#there have been no tragic deaths in my family. ive still got 3/4 of my grandparents my parents and aunts and uncles and cousins are allalive

[nebulouswaters]

Does anyone else constantly feel that nothing life-alertingly terrible has happened to them, and thus they are cheating the odds and constantly overdue for a catastrophic event to befall them and/or their family? Or is that just the anxiety disorder?

[otterplusharchive]

rey! do you have any recs for kdramas? i have never watched any, but i like lovable characters and romance ? thank you in advance!

I DO IN FACT HAVE DRAMA RECS HII not all of these will be kdramas, but ill start with the kdramas ive watched and enjoyed and ill include all the warnings for them that i can remember off the top of my head and a brief synopsis for u!

kdramas-

1. weight lifting fairy kim bok joo

this was probably one of the first kdramas i saw people post about in like 2015 and i watched a little bit of it in 2016 but then only just got around to finishing it last year. the basic gist of it is its about a young sports college weight lifter, kim bok joo, centering around her navigating through her life and trying to figure out who she is and what she wants in life and what she wants to be. her romantic interest in the show is a swimmer and they have a sort of rivals to friends to lovers, he is SO in love with her and its adorable. i absolutely loved the side characters in this show theyre all so fun and kim bok joos best friends and weight lifting team are especially delightful. my main warning would be that this show addresses eating disorders and theres a lot of mention of both weight gain and weight loss, theres also a plot point early on where kim bok joo has a crush on her eventual love interests older brother but it gets resolved and the older brother literally goes "i didnt realize you had a crush on me and if i knew that i wouldnt have been so friendly with you, it would be completely innapropriate for us to be in a relationship". overall its a really sweet and emotional fun show but if you have issues with weight talk id skip this one

2. tale of the nine tailed

this one is really recent from last year and i didnt expect to be so hooked by it but boy howdy did i get attached to all the characters and the wild plot. it feels hard to explain the plot but basically a nine tailed fox named lee yeon is living in modern day seoul and is working for the underworld finding paranormal spirits/creatures/other rogue foxes that are causing havoc on the world, hes resigned himself to living this life while waiting for his girlfriend who died tragically 600 years ago to come back to life because he traded his status as a mountain god in order to ensure that her soul would one day be reincarnated. a plucky investigative journalist named nam ji ah figures out that hes not human and shenanagins ensue because she looks exactly like his dead girlfriend oooooo whatll happen. the plot beyond that gets really wild and its hard to explain and is easier to just watch. if u enjoy paranormal adventures this one is good. my one big complaint and issue with this is that the immortal mountain spirit meets his original girlfriend when shes a child and she continues to visit him off and on as she grows up which is Hm I Dont Like That! but thankfully the present time romance our female lead meets him when shes about 30 if im remembering right. also warnings for general fantasy violence, references to child abuse, animal death, and abandonment issues

3. extraordinary you

HUGE unreality warning for this. if you have issues with feeling unreal or have paranoia/delusions about not being a real person id avoid this one just because of its premise

ok i know i said tale of the nine tailed was a hard plot to explain but BOY extraordinary you is even HARDER to explain. because its so wild but so good. its about a girl who realizes that she is literally a side character in a comic book, and the story becomes her trying to change the story to save her character from dying but it becomes a lot more than that. the romance in this is literally tooth achingly sweet and the show itself is very pretty, i loved the side characters in this one and the show was engaging and interesting to watch it became really layered and meta. super reccomend this one honestly. my main issues/warnings that i can remember off the top of my head were just one character being the classic controlling boyfriend stereotype, bullying someone specifically for being poor, unreality like i mentioned before, and then at the very end there was this love interest for a side character who got reincarnated from a past piece of writing that they had been in and put in the comic but she was a student and he was the school cook which is weird but thankfully they like barely interact at all and theres no real romance he just like recognizes her and its barely a thing at the end of the show but its still weird

4. mystic pop up bar

big warning for suicide, sexual harrasment (which is framed as being bad and the guy whos harrassing the girl literally gets thrown off a roof)

i havent finished this one yet and thats mainly because im not emotionally ready because this one makes me soooo emotional. if you like found family this is a good one. its about a pop up bar run by a woman whos been tasked with solving the problems of a certain amount of people in order to atone for her crimes in the past before dying, shes able to enter the dreams of people and solve their issues using the information she gets in the dreams. paranormal shenanagins ensue, she acquires a son and a husband and it kills me its so fun and quirky and fun despite handling dark themes and peoples problems. also very sweet the found family murders me

5. kingdom (netflix original)

i literally am not going to be able to watch any other zombie media because kingdom and train to busan are the best pieces of zombie media ive ever seen. warnings for gore and violence and just general horror aspects.

i absolutely love this one its so thrilling and well done, i love the acting and the way that this show looks its absolutely gorgeous. a zombie plague breaks out in joseon period korea where the emperor has died and then was brought back to life by the queen and her father in a ploy to try and keep their family in political power, the crown prince must find answers. a lot more happens and its very dramatic and good i love the characters in this one

cdramas

1. the untamed. if you follow me and you havent watched the untamed im begging you to watch the untamed. literally one of the most beautiful stories ive experienced in my life i am not joking when i say i cried multiple times over it. the main characters are canonically gay in love and have a son together please watch the untamed. handles a lot of dark themes, heres a tw guide

2. the sleuth of the ming dynasty

this is another one i havent finished but its fun so far, very gay, found family, food, and solving murder mysteries during the ming dynasty

3. hikaru no go (also known as qi hun)

havent finished this one, there is some propaganda about hong kong in the first episode but as far as i know thats the only instance of something like that in the show

this ones about the game go and so far its very sweet and fun, local boy awakens a ghost who was a master of the game of go hundreds of years ago and eventually is persuaded to learn how to play go with the aid of the ghost. im really liking this one so far its very cute and i love the characters in it. if youve watched the untamed nie huaisangs actor ji li is in this one!

4. the legend of yunqian

this ones very short and on youtube, all the episodes are about 5 minutes long and its a lesbian time travel fantasy adventure with a happy ending! funny and cute

jdramas

1. cherry magic

please please please watch cherry magic. the premise sounds very much like a weird yaoi kind of thing but trust me on this. trust me. it is so heart warming and sweet and i was so emotional about it and the growth of the main character.

adachi gains the power to read peoples minds on his 30th birthday based off a urban legend that if youre a 30 year old virgin that youll become a wizard. after gaining this power he accidentally finds out that his extremely popular and handsome coworker has a crush on him, and shenanagins ensue along with adachi having blossoming feelings in return. this show was really refreshing in a lot of ways, adachi is a main character who like.. is unsure of himself and insecure in a very kind of realistic way, he closes himself off and is afraid to reach out to people and through the course of the show we see him slowly come out of his shell and realize that hes likeable and lovable and that people want to be around him and its so nice to see. my main complaint about this show is that i dont really like the background couple, but otherwise this is a very sweet and refreshing gay romance that has a happy ending!

some others that i myself havent seen but that ive seen people talk about a lot and that i want to watch eventually:

- the legend of fei (cdrama)

- the wolf (cdrama)

- gaurdian (cdrama, not the kdrama one called goblin)

- healer (kdrama, i did watch some of this one but it was in 2016 and i never finished it so i barely remember any of it but i do remember liking it)

- nobody knows (kdrama)

- its ok to not be ok (kdrama)

sorry this is so long but i hope youll be able to find a drama u enjoy!!

[imagine-loki]

Once Upon an Unrequited Love

TITLE: Once Upon an Unrequited Love

CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT:5/?

AUTHOR: Tragically-Sarcastic

ORIGINAL IMAGINE: Imagine 1 2 3 4 

RATING:

NOTES/WARNINGS: I wrote this in one sitting, I have no earthly idea how.

 FYI: I made up the Circle, I tried to search for a mythical place that you could find in a forest, but none of them felt right. I used an Icelandic translator, so please don’t come for me if the translations are incorrect lol (research said that Icelandic is the closest modern language to old norse) 

The entrance of the circle was inspired by a picture prompt, when I saw it I was smacked by the idea of my Circle myth. I wrote down all the details I thought of and started writing this chapter. I had already written the last half, so I have a pretty decent sized chapter.

Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!

Happy Reading, my back hurts from sitting at my desk to write this! 

_________

“So where exactly are we going in this endless forest, and how do you know where we are going?” Loki asks, looking around at the trees that all seem identical to him.

“I come here everyday, so its a memorized path.” She says with a smile and a shake of her head. 

“Are you going to tell me what you are showing me? Or shall I walk for another hour in suspense.” He says, trying to look annoyed but failing. 

“What?” She turns to him with a smirk. “ The God of Mischief can’t take some mischief right back?”

“Teasing minx.” He mutters under his breath. 

He turns around to walk backward, looking at her. 

“At least tell me how much long-“ she cuts him off.

“Turn around and look your Royal Impatientness.” She points behind him.

He turns around to look at what she’s pointing at…and sees nothing.

He looks back at her tilting his head and searching her face for any sign that she was joking.

“Has being alone this long driven you mad?” he asks, only half joking.

She rolls his eyes at his confused look.

“Come stand where I am standing you daft man.” she grabs both of his shoulders, pointing him toward the doorway seeming to be made of vines and branches. 

“I don’t see it.”

“What do you mean you don’t see it? Its right there!” she says in frustration. She walks in front of him, just missing the mischievous look in his eyes. She looks back at the doorway and turns to him. 

“Stand behind me.” she demands. 

She feels his body behind her, as his hands settle on her hips. She raises an eyebrow in surprise. 

“Uh…what are you doing Loki?” She asks, trying to hide how flustered his touch has made her. 

She feels his breath brush her neck as he speaks in a whisper.

“I’m standing behind you.” 

“Well…you don’t have to stand so close Loki.”

“I know, now show me what you were looking at.”

“O-Ok, just kinda lower your head to be even with mine and look straight ahead of us.” She says, stuttering alittle. “Do you see it now?” When he doesn’t reply she turns her head to look at him, only to discover his face to be directly even with hers, and he was looking at her. 

“What are you doing Loki?” She whispers as her eyes jump from his brilliantly colored eyes to his mouth and back again. This is the closest they’ve ever been. 

He has an odd look on his face, before she can determine what it is he looks away, back in front of them.

“I see it now,” he pulls away, almost seeming reluctant to part from her. He puts his hand on her waist, slightly pushing her forward. 

“Shall we?”

They head toward the natural doorway, one confused and one silently determined. 

She stops for a moment to turn to him.

