#this juxtaposed with true blue magic. you get it right?

[hum--hallelujah]

good grief Peter

[aspoonofsugar]

Semblance of the Soul: Qrow and Raven

The Branwens are two people with a shared past, that have taken different routes in life:

Ozpin: Everyone has a choice. The Branwens chose to accept their powers and the responsibilities that came with them. And later, one of them chose to abandon her duties in favor of her own self-interest.

Qrow has made an altruistic choice. He hates the crimes of his tribe and is happy to help people by working for Ozpin.

Raven has instead decided to prioritize herself and her tribe and sees Ozpin’s cause as foolish and reckless.

At the same time, they are twins, but have chosen different families. This is why the concept of family comes up so often in their interactions. After all, they first meet in the episode called Family:

Raven: Hello, brother.

Qrow: Raven. So, what do you want?

Raven: A girl can't just catch up with her family?

And their last exchange is this:

Raven: Sorry, brother. Sometimes family disappoints you like that.

Qrow: We're not family anymore.

Raven: Were we ever?

Qrow: I thought so, but I guess I was wrong.

Still, how are they doing with their families of choice? Are they happy with them? Do they have healthy relationships?

For the both of them, the answer is no. This happens because Raven and Qrow are both scared to grow close to people.

It is just that this fear is declined in opposite ways. Raven is scared for herself (selfishness), while Qrow is scared for others (selflessness).

This trait they share, but show in different ways, is well conveyed by their respective semblances. This analysis will use their powers as means to explore both characters and their foiling.

RAVEN: BIRDS OF A FEATHER

Raven’s Kindred Link perfectly embodies the saying...

Birds of a feather flock together...

...until the cat comes:

Raven: I...I'm sorry...

On one hand it lets her create portals to the people she has a strong bond with.

On the other hand she mostly uses it to run away from those bonds.

Why does she do it?

The answer is clear:

Lionheart: I'm helping her for the same reason you are - I'm afraid. We... we can't stop her... no one can...

Raven is just another version of the Cowardly Lion. She is a coward like Leo, but does not aknowledge it and prefers to hide behind a pragmatic and survivalist mask:

Raven: That's why I tried to leave when I did. I'm not afraid, I'm smart.

This is why she goes back to her tribe after she leaves Yang and Tai. She says she does so because she considers them her family and wants to protect them.

However, her motivations are implied to be more selfish. She goes to them to run away from things that scare her.

To be more specific, the tribe protects Raven psychologically in two different ways.

1) It lets her be the monster, the criminal, the most violent and powerful one:

Mercury: We’re the guys you should be afraid of.

Raven: I doubt anyone should be afraid of you.

Here, Raven mocks Mercury, but the irony is that her coping mechanism is really not that much different from his. She hides behind a Grimm mask, a universal symbol of fear, but she is the scared one.

2) She goes back to the family who raised her and neglects the family she is supposed to raise (Yang).

Deep down, Raven is just an adult, who fails at being an adult.

Mostly, this shows in her inability to make a choice:

Yang: Which is it, mom? Are you merciful, or are you a survivor?

 As a matter of fact she keeps changing her mind because she is not brave enough to stick to one decision.

Initially, she is sent to Beacon, so that she could learn how to kill hunters. However, she ends up becoming a huntress herself and she accepts to fight Salem. She is considered so loyal that she is even given magical powers. Finally, she enters a relationship and has a daughter with Tai. She basically starts creating a life outside the tribe, only to leave it all behind at a certain point. It is not clear if it is because she saw something specific or if it is the result of a longer struggle.

The point is that nobody forced her to fight Salem. She could have also refused Ozpin’s powers. Finally, she could have told Ozpin and the others she wanted to stop. In any case, she did not have to leave her family to stop fighting Salem. What is more, she could have brought her family with her, when she ran away.

She chooses instead to leave everything she has built behind and goes back to the world she was a child in. It might be a violent world, but she sees it as safer.

Let’s highlight that she has the same tendency of changing idea in the series itself. She switches sides and organizes a risky plan, which puts almost all her major bonds (Qrow, Vernal and Yang) in danger. She does all that because she wants the relic, so that she has leverage against Salem. After all of this, even after Vernal’s death, she simply runs away. She is obviously shaken by her confrontation with Yang, who calls her out. However, Yang is perfectly right when she says so:

Yang: Because you're afraid of Salem!!! And if you thought having Maiden powers put a target on your back, imagine what she'll do when she finds out you have a Relic. She'll come after you with everything she has. Or she can come after me. And I'll be standing there, waiting for her.

Taking the relic would just put Raven in danger. For her it is safer to open the vault and disappear, so that someone else can take care of things. Even if this someone else is her daughter.

In other words, Raven is a failure of a mother. This is shown by her failing all three of her “daughters” (Yang, the Spring Maiden and Vernal). Moreover, it is perfectly conveyed by her being a Maiden.

The idea of maidenhood is symbolically juxtaposed to the one of motherhood. Of course, this does not have to be true in-universe for all the Maidens. Still, in Raven’s case, this juxtaposition is deliberate. Raven is an eternal Maiden, who runs away from her parental responsibilities.

This is why she received the power from her protegee instead than from a mentor figure. She is so selfish she takes from the people she should protect:

Cinder: Vernal was a decoy the whole time. The last Spring Maiden must've trusted you a great deal before she died. I bet that was a mistake...

What is more, it is strongly implied she killed the previous Maiden to take her powers. This is interesting because it ties to a second meaning of her semblance.

Her ability symbolizes the unfairness of the bonds she forges. She works to create those bonds and there is affection involved. However, these bonds are double edged swords for the other party involved because of Raven’s moodiness. She can leave when she wants and come back out of the blue. She can always go to others when she needs it, while others can never reach her. This leads to an unbalanced dynamic in Raven’s favour.

This dynamic can even become extremely dangerous for the other person:

Raven can potentially use her ability to attack the people she is bonded with. She does not use her semblance this way in the series. Still, what happened to the Spring Maiden is something similar. To receive the power of the Maiden, Raven must have been the last person in the girl’s thoughts before death. This probably happened because the two shared a close bond. A bond Raven betrayed.

In other words, the nature of Raven’s semblance hides in itself the potential of betrayal:

Raven: Aura can't protect your arm, it's Grimm. You turned yourself into a monster just for power.

Cinder: Look who's talking...

As Cinder points out, Raven too, like her, has become a monster to obtain power. The difference here is in how this montrosity is conveyed.

In Cinder’s case, she is literally turning into a Grimm. She has accepted this metamorphosis to take the Maidens’ powers.

In Raven’s case, it is ironically the opposite symbolically. She wears a Grimm mask, but the true monstrosity is the Maiden behind it:

Raven is monster-like because she stole the power from a person, who trusted her.

Let’s highlight that the motif of the Grimm mask has come up several times in the series. So far, it has been used by people, like Raven and Adam, who want to be feared. Something similar can be seen in the Hound as well, who is not really wearing a mask, but whose humanity is hidden behind his Grimm appearance.

In all three cases, the true scary thing is what is behind the Grimm-face:

It is always the humanity behind it that is scary. Be it the victim behind the monster in the Hound, society’s mistreatment of Faunus or Raven’s cowardice and what it led her to do:

Yang: You're right. I don't know you. I only know the Raven dad told me about. She was troubled, and complicated, but she fought for what she believed in, whether it was her team or her tribe! Did you kill her too?

Yang’s question is poignant and underlines how all Raven has done is simply to hurt herself. By hurting the people she loves, she has been killing a part of herself.

This is also conveyed by her emblem missing from her possessions. According to the wiki, Raven’s emblem is this:

Raven's emblem is a winged eye with a clock inside of it. This emblem has not appeared on any of her possessions so far.

This is a reference to Raven and Qrow’s allusion to  Hugin and Munin, Odin’s two ravens, who travel the world and bring him information. Raven and Qrow do the same for Ozpin and they are his eyes.

Qrow is the left eye:

Salem: The last eye is blinded... you disappoint me.

While Raven used to be the right. So, her emblem is probably the right version of Qrow’s own one. Still, Raven refuses that part of herself and this is why she is not wearing her emblem.

In short, Raven used to be a bird of a feather with Qrow, but she is not flocking together with him anymore. This is because a scary cat has come:

And Raven has sacrificed her bonds out of fear. Not only that, but she has weaponized them:

Yang:  You turn your back on people, you run away when things get too hard, you put others in harm's way instead of yourself!!

Raven has been using her most loved people as assets, so that she can shield herself from danger. Maybe it is because of this that she symbolically uses Omen to open portals. This even if she can apparently do so without it, since she opens them even as a bird. However, using her sword is a way to distance herself from the true nature of her ability (bonds). It is a way to reduce her ties with people to simple things she can use.

That said, this is damaging Raven herself.

To be more specific, she is making herself weaker and weaker:

Yang: Oh, shut up!! You don't know the first thing about strength! (...) You might be powerful, but that doesn't make you strong.

Raven is powerful, but weak. This weakness is symbolically conveyed by her behaving in the opposite way her semblance would need to truly shine.

Raven’s power works thanks to bonds, so it can be assumed it would be at its strongest if its user cultivated them both in quality and in numbers. However, Raven has few bonds and she is cutting them off one by one:

Yang: You can bond to certain people. And when you do, you could create a portal that takes you straight to them. You've got one for Dad. One for me. And you've got one for Qrow.

We know that Raven is also bonded with Vernal. Still, Vernal dies at the end of volume 5. Of the other ones Yang mentions, Raven has pushed away both Qrow and Yang through her actions at Heaven.

This makes this scene interesting:

Did the portal Raven opened at Heaven go to Tai? Did she go there because she felt nostalgic and missed him? Or is he the only one (both practically and symbolically) she can still run to?

QROW: A SCARE-QROW SCARED OF CROWS

Qrow’s semblance is Misfortune and it is basically a Bad Luck Charm:

I am no one's blessing I'll just bring you harm I'm a cursed black cat I'm an albatross I'm a mirror broken Sad to say I'm your bad luck charm

Qrow causes bad luck around himself. Because of this, he sees himself as a curse.

However, this conflict Qrow has with his semblance is actually symbolic of a turmoil developed on multiple levels.

Let’s begin with this:

Raven: You're the one who left. The tribe raised us, and you turned your back on them.

Qrow: They were killers and thieves.

Raven: They were your family.

Qrow: You have a very skewed perception of that word.

Qrow was born in a tribe of bandits and was taught how to kill and steal. Finally he was sent to a hunter academy, so that he could learn how to kill his classmates in the near future.

Qrow’s semblance is nothing, but the manifestation of his self-hate, that was probably partly caused by the environment he was born in. In a sense, it is his symbolical response to his childhood.

Let’s highlight that this response is very different from Raven’s. This is shown by their opposite behaviours toward their tribe. Qrow leaves it, while Raven goes back to it.

This difference can also be conveyed by how both Raven and Qrow share a specific motif, but embody it in different ways.

Both twins are associated with bad luck. Both can turn into ravens/crows, which are birds linked to misfortune. Moreover, their weapons are called respectively Omen (Raven’s) and Harbinger (Qrow’s).

The meaning is clear. The twins were born and raised with the idea that they should be symbols of violence and bad luck for their enemies. It is just that Raven wants to be a bad omen because it makes her feel strong. Qrow does not want it, but thinks he is:

I'm a harbinger, I cannot lie, I will change the color of your life.

It is to try and free himself from this curse that Qrow started working for Ozpin. He literally becomes the Scarecrow of the story to try and exorcise the bad fortune he brings. He is trying to scare the crows away. He thinks that if he does so, he’ll become a full person.

This ties with the original story of his allusion. In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the Scarecrow wants a brain because he is told by an old crow he would be just like a real man, if only he had one. In short, the Scarecrow wants a brain to become a real man, so that he can scare crows better than he already does.

Qrow too wants to be a full person, but he believes he is not. He thinks he is cursed and as a reaction to this he has attached himself to Ozpin and to his cause:

Qrow: No one wanted me... I was cursed... I gave my life to you because you gave me a place in this world... I thought I was finally doing some good...

This is why he reacts so badly when he discovers that Ozpin (who is basically a father figure for Qrow) has hidden so many things from him. Not only that, but he feels that the impossibility of truly defeating Salem (of truly defeating evilness) makes his life meaningless.

The point is of course that this is not the case and that Qrow does not need to do anything specific to be a true person and to be loved:

Qrow: Every choice I've ever made has led me here, and I've dragged you along with me. Oz, myself, the others... We're responsible for the mess the world's in now. I shouldn't have come, shouldn't have let any of you come... What was I thinking?!

Ruby: We're all in this together, and we're all going to do the best we can. That's all anyone can do. And I know it's what you've always aimed for. We would've come whether or not you'd let us, so stop talking like we're your responsibility! We're not! But we could still use Qrow Branwen on our side.

Ruby’s confrontation with Qrow at the end of volume 6 is basically the opposite of Yang’s confrontation with Raven in the finale of volume 5.

Yang calls Raven out because she refuses her responsibilities. She pushes them on others and leaves her own daughter to fight a battle she ran away from.

Ruby calls Qrow out on taking too much responsibility on himself. The kids were not forced by him to come. Qrow should not be completely responsible for them, but should learn to fight by their side.

Later on, Qrow is basically told the same by Maria:

Maria: You weren't half bad yourself today, Qrow.

Qrow: I feel like they did all the heavy lifting.

Maria: But you were there to help when they asked for it, and you were there to catch them when they fell. Literally, if I recall.

This is important because Maria appears just after Ozpin (aka Qrow’s mentor and guide) disappears. She is the person Qrow aspired to be:

Qrow: You never used your name, never showed your face. Lots of us thought you were just layin' low. Eventually, we just came to accept that you were probably dead. But the stories about you, I based my weapon off of yours. I wanted to be as good as the Grimm Reaper.

At the same time, Maria too, like him, considers herself a failure:

Maria: Well, I'm nothing but a disappointment, so you're well on your way.

However, at the end of the volume both Maria and Qrow realize that they do not have to save the world by themselves or to be invincible heroes. They just need to be there for their loved ones and the new generations. In short, Maria mentors Qrow on how to be a proper mentor.

And it turns out that he just has to take better care of himself:

In short, Qrow became the Scarecrow to scare crows, but ironically all he needs to do is to overcome his own fear of one Qrow.

If he does not, his semblance is bound to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, as it is shown in his two fights against Tyrian (vol 4 and vol 7).

1) In volume 4 he manages to protect Ruby, but ends up injured and unable to help the kids for the rest of their journey. He goes from their protector to a wounded man they have to take care of.

Narratively, it happens because of this:

Ruby: This is a lot to take in, and it all sounds crazy, but... I'm willing to do whatever I can to help because I trust you. But why couldn't you trust me? Why couldn't you just travel with us, instead of this secrecy, and, and--

Qrow: Look, this has nothing to do with trust. I-- It's a long story, okay?

The whole fight between Tyrian and Qrow could have played out very differently if Qrow were better at communicating with his niece. He wanted her away from Tyrian and himself because of his semblance, but Ruby interpreted it as Qrow not trusting her.

2) In volume 7, the battle ends with Clover’s tragic death being framed on Qrow.

Why does it happen?

Clover: Sometimes the right decision is the hardest to make. I trust James with my life! I wanted to trust you.

Once again, the problem lies in a lack of trust.

Qrow and Clover genuinely like each other and have bonded. Still, they fail to trust each other in a key moment and make the worst possible choice.

This is true for both characters:

Clover: I enjoyed working with you, you know. Even with that endless cynicism of yours.

Qrow: I'm usually proven right.

Clover: We don't have to fight, friend.

Qrow: You don't know my friends. That's how it always goes.

Qrow: Why couldn't you just do the right thing instead of the thing you were told?

In a sense, the whole fight can be read as The Scorpion and the Frog. In the original fairy-tale, the point is that one can’t overcome their own nature. The scorpion will sting the frog even if it goes against its own survival. Here, it is the same for the characters. In order for things to go well, either Clover or Qrow should overcome their flaw, but they fail.

Clover is not able to let go of his loyalty for Ironwood, even if it is clear the orders he received are wrong.

Qrow goes back to his usual cynism and makes a pact with Tyrian:

Robyn: I’m sorry for what happened. It wasn’t your fault.

Qrow: It was, though. I made a deal with the darkness, and he paid the price. It was all happening so fast, but Clover wouldn’t let up. Could have worked together against Tyrian if Clover just... 

Tyrian is the poisonous scorpion, while both Qrow and Clover are two frogs, who are hurt by him. Ironically, the frog’s mistake in the story is to trust the scorpion, while the mistake of our two frogs is that they did not trust each other.

Still, why is it so narratively? To be more specific, why is that so when it comes to Qrow’s character?

The answer is here:

Qrow: But the thing that really stings? For the first time in a while I thought, maybe, maybe I could be around somebody - anybody - without my semblance making it… complicated. And now, it just feels like a childish dream. Gone... like everybody else.

Clover is narratively this:

Blake: You have to understand that all of you are looking for simple answers to a very complicated problem.

He is a very simple answer to a very complicated problem that has its roots in Qrow’s interiority. Qrow’s flaw, what goes in the way of his relationships and happiness, is not that he is unlucky, but that he feels unlucky.

He feels worthless and thinks of himself as bad for others. This is why he keeps his distance and refrains himself from growing close to people.

He blames it on his semblance and this is why he makes an exception for Clover. It is because he sees in the other’s ability an easy fix to his struggle.

Still, he is proven wrong because in the moment of truth, they fail to communicate and everything goes to hell.

This is not to say that Qrow and Clover’s relationship was bad or that Clover deserved to die. In-universe their bond had beautiful aspects and could have grown stronger. Moreover, Clover could have developed and left his flaw behind.

Still, narratively Clover serves a specific purpose and him dying is a part of said purpose.

Clover brings a superficial harmony to a situation and a group dynamic, which is actually not harmonic at all:

Clover: What would you guys do without me?

The Ace Ops are a group of individuals repressing their own feelings and identities for the sake of an unspecified greater good. They see the world in black and white, not because they are stupid, but because they refuse complexity:

Robyn: Yeah, because you don’t care about the truth. You just want someone to be mad at. Easier than taking an honest look at what side you’re on.

Winter: Penny. The general is making hard choices so we don't have to.

