#then act as if that instability doesn’t play a role in the success. also the relationships?

[maiteo]

do you think Conceição will last at Milan?

it’s hard to predict anything with clubs and managers nowadays…given the desire for instant success/changes, not always having the resources a manager needs to make said changes etc…idk anymore😭 doesn’t help that these clubs change managers like they’re changing underwear

but!! even with the abysmal leadership at porto..money going into ppls pockets instead of the club and all that mess…he managed to create something special and had a great relationship with the players and fans…gave us some diamond in the rough moments fr😩

im rambling now but I hope he lasts tbh! I hope Milan actually gives him a fair shot tho and won’t be quick to dispose and replace the very second things aren’t ideal

[thedumpsterqueen]

Standards of Performance, Chapter 4: Misjudgments and Saviors

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3

AO3 Link

Sorry it's later than normal! I procrastinated the fuck out of the last half of this chapter and just got it finished. This chapter was originally going to include way more than just the interrogation, but the word count got away from me. Not a ton of Hotch in this chapter, but fear not, you will be fed next week ;) Also dark!Hotch hits different, you cannot change my mind. I hope you enjoy, thank you to everyone who takes the time to follow me, share my fic, and send me such kind messages. It means the world! <3

Summary:  You’re the BAU’s newest intern, desperate to prove yourself amongst an established team of much more experienced profilers. Agent Hotchner, the seemingly infallible team leader, sets strict expectations for your performance. He commands your respect without even trying, but is there something more to your relationship than a simple desire to impress your stony-faced boss?

Chapter: 4, Misjudgments and Saviors

Chapter Summary: The team interrogates Ellory Matthews and discovers that just because a killer is easy to catch, doesn't mean he's easy to predict.

Words: 2929

Rating: Explicit, 18+ (REMINDER: I don’t use chapter warnings to avoid spoilers. Assume violence, smut, etc. are possible in all chapters. Check AO3 for more exact tags <3)

Pairings: Hotch x Reader, Hotch x You

You threw on your work clothes and clambered into the back of the SUV in the dark, silent hotel parking lot. Morgan and Hotch were sitting up front, Morgan looking as exhausted as you felt and clutching a steaming cup of coffee like it was his lifeline, Hotch looking as startlingly unfazed as ever.

You caught a glance of the car’s clock up front between them and shook your head. Two in the morning - not an optimal time to interrogate anyone, much less try to force a confession out of a man desperate to avoid the consequences of a triple murder. If you were lucky, he’d fold quickly and the bulk of the paperwork could be pushed off until tomorrow when you’d all had more than a few hours of sleep.

After a blessedly brief drive (Hotch had a habit of ignoring speed limits, even in non-emergencies) and arriving at the police precinct, the three of you stood in the windowed room looking into where Matthews was being held. A police officer - you forgot his name, but he was one of the same ones who briefed you when you’d first arrived - gave you the rundown of his arrest.

“He was back on campus,” the cop said. “We stopped checking everyone in who entered through the gates after 10, so he must have waited until after then. Campus police were on a patrol when they heard screaming. He tried to grab a girl walking home from the library and got his ass pepper sprayed.”

You suppressed a snort at that. For someone who’d gone to such over-the-top measures to subvert the authorities after murdering three women at once, he was continuing to prove your initial theory, unprofessional though it was - he was an idiot.

Hotch thanked and dismissed the officer, who left after shooting one more glance of barely-suppressed disgust through the one-way window. Just the three of you now, you stepped forward, looking at your subject.

The first thing you noticed was his youth - he was young, around your age, which shocked you despite already knowing that information. He was big, too; not overly fit, but he certainly looked strong enough to have had the upper hand on nearly any female victim he chose. His face, inflamed and dripping with tears from the effects of the pepper spray, was his defining feature in that it wasn’t particularly defining at all. The structure was mildly unattractive - too-big nose, downturned eyes - and the symmetry just off enough that the absence of a stellar personality to compensate would render him nearly invisible to the opposite sex. That, you supposed, combined with a predisposition towards instability and a repeated lack of success with women, had created the perfect storm of obsessiveness and delusion that produced the three (almost four)-time rapist and murderer that sat on the other side of the glass.

“We need a confession,” Hotch said, breaking you out of your internal analysis, “but we also need to know if he’s done this before. Garcia put together a list of missing women that fit the victimology here as well as in Arizona and Nevada. Considering he dumped bodies there, we can assume he has some degree of comfort with those areas.”

Morgan grabbed the aforementioned list from Hotch and shook his head. “There’s dozens of names on this list.”

Hotch nodded in acknowledgement. “I know. That’s why I’d like to get closure for as many of the families as possible. But first, let’s focus on the three we know about.” He turned to you. “Morgan and I will go in first. We may have some success with intimidation from male authority figures, but I don’t see us piquing enough interest to get a confession. Normally, I’d send Prentiss or JJ in a situation like this, but I have full faith you can handle it.”

He paused, inspecting your face, no doubt gauging your reaction. “How do you feel about interacting with him?”

You felt sick, to tell the truth, knowing you were an exact match for his preferences. More than that, you felt woefully unprepared to conduct your second-ever interrogation under the scrutiny of two of the BAU’s experienced agents, including your boss. Especially your boss, whose gravelly voice and piercing eyes seemed to be occupying much more of your mental real estate than you were comfortable with.

You reassured him that you’d be fine, though, because looking like you were scared of interviewing a serial killer cast doubt on your ability to actually, you know, do your job . And if you watched Morgan and Hotch enter the interrogation room while really hoping that Hotch was underestimating their ability to crack him, well, no one needed to know.

Morgan swung the folding chair around, sitting with his arms propped on the backrest, directly across from Matthews. Matthews’ gaze, however, was glued to Hotch, who was standing with his arms crossed diagonally behind Morgan. You couldn’t see Hotch’s face, as his back was to you, but you knew what it looked like - jaw taut, lips pressed tight, frown even more pronounced than usual. Intimidating to anyone he came across, probably even more so if you were someone he was about to interrogate on suspicion of murder.

They made their introductions and began.

“Listen, Ellory, I’m gonna be straight with you here,” Morgan said, leaning forward. “This is not looking good for you, my man. We got you on attempted kidnapping at the same school three murdered girls attended. We have friends of these victims say they talked about a creepy teaching assistant in their classes. You’ve got piles of criminal psychology textbooks hidden in your house with notes that match what happened to these girls exactly. Put this in front of a jury, you’re getting convicted no question. At this point, it’s a matter of whether or not you wanna work with us and make this a little easier on you. You feel me?”

Matthews mumbled something indistinct, looking at his feet.

“Speak up,” Hotch commanded. You’d seen this before, what Morgan jokingly called the “good cop, bad drill sergeant” routine, but it always amazed you how easily they slipped into the roles.

Matthews looked up then, defiant. “They’re not mine.”

Morgan scoffed. “What aren’t? The books? C’mon man, they were under your mattress. In your house. No one’s buying that.”

“Well, it’s true,” Matthews mumbled, looking back down at his hands. “Don’t know how they got there.”

“And the girl?” Morgan asked, obviously unconvinced. “How you wanna explain you trying to kidnap a girl who fits the exact profile of three other girls who got kidnapped and killed in the same week?”

He whipped his head up at that, furious. “I wasn’t kidnapping her. She needed a ride. It was late.”

Hotch spoke up, his tone cutting. “Then why did she taze you?”

“She didn- look, she was confused, okay? I don’t know.”

“Sounds to me like she was pretty fuckin’ ungrateful,” Morgan offered. You cringed. You knew what he was playing at, but it was hard to hear nonetheless.

He continued, “Pretty girl like her, it wasn’t safe walking around that late, right? And you try to be a gentleman, try to help, and she freaks out and attacks you. That’d piss me off too, man.”

“Yeah. I guess,” Matthew responded, eyes flicking between Morgan and Hotch, seemingly unsure.

“Don’t worry about him,” Morgan said. “He’s just here cuz he has to be. Listen. We’re on the same page here. I’m you, I’m nice to these girls, I offer them rides, I treat ‘em like a gentleman. They turn around and act stuck-up, like they’re too good for me, right? That makes me mad.”

He paused, waiting for Matthews’ reaction. Matthews nodded, hesitant.

“So, what? Maybe I see them after they graduate or leave the college and confront them or something; tell them off for being such assholes to me when I was their TA. Maybe it gets heated, I gotta defend myself, someone gets hurt. Now, that’s not my fault, right?”

Matthews nodded again, more enthusiastic this time.

“Is that what happened to those girls, Ellory?” Hotch asked.

The room fell silent, waiting on his response. You leaned forward, nose almost pressed against the glass, praying it would really be this easy.

Matthews opened and closed his mouth, unsure. Morgan had worked him up, you could tell - his face was red, his hands balled up into fists on the table. He took a deep breath…

…and shook his head.

You cursed, stepping away from the glass. You heard Hotch and Morgan exit the interrogation room and come in behind you. You turned to face them.

“I thought you had him for sure,” you groaned to Morgan.

“Me too,” he replied, “but we got close. She going in next?” he asked Hotch.

Hotch looked at you. “He’s close to cracking. Act like he’d be doing you a huge favor by confessing, like you’d be in his debt. He wants to feel powerful, important. Convince him he can be.”

Catering to a man’s ego was a skill you’d fine-tuned after years of studying under, working with, and existing alongside them. Most men you’d had to flatter didn’t inspire quite so much disgust, however.

Just pretend he’s another idiot at a bar.

You straightened your cardigan and nodded. “I’m ready.”

“Remember,” Hotch said, “we’re right here. If you get too uncomfortable, just leave. This is a lot to ask of you so early in your position; I won’t blame you if it doesn’t go to plan.”

You nodded again and tried your best to smile. “Gotta learn sometime though, right?”

Morgan held out his fist to bump, and you obliged. “That’s my girl,” he said. “Go get ‘em, tiger.”

Hotch looked much less enthusiastic, but opened and held the door for you anyways. You took a deep breath and entered, plastering what you hoped was a convincing smile on your face. Matthews looked up, surprised, and returned your smile. He looked so normal in that moment, it was hard for you to reconcile that this was the same man who stalked, raped, and murdered three women and led authorities on a purposeless goose chase to divert suspicion.

Taking a seat directly across the table from him, you introduced yourself. “I’m the new intern at the BAU. I asked my boss if I could come talk to you. I just don’t feel like they really understood you, ya know?” You grinned, hoping the flattery would stick.

It appeared to, as Matthews leaned forward and spoke in a hushed voice, as if he was confiding in you. “I know how guys like that are. They think they’re the shit. Women always fall for that, though.” He looked at you intensely, and you started to realize very quickly why his victims had found him unsettling. “You don’t fall for that, right? That alpha male stuff?”

You forced out a laugh. “No, I prefer more sensitive guys. Ones that you can have a conversation with.”

“Are we having a conversation?”

“Wh-what? I’m sorry?”

“Are we having a conversation?” he repeated, still holding intense eye contact.

“Well, yes, I would say so,” you replied. “On that note, um, I wanted to be honest with you. It would really mean a lot to me if the families of -” you paused, choosing your words carefully, “- the three girls we’ve been talking to you about could get closure.”

“How do you mean?” asked Matthews, leaning back and crossing his arms.

“I just mean, they don’t know what happened to them, you know? And if we could tell them that whatever happened to them, it was a misunderstanding, and the person who did it feels bad, I think that would help a lot.”

Matthews’ beady, swollen eye twitched at that. “Feels bad?”

Oh, fuck.

“Sorry, I don’t know if bad is the right word, just that they didn’t want that to happen. For them to die.”

He paused. Seemed to make a decision.

"Who said I didn't want them to die?"

You had misjudged him - in that moment, you knew that. You had assumed the fatal ends to the encounters with his victims were born out of shame. That he felt remorse. That he didn’t want to mutilate and discard their bodies, and that the purposeful distractions from his true psychological profile had been a desperate attempt of an unintelligent man to throw the police off his trail. He was a creep, he was a stalker, he was obsessive and dangerous, and he was unintelligent. But he was also a sadist.

Realizing how pathetically unprepared you were to deal with this new diagnosis, you pushed back from the table and moved to stand - slowly, like you were trying to avoid startling a wild animal. Trying. But it all happened so fast.

Matthews shot up from his seat the instant you did - uncuffed, because he wasn’t supposed to be a threat, not like this - and grabbed you by the neck, dragging you across the table, scraping your legs against the hard metal edges. You screamed for help (really just screamed Hotch’s name over and over) until he had you too tight and you couldn’t anymore. Your hair was in your face, obscuring your vision, but you heard the door crash open seconds after he moved. He wrenched you closer to him, trapping you in the crook of one elbow, cutting off your breathing. More than cutting off your breathing, he was squeezing, much harder than he needed to simply choke you, and amidst the haze of your hair in your face and the blood rushing in your ears and the muffled sounds of Hotch and Morgan yelling, you had the wild thought that he might actually detach your head from your shoulders.

They can’t shoot, you thought, your last clear notion before your mind started to go fuzzy. He had you too close; the space was too small. A loud crash, presumably the table being launched against a wall, cut through the pounding in your head. You felt a sharp jerk - Matthews trying to move away - a sickening, dull crack, and the vice holding your throat was released. You dropped forward onto your hands and knees, hacking desperately, tears streaming onto the ground.

Morgan grabbed you by the shoulders and sat you up. “You ok? Hey, look at me, you ok? Can you breathe? Breathe for me, ok, come on.”

Coughing out a raspy, “Yes,” you pushed your hair out of your eyes and wiped your sleeve through the snot and mascara streaking your face. You looked to your left, trying to see what happened to Matthews, and nearly stopped breathing again.

He was dead, collapsed into a pile on the floor like sodden laundry. There was no blood, no apparent evidence of what happened, until you looked to his head and saw how grossly contorted his neck was. You looked up at Hotch in shock, who was standing over the body, hair askew, breathing heavily.

He broke his fucking neck.

Morgan could’ve done it, of course, but by the way Hotch looked up and met your eyes, you knew that wasn’t the case.

They gathered you up and wrapped you in a jacket. You saw paramedics almost immediately who cleared you medically (“No permanent tracheal damage, just expect bruising and soreness.”), met with internal investigators who questioned you about the incident, spoke to the rest of the team on a video call, spent 20 minutes on the phone with Garcia trying to reassure her between coughing fits that you were all alright, and finally, you were cleared to leave. The whole time, though, you were paying less and less attention to what was going on around you and more time thinking about the way Hotch looked when you looked him in the face.

You knew he had to have killed before; working this job for as long as he did made that a certainty. What you didn’t expect to see on his face was a complete lack of remorse. Disgust, even. He looked down at Matthews like he was scum, his lip curled and his jaw set. It was only when you made eye contact that you saw the slightest bit of emotion, of panic, before they whisked you away.

Morgan interrupted your cyclical musing. “You need someone to stay with you?”

Right, he was dropping you off at your hotel room.

“No, thank you Morgan,” you whispered, throat feeling more raw by the minute. “I’ll be okay.”

Morgan looked unconvinced but refrained from debating you. “Alright, but you know to call if you need anything, right?”

You nodded and managed a small smile. “Thank you.”

____________

Later that day, you took a commercial flight back, alone. Morgan and Hotch were staying for a few more days to finish closing the case, but they insisted you go home and rest. You were too drained to argue.

When you closed your eyes to sleep that night, in your own apartment, you expected to see Matthews, jeering at you from across the table. You expected to feel his arms wrap around your throat, to smell his stench, to wake up in a cold sweat thinking he was standing over you, ready to attack you again.

None of those things happened. In fact, when you closed your eyes, Matthews wasn’t the man you saw at all.