“So this is ‘Þögn hring’, Circle of Silence.” She says. “Once we walk though that door it will be completely silent. You won’t be able to hear anything at all, your breathing, speaking, or even our footsteps.” She tells him seriously. “Sometimes its a shock to the brain for sudden complete silence. Most can’t take being in the circle for more than ten minutes.” She smiles a small smile. “Ive been coming here for years so I can stay for much longer.”

Loki looks genuinely interested, a quizzical look on his face as he studies the doorway that looks like nothing more than a creative twist of nature. 

“How did you find out about this place?” He asks looking back down at her for answers.

“Well,” she says hesitantly. “When I first came to this forest I wondered around a lot. Just thinking about life I guess, and what I would do with mine going forward.” She looks away, lost in the memory. “I was having a particularly hard day, missing my parents, my friends, and y-“ she looks at him, embarrassed that she had let that slip.

“I was missing you as well.” She looks back into the distance, thinking back on that day. “I had wondered farther than usual and was, admittedly, lost. When I came upon this doorway I thought it was just a twist of branches so I walked through. I stumbled back out and I very nearly passed out from the shock of it.” She looks back up at him.

“Thats why I wanted to tell you before hand, I wasn’t prepared for it so it was very startling. But since you’ll be prepared you should be fine.”

She takes a step forward, looking back at him with a hand outstretched. 

“You ready?” 

He takes her hand as they step over the threshold. Ironically, the silence is deafening, an odd silence that has no chance of disturbance. He looks at her, astonished and extremely curious about this magical place. He lets go of her hand and walks a few steps away, and sure enough, not a single sound is made from his shoes making contact with the ground. 

Their laughter goes unheard.

————

“So why did you come back after your first experience with the circle?” Loki asks as they are making their way back to the house. 

“Well, I was extremely confused about what had happened. So when I got home I got out some books from our library about magical phenomena in forests.” Her hand waves around as she explains.  

“When I discovered the myth of the circle I knew that it was what I was looking for. Its origin is a very interesting story that resonated with me at the time.” She says as Loki helped her over a fallen tree. 

“A long time ago an ancestor of mine had a great heartbreak, it doesn’t say exactly what happened, whether it was a death of a loved one or a betrayal. But it says that she would search for a silent corner for some peace and quiet but no matter where she went or how quiet it was she was never happy with the near silence. So, she started looking for a solution. She came across a way to make an area silent for a small amount of time, and it worked fine at first, but she eventually got tired of casting it every time she wanted some peace. So she experimented with it until she eventually created the Circle. It was her favorite place to go and sit, and it just happened to be the place that she finally got it right.” She has a small sad sort of smile on her face.

“Im sure you connected with the heartbreak part of the story.” He says, obviously still angry with himself for his part in her sadness. 

She stays silent because he’s right, and she sees no sense in denying his part in it. 

She thinks back to that fateful day, the day her heart was broken by the one person that she thought would always be there for her. He had said that not only was she a ‘Royal hungry harlot’, but he also told her that she was a clingy thorn on his side, that he could never get rid of. His words that day were the reason she had to leave. 

She loved him with her whole being, and the thought of being a nuisance to him ripped her apart.

So she left. 

~Past~

A knock sounds on the door to the Queens private rooms, she already knows who it is. She turns to the door as it slowly opens, the girl entering being so familiar with her that she knows she can walk right in. Sadness is plain on her face, broken hearted would describe the youth. 

“Hello dear,” Frigga walks over to her, taking her hands in her own. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages, how are you?” she asks sweetly. 

“Frigga I must ask a very large favor of you.” She states plainly. “I need to…leave town. Immediately…Quietly.” she takes a deep breath, preparing for the second half of her request. 

“I also…need you to not tell Loki where Ive gone, or that you know of me leaving at all.”

Her words are a shock.

“Are you alright? Has something threatened you?” Frigga asks worried. “Leaving town seems rather extreme, and on top of that, why can’t Loki know?” Her eyebrows goes up in concern. “Is …Is he the reason?”

“Something has happened between us, and I must leave. Make no mistake, he has done me no physical harm and the situation is entirely my fault. However, I fear he will eventually try to find me and I-… I don’t want him to.” She shakes her head, tears welling in her eyes. 

“I can’t take seeing him when Ive come to know what I know.” She looks up at the woman that she has always viewed as a mother. 

“Please Frigga, please help me slip away and please don’t tell him where I’ve gone.” A lone tear makes its way down her cheek.

Frigga wipes the tear away, her heart aching for the heartbroken look of the girl in front of her.

“I won’t, I promise.” She takes her face in her hands and kisses her forehead comfortingly before wrapping her up in a hug. 

“Frigga, you must know how I appreciate you and all you’ve done for me over the time I’ve known you. I just-“ She takes a deep breath and lets it out shakily. 

“You have no need to thank me dear, I view you as my own and would do anything you requested.” Frigga assures her with a small, if not sad, smile on her face.  

The girl reluctantly pulls away, wiping the tears away and taking a deep fortifying breath.

“Im going to my families forest, Verndaskógur, It is very secure so there is no need to worry after my safety…once I’m gone.” 

“Please don’t try and change my mind, my heart is already broken leaving all of you. Please don’t be angry with me for leaving, you are the closest thing I have to a mother left, I don’t want to leave on a bad note.” She pleads.

“I must ask, are you sure you can’t workout whatever happened between you? You and Loki have had disagreements over the years and you’ve always made up, how is this time any different? Won’t you discuss it with him first?” She makes one last attempt at getting her to stay.

“Im sure. This time is different. I have to leave, I can’t be around him anymore I-…” she looks up at Frigga. “Im sure you know that I love him, but… I have to leave him, for my own good and his. I need to get out of his life, out of his way…for good.” She says, a determined look on her face. 

[stardustreviews]

Blog All Day, Meme All Night

over a month ago, actual ray of sunshine @lynchmatthew​ tagged me in this and uhh i finally finished tweaking this blog so why not do it now!!

tagging @the-little-witches-books, @jostenne, @wylans, @pynchvinsky, and uhh anyone else who wants to!

╰☆╮1. YEET – which book would you yeet out of existence?

Highkey? A Court of Wings And Ruin. That was the book that made me realize that I just couldn’t read anymore Maas. I hated the way she wrote romance, how all her male characters were possessive, the half-hearted attempt at “representation”.

╰☆╮2. CRYING KIM K – which book gives you lots of feelings?

Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust. I need to write a review for this at some point, but basically-- it’s an absolutely beautiful book, a feminist retelling of Snow White, and the mother-daughter relationship between Mina (the Wicked Queen character) and Lynet (the Snow White character) is meticulously, wonderfully crafted. I cannot recommend this book enough!

╰☆╮3. AMERICA, EXPLAIN – favourite book set outside the us?

The creator of this tag, @meriknihar​ definitely intended this to be an In-Unvierse question, so uhh,, Illuminae definitely counts, right? It takes place in our cosmos, just very far away in both time and distance. I just love how tight and unexpected the plots were, and the format they chose was so interesting

Otherwise, I’d say The Book Thief, which is set in Germany and made me cry my heart out.

╰☆╮4. RIP VINE – your saddest character death?

MAJOR ACOL SPOILERS AHEAD!!

A Darker Shade of Magic’s Holland Vosijk. V. E. Schwab created a beautiful, tragic character, and even thinking about him makes me sad again. He deserved the absolute fucking world, man.

╰☆╮5. WHAT ARE THOSE? – a book that left you confused?

Caraval by Stephanie Garber. It wasn’t that I didn’t get what was going on, but it was just too disorienting. The reader never really finds their footing in her story, and even at the end I was still not sure what was real and what was part of the performance. I don’t know, I guess I just felt like the protagonist’s agency didn’t mean anything when the rug was being pulled out from under everyone’s feet each chapter, and each twist seemed to negate the last. It was just too much.

╰☆╮6. BIG DICK ENERGY – favourite character with BDE?

It took me a while to figure this one out, but probably The Cruel Prince’s Jude Duarte. She will do whatever the fuck she can to get ahead, she refuses to be intimidated, and she’s an amazing Slytherin queen who is more than welcome to murder me if she wants.

╰☆╮7. I WON’T HESITATE BITCH – favourite book with a morally grey protagonist?

Vicious by V. E. Schwab. I read this the summer of my junior year and I fell in love with the story. She’s just,,, so good at crafting characters, and I need Vengeful now that it’s out.

╰☆╮8. MOVE, I’M GAY – favourite book featuring a lgbp+ romance?

Anyone who’s been around me for more than 2.3 seconds knows I am a weakass hoe for Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Córdova. It’s a fun yet dark adventure novel featuring Latina witches, realistic and loving families, lots of magic, and the softest wlw couple I know. My heart belongs to Alex and Rishi.

╰☆╮9. STREET SMARTS – favourite book featuring a protagonist whose strength is their intelligence?

Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore! Bitterblue is a puzzle of a book about mysteries and healing, and unlike the warrior Katsa, the titular protagonist doesn’t have strength or survival instincts. Instead, she has a deep desire to do good, and the brains needed to get to the bottom of the wound her father left on her country. (A close second is An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson; it’s a delightful story about a painter spirited away to Fae territories, and she survives largely due to her cleverness. Plus the book has some wonderful reflections of stagnation vs progress and the price of immortality,,, would highly recommend.)

╰☆╮10. ALEXA PLAY DESPACITO – character death you were happy about?

Severus Snape from Harry Potter. I don’t care that he was on The Good Side, and I really don’t care that He Will Always Love Lily. Severus Tobias Snape is a toxic slimebag, and when he joined the Wizard Nazis and called his best friend/crush a fucking slur, got butthurt that she didn’t want to hang with him anymore. He was willing to let an innocent man and a fucking baby be brutally murdered to save Lily, and even after she clearly rejected him, refused to get over her and let it become creepy and borderline-obsessive. The whole thing where he tore a photo of the Potter family so he could have Lily’s picture and no one else’s? And where he tore off her signature too? What the fuck. Also he has the emotional maturity of a 12 year-old, taking his anger out on two innocent and already traumatized children, to the point where he was one of those children’s greatest fear that is not okay. Anyways he can choke.

╰☆╮11. THEN PERISH – a book you DNFed?

Snow Like Ashes. I didn’t get very far into it, but I remember the premise not really grabbing me, and then it was due back to the library and I didn’t really care enough to get it ever again.

☆╮12. KERMIT SIPPING TEA – a book that makes a statement?