This fits with them being a group based on Aesops aka short stories with a very well defined and often simplicistic message.

In short, Clover is the one that keeps his group together. Once he is gone, his group starts deteriorating. All because they refuse to aknowledge their feelings:

Ren: That’s why you lost against Team RWBY. You, you try to fight how you feel about each other, so you’ll never truly work as a team.

Once he is gone, Qrow is similarly forced to grieve and self-reflect. Luckily, he is not alone:

Robyn is the opposite of Qrow in terms of symbolism.

Qrow is associated with crows and bad luck, while Robyn is linked to robins, which bring good fortune.

She is also a symbol of unity and hope (her emblem is basically Katniss’s symbol in the Hunger Games, after all):

Tyrian: Robyn Hill. For such a little bird, you have quite the impact around here! Bringing hope and a smile wherever you go! I find it…upsetting.

Despite this, Robyn too has suffered isolation, just like Qrow:

Robyn: Believe it or not, I know a little of what that’s like. When people are worried you’re gonna sniff out their secrets, they tend to push you away. It makes a real connection… difficult.

Qrow: I-- never thought of it that way.

Robyn’s line is important for two reasons.

a) It shows Qrow that he is not the only one who has met difficulties in life because of his semblance. His case is not unique.

b) It links to the idea that trusting others is difficult and it is not something that comes without dedication and work.

As a matter of fact Robyn’s semblance is specifically symbolic of trust. It is the power to detect lies through touch, so if you are going to work with her, it means you must be ready to trust and to be trusted:

This also ties figuratively with the act of shaking one’s hand as if to make a pact (an act of trust). If Raven’s power is about asymmetrical bonds, then Robyn’s is about mutual ones.

Robyn highlights that this creates problems for her because it is not easy for people to trust. Some can’t be trusted, while others do not trust Robyn won’t cross their boundaries.

However, this also means that the relationships Robyn manages to forge are strong bonds, where everything or almost everything is out in the open. This is the exact opposite kind of environment than the one realized through Clover’s good luck semblance. It is a harmony more difficult to reach, but it is a more stable and genuine one.

It is these kinds of bonds Qrow should aim to create. In order to do so, he must accept his semblance and his past as parts of themselves. Still, he should not let them define him. Not only that, but he should learn to trust others and their strengths:

Qrow: Ruby, stop!

Ruby: I need you to trust me.

Only in this way, Qrow can truly grow. The secret is that it was never about scaring the crows away, but to learn how to live with them.

HUGIN THAT RUNS AWAY AND MUNIN THAT MAKES EVERYONE WORRIED

Raven and Qrow’s issues can be synthesized by this quote:

"Hugin and Munin fly each day over the spacious earth. I fear for Hugin, that he come not back, yet more anxious am I for Munin."

Raven never comes back, while Qrow has his loved ones fear for him because of his self-destructive tendencies.

In order to overcome these flaws, they must grow in opposite directions.

Raven must realize that her survivalism is actually self-destructive. It makes her survive, but it negates her the chance of living. She must become more selfless and trustworthy to make it up for the unfair bonds she created.

Qrow must accept that his self-destructiveness is actually selfish and damaging to his loved ones. He must start to trust others’ strengths, so that he can be brave enough to live together with them, instead of looking at them from afar.

[lemonprick]

thoughts on raya and the last dragon

i watched the film last night and stayed up just a lil bit to type up notes so excuse any spelling. critiques not in chronological order and also i watched it without subtitles so i had to look up the names on wikipedia

holy crap i love this whip-sword it’s awesome and so beautifully done

twist would be much more powerful if raya and namaari were shown to have a stronger emotional bond despite their nations having icy relations (and not just having met for what, one day?)

kinda confused as to what the characterisation of younger raya was set up for? her enthusiasm for war is juxtaposed with her father’s peaceful beliefs and 6 years later this doesn’t get addressed as much, although one could say her going after the fang girl was the triumph of her ‘war’ side 

sisu’s design (and all the dragons really) irks me in that it’s too human- besides the pastel colours which i absolutely abhor (there’s not really any contrast, is there), the fact that they’re ancient creatures, having lived 500 years ago and are literally magic, why do they have to look like humans?? i hate it when in fantastical worldbuilding human features are given to species that absolutely do not need them

i for one am mad that the concept design which had black outlining the eyes and mouth and gold on the gill things wasn’t used, and it looked perfect for a water dragon with its very koi-like patterns

but for what it’s worth, props for steering clear of western dragon anatomy! asian dragons tend to be more snake-like rather than lizard-y and so the gratuitous shots of sisu snaking through the sky made me appreciate her design a little bit more

holy crap i love this whip-sword

the function of the gems confuses me: since sisu is shown to still have powers despite being away from the gems, why are they important except for warding off the druun? since the twist was realising the pieces had to combined and they had sought to collect the gem pieces before sisu ‘died’, what was their goal??

there’s a surprising amount of fight choreography for a disney movie, and it’s actually cool? like it’s amazing with the weapons, but when they both dropped their weapons and just went at each other with nothing but pure hand-to-hand combat I was so happy

love the parallel between the crossbow pointing at sisu and the sword triggering the crossbow 

the whip sword is awesome

lowkey thought the blue stone in the dragon pendant was gonna be the last piece of the gem that namaari didn’t even know she owned à la over the moon but was pleasantly surprised they didn’t stick with that!

the huge guy with the baby is best duo 

the hatred on raya’s face when she stormed into the palace was amazing and the fight that ensued had some really cool lighting holy-

can’t believe I'm saying this since I went in this movie unusually happy it doesn’t promise any romance, but the tension between raya and namaari and especially the fight scenes? unparalleled- take that what you will but between Raya’s sword and Namaari’s double blades, something is indeed going on

finally! a final fight where the side characters actually helped in the battle! bonus points for raya to realise what they were doing was more important and heroic than what she was at that moment

her distrust for namaari was what triggered the crossbow and her realising taking the first step to trust was the only way to lead the others to do the same...!! just wished she’d shown a bit more guilt or remorse at being partially responsible for sisu’s death 

Not me gushing over the rain running down the stone statues and gradually falling away to reveal them still being alive  because the textures

why oh why did the other dragons have to be back?? at first I thought raya’s naïveté at dragons being the only solution to peace was gonna be her lesson, that dragons don’t magically make the world better and you can’t bring peace without initiating it yourself- which kinda turned out to be true, she did save the world by initiating trust, so why are the other dragons back?? if the first magic didn’t save them, why did the second?? biggest criticism of the film so far (edit: comments have suggested raya and co. putting their trust in the dragon’s magic was what brought the dragons back, which, fair enough. but alas my desire for the dragons to remain stone still stands)

the whip sword

i pedantically have an issue with the ending boat scenes that concluded one adventure after the other- this director loves offscreen dialogue over a wide shot of the boat, which is fine BUT the dialogue always starts way too early and the volume never lowers to a suitable distance and it’s annoying me

some lines do seem to start too early, before the visuals cut to the next shot, without letting the scene breathe but maybe that’s just my lagging 

there are some places where the split screens and special effects don’t serve the scene all that well and are only there to look cool (which on its own is a good enough reason but cmon disney!) like the beginning fight where there’s a really short shot of a split screen of raya and her dad, where her dad’s screen enters when he utters one line of dialogue before sliding out of frame. a lot of times this feels too videogame-y instead of a film

overall, this is a story that could’ve been told by anyone, but ultimately in its execution this movie is undoubtedly very disney. i have this nagging feeling that if this were made by some other studio, raya’s inner conflict of saving her dad rather than saving her world would have been focused on a lot more instead of the dragon stuff

and also, the fact that saving her dad = saving the world (it practically requires the same steps: retrieve the gems, un-stone everyone) really doesn’t drive the conflict between raya’s personal goal and the ‘right’ thing to do 

to me, disney movies have a very general and surface level message that’s applicable to all ages and they package it very well in cool animation, good music and quality voice acting; it stops there at the thematic elements, however, and doesn’t go deeper than that. 

raya’s desire for vengeance is very quickly resolved upon her facing the demon-things and realising she needs to trust, thus righting her priorities cleanly and swiftly. but raya stands out from other princesses in that she believes the world is broken, having being broken herself, and no longer has hope in the world- her quest is to solely bring her dad back. 

this I feel like could have been touched on and explored in really cool ways, but it didn’t, which was what I expected anyways. disney has perfected their formula for safe, generally good movies, and doesn’t even try to dig deeper into the stories they choose to tell, which is an absolute shame because this is such a cool concept!

can’t you tell i love the whip sword

[liusaidh-writing]

Call it True - Chapter Four

Here it is, the next chapter. Enjoy! 

Thanks to @faithperry46 for being a wonderful beta reader!

[Prefer AO3?]

Chapter 1 // Chapter 2 // Chapter 3 

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

Claire clung to Jamie’s arm as they strolled around their neighborhood after a good meal and little bit of heavy flirting on both their parts. They’d had a couple drinks between them, and Claire was feeling light-headed and slightly silly. 

“What’s the worst thing you ever did in school, Jamie?” Claire laughed quietly as they dodged a large rain puddle, Jamie tugging her with him, pulling them ever closer together. Their feet haphazardly hit one another as they stumbled, Claire burying her face in his arm to attempt to regain some composure. 

“Well..I’ll have to think about that one, Sassenach,” Jamie responded, drawing out his words in a teasing tone. 

“Were you that badly behaved?” 

“No...no...it’s just, I’m not sure which story you’d like to hear more. I like to hear you laugh. How about you, Claire - what’s your story?” 

“Um, well, at Uni, in the dorms, there was a girl whose parents had, for whatever reason, paid extra so their daughter could have a room to herself.”  Claire paused, wondering if he’d find her tale amusing or boring. She gritted her teeth, daring herself to get on with it.

“And…” Jamie prodded.

“And...she had a highly illegal pet rabbit in her room.  She was a bit strange, to be honest, a bit of an outcast…” She paused again, eyeing Jamie’s reaction as he found out she was basically admitting to bullying a girl. 

“Anyway, so, the girls and I, one night, were gossiping - as girls do, you know - and this particular girl and her rabbit came up in conversation. She was always prattling on about this rabbit of hers, and it could get annoying. I mean, the school had to have known, so why was she getting away with it? So, we girls decided to sneak into her room and…”

Jamie was grinning ear to ear,  eager to hear the climax of her story. 

“Please tell me you didn’t harm any animals, Sassenach,” he said with mock sincerity. He knit his brow and jokingly gave her a stern look.

“Ahem, no, I am no bunny murderer. We just went into her room while she was away - no one locked their doors - and....took the rabbit.” 

Jamie’s mouth was agape and Claire spat out a shameful giggle as she recalled how the girl had found them with the poor rabbit - cage and all - just a few minutes after they’d gotten it into Claire’s room. 

“Thankfully we all had a good laugh about it, no arm done. Now, your turn. Go on.” She nudged him playfully with her body, knocking him slightly off balance. 

“I had no idea you’re a bunny stealer, Sassenach! I don’t know what to think of you now.”

Jamie shook his head in admonishment, then laughed. He stole a quick kiss, pecking Claire on the mouth. She pressed her lips together, savoring any little bit of him she could claim as her own, and again nudged him to tell his story.

“Why are you looking at me, Sassenach? I never got into trouble at all!”

“I don’t believe you. I just admitted to grand theft! Well, maybe it wasn’t grand, but...you can’t leave me dangling out here on the bad girl branch all by myself!” 

“Bad girl, is it?” Jamie stopped abruptly wrapping her in his arms, kissing her deeply. Claire parted her lips, inviting him further. Their bodies aligned, Claire’s arms were buried deep in his jacket, wrapped around his waist as she clung to his shirt. Her knees were shaking, and she leaned in, breathing all of him in. The sounds and street lights around them all but disappeared as Claire felt herself pulled further into the deep.

Parting, they were both breathless. Claire noticed Jamie’s eyes danced with amusement, their blue color reflecting the neon of the shop signs nearby. 

“Do you know how long I’ve wanted to do that,” she said in a whisper, surprising even herself. 

Jamie dipped his head to catch her lips in his once more, quickly this time. 

“As long as I have, perhaps?” he asked, one side of his mouth going up in a wistful smile. They began walking again, and Jamie nodded in the direction of their building. “Let’s head home. It’s getting pretty late, anyway.” Noticing that they were the only ones out, Claire enjoyed the relative silence of the night, only the occasional dog bark or car passing by broke the magic. It had stopped raining, and the lighthearted conversation had done a lot for her nerves. 

She let him pull her along, not wanting him to see her face as she absorbed the word ‘home’. She had a vision of their clothes, mingling in one closet; their bed, duvet twisted and smelling of sex; two glasses of ignored scotch sitting on the coffee table in front of the couch, where they lay tangled, choosing foreplay over alcohol. She shivered involuntarily, finding his hand and grasping it tightly. She briefly wondered why this, with Jamie, felt so natural, so right. She’d seen him just three times now outside of their window chats, and she felt like they’d been like this forever. It was as if she’d found solid ground with him, something true, and she hadn’t realized just how much she needed him. She’d been adrift her whole life, come to think of it, floating around with her Uncle Lamb. Campsites, hotels, temporary lodgings in one foreign country or another.  Taught by tutors, she’d never attended traditional school until she decided to go into nursing. She didn’t regret her childhood, but she knew Jamie had a family, had roots. She liked the idea of finally having roots, even tangentially, through him.

“Erm, I’d invite you inside, Sassenach, but I’m afraid you’d be bombarded by an interrogation of sorts. My nephew is staying with me at the moment. I-”

“Oh, your nephew? He’s alone right now?”

“Yes, he’s 19 - perfectly capable on his own, except when my sister decides he’s gone and gotten into trouble. I get the task of straightening him out. Or something. I don’t know how much I help, but I try.” 

“That’s nice of you. I’m sure he appreciates it.”

“Well, he appreciates the ability to escape home once in a while, anyway.”

“Well, we can just go to mine then. I don’t live far away,” Claire joked. “I think I may even have some whisky stored away somewhere.” She rubbed her chin, trying to picture where that dusty bottle was hiding. It had been a gift from Uncle Lamb one Christmas, and she’d never had the occasion to open it. Why not now? 

-----

Sipping her drink, Claire watched Jamie, his strong jaw clenching slightly with each sip. She watched his movements as he set the glass down on the side table, careful not to make any noise. They’d both been rather quiet, like the night was made of glass, and neither of them wanted to shatter it. 

Claire watched as Jamie took a slow sip of his drink, savoring the flavor. She watched as his tongue darted out past his lips, only briefly; she found herself mesmerized by his movements, even down to the way he kept tapping one finger on the glass as he held it in his hand. Claire knew she felt awkward and gangly, unsure of what to do with her arms, her hands, her legs. She felt like she saw some of that in him, too. 

She took a fortifying sip of her own drink, and then set it down on the table in front of them. With a clink, the glass hit the hard wood table top, breaking the silent reverie. 

“So...I must say, it’s been awhile since I’ve had a, er, date up here.” 

She wasn’t sure why she was bringing up past lovers - she certainly didn’t want to get into a conversation about it with him, but she wanted to say something. 

“I’m afraid my flat is entirely female free. I’m no good at this, myself.”

“No good? I’m enjoying myself, if it makes you feel better. I could turn on a movie? Or some music?”  She ran a hand through her hair, trying to decide which option would be better, when she felt him grasp her wrist and pull it away from her face.  He kissed the inside of her wrist, sending shivers down Claire’s spine. 

“Well, I suppose we don’t need music…” she trailed off, lulled into a calm by Jamie’s soft touch on her delicate skin. He moved closer, and she felt his leg meet her own on the couch. He leaned in while she was looking down and they cracked heads, both jumping back slightly, holding their heads. 

Claire laughed easily, some of the tension broken.  

“See? I told you..” Jamie remarked, rubbing his forehead. 

Claire, trying her luck, leaned towards him this time, catching his mouth with her lips, the kiss quickly evolving into a more desperate one as Jamie pulled her onto his lap. His hands were in her hair, and she quickly pulled one of his arms down to the hem of her shirt, inviting him to touch her bare skin. The heat of his hand was a warm balm,  juxtaposed with the goosebumps that formed along her torso. He, at first, spread his palm along her back, stroking up and down, their lips still fiercely together, neither of them willing to part. 

Jamie began trying to undo her bra, and Claire groaned, frustrated at the one she’d chosen. It was a difficult one to unclasp for whatever reason. As he struggled, Claire sat up and reached behind her, awkwardly getting it undone for him. 

“Damn thing, sorry,” she whispered, and she decided to discard with her bra and sweater all at once, leaving her vulnerable slightly shivering in the cool air. Jamie pulled her back down, wanting her mouth on his again, and he kissed her deeply while he grasped one breast in his hand, bringing his fingertips to her hard nipple. Claire immediately wanted more, as she felt the tell-tale heat pool between her legs. 

“Can we go to the bedroom?” She mumbled, reluctantly pulling away from him once more, yet eager to get more comfortable. Jamie tugged at her legs, and Claire straddled him before he lifted her, her legs wrapping around his waist as he stood. Their denim pants were an irritating barrier, and Claire rocked against his hips as he walked, keeping her lips on his neck, just below his ear. He didn’t stumble, easily making his way to her bedroom, where he gently laid her back on her pillows and followed her down. 

Claire immediately went to the button of her pants, unclasping it, her zipper following suit. Jamie lifted his hips as she wriggled out of her pants, and he pulled them down and off her ankles. Pulling his shirt over his head, Claire gave a small gasp as their torsos met, bare skin on bare skin. It was nearly enough to send her to the edge, but she fought against it as she fumbled with the button on his jeans. She was still in her knickers - thin cotton with small rosebuds - and after Jamie had discarded his pants, she felt his fingers glide to her inner thigh. Tickling up to the edge of her panties, he hooked a finger around one side and pulled them down, leaving Claire entirely naked.  

She watched as he took her in; his eyes shone brightly, arms trembling as he lifted one hand and, licking his lips with a hard swallow, he let one finger make its way slowly down her torso, past her navel. His finger found the hard bud of her clitoris as he began making circles, driving Claire entirely out of her mind all at once. Her hips jerked involuntarily, and she lifted her head slightly and eyed his cock, still encased in his briefs.