[clarasimone]

Iain Glen nailing Hamlet (1991)

In 1991, after winning the Evening Standard Film Award for Best Actor, Iain Glen gave his soulful all, not on the stage in London, no, not yet, though really he could have, but at the Old Vic in Bristol, donning the persona of the Dane, Hamlet. He won the Special Commendation Ian Charleson Award* for his performance and yet it appears we will never see but stills from this production as no video recording was made, not even by and for the company. The University of Bristol has the archives of the production: the playbook, the programme and black and white stills. The V&A archives have the administrative papers. In our day and age, this sad evanescent corporeal sate of affairs is unimaginable. The memory of the play, of this performance fading away? We rebel against the very thought. We brandish our cell phones and swear we shall unearth and pirate its memory, somehow, somewhere. Even if we have to hypnotize patrons or pull out the very hearts of those who saw Iain Glen on stage, those few, those happy few, to read into their very memory and pulsating membrane just how brilliant he was. Because he was, he was. That’s what they’ll all tell you... 

Below, those pics and testimonies....

*(The Charleson Awards were established in memory of Ian Charleson, who died at 40 from Aids while playing Hamlet at the National Theatre in 1989)

- Iain Glen is a rampaging prince, quixotic, technically sound, tense as a coiled spring, funny. ‘To be, or not to be’ results from throwing himself against the white walls, an air of trembling unpredictability is beautifully conveyed throughout. ‘Oh, what a rogue and peasants slave’ is blindingly powerful. My life is drawn in angrily modern post Gielgud Hamlets: David Warner, Nicol Williams, Visotsky, Jonathon Price. Iain Glen is equal to them. He keeps good company. THE OBSERVER, Michael Coveney

- Paul Unwin’s riveting production reminded me more strongly than any I have ever seen that the Danish Court is riddled with secrecy. Politics is a form of hide and seek: everyone stealthily watches everyone else. Iain Glen’s Hamlet is a melancholic in the clinical sense: his impeccable breeding and essential good nature keep in check what might be an approaching breakdown. His vitriolic humour acts as a safety valve for a nagging instability, his boyish charm is deployed to placate and deceive a hostile and watchful world. Glen brings out Hamlet’s fatal self absorption: the way he cannot help observing himself and putting a moral price tag on every action and failure. He is a doomed boy. And his chill but touching calm at the end is that of a man who has finally understood the secrets behind the closed doors. The Sunday Times, John Peter

- This is an excellent production of Hamlet from the Bristol Old Vic. The director Paul Unwin and his designer Bunnie Christie have set the play in turn of the century Europe. Elsinore is a palace of claustrophobically white walls and numerous doors. All this is handled with a light touch, without drawing attention away from the play. Our first encounter with Hamlet shows him bottled up with rage and grief. Glen gives a gripping performance. The self-dramatising side of the character is tapped to the full by this talented actor. The Spectator, Christopher Edwards

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The following though is my favorite review/article because it situates Iain Glen’s creation is time, in the spectrum of all renowned Hamlets.

How will Cumberbatch, TV’s Sherlock, solve the great mystery of Hamlet? by Michael Coveney - Aug 17, 2015

In 1987, three years before he died, the critic and venerable Shakespearean JC Trewin published a book of personal experience and reminiscence: Five and Eighty Hamlets. I’m thinking of supplying a second volume, under my own name, called Six and Fifty Hamlets, for that will be my total once Benedict Cumberbatch has opened at the Barbican.

There’s a JC and MC overlap of about 15 years: Trewin was a big fan of Derek Jacobi’s logical and graceful prince in 1977 and ended with less enthusiastic remarks about “the probing intelligence” of Michael Pennington in 1980 (both Jacobi and Pennington were 37 when they played the role; Cumberbatch is 39) and emotional pitch and distraction of Roger Rees in 1984 (post-Nickleby, Rees was 40, but an electric eel and ever-youthful).

I started as a reviewer in 1972 with three Hamlets on the trot: the outrageous Charles Marowitz collage, which treats Hamlet as a creep and Ophelia as a demented tart, and makes exemplary, equally unattractive polar opposites of Laertes and Fortinbras; a noble, stately Keith Michell (with a frantic Polonius by Ron Moody) at the Bankside Globe, Sam Wanamaker’s early draft of the Shakespearean replica; and a 90-minute gymnastic exercise performed by a cast of eight in identical chain mail and black breeches at the Arts Theatre.

This gives an idea of how alterable and adaptable Hamlet has been, and continues to be. There are contestable readings between the Folios, any number of possible cuts, and there is no end of choice in emphasis. Trewin once wrote a programme note for a student production directed by Jonathan Miller in which he said that the first scene on the battlements (“Who’s there?”) was the most exciting in world drama; the scene was cut.

And as Steven Berkoff pointed out in his appropriately immodestly titled book I Am Hamlet (1989), Hamlet doesn’t exist in the way Macbeth, or Coriolanus, exists; when you play Hamlet, he becomes you, not the other way round. Hamlet, said Hazlitt, is as real as our own thoughts.

Which is why my three favourite Hamlets are all so different from each other, and attractive because of the personality of the actor who’s provided the mould for the Hamlet jelly: my first, pre-critical-days Hamlet, David Warner (1965) at the Royal Shakespeare Company, was a lank and indolently charismatic student in a long red scarf, exact contemporary of David Halliwell’s Malcolm Scrawdyke, and two years before students were literally revolting in Paris and London; then Alan Cumming (1993) with English Touring Theatre, notably quick, mercurial and very funny, with a detachable doublet and hose, black Lycra pants and bovver boots, definitely (then) the glass of fashion, a graceful gender-bender like Brett Anderson of indie band Suede; and, at last, Michael Sheen (2011) at the Young Vic, a vivid and overreaching fantasist in a psychiatric institution (“Denmark’s a prison”), where every actor “plays” his part.

These three actors – Warner, Cumming, Sheen – occupy what might be termed the radical, alternative tradition of Hamlets, whereas the authoritative, graceful nobility of Jacobi belongs to the Forbes Robertson/John Gielgud line of high-ranking top drawer ‘star’ turns, a dying species and last represented, sourly but magnificently, by Ralph Fiennes (1995) in the gilded popular palace of the Hackney Empire. Fiennes, like Cumberbatch, has the sort of voice you might expect a non-radical, traditional Hamlet to possess.

But if you listen to Gielgud on tape, you soon realise he wasn’t ‘old school’ at all. He must have been as modern, at the time, as Noel Coward. Gielgud is never ‘intoned’ or overtly posh, he’s quicksilver, supple, intellectually alert. I saw him deliver the “Oh what a rogue and peasant slave” soliloquy on the night the National left the Old Vic (February 28, 1976); he had played the role more than 500 times, and not for 37 years, but it was as fresh, brilliant and compelling as if he had been making it up on the spot.

Ben Kingsley, too, in 1975, was a fiercely intelligent Royal Shakespeare Company Hamlet, and I saw much of that physical and mental power in David Tennant’s, also for the RSC in 2008, with an added pinch of mischief and irony. There’s another tradition, too, of angry Hamlets: Nicol Williamson in 1969, a scowling, ferocious demon; Jonathan Pryce at the Royal Court in 1980, possessed by the ghost of his father and spewing his lines, too, before finding Yorick’s skull in a cabinet of bones, an ossuary of Osrics; and a sourpuss Christopher Ecclestone (2002), spiritually constipated, moody as a moose with a migraine, at the West Yorkshire Playhouse.

One Hamlet who had a little of all these different attributes – funny, quixotic, powerful, unhappy, clever and genuinely heroic – was Iain Glen (1991) at the Bristol Old Vic, and I can imagine Cumberbatch developing along similar lines. He, like so many modern Hamlets, is pushing 40 – as was Jude Law (2009), hoary-voiced in the West End – yet when Trevor Nunn cast Ben Whishaw (2004) straight from RADA, aged 23, petulant and precocious, at the Old Vic, he looked like a 16-year-old, and too young for what he was saying. It’s like the reverse of King Lear, where you have to be younger to play older with any truth or vigour.

Michael Billington’s top Hamlet remains Michael Redgrave, aged 50, in 1958, as he recounts in his brilliant new book, The 101 Greatest Plays (seven of the 101 are by Shakespeare); Hamlet, he says, more than any other play, alters according to time as well as place.

So, Yuri Lyubimov’s great Cold War Hamlet, the prince played by the dissident poet Vladimir Visotsky, was primarily about surveillance, the action played on either side of an endlessly moving hessian and woollen wall. And in Belgrade in 1980, shortly after the death of Tito, the play became a statement of anxiety about the succession.

There’s a mystery to Hamlet that not even Sherlock Holmes could solve, though Cumberbatch will no doubt try his darndest – even if he finds his Watson at the Barbican (Leo Bill is playing Horatio) more of a hindrance than a help; there are, after all, more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in his friend’s philosophy.

*************************************************************************************************

Oh! Did I say that we were never going to see Iain Glen in the skin of the great Dane? Tsk. How silly of me. Meet IG’s Hamlet in Tom Stoppard’s postmodern theatrical whimsy ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD, shot the year before the Bristol play.

Though almost surreal and most often funny as the film follows the Pulp Fiction-like misadventures of two forgettable Shakespearian characters, crossing paths with other more or less fortunate characters, their time with Hamlet makes us privy to the Dane as we never quite see him in the Bard’s play... but for one memorable scene,  in which Iain Glen absolutely nails it, emoting the famous “To be or not to be” which you see tortures his soul, brings tears to his eyes and contorts his mouth; the moment made all the more memorable by the fact that it is a silent scene. You never hear him utter the famous line, but you see the words leave his lips and feel them mark your soul.

I’m kinda telling myself that it’s 1991 and I’m sitting in the Old Vic, in Bristol, not London. Not yet.

[warsofasoiaf]

Hi again, just a friendly reminder for you about Disco Elysium. I played it myself 2 weeks ago and I thought it was a wonderful game, looking forward to hear your opinion.

Here’s the weekend reminder about disco elysium: at some point I’d like to hear your thoughts about Kim and the deserter, but I’m sure you have a lot of first thoughts about the game’s narrative and styles at large and the overall themes ?

Yep, I’ve got many thoughts on Disco Elysium. Overall, I found it an incredibly enjoyable throwback to the classic role-playing games of the old Infinity Engine in a good way. It’s dialogue-driven in the way Planescape: Torment was, but was confident enough to avoid the pitfalls of combat that punctuated the D&D games in favor of a mechanical challenge of skill checks. All conflict is done through dialogue, either through picking a dialogue choice or engaging in a skill check. The game also helpfully gives you feedback, not only in your skill totals, but in how your actions influence the choices you’ve made. Did you take the corrupt union boss’s check? He has you over a bit of a barrel so it’s harder to resist him. Did you impress Cuno with your marksmanship by shooting down the body? You have a bonus to impress him since you’ve already done it before. This sort of openness with the mechanics of the game helps smooth over understanding of the functions, as well as reinforce the themes. Since everything you do is in the dialogue trees, and all of these choices occur in dialogue, it stresses careful reading of the dialogue box as opposed to something you just blow through to get quest markers or goodies.

Alright, let’s talk about the plot. Since there will be spoilers and it’s a relatively recent game, I’m going to throw a cut in here.

One of the chief themes of the game is sadness and loss, it’s written all across the setting. Heck, it’s even written into the name. Disco is the archetypical music genre that is dead, despite its followers wishing that it could come back. Elysium, the afterlife of Greek mythology. It was a failed communist revolution followed by a failed monarchist rebellion followed by a capitalist invasion, and now exists as a pit of corruption, crime, and plenty of people within Martinase look back to the lost days by cleaving to the old political systems as a source of comfort. Communists and monarchists look back to the old communes that were established, capitalists look to the successful Coalition and the ability of capital to absorb its naysayers and failures into itself for success, and the moralists look at the other three and say “you extremists are absolutely insane!” and hold to their own centrist platform and the path of incremental caution. This is hardly unusual in our own history, with far too many historical examples to list here. There’s a longing there for something that is lost, the people you meet in the game are lost, even what seems to be simple comedic beats have their own secret wishes, like Cuno who ends up helping you in the final act if you lose Kim, and can even become a junior police officer once out of the thumb of Cunoeese. Harry can sing the saddest song about the littlest church, and it’s a perfect expression of his regret, as his reptile brain lets him know. The deserter is lost in regret, albeit an incredibly negative sort. He curses those who are not ‘committed’ like him, who aren’t willing to murder like him. He looks at the Rene, the old monarchist with his boule, and wishes only to pull the trigger and silence him. 

The main character you inhabit is a great twist on the blank slate character that dominates the ‘western RPG.’ The main character starts the game passed out in his own drug-fueled excess. Where most RPG’s either expect reading a large lore dump (this was the case with the Forgotten Realms Infinity Engine games, which expected people to know who Cyric or Auril was) or largely wave it off with bland exposition, this was a game that made what happened an integral part of your character. What drives such a man to try and destroy himself so completely? Going through the game reveals the answer: it’s Dora, your ex-wife. Before, your obsession with your job (your case load, as noted by Kim, is exceptionally high), seemed to be at odds with your character’s penchant for substance abuse and overall instability, but exploring the failed relationship with Dora sheds new light on Harry DuBois. Dora was a wealthy woman, and your character was clearly a member of the lower classes given his demeanor and salary. Your character tried to immerse themselves in the work perhaps to earn more money, or simply to earn prestige to help alleviate the mismatch. It didn’t work, Dora left six years ago, and the detective has been alone ever since. By calculating the ‘cop tracks’ that the character can be on, the game can populate dialogue with references to the behavior, allowing the character to fill out aspects of themselves in a character-driven way. Tyranny did this with its campaign character generation, and Disco Elysium does it here. Such things are always going to be niche in RPG’s, the driving trend these days is instead make a completely blank character and have them be built out from actions taking place in the game world, but this typically leads to characters who rationalize performing optimal paths and who do everything the game offers in the world, which translates either into a lot of time doing repetitive content (in order to built up other character builds to the same level of mastery to the original build) or leads to ludo-narrative dissonance at the ease of which the character plows through the content, like becoming the Arch-Mage in Skyrim without being able to cast a single adept-level spell.

However, that isn’t to say that Harry is alone. Instead, the detective is quite a crowd is his own head, with the 24 various skills that he has developed largely advising, suggesting, yelling, and talking over each other. This was almost certainly part of the reason the original name of the game was “No Truce with the Furies.” The Furies, in Greek mythology were embodiment of vengeance, primal feelings that sought out their goals. These 24 skills in your head almost cannot be compromised with, only accepted or rejected. They’ll yell inside your own head to listen to them. Electrochemistry wants its next fix, Volition is certain that Klaasje is trying to manipulate you and wants you to slap cuffs on her right now, Physical Instrument wants you to show everyone who’s boss with fists while Authority wants the same with words. This was almost overwhelming at first, 24 characters to figure out in addition to my own character as well as Kim, Cuno, Joyce, Everett, and the Hanged Man made me wonder what exactly I was going to do. What was the difference between Volition and Composure, or Shivers and Inland Empire? It helps on a replay once you figure out what the skills actually mean and can help shape your character into your preferred vehicle for exploring Revanchol West. Dealing with these characters can be fun, insightful, and incredibly heartwarming, as the player can understand when they finally find out that Reptile Brain and Limbic System are simply trying to help Harry out with the loss of his ex-wife by trying to get rid of the sad feelings as best they can. 

What helps with this though, is that failing skill checks is not a death sentence. One of the most annoying things in games comes when you depend upon success after success that is out of your control, it encourages save-scumming behavior. This isn’t to say that failure isn’t a valuable learning experience or that difficulty is something to be avoided; the enduring popularity of the Soulsborne genre suggests that difficulty is not itself a bad thing. But failure typically has to be fair. If instead a game drops you in a room with 25 gorgons, forcing you to roll 25 checks against petrification or die immediately, that’s not challenge, that’s just padding the length of the game by forcing repeat content. Disco Elysium instead makes failure, particularly of red skill checks, either entertaining or allowing alternate paths. I laughed with absolute glee when my character took off from Garte yelling at him about the trashed hotel room which ended up becoming a full sprint while flipping him the bird, causing me instead to run over the nice wheelchair-bound old lady, in true black comedy fashion, or that you can get into a nodding war with Kim that’s so intense that you actually break your neck. That the game offers so many different methods to the same path helps elevate the role-playing elements.