The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness is a great one. It’s a story about being the side characters, the ones who aren’t the Chosen Ones who get sent on an epic quest against evil. They’re just people, dealing with real problems, mental health issues and conflict with friends, and Ness handles the subject with a deft sort of beauty.

The Twelve Little Cakes also qualifies, too. It’s a memoir of a woman’s childhood in a post-Stalinist USSR-era Czech Republic. Despite the depressing setting, Dery manages to write a book bursting with optimism, with belief in the goodness of people and a better world, and that persepctive is as refreshing s it necessary in this modern age.

╰☆╮13. SAME HAT – the character you relate to the most?

I had,,, a lot of trouble with this one, so I’m going to say that Lara Jean from To All the Boys Ive Loved Before really reminds me of my high school self. She daydreams a lot, loves The Aesthetic, is not very grounded in reality, Is Soft And Kinda Anxious. Sure, let’s say that.

╰☆╮14. OH WORM – a book you didn’t expect to love?

I’ll Give You The Sun by Jandy Nelson. I’m not normally a contemporary person, but I finished this book sobbing instead of working on a health essay. Books that have conflicts shaped like mysteries and puzzles, where personalities and situations clash in a way that looks a little bit like tragedy? Those are books are automatic favorites.

╰☆╮15. SHREK – favourite book featuring mythical creatures?

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater revolves around the capaill uisce (aka kelpies). Stiefvater is brilliant with characters and atmosphere, so even though her books are more slow-paced, I was still absolutely enchanted.

[shakingthestars]

Final predictions about TLJ before the world premiere

Today is the world premiere of TLJ. Before we possibly get major leaks, here is the final version of my bingo. After that, I will keep myself away from spoiler until I enter the theaters on December 13th, 9.45 a.m C.C.T Paris.

Very hard to select the information so there is nothing about ii.e. Ahch-To or Canto Bight. Plus the bingo is very oriented to Kylo, Rey, Luke and Snoke. Not that the other characters and arc ain’t important but IMO this is where the heart of the story is.  A lot of these predictions are based on the discussions + metas that I wrote on the reyloskyforum.net.

I) First line: Kylo and Rey’s relationship

Regarding Kylo and Rey, I believe that romantic drama is indeed about them but romance is not central to their relationship and the plot in  TLJ. The most important dimension IMO is that they share this unprecedented connection through the Force that throw them at the center of the battle between the Dark Side and the Light Side. Therefore, they are key to achieve together the balance of the Force. Their connection reminds me a lot of E.T. and Elliott’s connection since I saw a lot of callbacks to E.T. the Extraterrestrial in TFA

II) Second line: Rey’s background

Regarding Rey, I am definitely convinced that she is not a Skywalker:

Rey: I know all about waiting..for my family

Maz: Dear child. I see your eyes: you already know the truth. Whomever you’re waiting for on Jakku, they’re never coming back

For me, Maz’s line about “people she is waiting for are never coming back” always made it pretty clear that Rey’s family would never ever show up. Rey is a young person who desperately craves for belonging and as Maz said: “the belonging you seek is not behind you, it is ahead”. In other words, she may not find her birth family, the one of the past, but she can still find a family, the one of the future.

I don’t need Rey to be the daughter or granddaughter of a character we already know. IMO, the importance of her origins is in something ancient, maybe connected with the origins of the Force given Colin Trevorrow’s statements before he was fired :

I’ve seen all of the theories… What I do know is that we’re going to make sure that that answer is deeply and profoundly satisfying, because Rey is a character that is important in this universe, not just in the context of The Force Awakens but in the entire galaxy, and she deserves it. So we’ll make sure that that answer is something that feels like it was—it’s something that happened a long time ago [in a galaxy] far, far away, we’re just telling you what happened.”

We know from Daisy Ridley that there is no immaculate conception with Rey contrary to Anakin. So I came to speculate that Disney/LF might have got some inspiration from Disney movie Atlantis - the Lost Empire and even more from the Castle in the Sky (that Disney apparently used as inspiration for Atlantis - the Lost Empire). In The Castle in the Sky, (Lu)Sheeta is the long lost descendant of the royal family of Laputa, a floating castle in the Sky whose powerful destructive energy comes from a crystal. No time to make a long meta but I saw similarities with both The Castle in the Sky and Atlantis - the Lost Empire in Rogue One but also in TFA. And my feeling is that kyber crystals are going to be important in that story. As for Rey Kenobi, I am convinced that Rey parallels Obi-Wan more than any other character. Still, I remain cautious because parallels ain’t an ultimate proof of lineage, i.e. Finn parallels Luke as much as Rey parallels Obi-Wan in TFA, which doesn’t make Finn Luke’s son. So Rey Kenobi IMO ain’t the most important thing in Rey’s background. For me, it would be the cherry on the cake.

III) Third line: Kylo Ren’s background

Regarding Kylo Ren’s background, he is IMO the only and last Skywalker child. My feeling is that his abusive connection with Snoke is the key element of his background much more than having neglecting parents. I tend to see Snoke as the Star Wars version of any manipulative Disney villain that target a young character either from the cradle in order to achieve a specific plan. And a lot of Disney villain target and manipulates a character either to get an artifact (Ursula/Ariel ==> get the trident) or to use that character as a mean to maintain themselves alive and well (Gothel/Rapunzel ==> uses her power to maintain herself young) or to crush that character (Maleficent/Aurora ==> kill her). Since the ST is produced by Disney/LF, there are callbacks to Disney movies. And a lot of people may be surprised but the trio villain/Prince(ss) in distress/Prince(ss) to the rescue is not what it seems to be. Once one understands that Snoke got  the role of the Disney villain, Ben the role of the Disney Prince(ss) to rescue and Rey the role of the Disney Prince(ss) on the rescue, the perception of Kylo Ren as a villain completely changes. At least, this is how mine evolved. And Disney movies are much about going beyond the first impression of a character especially when a character is called a monster at the beginning of his journey (i.e. Quasimodo, Beast;, Elsa). And Disney are also about monster misjudged by the others who find a way to regain their humanity in the world’s eyes:

Georges Lucas: I like the idea that the person you thought was the villain is really the victim, and that the story is really about the villain trying to regain his humanity,

So my feeling that both Kylo Ren’s background and fate in TLJ will be tragic because he is a character that got much hate for his actions and especially for the patricide, which is perfectly normal. But my feeling is that he is not meant to remain a villain until the end of the ST to die unredeemed or get a redemption by the very end like Vader. I think that the tragic thing about Kylo Ren is that he developed a strong connection with Snoke from the early age and that Snoke was the only one to help him when his raw power got uncontrollable. My feeling is that his commitment is actually more to Snoke than the FO. I think that Snoke represents for him what a dark version of E.T. could have become for Elliott: a possessive,exclusive and toxic friend. And it is also my feeling that Snoke had something very precise in mind by targeting that child in particular and  being interested in his power. Their relationship is not a copy of Palpatine and Anakin’s. There is something much more exclusive. We know from Serkis that Snoke is much darker than Palpatine but also very vulnerable. So my feeling is that Snoke and Kylo’s connection may have become so strong through the years that Snoke actually needs Kylo Ren to survive. In any case, I don’t think that Kylo Ren can cut his ties that easily to Snoke. . So I think that Kylo’s allegiance will slowly shift: his allegiance to Rey will become stronger than his allegiance to Snoke in the throne room. My feeling is that he will try to cut it but I don’t think that Snoke will let him go that easily.  The TFA novelization makes it pretty clear that Snoke sees himself as an architect polishing amasterpiece. This is something he has been dedicating himself for decades so I hardly imagine Snoke throwing his masterpiece away like that or letting his masterpiece tueining his back on him without reacting

IV) Fourth line: Final arc  of the movie

Regarding the final arc of the movie, the analysis of the timeline gives me the feeling that Supremacy is not the real climax of the movie. From the analysis of Finn and TRey’s costume + physical state, I put my money that the battle on Crait is the final battle of the movie. Therefore, Supremacy can’t be the climax. Plus I fins it strange how the SW crew keep spoiling what happens on Supremacy (Finn vs. Phasma and Rey vs. Snoke) and keeps showing Crait as a random battle although Rian stated that Crait would play a key role in the movie. So IMO, Crait is where all characters will converge for the final arc. My feeling is that Luke will show up unexpedtedly on Crait after being out of screen for a good while since the Ahch-To arc. I also believe thay Snoke will show up there : I just can’t believe that Snoke would make an appearance in the movie just to get defeated pathetically on his own ship and then letting the FO letting the FO battling on Crait. Serkis confirmed that the  guy has a huge agenda, is very powerful and hides his true nature. He is someone very determined and full of resent: IMO, there is no way he abandons the fight to go hiding like a coward. And TLJ is the second movie of the trilogy,  which means that it should represent the lowest point. If Snoke has a huge agenda, I guess he will succeed in achieving it and the FO shall ultimately win over the Resistance on Crait.

V) Fifth line: Shocking outcome

Regarding, Rian did confirm that there would be a shocking outcome coming naturally and romantic drama. IMO, TLJ shall end with a major stake and conflict rising from a shocking outcome.

I exclude any scenario involving that Luke, Kylo and Rey all end up by the same side

Scenario 1: Light Luke/Kylo/Rey

==> Game over for Snoke and the FO

Scenario 2: Dark! Luke/Kylo/Rey

== Game over for Leia and the Resistance

I exclude any scenario involving Luke becoming the center of the story because Mark confirmed that the ST is not about Luke’s story any more.

Scenario 3 : Dark! Luke vs. Light Kylo and Rey

==> would involve to bring Luke back to the Light. Who should do it? Leia is the most obvious candidate but this is not the story of the Skywalker twins. Kylo is his nephew but his relationship with Luke isn’t the centerpiece of the ST. As for Rey, why would she go after Luke to bring him back to the Light if he is neither her belonging behind (father) nor her belonging ahead (lover)

Scenario 4 : Light! Luke vs. Dark Kylo and Rey

==> This scenario would make Luke the hero of the ST once again

I exclude the following deaths

Scenario 5: Luke’s death

==> We already lose a belove OT character as shocking outcome in TFA. Plus, what’s the point to have Luke back to the Resistance by the end of the movie to help the Resistance if one makes him die.

Scenario 6: Rey’s death/near-death state

==> They’re not gonna make the heroine die or end up in near-death state. That brings nothing to the story.