“Not yet. Let me touch you, too,” she breathed, reaching between them to put her hand into his waistband, grasping his cock. She felt him shudder as his lips found hers again. She quickly tore off his last bit of clothing and stroked him briefly before pulling him down, placing him between her open legs. 

“You sure?” he whispered, settling into his position as she lifted her hips slightly in invitation. Biting his lip, he kissed her once, moaning slightly into her mouth as their bodies trembled in want.

Claire could only nod her head before reaching down and helping him to enter her, the creak of the bed making Claire smile slightly as she felt him begin to thrust his hips, slowly at first.  She savored the friction, and let a hand dance in his hair as she kissed him deeply, her other hand making its way between them to touch herself, intensifying her pleasure. She watched as Jamie’s eyes shut, his forehead against hers as he began to go faster, and as her eyes fluttered closed, the spark that had been dancing between them for the last couple weeks grew into a flame, engulfing them both in one breath.  

Claire grasped the duvet, riding the waves for as long as she could as Jamie’s hips jerked, his lips crashing into hers once more. She almost immediately wanted more, but allowed him to clamber off and lay to her side to catch his breath, her heart hammering. 

She looked over at him, smiling.  It had been rather short, but she hadn’t wanted to wait any longer. Still trembling, she leaned into him, her head on his chest. She figured they had all the time in the world now to perfect, to experiment, to feel that again, and again. She smiled again, her face buried under his chin. Jamie brought his arms around her, but kept quiet. She could feel his heart beat beneath her cheek, and revelled in its steady thumps. She barely noticed as her eyes fluttered shut, his pulse lulling her to sleep. 

She dreamed of tangled blankets and Jamie’s rough hands roaming her body. 

----

Claire woke with a sharp jerk. Light was streaming in, her curtains open to the morning outside. She squinted at the light, feeling slightly like a vampire, and clambered out from the covers. Noticing Jamie’s absence, she smiled, and throwing a shirt over her head, she headed from her bedroom, expecting to find him there. 

Instead, she was greeted with the still artifacts of her life - the couch, their glasses still on the coffee table; her small dining table and four chairs, and the kitchen - empty and unused, as usual. She paused, standing still, then walked back through her bedroom to the washroom. That, too, was empty. 

She looked around her room for some sign, some proof that last night had, in fact, happened. She could feel the pleasurable ache still lingering between her legs, and she knew, deep down, that she’d not dreamt it. But where was he?

She grabbed her phone, checking for messages. Nothing. 

Walking to the kitchen counter, she finally saw a hastily scribbled note in Jamie’s messy hand.

Claire,

I had to leave. 

I’m sorry. 

Will talk soon.

xx, Jamie

Claire’s jaw dropped, the letter fluttering from between her fingers. She quickly ran, threw on some pants, and dashed out her door  barefoot. The cold morning air turned her blood to ice as she dashed up the stairs to his front door. She knocked, thinking surely that he’d be there. That perhaps he simply had to work this morning, or had to check on his nephew. 

There was no answer, and Claire, hugging herself in the cold, slowly ambled back to her apartment, confused and shivering. She grabbed her phone again, dialing Jamie’s mobile. She held it to her ear, hearing the incessant ringing as she got no answer.��

She looked at the phone, puzzled, and if she was being honest, a bit hurt. 

Had she done something last night? Oh God, she thought with horror, had she drooled on him, talked in her sleep, kicked him?  

She sat on the couch, unable to figure out what to do. Emptiness crept in, and she felt tears stinging her eyes as she fought back, unwilling to cave to her own misery.

[autumnblogs]

Day 4: You eat a weird bug and don’t even care.

Starting later than usual today because I’ve been absolutely swamped with work. Let’s get down to business to defeat the Huns.

https://homestuck.com/story/644

I’ve never really gotten why John falls asleep here. Seems an odd place to fall asleep, especially with the adrenaline rush that must have been. Maybe he’s passing out from exactly that? Alternatively, maybe Vriska is putting him to sleep.

 I also forgot that John Sleeps/Skaian Magicant is split between two flashes.

https://homestuck.com/story/651

Ah here we go. John has what are, if Jade is to be believed, lousy dreams. He dreams of his Dad, of clowns, of baked goods, of Fruit Gushers, of his own symbol, the weird knock-off slimer, and Harry Anderson, before finally Jade appears.

I am not a psychologist or therapist. I am not even anything more than an amateur literary critic. But let me give you my take on that. It’s clear that John is dreaming about all kinds of things that are giving him anxiety here, if Jade’s assessment about his dreams being lousy is true.

Harry Anderson is, as he’ll say later, kind of a weird mutual father figure for him and his Dad, and as a stage magician and comedian, he represents John’s aspirations.

John wants to grow up to be a great stage magician and comedian, and if there’s anything we’ve seen about the Heir of Breath so far, it’s how extremely self-critical he is of his abilities - he’s screwed up every disguise and magic trick he’s tried so far. 

The other things are pretty self-explanatory - he’s anxious about his relationship with his Dad, he’s anxious about his Dad’s identity, he’s anxious about his own identity - with the exception of the gushers. Are gushers just symbolizing Sburb for John? Does he have a premonition that the gushers are tainted by the hand of his archnemesis, Betty Crocker? Maybe that one’s just silly.

Maybe they’re all just silly!

https://homestuck.com/story/652

I promise I will have more to say about Jade’s conversations once she is actually introduced, but until then, she is too enigmatic for me to talk about :^)

I will say, if the fact that John is stressing out about everything in his life and just not vocalizing his anxiety, it’s probable that he thinks Jade is just as mysterious as his pals think she is, and is just not talking about it.

I think John, like Jake, is way more intelligent than he lets on, and probably just keeps a lot of things on a simmer, thinking about them without necessarily opening up about them. He talks a lot about surface level stuff for sure, but he seems a lot more hesitant to talk about emotions, theories, that sort of thing. It actually reminds me a lot of how Kim Kitsuragi from Disco Elysium, far from his highly imaginative partner the player character, writes his thoughts down in a notebook to keep track of his through processes, hunches, case details, etc, whereas the Detective organizes everything in an interactive Thought Cabinet that serves as one half of the game’s Inventory and Progression System.

For example, John’s ability to describe and his ability to theorize is on full display in the FAQs that he writes, but when he talks, he’s often just as disorganized as he is everywhere else. Maybe John needs to take up journalling.

Huh. I wonder if Kim is a Prospit Dreamer and the Detective is a Derse Dreamer? That would make a lot of sense. Once @bladekindeyewear finishes playing Disco Elysium (which he is playing at my behest), I’ll see if he’s interested in assigning Lunar Sway, Classes and Aspects to the two of them.

https://homestuck.com/story/665

Dave Owns. The Narrative switches between character perspectives often right before there’s a major climax so that lots of characters can all have climactic encounters in sync with one another.

Eye imagery is on full display here as Dave ascends to the highest point in the building. The Sun over Dave’s house is drawn differently from other abstractions of the Sun in Homestuck, and this particular drawing of the Sun will later be juxtaposed against Terezi’s eyes as Alternia’s Sun burns them out.

The Sun as the Symbol of Light is also juxtaposed with Rose’s eyes later when she uses her seer powers, strengthening the connection between the Sun and Eyes. Near the very beginning of the comic, Rose compares the Sun moving on from the east coast to the west as him casting his lurid gaze on younger parts of the world, or the country. I’m not recalling the exact phrasing at this time.

Lil Cal’s creepy eyes are also highlighted by the Camera here. Through the vehicle of Lil Cal, Lord English is watching and quietly giving approval to all of this.

I choose to interpret the camera’s focus in this flash as giving us a glimpse into what Dave is paying attention to. And boy does Dave notice all of these eyes on him. Between seeing the sun as a malevolent eye watching him, to Lil Cal’s glassy gaze, to the Cameras bro uses to surveil him 24/7, Dave feels like he’s constantly being watched, and I think it’s safe to say it gives him the creeps.

https://homestuck.com/story/673

WV’s self-estimation isn’t much better than John’s.

https://homestuck.com/story/678

I wonder if we can get some insight into the strange minds of the Carapacians in the way that before he’s even finished receiving the commands, WV acts on them. WV is even more impulsive than John.

https://homestuck.com/story/684

Oh yeah, WV’s self-worth is way worse than John’s.

https://homestuck.com/story/685

Luckily almost as soon as his thoughts come, they go. He doesn’t spend too much time brooding over his self-loathing and survivor’s guilt, so good for him.

https://homestuck.com/story/688

A whole bunch of things that are symbolically related to the cast!

While WV’s can town playtime functions as foreshadowing for us, it serves as a replay of the extremely recent past for him, at least in terms of events that we know about.

https://homestuck.com/story/694

The light on Serenity’s belly looks a bit like the Sun, and therefore, an eye.

https://homestuck.com/story/699

The Blue Trees of Can Town call forward to Terezi’s forest, but I don’t think this is probably more substantial than something fun Andrew decided to call back to when he was writing the trolls.

IDK. Maybe Blue Trees = Democracy = Justice?

But Terezi’s brand of justice has nothing to do with Democracy.

https://homestuck.com/story/709

Tab, like GameBro, is an artifact of a bygone age.

https://homestuck.com/story/711

It’s a lot easier to become a citizen of Can Town than it is to become a citizen of the United States!

https://homestuck.com/story/714

I wonder who input all those commands before WV got on board? Maybe whoever was in charge of building these contraptions in the first place - a Carapacian Lab Rat in the Veil.

Always felt like the unseen actors making Sburb run behind the scenes were one of the nicest touches, they lend an air of sinister mystery even beyond the Guardians.

https://homestuck.com/story/721

I am not good at chess.

Maybe sometime, I will have my friend who is good at Chess analyze this game, and see how he feels about it.

https://homestuck.com/story/735

WV’s Self Esteem is very, very bad.

https://homestuck.com/story/752

Our first introduction to the laws of time travel in Homestuck - the past is a place that materially exists, and in only one specific configuration that can be interacted with. You can only bring things forward from the past if nobody else got to them before you. You can’t go back and undo things that somebody else (or you) has already done according to the canonical configuration of events.

https://homestuck.com/story/757

This is ridiculously cool.

Homestuck’s huge climactic story events are arguably one of the things that makes it so special as a story. I can’t think of a story that does such a good job of building up tension in multiple storylines before having them all converge.

https://homestuck.com/story/760

:D

https://homestuck.com/story/765

I wonder what the exact mechanism is by which Jade is aware of the gaming abstractions and commands to the degree that she is? Is it just her Skaian dreams? This could be a one-off gag, but it could also be an indication of a degree of clairvoyance greater than that which I feel like the visions she has as the Prospitian Moon passes through Skaia.

https://homestuck.com/story/768

Jade loves to watch things grow.

It’s a Space Thing.

https://homestuck.com/story/777

According to BladeKindEyeWear’s Inversion Theory Jade’s complicated and carefully orchestrated time loops, which she uses to connect people with possibilities, is an example of her inverting under extreme stress, acting more like a Seer of Time, her opposite, than like a Witch of Space (in much the same way that Rose acts an awful lot like a Witch of Void for much of the comic’s first half!)

I expect a real Seer of Time wouldn’t need quite so many contrivances to keep track of everything going on in the past and future. Eventually, Jade stops using her colourful reminders, which is probably an indicator that she is no longer attempting to play outside of her lane.

https://homestuck.com/story/789

Pretty much all of Jade’s interests cast her immediately as someone with a pretty strong maternal instinct, something that she shares with other heroes of Space. Jade is a caretaker. 

Her playthings are dolls so she can roleplay the part of a Mom. She grows oodles of plants, and seems to have a knack for it. She likes animals, and though the only animal in her life takes care of her, she puts in some work to take care of him too.

Her interests definitely mark her as the more classically girly of the two between her and Rose, and like her brother is preoccupied with manhood and Dadliness, Jade seems to preoccupied with Momliness - which is odd, considering that she doesn’t have a maternal figure to aspire to! (Maybe the White Queen?)

https://homestuck.com/story/790

Jade is not of course, only girly. The same way that Dad’s culturally out-of-place baking hobby marks him as transgressively feminine to John’s dismay, Jade’s scientific and artillerist hobbies are transgressively masculine.

Although it’s tempting to say that Jade loves the sciences because Grandpa raised her to, or because she’s aping him after he died, she’s clearly born to it. I think about the question of nature and nurture a lot in Homestuck.

I think on the whole, it falls pretty far to the side of Nature. Characters who share a common ancestry also share common character traits more often than not, even in the absence of shared cultural touchstones, shared geography, shared timeline. The same character only has a limited number of possible choices that they could have made, as Aranea will later say.

On the other hand, some characters turn out very different in one life than they do in another. Dirk doesn’t turn out nearly the psychopath that Bro Strider is by the time that Homestuck Proper concludes.

https://homestuck.com/story/795

Squiddles are, as everyone knows by now, a manifestation of the Dark Gods of the Furthest Ring, but I think there’s more going on with them too - they have kind of a horny energy that I can’t quite place. I’m going to come back to that. Any case, they seem to be one of the symbols that Rose and Jade share in common, although Rose subverts the colorful and cute squiddles into icons more of the extradimensional beasties that they actually represent.

Maybe I think Squiddles are a symbol of horny for the same reason that snakes are lewd to Cherubs - there’s definitely something phallic about tentacles, and definitely something intimate about the idea of becoming someone’s tangle buddy. The very first time I read Rose’s handle, I thought it read Tentacle The Rapist, which I suspect is kinda the point, and some of Andrew’s other works have variously described the process of interacting with tentacles as being molested and so on and so on.

Rose and Jade actually share a huge number of symbols in common between the two of them, which I think is great, but also sad - Rose and Jade clearly actually have quite a lot in common, and the two of them don’t really interact very much.

https://homestuck.com/story/797

I’m going to eventually decode Jade’s fascination with animals too, but for now I want to remark that it’s not just the idea of looking like an animal that excites Jade - it’s the idea of being  like an animal that excites her. The exact same little poem is later reiterated by Serenity in WV’s nightmare, as he dreams of losing control of the power of the Ring of Orbs Fourfold and killing everyone he loves. What would be a nightmare for WV though is a fantasy for Jade. The idea of being out of control is thrilling for her.

Dave is also a furry.

https://homestuck.com/story/798

The trappings of a proper gentleman. Monocle. Pipe. Top Hat. Little White Gloves. A proper gentleman without these is a piss poor excuse for a proper gentleman indeed.

SYMBOLS.

https://homestuck.com/story/800

Another spot where Jade is able to interface directly with the audience, in some form or another.

https://homestuck.com/story/802

Jade may have fantasies of transforming into something more animalistic, but she’s not willing to indulge them.

https://homestuck.com/story/803

Jade completely rejects the symbols of witchcraft that Rose so readily embraces.

https://homestuck.com/story/804

Jade contemplates engaging in some Vriskaesque behavior. Is it just because Vriska is watching her? Maybe she’s picking up some Vriska-esque vibes through the feed as the Thief of Light practices her mind control. 

https://homestuck.com/story/808

I think it’s safe to say one of two things is going on here.

Jade is either literally cognizant of the audience and interacting with them, putting her on a layer of the story that is quite a lot closer to us than you would expect of someone as innocuous as Jade (maybe the immediate presence of the Fourth Wall upstairs could facilitate that relationship?)

Or Jade has an active imagination, is extremely lonely, and likes to interact with her imaginary audience as a way of projecting a friendly and hospitable demeanor onto the world around her in sort of the exact opposite way that Rose imagines the worst of everything and everyone?

Or, as it often is in Homestuck, it could be both motherfuckin’ things.

https://homestuck.com/story/829

Did I mention Dave is a furry? Dave is totally a furry.

If we read Squiddles as a symbol of intimate contact with living things, Jade’s computer having Squiddles front and center is appropriate - it’s her point of contact to all the people in her life.

Tune in on the morrow to watch Dave’s Bro beat the shit out of him.

Until then, this is Cam signing off, alive and not alone.

[quackmyback]

Heads or Tails : chapter one

Will Byers x Fem!OC

Hi friends, I don't think anyone actually read chapter zero, besides myself ofc, so I decided to post Chapter One today like I said I would :)

MADMAX AND THAT ASS

Mason pulled herself from a restless sleep, blinking away the gunk layered across her pupils and trying to swat away the sun streaming through the window. Slowly, she sat up and messed with the knots in her hair and she watched Max peacefully snore with her blanket half on her and half on the floor.

"Max," Mason called to her sister in hopes of waking her from her dreams. "Max. Dude!" Mason threw a stuffed animal -- a small, kind of deflated elephant her dad had got her years ago -- and nailed Max right in the nose.

"What the hell, Mase?"

"Get up, we have a one-way ticket to hell in about fifteen minutes." Mason threw her blankets off her legs and headed over to her and Max's shared wardrobe -- picking out a simple outfit that she hoped wouldnt get her taunted on her first day at school.

The twins juxtaposed each other:  while Max wore her hair down, Mason tied it up with braids and and excessive use of hair clips, while Max liked baggy jeans and larger hoodies -- Mason preferred oddly patterned skirts with white shirts and denim jackets. Both girls only owned one pair of shoes: Max's were a red pair of converse they had found super cheap at a thrift store while Mason's were a weird off brand of keds that were fully white.

Mason walked out of the room, back to the bathroom, and shouted back to her sister, "and you better hurry your ass up, because I am not biking to school!"

"Whatever, dork!" Max slammed the door to their shared bedroom.

• ○ •

W

hen Billy parked the car, Max and Mason exited. Mason gazed around to see everyone staring at her new step-brothers ass and, while delighted it wasn't at her, her lip curled in disgust. She sped walked to catch up to her sister, who was slowly skating towards the Middle School across the parking lot.

"This is gonna be a total nightmare," Max scoffed glaring at everyone around them who dared to take a glance towards the Mayfield twins.

"Maybe" -- Mason shrugged -- "maybe not."

The girls continued their slow, torturous walk to school -- stopping at the front desk so that Mason could ask for their schedules. Assuming that their classes would be the same, Mason felt misery when she realized she would have to part from Max for art.

Max sighed, "Well, at least you dont have Drama with Mrs. Cockwit."

The girls looked at each other before their faces broke into smiles, Mason examined their schedules side by side once again. "Science," she said. "We should probably hurry and go find-"

"-That wont be a problem, Miss Mayfield." The twins turned suddenly to find a burly man behind them, the principal they assumed. Now, they're own personal tour guide. "I will be leading you to your first class, please the bell will ring shortly, so follow me."