Similarly, one of the best moments of game design was when you looked at the billboard to find out where Ruby could have gone. It’s a difficult Shivers check, which might force people into an insurmountable wall if they haven’t upgraded their Shivers skill. However, doing stuff in the fishing village, from going on a date with the harpoon girl to tracking down what went on with the body on the boardwalk, gives you bonuses to the check, encouraging the character to perform the side quests and explore the bonus content. 

The game’s side content really does reward some more of the Dirk Gently type of character that sees connectivity in anything. The old lady reading outside the bookstore doesn’t have a missing husband only to later be the wife of the man who died on the boardwalk, or that a grounded character won’t walk out into the water to speak with the apparition of Dora as the mythical Dolores Dei (another great reference to what was lost, the lost wife seen as the lost mythic Moralist conqueror and crusader) means that the more grounded character does have the more grounded, less intense story. But the short length encourages replayability, and the idea that a grounded character has a more grounded story is in it’s own way a commitment to the game’s overall vision, even if it means you miss out on a key insight the first time around.

I’m incredibly impressed at how the developers stuck to their visions and the finished product that they developed. My hat is off to them.

Thanks for the question, Khef, the multiple Anon’s who reminded me, TBH, and everyone else who was looking forward to this essay.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[dyedmaxiian]

So I want to take a moment to address something because I’ve been wracking my brain trying to figure out how to put it into words, but I think I’ve finally figured out how to answer:

Why does Jamie need the Minutemen, and why do they need him?

It boils down to something very simple, and it’s that the Minutemen need a personality that is kind and cares about the well-being of others, but doesn’t allow the organization to be dictated and controlled by personal vested interests of individuals but rather the greater of the collective Commonwealth. I say that with the footnote of that the SOLE PURPOSE of the Minutemen is to protect & help the people of the Commonwealth, whether they be human, synth, or ghoul alike, because that is ANOTHER key point of the Minutemen that I like a lot of people forget about.

In the game we see that the reason the Minutemen fell apart is a combination of a loss of strong leadership as well as a descent into corruption, in-fighting, and personal goals. All of which are POISON to any faction, and as such the Minutemen by the start of the game are beaten down to their last legs. As such, the Minutemen need to be pulled back together and given a STRONG and proper foundation. They also need leadership that is devoted to their primary purpose which is at its very core drawn down to their mantra ‘Protect the people in a minute’s notice’.

So why does Jamie need the Minutemen exactly?

Well, to make a long story short, Jamie can’t serve an organization with selfish goals in good conscience. Part of the reason Jamie was even willing to join the Brotherhood in the Capital Wasteland was because of the way Owyn & Sarah Lyons ran their Brotherhood. It was still flawed mind you, and Jamie openly recognizes as much when asked about his thoughts on the Brotherhood’s prejudice & ideals regarding science & technology. But at their core what they wanted to do was HELP. The Lyons Brotherhood could have easily taken over Project Purity and hoarded it to themselves, but instead they took the functional project purity and decided to use it to distribute clean water across the Capital Wasteland and provide relief to the people of the Capital. Which goes against the Brotherhood’s general code. It was the entire basis of why the Outcasts were even present in the first place. As such, Jamie was in GOOD CONSCIENCE serving the Brotherhood under Owyn & Sarah Lyons. 

Unfortunately, this come to a close when the Lyons leadership is killed off. Then there’s a period of instability before Arthur Maxson comes into the picture. What Maxson does is completely negate all that the Lyons brotherhood stands for. But why is it exactly that he stays with them? Well, simply put, it’s all he has left. He doesn’t HAVE any good alternatives, and while the guilt & shame of helping an organization whose vested interests are selfish and bordering on brazen, it isn’t enough to negate TWO very important elements of his life in the Brotherhood: A) the familiarity, as he has nowhere else to go and B) the fear of leaving due to what the implied ramifications are. 

After the Prydwen flies into the Commonwealth, and the Minutemen start to arise again, Jamie takes notice of it. He’d heard word about Preston and the Minutemen, when he arrived with Danse, Haylen, and Rhys, but they were effectively ghosts. The only frame of reference he had was Preston Garvey, who to him was a shining example of what he always believed the Brotherhood SHOULD be doing. But he remains put because feasibly he has his squad to lean on and so he figures so long as he has them, he can weather the storm of being stuck answering to a less than moral Brotherhood of Steel in his eyes.

HOWEVER, when Blind Betrayal comes to pass, it’s effectively the straw that breaks the camel’s back. It’s the line that he never thought would be crossed by anyone in the Brotherhood, and it’s the final nail in the coffin for any faith he has in the Brotherhood eventually doing good again. Maxson steps over that boundary and Jamie snaps. He can’t in his right mind pledge loyalty to an organization that would forcibly turn on one of their own, ONE OF THEIR MOST LOYAL NO LESS, on the principle that he “ISN’T HUMAN”. And Jamie leaves. But even then, there’s a void that’s left due to paranoia and focus on helping Danse survive the Commonwealth.

It isn’t until Jamie and Danse seek asylum with the Minutemen that the wake up call hits. What he’s been looking for, has been sitting right in front of him. The Minutemen have been doing exactly what he has been hoping to for by that point, years. They’re what he admires in the Commonwealth and it’s without hesitation at that point that he enlists. They align with exactly what he’s wanted to be doing as well as they offer him a place in their ranks which he can take without the fear of guilt or shame for taking it. And while he always has a special place in his heart for what the Brotherhood once was, the Minutemen feel more RIGHT to him in the long run. They make him feel like what he’s doing is RIGHT and their very mantra stands for what he always believed was the RIGHT thing to do.

Now then, that brings to the inverse of this question:

Why do the Minutemen need Jamie?

Well, this goes back to what the Minutemen has ultimately been lacking since the death of Joe Becker, where the Minutemen descended into chaos. The problem there was that it’s implied the Minutemen had a General who was the ONLY voice guiding them, and unfortunately that sort of history is doomed to repeat itself without Jamie. While a Colonel, Jamie actually encourages the General and Preston to work WITH him instead of sectioning each other off. Jamie also encourages a council to be involved in the process of decision making. The General pushes the Minutemen in a direction, but they’re not the ONLY head of the Minutemen that has a say in what happens. But most importantly, there is SOMEONE in the Minutemen who has a contingency plan for the event that the Minutemen General loses sight of the Minutemen’s best interest.

They HAVE plans in place to ensure that even if their figure head strays, the Minutemen will survive and will continue to do the right thing. Not to mention that the vast majority of people in the Minutemen do not have the experience that Jamie has in terms of being part of a military organization. Despite the pain & suffering that came with serving under Maxson, it was a learning experience and he DID learn the ins and outs of being a successful military organization. Granted he can also distinguish the good from the bad, which would allow him to provide insight into ways in which the Minutemen would benefit greatly from organizing themselves. 

The other major Jamie plays that makes him crucial to the expansion and successful development of the Minutemen is him taking on the role of ENFORCER. He’s never going to be ‘GENERAL’ material. It was proven time and time again as a younger man that it’s not his role to play, but as he’s grown more and more in this post-apocalyptic world he HAS grown out of old habits. So the role of Colonel suits him fine. But it also provides him with the support all leaders need. Where he shines is his directness with people. Yes at times it verges on abrasive or overly blunt, but the beauty of Jamie’s role in the Minutemen is that his entire JOB is to play ‘the mean one’. He’s not supposed to be SUPER warm & amicable. He’s supposed to make the trains run on time. Make sure that the Minutemen survive and anyone they’re tasked with protecting is SAFE and well cared for by the Minutemen. 

Jamie fills a role that is SEVERELY lacking in the Minutemen. While you could argue that Ronnie could fill this role also, it’s pretty cut & dry that Ronnie doesn’t seem to be the LEADER type judging by how very devoted she is to planting herself at the Castle rather than being part of the decision making process. Ronnie is more of a ‘Warden of the Castle’ rather than a “Colonel of the Minutemen”. Jamie has no such fastenings. And Ronnie works for making herself integral to the functionality of the Castle because she represents the STEADFAST nature of the Minutemen that should be seen by anyone with the prospect to join or negotiate terms of alliance with the Minutemen.

Why Jamie works as a Colonel specifically is boiled down to simply that people are faced with the THREE PILLARS of the Minutemen’s leadership. The Fearless Leader ( The General ), the Diplomat ( Preston Garvey ), and last but not least the Enforcer ( Jamie ). When negotiations fail, and being nice or inspiring doesn’t work, then you’re faced with a DIFFERENT side of the leadership. If you can’t work things out with Preston or the General, then you have to deal with Jamie.

The entire idea behind Jamie’s presence in the Minutemen is to act as the FEARSOME FORCE that will stomp you under his boot if you don’t play nice. He’s not meant to bully you into an alliance, he’s meant to remind you that if you disrupt the order, then you’ll be faced with a rather UNPLEASANT consequence. Because Jamie is arguably the MOST imposing of the Minutemen’s leadership by how he conducts himself and his stark directness, you could argue Jamie not only helps to organize them into a more effective faction, but also helps to keep the PEACE when all else fails by simply reminding people that the Minutemen aren’t a DOORMAT and if you threaten what they’ve built, you’ll be met with QUITE an unpleasant surprise.

In short: Jamie helps solidify that the Minutemen are kind & good natured, but not the kind to be walked all over.

[kindledspiritsbooks]

My Month in Books: December 2019

The Queen of Nothing - Holly Black

Power is much easier to acquire than it is to hold onto. Jude learned this lesson when she released her control over the wicked king, Cardan, in exchange for immeasurable power. Now as the exiled mortal Queen of Faerie, Jude is powerless and left reeling from Cardan’s betrayal. She bides her time determined to reclaim everything he took from her. Opportunity arrives in the form of her deceptive twin sister, Taryn, whose mortal life is in peril. Jude must risk venturing back into the treacherous Faerie Court, and confront her lingering feelings for Cardan, if she wishes to save her sister. But Elfhame is not as she left it. War is brewing. As Jude slips deep within enemy lines she becomes ensnared in the conflict’s bloody politics. And, when a dormant yet powerful curse is unleashed, panic spreads throughout the land, forcing her to choose between her ambition and her humanity…

Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson

Moving forward and backward in time, Jacqueline Woodson's taut and powerful new novel uncovers the role that history and community have played in the experiences, decisions, and relationships of these families, and in the life of the new child. As the book opens in 2001, it is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody's coming of age ceremony in her grandparents' Brooklyn brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, making her entrance to the music of Prince, she wears a special custom-made dress. But the event is not without poignancy. Sixteen years earlier, that very dress was measured and sewn for a different wearer: Melody's mother, for her own ceremony-- a celebration that ultimately never took place. Unfurling the history of Melody's parents and grandparents to show how they all arrived at this moment, Woodson considers not just their ambitions and successes but also the costs, the tolls they've paid for striving to overcome expectations and escape the pull of history. As it explores sexual desire and identity, ambition, gentrification, education, class and status, and the life-altering facts of parenthood, Red at the Bone most strikingly looks at the ways in which young people must so often make long-lasting decisions about their lives--even before they have begun to figure out who they are and what they want to be.

Katherine by Anya Seton

This classic romance novel tells the true story of the love affair that changed history—that of Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the ancestors of most of the British royal family. Set in the vibrant 14th century of Chaucer and the Black Death, the story features knights fighting in battle, serfs struggling in poverty, and the magnificent Plantagenets—Edward III, the Black Prince, and Richard II—who ruled despotically over a court rotten with intrigue. Within this era of danger and romance, John of Gaunt, the king’s son, falls passionately in love with the already married Katherine. Their well-documented affair and love persist through decades of war, adultery, murder, loneliness, and redemption. This epic novel of conflict, cruelty, and untamable love has become a classic since its first publication in 1954.

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in “The Satan Sacrifice" of Kinnakee, Kansas. She survived—and famously testified that her fifteen-year-old brother, Ben, was the killer. Twenty-five years later, the Kill Club—a secret secret society obsessed with notorious crimes—locates Libby and pumps her for details. They hope to discover proof that may free Ben. Libby hopes to turn a profit off her tragic history: She’ll reconnect with the players from that night and report her findings to the club—for a fee. As Libby’s search takes her from shabby Missouri strip clubs to abandoned Oklahoma tourist towns, the unimaginable truth emerges, and Libby finds herself right back where she started—on the run from a killer.

House of Salt and Sorrow by Erin A. Craig

Annaleigh lives a sheltered life at Highmoor, a manor by the sea, with her sisters, their father, and stepmother. Once they were twelve, but loneliness fills the grand halls now that four of the girls' lives have been cut short. Each death was more tragic than the last—the plague, a plummeting fall, a drowning, a slippery plunge—and there are whispers throughout the surrounding villages that the family is cursed by the gods. Disturbed by a series of ghostly visions, Annaleigh becomes increasingly suspicious that the deaths were no accidents. Her sisters have been sneaking out every night to attend glittering balls, dancing until dawn in silk gowns and shimmering slippers, and Annaleigh isn't sure whether to try to stop them or to join their forbidden trysts. Because who—or what—are they really dancing with? When Annaleigh's involvement with a mysterious stranger who has secrets of his own intensifies, it's a race to unravel the darkness that has fallen over her family—before it claims her next.

Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane

A profoundly moving novel about two neighboring families in a suburban town, the bond between their children, a tragedy that reverberates over four decades, the daily intimacies of marriage, and the power of forgiveness. Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope, two rookie cops in the NYPD, live next door to each other outside the city. What happens behind closed doors in both houses—the loneliness of Francis’s wife, Lena, and the instability of Brian’s wife, Anne—sets the stage for the explosive events to come. Ask Again, Yes is a deeply affecting exploration of the lifelong friendship and love that blossoms between Francis and Lena’s daughter, Kate, and Brian and Anne’s son, Peter. Luminous, heartbreaking, and redemptive, Ask Again, Yes reveals the way childhood memories change when viewed from the distance of adulthood—villains lose their menace and those who appeared innocent seem less so. Kate and Peter’s love story, while tested by echoes from the past, is marked by tenderness, generosity, and grace.

Well Met by Jen DeLuca

All's faire in love and war for two sworn enemies who indulge in a harmless flirtation in a laugh-out-loud rom-com from debut author, Jen DeLuca. Emily knew there would be strings attached when she relocated to the small town of Willow Creek, Maryland, for the summer to help her sister recover from an accident, but who could anticipate getting roped into volunteering for the local Renaissance Faire alongside her teenaged niece? Or that the irritating and inscrutable schoolteacher in charge of the volunteers would be so annoying that she finds it impossible to stop thinking about him? The faire is Simon's family legacy and from the start he makes clear he doesn't have time for Emily's lighthearted approach to life, her oddball Shakespeare conspiracy theories, or her endless suggestions for new acts to shake things up. Yet on the faire grounds he becomes a different person, flirting freely with Emily when she's in her revealing wench's costume. But is this attraction real, or just part of the characters they're portraying? This summer was only ever supposed to be a pit stop on the way to somewhere else for Emily, but soon she can't seem to shake the fantasy of establishing something more with Simon, or a permanent home of her own in Willow Creek.

Oh My God, What a Complete Aisling by Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen

Aisling is twenty-eight and she’s a complete ... Aisling. She lives at home in Ballygobbard (or Ballygobackwards, as some gas tickets call it) with her parents and commutes to her good job at PensionsPlus in Dublin.

Aisling goes out every Saturday night with her best friend Majella, who is a bit of a hames (she’s lost two phones already this year – Aisling has never lost a phone).

Aisling spends two nights a week at her boyfriend John’s. He’s from down home and was kiss number seventeen at her twenty-first.

But Aisling wants more. She wants the ring on her finger. She wants the hen with the willy straws. She wants out of her parents’ house, although she’d miss Mammy turning on the electric blanket like clockwork and Daddy taking her car 'out for a spin' and bringing it back full of petrol.