I also rule out these scenarios although IMO there is a possibility that it happens:

Scenario 7: Dark! Rey vs. Light! Luke/Kylo

==> Although there are hints at Rey’s darkness, I don’t think she will fall to the DS contrary to so many people seem to think. The analysis of the timeline tells me that she’ll escape Supremacy with bruise but safe and sound. Plus, there were photos on Crait showing Rey by Finn and Poe’s side as she already has her bruise, bruise that she got on Supremacy. If Rey doesn’t turn to the DS on Supremacy as she is fighting against PG and uses he raw power, I don’t think she is supposed to turn to the DS later

Scenario 8: Kylo and Rey flee together, away from the FO and the Resistance

==> Rian said that there is romantic drama, which by definition means that there will be obstacle to a romance happening. If Kylo and Rey flee together, isn’t it the confirmation of a romance? And where would be the romantic drama? Kylo and Rey are at the center of the balance and together represent a big threat to Snoke and his agenda. If I would be Snoke, I would make anything to get them separated

Scenario 9: Kylo’s tragic fate is IMO the shocking outcome of TLJ

I personally believe that Snoke will play a major role in this because if I would be Snoke, I would do anything to end my physical vulnerability either by acquiring a powerful artifact or by using the Force energy of someone else. I even believe in the possiblity that Snoke isn’t meant to remain old, vulnerable  and creepy-looking. I would put my money that one of his goal is to become young again, all powerful and handsome. In other words, the same kind of tyran that young Vader intended to be had he not ended up like a piece of burnt fleh. And who better than Vader’s spawn himself coud help him achieving that goal? One of my headcanon is either Snoke uses Ben to acquire something  valuable and crushes him or he uses his power energy to become all powerful again. By tragic fate, I mean something close to near-death state, possession, dark prophecy, etc...Something that make Kylo Ren a villain the audience can truly relate to.

Why do I believe in that kind of scenario  rather than Dark! Luke or Dark! Rey?

Because Kylo Ren is at the center of major stakes within the contexte the ST and even within the context of the entire franchise:

1) The unending  tragedy of a family...

Kylo Ren is the only and last descendant of the main family of the entire franchise, a family plagued with unending dramas:

#Who is the next?#

It was confirmed that Leia was supposed to have a bigger role in Episode 9 so she was supposed to survive Episode 8. I already pointed out that Luke’s tragic death would bring much. The audience already got a shock with a belove OT character’s death in Episode 7. And even if Luke’s death would be a big shock to the audience, it doesn’t raise any major stake regarding the fate of the Skywalker family. Losing the only last Skywalker child on the other end would give a dramatic turn. The tragic fate of a young male/female is always more tragic than a older character because...

2) A mother wanting her only child back...

Can you imagine how tragic it would be for Leia who begun her life having lost her mother and possibly end her life having lost her son. Leia all alone bears the tragedies of the Skywalker family in regard to all the people she lose during her whole life. And friendly reminder that this broken woman is clinging to the hope to have her son back. And there is even something more this woman obviously wishes :

Source: from Poe Dameron comic (canon)

“Never imagined this,” Han had murmured, sitting up in their bed late at night. Ben’s tiny head resting in the crook of his father’s arm. “Having a kid. Even wanting a kid. But now he’s here and-”

“And you’re a dad.” Leia had learned closer, unable to resist the chance to tease her husband. “Just think hotshot. Someday you might even be a granddad.”

Han’s chuckle had warmed her. “Speak for yourself, sweetheart. Me, I ain’t ever getting old.”

Source: Bloodline

I don’t believe in Rey Solo : it was debunked several times. And Poe ain’t Leia’s son. So there is only one person in that galaxy far way who could make Leia a grandmother one day. And here is why Kylo Ren is at the center of the drama in regard to the Skywalker family. Make the only Skywalker child die or give him a tragic fate by the end of the ST: bye bye Skywalker family! Although I am no Reylo for reproductive imperative because Rey deserves to be seen as something else than a utero, this is something to keep in mind. The Skywalker family has suffered dramas and Kylo Ren is at the center of the drama in the ST. Another interesting thing is that Carrie Fisher’s death didn’t to represent a massive drama to a point that Rian felt the need to edit TLJ. We know that Leia was supposed to have a bigger role in Episode 9, but in that kind of scenario her absence could be easily explained. If I had lose my mother, then my adoptive parents, then my husband, the tragic fate of my only child on top of that would make me lose the will to fight and live.

3) A heroine searching for her belonging...

The ST is the story of Rey and how the story of that young woman fits in this great franchise in which the Skywalker family was always at the center of the plot. Rey is a great character in herself: she doesn’t need to be related to the Skywalker, the Palpatine, the Kenobis to be important. She is not there either just to serve as a tool for a man’s narrative. She is strong, able to handle herself and wise enough to make her own choices. And what  does this young woman ever wanted in her life? To have a family!

J.J.Abrams: There was this powerful idea that what she desperately wanted was belonging, which she will get, simply not the way she expects

In other words, Rey is not someone full of ideals who gets involved in a fight because she believes so strongly in the ideal of the Resistance and that fight will become her whole life.Contrary to Anakin and Luke, she has no roots either to follow the Jedi’s path. Anakin always wanted to become a Jedi and Luke wanted to become a Jedi like his father. The only thing this young woman ever wanted was to belong somewhere but she is persuaded that she can only find a belonging in her birth family and thus has difficulty to accept that they’re never coming back. And she will get a belonging but not the way she expects because the belonging/family she seeks is not behind her/in her past (parents, birth family) but ahead/in her future (lover, future family). You rarely become part of a future family if you don’t find someone who makes you part of that family, in other words a partner. And we know thanks to Maz that someone who is not part of her birth family could still come back.  Given the way Disney/LF hints at this strange connection and relationship between the Rey and Kylo Ren - only descendant of the Skywalkers - it would make sense that Rey finds in the Skywalkers her future family. However, Rian said that there is romantic drama in TLJ, which means obstacles preventing a romance from happening. If Rey learns in TLJ the reasons why her parents never came back, she will have lose her belonging behind forever. And if Ben suffers a tragic fate in TLJ, she will have lose her belonging ahead. There wouldn’t be more romantically dramatic than this. If Rey loses her belonging, then it also means that this young woman loses the chance to have a family. And since Rey and Kylo’s relatinship is the centerpiece of the ST, it makes sense that the major conflict and/or stake raised by the shocking outcome of TLJ would be about them.

4) The  Balance of the Force and the eternal war between the Dark Side and the Light Side...

Since Kylo and Rey are at the center of the ST, they are also at the center of the Balance in the Force in order to end the war between the DS and the LS and two sides of the conflict. Sure, Rey could try to do it alone but Rian Johnson insisted that these two are almost dual protagonists. There is no mistake in promoting them together and mirroring each other. They are equally important for the balance to the Force. And if there is one person who has no interest in having Kylo and Rey together, it is Snoke. These two powerful Force User represent a real threat for his huge  agenda. If Kylo and Rey end up together as allies and/or lovers, there is no romantic drama and I might add that it already means more or less game over for Snoke. Giving Kylo Ren a tragic fate would compromise the possibility of bringing Balance in the Force and an end to the war between the Dark Side and the Light Side. 

5) The heavy debates among the Star Wars fandom...

Kylo Ren is at the center of heavy debates among the SW fandom: redemption/ anti-redemption; Reylo/Anti-Reylos, etc...It is perfectly normal that a lot of people despise Kylo Ren for his actions and especially for the patricide. For some people, there is even hate toward this character to a point that one consider he shall die  and/or suffering a tragic fate by the end of the ST.

If I would be Rian, I would give them  what they want/expect earlier than they think and in the most unexpected way

Kylo haters: : Holly shit, Rian! You didn’t dare...

Reylos: My ship...

GA:

Although Luke turning to the DS or Rey turning to the DS would surely shock the audience, it wouldn’t bring much. Most of the audience already like these characters and would them back in any case. No way that Luke would die unredeemed so he would be back in the end but it would be too reminiscent of Vader’s. As for Rey, she is the heroine so there would be no way that the audience wouldn’t anticipate her redemption. Kylo on the other hand is a very unpredictable character who raise heavy debates within the fandom. Giving him some tragic fate would allow to keep the ultimate outcome of the ST uncertain for everyone.

[missjackil]

One Year.... One year ago this month, I was introduced to these AMAZING gentlemen, and life has never been the same! I don’t recall the exact day it happened, but I do know it was March, 2016, 