They did, reluctantly, follow him to a wooden door where they could faintly hear the teacher teaching his wisdom to a class full of kid more likely than not to drop out of three years. They walked in, quickly as to avoid as much attention as possible. Though when Mason had looked up when passing the teachers desk, she realized that wasn't going to be easy.

"Ah, these must be our new students!" Mason's attention snapped to the teacher, she had realized on her schedule his name was Mr.Clarke.

"Indeed it is," the principal who had herded the two into the classroom confirmed,"All yours."

Mason rushed to follow Max to the back, yet they were stopped about as fast as Max could rolled her eyes.

"All right, hold up." Mr. Clark held put his hand to stop the two and smiled. "You dont get away that easy."

Mason barely muttered under her breath, not even enough for it to really reach her own ears. "One could hope."

Mr. Clark continued his introduction, as if the two girls weren't capable of saying their own names. Mason was more than capable of having a panic attack discretely, surely she could say her name to a classroom full of people. Wait a minute.

"Come on up, dont be shy. Dustin, drum roll." A kid in the front, who wore a hat and a dinosaur hoodie, closed his notebook and drummed his fingers against it. "Class," Mr. Clark began," please welcome, all the way from sunny California, the latest passengers to join us on our curiosity voyage, Mason and Maxine."

Mason swallowed and shuffled awkwardly, "Uh, I'm actually Mason and that's-"

"Max. Not Maxine," Max interrupted her sister, eager to sit down and hide away from the vulturous stares of the class.

"Oh, well, I'm sorry. Um, all aboard, Max and Mason."

The twins hurried past him, finding empty seats in the near back of the class -- Mason scoring one near the window. She pulled her notebook from her backpack and pulled one of her many colorful pens from the side pockets -- the only happiness she ever was given was from those pens.

She sat there for a moment, staring at the blank page in front of her and barely hearing Mr. Clarke lecturing the class. Not surprisingly, she also barely notices Max's elbow slowly shoving Mason's notebook off the desk.

"Dude" -- Mason barely caught the book before it fell and furrowed her brows -- "what the hell?" She dropped her voice to a whisper in Hope's of not getting in trouble on her first day at school for Max's mischief.

"Those guys upfront keep staring at us," Max whispered through her hair. Mason's eyes flickered up and, lo and behold, the four boys were, indeed, staring at them. Well...

"They arent staring at us," Mason corrected, "they're staring at you. "

"Why?"

"How the hell should I know?" Max turned to face forward, playing with her hands after her sister said that. Mason sighed," Don't worry, I have an idea."

Max nodded, trusting her sister,"Okay."

With that, Mason grabbed the top of her blue pen with her teeth and popped it off. She wrote the first thing that came to mind in big letters.

• ○ •

Mason walked into the art room, it was lined with floor to ceiling windows and every wall was a different color. The room was fairly empty, Mason assumed it was because art was pushed onto students as much as sports or academics.

She sighed and took a seat by the window. Some one pulled the stool beside her out and sat down. Mason looked over to find one of the boys who were staring at her sister. He smiled, a small smile that didn't really reach his eyes. He looked like he had a lot on his mind, way too much to deal with for a small boy his age.

"Hi, uh, I'm Will."

Mason returned his smile, her hands were shaking; she buried them in the pockets of her jacket.

"I don't think I need to introduce myself." Mason looked down at the table, he had his sketchbook out and she didn't -- she anxious that she was supposed to already have it out. Did anyone else have it out? Her eyes danced around the room, avoiding Will's beautiful brown ones the whole time.

He noticed her behaviour, and it barely seemed unusual until he realized her leg was bouncing quickly and her bottom lip was pulled tight between her teeth. When she released it from its death grip, he could see the scabs forming across the sensitive skin.

"You'd be right," he laughed, hoping to calm her down,"Mason, yeah? That's a pretty cool name."

"It's a boy's name." Mason ducked down below the table to retrieve her sketchbook from her back pack.

"It can't be a boy's name." Mason looked at him for the first time since he sat down next to her. He smiled goofily, she saw that it reached his eyes this time. Her heart leaped. "How can it be a boy's name if it's your name?"

Mason's lips parted and her leg stopped bouncing for a second, but her hands had exited her pockets and were bending the bottom corner of her sketchbook. "Well, I think my parents wanted a boy."

"Well, I think my mom wanted a dog." He spun a lock of his hair around his finger, "She got the shedding and, I offered to play fetch with her, but she thought that was weird."

Will felt pride swell in his chest, a smile broke out across his face after a sweet snippet of laughter fell from her lips.

Mason let her laughter die into a small smile and she glanced at him, "Hey, I'll, uh, I'll show you mine if you show me yours?"

Will glanced down at his sketch book anxiously, "O-Okay."

They grinned, exchanging books and looking through the other's masterpieces. Each other, carefully calculating their looks at each other to see the other's reaction towards their pride and joy.

• ○ •

"He seemed nice," Mason defended her new friend, despite Max's efforts to deter her away from him.

"No way, he's one of the creeps who stared at us." Max slammed her hand down onto the button and violently yanked the joystick.

"They were staring at you, and maybe they arent creeps maybe they just are curious about the new kids and are too scared to approach."

Max quickly diverted her attention from Dig Dug to Mason and back to Dig Dug before she died. "If that were true, they would've been looking at you too." Mason sighed loudly, laying her head against the side of the machine. "Now, dude, you're really killing my Dig Dug vibe."

"Whatever," Mason shover herself off the machine and turned to her sister, "I'm gonna get a soda, you want anything?"

"Grape and a snickers."

"Got it."

Mason walked away, her hands in her pockets jingling she change, she rubbed her fingers over the rough circles repeatedly to assure herself she had enough to pay for everything.

"What can I get for you," The guy behind the register asked. Mason's eyes dashed across the menu even though she already knew what she wanted.

"Uh, yeah, can I get a strawberry and a grapefruit fanta plus two snickers." She looked down at her pocket to pull out the change. "Oh, uh, please.m," Mason quickly added.

"No problem."

While she waited, Mason leaned against the counter and faced towards where Max was standing at the Dig Dug machine working her magic. Then, her eyes fell on the two boys from their science class."

"Oh, you've got to be shitting me."

As if they sensed her looking at them, the glanced behind them and their eyes widened -- busted.

"Position has been comprised! Fall out!" The curly haired boy shouted, Mason watched as they ran out the door. She sighed, shaking her head and turned towards the counter where the guy had set down her order.

"Thank you." She handed him the money and retreated back to Max. She sighed as she handed max her snickers and held onto the soda for when she finished the game she was playing.

"What's got your panties in a knot?" Max barely glanced at her, taking a giant bite of her snickers.

"Fuckin' creeps." Mason cracked the top of her strawberry soda and took a gulp.

[romacharm]

title: the ways we say i love you chapter: 1/1 fandom: avatar pairing: zutara notes: for @goldenclasp and @zutaraexchange summary:

but this is wartime, dearest. only a few make it out alive. 

[ in which katara and zuko mend the breaks. ]

AO3

i.

zuko knows a number of things, like the smell of early-morning dewdrops dripping from leaves, the crimson glow of a fire fueled by rage, and that he is irrevocably in love with a girl who wants nothing to do with him.

he’s learned to track animal prints, and how to distinguish them; he’s learned tears don’t always mean sadness, and eyes full of affection can turn into something so twisted, so brutal, so vicious.

his mother told him, once, that love is a choice. love is being together after quarreling and spitting angry words, and love is dangerous dance that neither ever learned the steps to. improvise, zuko, and you’ll make it. he’s not sure when it became less about love and more about heartbreak, or survival, but his mother has always had a way of making things fit.

when he was too selfish to listen or understand, his uncle told him love isn’t anything. pure love is unconditional and selfless; that’s all. he said love is something we define for ourselves.

zuko has never thought much of love. and, even if he had, he would have thought love was a distraction, or something he couldn’t ever achieve.

he never thought about the way it could feel to imagine someone’s fingers intertwined in his, someone’s life intertwined in his. until he does, dreaming beside a crackling fire, and the reality of it is like a slap in the face.

to a scarred boy with nothing to call his own, love is a daydream. love is a fantasy. it is not, was not, a reality.

love has no place in war.

(still, he remembers kindness and the feel of her cool fingers against his scar. he doesn’t let anyone touch it. but she did.

somehow it feels right, that it should be her. even though he knows it’s not.)

he shifts in the dark and stares at twinkling lights centuries above him. they sparkle despite everything; they are a constant in a world that has known only injustice for far too long.

and he starts to think, no, love isn't for him. maybe what he's mistaken as love is a reaction, a normal emotion stemming from a super-charged moment surrounded by crystals and loneliness. until he sees her again the next morning, and the glare she shoots him makes his heart unexpectedly pound in his chest.

he knows her narrowed eyes and piercing gaze like the back of his hand, by now. he knows her mistrust and doesn't blame her for it.

but he also knows her soft smile when she cares, the fluid movements of her arms when she waterbends, the way she sleeps without moving, like she's ready to spring into battle at the slightest noise. he knows the ever-present fear in the back of her eyes, and how her expression is almost always guarded and unreadable.

this is wartime, and she was not born a soldier, but she was forced to be one. he knows he had a hand in that.

he has many regrets. but he will make them right again.

.

ii.

katara doesn’t expect zuko to understand. it was his people that took her mother away; how would he know that any kindness she offered him was like disrespecting the circumstances of her mother’s death? she extended to him an olive branch, once, and it turned out to be the worst mistake she’s made. to put trust in someone who rips it apart. to try to help someone who tears her apart.

she ignores his eyes over the fire. the temple is cold and drafty, and she knows zuko is warm, but she’s entirely unwilling to meet him with anything but scorn.

deep within her, she still feels some kind of call to him, some kind of siren song that pulls her toward him. it makes her body tingle with rage and something she doesn’t want to name, something that makes the anger in her even greater. katara tries her best to be a calm and parenting figure, but zuko… zuko.

so she’s surprised when he comes back with suki in tow. she’s surprised he didn’t sell her brother over to the highest bidder at the first possible chance. it’s not enough to trust him yet, but enough to make her think. she’s even more surprised when he helps sneak her out to the general who’d had her mom killed.

even more so when zuko stands back and lets her decide if she should kill. if blood should be on her hands, too. she drops the water around her and turns back to zuko, ready for the day-long flight ahead of them.

this is when she begins trusting him again.

she lets him help her collect food and water and overlooks the way his hand accidentally brushes hers as they walk. she’s not ready for the idea of it being intentional yet.

if zuko is a star she is the rest of night: inky darkness and silvery moonlight. she decides she doesn’t mind it so much.

.

iii.

being friends with katara is nothing like zuko imagined it would be. then again, he wouldn't let himself indulge in those kinds of fantasies much before he actually re-earned her trust; no point in entertaining thoughts that went straight to the pangs in his heart, anyway. they both wake early and sleep late, careful of the rise and fall of moonshine and sunlight, like a dance they tiptoe around together. they spar sometimes at night and in the morning, and they're evenly matched, depending on the time of day.

she opens up to him slowly. first it's a thank-you for helping her find closure. then it's the feel of her hand in his on appa’s back. as romantic as it feels to zuko, it's not meant like that; he knows it's katara’s way of being supportive, of understanding that he's left everything behind for their motley crew of teenagers and a cause to destroy the father he once wished could love. he doesn’t try to read between the lines of her palm.

he could, though. he could torture himself like that. he could let his dreams run away from him and imagine too much too early. she’s not obligated to like him at all, zuko feels lucky every time she doesn’t forcibly oust him from camp ━

then he jolts awake with the ghost of lips on his. his traitorous subconscious shows him scenes he can only wish become real.

by the time they’re safely on ember island, zuko’s hope has been only slightly rekindled. the girl-turned-warrior he’s fallen in love with still has a soft streak to her, like low tide, such a contrast from her sharp ice-rain. that morning after he’s tossed and turned for hours, he finally sits up. katara looks over at him.

“feeling alright?” she asks.

zuko rubs his head. “yeah, i think.”

she’s already finished making breakfast, is sharpening knives of ice using a rigid stone. the small smile on her fast juxtaposes the violent scraping of rock on ice.

“you look like you haven’t slept,” katara observes.

“i was thinking,” zuko says.

“penny for your thoughts?”

zuko stands and sits next to her on the steps, resting his elbows on his knees. “i just… i have my doubts. who knows how all this is going to end.”

katara nods but says nothing, pausing mid-scrape. she drops her tools and takes zuko’s hand, reassuring in her calm, steady grip. nothing like his hands that tremble as he combs them through his short hair. they sit for a while, resting, until the others wake up.

.

iv.

the ember island players are arguably the best part of their time on the island, but that’s not saying much. there was only one thing that the play got right: growing feelings, at least on zuko’s part. as they trudge back to camp, he can’t help but notice more acutely the slope of katara’s shoulders, the way she ushers them all along, the mother hen of the group.

he notices, over the next few days, the soft smiles that come to her face when she’s content, the stressed furrow of her brows, the slight downturn of her unimpressed mouth. he notices her mouth a lot.

but they are warriors, bred to hurt and kill, taught by powers beyond their control to hate and fight and never surrender. zuko only learns the true meaning of surrender when she stares into his eyes for a brief moment, affection in the undertones of her stunning blue eyes.

they’re alone one night when zuko finally begins to break. he looks at her lips for a beat too long, and katara notices. he’s afraid she’ll pull away from him immediately, terminate the friendship they’ve been growing ever since the abandoned air temple ━ but she doesn’t. katara’s eyes flit down over his mouth, his chest, back up to his eyes. she smirks like a challenge.

“is it okay,” zuko asks, “if i kiss you?”

“i was starting to think you’d never ask,” katara murmurs.

for once, zuko does not hesitate. he presses his mouth to hers quickly; heat overcomes the simmering fire in his veins, and he feels the cool touch of her water when she reaches up and splays her fingers along his cheek. he pulls her toward him with an arm around her waist, reveling in this, the intoxicating, beautiful feel of katara and zuko.

.

v.

when all is said and done, they move to the fire nation. katara wanders with wide eyes around peacetime festivals, no longer trying to reconcile the three versions of the fire nation she now knows: a band of cruel murders, a desolate people in search of hope, and a rowdy crowd filled to the brim with enthusiasm.

zuko links his arm through hers and pulls her toward a stand selling strange, blue drinks for a coin a cup. in the time that comes, he will be passing laws and treaties and orders to get the fire nation back on his feet. but zuko knows, he will not be alone. he takes a sip of sparkling blue magic and looks at the girl at his side, dressed now in red with the stab of her blue eyes. he sees katara and she sees him.

some say the love between them could only have lasted during the war. when they were both soldiers, fighting for the same cause. but zuko and katara both agree ━ the real story starts here.

[dustydahlin]

Transformation and Renewal - Romans 12:1-2

Subject: The goal of this article is to dissect Romans 12:1-2 so as to identify the relationship between worship and transformation. I intend to help you understand how to have a deeper relationship with God, according to this amazing little Scripture. 

{Click here to watch the corresponding video}

Remember the Magic Eye Illustrations of the 1990's? Remember how the discordant patterns and vibrant colors overlaid a single picture that was intended to be seen? The entire point of these visual illusions was to see the picture within the pattern. "If you looked at them in just the right way," you would be able to see the intended picture. (Examples below).

{Fun fact:

These pictures encoded Single-Image-Stereograms (SIS's) in colorful and seemingly discordant patterns. The SIS's are simply a series of dots, strategically placed, that would (when looked at the right way) allow the eye to see a 3D image within the pattern.}

It can be the same same way with the Bible. Sometimes, we can get distracted with the inherent beauty of a particular passage, and/or interpret a Scripture according to our own understanding or presuppositions. It seems to me Scripture can (sometimes) be like the Magic Eye Illustrations. We have an idea as to what the surface patterns are, and yet sometimes we have difficulty seeing the pictures composed inside the patterns. Sometimes this can be a difficulty of Scripture. More often than not, Scripture can be pretty straight forward – more or less direct and clear. Yet in certain instances with certain topics – with certain Texts - it can be difficult to ascertain the full picture. We can see the patterns on the surface. We can see the beautiful colors of inspiration, and the divine brushstrokes of grace. However, there are times where we miss the intended picture because we approach the Word through a postmodern worldview (lens). We read into the Text our own cultural, doctrinal, and/or philosophical presuppositions. Like with the Magic Eye Illustrations, there are some Passages that must be “looked at the right way.” We must diligently apply the rules of hermeneutics to our study of God’s word, in order to see the big picture.

​I submit, this is the case with our Romans 12:1-2 Passage. After a little bit of study, I have concluded that I have had the wrong understanding of this Text. Up until now, I have only seen the beautiful patterns presented in it, but I have missed the picture that was intended to be seen the whole time. I believe God has a word for us, today, that will not only challenge how we understand this Scripture, but it will grant us a clearer vision of what a it means to have a deep spiritual life and a deep relationship with our Lord, Jesus Christ.

looking into the pattern!

"I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect" (Rom. 12:1-2; ESV).

Let us look at some of the significant key words of this Scripture for some understanding.

"In view of Gods Mercies" -

​Paul emotes! By the Spirit of God, Paul presents an incredibly emotional plea for the believer to view the mercies of God in such a way that it would cause the heart to respond with worship!

"Paul boldly states the truth of God, but here he comes pleading with us! I see him lift the pen from the paper and look around at us and say, 'I urge you, in view of the mercies of God, God's great mercy to you, His many mercies, His continued mercies.' What stronger plea could the apostle have? And what we are to do? We are to present our bodies to God, not our souls along, to make real, practical work of it" (Spurgeon).

The spiritual implication is this: as we reflect upon, rehearse, and make personal the mercies of God, it should provoke the believer to action.

"present your bodies" -

To the Greek, this would have been ground breaking. During this time in history, the Greeks had an interesting mindset. They firmly believed that "the body" was so evil and so pervasively immoral that there was no reason to "even try" to do good with the body. "An ancient Greek never thought of presenting his body to God. They thought the body was so unspiritual that God didn’t care about it" (Guzik). And not just that God didn’t care about it, He wouldn’t want it. They would have been floored that God doesn’t just want the intellect or soul, He desires physical, outward obedience. This is the key phrase to understanding the this whole Passage. Everything flows from this concept. (See Graph Below).