When a week in Tenerife with John doesn’t end with the expected engagement, Aisling calls a halt to things and soon she has surprised herself and everyone else by agreeing to move into a three-bed in Portobello with stylish Sadhbh from HR and her friend, the mysterious Elaine.

Newly single and relocated to the big city, life is about to change utterly for this wonderful, strong, surprising and funny girl, who just happens to be a complete Aisling.

Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen, the creators of the much-loved Aisling character and the popular Facebook page 'Oh My God, What a Complete Aisling', bring Aisling to life in their novel about the quintessential country girl in the big smoke.

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

Far beneath the surface of the earth, upon the shores of the Starless Sea, there is a labyrinthine collection of tunnels and rooms filled with stories. The entryways that lead to this sanctuary are often hidden, sometimes on forest floors, sometimes in private homes, sometimes in plain sight. But those who seek will find. Their doors have been waiting for them. Zachary Ezra Rawlins is searching for his door, though he does not know it. He follows a silent siren song, an inexplicable knowledge that he is meant for another place. When he discovers a mysterious book in the stacks of his campus library he begins to read, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, lost cities, and nameless acolytes. Suddenly a turn of the page brings Zachary to a story from his own childhood impossibly written in this book that is older than he is. A bee, a key, and a sword emblazoned on the book lead Zachary to two people who will change the course of his life: Mirabel, a fierce, pink-haired painter, and Dorian, a handsome, barefoot man with shifting alliances. These strangers guide Zachary through masquerade party dances and whispered back room stories to the headquarters of a secret society where doorknobs hang from ribbons, and finally through a door conjured from paint to the place he has always yearned for. Amid twisting tunnels filled with books, gilded ballrooms, and wine-dark shores Zachary falls into an intoxicating world soaked in romance and mystery. But a battle is raging over the fate of this place and though there are those who would willingly sacrifice everything to protect it, there are just as many intent on its destruction. As Zachary, Mirabel, and Dorian venture deeper into the space and its histories and myths, searching for answers and each other, a timeless love story unspools, casting a spell of pirates, painters, lovers, liars, and ships that sail upon a Starless Sea. 

The Swallows by Lisa Lutz

What do you love? What do you hate? What do you want? It starts with this simple writing prompt from Alex Witt, Stonebridge Academy's new creative writing teacher. When the students' answers raise disturbing questions of their own, Ms. Witt knows there's more going on the school than the faculty wants to see. She soon learns about The Ten--the students at the top of the school's social hierarchy--as well as their connection to something called The Darkroom. Ms. Witt can't remain a passive observer. She finds the few girls who've started to question the school's "boys will be boys" attitude and incites a resistance that quickly becomes a movement. But just as it gains momentum, she also attracts the attention of an unknown enemy who knows a little too much about her--including what brought her to Stonebridge in the first place. Meanwhile, Gemma, a defiant senior, has been plotting her attack for years, waiting for the right moment. Shy loner Norman hates his role in the Darkroom, but can't find the courage to fight back until he makes an unlikely alliance. And then there's Finn Ford, an English teacher with a shady reputation who keeps one eye on his literary ambitions and one on Ms. Witt. As the school's secrets begin to trickle out, a boys-versus-girls skirmish turns into an all-out war, with deeply personal--and potentially fatal--consequences for everyone involved. Lisa Lutz's blistering, timely tale shows us what can happen when silence wins out over decency for too long--and why the scariest threat of all might be the idea that sooner or later, girls will be girls.

[moonlitgleek]

It annoys me that Rhaenys the Queen Who Never Was gets dismissed so steadily. She was third in line for the throne until her father's death. Than whoops Succession Crisis What About Rhalla and Aerea!?! That problem would have still been there if Aemon lived and taken the throne. So why is Jaehaerys betraying his granddaughter so applauded? The Great Councils did nothing but kick the problem down the generations.

First thing I want to point out here is that I don’t think that Jaehaerys passing over Rhaenys in succession is applauded, at least not from what I’ve seen? What I’ve seen is explanations that offer a more nuanced reasoning beyond Jaehaerys simply being a misogynistic jerk who thought women shouldn’t rule. It might be that Jaehaerys’ decision did derive from a degree of misogyny - Queen Alysanne certainly seemed to think if the Second Quarrel is anything to judge by, but I personally like to think there is a deeper reason because this move shows uncustomary behavior from Jaehaerys. Certainly the guy who made policy changes on the recommendation of his queen and who actively demonstrated political trust in her to where it was said that she ruled the realm as much as he did doesn’t seem likely to pass over his granddaughter simply due to her gender. It also stands to reason that the political partnership of Jaehaerys and Alysanne was likely informed by the crucial political role their mother Alyssa Velaryon and their eldest sister Rhaena played in saving the Targrayen dynasty after Aenys’ weak rule and Maegor’s brutality threatened to do it in, and in winning Jaehaerys his throne in the first place. It is only by the action, bravery and (personal and political) sacrifice of two women that Jaehaerys was coronated in the first place, and Queen Alyssa then held the realm together in the aftermath of war and huge instability for two years till Jaehaerys reached his majority. That the three most prominent women in Jaehaerys’ life were all such active and astute political actors who not only shaped his life but also his reign makes me think there has to be more to his decision to pass over Rhaenys than just prejudice. I also think there could be thematic resonance to Jaehaerys’ decision to bypass his grandaughter’s rights to stave off instability paralleling his sister’s Rhaena’s own decision to bypass her daughters’ rights for a similar reason, and how that juxtaposes against the rampant selfishness of the two sides of the Dance of the Dragons.

Another point of discussion is why concerns about Rhalla and Aerea’s lines only emerged after Aemon’s death and why hadn’t Jaehaerys acted before. That part is a bit hard to discern because we don’t know what Prince Aemon and Jocelyn Baratheon’s fertility history was like. Rhaenys was their only daughter but it is possible that they had either conceived again or at least were trying to since producing a male heir was widely seen as securing the line of succession in a way that a female heir wasn’t. If Aemon and Jocelyn conceived again after Rhaenys or even had children who died in infancy, the issue of the claim of Rhalla and Aerea’s line might not have seemed as dire since there was still hope that Aemon, who was only in his thirties when he died, would have a son, something that was soundly lost with his death. So it might not be necessarily true that concern about his nieces’ lines only came to Jaehaerys’ mind after Aemon’s death as much as that Aemon’s death made Rhaenys’ succession a matter of course which in turn made the possibility of conflicting rival claims to the throne more real prompting Jaehaerys to take action to settle the matter.

As for the Great Council, certainly it is one of the dark ironies of the series that Jaehaerys’ speculated attempt to get ahead of a possible succession debate and war ends up being used to inspire the biggest civil war in Targaryen history. But that’s to blame on Viserys I’s laziness and refusal to deal with the complicated legalities of the succession during his reign rather than on the efficiency of a Great Council. The purpose of a Great Council was to put succession debates to a majority vote rather than the arbitrary choice of the king which is a pretty sound political and legal move all things considered. That’s a solid solution since it decides succession by the will of the vassals over whom the king claimed the right to rule while establishing a body of authority to decide matters of succession allowing for such debates to be settled peacefully and curtailing possible wars. That Viserys I chose to overcomplicate succession by not only ignoring the legal argument that put him in power in the first place when naming his daughter heiress but also by refusing to settle a painfully obvious succession debate in which the two legal precedents clashed is to be blamed on him rather than the Great Council or Jaehaerys I. Viserys set the stage for the Dance by unnecessarily making an already complicated legal matter worse, ignoring the blatant bad blood between the blacks and the greens then stupidly setting the greens up with all the authority they needed to force the issue. Viserys is the one who kicked the problem down a generation while offering no alternate solution and taking no decisive action to settle the matter peacefully. Putting the blame of that on either Jaehaerys or the Great Council exonerates Viserys from much of his ineptitude and willful inaction.

[eurekahq1-blog]

BASICS

NAME: Marley Jennifer Silver. DATE OF BIRTH: September 11th, 1995. AGE: Seventeen. GRADE LEVEL: Sophomore. FACECLAIM: Hailee Steinfeld. PRONOUNS: She/her.

STUDENT FILE

GPA: 2.5 — Marley doesn’t really give a fuck about school, but she doesn’t want to fail out. She considers herself to be very antiestablishment. She only keeps her head above water by being friends with the teachers. EXTRACURRICULARS: Band geek, she plays the piccolo in the marching band and the ukelele in her spare time. And everyone else’s considering she brings it to school.  DISCIPLINARY HISTORY: Detention for one of Alyssa’s protests she participated in, also for parking in the senior parking lot. Which she continues to do. She thinks it’s okay because she drives a Mini Cooper and it’s very small.  STUDENT SINCE: September freshmanyear.

FIELD TRIP INFORMATION

ITEMS ON PERSON: Her uke, as always. A spare pair of socks, as it’s quite literally her worst nightmare to step in something and have wet socks. Orange Tic-Tacs, a Dunkin Donuts giftcard she’s been carrying around since freshman year that still has money on it, and seventeen dollars. Her MP3 player, as she doesn’t have a cellphone.  ITEMS IN OVERNIGHT BAG: Clothes and undergarments for the next day. She didn’t want to bring anything else.  REASON FOR ATTENDANCE: She’s super tight with all the teachers. 

BIOGRAPHY

 Most people spend who think of spending time in a van down by the river as an artistic choice do it after college, but Marley was born in the back of her parents’ RV as they raced back to the United States border to get her born there to match their citizenship. She was born in the parking lot of a south Texas Denny’s, and hasn’t looked back from being abnormal since.

Most of Marley’s ( named after Bob Marley, despite her parents telling her conservative grandmother it was definitely short for Marleen ) life has been spent in said RV, traveling throughout South America with her parents, who worked at various hostels and in different odd jobs to keep gas in their tank and food in their bellies. Marley was supposedly homeschooled, but mostly was self taught — resulting in several spots in her education. She knows all about music history, however, at least from the 50s-90s. She doesn’t listen to anything after, considering it too mainstream, as taught to her by her parents.

When her father got cancer, they had to stop travelling and settle down with her grandma in her dad’s hometown of Eureka, California. She began attending public school there, and though her father beat cancer — they never went back on the road as promised. Marley is still waiting to live her life full of adventure again, but it seems to be that she’s stuck in one spot. 

Marley never fully acclimated to her time in school. No one likes her, no one hates her. She just floats and exists, playing her uke under the bleachers, skipping class to smoke cigarettes in the bathroom, or eating lunch with teachers in their classrooms. She plans on skipping town as soon as she turns eighteen, with or without a degree.  

Marley isn’t really as cool and against looking towards the future as people think, or, as much as she wants them to think. The instability and general self sufficiency of her childhood left her floundering in figuring out how exactly people were supposed to act — her only role models became her extremely hippie, stuck in the 60s parents. She became a carbon copy of them in hopes of gaining more attention or guidance — but instead, she just became a caricature. She still has trouble with social situations, and generally gets along much better with adults. 

PERSONALITY

Marley prides herself on being different — that at least, she knows is true. She has a lot of things she loves, but has no clue how they fit in relation to her sense of self, so she just lets them control her. She tends to do that with a lot of things, resulting in very poor impulse control and almost immediately saying no to any request, desperate for some sense of having control over herself.

Since she spent so little time in her formative years with other children, by and large, Marley prefers the company of adults. This mostly occurs in her interactions at school, hanging out with teachers more than she does students, especially her favorite ones. She often lurks in Miss Jane’s room, or even sometimes sacrifices hearing an earful to spend time with Alexander and practice the piccolo. 

Generally lazy and not very hardworking is a good way to describe Marley. She does her best to live life for enjoyment, not for success, and almost anyone who observes her behavior would be able to tell. 

CONNECTIONS

JANETTE HUANG — Miss Jane is Marley’s favorite student, and the affection is mutual. Often times, lunch periods are spent in comfortable semi-silence with Jane grading papers and Marley strumming her uke. 

ARTHUS ‘ART’ NORTON — Marley found Art bleeding on the bathroom floor in her freshman year, when her sprained ankle caused her to need to use the big open bathroom. He had shot himself and missed at the last second, putting a bullet into his shoulder during a fire drill so no one would hear the sound. She’s avoided him ever since.

OSKAR MORENO — Friends with benefits. Or well, moreso acquaintances with benefits. She’d like to get to know him better, maybe start more of a relationship. He still thinks her name is Mary half the time. 

MARLEY IS OPEN.

[astrolocherry]

Astrology Characters for Stories

Aries: Your hero. Your fun loving wild child. The woman in a male dominated field. Your sportsman. Your adrenaline junkie. Your catalyst for chaos Expresses as excitable, decisive, unpredictable, defender, destructor, antagonist, revolutionary   The Aries character is youthful, brave, competitive, and will do anything to win. A character with a strong will and even stronger body to follow. A character who triggers chaos to ease their own boredom.  Likes wearing red. Has an equally fun loving and energetic dog that is adored. A character that is capable of working under high pressure situations like paramedicine or emergencies.  A character that is fighting for her cause. Mars is the ruler of Aries and corresponds with accidents, a character that displays remarkable inner strength to recover from a trauma. A character who won’t hesitate charging into danger to save somebody. Wonder Woman. 

Taurus Your figure of beauty. Your desired one. Your affluent one. The stylish artist. Your business owner. Your hippie. Your hopeless romantic.  Expresses as socially graceful and considerate. May be very indulgent. A character who knows how to enjoy the good things in life. A socialite. A character who loves throwing dinner parties. A savvy business woman with elegance, beauty, and sass. A character longing for traditional, classical romance in a world that seems to have forgotten what that is. A character who suffers financial instabilities.  Has a taste for the aesthetic. Loves to stylise. A character who can play instruments or write music. The beautiful girl next door. A character working at the art gallery longing for her portraits to be on the wall. A woman who runs the floors of Wall Street with her stunning heels and pink blazer.  

Gemini Your main voice. Your student. Your teacher. Your intellect. Your author. Your gossip. Your talkative barista. Your school starter  Expresses as clever, charming, and a little cunning. A unpredictable character. Your character who shuts down debate instantly with wicked wit. She could be comedic. She may speak many languages. She may be a professional student. A character who is the ‘go to’ when people have questions. A character who is always using her phone. A character who seems to know everything about everyone. A character that you never quite figure out what the real intention was. Likes to wear fresh, cute and youthful outfits. A character who takes off in a moment’s notice, and plays the devil’s advocate. A character who is underestimated due to her scattered and erratic behaviour but solves great codes or crimes or mysteries. Fyi. Sherlock Holmes was a Gemini 

Cancer: Your mystical fantasy. The adored child of the family. Your first time mother. Your People’s Princess. Your Queen Mother. Your witch or sorceress. The family matriarch  Expresses emotional and maternal qualities, often moody, easily provoked, imaginative, and nostalgic  The Cancer character is protective. She could be a psychic or receive messages from crossed ancestors.  Likes wearing darker hues. Maybe also a cross. A character who may be lost in time or attempting to run or heal from her past, one who makes admirable sacrifices. This character prefers to be home with loved ones and retains traditional values. She may live in a house the family has had for decades, probably haunted. Very caring and sensitive, could be a nurse, counsellor, or work with children. A character who has a vivid and intriguing inner life that is shut off to others. A character who is reuniting with her family or meeting her mother for the first time. 