This is how it started... It was a very cold, snowy winter here in NJ last year, so my life long friend Dawn, my daughter Sarah, and I started binge watching different series on Netflix. Dawn first suggested this show Supernatural, which I had only heard of in passing a few times over the years, but she had watched since the beginning. She said I would love it, the brothers  are hot, they hunt monsters and demons, delve a lot into Religion, which is a big interest of mine, I even have a degree in Theology, and am legally ordained. I checked the title on Netflix and saw it had 10 seasons available, and I said  “Nah, that’s a pretty big commitment, I dont think I could stay interested in a show that long” then Dawn informed me, that it was still on the air and in season 11. Not my cup of tea, so I declined. She next suggested Nurse Jackie, which was really good, but so easy to burn through. I got the next pick and picked House MD which had been mine, and my daughter Sarah’s favorite series to date.  This was a longer series than Nurse Jackie, 8 seasons instead of 7, and hour long episodes, as opposed to half hour. This took almost 2 months to get through. While watching this series again, I would keep commenting how much I loved the bromance between House and Wilson, to wish Dawn would always reply “The you will LOVE Sam and Dean!!” So since she had next pick, I agreed to give Supernatural a try.  And this is what happened... *CRASH BOOM BANG  <heavy flop>* “Wooooaaah easy tiger” “Dean?” Yeah, these boys are freakin adorable, and Im gonna love this bromance. I thought Dean was hot, and Sam was cute. Too young for me to think he was hot (me being 49 at the time) but I felt like the monsters and a lot of the horror was pretty lame, and sometimes even cheesy, though I did enjoy the chemistry the boys had with each other, and found Sam’s psychic visions to be an interesting element, I didn’t think I would stay interested for very long.  For a while, we were only watching 2-3 episodes at a time, a couple times a week when Dawn would come over. Near the end of S1 I told her I didn’t think I wanted to continue. She asked me to PLEASE give it to the end of season 2 and if I still didnt like it, we could find something else. As promised, I did become more interested in S2. The humor was funnier, the acting got better, and the bromance was hotter, and the emotional moments were even more heart breaking. The first episode that left a really big impression on me was Born Under a Bad Sign. Until then, I knew Sam had psychic powers, and his father was worried he would turn dark, and left it on Dean’s shoulders to save him or kill him (good idea John, what the hell) and this episode was probably showing Sam go bad. I didnt want that, I liked the boys and I wanted to like both of them and not have to start thinking of Sam as evil, but he was soooooo creepy in that episode! I was so afraid he was going to rape Jo, fortunately he didn’t, but that “My daddy shot your daddy in the heeeaad” thing gave me the willies! I was so uncomfortable with this “Dark Sam” I thought maybe I couldnt continue. Dawn didnt want me to stop just yet, but didnt want to give me spoilers, she told me “Don’t worry, Sam and Dean are the GOOD guys and Sam is a REALLY good guy” so I continued. When it was discovered that Sam was possessed, I found that very interesting, I didn’t think the boys would ever succumb to the evil things, just kick their asses all the time, though I assumed theyd have their own asses kicked sometimes, I never thought the show would allow the heroes to really suffer.... boy was I wrong huh??  I recall my first noticing that Sam was hot and built like a truck, in Heart, and it was also the first time I really cried. I remember telling Dawn, I will watch it when she comes over but Im watching it on my own too, because now Im much more interested, but I also said “it’s kind of a bummer knowing the boys wont die, that will take away from the suspense and emotional moments when it’s feared they might die, and I remember her giving me this look... she said “trust me, you know nothing”. She was right ... All Hell Breaks Loose 1 & 2 had me sobbing! When Sam dies in Dean’s arms and Dean sobs into his neck, I dont think Ive ever seen such intense, realistic  grief on a TV show. And then Dean goes and sells his soul for Sam!! This turned what I thought was a “My brother is my best friend” love into a “Id willingly spend eternity in fire and torment, to have one more year with my brother” love. That was a big turning point for me. I new Id watch it till the end and couldnt wait for those long days off when I could just binge all day long.  Then Season 4 happened... I dont know when exactly it happened, or which episode it was, but somewhere early in S4, I discovered the most amazing thing. I woke up one day and realized I am madly in love with Sam Winchester! And to top it off, I was hopelessly addicted and obsessed with SPN! I wont give a rundown of how each season hit me, but its been a crazy, emotional, tragically painful, beautful roller coaster that I have no intentions to ever get off of. By the time I got to S9 and started seeing the episodes dwindle away, I didnt want to finish too fast, yet I wanted to keep binging, so thats when I decided to start rewatching. ration out the newer episodes so I dont finish too fast, and binge the ones Ive already seen, and Ive done that continiously since then, and that was in May. By the end of June, I had watched everything on Netflix and purchased all of S11 On Demand and just kept finishing and starting over, rinse, repeat.  What I have learned... I mean no disrespect to Dean, I love him... but, if he ever says “As long as Im around, nothing bad is ever gonna happen to you” ... just RUN!! He said this to Sam in S1 and things just unraveled fast for poor Sam. I dont think there are many bad things LEFT that haven't happened to Sam, and we still have at least 2 more seasons to go!!!  To me, Sam is the most beautiful, kind, selfless, brave character ever. Yet, he can be a little selfish on occasion, but if you needed any of the duct tape and safety pins that hold him together, he wouldnt think twice about giivng them to you. He is scared fairly often, but it’s never stopped him from facing any big bad monster life could hand him.Season 10 was definitely not his most attractive season (that hair?? WHAT??) and if you piss him off, he can viciously sting with his words at the very least, or be brutally lethal with his hands when need be. He is a full on nerd, but not the least bit pretentious about it. He doesnt think he is better than anyone, and maybe even not as good as most. He is brilliant, but wont ever make you feel stupid. He is the sweetest, kindest gentleman you’ll ever meet, but 100% badass as well. But most of all. he loves Dean with everything in his life. He will never leave him (again) for anyone. If he ever finds a significant other, they will have to accept him and Dean as One person. Package deal and thats it.  To me, Dean is a rock. He rarely ever changes, This isn’t a bad thing. This compliments Sam, who is ever changing. Dean doesn’t live inside his head. He expresses his feelings more physically than with words, though he isnt one to mince words if you need to hear it. He’s emotional, not afraid to cry, but maybe afraid of who he allows to see it. He’s not perfect, he has made a lot of poor choices for himself and for Sam as well, but never with any ill intent (other than when influenced by a Supernatural force) He is a sweetheart, who unfortunately carries too much baggage. In Regarding Dean I feel like I met the REAL Dean that is lost under decades of pain, lossm and never ending violence. He can piss me off big time, but I forgive him because Sam does, and the most important thing in his world is Sam. There is nothing he wouldnt do, nor lines he wouldnt cross for Sam, and I believe he would give Sam anything in his power if Sam would simply ask.  What I think of the side characters  Cas, Crowley, Rowena, Bobby, etc.. all good characters who bring a lot of interest to the show, but none are strong enough characters to have their own storylines apart from Sam and Dean. Their side stories arent very interesting. I would watch a show that was only Sam and Dean (which is what I prefer) but I wouldnt watch a show that was only Cas or Crowley or whomever. They should support Sam and Dean and thats it, in my opinion.

What I have learned about the Fandom... Supernatural is the Holy Reaches of Heaven to them and they are Religions. Separate groups of individuals, expressing their love for the show and the characters in different ways. Some SPN religions are open and accepting, and some are vicious and hateful. Everyone gets different things from different parts of the series, but some of these religions, think their thoughts are the best and only True Canon even when sometimes, their thoughts are not canon at all. There are some fun, silly, kind loving fans in the SPN Family, and I have met a few, but Ive also seen some unnecessarily hatefull, mean spirited individuals who I cant consider family. SPN belongs to me, and it belongs to you. Take from it what you take from it... blog your blogs, go meta crazy, ship your ships, and write the shit out of fan fic... but please dont belittle and berate those who think differently. It is a ficitonal show, no one is going to go to Hell or be arrested for their views on it. If you don’t like it, dont watch it, but let those who do still love it, like myself, enjoy it while they can. Don’t go trying to hurt our feelings with “It should end!!” because someday it will, we know this, but we want it to live on for as long as J2 are happy to do it, and even then, it’s gonna hurt like the death of a loved one to see it go, so try to be more considerate okay? If you stayed to read ALL of this, You are precious to me :) and thank you!

[notesonfilm1]

Figure 1: Image from Sanctuary Wood

Last week, whilst visiting Sanctuary Wood, a WW1 museum in Belgium, original trenches still visible outside,  the history surrounding them still vividly commemorated and mourned, I came across this image (Fig 1, above). I’s from a big wooden stereoscopic viewer where you place your eyes on peepholes and the mechanism creates the impression of three dimensionality in order to convey the disasters of war. I managed to get my camera’s lens only through one of the peepholes but succeeded in capturing this image, by necessity partial. It reminded me of Goya’s ‘ ‘The Disasters of War’, particularly the ‘This is Worse’ image (see Fig. 2 below).

Figure 2: This is Worse

It also seemed to coalesce and bring into focus a series of art exhibits, experiences and reading of the past few weeks, that all of a sudden seemed to be meaningful not only in themselves but in relation to each other: Firstly, a superbly moving installation by the great Iranian artist Farideh Lashai called ‘When I count there are only you…but when I look there’s only a shadow’, a conversation across the centuries — centuries of war and destruction —  with Goya’s ‘‘The Disasters of War’, currently on display at the Prado museum, exhibited amongst  its superb collection of Goyas, the best collection in the world. Farideh’s work — on which more later — is in dialogue with Goya’s.

Fig 3

Secondly, I’ve also been thinking about the current ‘Pity and Terror: Picasso’s Path to Guernica’ exhibit at The Queen Sofia Museum in Madrid, which so well demonstrates how Guernica’s depiction of disorientation, suffering and terror quickly became an emblem of the modern condition. The exhibit shows how in Guernica, the world had been “changed into a furnished room, where all of us, gesticulating, wait for death” Picasso’s Guernica is also very much in dialogue with Goya’s work. In the ‘Picasso: Tradition and avant-garde’ exhibit, jointly hosted by the Prado and the Queen Sofia museums in 2006 as part of the celebrations of  the 25th anniversary of Guernica’s return to Spain, the Prado demonstrated Picasso’s dialogue with art history, his re-workings and explorations of works like Velazquez’s ‘Las Meninas (see below)’ and works by other key key painters in the the history of art such as Rubens, Raphael, Titian, Rembrandt, and many others, including Goya.

At the Queen Sofia, what was explored more particularly was Guernica and its legacy. I remember being impressed by corridors exhibiting — in chronological order —  all the sketches Picasso produced in preparation for it. Picasso worked every-day, prodigiously so, and every-day the figures became clearer, simpler, more powerful.  The installation also placed together Goya’s Third of May (1814) with Manet’s The Execution of Maximilian (1869, see Fig 3. above) as well as Picasso’s own The Charnel House (1945) — so clearly a re-working of Goya’s The Third of May — and Massacre in Korea (1951, see below), in relation to Guernica, the earlier ones acting as contexts for it.

  The third element, tied to all of the above, that’s been on my mind is T. J. Clark’s superb essay in the August 17th issue of the London Review of Books on Picasso and Tragedy.  In it he writes:

‘For some reason – no doubt for many reasons, some of them accidental or external to the work itself – Picasso’s painting has become an essential, or anyway recurring, point of reference for human beings in fear for their lives. Guernica has become our culture’s Tragic Scene. And for once the phrase ‘our culture’ seems defensible – not just Western shorthand. There are photographs by the hundred of versions of Guernica – placards on sticks, elaborate facsimiles, tapestries, banners, burlesques, strip cartoons, wheat-paste posters, street puppet shows – being carried in anger or agony over the past thirty years in Ramallah, Oaxaca, Calgary, London, Kurdistan, Madrid, Cape Town, Belfast, Calcutta; outside US air bases, in marches against the Iraq invasion, in struggles of all kinds against state repression, as a rallying point for los Indignados, and – still, always, everywhere, indispensably – an answer to the lie of ‘collateral damage’.’Clarke expands on his definition of ‘Tragic Scene’ as follows: ‘the moment in human existence, that is, when death and vulnerability are recognised as such by an individual or a group, but late; and the plunge into undefended mortality that follows excites not just horror in those who look on, but pity and terror (see footnote 1)

In the rest of the article T. J. Clarke sets out definitions of tragedy and their connection to Pity and Terror, the connection between tragedy and the monstrous ( see quotes under footnote 2), the relationship of spectacle to tragedy and the monstrous (see quotes under footnote 3), and how this figures in relation to the representation of space (and connected to the comments on the world as a furnished room above, but also the quotes under footnote 4). Clarke concludes:

‘Perhaps, then – though the thought is a grim one – we turn to Guernica with a kind of nostalgia. Suffering and horror were once this large. They were dreadful, but they had a tragic dimension. The bomb made history. Mola and von Richthofen were monsters in the labyrinth. ‘And everywhere we see them perishing, devouring one another and destroying themselves.’ It may be true, in other words, that we pin our hopes on Guernica. We go on hungering for the epic in it, because we recoil from the alternative – violence as the price paid for a broken sociality, violence as leading nowhere, violence as ‘collateral damage’, violence as spectacle, violence as eternal return. But how could we not recoil? And does not the image Guernica presents remain our last best hope? For ‘vulnerability, affiliation and collective resistance’ still seem, to some of us, realities worth fighting for.