(By Dusty Dahlin)

"a living sacrifice" -

To the Jew, this would have held incredible significance! They would have understood, better than anyone, what God required for a sacrifice. Levitically, before an animal sacrifice could have been offered to God, it had to be deemed "clean, spotless, and without blemish" (Lev. 4: 3, 23, 32; Lev. 1: 3, 10, Lev. 3:1, 6). They would have had no choice but to bring to mind the mercies of God; they would have understood that this was yet another reminder of the grace of God to justify the individual. They would have known that God's mercy was responsible for, first, having cleansed them and made them righteous. They were, in the sight of God, clean and pure – without spot, stain, or blemish. They understood the implication was that they had been made clean and blameless before God. And so now, they were able to give themselves fully to the Lord.

"spiritual worship" -

This can also be rendered "reasonable service." It seems obvious that Paul seeks to conjure to mind the priestly service performed at the temple. The concept which leaves "worship" and "service" synonymously linked is that of the priestly duties which worships God through serving others.

"And" -

In the Greek, the grammar between verses 1 and 2 should be noted. The Greek concludes that both of these verses are inextricably connected. "Verse 2, while grammatically parallel to Verse 1, really explains in more detail how this giving of ourselves as sacrifices is to be understood" (Douglas J. Moo; IVP).

"do not be conformed" -

This is an interesting word. This word is made up of  σύν (which means "beside, with, or accompany") and σχῆμα. The word σχῆμα refers to "the habitus, as comprising everything in a person which strikes the senses, the figure, bearing, discourse, actions, manner of life etc." (Blue Letter Bible). Being that the mind is mentioned a little later, we may be tempted to understand this as singularly referring to the mind, intellect, or thought life. This word, however, must be understood as being connected to the whole way of life. This is helpful to understand this in conjunction with the presentations of our bodies to the Lord – not only the presentation of our minds. This command is that of making every effort to keep from falling into the world's systems and patterns of living. While the world would take and take and take, the Believer is to give selflessly of his whole-self. We are not to present our bodies to corrupt worldly pleasures...

"be transformed" -

Again, this word transformed (μεταμορφόω - metamorphoō) is connected to the offering of our bodies – our entire lives – to God. This can be best understood along the lines of sanctification. As we serve God by serving others and pattern our lives after faithful and sincere obedience, we will find ourselves more and more transformed/sanctified. We must fashion not only our thoughts but our actions in loving obedience to Christ. He did, after all, bestow many mercies upon us. Mercy upon mercy, He justified us and made us righteous before him. We can now understand that we are clean, guiltless, and without spot or blemish. We may now live according to His many mercies and be continuously transformed.

“Only let us hold true to what we have attained” (Phil. 3:16).​

"renewal of your minds" -

Yet again, the concept of “renewing the mind” is juxtaposed to presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice to God. Culturally speaking, it is important to know that a Jew would have understood spiritual transformation and the renewal of the mind differently than we. According to Allen Hirsch, a Jew would have understood that transformation of mind would not only include knowing information, it would have also included action (Allen Hirsch; “Forgotten Ways”). In other words, transformation of the mind would have never have been separated from practice. (See Diagram Below).

​{By Allen Hirsch, "Forgotten Ways"}

And so, in true fashion, Paul would have had in mind that as one views, learns of, and experiences the many mercies of God, it would lead to transformation as the individual demonstrates this knowledge through a change in behavior, action, and practice. The renewal of the mind, to a Jew, would have been inextricable from action/practice.

​

“That by” -

other translations render this “So that.” This communicates a result. “That by/So that” shows what the result of presenting your body before God, in serving others, begets.

“may discern what is the will of God...” -

The result of fashioning one's life – thinking, behaviors, speech, and selfless service to others – is the discerning of God’s will. This is incredible! As we sacrificially give of ourselves for the benefit of others, we position ourselves to hear from God and discern His will. As we view glory, love, and mercy of God, and begin to participate with the Holy Spirit in our progressive transformation through serving the needs of others, the ongoing result is that of spontaneous revelations of God’s will for us.

​

The Big Picture! ​

Simply put, the believer can position themselves to experience a deeper spiritual life with Christ through service.

Firstly, as the believer engages in expressions of worship that seek to glorify God through serving others, these acts of sacrificial service help to keep the individual from being conformed to the patterns of this world. Service is a powerful way to battle the selfishness of the flesh and combat the enticing luster of the world.

Also, from a place joy – having experienced the mercies of God – the believer is able to participate/cooperate with the Holy Spirit in the process of transformation and sanctification.

​​“I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification” (Rom. 6:19).

​Like in our Passage, this one also speaks to the fact that we get to participate/cooperate with the Holy Spirit in the process of sanctification. As we make the conscious efforts to present our members (everything we DO in the body) to God, we hike the trail of sanctification. (Also, reference 1 Th. 4: 3 and 1 Peter 1:2).

​

Secondly, as we worship and glorify God by serving others, we find greater fulfillment and satisfaction in operating under our divinely intended purpose. ​

Our Romans 12 Passage is riddled with the reality of our new identity and with our priestly calling. We are to understand that, the moment we placed our faith in Jesus Christ, we have been ushered into the “priesthood of believers.” Like it was in under the Old Covenant, we are also to consider our worship and our purpose the same! We are to serve and worship God by serving the needs of the people. As we continuously learn to submit ourselves to the work of Christ through service, we experience the peace and joy of knowing we are operating under what God would ultimately desire of His children.

​

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9).

Finally, not only is sacrificial service one of the ways that we get to participate in the many blessings and glories given to those of faith, but is holds a promise of hearing from God. If our desire is for a clearer vision and greater insight into the will of God for us, we will position ourselves – through service – to discern the will of God! The result of sincere and sacrificial service is that of receiving spontaneous revelations of God's will.

Additional Recommendations:

“The Letter to the Romans (New International Commentary on the New Testament)”

“Romans (The NIV Application Commentary)” 

“A Theology of the New Testament”

“Militant Thankfulness: An Essential Practice to Experiencing a Full Spiritual Life”

[sailor-cresselia]

Zi-O 19 and 20: lol whoops waited a long time, might as well do them at once!

~We now bring you our Quiz Saga Liveblog.~

WhiteWoz’s Storytime Void is infuriating. Both because it’s so visually cluttered with all of the times displayed, and because the MULTITUDE of ticking sounds.

I love that the boys don’t have to stay still to transform. Seeing their transformation backdrops follow them like this, as their running, it’s great!

(I’m still pretty sure that Oma Zi-O’s bizarre chair is his transformation backdrop, by the way. At least, assuming that he’s not Another Zi-O.)

Is that a GOOGLY EYE on Another Quiz’s forehead?!

Sougo’s using the gun mode an awful lot lately.

“That monster is mine.” Yeah, it sure is, buddy. It SURE IS.

Hm, don’t think I noticed last time, but “The lessons of the past can’t be clouded by lies” is what’s playing over the shot of Rider Woz in the OP. Does that apply to the lessons of the future, as well?

Hey, Kamen Rider Quiz. You’re a little overpowered, there. We’ve already got ONE reality warper affecting our actions. We don’t need two, thank you very much.

I can FEEL the ‘We are not okay with this fight’ just RADIATING off of both Sougo and Geiz as this guy’s attacking them.

Geiz is still immediately here for the Woz’s nicknames, and Sougo’s getting a kick out of ticking off ‘his’ Woz. I love it.

The Another Rider and the Original Rider both existing at the same time… I haven’t seen the rest of the episode, of course, but I’d guess it’s a combination of “someone brought Actual Quiz back in time”, “Sequence Breaking”, and “The rules of time travel aren’t nearly as set in stone as they have been led to believe.”

(Yes, I’m sticking to that particular gun, come Helheim or high water.)

Sougo has a point – BlackWoz doesn’t come along for the fights, like, ever. He didn’t last time against Another Shinobi, not really. Not on his own; he was following Sougo to try and keep him away. So YES, Sougo’s calling you out on being out of character.

HI YES have I mentioned I really like when this season does ‘parallel version splitscreen’ shots? Like, during the Gaim arc with the two Sougos, and during “Fourze and Faiz” with Sougo and Geiz in the two respective time planes. It’s GREAT.

It’s a thing that the past few seasons have done, actually – these sort of split-views of characters. Ex-Aid used it a number of times for Emu and Parad’s conversations when they were fighting each other, particularly as Mighty Brothers XX L and R, where they went back and forth showing the suits in the ‘real world’ and the civilians in a mirrory, shadowy mindscape. Then, in Another Ending, there were several times during Genm vs Lazer that Kiriya and Kuroto were juxtaposed with their Rider forms. THAT was played a lot in the second half of Build – scenes alternating between having the armor and the civilian talking in the middle of a fight. To say nothing of the Takumi/Sento swaps, where they would sometimes change which actor was present when Takumi was talking. Sometimes. I really like that ‘form meets function’ aspect – remind the viewer who is under the mask, or who’s in the pilots seat, and it’s just really cool. The synchronized alt-selves talking is just another extension of that, be it a time-displaced Sougo or a Woz from a different timeline altogether.

… um.

Actually, whatever happened to “3 days from now” Sougo?

Suuuure, these are the only two options. Riiiight. “Take Quiz’s power (and totally kill your friend)” or “No More Mutants Riders.” Yeaaaah, we’ll get RIGHT on that, thanks Woz’s.

AHAHAHA NO. Uncle Tokiwa… ‘given how long it’s been stopped’ that watch is a Tragic Keepsake for Quiz, isn’t it? I mean, he’s from the future and all, so.

“Oh! Sougo, you have a lot of friends who like clocks! This one can stay for lunch too!”

“Um, uncle, no, this one has directly tried to kill me, actually, so maybe not-”

Ohhh. Right… Assuming the ‘riders lose their memories without their powers’ is true, which the characters all still believe is, even though i’m not so sure…

Taking Quiz’s powers while he’s… um, 2040 minus 2019 is…

Taking Quiz’s powers while he’s 21 years in the past is NOT a good thing.

“You will soon be forced to make some rather merciless decisions. Consider this practice.”

HEY WHITE WOZ. I’m not liking your expressions here. That’s waay more sketchy than someone who ‘supports’ their ‘savior’ has any business looking. Like, not even a creepy adoration sketchy, just. Plain creepy.

Oh no, that’s right, Another Quiz is Actual Quiz’s father. And now Mondo says that ‘he was talented, according to [his] mother.” Which means that in the proper timeline that he’s from… he never knew his father.

(Re-Ray plays quietly in the background)

Sougo has ZERO points. Poor Tsukuyomi only has three. Mondo quit it, you’re the GUEST here. Show some mercy on your poor, moronic host.

Geiz, what’re ya doing sneaking downstairs? (It could only be Geiz, because he’s wearing pants that fit.)

(gasp) GEIZ! You’re not wearing your harness! I was starting to think it was part of you!

(Congratulations! You didn’t do a violence!)

~skipping to the fight~

INSERT SONG: GEIZ TIME!

Okay, but really, when are they releasing these? And how many more are we going to get? Because so far I’m liking what I’m hearing, from this one and from Sougo’s in ep 16.

Not really sure what those sound effects are with your Ex-Aid armor today, though, Geiz.

Decade!OOO is Tajador. We want our bird.

BUT. Sougo’s movements are… eerily Eiji-like right now.

Hey, didn’t I say something about ‘when he stops being a knock-off, that’s when we need to worry?’ That would have been… right, last time was when I was watching the raw of episode 15. When Sougo was pulling off a pretty decent version of the Rabbit Tank Sparkling finisher. And then in 16, he was using Mighty Brothers XX pretty accurately, as well.

HM.

They go for the finisher, and the music stops dead when Hora freezes time. It’s disconcerting enough when that they do that with the background music. When it’s VOCALS that cut out, it’s terrifying.

Neither Geiz or Sougo are meant to take attacks from other Kamen Riders. It’s why Geiz was so poorly off after that curb-stomp Sougo gave him in the first part of “OOO and Genm.” It’s why Decade dealt so much more damage to both of them. And they just got hit with each other’s finishers.

WhiteWoz cares not for your puny ‘morals’ or ‘sense of right and wrong’ or ‘geiz’s growing realization that he’s not going to be able to go through with killing zi-o’.

WhiteWoz cares not for anyone.

Hey, Showy McSynth Pop? I don’t think it counts as winning if you hack the timeline to let yourself win.

So, Quiz’s backstory is breaking my heart. He just wants to see if his father actually loved his mother. That’s tragic. “Until she knows the truth, I don’t think my mother will be able to move on.”

About as equally tragic? Sougo’s line. “I think I understand.” said hesitantly, as he sits down, with restrained movements. Usually, when he’s Sougo (as opposed to Zi-O), the kids arms are almost constantly in some sort of motion. But he folded them and sat quietly down.

Sougo… what happened to your parents?

Geiz, baby, please tell me that the attack is at least partly a stunt? That you talked to Mondo before you guys came here?

Geiz??

(enter episode 20!)

We’re back to BlackWoz’s Storytime Vault! Hooray!

So: Sougo gets BlackWoz to help him and Mondo get out, via nifty Magic Scarf powers. Hora brings Another Quiz with her. And WhiteWoz is a total creeper calling them cowards.

The sunlight light overtaking Geiz and going into the 20 Rider Kicks logo is GREAT. Not only is it a great method for a transition, but it keeps us from seeing what Geiz is feeling – which it needs to, right now.

I’m pretty sure that was a sigh of relief from Geiz when Sougo and company left, after all.

The sequence breaking Another Riders seem to be a lot MORE painful to become than the Regular Another Riders… and those were already painful to watch. (Another Quiz’s eyes flashed red and blue briefly when he transformed, that’s nifty!)

Yup, I was right. The watch is a Tragic Keepsake. It was Mondo’s dads, and I think it broke today.

Sougo shows off his ‘Low INT, High WIS’ stats again. Did terribly at the quiz last episode, but can tell that Mondo’s not just here for his mothers sake. (Sougo, what happened to your parents?)

Geiz asks Tsukuyomi what Sougo would do. Well, he asks what “Zi-O” would do, and I eagerly await the day we get to see “Zi-O” become “Sougo” for him. Please let it happen. I’m still upset that nobody expect for Kasumi and Kazumin ever called Ryuuga by his name, this is almost as bad.

When she says that he’d try and prioritize Mondo’s feelings, he replies that “I guess we’ll have to fight. Make sure you tell him that.”

I don’t think that’s what you actually mean, Geiz. I think you’ve got a plan.

I hope you’ve got a plan. … one that you’ll be able to follow through on, because we know full well how that original plan is going.

And through these last two scenes – inside and outside of 9-to-5, the piano version of Over Quartzer is playing. It’s a thing of beauty.

Hm. “I guess we’ll have to fight”… Geiz, you were talking about you and Sougo, as opposed to you and Mondo, weren’t you? Because you went straight for Zi-O, not for Quiz. Clever boy.

Wait, when did you get Build?! I get that the watches are interchangeable, but you’ve been running Ex-Aid a lot lately, too.

(Now I kind of want to know if the Cross-Z and Genm watches are compatible with the Decade adapter…)

Sougo took a BEATING with that Build finisher, didn’t he…?

Nah, not as much as he could have… it looks like Geiz was pulling his punches, so to speak.

Sougo pulls the ‘which Woz are you?’ gag, and actually gets BlackWoz to refer to himself as such. Sougo gets a kick out of that, Tsukuyomi is dully surprised, and Woz is disgusted with himself.

Heehee… neither of them are telling their respective Woz’s what their own plans are. And neither of them are actually agreeing with their respective Woz’s goals.

Pity the respective Woz’s don’t acknowledge that last fact.

Sougo asks what Geiz would do… and when Tsukuyomi tells him that Geiz asked her the same respective question about him… that seems to tell Sougo everything he needs to know.

Low INT, High WIS. Sougo, you’re a deceptively devious little twig, aren’t you?

(WhiteWoz, knocking Hora down wasn’t necessary. Because I don’t believe for a SECOND that Geiz did THAT.)

Sougo, you deceptively observant little twig.

“So… Tsukuyomi said that Geiz asked her what I would do. I know I would let them interact. So, if he’s doing what I would do, then that’d be why he attacked me up there. So now I have to hold up his end of what he would do, and go straight to getting rid of the obstacle. So, I’ll take on RiderWoz, and let Geiz lead the father-son chat.”

So… The HeiGen Forever movie IS, in fact, canon, then? Because that’s the Double Ridewatch right there. And- pft – the Gaia Memory shoulder pads are temporarily little stick figures – pftHAHAHA! And they do the pre-transformation pose before attaching – this is absurd oh my god!

Of COURSE beating Another Quiz could work with Kamen Rider Quiz!

If a Riders power can only exist at one point in time; which still sounds fake, but I’ll allow it for now; the one that comes later seems to take priority. All the previous Another Riders were made after the Proper Rider already existed. That’s why the watches that our riders use had to be picked up in the present day – that way, they came into existence after the Another Rider did.

The exception to that is Shinobi, who didn’t exist at all yet, and was rendered impossible by being his own Another Rider.

In this case, Kamen Rider Quiz technically is the later iteration. He became a Rider in the future, and he’s here via time travel. So, chronologically speaking, Another Quiz came into existence in 2019, but Kamen Rider Quiz does not exist yet. So he can be considered the ‘replacement’.

SOUGO NO DO THE FINISHER IN THE LIGHT I WANT TO SEE IT PROPE-

wait it’s a Double finisher with CYCLONE JOKER? Maybe I don’t want to see it properly, Joker’s finishers are usually borderline body-horror…

Okay no, we’re good, it’s still iffy but it’s not nearly Joker Extreme levels of iffy, so we’re fine. I am A-OK with this finisher being a bootleg.

RiderWoz is OP. Sougo’s REALLY hurting after that.

Sougo and Geiz are. Not. Meant. To. Fight. Riders.

This scene with Mondo questioning his father is absolutely heartwrenching you guys. Made even more so by the piano version of Over Quartzer picking up where it left off earlier.

And then RiderWoz just has to come in and ruin everything. And use some TOTAL overkill on those attacks – oh GOD with actual lightning bolts and everything, and I had thought Quiz’s attacks were brutal when HE was doing them?

WhiteWoz cares not for your puny human morals or ethics.