Leo:  Your starring role. Your Queen. Your dramatic teenager. Your aspiring actor or artist. Your Prince Charming. Expresses the graces and faults of youth, playfulness and fun, leadership and dignity. The Leo character is noble, honest, strong willed, and creative. This is the one who lights up the room. Well liked, but sometimes misunderstood.She may live in a palace, a place of privilege, or more likely a chic and stylish decorated apartment with her prized animal. Likes wearing gold. Will go into battle. But gets very wounded in battle. A character who is trying to feel comfortable in her own skin, a character who expresses with pride and confidence but is secretly very unsure, a character who has overcome all the odds to reach their dreams and rule the world in some form

Virgo Your intellectual progeny. Your puzzle master. Your dedicated and deserving labourer. Your problem solver. Your domestic eccentric. Expresses as competent but self doubtful, has perfectionist tendencies, is very helpful and knowledgable, can be socially awkward in conversation until she is completely comfortable. A character who has odd rituals or phobias. A character who is a nurse or a nursing student. A character who has gruelling self expectation and goes to extremes. A character suffering a health crisis or a character who solves medical mysteries. A character who is special and can decipher number riddles and patterns  Appearance can be very primed to perfection. The home can have a unique, very personal set up that reflects deeply ingrained rituals, it may be  A character who is under appreciated. A character who carries out secret acts of altruism. Bree on Desperate Housewives is a good but extreme example of a Virgo character 

Libra  The King’s daughter. Your object of desire. Your hopeless romantic. Your sweetheart. Your lawyer. Your court room darling. Your heartbreaker  Expresses as sociable and friendly. Is easily well liked but has quite intense self doubt. Can routinely fall dangerously in love because of her vivid fantasy life. The friend everyone calls when they need a hand, an ear, or a heart.  A character who crumbles when she is alone. A character who runs a law firm and throws the best parties like she has a day and night personality.  A character who sacrifices everything for love. A character who has dreamed of her wedding since she was a child. A character who has a gleaning, blissful, classical image of romance in her mind. A character who is written off for her femininity or ideals but has a blade on her tongue during debate and slices just about anyone.  Well styled, complementary dressed, nothing outlandish but nothing boring. Likes to accessorise. Home is cordially decorated and symmetrical.  A character who is forced to choose between her head and her heart. A character who is fighting injustice against a big corporation or government. A dancer who is forced to choose between love and her art 

Scorpio Your anointed one. Your gifted one. Your medium. Your seducer. Your revealer. Your hidden catalyst. Your troubled one.  Expresses as secretive, knowledgable, calculative, sensitive, and intense. Can easily throw off weaker characters. Can be the intriguing object of desire. A character who is a detective. A character who can read people’s minds. A character who doesn’t trust other people. Scorpio is watery and medicinal, the character could be a grand healer or crone. A character who is a witch or gets involved in dark occult. A character who is forced to undergo psychoanalysis but systematically erodes the mind of the psychiatrist in the process.  Lives in the house down the end of the street with the forbidding black fence and cemetery gates with a pet crow  A character who uncovers conspiracies or government corruption. A character who follows the trail of serial killers and never fails. A character who assists dead people crossing over. A character that is instantly respected regardless of social skills. A character who can’t help but seduce unsuspecting victims 

Sagittarius Your free spirit. Your jet setter. Your foreigner. Your student. Your professor. Your life of the party. Your pilgrim. Your comic. Your philanthropist. Your genie in a bottle  Expresses as fun loving, provocative, knowledgeable, open minded, pleasure seeking. A character who has a remarkable change of fortune. A character who celebrates culture, freedom, and life. A character who can provoke tension due to her sharp honesty.  A character that wanders endlessly but doesn’t want to be found. A character that lives out of her suitcase and wears flowers in her hair and follows the festivals around. Jupiter is the ruler of Sagittarius so this character has numerous lucky breaks.  Earthy, festive, and bohemian styling, cool and casual  A character that never gives her real name or address, aspiring to escape the memories and confines of her home town. A character that experiences an enlightenment and goes completely off the grid. A character who falls in love abroad or meets a guru with profound spiritual truths, a character on a journey

Capricorn Your Cinderella story. Your rags to riches Princess. Your leader. Your corporate ruler. Your battler. Your old soul. Your matriarch or patriarch.  Expresses as focused, resourceful, dedicated, loyal, overcomes the odds, graceful, elegant, powerful , formidable  A character who proves herself against the odds. A character who inspires and leads the way while secretly doubting herself. A character who is a master or expertise of their trade. A character that missed out on childhood. A character with an absent father. A character who has generated remarkable wisdom during her short time on earth. A character who can stop or change time. A character that owns a clock with everyone’s date of mortality. Appearance is sharp, classical, elegant, conservative, dapper  May live in a noted part of town or in a well known building considering Capricorn’s social prestige. A character who relentlessly chases her dream. A character who expires through her story from heartache to success. A teacher. A business woman. An expert on intricate statistics. A character who feels like death is always chasing her 

Aquarius  Your genius. Your eccentric. Your mad professor. Your enigmatic air fairy. Your revolutionary. Your conspiracist. Your misfit.  Expresses as highly intelligent, peculiar, outlandish, compassionate, unpredictable, free spirited, intriguing. A character who is relentless and frenetic about proving her unorthodox theories. A radical protestor. An environmental warrior. A character with secret alien friends. A character that experiments with everything with natural style and flair. Unusual or striking appearance, a teal haired character with purple contacts  Aquarius is a character who has a lot of friends and appreciates unity. A character who inspires other people to join her plight against an injustice. A character from a small part of the world given nothing but a voice to change the world. A character who indulges in the Aquarian utopia that has been created in the near future 

Pisces  Your inspiration. Your salient chameleon. Your lover. Your sacrifice. Your Fairy Godmother. Your mythical creature Expresses as highly sensitive, emotional, withdrawing, creative, mysterious, tempting, and delirious. A character who is spiritual and has psychic gifts. A character that listens to fairies. A character who dreams herself into new worlds every night. The Pisces character is gifted, multifaceted, receptive, and intuitive. She can instantly tell if somebody is happy or sad before they say anything at all so she knows all the time that people lie. Styled in darker or purple hues with thick coated mascara. Wears a cross or a symbol. Lives alone because she needs to escape from people. A character who is trying to support and heal people from their mental illness while suffering it herself. A character that receives frequent psychic prophecies. A character who can see what other people can’t. A character that deals with inhuman experiences in a human world. A healer, a witch doctor, a medicine woman, an evangelist 

-C.   

[garudabluffs]

Civil Resistance : What Everyone Needs to Know®

Harvard political scientist Erica Chenoweth     26 February 2021                

Introduces the essentials of how and why civil resistance works in a conversational and accessible style

Concise yet systematic overview that draws from both historical and contemporary cases, including the present-day United States

Demonstrates the centrally important role civil resistance has played in shaping our world

Trump may try to steal the election.

Americans may have to take to the streets. An expert on nonviolent civil resistance talks about when protests work, how they work, and when they become necessary.  

In these types of situations, do business elites tend to side with power or the state? Erica Chenoweth “It depends. Essentially, yes, unless it’s clear that the incumbent means instability and chaos. They want stability because that’s good for markets. So to the extent that mass mobilization can be disruptive enough, through a series of strikes or boycotts, that could have a really meaningful impact on whether they decide it’s in their own financial interest to support Trump. Ultimately, they don’t care who wins or loses. They care about whether the political situation is undermining their own prosperity and futures.“

https://choosedemocracy.us/

https://protecttheresults.com/

What would undermine a mass movement of this kind? What tactics or strategies should be avoided at all costs?

E.C. “The first thing that comes to mind is that it’s easy for movements to devolve into disarray when they are attacked, and it’s important to think through how this happens. A regime, if it wants to maintain control over a population, wants a movement to respond violently, because then the regime is able to draw on all kinds of narratives about the need to protect the people from the “criminals” and the “terrorists.” And that has been, unfortunately, a remarkably effective rhetorical and narrative device.

This is why movements really need to undertake some degree of preparation because nonviolent resistance doesn’t mean it’s going to be a nonviolent interaction. In most of the cases I have studied, activists are hurt and killed in these events around the world. Successful movements tend to expect and prepare for violence against them, and they know that when violence is being used against them, it’s because they’re genuinely threatening the state and the status quo.”

Erica Chenoweth “Never underestimate the power of nonviolent resistance to help achieve the effective changes that people are trying to achieve in their communities. Many people are wondering what they can do right now.

Number one is vote. Number two is encourage other eligible voters to vote and support their efforts to do so, in terms of giving them reminders or rides or whatever they may need.

But lastly, it’s also important to just stay connected with people in our communities right now and try to meet their immediate needs. We’re in a pandemic and lots of people are struggling and suffering with making ends meet. It can be very helpful for people to take care of one another and to find purpose and motivation in those types of actions. And these activities also build capacity for longer-term and more resilient collective action.Number four is to attend a nonviolent direct action training or two, so that you are equipped with basic skills that will make you feel more prepared for various scenarios and the role that you might play in them. And then the last thing I’d say is that it’s a really good time for people to feel connected to a political home, whether that political home is something they find in their faith community, among friends and family, among people who have similar affinities at work, or in a political party, a community organization, or whatnot. There are lots of bipartisan and nonpartisan groups that are organizing specifically around the election and its aftermath that folks can check out.

Because the most important thing for people to remember is that they’re never alone. If they decide that they’re called to act to protect the Constitution and use nonviolent resistance to do that, then they’re following the tradition of millions and millions of people in the US and around the world who have done and are continuing to do this as well.

They’re not alone.”

READ MORE https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21517732/2020-election-donald-trump-protest-erica-chenoweth

Tom Verlaine…https://youtu.be/AYyn8edu32E

I understand all, I see no Destructive urges, I see no It seems so perfect, I see no I see, I see no, I see no evil

[morganbelarus]

Trump: I’m a ‘very stable genius’

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump slammed reports questioning his mental stability in a series of tweets Saturday morning, writing he's a "very stable genius" after the publication of an expos about his first year as President put the White House into damage-control mode.

"Now that Russian collusion, after one year of intense study, has proven to be a total hoax on the American public, the Democrats and their lapdogs, the Fake News Mainstream Media, are taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence ... " Trump wrote, referring to questions raised about the mental fitness of the former President, who disclosed in 1994 that he had Alzheimer's disease.

"Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart," the President continued. "Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star ... to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius ... and a very stable genius at that!"

After his tweets Saturday morning, Trump told reporters at Camp David that Wolff is a "fraud" who doesn't know him.

"I went to the best colleges, or college," he told reporters. "I had a situation where I was a very excellent student, came out and made billions and billions of dollars, became one of the top business people, went to television and for 10 years was a tremendous success, as you probably have heard, ran for President one time and won. Then I hear this guy that doesn't know me at all, by the way, didn't interview me, said he interviewed me for three hours in the White House. Didn't exist, it's in his imagination."

Trump continued: "I never interviewed with him in the White House at all; he was never in the Oval Office."

Wolff told "Today" show host Savannah Guthrie on Friday that he "absolutely spoke to the President" while working on "Fire and Fury."

"Whether he realized it was an interview or not, I don't know, but it certainly was not off the record," Wolff said. "I've spent about three hours with the President over the course of the campaign, and in the White House. So, my window into Donald Trump is pretty significant."

The remarkable spectacle of Trump defending his mental stability comes after the President and some of his top officials spent the last few days countering claims in author Michael Wolff's new book, "Fire and Fury," about Trump's mental fitness to serve as President. The book, which went on sale Friday, also paints the picture of a President who neither knows nor cares about policy and doesn't seem to perceive the vast responsibilities of his role.

CNN has not independently confirmed all of Wolff's assertions.

Trump's tweets also come after reports surfaced that a dozen lawmakers from the House and Senate received a briefing from Yale psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X. Lee on Capitol Hill in early December about Trump's fitness to be president.

"Lawmakers were saying they have been very concerned about this, the President's dangerousness, the dangers that his mental instability poses on the nation," Lee told CNN in a phone interview Thursday, "They know the concern is universal among Democrats, but it really depends on Republicans, they said. Some knew of Republicans that were concerned, maybe equally concerned, but whether they would act on those concerns was their worry."

The briefing was previously reported by Politico. Lee, confirming the December 5 and 6 meeting to CNN, said that the group was evenly mixed, with House and Senate lawmakers, and included at least one Republican -- a senator, whom she would not name.

Lee's public comments are highly unusual given protocols from medical professional organizations -- including the 37,000-member American Psychiatric Association -- banning psychiatrists from diagnosing patients without a formal examination.

The White House has taken issue with the claims in Wolff's book since excerpts of it began to surface online ahead of its publication, with press secretary Sarah Sanders calling it "complete fantasy" and an attorney for Trump sending a "cease and desist" threat to the book's author and publisher.

Trump issued a scathing statement on his former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, saying he had "lost his mind" after the book quoted Bannon making negative remarks about Trump and son Donald Trump Jr.

The book quoted Bannon as calling a June 2016 meeting between a Russian lawyer and the President's eldest son, son-in-law Jared Kushner and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort "treasonous" and "unpatriotic."

Bannon also reportedly told Wolff: "They're going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV."

Trump lit into Bannon in a tweet Friday night, saying he "cried when he got fired and begged for his job."

"Michael Wolff is a total loser who made up stories in order to sell this really boring and untruthful book," Trump wrote. "He used Sloppy Steve Bannon, who cried when he got fired and begged for his job. Now Sloppy Steve has been dumped like a dog by almost everyone. Too bad!"

Wolff reiterated his belief that it is becoming a widespread view that Trump is unfit for presidency, telling BBC Radio in an interview overnight that it's a "very clear emperor-has-no-clothes effect."

"The story that I have told seems to present this presidency in such a way that it says he can't do his job," Wolff said in the interview. "Suddenly everywhere people are going, 'Oh my God, it's true, he has no clothes.' That's the background to the perception and the understanding that will finally end ... this presidency."

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told CNN in an exclusive interview on Friday he's never questioned Trump's mental fitness, despite reports he once called Trump a "moron."

"I've never questioned his mental fitness," Tillerson told CNN's Elise Labott. "I have no reason to question his mental fitness."

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[ethan1220world-blog]

Audience Studies (3P18) Blog Post #2 - Ethan Limsana

Although I spoke a lot about how mass media power and advertising has made rap music an important part of my life, it is one of hundreds of different medias I use to gratify my individual wants and needs for a variety of constantly evolving reasons. After all, modern advertising relies on understanding what I want before I ask for it. Through self-examination, I use movies, tv shows, video games, multiple social medias, and books for all different reasons depending on genre, length of time, level of engagement, etc. This week, for example, I bought a new phone online that I’m very excited for. To deal with my higher than usual amounts of hyperactivity and lack of attention span, I’ve watched countless amounts of YouTube videos about the products in comparison videos, unboxing videos, and reviews. Also, to deal with my energy, I’ve stopped playing slower role-playing video games, and I’ve spent more time playing fighting games where all my thoughts are in the moment and fast paced, where most other times these games are too intense for me to feel comfortable. This also effects my music listening to be faster paced EDM, or rap music as an interesting side-effect. In this way, I’ve used media to gratify my individual, particular needs as an active user. Deeper, is looking at what specific needs each of the medias I used gratified. The comparison and review YouTube videos gratified my cognitive needs by giving me more knowledge about the phone before and after purchasing the product; how to use it and how it performs in comparison to other popular phones people are buying. My affective needs are met by listening to music that accompanies my emotions, making my overall experience more pleasurable. Advertisements of the product make it look extremely clean, and expensive which meets my integrative needs that give me the feeling of higher status for owning this new piece of technology. My social needs are not particularly met by any of these actions, but the phone itself represents the media platforms I will use to become even more social which is at the height of my excitement. Also, my escape needs are met by video games, being able to put off the thoughts of homework, chores, and other responsibilities to allow my mind stay at its’ preferred state.