 ‘The Disasters of War’, part of Goya’s Caprichos (Caprices), is a series of sadnesses and horrors drawn in two sketchbooks in 1797 and 1798 and published in 1799. According to The New York Times: they detailed ‘abuses by the Roman Catholic Church, societal ills from pedophilia to prostitution, and rampant superstition in an age of revolution and terror.’ ‘What is a ‘capricho?‘ asks Robert Hughes in Goya, his masterful work on the painter (Vintage Books, 2004): ? ‘A whim, a fantasy, a play of the imagination, a passing fancy….the word derives from the unpredictable jumping and hopping of a young goat (p. 179)…Goya, however, was the first artist to use the word ‘capricho’ to denote images that had some critical purpose: a vein, a core, of social commentary. This he made clear with the notes that he wrote on a drawing for what was to be the first of the Caprichos, but whose final etched version got shifted to plate 43: The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (Hughes, p. 180, see image below).

The Sleep of Reason Brings Forth Monsters

Writing on the ‘Sleep of Reason’ image, Sarah C. Shaefer says, ‘

In the image, an artist, asleep at his drawing table, is besieged by creatures associated in Spanish folk tradition with mystery and evil. The title of the print, emblazoned on the front of the desk, is often read as a proclamation of Goya’s adherence to the values of the Enlightenment—without Reason, evil and corruption prevail.

However, Goya wrote a caption for the print that complicates its message, “Imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters; united with her, she is the mother of the arts and source of their wonders.”

In other words, Goya believed that imagination should never be completely renounced in favor of the strictly rational. For Goya, art is the child of reason in combination with imagination.

 I should add that inherent in Goya’s caption for the etching is the driving force of The Enlightenment, and in the juxtaposition of Goya’s Sleep of Reason’ and Picasso’s  Guernica is the essence of Adorno and Horkheimer’s argument in The Dialectic of Enlightenment: that Reason, which brought so many freedoms and so much progress since the ‘Age of Enlightenment’ carries the seeds of its own destruction: Reason  on its own and unharnessed dialectically is also what leads to total annihilation (or the Atom Bomb as they’d say). Thus here we have Goya, with what has become an iconic image of the Enlightenment and Picasso with what has become an iconic image of Modernity. It’s worth looking at them once more and side by side:

Some other interpretations of this iconic image of the Enlightenment and its limits by Aldous Huxley and others can be found here

Goya in Times of War

Revolution, chaos, war, disaster, death; all figures so heavily in Goya’s work that there was an exhibit at the Prado, with accompanying catalogue (see image above) just on this subject in 2008.  Goya was born in 1746 in Aragon and died in exile in Bordeaux in 1828. He suffered from an illness in 92-93 that left him deaf, made him determined to follow a path of free expression in painting and resulted in work that was darker, anguished troubled, and that manifested itself not only in the etchings but also in the portraiture, most famously in his painting of Charles IV and his family (see below). Has a royal family ever been depicted thus?

  These are the years of the French Revolution and subsequent terror from 1789 onwards. The French declaring war with Spain and the invasion of Rosillon by the French in 1793, the defeat of the Spanish Armada by Nelson in Cape Saint Vincent in which Spain lost Trinidad to the English interrupting traffic between Spain and its colonies in the Americas. These are the years of the Bonaparte and the 18th Brummaire (1799). These are also the years Goya becomes the highest ranking Royal Painter, the ‘Primer Pintor de Camera.’ And this is all before The Spanish War of Independence against the French (1808-1814) and the fatal consequences that arose form it from 1814-1820, from the moment that Napoleon is exiled to Elba to the moment Fernando VII swears to the new constitution in the Cortes in Cadiz in 1820.

Goya’s deafness isolated him, made him delve more into his own consciousness and into his own thought. But his vision was clear and what he saw was horror after horror. And he had the daring and the skill with which to express it (random examples that caught my eye from the Goya in Times of War exhibit below). According to Ana Martínez Aguilar, ‘The Disasters of War, for many (Goya’s) best series of etchings, is the work of a mature man, one whose made Enlightenment thought his own, humanising it. He articulates a personal vision of the world, penetrated by skepticism and, at the end, in my view, by compassion understood as empathy to the suffering of others’.1

The great Iranian Artist Faridah Lashai (1944), was greatly inspired by Goya, particularly the etchings, the caprichos that constitute ‘The Disasters of War’. Like Goya, Farideh lived through times of revolution, immense social changes, death and disaster, and the rule of power, fear and terror,  in what we now called Iran but was then called Persia. In 1951 Mohammad Mosaddeqh’s nationalisation of the petroleum industry resulted in a military coup which, with the help of the CIA and MI6 removed him from office, put him in jail and facilitated the return to power of the Shah. In 1971 we see the start of armed resistance in Siahkal. In spite of extraordinary repression, what ends up becoming an Iranian revolution deposes the Shah in 1979 only to replace it by the Popular Republic of Islam ruled by the Ayatollah Khomeini, Imperial rule deposed only to be replaced by Theocratic one. This is then followed by the Iraq-Iran war from 1980-1988 where war and religious power downgrades reason, upgrades superstition, stabilises the tyrannical and results in the kinds of effects so well dramatised by Goya in the ‘Sleep of Reason’ and in his ‘Disasters of War’. Lashai was imprisoned from 74-76 and lived through Hussein’s  bombardment of Tehran in 1986.

The work of both Goya and Lashai, develops against a backdrop of revolutionary though and in an intellectual context of writers, dramatists, artists and philosophers: the historical context for Goya was the Enlightenment, The French Revolution of 1789 and the Spanish War of Independence; Lashai’s world is that of protest and liberation movements in the ’60s and ’70s, the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1978-79, and the Iraq-Iran war 1980-1988)

  All of this brings me to Farideh Lashai’s multimedia installation, the meeting of Goya and Leshai, and how Leshai re-works Goya, my original reason for writing this post (see clip above). The Installation is situated in the Prado between the room that houses Goya’s The 2nd of May and the The Third of May and the room that houses his Black Paintings. Farideh took only 80 of the 82 etchings that make up The Disasters of War so she could form a rectangle of 8×10. She then did her own etchings based on Goya’s, copying them, but removing all figures from background so that they seem to be only landscapes. These landscapes act as a kind of screen. She then did an animated film that reinserted the people onto the landscape. When the film, constructed as a circle that acts as a both iris and spotlight hits the screen, what we see are the landscapes first empty of the terror it once housed as they might now once again be in real time, now once more populated, but populated by corpses and other disasters of war it once was a sight for. The spotlight is only ever partial, the moving spotlight does not usually fully reveal what is in each individual and rectangular etching. It acts as a kind of memory. It’s fleeting, partial. The music, Chopin’s 21st Nocturne in C minor, adds to the beauty and the sadness.

Goya’s etchings emptied of people, events and horrors that once populated it, reduced to landscape

The slow and partial reinsertion of events, history, people: Goya’s full disasters of war, once more returned to a tragic scene.

Watching the installation reminded me of returning to the Montreal neighbourhood I grew up in after an absence of twenty years, something every tango lover knows leads only to sadness and heartache. I recognised every street, every building, every monument. But whereas once I walked those streets surrounded by friends and saying hello to dozens of people as I walked, I now knew no one. The site being the same had the effect of rendering me spectral to myself. I had changed. It hadn’t. My presence there was almost a ghostly one. Except for the people who, because no longer there in situ presented themselves and walked with me in memory. I walked through those real streets but now with the people I once loved, made present in my mind through their absence on the street. Lashai’s work makes one think of such things. I found it interesting that the Spanish title ‘Cuando cuento estás solo tú…pero cuando miro hay solo una sombra’, translates as ‘When I tell there is only you….but when I look there is only a shadow’. But the English Title of the installation is ‘When I Count, There Are Only You…But When I Look, There is Only a Shadow’. I wonder if that an error in translation or does the ‘is’ become ‘are’ as the installation unfolds, pluralised  just as I became we walking through those all too familiar streets where I once knew so many but now walked alone?

The catalogue of the installation is prefaced by an excerpt from T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land  from the first section, ‘The Burial of the Dead’

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water. Only

There is shadow under this red rock,

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

What Leshai does with Goya is to make us pay attention to what is already in Goya but which our times might have made us less sensitive to. Her reduction of Goya’s etchings to bare landscapes only underlines, as the spotlight hits them and reveals the drama of the events, the fate of the people — the full horror. They’re settings for the cultural ‘Tragic Scene’ T.J. Clarke attributes to Picasso’s Guernica. We see, for a moment, in a glimpse, the death and vulnerability that once peopled the scene. We see it too late. The tragedy has happened. We see it as a series of spectacles through the etchings. But that ‘undefended mortality’ not only excites horror but evokes pity and terror. Leshai makes whole what time might have erased from ‘The Disasters of War’. She looks under the stony rubbish, into the broken images, extracts the shadow, and does indeed evoke in T. Eliot’s words ‘fear in a handful of dust’. The Chopin adds a serene melancholy to the watching of that which we cannot change. Even if our view now, seen though the centuries and across cultures, can only be a partial illumination.  It’s a masterpiece of an installation, a dialogue between works, and by masters of their form.