Hey. HEY. What did those two watches just DO to Geiz? The bizarre vision thing is one problem as is, the electric shock is another, but something ELSE about that just effected him. Poorly.

WhiteWoz is in some serious trouble.

Hey. HEY. ProperWoz. What is that watch you just handed to Uncle Tokiwa? Why do you have Sougo’s upgrade?

I am glaring in the directions of BOTH Woz iterations. You’re BOTH super sketchy. But at least the first Woz is a more tolerable type of sketchy. At least he doesn’t seem to delight in other peoples pain.

SO I’m having fun with this again! Just have to hold out hope that they know what they’re doing with the previous riders, and keep going!

After all...

Mondo doesn’t seem to have lost his memories, now does he?

[redpandanewsnetwork-blog]

EXCLUSIVE: Former Pentagon Chief of Staff, Kevin Sweeney, Validates Controversial Conspiracy Theories Concerning the Moon Landing, 9/11, and Extraterrestrials

WASHINGTON — On Sunday the former Pentagon chief of staff — Kevin Sweeney — resigned. The news of his resignation comes days after James Mattis, former Secretary of Defense, announced his departure from President Trump’s administration. 

In an exclusive interview with Red Panda News Network reporter, Melissa Mahoney, Sweeney validated some of the wildest conspiracy theories, such as the faking of the Apollo moon landing, 9/11 as an inside job, and even the existence of reptilian aliens. 

A transcript of the conversation is below.

Good morning, Mr. Sweeney. Thank you for agreeing to this interview. 

Good morning to you, Ms. Mahoney. It’s no problem at all. It’s nice to air out old laundry anyway [laughs].

So firstly, a question that I’m sure is on everyone’s mind: Why did you choose to resign? 

Well, to tell you the truth, Ms. Mahoney, it’s because I didn’t want to be there when everything collapses on the Trump administration. [Laughs heartily]

I’m glad to see you’re in good spirits this morning. I can imagine it must be tough working under a president who’s been known to shut out any sort of criticism. 

Ah, well, thank you. I smoked a fat joint about thirty minutes before coming into this studio. I love this newfound freedom I have. Normally I’d be nervous, but anyone who leaves this batshit insane administration is bound to land a book deal anyway. Case in point, Sean Spicer’s new book, The Briefing, and whatever piece vitriol Scaramucci released this past Fall [referring to Anthony Scaramucci’s newest book, Trump: The Blue Collar President].

Well, they do say that there’s no such thing as bad press. 

Unless you’re Hillary Clinton, that is. 

Point taken. Anyway, you told me before the interview that you wanted to shed some light on “matters of grave importance.” You mentioned that one of these “matters” is the staging of the Apollo missions and the moon landing. Can you tell me more about how this was staged?

Oh boy, yes, the Apollo missions were a whole bunch of baloney. Honestly, they just had some kids from NYU’s film and theater department covertly work with the Johnson and then Nixon administrations to stage a moon landing in Los Angeles. They just got a bunch of sand and juxtaposed some images of the beach and ran it through some filters. It was the height of the Cold War and the Soviets were launching apes into space and well, we had to respond to that. I mean, a monkey in space? How cool is that?! America really needed to one-up them, so we did with some good ol’ fashioned Hollywood magic. Getting the lighting and flag motions on photograph was rather hard though. As you can imagine, it’s not easy to recreate the moon on earth, but somehow they managed. 

Wow, so you’re saying that Americans have never visited the moon?

No American has ever visited the moon, but the lunar rover in the 90s was the real deal. By that point, we really did have the technology to send humans to the moon as well. But we already had the victory so it didn’t make sense for the government to fund NASA to send more people to the moon when rovers and satellites could collect all the samples needed. 

Unbelievable. Honestly, I’m not sure what to say. That really must be a tough pill to swallow for Baby Boomers. 

Yes, it is indeed. But swallow the pill we must if we’re to move on. 

There’s no shortage of wisdom from you, it seems. Another popular conspiracy theory is that the “Planes Plan” was a cover-up for the attacks on the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon, which for the former was a controlled demolition, and the latter a missile strike. Do the conspiracies here hold any water?

Absolutely. The Planes Plan was a complete and utter lie. My cousin, Todd Sweeney, was one of the demolition experts in charge of the towers. Sure, actual planes were involved in the Twin Towers attacks, but do you really think jet fuel could melt steel beams? That’s just ludicrous. The way those towers collapsed looked like something out of a Tonka Truck commercial. It was way too clean — the kind of controlled construction project our dear leader could only dream he was capable of orchestrating. 

And what about the Pentagon?

Oh, yeah, we just shot that son-of-a-bitch with a MIM-104 Patriot missile. That baby is a true work of American ingenuity right there. Probably the most iconic SAM [surface-to-air missile] in our Republic’s arsenal.

How is it possible that all of this remained such a closely guarded secret?

Same way that the CIA-sponsored assassination of JFK remained secret: through careful planning, big money, and vacuum-sealed lips. 

Wait, JFK was assassinated by the CIA?

Yes, but I don’t think we’re going to have time to get into that one. 

That’s true. Ah, but now I’m so curious... But back to the point; tell me who was in charge of the September 11 attacks?

It was mostly a threesome between Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Rumsfeld. Cheney’s got a long history of making money off of warfare with Haliburton. He goaded President Bush into following his lead. He manipulated Bush by attacking his insecurities. You see, George W. Bush was terribly anxious about living up to his father’s expectations. I mean, his father was a beloved president and George W. Bush knew he didn’t have the chops. But still, his father sort of pigeonholed him into the presidency. It’s a sad story about an even sadder man.

That’s a shame.

It sure is. As for Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, well, they’ve had a neoliberal — or as I like to call it, a neolibtard — circle jerk for quite some time. They’ve always been war brokers and this was just another business plan as far as they were concerned. 

Well, this is all just so much to take in. If what you’re saying is true, it would change everything. And you’ll be going into far more detail about these and other conspiracies and government secrets in your upcoming book, right? 

Absolutely. I know it may seem presumptuous to think I’ve definitely got a book deal coming, but come on. If that jerk off Scaramucci can land a deal, then any idiot can. I mean, It’s a crazy time we’re living in. Hillary Clinton’s book [referring to Clinton’s book, What Happened], is a New York Times Best Seller, for crying out loud. This is the age of hack writers, I’m telling ya.

Is there any other conspiracy you’d like to confirm before our time is up?

The earth has been visited by extraterrestrial life. Roswell? Full of aliens. Our nation’s capitol? Also full of aliens. The whole “grays” thing is hogwash, though. The reptilian conspiracy theorists got it right. However, neither the Clintons nor the Obamas are themselves reptilians as some claim. No, they just work with them directly. But don’t hold your breath, Republicans, cause plenty of folks in the GOP work for them too. I’m sure he won’t admit it, but Paul Ryan plays pool with them every Saturday night. I’ll leave the rest up to the readers’ imaginations until the book comes out. But if you really can’t wait to find out then I suggest you find yourself a dealer and start smoking some DMT [referring to the potent psychoactive hallucinogen]. 

Well Mr. Sweeney, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you again for agreeing to this interview with me.

Anytime, Ms. Mahoney, anytime. 

[secretcinema3]

The Killer Elite

Cinema is the stuff dreams are made of, all our romantic reveries and daydreams come to life, a projection of the perfect world we'd love to be living in, full of excitement and happy endings. Or it would be if it wasn't for one little problem: not all our dreams are so wholesome. In fact some are downright scary. And nothing gets at the malign impulses lurking in our subconscious quite like cinema. It's something filmmakers have known since the earliest days; audiences love the vicarious thrill of illicit acts just as much as wholesome ones.

Which brings us to the horror and fascination we have with those who disobey the most serious of all the Ten Commandments. As Ernest Hemingway once observed, ''when a man is still in rebellion against death he has pleasure in taking to himself one of the Godlike attributes, that of giving it. This is one of the most profound feelings in those men who enjoy killing.'' What he neglected to mention was the pleasure an audience often experiences, whether it's in the bullring or the cineplex, while watching this rebellion against death. It's a primeval experience, a ritualistic act, one that connects cinema to ancient rites and religious transfiguration. The cinematic killer enacts our hidden desire to kill and our hidden relief that the victim is someone else. They die for us, so we don't have to. They kill for us, so we don't have to. So whether it's the serial killer, the vigilante or the hitman, the killer is always with us, haunting our dreams, charming our worst instincts, hunting us down with remorseless determination. Here are five of the more memorable of cinema's most troubling and enduring residents.

1. Speaking of Hemingway, his short-story The Killers was the basis for one of the great noirs of the 1940s. Two hitmen (Charles McGraw and William Conrad) arrive in the small town of Bedford to kill someone called 'the Swede'. As they move in on the local diner, their long coats and hats, the anonymous suit of the professional killer, add to the silhouetted menace. Inside they wait for the Swede to arrive, ordering food and talking to the owner and the one customer (Hemingway surrogate Nick Adams). McGraw and Conrad are impeccably hard-boiled here, barely-restrained violence embedded in every seemingly mundane exchange, voices oozing sullen condescension and contrariness. The levels of big city contempt Conrad gets into the line: ‘‘They all come here and eat the big dinner’’ is something else. They’re school bullies codified as angels of death, talking down to grown men (‘Town’s full of bright boys’), blood as cool as lizards. The film goes on to tell us why the Swede (Burt Lancaster) has ended up here but it starts with this recreation of the original story in all its noirish brilliance.

https://youtu.be/9Z0oYYl7FJY?t=1m27s

2. We can't talk killers without talking Hitchcock. Killers were one of specialties and I could pick five clips from him alone. In the end I chose Bruno Anthony from Strangers On A Train. It's an incomparable performance from Robert Walker, the killer as psychopath, victim and charmer all in one. When Bruno stalks the young woman at the carnival Hitchcock invests the innocence of rides and signs (’Magic Isle’/‘Tunnel of Love’) with foreboding, all that darkness surrounding the bright fantasy world. We see the normal predatory desires of young men juxtaposed against the murderous kind following them. (Watch Bruno relishing the popcorn, appetites aroused by the prospect of the kill). But Hitchcock was always trying to implicate us in his murderous schemes, manipulating us to identify with killers, and here as Bruno murders the young woman Hitch lowers her body into our laps, presents her to us as a sacrificial offering in the dark reflection of her fallen glasses. We’ve got what we wanted all along, our true desires revealed. We’re no different to Bruno, really, his body distorted and demonic now in the visionary frame (within-a-frame) of those most Hitchcockian of glasses.

https://youtu.be/Kl9fOZFpess

3. It's hard to imagine the western without killers. The gunslinger, the outlaw and the gun-for-hire were staples of pretty much every western ever made. So an enormous wealth of ornery so-and-sos in black hats to choose from then. I've gone for an Italian take on this most American of genres. Surely few killers have ever had a cooler (or better soundtracked) entrance than blue-eyed Frank in Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time In The West. We’ve just watched the McBain family brutally gunned down. One child remains, rushing out of the house, stopping abruptly as he sees the bodies of his family lying in the dirt. (This moment, the point-of-view camera rushing towards the door, then the close-up of the child’s face as Morricone’s heart-stopping music erupts is as thrilling as it gets). The mystery gunmen emerge from the brush, five faceless bringers of death, long coats billowing in the dust as they approach. Then the camera pans slowly forward and around to the leader’s face. It’s Henry Fonda, paragon of liberal justice in films like The Grapes of Wrath and Twelve Angry Men. Surely he won’t shoot the child? ‘What are we going to do with this one Frank?’ Frank spits on the ground, on our expectations, on his own reputation. Fuck that Henry Fonda. You think you know someone? ‘Now that you’ve called me by name,’ he replies. But this is just an excuse. Frank’s cold blue eyes have already told us what’s going to happen next.

https://youtu.be/QqTfBysL0wE

4. Not all movie killers are human, of course. Monsters, alien creatures and pissed-off animals have all menaced mankind over the years. Most of these can be explained by the unpredictability of nature or our instinctual fear of the unknown. Movies where we imagine being preyed upon by our own technology, on the other hand, are harder to explain. John Carpenter's Christine is a good example of this. In Stephen King's original book the car was haunted. In the film, however, it has no discernible reason for turning on humanity. It's just bad and it wants to kill us. Of course, it might be the culture that’s haunted, the dream of 50s America going sour in the 80s night, the eerie, mocking sound of doo-wop in the air. ‘You ain’t mad are ya?’ asks doomed bully Moochie Welch prompting the car’s headlights to explode like solar flares. Oh yes, Christine’s mad all right, mad as hell. (It’s a 1958 Plymouth Fury after all). Mad all the big-finned promise of the American Dream has been betrayed. Or maybe the murderous car represents the auto destruction of a society destroying itself, especially with machines. Techno-phobia was clearly in the air in 1983. Maybe Christine travelled back from the same future depicted the following year in The Terminator, where all our machines have finally risen up against us. 

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbHKdn0XScg&hl=en_GB&fs=1&rel=0]

5. And finally, a more recent phenomenon is the rise of the female killer. A staple of exploitation movies and comic books, the female killer has been gradually making her way into the mainstream as trash aesthetics and comic book sensibilities take over popular culture. Girls kicking ass is a win-win for everyone, female empowerment meets geek boy fantasy in an unholy alliance. Tarantino has something to do with it, as did TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. However, these killers tended to be wronged women on revenge missions or weak-armed but pretty girls not entirely convincing at running. But not always, and not anymore. Take the brutal elegance of Charlize Theron’s Cold War spy in last year’s Atomic Blonde. It’s still fantasy material, from bath scenes to lesbian sex, but the stunning, visceral one-take stairwell fight may well be a greater argument for equality than a whole library of feminist texts. The female body is no longer a weakness, the urge (and capacity) to kill no longer an unnatural consequence of some man’s brutality. Skill, stamina and force have equalised the contest. Hemingway’s assumption that only man could be ‘in rebellion against death’ by ‘taking to himself one of the Godlike attributes, that of giving it’ is old hat. There’s a new God in town now, and she’s taking no prisoners. 

https://youtu.be/XarGS1AeEcE

[kentonramsey]

3 Outfits That Prove Backless Sneakers Are Underrated

I completely forgot about my prized middle school possession–backless slide-on sneakers that were blue suede with a black stripe down the front–until two weeks ago when I stopped by Mikaela’s apartment to drop something off, and noticed a similar pair lined by the front door. With a rush, I remembered how unexpectedly versatile a slide-on sneaker is–not to mention the fact that is has all the good parts of a sneaker, with the bonus of being slightly more stylized. I asked Mikaela if she would be opening to demonstrating their magic by collaborating on a mini style shoot with me, and she agreed with enthusiasm. Below is the result, accompanied by a conversation about our shared love for backless sneaks and some thoughts on how to wear them. –Elizabeth

Elizabeth: When I stopped by your home the other day, I noticed a pair of slide-on backless Nike sneakers that TOOK ME BACK. I had a blue suede pair years ago and I hadn’t thought about them until I saw your pair by your front door. Can you tell me about yours? Where do you wear them? Why did you buy them?

Mikaela: Hiii! First of all—you literally had blue suede shoes, like the song?? Fantastic.

Eliz: Oh, yes.

Mikaela: Unsurprised. You fashionista, you. So, the shoes! It’s funny you noticed them because they’re just my “bodega shoes,” that I’ve had since the early 2000s. I truly don’t recall them ever NOT being in my life… one day, they just kind of appeared. But I guess that’s the case when you’re the youngest kid. They’re a size too small, so it’s clear that my past self jacked them from my older sister. Youngest kids always end up with the best hand-me-downs.

Eliz: It’s true. I got a lot of my sister’s growing up. Actually–sneakers in particular. I guess it’s because they only get better as you wear them.

Mikaela: Yes! Something about a sneaker’s structure just ages like fine wine–I don’t mind if my sneakers look a lil’ ratty. My Air Maxes are shot and torn, but I love that about them! And you can’t tell in photos.

Eliz: The nostalgia hit me when I saw them, but they also made me newly aware of a hole in my shoe wardrobe. I only want to wear closed-toe shoes in general right now, so I can walk as far as I need to comfortably, and because I love how sneakers look styled with summer dresses–but historically that’s meant missing out on the ease of a slip-on sandal. I really feel like backless sneakers are the solution?

Mikaela: YES to all of the above. It wasn’t until I put those black Converse on with the slip dress that I realized how perfect that combination is.

Eliz: It’s such a good combo, and the backless element makes the look feel more summery than it would if the dress was paired with normal sneakers. I also like how the sportiness of that particular style juxtaposes with the flowy, lightweight sweetness of the slip.

Mikaela: Yes, and the backless look makes the outfit a little more unconventional. We’ve reached a peak with the slip dress + chunky sneaker combo, and the 3 wing 4 in me always wants to look a little ~different~ from the norm.

Eliz: Were they easy to walk in without sliding around?

Mikaela: My old ones are tough because they’re not my size, so I can’t make it far without them slipping, but that’s why they’re my bodega shoe. When I’m wearing the correct size, I find them very easy to walk in, and am much less prone to slippage than a traditional slide sandal.

Eliz: In addition to styling them with dresses, I also love pairing them with pants that naturally slope down in the back so it’s not obvious the shoes are backless until you start walking. And then it’s a fun surprise!

Mikaela: Hahaha yes! We love to keep the people guessing. Those pants combined with the slipper sneakers made me feel like I was wearing the most luxurious and fashionable pair of pajamas in my life. And I mean that as the highest compliment.

Eliz: I love those pants so much, too. That elastic waist band and big cuff. They’re by DIARRABLU and there’s also a matching top available. I think we should officially start calling that style “slipper sneakers.” They’re the ultimate loungewear of footwear–but you can still go outside in them.

Mikaela: Okay I’m going to have to snag that top ASAP. And yes, slipper sneakers are the backless sneakers’ bougie, sleepwear-loving cousin! Time to bring the loungewear to your feet, people. This outfit was definitely my favorite. I felt like that effortlessly chic, cool girl you see on the train. You just wanna be her friend, or know where she’s going! The knit top elevated it, but the sneakers kept it comfortable and approachable.

Eliz: Yes yes yes! Cool Subway Girl = the ultimate goal!

Mikaela: I hope I’ve been someone’s Cool Subway Girl before.

Eliz: Same. And those were your good ol’ bodega shoes! Their time to shine.