In these instances, I often have with the media as a tech enthusiast, I act as both a ritualized audience member and an instrumental audience member depending on the context. In this scenario, I am seeking for these specific types of content to fit my needs, but overall, accessing each of these mediums for media is performed most days anyway. The cycle of consumption of media for myself is highly ritualized while the specific motive for interest changes daily. If it were not the excitement of buying a new phone, it may have been the excitement of a new video game, album, movie. The best way to understand why I act in a cycle like this would be to understand the “expectancy value approach”. This looks closely at what my gratifications sought in relation to my gratifications obtained; the higher success of my gratifications obtained over time will increase my dependency on the place (media) that I sought for gratification. Going back as far as I can remember, my gratifications for media were first met with video games by my family. My uncle was extremely influential in my childhood as I grew up without a father and no other siblings, his interests were passed onto me as I spent time with him. He valued video games at that time, and they quickly became a source of family bonding for us and served as a learning space for me when I started playing at around 3 years old. Since then, they were rooted into my childhood, meeting my emotional needs and my proficiency over time has met my own personal fulfillment. Since technology for us today has been evolving and improving at such a rapid pace, video games have always obtained my gratifications and my dependency on them today is very high. As video games have improved, viewing them on online sources like YouTube have become incredibly popular while the medium of television has not aged like this. Most of the online influencers on YouTube who are interested in video games are also interested in tech, and through the grapevine of gratifications obtained, my tech interests have shaped my job choice to Best Buy and opening the opportunity for working in mobility and smartphone enthusiasm. This observation of my life with video games and technology also show me that my individual needs are not static, but constantly shifting and developing over the course of my life. It also shows me that my uses of media are reflected by my society, being influenced and shaped by the people around me who I grew up with and who I currently interact with.

         Needless to say, my life has had many times of instability and struggle whether it be for financial issues in my family, or personal emotions during high school, my integration with media has always been stable. Even to the point of having important impacts on my life like determining my interest in tech which is now a vital part to my personality. By examining the uses and dependency approach, it is understandable why I am dependent on these cycles of using multiple outlets of media based on emotion and interest. If I were to look to other sources for gratification like going out to parties, travelling, or working out; although I don’t feel I cannot do these things, I am not guaranteed the same satisfaction, so they are not as addicting as my use of media. In this way, I am acted upon by advertisers in the media, but I also act as an agent of free will. The issue is that the factors that guide my freewill may not be healthy. Even though my interests were originally guided by my family at a young age, the way it has shifted has been a product of addiction and less time spent outside of technology.

 Now that I’ve established myself as an agent over someone who is purely acted upon by advertisers, it is important to know how I decode and make meaning of these messages I’m exposed to. Interpretations of semiotics is what determines my understanding of any text I encounter. To best describe how this affects me, for this week’s blog I will closely relate my understanding to media in relation to my parents due to generational gaps changing our understandings of media texts. Since I’ve been using a personal computer daily since getting one for myself in grade 8, I’ve engaged in many different online communities including reddit, 4chan, and video game communities like Minecraft servers. These have been sites of social intertextuality which has cultured me during my developing years, my mother, in her developing years would have been restricted to physical social gatherings and more patriarchal types of media like daytime television and big budget films. To connect with her I sometimes show her funny memes I find online to hopefully make her laugh, but I’ve learned that much of my humor is not understood by her and I choose to share with her. I’ve shown her the popular icon “pepe the frog” in humorous portrayals and she has no clue what it is outside of an amateur drawing of a frog with human-like features. I see the frog as a template that anonymous users add to and alter to share their emotions, or what’s called “reaction pictures”. On the other hand, some political points of view may see the icon as in sighting terrorism or right-wing ideology which may be because of the influence of 4chan’s anonymity and history. Screen theory suggests that films include embedded ideologies from the filmmakers, and that films work to deny their existence as merely text and therefore become normalized to us. Despite each of us interpreting this one picture in different ways, the meanings we create are abstract due to our history with film and media so none of our interpretations are wrong, so each of us are right.

In the encoding/decoding structure, the creator of the version of the picture is encoding a message by his alteration of the picture, the time and place of the post, and the message via text that may accompany it. Due to my prior knowledge of the frog being used as a comedic representation, whether the frog has a birthday hat, is crying, or id holding a gun, I’m heavily influenced to decode the message as a comedic gesture. For a left-wing figure, they most likely have been the receiver pro-gun activism, or anti LGBT communities who use the frog in posts from time to time. As my mother the understanding of having little context to the figure causes her to have a neutral position.

         Here, I can see the asymmetry of meanings from the encoder to the decoder. Due to the abstract nature of memes today in our society, I can’t always be too sure of the creator’s true intention, but the fact that decoding is polysemic, means most of us have different outcomes of meaning than what was intended. For this scenario, I’m probably right due to my position in relation to the broadcaster. People posting memes online should be assumed to be within my generation because of the surrounding medias that attract my age demographic to websites like reddit and 4chan. My connotations should therefore include most of the intertextualities of the creator themselves which include video games, older posts on the website, and social media. My mother doesn’t know these same intertextualities, so her reaction is more on the denotative level, taking the message for its literal meaning which holds little value. The left-wing figure brings connotations of real-world issues the online platform, taking an oppositional position to the post.

There are three different positions audience can decode messages; these are described as dominant, negotiated, and oppositional. If the left-wing person is repurposing the encoded message to fit their preferred view that the text exists as a political message, they’re taking an oppositional view to the message. I am younger and have been influenced by this type of media in the way the creator intended with little difference, I am a dominant reader. My mother, taking the information for what it is in reality as a post that has little significance in her life, she has negotiated the meaning of the text.

         Intertextuality is what drives my interest for most of the entertainment I consume but I don’t have a strong background in music which separates my understandings of music from my friends. Take Drake’s song “mob ties” for instance. When this song came out, I thought it was enjoyable because it was repetitive and catchy, but my friend Eric liked it for an entirely different reason; the meaning behind the lyrics. Through keeping up with Drake’s social media pages and recent news, he knew that there was drama within the community and that Kanye West had been producing music for other rappers that were making fun of him in their newest music. Avid fans were waiting for Drake to acknowledge this, and to fit their preferred narrative that Drake would come back and release a great song that would solidify his position as a stronger, more influential rapper. Recently I’ve gotten a new coworker who used to be in a rock band, and now does music a hobby. When I’ve asked what he thinks about my music tastes, he usually turns his nose up; not because it is a different genre, but he cares more about the history and culture of the music which is expressed through sampling and remixing of sounds. He finds that they don’t feature enough creativity in sampling, but result to choosing an interesting sound, and repeating it which he thinks is an insult to other artists who put in more effort. Intertextuality has caused us to understand and react to music in very different ways depending on our context. I can see how simple differences of gender, race, and age these same effects with all sorts of media can have, but I have little first-hand knowledge.

Media reception theories give me some more context about uses and gratifications by taking a look at the contexts of my media consumption. In order to understand the contexts of my media viewing, I will examine the rituals of an average school or workday for myself. Studying film, I feel it is my duty to fill as much of my free time with viewing online content in order to be efficient in learning about film while enjoying my leisure activity in the domestic sphere. In the beginning of my day at 7:00am, I spend an hour of my time on YouTube to procrastinate getting up, while keeping myself from falling back asleep; watching esports highlights or tech enthusiasts. This is the least important content as I don’t want to wake up to anything intense. While I am getting ready, my visual attention strays, so I turn on podcasts until my drive to either work or school is done. These podcasts give me the experience of socializing without being present. Once I’ve arrived, I switch to music and space out, attempting to change my mood to either excited or relaxed, until I’ve stepped into my kiosk or my class. Once there, if I have free time, I know I won’t be able to devote much attention, so I either glance through online shopping to ease my mind while doing something productive by planning how to save money. After I’ve made my way back home, I do my homework and play video games simultaneously. Often, I lose my attention because I feel too energetic, so I resort to using fighting video games to temporarily put my brain through intense excitement to calm myself down and work. This process also works as a reward system that for every hour I work, I play half an hour of games. Finally, at the end of my day I try to watch either a TV show or movie depending on how tired I am.

In this examination, just about all of the types of entertainment I consume have been chosen to best fit my social and situational contexts and the amount of attention I have free to give. I am naturally introverted despite being very outgoing and talkative in sales, so my preferred leisure is done with full attention to detail and in isolation. I would way my use of video games as a reward system for homework completion is a gendered dynamic when comparing the ways my girlfriend procrastinates. She is less concerned with violence and gore, but traditional female roles, so she likes to procrastinate by watching cooking videos online. I also prefer to avoid spending time with my parents because my mother has married into very rude male which has extremely changed gender dynamics in the household. In the living room, I have lost the ability to watch my preferred content and, in my room, I’ve lost the ability to have volume on mt TV at night. Fully utilizing my smartphone as a medium for entertainment and communication is the best way for me to deal with these social contexts within the home, which affects my physical context as a result. In order to watch my daily entertainment, it is most beneficial for me to stay in my room for long periods of time, or while I’m on the go. They often get into loud verbal fights which put me out of the mood for longer content like movies, so I will instead view shorter YouTube videos that take less attention. In this examination, the media has dominated my free time by the active choices I make to fit entertainment around the structure of my day.

My generation and younger ones either have more introverts, or introverts are better enabled than ever before with the use of new smartphones and on-demand video platforms with fast internet speed. The text uses the term “time-space distanciation” which is used to explain the phenomenon that individuals are becoming increasingly able to experience social interactions without ever being physically present by the use of social media. Smartphones provide me instant links to speak directly to the most famous people in Hollywood as well as my family members who may just be in the next room. This instant feedback is even faster than walking to that next room, resulting in the technology changing the situational geography of my life; I no longer need to make appointments with people to speak with them, so I no longer need to structure my days with those restrictions in mind. I do not need to attend a seminar to receive guidance from real directors. I do not need to even walk to the Livingroom to speak with my parents.

We do still have positive rituals and interactions in the home during few occasions, one being dinner. We all use our smartphones in similar ways, meaning most of our knowledge and topics are influenced by what we have done on our phones. Often, I bring up a topic of technology, my mother talks about what her friends are doing, and my stepfather talks about prices for things he’s seen online. In this way, smartphones as a transactional system have shaped the conversations, we have with each other. We have each bought our phones from our carriers. The important part of integration has been their objectification; they fit on our persons at all times of the day which makes their incorporation into our lives easily manageable. Once they have been personalized, they serve as the conversion that brings us new information we wouldn’t otherwise have, resulting in giving us topics to speak of that avoid conflict. In the same way they can cause conflict, but we have learned to filter out topics which start conflicts.

 The text often relates to the popular MMORPG World of Warcraft when making points about the heights of audience member’s engagement with a online text, building a community and participating in a virtual society. This game was extremely dominant in a time where I would have thought the stereotypical geek would be male, socially awkward, low income, and ugly. Although these stereotypes are still around just like any other, popular opinion has shifted to appreciate fandom and subcultures and to embrace the forming of new communities through meetups, conventions, and media involvement. The most engaged I’ve ever been as a fan was during the 6 years, I played League of Legends, a game that changed the way I saw online games forever, with a peak of 27 million active players at the same time. At first, I was peer pressured to play the game when I didn’t want to, but I eventually started and was exposed to the largest, exciting online community I’d ever seen. What got me hooked initially as a consumer was the prosumers of the game. YouTubers who played were uploading comedy shorts, highlight reels, lowlight reels, professional games, and everything in between. Since these online influencers were using YouTube, the site offered me a comment section to talk with other fans. These Youtubers’ popularity was so high, communities formed around the game and each of these individual personalities which brought in a maximum number of consumers to be part of the community. In this time there were so many active members that nearly every new type of interpretation and reinterpretation of texts within the game were poached and played with: community drawings, fan fiction, sexual repurposing, music that used samples from in-game sounds, etc. The game itself seemed much smaller than the community around it as everyone was distributing their unique works, supporting each other either socially or financially, and playing with imagination gained. Within one year, I became so engaged that I became a prosumer myself, working to make good plays and post them on my own channel for people to comment and post on Reddit. I mainly played a character named ‘Wukong’, which I made guides on how to play, made my username, and criticized other players who didn’t play him the ‘right’ way. This was an act of textual poaching because I inhabited the character and learned everything about him and gained a sense of ownership of this character, I spent countless hours with, resulting in creating a prescribed way for others to play the character. This sense of accomplishment and mastery even made me feel different about my personal life; I felt I was belonging to somewhere better than others after the school bell rang.

Within two years, I enjoyed one of the social aspects by attending my first Fan Expo at the Metro Convention Centre which had huge fan meetups where many fans dressed up as ‘their favorite characters and most booths sold only League of Legends artwork and apparel.  Here, I saw the hierarchy of the subculture in person. Popular Youtubers and cosplayers sold their autographs and photos and were chased down and treated like celebrities by fans. Lesser known cosplayers, especially sexualized females, were treated second to the online influencers as many gave them tips and asked for photos. At the bottom was whoever wasn’t visually noticeable like me, not dressed up. Although I was at the bottom of the hierarchy, the culture was socially safe; I could dress like a female character and people would probably be excited about it and I would have a great time away from reality for the day.

As a huge fan by my third year, I played many more characters within the game and was challenging the institutional producers of the game. As I was highly ranked and well experienced, I decided to offer my concerns and wants on a weekly basis on the developer’s forum pages. In many occasions I would directly email them and receive feedback within a day or two. The game was updated every couple weeks and my notes would be about what items and characters I felt needed to be stronger or weaker and provided reasons why. As an activist, it was really rewarding to see how my contribution as a community member had the effect on a multibillion dollar video game company which is a crucial reason of why I was engaged for so long. Though many times I was reminded that as merely a community member, I was powerless when others decided against me. As the game matured, many of the YouTube influencers felt they were entitled to special treatment in the game for the work of creating large fanbases that played the game but again, they were a powerless elite, and one by one, most of the biggest celebrities in the community left for other games, leaving the professional esports as the last of the community and micro-celebrities.

With these big changes in the community, during my final days playing the game the community was still large because of the number of players addicted to the gameplay, but the variety of fans had diminished, leaving only the esports fans left. This showed the dark side of fan identity and group cohesion that made me leave the community. Identity shifted from a hierarchy that valued overall participation, to competitive ranking. If you weren’t in the top 1% of ranking, you didn’t have an opinion. The best players in the world were praised while community members who had been active for years weren’t valued because they weren’t good at winning. The game also became much more about money too; in order to fit these new standards of the community you needed a fast internet connection, expensive computer, and enough wealth to not have a job in order to perform at the top level and become a celebrity. As the second wave fan scholar would find, although I escaped into a virtual world for multiple years, I was not able to escape the systems of hierarchy as they were recreated by the community.

An interesting view of my experience with League of Legends is the profit of productions by the community. The reason for such a large audience, as I mentioned, is because of the online content creators, bloggers, and vloggers. While I gave my thoughts about the game to the company, I was acting as a part of crowdsourcing; an integral part to the way the game is made and its updates. I and countless others avid gamers would specifically tell Riot Games what was too strong and too weak, and they would fix the game on their terms. The community was working every day, putting in collective hours to create a cycle of media entertainment around the game for others to see and join, while the company itself did not sponsor or pay for these activities. Looking back at it, Rot Games for a long time worked to coexist with prosumers; accepting free advertising, in fact, expecting free work from people like me as the audience members became an important part to the structure of maintaining the game’s popularity. When big community members expected special treatment from the company for their free labor, they were not rewarded because they didn’t own any of the product they were remaking and mass distributing. For myself, the same is true and the time I spent contributing to the community was just free labor, giving away my intellectual property.