  José Arroyo

  Footnotes, all from T.J. Clarke

  ‘Tragedy,’ he says in a famous passage, ‘is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain grandeur; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play … producing pity and terror in the audience, and thereby cleansing the audience of these emotions.’ The word bequeathed to us by the last sentence is katharsis, whose roots seem to lie in medicine or rituals of purgation. Why the experience of pity and terror in the theatre is cathartic Aristotle never explains – he seems to take it as self-evident. Some have questioned Aristotle’s confidence, others (like Brecht) have disapproved of the cleansing. Is pity an emotion we want to be purged of? Are we right to call it an ‘emotion’ in the first place? But let me put these questions aside – they take us towards insoluble mysteries – and return to the question of the monstrous. Aristotle knows full well that horror and disproportion are intrinsic to tragedy’s appeal. But he makes a distinction between the appearance of the dreadful on stage and its unfolding in an action – its progress towards a moment of recognition. Tragedy, he admits, is partly a matter of theatrical effect: the circular stage, the dancing and wailing chorus, the backdrop of the ‘scene’. He calls this physicality ‘spectacle’ and is conscious of its power:

Pity and terror may be aroused by means of spectacle; but they may also result from the inner structure of the piece, which is the better way … For the plot ought to be so constructed that, even without the aid of the eye, he who hears the tale will thrill with horror and melt to pity at what is taking place … To produce this effect by mere spectacle is a less artistic method … Those who employ the means of spectacle end up creating a sense not of the Terrible but only the Monstrous, and are strangers to the true purpose of tragedy.

2. ‘I doubt that an artist of Picasso’s sort ever raises his or her account of humanity to a higher power simply by purging, or repressing, what had been dangerous or horrible in an earlier vision. There must be a way from monstrosity to tragedy. The one must be capable of being folded into the other, lending it aspects of the previous vision’s power.’

‘The terrible and the monstrous – these do seem repeated terms of Picasso’s art after 1925. And spectacle, as Aristotle understood it, is certainly Picasso’s god. But in Guernica didn’t he find a way to make appearance truly terrible, therefore pitiful and unforgivable – a permanent denunciation of any praxis, any set of human reasons, which aims or claims to make what actually happens (in war from the air) make sense?’

    3. We are circling back to Aristotle’s notion of ‘spectacle’, which extends to all things appealing primarily to the faculty of vision: the Greek word is opsis. Modernity is a system of incessant opsis. So the prominence of war in modernity – and the fear that it may be modernity’s truth – is not a matter of more and more (or less and less) actual conflict, but of violence as the form – the tempo, the figure, the fascinus – of our culture’s production of appearances.

  4.’ spatial uncertainty is one key to the picture’s power. It is Picasso’s way of responding to the new form of war, the new shape of suffering. Uncertainty about the nature of space is, further, a charged matter for him – especially when the space in question is that of a room, a table, walls, windows, a chequerboard floor. For the room is the form of the world for Picasso. His art depends on it. Guernica puts in question, that is, the very structure of Picasso’s apprehension’.

‘It is this combination of domesticity and paranoia – of trust in the room and deep fear of the forces the room may contain – that makes Picasso the artist of Guernica.’

Other Footnotes: 1, Ana Martínez de Aguilar, ‘He custodiado cada cosa dentro de mi’, Farideh Lashai: Cuando cuento estás solo tú…pero cuando miro hay solo una sombra, MadridMuseo Nacional del Prado, 2017. My own translation from ‘Los Desasters de la guerra, para muchos, su mejor serie de estampas, es la obra de un hombre maduro, que ha hecho suyo el pensamiento de la Ilustración humanizándolo. Articula una visión personal del mundo, penetrada por el escepticismo y, al final, a mi juicio, por la compansión, entendida como empatía hacia el dolor ajeno’, p. 33.

Farideh Lashai: When I count there are only you…but when I look there’s only a shadow Last week, whilst visiting Sanctuary Wood, a WW1 museum in Belgium, original trenches still visible outside,  the history surrounding them still vividly commemorated and mourned, I came across this image (Fig 1, above).

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Real-Life Love Stories That Will Remind You True Love Does Exist

A long time ago, someone told me one of the truest love stories. It was this: the real value of your life is how well you loved and were loved back.

In an age where people, places and moments are too easily replaced, societal norm has acclimatized to a kind of social media dating that is anything but normal.

I have often pondered what impact this modern re-invention of romance would have on me if I were 10-years-old today. I grew up where liking a boy meant a stomach of fluttering butterflies if he looked at me. At 10-years-old, my idea of romance or love stories was the way your reflection danced into someone’s eyes and how that made you feel.

I have never stopped believing that or living by that.

Here are some inspiring love stories to restore that faith in love that the 10-year-old you had:

1. True love knows no obstacles or distance.

Despite abject poverty and social stigmas of his “untouchable” caste, Pradyumna Kumar Mahanandia[1] earned a place as a student at the College of Art in New Delhi.

Following his painting of Indira Gandhi, many people wanted him to draw them. One of those was Charlotte Von Schedvin, who was traveling in India.

They soon fell in love and got married. Charlotte, however, had to return home to Sweden. She offered to pay for Pradyumna’s plane ticket, but he had too much pride to accept and promised he would make the money on his own.

After a year, he had still not saved enough.

Selling all of his possessions, he made enough to buy a bicycle. He then cycled for four months and three weeks, covering 4,000 miles across Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Germany, Austria, and Denmark to get to Sweden.

They are still happily married 40 years later, and live in Sweden with their two children. Pradyumna became a well-known artist and is a cultural ambassador.

When asked about his arduous journey, his reply was, “I did what I had to, I had no money but I had to meet her. I was cycling for love, but never loved cycling. It’s simple.”

2. You are never too old to find love.

In 1946, Anna and Boris had only been married for 3 days in Serbia when he left for the army.[2] Afterwards, Anna and her family were exiled and despite both their frantic searching, the two were unable to find each other.

Years passed and they both married other people, yet neither forgot their first love.

When their spouses had died and after 60 years, they coincidentally visited their hometown at the same time. When Boris saw her, he ran up to her and said: ‘My darling, I’ve been waiting for you for so long. My wife, my life…’”

They remarried not long after.

3. Love as first sight does exist.

Nacho Figueras is universally recognizable as the polo player with the striking model looks, featured in many of the “Polo by Ralph Lauren” adverts.[3]

He first saw Delfina Blaquier in their native Argentina when they were just teenagers. He knew immediately that he would marry her and decided to pursue her properly.

Every night, he would travel for almost 2 hours to see her, after working all day at a ranch. He would sit with her on her porch and play his guitar to her for a short while, before going home to sleep for another long day at work.

The couple married in 2004 and have since had four children

4. True love means loving each other until the very end.

Princess Charlotte was the daughter of George, Prince of Wales (later George IV) and Caroline of Brunswick.[4] She was the future heir to the throne and was adored by the people, which was a stark contrast to the rest of the Royal family who were loathed.

Her upbringing was turbulent amidst her warring parents. At 17-years-old, Charlotte was pressured into agreeing to marry a Prince she didn’t like, until she met the handsome and dashing Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. Her father finally relented and permitted her to marry the impoverished Leopold.

Following their wedding and two miscarriages, Charlotte again became pregnant with the entire country elated.

In 1817, at 21-years-old and after two days of a difficult labor, Charlotte delivered a stillborn 9-pound son by breech birth. Prince Leopold was so worried that he refused to leave his wife’s side and insisted on helping her–something that was unheard of at the time.

After the third day, Charlotte’s condition seemingly improved. Leopold was urged to take an opiate to rest, as he had not slept for 3 days. Unfortunately, Charlotte’s condition worsened and it was not possibly to rouse the sleeping Leopold as she died.

Her death elicited international grieving on an even bigger scale than Princess Diana’s. Britain ran out of black cloth because everyone wore black–even the homeless found black scraps to tie around his or her arms.

Prince Leopold plunged into depression and eventually took a mistress who resembled Charlotte. Years later, he remarried and named his daughter Charlotte.

The Princess’ final wish before dying was for Leopold to be buried beside her when his time came. Shortly before he died, he asked Queen Victoria for this wish to be fulfilled but it was denied. His last words were: “Charlotte Charlotte”.

5. Remembering your love stories will keep love alive.

Jack and Phyllis Potter met in 1941.[5] Jack frequently wrote in his diary about their story and continued to do so for his whole life.

After seventy years together, Phyllis had to be moved to a nursing home as her dementia became too much for Jack to deal with alone. Unperturbed, Jack visited her daily and read to her each day from his diaries to help her to remember their love and life.

6. Young romance can stand the test of time.

Kate Middleton was just 19-years-old in 2001 when she first met Prince William, where they both studied at St. Andrews University.[6]

Unfortunately, the pressures of the media and a long distance relationship caused them to split up in 2007. They, however, decided to get back together later in the same year.

Prince William eventually proposed in 2010 with the late Princess Diana’s famous sapphire engagement ring. And in 2011, millions all across the world watched their wedding ceremony that culminated with “that kiss” on the balcony of Buckingham Palace.

7. Love stories that are worth it, are worth the wait.

In the 1974, Irina and Woodford McClellan got married in Moscow.[7] Woodford, an American, had to return to the USA when his visa expired. He was repeatedly denied returning to Russia, and she was likewise refused entry to the USA.

It took 11 years of phone calls and letters to each other and unwavering endeavors before they were in 1986 in the United States.

Final Words: Live, Laugh, and Love

For those who have found love, remember the beauty of being in love is finding new ways to keep falling in love with that person.

For those who are still looking for love, don’t let the cynicism of the social media generation to cloud your hopes. It’s true that love happens when you are not looking and when you least expect it. Have faith in yourself and in the love that you deserve. After all, you owe it to your 10-year-old self.