Mikaela: They never thought they’d see the day!!!

Eliz: LOL. And what about outfit number three: the mini skirt ensemble?

Mikaela: Oh you mean my Dionne from Clueless cosplay??! ICONIC.

Eliz: That’s the one!

Mikaela: I loved this outfit. The dainty sneakers kept it preppy without looking too tennis-y (but also, there’s nothing is wrong with a good tennis ‘fit). The layers are what got me, though. The T-shirt with the skin-tight, thin cardigan! It’s genius. I felt hawt.

Eliz: You looked it! And yeah, I liked the cardigan element, too. A tissue sweater is always a good investment because you can wear it through so many different seasons.

Mikaela: You are a master stylist, Eliz. I’ll say it every day.

Eliz: Oh jeez. It was all the model and… the backless sneakers, I tell ya! He he he.

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[castlehead]

[BENEATH THE PLYMOUTH. chapter nine, conclusion]

I.   Can’t life end again, before the sun Goes down over the hills like a parasol? Life polluting our heads with questions That don’t know their own answers …

  Then why give it us? the private said. I mean,

Armies kill and are killed for these, and ya En’ up with what monstrous

Bleakness stripes in blood; that is your prize. With flagging limbs I speak my Rage at the enemy. My True Veteran Rage, Which is my food and drink, I cross the

Battlefield and I singlefile my bros And doesn’t this matrix of bootstring Done up on you quicker now if We get incoming fighter jets? You are Meanwhile living it up like a damn Yossarian with them foolish virgins The new recruits till I

Send again for u to drive another imbalance right Weepwoop weepwoop weepwoop

Tried and true are the men to get killed first After all, nothing like

Deaths of  honorable   men To stew up the lesser rage of cowards for to deal In lamenting them, as if it were for fun, sportiness,

Oratory, red and blue lights! crack Open a cold one with the boys! magnifico! raises

Chalice to those sent to a Rightful place in the heavens, those Weak mounds or plots now, some Severed from life by the single nip Of severe pill intake after the war

You’re too fucking good for a life of Seizures take this xanax instead.

. .  .   .    .     .      .       .        .

What am I doing I am here, I am atop a mountain, lets call it, Am breathing full for the first time, In my headspace I persist An effluvium; while a desperate gush’f a need For sanctuary tells me I am far from Ahead of turning this damfool twilight In my head away from its Croaking doubts, and guilts, Can barely.

This Twilight, What have I left to examine of you? I say Sagely to the private, do all that you did, as well Upon / A separate, spent drift, perspective, etc.,

While the wolfish / Folk don caps Of what they wrongly think they

Are. This could be a story about why I wanted to kill myself Or it could be about whatever I want to make it about, Hopefully something, something less dramatic. Well. I hope you like it. I worked very hard on it. It Makes me want to weep to think of it, and yet I must, I want to tell you all of what it means to make a difference Atop a mountain, I see you there, my love, Please, please love me, there is not much I can say Except, love me. All this daft World. All of its haunting Contradictions, nifty spools out of sense I cause

Rounding the corner, get them, chase them, Go deep into the forest, up the climate. Up, Up

Have you found, the little that speech can give you             back is width enough for a heart in grief to corrode Or two? Sleep, sleep, dear one. I have ye, ye is   much obliged to nurture me myself, but unlike I you, u dont have to me, For I nurture myself well enough already. This someone else in this                 house of mirrors you keep talking about, quaking With unfed genius, and whom is monster, monster,              knocks upon the head, to heel up This phantasm, intimidate it backwards          a little, scorn its brunt, then deftly reconnoiter With it later back at the chasm’s lost wrinkle there where not           one minute of time is spent not laughing about the situation. A light could swiftly get penetrant the brains of the                   unfed genius, the wreck, The wry one, the lost thing betokening all worlds’     wishing that human vanity hath brayed like a horse for, and Prayed, prayed for, to congeal as even the protozoa of a spark at the top of a mountain; to let hope congeal in plenty as the blizzard Of the century to garnish the summit.

You have the prototype, but it is a him, and he is to love what love         had always needed to Be! We mold and mold what we want the world to           be, mold it out of a wish                       Or three,

. .  .   .    .     .      .       .        .      

II.   Each interesting temperament says hello to me, Before fleeing from me,

They pass and pass like they meant something once but won’t tell Anymore, as I wait to be given back what has been once robbed, still

Hell. What’s the difference really? Been once asking me for the last Of its energies, itself will change, always change. So it goes with The whims of opinion, as to what sits well in one’s stomach,

Or if not that at most just rumbles hungrily there, or gets one’s noticing Depreciating, or not. Anything wld lead me to an answer I’d get besotted of,

Ornate reasons for expression are my thing. Showy excuses for my skewed bind called my life.

That rattle here and there around the point I try to make a success As the voltage is turned on I mark my last of humanity goodbye,

As I remember ur indolence / I so forget my Thoughts, feelings, guilts, shames.

And it is mostly all the same. Watch me empty buckets of sorrow! My eyes. My continual essence is such a pain in the ass. I prefer Additional things in the mix, more than mere sadness. But Our relative experience, though relative, would try to deny Us that even, wouldn’t it? That all could simplify into an urge For relief, something that goes against the little voice That says, These are more than just

Words. But I want them to mean something, really, I really do; want them to bring you places, string You along on their meanings, bobbing and chafing:

Even by faith there being a verbal string to the argument Makes an argument. Reason’s transcendent like That and can make for bitchin’ metaphysical

Recognizingz. What. Something crucial loafs In my empty canister called body. So sue me. It, that is, What I am, doesn’t do anything there but magically

Stays aloof without disappearing: this buried thing: well I Daze myself off into space and meet you there, like, In space: and anyway waiting too long would

Be a rightful hazard for my personality to squeal about In being aloof. I have no ridiculous thing to write But instead forth go into magnifying what is said

Already like a patient requiring ibuprofen by exaggerating The pain that is still pain. More fun is this, this getting Shot with a gun-syringe of aenesthetics: they

Say “Ready for time out” when they do it: You wake up later feeling licked

Like, like a trainwreck, vibrating in freezing AC cold.

Yet if the headache’s needed, then, getting It treated should squelch the purpose. Leave my maladies There, you kno, safe in the trinketbox. Leave me traumatically

Unaided. Like until I hanker badly for an answer myself That I try and remember to give after the longest Period of time possible. So if I can’t,

I want. Feel so stifled. What is important to you: Making sense but making sense new: making poetic Thinking a type of poetry in itself: it works after all:

Let’s ask that question: if I am ambient in my relative Nature, or if the vibe is something more jagged, Which is already something wavy and ambient, An eccentric trick of the mind to woozle itself Into angles of self and pithy creation would Eventually present itself; but do not do it. Yu will not remember how for the life of you. It will just be a picture you see of what you want.       Such ignorance

Fascinates one into playing, like, by their own rules, starting To play with concepts. I want to stick to one but Don’t even have one. Strange taste

In my mouth there is. So much there is of self That committing to one thing, even per page, is Backwards, bawdy, bluntly reasonable tho

Past its secure, random prints the weird entry Glamorizes, then makes a thing: I went to those to Mean something, like, went to the words, I mean:

What of it: this is going to be something I Hopefully do not regret, that my large, shiny being notices as Light through the window, getting reflected on by the closing

Door of a car: don’t doom me to just that though: I am a searcher: I’m trying really hard: doe a deer, Blabla: I have the right wrinkles for to

Explain my argument sideways: planecrash: Runtish reason, bleed me out of you into a body My own, hopefully: fuck my answers

For everything: I don’t care about the bad choices. The, that is, horrible reasoning, is not, is a Way, a new one, to work my way

Through poetic thought: my elbows hurt for example: My back does: a weird taste in my mouth: righteous Diligence, give me some rapport with

These words, craft em like gems that are squeezxed And tormented to life, force it, force it to live, I need This living thing in me to express its repressed

Stuff so long repelled: don’t do me like A normal, hoggish perspective on the matchlit Cave we squander through: through and through,

I impress upon myself impressive gonging shouts, Right?: or do I never mention the invisibleness of What I speak of, you know, outside of just then.

. .  .   .    .     .      .       .        .      

Despite my own personal dilemmas, I have An element unknown by this practice,

Settled in decisive waves of calendar And rotation, space and juxtaposing,

Retracted stuff and statements left bled till Steam lost. I have these unknowavles

Without constraint as things my diction nails To the wall of the page. But I have

Dilemmas, things I create for to Be baffled by them, scorn, growls,

Soggy mittens in wintertime. Nothing Counterintuitive, I always say, gets past me.

I allow those confusions room in my material Cell, breathe out flowering my spent

Petals to a floor of verbiage. OK. What can I say ?? Though ?? Really,

That the cricketsong is unbelievable, The night drinks up that thick

Music; that everything now is considerable, And I decently understand; and that

Everything, even what I do not know, Is important. So as to this,

III.   Constantly, barely on a cuticle Would reality seem to stand for us;

You are not so fine, so tenuous as your situation, which is reality, And which offers up zero places for you to trip and fall into the sky.

Regretfully at that would the whole of reality disappear, as Soon as there were not these gravitational beings humans are, To classify and disseminate reality, which is in other words not What you think it is but what you will never see it as and more,

More than just a pretty thang, due to a sounding sunlight, due to, To say, an obstreperous daygloss over the city; but is in the worlds Behind admitting a lack of a name for this non-language, which Although remarkably loud on the still, static eaves, seems [yes] To have come overnight with the junipers. But the sense of sight,

The sense of sight simply was not auditory. And other things, Were fine, were fine as cuticle. Now, as for the problem of sight,– It was already a completely different sensory-experience, one I watched at once go wither off many roofs like flakes, go silent By the weeping mud round their walls overtook by river, but This not immediately. A sourceless jangling like of jewelry first:

Shattering out-seeming a white sun: a wake of these fragile things. Like paint-chips. Saw something, somehow ornamenting rays,– Wither from my grasping. For back then I’d left the peanut Gallery as per usual, my focus on imagination’s latest fare,

As I walked away from my cute little fucking friends or whoever. They went off none wiser, lolling their tongues At stonyfaced adults, so

I chose pursuing possible phenomena: I sense-guessed some Strange thing off there to my side, and in my sight alone:

It was as light, yet if light had A sound, a fastidious muttering to,

To complement its urging bright, and Brilliantine crisp form, giving

Marker in particular, as I noticed more, those looser, tattered Parts of sun and chidden dun. So as, in physicality or Whatever manifesting this gets called, to make

It sound its shifting throughout all degrees, cajoling and Maneuvering almost as if it had feet tapping steps to take.

I was 10, and though I kept awhile that booming stepping light In thickspun places for my mind to go and mend an ear for, And. Back me to that spot, so that itself the unilateral instant

Of perception would not dim, well so it dimmed, And I forgot the noise;

Cotton fills between my ears at the thought, to the point I you know like wouldn’t barely hear a foghorn; then Aggravation past recalling. I can’t now even know if

Anything is absent. That’s how bad it is. Events, E’en if they’d been in paint, certain ones’re more Past recalling than the bluntest detail

Of whatever I’d kept warm enough of it all, by The fire of possible to picture, there, you Know: in the mind’s eye. More important to Remember the erasure electrodes could feed Than the one they could stifle with a ball-gag.

That raged-out delight in your eye could Seed in you and with enough

Of this obscure hallucinogen consumed, zoom the pneumatic Parturitions what had been waiting to canter out out in hot Speech straight from braincavity, for

The benefit of your local Shaman: Into the brushy groins thus go

The Cocky British Adventurers, searching for the fountain Of youth, or at least some village where they can get high. The voodoo dey is pay to see, like, to cure incontinence;

Don’t tell! By the barrel in transport go things to forgetting; A given day, from spore to spore remits; direction is avoided Like a bad thing so we all go back to where it growed from

In the states. More than inner leagues of a breastbone, This is a serious matter. Or rooms we might Could spend all day a-lounge

Upon our rucksacks waiting for inherited luck To be what haunts us, that to crumble, buckle, Quick to breathe, then nothing,–would not so Succeed: spirit pulls us from the fingers of spirit With grand tweezerpairs,

But: what of the dangerous chemical overlapping, could that not Melt any elated feeling straight between its own two hands Lifting it, fruiting out the cracks, from that elation, once again, Which: are nay pieces of the will to dry up the anima/animus For good: like British testicles in the Rainforest its, your Very hands do not, refuse to

Let you handle, now, because, you Know, it will burn for awhile if even it, whatever is Controlling the nefarious block between

Whatever happiness of a sort and their significant Person: birthed into that happy flesh, that skin, That thing that will remind one, you, of the fabulous,

Unshed lair at the foot of the mean, corrosive stairs, Pregnant with mercy for the steps of light on it only.

Listen: go by that so as to seize new life: if wholly for more Artful-slung ascents, wax the temples of yr head And go under, and send accents of voltage, Pole to pole to pole.

WE ALL OF US are of what WE were,

Which cannot gather ‘mustard’ nor In mustering it up should you go without A sort of wheeling will: well: no soul should be Without a healing will: it which fights between Your lungs and what your heart insists

Was, has been there before: they, uh Will know they are observed And know not to do so There now; this too

Comes as natural As all these, as ventricle. There’s An aqueduct to tamper with.

Mine and mine through it–all the overwhelming shit of it all, For stuff yours. Just, don’t

Besiege, sweat and Sweat to illness; or make it yours; or do you and I,

Walking down the dirt road with our selves styled right in front Of us at the edge of madness–meanwhile, the road is at the edge Of the psychiatric hospital–pursue towards our to us so-so Talismans, like the reveille to break ‘us all’ into morning,

With an empiric dournesss and a poetic somberness like dirty rocks? Nay hope to find for this or that eclogue, a meaning punctual, as

We clean them like pissed Jockys, Answering only for the gold but in a

Locked eye–or interminable, breathless moment. These could Be spied by some among

Us less romantic as the crummy afterburners Of a godhead: but to us and others like ourselves not morsel at all, But at the very head

Of the war, and us the blood-mud of a battered theatre, rocketing For battlefield-next; to capture a frantic vibe or two

As might well make us frantic? To display The snack and succor of our wellbeing again, that is; Perhaps in a happiness the other there, at least

–Amongst these mossy graves: where yours, my, and Our ideologies get bestowed on, stoic although out of order, us, Again. Like some gift cherishing its other one,

We blind to our own cherishing. We tempted to hunker into place

On the flat of a large rock: and still we worry of A frightening mishearing of the argot from the first

To spell you out as tending to follow your arbitrary wisps again, Dodging the spitting of these asps forlorn by the same proxy Sense walks out to let fill for it too, whom try and try in fidgets To tell you realistically: you is, uh

Mercurial to sell your snappy deathtraps To the others sitting hunching In the back of the light, awaiting the unveiling Of The Random Vision: it all, and it will, flies back at you, The one elated: from their dark shelters it comes To make that noise you knew only light to. Then, as the speech

Of one given so much to dreams that it were a Sickness the mind ingratiated unto the Rest gives up the ghost and calls itself the same thing

Given to these corruptible seconds you’d happened to get The high beams on at the correct angle of phrasing-light, and Especially since it was not found, and by it I mean, this

Especial species, while scoping out out of greed for an exotic Metaphysical animal rustling softly somewhere dangerous along The curtain, made entirely of infinities: you

Waited for to steal the show, but, then, kabamm, And we lose it: our salutary mistresses

Delayed the minstrelsy, time melted, weak shooting At a fenced-in target: as we themselves blast

All motors, play chicken with feelings fine as cuticle: the Cheering to get mutuality in a busted zipper halfway Down the coat: I sleep in a cot: don’t feel sorry: for you:

Our someplace mistakes beautifully without any Communication’s dotage, without interest, In it for the art: usher us along this rock a bit, And all to stomp down the feeling.

The freckled derelict impetuous parts Our molded forming spits panoply to graciously, as Our freeze of eye at each other, and with that a dolor of collar And crimp at the shoulder, and hands to arms clasping Tenderness to the hilarious sound of trombones:

To filtered, moribund animosity all is as spiritual adiposity, and to The spine’s own place in hurting is there a weakest when true

Hue. Trickling Minuses down each disc, doth it, doth it doth it, and Bring you to the tomb the tomb, tomb, tomb.

Happiness focused atom-wise to blathering lambs’ limbs’ Context pillowy gets us confuséd fledged from right to left

And then to do, uh, do so is Yet the where where is someplace stronger, smaller. Right eh ?? The speech, argot, recommends its woes Like fashionable trinkets at a gas station. And decides

Us to go down the drain like toiletflush these untimely Dissimilars, once posh, now as but the gourmand’s Misery. Before the game, he ate a bunch of hotdogs,

Came to the eating contest for a snack. Yet which is of tidings Is that being flatlined on nonbeing like a medley of thrown

Sounds through to the end of the roll of the last toilet -paper in the WholeWORLDEver. Crates us as off

We go like in a box to nice otherness, while Seconds remind us of the ghost

In the moon we forgot to call mightily and we are Now stuck in this bricklump desuetude.

In the very moon our trembling lips lie about knowing it Afar, and I care not how long the line spits landscape; Don’t; or does perhaps. I want to speak visions Of colors. And now for another

Thing: this is different because it leaves up to discussion The rather ornamental debacle. Dry squalor.

Heated up desertions of eye. Fickle hold, o hold. Broken record you is. Well: my army had Nothing with it come to much

But a father what that grabbed the attitude off The collar of the young punk with spots on’is faythe. Like golly.

Repetition you let us pay for your drinks And get stabbed like Marlowe in the eye. Shiver, Species. For it is what we tell you do.

Collective unconscious needs dramamine stash, before All civilization hurls into the closest bucket and- -Frightens the children. Pellucid is the sky’s heart. He’ll know what to do and, uh, what forgive.

Something cold in this heart. Heal me, heart. Respond A bit too soon to the call. Discuss politics. Fuck you. And be Young Joyce uncomprehending at the

Christmas table with Old Dante Muckering up the gaffe of talking blunt about

The PRIME MINISTER Bad gaffe made the more.–

I took a thousand stout men and made them soldiers. Still the question was not solved: do we or do we not Exist: I founded lackeys like the Prime Mover I is. I am, Tell me, young lamb, [eyecontact] I am like

Roses sweet-smelling yes. I have an ankle that is a chip off

The shoulder and there is so much you’d never suspect through The blinds: you are blind to much: anything but old rinds I give

You to see. Of cataclysmic woe, Is uncouth to say it comes, betimes Betimes.