To examine how these online influencers brought hundreds of millions of fans to play the game, a modern look at the way we’re using technology to our advantages will explain these possibilities. There are many games made from big producers who invest much more into the creation of their games: EA, Activision, and Ubisoft. The reason League of Legends is able to have so much more success is because its style isn’t hardware intensive, allowing for nearly anyone with a computer the access of playing. It is also free to play with online currency structures; removing the only financial barrier from not playing the game. Our society is heavily digitized since tech is becoming cheaper and cheaper to the point, I could have a smartphone and a computer to play games for around $350; less money than a couple weeks of groceries for some. These two technologies allow access to all types of entertainment which transforms us into an engaged community for the game who act across a multitude of online communication mediums, create, remake, and distribute our own work. This is a form of fragmentation; although the video game only exists as one type of entertainment, fan span far and wide across the internet on YouTube, Twitter, Wikis, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, 4chan and others while I have access to each of these within any convenient context, always seconds away from either my phone, iPad, laptop, desktop, and smart TV. These technologies allow for audience autonomy where I can interact by posting a video by using my webcam, or comment on another’s user generated content. These enabling social media platforms include the means to watch the video, give feedback through likes and dislikes, and offer comment sections where the audience can interact with the producer. Early content creators were rewarded for their creativity in a new subculture and placed them higher than developers in the perceived hierarchy of the game. One of my favorite creators, ‘Videogamedunkey’ is an example of a creator who saw early success and even after his departure, is realized by the community as it’s king by many. He was a potentially dangerous figure for the publishers at the time because his content often including remixing of other online content where the game is being compared to any number of copyrighted medias, and his words engaged more fans than the official game’s accounts on social media. When he was filming a new video of him trying to win games and gain a higher rank as opposed to his usual comedy content, his internet fame stopped him. Many times, when he would play, others would recognize him and stop trying to play competitively, starstruck by seeing the youtuber in their game. Videogamedunkey became the target of trolling and in one of his games, verbally abused another player for their actions. The game has strict rules on friendly communication, and certain words and phrases result in automatic bans from playing the game. Videogamedunkey felt entitled to special treatment because of his status and free labor for the company and requested he be unbanned to finish the video. He was denied this treatment and slandered the entire company in a single update video and his departure from the community. This instance showed a crack in the participatory culture around the game; it was a visual-audio representation that community members are nothing more than consumers for the large billion-dollar company. Many who followed the YouTuber across his social medias and creators similar left the community as a sign of protest. This movement showed a new folk culture; players reflected on their efforts and revalued their time spent in order to make the cultural move of finding new games to replace League of Legends. In the “read-write” culture, gamers followed a single person who through interaction with fans, was able to change and influence and small portion of the culture within the community. In the broader context of the success of League of Legends, this instance lost them only a small percentage of fans but was soon replaced as the most popular game in North America by Overwatch, and soon, Fortnite. Videogamedunkey has also kept most of his fans at around 6 million YouTube subscribers, although has not risen in popularity since. League of Legends is still an extremely popular game and that success should be thanked by the participatory culture that is rooted in its beginnings and what still continues today through content creation of professional players across a network of fragmented audience members viewing all mediums of social media.

This effective use of transmedia production has become an expectation of modern participatory audience members. Taking a broader look at the  

To conclude what I’ve learned about media audiences and how they operate today and, in the future, I will look at my current favorite content creator Marquez Brownlee and the advertising technology of Google. I’ve explained earlier that I enjoy watching videos based on new technologies and smartphones, and that I use my own smartphone as a tool to structure entertainment viewing and media participation throughout my entire day as a constant ritual. Marquez Brownlee has gained my subscriptions across many different media platforms because of his expertise in transmedia production. My gratifications as a fan are gained through intertextuality and interactivity, rewarding me as a fan for paying attention over the course of time, understanding references and being able to interact with the creators. Marquez does this by his use of different media platforms. On his main YouTube channel, he is a very cinematic smartphone reviewer who occasionally reviews other tech like headphones, smart home products, and tesla. For me, Marquez exists as a paratext; he is able to offer me meanings about new products and I trust his opinions. Based on his review on a phone, I’ve placed it on my shopping list, sold my old phone, and bought the new phone as a discounted black Friday price, effectively making money while getting a new expensive piece of tech which gratifies my needs including my social status and entertainment with a larger screen to body ratio, making movies more vivid on the go. Due to my understanding of buying and selling applications like Kijiji and my use of paratexts, I am able to use this information to become an informed consumer and profit from trade to gratify many of my needs as a consumer.

Marquez’s content is also becoming increasingly important to my daily rituals because he makes content which is able to fit my free time due to his understanding of fragmentation as a creator. He creates content that seamlessly travels with me during my daily activities. I watch his cinematic reviews when I can give visual-audio attention to learn about my new phone. When I’m driving to work, I turn on his podcast to listen where he gives a more in depth talk about the new technologies he’s reviewed over the week. Once I’m home and I want to scroll through some social media before going to sleep, he’s active on Twitter, excited to talk about what upcoming tech he’s going to try out in the near future, so I have something to look forward to in the coming days. The structure that is being used on me is one that fully embraces fragmentation in the new media landscape. I am always seconds away from viewing his work and it offers seamless transitions of entertainment based on my own special, social, and time contexts while offering me intertextuality between the texts by ‘continuing the conversation’ among all of these different media platforms. Even in the last 10 minutes of his podcasts, he dedicates time to mention questions his community has asked and give’s shout outs to other people’s content in the community. This fills my need for interactivity as a community member, which instills the feelings of fandom I previously found in League of Legends. This utilization of medias fits what audience members like me expect and big companies are realizing this and building similar structures; having multiple social media accounts, creating videos, blogs, and interacting with fans. As an agent of my own consumption, this structure works the best for now until my needs evolve again which if anyone can guess what that is, it is Google.

I’ve been selling Google products for a few years and I need to know how they work and their business model. I own a Google smartphone, use Google software in the form of search engine and YouTube. I also own smart thermostats, speakers, TV’s, and Light bulbs. Most importantly, I heavily rely on Google’s voice assistant to perform hands free tasks. Something interesting is that physical Google products, despite dominating software, don’t include great hardware, but this is on purpose. Google’s phones are known for having the best cameras, but they are also much lower in cost to produce. This is because Google has invested in machine learning technologies across all their platforms to fix our issues as consumers. If my photo doesn’t look good, machine learning has look at billions of photos and knows what feature should stand out and offers me a DSLR quality photo without any work or production value. In other words, since I have given Google access to look at my photos, I gain the benefit of better-looking selfies. Similarly, if I give Google consent to my viewing habits, I can watch unlimited on-demand YouTube videos that are catered to me, or if I give my location, I can find the cheapest gas near me while driving if I ask the assistant. Google is an advertising company and all this information that is taken is used to give to machine learning that advertises me things based on my history as an audience member. Since it is a software, this advertising is able to track me through my accounts across the fragmentation of using different devices on different websites. No type of advertisement other than Google’s can be as successful because they have no way of tracking audience members fragmentation like Google can. To explain the cycle of my latest smartphone purchase, Google advertised Marquez’s review of the Oneplus 7 Pro on YouTube, Google gained the information that I viewed the whole video, then went online to do further research on the product, and within a week, my Google news feed that is built into my phone advertised Oneplus 7 Pro black Friday deals as the top story curated for me. As a salesperson, the informed buyer is the hardest person to sell to. Google’s software is able to become a new type of salesperson that is consistently making the right offers and denial of services means the loss of being an active member of the modern media. 

                                                     References

Sullivan, J. L. (2020). Media audiences: effects, users, institutions, and power. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

[newssplashy]

NEW YORK — Sarah Saltzberg knew from an early age that she wanted to be an actor and a writer, too, because she loved concocting improvisations.

Then again, as a teenager, she did have a nice little business designing, making and selling macramé bracelets, which made her think about an entrepreneurial career.

But never during her childhood did Saltzberg fantasize about a life in real estate.

This is not one of those stories with a surprise ending, so the cards are going on the table right now: Saltzberg, 42, who made good and continues to make good in the theater, is also a founder, with Jon Goodell, of Bohemia Realty Group, a 6-year-old niche company that specializes in rentals and sales, river to river from 96th Street to the top of Inwood, plus a bit of the Bronx.

Saltzberg’s staff shares her creative inclinations. The majority of Bohemia’s 120 agents have degrees in the performing arts. The roster includes actors, dancers, burlesque performers, an opera singer and a professional clown. The head of training at the company is a folk/rock singer and songwriter. The uncertainty that is part and parcel of a real estate agent’s life (where, oh where, is that next commission coming from?) is familiar to actors who routinely deal with similar anxiety (where, oh where, is the next role coming from?).

“Real estate is constantly shifting. You have to hustle to be successful, which is the same as being an artist,” said Emily Ackerman, a Bohemia sales agent who is also an actor and playwright. “We’re comfortable with instability. In fact, a lot of us thrive on it.”

Prospective sales agents will undoubtedly be relieved to learn that no audition is required and that the culture of the agency’s two offices — in West Harlem and Washington Heights — is decidedly un-corporate. Employees bring dogs and babies to work, and have been known to break into song — with perfect pitch, of course.

“I’ve worked at traditional real estate companies, and agents didn’t speak to each other,” Ackerman said. “But the vibe here is very different.”

She added: “So many of us have collaborative experiences working in the arts, and we’ve translated that directly to our real estate business. We work together on deals.”

Some Bohemia staff members will work on a Broadway show for several months, then come back to Bohemia. “The door is always open,” said Brian Letendre, a sales agent for high-end properties and an actor whose credits include featured and principal roles in the musicals “Urban Cowboy,” “Movin’ Out” and “Mary Poppins.”

“Working in real estate has allowed me choice,” he continued. “I can be more selective about what I want to audition for and the roles I want to take.”

And, Letendre insisted, he is relentless on both fronts. “I go after the property a client wants just the way I go after an acting job,” he said.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, a number of Bohemia clients are also in the arts. Among them are Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Benj Pasek, who helped write the Tony Award-winning score for “Dear Evan Hansen,” Laura Benanti, a Tony Award-winning actor who has a standing gig as Melania Trump on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” and Celia Keenan-Bolger, who plays Scout in the forthcoming Broadway adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” as well as stage managers and ensemble members of musicals.

And who would know better than Saltzberg and her Bohemia colleagues how tough it is for a theater person to get approved by a bank or a co-op board?

“I’ll say to landlords, ‘Hey, I know that on paper this person looks like a risk, but let me explain what this means: This guy just got a job in ‘Hamilton.’ That show is not closing. He’s going to be in that show for a while,'” Saltzberg said. She is also able to tell potential clients which buildings have flexible management companies and board presidents.

“This is a relationship business the same as other businesses,” she said. “And when you specialize in a geographic area the way we do, and you really have an understanding of the people in the neighborhood and the people who are running things, you can get things done in a way that maybe you couldn’t do otherwise.”

Saltzberg got into the business in 2002 while helping to develop and raise money for a fledgling show that would grow up to become the Broadway musical comedy hit “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.”

She had a featured role in the show as the lisping, pigtailed Logainne Schwartzandgrubenierre, “the daughter of two gay dads,” a character that she created (and that continues to provide her a few thousand dollars in royalty payments every year).

“A friend was like, ‘You should do real estate. Just do it for a little bit. It takes 40 hours to get your license. Make a bunch of money. Put it in your show, and then you can stop doing it,'” Saltzberg recalled. “And I was like, ‘That sounds pretty good.'”

Wendy Wasserstein, the playwright for whom Saltzberg was then working as a weekend nanny, urged her on as well.

Three weeks after becoming a sales agent, Saltzberg, who was living on Central Park West and 108th Street at the time, took note of the vacancies in her building. She phoned the landlord about showing them. He hung up. She dialed again. He hung up again.

“I kept calling until he finally listened to me,” Saltzberg said. “I was like, ‘I’m what you want: I’m young, I’m energetic, I’m an artist. Artists are OK with living in these parts of the city that are not fully developed yet, and I have tons of friends who would want to move into the vacant apartments.'”

It was a Thursday. The landlord gave Saltzberg the weekend to make good. By Monday, she had applications on all the available units.

Something clicked. “I found that it was all a lot like being an actor,” she said. “It was persistence and using improvisation to solve problems.”

Since then, she has seen the neighborhood evolve. “When I first started doing this, I walked through drug deals with clients all the time,” she recalled. “We’d get to the apartment, and I’d have to think fast, so I’d say things like, ‘Well, at least you know you don’t have to go very far.'”

Within months, she said, the formerly skeptical landlord opened his expansive portfolio of buildings in Upper Manhattan to her.

All the while, “Spelling Bee” was moving on a fast track to Broadway. “Once we opened, I was thinking, ‘I don’t need to do real estate anymore because I’m making a living wage with the show,'” said Saltzberg, who worked at several other agencies before starting Bohemia. “But I realized I loved it. I loved that what you put into it was what you got out of it. I loved the art of the deal, and I loved the neighborhoods I was working in. It was very exciting to be part of them.”

Between performances on matinee days, she showed properties, frequently to other actors, frequently in the company of “Spelling Bee” castmate Jose Llana, a future star of the David Byrne operetta “Here Lies Love,” who had gotten his real estate license, too.

“We were in Upper Manhattan, where a lot of Broadway people would be looking,” Saltzberg said. “And sometimes they would be like, ‘You look so familiar.’ And we’d say, ‘Well, have you seen “Spelling Bee”?’ There was so much trust because clients knew us from this other thing.”

Ferguson took due note as Saltzberg sized up the agents on the other side of the deal when he was looking for a pied-à-terre in Chelsea. “I watched Sarah figure out how to work with them based on what they brought into the room. She has this great ‘Yes and —’ skill.”

“As an actor, Sarah puts herself into other people’s shoes, and I think that makes her more attuned to her clients’ needs,” said Benanti, who turned to Saltzberg for assistance in finding a two-bedroom, two-bathroom co-op in Upper Manhattan.

If Saltzberg’s theater training has been a help in her real estate career, her real estate training has proved equally useful in the theater.

“I have learned things about business that I had never learned as an actor,” she said. “I could do a great Irish accent, but I couldn’t look at a contract and think, ‘This doesn’t make sense. I have to negotiate on this and this point’ and fight for what I want. And that’s a huge pitch we make to agents with an arts background who come into the firm.”

As both an actor/writer and a real estate broker, Saltzberg knows the importance of setting a scene. Shrewdly, she has made Bohemia’s offices a celebration of the neighborhoods they serve. Vintage photos of subway cars hang in the Bohemia outpost on Frederick Douglass Boulevard and 113th Street. The centerpiece of the reception area is a map of legendary Harlem nightspots. In the agency’s Washington Heights office, work by local artists is displayed.

By way of strengthening its community ties, Bohemia contributes money and time to the Harlem Children’s Zone and Morningside Park, and does adoption events for Bideawee.

“Sarah lives in Harlem and loves Harlem, and it comes across,” said Avi Feldman, a partner in Omek Capital, which develops rental buildings, mostly in the 125th Street corridor, and retains Bohemia as its exclusive rental broker. “She involves herself in neighborhood activities and is an integral part of the community.”

Saltzberg can be forgiven if she seems a little distracted at the moment. She is working on marketing for the Ammann, a condominium that has just opened in Hudson Heights; Bohemia is the exclusive agent for the development.

And come Monday, there will be another opening, this one on Broadway, for the musical “Gettin’ the Band Back Together.” Saltzberg is credited with providing “additional material” (and is pleased to report that two former Bohemia sales agents, Ryan Duncan and Tad Wilson, are members of the show’s ensemble).

“We’re offering discounts on tickets to friends and business associates in Harlem,” she said. “And to my son’s preschool.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Joanne Kaufman © 2018 The New York Times

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In Defense of Enforced Monogamy

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The mainstream media’s reaction to Dr. Jordan Peterson’s comment about monogamy during a New York Times interview is telling: not only are mainstream pundits and columnists incapable of offering any arguments against monogamy (besides ridicule), they accuse Dr. Peterson of exactly what they themselves engage in.

Hadley Freeman’s response in The Guardian is a perfect example. In a roundabout manner she accuses Dr. Peterson of anti-intellectualism for having fans like Mike Cernovich and Sean Hannity (ooooh, so scary!), but then she engages in the worst kind of anti-intellectualism by using this guilt by association tactic as well as snarky strawmen arguments about how Dr. Peterson supposedly believes that “magic vaginas” will cure “misogyny.” This, of course, isn’t what Dr. Peterson argued at all—but it shouldn’t surprise us that a low-IQ chronically angry Jewish feminist writing for a left-wing rag like The Guardian would come up with such a weak comeback.

The term “enforced monogamy” may seem scary to some, especially our more libertarian-minded friends, because who wants a patriarchal government, or some other strong social force (like a religious institution) “enforcing” social norms? But that’s fine by my book—I like the term. After all we’ve seen that a “free” and secular society such as our own naturally devolves into sexual liberalism and what some have called “hypergamy”—large numbers of women competing for the affection of a very small number of high status men. In other words, enforcement of some sort may be necessary if we want to bring back monogamy.