Featured photo credit: Stocksnap via stocksnap.io

Reference

[1]^BBC NEWS: The man who cycled from India to Europe for love[2]^Telegraph: Russian couple reunited after 60 years apart[3]^This Glamorous: great love stories № 02 | nacho figueras & delfina blaquier[4]^QAB: The Tragic Life Story of Princess Charlotte[5]^ABC News: Jack Potter Reads 75 Years of Diaries to Wife With Dementia[6]^Express: William and Kate: The story so far[7]^People: Kept Apart by An Iron Curtain for a Dozen Years, the Mcclellans Overcome the Trauma of Reunion

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from Viral News HQ http://ift.tt/2qoLN5i via Viral News HQ

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I found this story while I was on social media that read all in capital letters:

3 CHILDREN KILLED BY MOTHER IN WILMINGTON- Usa News. Then read underneath the bottom countynews.club. I had never heard of the site before but since it was shared by one of my close friends that I had known for years and then the story was shared again by another person right below the post I assumed it was true and since it had Usa News which I was familiar with, I looked up the story online. When I looked up the story online, USA news came up in the results but right after the words USA NEWS it read Usa News – News For Facebook Members. Which wasn’t what I had thought USA news was but when I researched deeper I actually was familiar with USA today which is a known and reliable news source. The story was written by an anonymous writer and read: Wilmington officers found the boys’ bodies in a closet with multiple stab wounds with the witnesses saying that the woman’s brother arrived at the home and a woman, the mother, met him in the garage, speaking unclearly. She went back in the house and locked him out. She then proceeded to stab herself several times, according to police. The brother then forced his way in and found her in their mother’s bathroom with multiple stab wounds and called police. Police responded to the scene and were told the woman had children. They found the boys’ bodies, ages , 5, 3 and 2 months, in a closet in the home. The police reported that it appeared at that point that the children were likely stabbed to death and that parts of their bodies were dismembered. The woman may have been pregnant with another child, and she stabbed herself in the abdomen. Friends and neighbors commented to reporter and the police such as Henry Evans saying that they could have imagined that she could do something like this. Evans said he’s friendly with some of the family members in the house. He remembered the kids playing in his front lawn. The story concluded that the woman is in a nearby hospital in critical condition. I looked up the same story without the county news link, and the website named www.wect.com which is the one of Wilmington’s news sources that includes news, weather, sports, community information, and programming schedules. They had the same story but were written differently and by a author named Rodney Harris. He starts by giving the location of the crime which was located in COBB COUNTY, GA and wrote that; the bodies of a woman and her three children were found inside a Cobb County apartment complex on Tuesday morning. (Not a house that countynews had described) Cobb County police were called to Walton Crossing Apartments on Mulkey Road in unincorporated Austell just before 10 a.m. Harris gives times and locations that the police had arrived to something that County news failed to do also. They found the body of 35-year-old Kisha Holmes dead inside the apartment. Her 9-month-old infant daughter, along with her 4-year-old and 10-year-old son were also found dead.  In the article county news gave the children found were 5,3 and 2 months of age. The “brother” was also never mentioned, neither was the mother locking him out and him barging him to find her in the bathroom. The police said Holmes killed her children and then took her own life. Harris never mentions that the mother stabbed her children,  or that she was pregnant and tried to kill the baby along with herself because of “stab” wounds to her abdomen. Harris concludes that the cause of death has not been determined and will not be released until the autopsy is finished. To add authenticity to the article and “proof” that the story is factual, people who live in the community told CBS46 they got a letter from the apartment complex management stating that a family had been lost in the community and were sorry for their loss. Witnesses such as Rashan Johnson, a neighbor, that lived across the hall from Holmes told police that he never noticed anything out of the ordinary and that she was quiet and kept to herself. He stated that he woke up this morning to the maintenance man knocking on the door and came outside running down the steps, that is about all. Management from the apartment complex released the following statement:

"Walton Communities management is grieving for the family involved in this tragic situation, and our thoughts and sincerest condolences are with their loved ones. We will work to support the Walton Crossing community as its members process the news.Police are currently investigating the domestic incident that took place at Walton Crossing in Austell. Since the matter is still under investigation, please direct any questions to the Cobb County Police Department at 770-499-3945."

 ·        It’s sad that the shared link online, which was then shared by others and opened because of the headline and what looked like a reliable news source was so far off from the original story. They made up facts that would seem the most gruesome and none of it was even true. Such as the 60min video on fake news, the county news site, when you click on the site as you read the story advertisements flashing on each side of the page pop up, and as you scroll to the bottom more and more come up for you to click unlike the webpage for Wilmington news, it was just the news story then other local news happening in the area. News sources or fake news are presented online so that people click on the story which make money for advertisers. Another tip for analyzing news sources is odd domain names, which because of this class ive never heard of county news before which made me rethink if the site was factual or not. Another tip I learned when analyzing reliable news stories and sites were to look at bad web design and the use of ALL CAPS can also be a sign that the source you’re looking at should be verified and/or read in conjunction with other sources which the link on facebook had. I wish I could write on her wall, all these tips and ways to know or be more careful but news travels and is shared so fast, you really have to think would it make a difference?

  Fake News:

http://www.countynews.club/2017/03/29/3-children-killed-by-mother-in-wilmington/

Real Story:

http://www.wect.com/story/27953163/bodies-found-at-cobb-county-apartment-complex

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Real-Life Love Stories That Will Remind You True Love Does Exist

A long time ago, someone told me one of the truest love stories. It was this: the real value of your life is how well you loved and were loved back.

In an age where people, places and moments are too easily replaced, societal norm has acclimatized to a kind of social media dating that is anything but normal.

I have often pondered what impact this modern re-invention of romance would have on me if I were 10-years-old today. I grew up where liking a boy meant a stomach of fluttering butterflies if he looked at me. At 10-years-old, my idea of romance or love stories was the way your reflection danced into someone’s eyes and how that made you feel.

I have never stopped believing that or living by that.

Here are some inspiring love stories to restore that faith in love that the 10-year-old you had:

1. True love knows no obstacles or distance.

Despite abject poverty and social stigmas of his “untouchable” caste, Pradyumna Kumar Mahanandia[1] earned a place as a student at the College of Art in New Delhi.

Following his painting of Indira Gandhi, many people wanted him to draw them. One of those was Charlotte Von Schedvin, who was traveling in India.

They soon fell in love and got married. Charlotte, however, had to return home to Sweden. She offered to pay for Pradyumna’s plane ticket, but he had too much pride to accept and promised he would make the money on his own.

After a year, he had still not saved enough.

Selling all of his possessions, he made enough to buy a bicycle. He then cycled for four months and three weeks, covering 4,000 miles across Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Germany, Austria, and Denmark to get to Sweden.

They are still happily married 40 years later, and live in Sweden with their two children. Pradyumna became a well-known artist and is a cultural ambassador.

When asked about his arduous journey, his reply was, “I did what I had to, I had no money but I had to meet her. I was cycling for love, but never loved cycling. It’s simple.”

2. You are never too old to find love.

In 1946, Anna and Boris had only been married for 3 days in Serbia when he left for the army.[2] Afterwards, Anna and her family were exiled and despite both their frantic searching, the two were unable to find each other.

Years passed and they both married other people, yet neither forgot their first love.

When their spouses had died and after 60 years, they coincidentally visited their hometown at the same time. When Boris saw her, he ran up to her and said: ‘My darling, I’ve been waiting for you for so long. My wife, my life…’”

They remarried not long after.

3. Love as first sight does exist.

Nacho Figueras is universally recognizable as the polo player with the striking model looks, featured in many of the “Polo by Ralph Lauren” adverts.[3]

He first saw Delfina Blaquier in their native Argentina when they were just teenagers. He knew immediately that he would marry her and decided to pursue her properly.

Every night, he would travel for almost 2 hours to see her, after working all day at a ranch. He would sit with her on her porch and play his guitar to her for a short while, before going home to sleep for another long day at work.

The couple married in 2004 and have since had four children

4. True love means loving each other until the very end.

Princess Charlotte was the daughter of George, Prince of Wales (later George IV) and Caroline of Brunswick.[4] She was the future heir to the throne and was adored by the people, which was a stark contrast to the rest of the Royal family who were loathed.

Her upbringing was turbulent amidst her warring parents. At 17-years-old, Charlotte was pressured into agreeing to marry a Prince she didn’t like, until she met the handsome and dashing Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. Her father finally relented and permitted her to marry the impoverished Leopold.

Following their wedding and two miscarriages, Charlotte again became pregnant with the entire country elated.

In 1817, at 21-years-old and after two days of a difficult labor, Charlotte delivered a stillborn 9-pound son by breech birth. Prince Leopold was so worried that he refused to leave his wife’s side and insisted on helping her–something that was unheard of at the time.

After the third day, Charlotte’s condition seemingly improved. Leopold was urged to take an opiate to rest, as he had not slept for 3 days. Unfortunately, Charlotte’s condition worsened and it was not possibly to rouse the sleeping Leopold as she died.

Her death elicited international grieving on an even bigger scale than Princess Diana’s. Britain ran out of black cloth because everyone wore black–even the homeless found black scraps to tie around his or her arms.

Prince Leopold plunged into depression and eventually took a mistress who resembled Charlotte. Years later, he remarried and named his daughter Charlotte.

The Princess’ final wish before dying was for Leopold to be buried beside her when his time came. Shortly before he died, he asked Queen Victoria for this wish to be fulfilled but it was denied. His last words were: “Charlotte Charlotte”.

5. Remembering your love stories will keep love alive.

Jack and Phyllis Potter met in 1941.[5] Jack frequently wrote in his diary about their story and continued to do so for his whole life.

After seventy years together, Phyllis had to be moved to a nursing home as her dementia became too much for Jack to deal with alone. Unperturbed, Jack visited her daily and read to her each day from his diaries to help her to remember their love and life.

6. Young romance can stand the test of time.

Kate Middleton was just 19-years-old in 2001 when she first met Prince William, where they both studied at St. Andrews University.[6]

Unfortunately, the pressures of the media and a long distance relationship caused them to split up in 2007. They, however, decided to get back together later in the same year.

Prince William eventually proposed in 2010 with the late Princess Diana’s famous sapphire engagement ring. And in 2011, millions all across the world watched their wedding ceremony that culminated with “that kiss” on the balcony of Buckingham Palace.

7. Love stories that are worth it, are worth the wait.

In the 1974, Irina and Woodford McClellan got married in Moscow.[7] Woodford, an American, had to return to the USA when his visa expired. He was repeatedly denied returning to Russia, and she was likewise refused entry to the USA.

It took 11 years of phone calls and letters to each other and unwavering endeavors before they were in 1986 in the United States.

Final Words: Live, Laugh, and Love

For those who have found love, remember the beauty of being in love is finding new ways to keep falling in love with that person.

For those who are still looking for love, don’t let the cynicism of the social media generation to cloud your hopes. It’s true that love happens when you are not looking and when you least expect it. Have faith in yourself and in the love that you deserve. After all, you owe it to your 10-year-old self.

Featured photo credit: Stocksnap via stocksnap.io

Reference

[1]^BBC NEWS: The man who cycled from India to Europe for love[2]^Telegraph: Russian couple reunited after 60 years apart[3]^This Glamorous: great love stories № 02 | nacho figueras & delfina blaquier[4]^QAB: The Tragic Life Story of Princess Charlotte[5]^ABC News: Jack Potter Reads 75 Years of Diaries to Wife With Dementia[6]^Express: William and Kate: The story so far[7]^People: Kept Apart by An Iron Curtain for a Dozen Years, the Mcclellans Overcome the Trauma of Reunion

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