Hypergamy naturally leaves a large number of young men wanting more. This becomes a source of instability in society—men, being more violent and aggressive than women, are more likely to act in a violent manner when they feel they have nothing left to lose. This can take the form of senseless crime or organized political and religious movements that seek to overthrow the current order.

And this is what Dr. Peterson’s proposal of returning to monogamy seeks to cure. With fewer single angry men, and with more men having the responsibility of caring for families, society will suffer from less crime and fewer destabilizing movements.

But there is another more important reason for supporting enforced monogamy, a reason that Dr. Peterson doesn’t touch on: birth rates.

No society, no civilization, no religion, and no ideology or belief system can expect to perpetuate itself without finding a mechanism to encourage birth rates. After all, reproduction isn’t just the primary way of passing on your genes, but also your ideas. Numerous studies have shown that political views and religious beliefs are both highly heritable. And as the Jesuit saying used to go, “give me the child for the first seven years and I’ll give you the man.” In other words, rearing of children also play a large role in what future generations end up believing.

Point being, any civilization, religion, or ideology that wishes to be successful should aim to produce as many children as possible and control the way in which they’re raised. This is the surest way to guarantee the success of your belief system or ideology over the long run.

While birth rates are plummeting in the West, we are bringing in more third world immigrants with high birth rates. The conclusion is inescapable: we are being replaced by peoples from other civilizations. And what will happen to our civilization when that happens? Does anyone really think that France, for example, will be the same or better when the majority of the population will be made up of Muslims originating from North Africa and the Middle East (set to happen by 2057)? Or that the United States will be the same or better when the majority of the population will be made up of Latinos (set to happen by 2060)?

No, of course not. Countries like France and the United States will irrevocably change for the worse when their populations no longer represent the people and the belief systems that actually created these two countries.

The conclusion here is simple and inescapable: if we want to save Western civilization and the ideas that built it, we have to start by having more babies. And the surest way to do so is to enforce monogamy—no more sexual revolution, no more sleeping around, no more hypergamy, no more birth control, no more dating around to find Mister or Miss “Perfect,” no more putting off kids until you become infertile so you can get a jump-start on your career. As a society we need to go back to the 1950s (or earlier) when everyone got married at a relatively young age, were expected to have children, and where anyone who cheated faced serious social (and sometimes legal) consequences.

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Opinion: Post Brexit, Indian subcontinent can be vital role for the UK

By Syed Muntasir Mamun &  Yashasvi Nain* 

Ahead of Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), scheduled to take place in London in April, old debates have come alive over the relevance and importance of the Commonwealth of Nations and its involvement in world affairs. As alternative to the European Union post Brexit, the United Kingdom sees the Commonwealth as a global trading and international affairs network. In the absence of China, the organization provides a platform to demonstrate the credibility of aspiring global leaders like India.

A visit by Prince Charles in November 2017 to invite Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the summit to discuss India’s role in the organization shows the importance Britain bestows upon India’s strategic ambit. Subsequent visits from Tim Hitchens, chief executive of the Commonwealth Summit Unit, and Patricia Scotland, the Commonwealth secretary general, further reinforced this position.

Trade statistics from 2016 show that the UK imports from the Indian subcontinent, which encompasses India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, totalled £15.2 ($21) billion, and exports £7.7 ($10) billion. Within the rest of the Commonwealth there is a marked propensity for an Indo-centric focus in trade. For instance, trade between India and South Africa now stands at around $20 billion, and between India and Nigeria at around $10 billion. Adding up trading configurations between other African and South Asian countries would definitely prove what is more obviously felt than said — that the trading heart of the old empire is still evolving.

In 2016, during the House of Commons debate, former Defense Minister Lord Archie Hamilton asserted that the limitations in the EU competence clause is the biggest obstacle in the UK-India trade, and that after Brexit its removal will boost bilateral trade between the two countries. India is seen as a preferred partner by the UK for obvious reasons. According to the joint statement released after the India-UK Summit in New Delhi in November 2016, India was the third largest investor in the UK and the second largest international job creator: Indian companies having created over 110,000 jobs in Britain. Furthermore, India is also considered a key target market, with recent forecasts by the London Chamber of Commerce suggesting that a deal could boost UK exports to the country by 50%. Furthermore, if one considers trade statistics, Brexit doesn’t appear to have much of an effect  on India-UK trade.

As per the House of Commons briefing paper on migration issued in October 2017, in 2015 43% people immigrating to the UK were nationals of other EU countries, while 44% came from outside the European Union. Around 17% of all migrants are from three countries alone: India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

The Indian subcontinent is by far the most strategic region driving the dynamics of the Commonwealth. What happens here is more relevant to the future of both the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth as a whole.

COINCIDENCE OR GOOD TIMING?

Britain’s triggering of Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty following the June 23, 2016, referendum came almost a year after the Malta CHOGM of 2015. The 2018 London CHOGM comes almost one year ahead of Britain’s final departure from the EU on March 29, 2019. In the absence of a clear government strategy, the EU referendum decidedly put the UK on a rough, and apparently unstable, path of destiny. But it does not have to be that way. While the immediate aftershock of the referendum was that of a freefalling pound, which remained at a historic 10% low against the US dollar and at 15% against the euro, it seems that the immediacy of the doomsday predictions were balanced with a steadier economic growth (1.8% in 2016), second only to Germany’s 1.9% in the G7. The UK economy has continued to grow at almost the same rate in 2017. Crucial negotiations centering around what Brexit would mean in reality are still in the making.

With this backdrop, CHOGM 2018 opens a window of opportunity for both the United Kingdom and its Commonwealth cousins to essentially rebuild the Commonwealth in such a manner as to transform both in ways hitherto unimagined. The Commonwealth, thanks to a combined economy of more than $10 trillion and an annual growth in excess of 4%, provides a perfect platform for achieving these aims and is probably one of the best alternatives to manage a post-Brexit scenario for Britain.

The UK, thanks to historic and institutionalized connections with its former colonies, is better positioned as a ring leader, capable of successfully integrating international trade — particularly the small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) seeking new markets — into a global trade regime than most other countries, except maybe the United States. It would be wise to not forget that the Commonwealth can boast the fact that half of the top 20 global emerging cities are located within its jurisdiction and that average trade costs between Commonwealth countries will be lowered by 19%.

As a strategic recourse to the systemic uncertainties and instabilities caused by Brexit, the United Kingdom can now act strategically and utilize its position as the chair of the Commonwealth to create a system that will assist member states in integrating more fully into a fairer and more equitable global trading regime. Opening markets and by ensuring mobility of productive factors across a fair, value-based ecosystem will help UK SMEs and financial institutions to enter new markets and boost innovation, growth and job creation.

THE ROADMAP

There are talks going on to host a Commonwealth trade hub in India to promote commerce and investment across the organization. But it is high time that the Commonwealth leadership wakes up to the fact that the systems that govern the prospects of individual prosperity ought not to be only economic in nature. Rather, prosperity is the ability of the state system to enable the individual to live with pride and human dignity. Access to nutrition, shelter, health, education and an otherwise decent living is all part of the prosperity that we understand.

If the UK wants to make the Commonwealth more relevant under its leadership, it must focus on the following areas that will play an important role in making the idea of the Commonwealth work for the people of the Commonwealth. First on the list is employment. With the desire to be connected to the global networks of talent and productivity, everyone is both wary and eager for employment, not only in the service industry, but also as entrepreneurs. The Commonwealth could be a platform that gives structural support for building and connecting markets for both. For instance, more than half of the small nations within the Commonwealth (31 out of 52) are Small Island Developing States, where development is being adversely affected by their remote locations.

This leads to the second point, connectivity: People want to travel and connect. This is a rising vector of an inalienable right in the global consciousness. The Indian subcontinent is well connected to global networks, but attention is needed for upgrading the existing land-based transport infrastructure such as roads and railways, among the Commonwealth countries. It will not only affect social development but will also give much needed structures for an economic boost in the region. Also, post-Brexit, the UK will not be bound by the free movement of workers laws, and there is an opportunity to ease visa restrictions to fill the skill gap from the Commonwealth countries. At the very least, visas for students and professionals from the Commonwealth looking for job in the UK could be fast-tracked.

Third, power and energy: Both people and institutions are energy-hungry. At this moment, countries in the Indian subcontinent depend on a single source to provide more than 50% of total their individual electricity generation. Thus, India produces 67.9% of the region’s coal, Nepal nearly 100% of the subcontinent’s hydropower, Bangladesh provides 91.5% of its natural gas and Sri Lanka 50% of its oil. Sustainable, eco-friendly, affordable and accessible energy needs have to be met if systemic balances are to be achieved in the long run.

Fourth, technology: Any institution that wants to be relevant to the people and, consequently, draw mandates for representing them, ought to carry with itself a tangible promise of technology. This doesn’t mean the internet alone, but also applications and system support to develop ideas with solid financial underwriting.

Fifth, ecological sustainability: With 1.7 billion people, the Indian subcontinent has more people than the whole of Europe and both Americas combined. Unfortunately, that does not translate into wealth. More people are going hungry in South Asia than in Africa. There is substantial inequality in the region, especially when it comes to food supply. It is also vulnerable to the impact of global warming and climate change. Preventing the creation of more climate refugees should be a priority for the Commonwealth, with many of its small island nations particularly affected by rising sea levels. Hence, comprehensive measures and plans for the future need to be laid out, and Britain can lead the way with sustainable development and technological advancement to tackle the environmental crisis.

Sixth, a safer world and a safer Commonwealth: Attacks on civil liberties, free speech and restrictions on civil society are growing across the Indian subcontinent. Based on basic human freedoms, rights and the rule of law, a society free from fear and persecution should be a steady goal throughout the Commonwealth. The organization should work harder to enforce the practical realizations of the core values of human rights enshrined in its charter. The Commonwealth as an institution has been rather successful in setting democratic, legal and human rights standards for the world to follow. But it is time that the Commonwealth wakes up to the desires of the ambitious young minds of its member states and takes cognizance of the need to both contribute and belong.

BALL IN ST. JAMES’ COURT

It is impossible for the governments to do everything. There has to be a partnership between the private and the public sectors to optimize the resources and possibilities available at our disposal. Instilling a component of trust among the nations party to such a grand design is crucial in this regard. The Commonwealth leadership must demonstrate a determined and forward-looking approach to bringing peace and prosperity to the Indian subcontinent, which, despite its glorious past, remains the least integrated in the world. The Commonwealth Charter has already taken note of civil society. It is time that innovation — both as an idea and a platform — is taken as an operational pivot.

Brexit is looming ever larger. New negotiations and new priorities are being conceptualized. This is the best time for the United Kingdom to repackage the Commonwealth as an organization “for the members, by the members and of the members.” The seed of a plausible sense of ownership among member states — in particular for the imagination of the youth — needs to be sown, and it should not be perceived as if benefiting just the UK or a handful of prosperous countries. Existential issues central to the people of the Commonwealth need to be addressed. Learning from the Indian subcontinent and what is happening there, and reflecting the substance of that learning across the plethora of platforms and institutions that the Commonwealth provides, could help create a mechanism that can solve problems for the long term.

There was an ancient proverb, “You are, therefore, I am; and since I am, therefore, you are.” The best network is not a cartel of petrochemicals and weapons. Rather, it is the network of intelligent minds working together.

  * Yashasvi Nain is an international lawyer for humanitarian justice and inclusive development. 

This article is originally published in the Fair Observer

(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL)  

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Trump: I’m a ‘very stable genius’

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump slammed reports questioning his mental stability in a series of tweets Saturday morning, writing he’s a “very stable genius” after the publication of an expos about his first year as President put the White House into damage-control mode.

“Now that Russian collusion, after one year of intense study, has proven to be a total hoax on the American public, the Democrats and their lapdogs, the Fake News Mainstream Media, are taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence … ” Trump wrote, referring to questions raised about the mental fitness of the former President, who disclosed in 1994 that he had Alzheimer’s disease.

“Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart,” the President continued. “Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star … to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius … and a very stable genius at that!”

After his tweets Saturday morning, Trump told reporters at Camp David that Wolff is a “fraud” who doesn’t know him.

“I went to the best colleges, or college,” he told reporters. “I had a situation where I was a very excellent student, came out and made billions and billions of dollars, became one of the top business people, went to television and for 10 years was a tremendous success, as you probably have heard, ran for President one time and won. Then I hear this guy that doesn’t know me at all, by the way, didn’t interview me, said he interviewed me for three hours in the White House. Didn’t exist, it’s in his imagination.”

Trump continued: “I never interviewed with him in the White House at all; he was never in the Oval Office.”

Wolff told “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie on Friday that he “absolutely spoke to the President” while working on “Fire and Fury.”

“Whether he realized it was an interview or not, I don’t know, but it certainly was not off the record,” Wolff said. “I’ve spent about three hours with the President over the course of the campaign, and in the White House. So, my window into Donald Trump is pretty significant.”

The remarkable spectacle of Trump defending his mental stability comes after the President and some of his top officials spent the last few days countering claims in author Michael Wolff’s new book, “Fire and Fury,” about Trump’s mental fitness to serve as President. The book, which went on sale Friday, also paints the picture of a President who neither knows nor cares about policy and doesn’t seem to perceive the vast responsibilities of his role.

CNN has not independently confirmed all of Wolff’s assertions.

Trump’s tweets also come after reports surfaced that a dozen lawmakers from the House and Senate received a briefing from Yale psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X. Lee on Capitol Hill in early December about Trump’s fitness to be president.

“Lawmakers were saying they have been very concerned about this, the President’s dangerousness, the dangers that his mental instability poses on the nation,” Lee told CNN in a phone interview Thursday, “They know the concern is universal among Democrats, but it really depends on Republicans, they said. Some knew of Republicans that were concerned, maybe equally concerned, but whether they would act on those concerns was their worry.”

The briefing was previously reported by Politico. Lee, confirming the December 5 and 6 meeting to CNN, said that the group was evenly mixed, with House and Senate lawmakers, and included at least one Republican — a senator, whom she would not name.

Lee’s public comments are highly unusual given protocols from medical professional organizations — including the 37,000-member American Psychiatric Association — banning psychiatrists from diagnosing patients without a formal examination.

The White House has taken issue with the claims in Wolff’s book since excerpts of it began to surface online ahead of its publication, with press secretary Sarah Sanders calling it “complete fantasy” and an attorney for Trump sending a “cease and desist” threat to the book’s author and publisher.

Trump issued a scathing statement on his former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, saying he had “lost his mind” after the book quoted Bannon making negative remarks about Trump and son Donald Trump Jr.

The book quoted Bannon as calling a June 2016 meeting between a Russian lawyer and the President’s eldest son, son-in-law Jared Kushner and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort “treasonous” and “unpatriotic.”

Bannon also reportedly told Wolff: “They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV.”

Trump lit into Bannon in a tweet Friday night, saying he “cried when he got fired and begged for his job.”

“Michael Wolff is a total loser who made up stories in order to sell this really boring and untruthful book,” Trump wrote. “He used Sloppy Steve Bannon, who cried when he got fired and begged for his job. Now Sloppy Steve has been dumped like a dog by almost everyone. Too bad!”

Wolff reiterated his belief that it is becoming a widespread view that Trump is unfit for presidency, telling BBC Radio in an interview overnight that it’s a “very clear emperor-has-no-clothes effect.”

“The story that I have told seems to present this presidency in such a way that it says he can’t do his job,” Wolff said in the interview. “Suddenly everywhere people are going, ‘Oh my God, it’s true, he has no clothes.’ That’s the background to the perception and the understanding that will finally end … this presidency.”

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told CNN in an exclusive interview on Friday he’s never questioned Trump’s mental fitness, despite reports he once called Trump a “moron.”

“I’ve never questioned his mental fitness,” Tillerson told CNN’s Elise Labott. “I have no reason to question his mental fitness.”

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/06/politics/donald-trump-white-house-fitness-very-stable-genius/index.html

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