I natty up the RansomStash of money, think I hurl in some other dimensionanony

Rubbled out of zeitgeist. Like what’s left of what Was once important. MAKE EVERYTHING EXPLODE Says the mind, to the maker, and dirigible the static Plane being’s on or is not on. I have a backache. A good part of the poem is that you do not

Know who the referent ‘I’ is. Wonder retracting statements From itself is and remains the wonder of those statements It did not pursue, nor highlight.

That’s what I tell yeh. My GOD who how he did it ?? Till next horn’s blowing.

The new fodder’s here.

I look at my watch all pithy. I want to talk about something

Different, Now:

IV.   These moving things, in

Front of my memory are in front there, as if they could be In front: preparing to be remembered. As like water floating On air, an air once obvious lightness, now heavy but only as Waged by its distinction plashing down weightless;

A rose fighting God for a crumb. What I thought mine,

The diviningrod for the gold that is as it is, while The dappled glinting hurlings-out of sun its Buried symbolism: the rod was looking Surly and sad at me

With its inanimate, punk-poker countenance, asking an Arresting conference between myself and all What is in the coming-trough of that

Empty ray my sun begins behind, waiting For the lordly entropy unkind bids for power Wreak of all over the mystified Others’ whispered Commissions to blesséd rekindlings of an ease For suns as mine, and for them

Eagerer plumbs the problem into the general, poetic Selfhood you and I equate to the choral bastion For all the body politic to get unto itself

A final haunt for meetings with those in the field; First, get me to the shallow symbol quicker, for The more is, within, that is

Our fighting, unfound parts, found Out to their believing-to-be-seen, awkward, Aggrandizing root, the more is seen Human all our trickling signs;

As, for example, the professor nodding Dipping glasses from eyes might say

Profoundly, You have me breach into your sociopathy: Behind these displayed tears eyes mutely Carry over bucket by bucket

Past the lids, then Closed goes your roving imagination To the many grunted teachings, wanders to

The place affect and displeasure dwell In commune much as the sun and moon Are. You contrive and contrive Despite a lack of closure. Evil

Grunts; then, the old magician steps upon his Own tricky sidewalk, back broken, spine Flailing out of the flesh like

Sides of things intentionally prized, for Being many-sided, being peripheral, being thus The clamp-down on upon the rift between a Self and self, the murderous wage, a drifting Buoyed survival technique, culminating In the petty boutique where make fancy our

Designer desires. Manically let you grin, let you-

-And find me there and bitterly beneath your skin, Interred, an errant bug clutched by the teeth Of cells, entirely made of mature dismay

At this rattling feature or that, a singing twitch Ersatz dissolves in simply prudery, although the Match is boundless once uncovered to its Eloquent extremes, its funny bets

Atop a covered wagon on the turnpike to Work, ensuing gases here and there, plucking Marred hairs and ingrown nails from the More similar decripitudes of life, yet leaving still

The undone pyre of waxing-worship to Intend itself beyond, beyond a folly, and beyond An enigmatic coach a breed of stag gallops With, like a friend, a friend or fiend,

A whipping to the nakedness our traveling, A scorching of impassioned earthen to What’s the sillier darkness of conceit, deceit, Received by amplifying weeping, or By entrancing the metaphoric tides an Element-electric wouldn’t send

To the chop-house. Let whom lay beneath The tarpaulin conceive this second poem with Next day’s wrathful heat to incubate

Idea, idea of shrouded modern people Messing with themselves with chemical And flirty doctrines flirting on the bilious; We are about what sadly is not serious.

And you, cheap gourmand, upon his food And slaughtering by the minute every truth His 'times’ replayed like plays in college football

Or, which multiplied disheartening with Kids; which antiquated meme and vine impelled To the furnace, and were meant to be an irony Without a foreground, or just merely funny Will, in time, call all of itself lamed

By richer generations whom do not tie severely The knot so early, nor that one of frame-of-mind,

Nor vicious as the adding of more poem to This poem, this tape, this wrong, this blare,

This carousel, could our analyses of flickering face Be less human than the rest. Dispassionate tools.

.   .   .     .     .

To jealous the color of every real ordinary. Mass composites are what the want want To be: load up my carriage, run faces by me For the right one to win

Me over, roam grim sealingwax doubles Like they were the robotic asswipe Your linear ability commands to howitzer The shit out of. I want

To destroy all the air. Then of course, would fain destroy This feigned couscous, by words Jellied in the fridge next to the words, and which gets Warmed up, connotes feelings words alive Trumpet menagerie by menagerie. Flown out of itself

The memory wants back to mentioning, Dries off on the water: the weight of all of this Wants to invite God and the rose To brunch, you know, just to talk

About maybe focusing instead on the sad Memory, unsaid. Split like atom

The discontented flash of thundering. The only thing deeper is unwanted

By you, though you think you do, but no, you Do not, do not know what you

Want from these tears the Result of a brief squabble that should Have been rightly emptied into

The Well Of Lidded Impactfulnation, I mean, man, imaginpainshun. The sidewalk entered a flaccidity unbefore Seen, saturated by these decked freckles of Unbelievable, haunting rain as

The city burned just to get some light On this one page in shadow or Night merely spilled,

Rotting, all over this oops And contracted by the mean tacklers Of bulls. Then revert to those gutted, realize

The pen is dusty and empty, the tears A stupid fragility that makes broke the back Of a mountain not included in

The latest Jake Gyllenhaal deluxe set Of withered, weathered - - sexual frustration In the form of abstract painting full of themselves That is, mainly stuffed with their own selves, Which, pretty much, is everybody you Just had fight with, like, what

They are like, since we’re filled with Ourselves or at worst another fills or is filled By us, which is dangerous especially For emotional bohemians on the klutzy radar Muttering germs of new shit In the corner, like, the

Corner of the crooning voice you can’t place, Can’t raise, faze, amaze, or daze; What ridiculous fun it is to chop the world in half, Leaving only robotic faces tunefully chosen In essence. Maybe you lose the song But it comes back early once That nifty ‘copsiren simulator’ busts Everyone fleeing from the party, and an Avalanche of high folk pour out

Like tears of once what was, unto lids, The resultant dripping, squeezed into their lighted Aspect, performing light again

On the random Chair of Life where drunk poet sit, Whispering saturated sidewalks, eating couscous

By themself, since everyone of us has turned Into a wax rendition of the invisible, and by this Needle of a difference doth split the chained

Opines of unhealable hunger’s dust Where the bulls we fear once were, are not At present.

Dance, dance, ludicrous, failing mind, for nigh you won’t again So mourn, you, rebel from the rest of yourself and die,

Remove in revving happiness up what hath Embraced you, baffled, from two steps away.

It is the corner’s voice. It is the coroner’s voice, bespeaking Valuable Soul, but sans shirt, shoe

. .  .   .    .     .      .

truly keep me in your bad massacred heart that lunges against your ribcage like it’s selling something it’s like an animal against you you know

find out what lingers between you and beats and stales there and planetary in the dust without a friend but the one you pay for

without an anchor you live your life to listen for some kinetic power somewhere there

unduly and lacking but what you have pawed at for so long now you have

it so live to stir people do such well this man is a tired broken thing wearing an old tattered coat he is grimacing against the bitter cold and

of his way of writing he is sure that he is without an echo back to himself peacefully he lights a fire beneath his fragrant ass he is of the metronome of fart and feeling in feeling

it is in the basics you reach for the flower in my lungs through my throat you have an ascertaining of body in your body

you wild as fire wrinkle orange and yellow separately of it you are the fire of beauty of both

you stick to listening to what’s between the chambers of desire your mind goes crazy and gets stuck in yet

without feelings without the hope of feelings you still feel you are the argot of feelings you want to waste your life trying to fix me I want to taste my life in your ice cream’d hands I want to desire the reality behind things a bit

I want to hire another human to attend to my morals and come upon a spree of finite conclusions for me

our register of voice makes enough of that for the two of us to hear it however low

to wander throughout and divide the equation we would have solved using another’s breathy brain

tell me I am true for what I think of that is that I am untrue tell me my own wrinkles of fire again despoil meaning from the craning of my neck to look upwards at a sky filled with myself filled with the clouds of myself and it makes

me go away into the feelings try me with those feelings and keep my hunch cracked like the tar across the road reality follows

driven by those high and fruitful voices…

[houstonlocalus-blog]

Album Reviews: Mac DeMarco, Slowdive + more

Slowdive — Slowdive

Let’s say that Slowdive put out albums before and that is your primary interest in being curious about this album. Let’s just say that. It helps but doesn’t matter whether you have or have not heard them — this album fucking rules. Dream pop, not sure what it means, but I associate it mainly with delay and echoed instrumentation, which is a trite simplification. However, Slowdive’s name is mentioned in correlation with this notion. “Slomo” opens the album, it crescendos and fades, disappearing into a red hued cloud. “Don’t Know Why” is more pulsed movement but also grand, it is a sea of birds overhead, the close shot of the person looking out of a window, memories or possibilities; you are swept up in the emotion. “Falling Ashes” is a beautiful occurrence, a starlit sky, it expands outward, it covers you in sound and emotion. Don’t call this a comeback, this album is as relevant as anything this band or any band is doing at the moment, and it is constantly beautiful.

  Bonnie “Prince” Billy — Best Troubador

Bonnie “Prince” Billy, like Nina Simone or Sinatra, is a great interpreter of song. He is able to embody the spirit of the song and re-introduce it in a way that exalts not only the song, but also calls for a possible reexamination of the covered, who in this case is Merle Haggard. Haggard, without this particular attention, has an amazing catalog and is a viable artist in his own right, so the task is brave. “I’m Always a Mountain When I Fall” is Haggard as Motown sung by Billy: “Losin’s always been a way of life for me, but I’m always a mountain when I fall,” a common trope of country and blues is self deprecation, but losing never jammed this hard. “I Always Get Lucky With You” is a wedding song in the salacious and the romantic, something you might drunkenly grope a date to, endearing but slightly foul, it is romance. “Some of Us Fly” is another gem; “Some don’t give a damn, some give it their all, some us fly, but all of us fall.” This should be played at graduations and funerals, sobering yes, but true. Bonnie “Prince” Billy brilliantly plays and displays these songs in tribute, but also showcases the mastery of Merle Haggard and the players assembled to put this album together. I love it immensely.

  Mac DeMarco — This Old Dog

Mac DeMarco is seemingly a purveyor of the easy living aesthetic. His latest, This Old Dog, is a mellow affair, not in the sense of excitement, but in the way that the songs are laid bare, sparse in arrangement and instrumentation; but a song’s impact is not dependent upon the addition of oboe or second guitar. The titular track “This Old Dog” is a wonderful example of this, a proclamation to maybe a lover or maybe owner of a dog to their dog; its sentiment is mainly this world of duty and distraction may take parts of my attention but will not take me away. “For the First Time” is a funky slow jam, reminiscing on love in its infancy, another separation reference, “just like seeing her for the first time again,” we’ve been apart but are no longer. “Dreams for Yesterday” is another jam; live today, be here now, all that you’ve left is your fault, embrace your dreams, moments, loves, etc.  This is a good album for these coming summer days with ideas of cocktails and hammocks and long walks.

  Moon Duo — Occult Architecture Vol. 2

Some albums benefit from the innovations of sound and stereo. Their Occult Architecture albums work best in full sprawl of sound. The sound is large, it is to feel inside the song as the roar and fog surround you. “Mirror’s Edge” is a psychedelic funk voyage, it is the the neon lights, the passing cars, the stars hidden by the glow of the downtown, it is the sound of the seduction of danger. “Lost In Light” is what the title suggests, it lifts and suspends you. All that will be is revealed, the voice an ethereal choir; why are my teeth chattering? “The Crystal World” is the helicopter ride, observe in wonder, then land, walk amongst it. Marvel at its glow and dance, the groove is effervescent.

  Aldous Harding — Party

“I broke my neck dancing to the edge of the world, babe.” Aldous Harding’s last album was once categorized as goth folk, and I don’t know what either of those things are, because the idea of creating an idea or purposely perpetuating an idea is crazy and only makes sense when attempting to make sense of it. The album Party does not need this simplification and in many ways cannot be simplified in that fashion. “Imagining My Man” was the first glimpse of this record for me, a love song, about love and all it’s scars and uncertainties, because essentially isn’t all imagination first, idealism? “All my life, I’ve had to fight to stay;” even as this lyric is punctuated by a “hey” that sounds like it came from a child’s choir, it still expresses love, but it proposes the actual and the imagined. “What If Birds Aren’t Singing They’re Screaming” isn’t dark in sound, but “I got high and thought I saw an angel, but it was just a ghost making wooden posts of my family” doesn’t exactly bring in the sunshine. But that is Harding’s lane, and it is a lane she plays superiorly. Brevity underscores the power; when it sets in, it’s over, and you have the space between songs to gather yourself. “I’m So Sorry” is another light beam, possibly about addiction. It contextualizes the life of dependency despite better judgement: “Everyone is looking on, why in the world would I risk this now.” It is the woozy thought, laid out on the floor burping up the whiskey, family and friends, audience, waiting for your arrival, you are not ready; “Freedom, balance, so many friends wish that for me.” The excellence of this album is the stillness, the calm. Throughout the many characters of the songs, Harding presents them as composed and resigned to this. “Horizon” is the retreat from love as rescue to the lover: “Here is your princess and here is the horizon.” You may feel that you want this, you do not know what this is. I am way into this album, it shakes my core.

  Bill Mackay — Esker

“Aster,” the opener of Bill Mackay’s album, is all that this album is in 1 minute and 31 seconds. It is mystery, it is tradition, it is magic. Bill Mackay has created a superior guitar driven album in a time when music, ideas, people, have become disposable. Like many of the greats — Jack Rose, John Fahey, Glen Jones, Marisa Anderson — this album melds the ideas of tradition and the mystique of the unknown. “Candy” is a wonderful ragtime-y bluegrass-ish piece, but the expression and voice which Mackay brings are unrivaled. “Persona” is something else altogether, the picking juxtaposed by the winds of sound that decorate the song make this song as much highway as they are space and beyond. “Wail” is something of a ballad, it is a sunset or sunrise, it is long stare, it is the sheet on the clothesline blowing in the wind, it is life and emotion. This is one of those albums you live in and with, it becomes and embodies different things dependent upon setting and mood, but it wears each accordingly.

Album Reviews: Mac DeMarco, Slowdive + more this is a repost

[esthermeronobaro]

I <3 SLC: Beautiful Godzilla Out

Beautiful Godzilla is a column about my feminist bicycle adventures for SLUG Magazine. Published monthly in print from 2011-2014. Read the original online and in print on page 21.

Hey guys, this is my last Beautiful Godzilla column. I’m moving to New York City to dedicate my life to pizza.  

I’ve thought a lot about what I wanted to write here, in this space, for the very last time—something smart and meaningful and funny, of course, but all I could think about was how much I’m gonna miss this city.  

So, those of you who claim your home elsewhere (even if you only lived in California for six months back when you were two years old), pick up a trusty ole beater from the Bicycle Collective, sign up for some volunteer hours while you’re there, and let me lead you through a verbal tour of Salt Lake City as a precursor to your next bike adventure. The next time someone asks you where you’re from, I hope you’ll jump up and down screaming “SLC!” after proving you’re not hiding a Mormon demon tail.  

Everybody’s Salt Lake is a little different, waxing and waning as you meet new people, get a good tip on a restaurant you’ve never been to, or fall asleep on TRAX one day and end up adopted by juggalos. 

Mine runs the square area between 2100 South to about 4th Ave (too lazy to ride up that hill any farther), 900 West to 900 East (ditto). The mountains sure are pretty to look at, but there’s fucking snow up there, you crazy bastards! 

I felt like an outsider for a long time in this town—not ’cause I had anywhere else to call home, but because I felt a disconnect with my surroundings, especially living in the bubble that is university life (one in every four college students has an STD, FYI). That all changed the first time I hopped on a road bike (I did get saddle sores, though …). Cycling makes a city feel like it belongs to you, like you know and understand it in a way that maybe you didn’t before. I’m sure that there are other things that can contribute to a true sense of residence, like fireworks and an inbred pioneer heritage, but there’s nothing like the bicycle—the perfect machine.  

Salt Lake City became mine the first Midnight Mass I ever attended, about six years ago in the middle of a dry winter day. We rode all the way out to Sugar House, bombing hills on our way back as I gripped the handlebars in silent terror, thinking I was sure to fly over them if I were to hit the smallest scar in the asphalt. 

Chris Ginzton practiced his Spanish on me the whole ride, and as the adrenaline numbed my fear, I thought, “This is beautiful.” Or maybe it was, “He is beautiful … ” 

As I attended more and more events, I felt my confidence grow, and not just in my cycling abilities. Critical Mass, as chaotic as it seemed at times, provided an outlet for the peaceful protester inside of me that I had been too scared to express before then, because you know that prison bitches would go apeshit over my butt—just ask my lil’ lesbo sis, Carla, who shares my “jeans” and is practically rolling in vaginas. I always looked forward to riding through the Gateway, a tall bike at my side, Zed’s boombox spitting cheesy ’90s rap, and bike bells ringing like a hundred wind chimes in a maddening gust as pedestrians gawked at us and cars honked impatiently. Those days, rides would often end at the top of the Walker Center as the sun set, with anyone we hadn’t dropped off at a bar passing around flasks of wine and whiskey, taking turns testing out the freak bikes among us. The view alone—an eyeful of historic buildings and dirty alleyways juxtaposed with contemporary architecture and modern street art, tinged by this city’s many Instagram-worthy sunsets—makes you feel like you’re doing something right.  

Then there was the afternoon I came face to face—or perhaps frame to door—with my mortality. It was one of those days when the air hits your face like ice water, but the sun’s so bright it reaches under your skin to warm you from the inside out—the only appropriate outfit for that weather is one of those fluorescent green, full-body suits. Had I been wearing mine that day, perhaps things would’ve turned out a little different, but I was conveniently wearing a helmet, otherwise this column would just be a slobber smear. I hit the ground hard on my back, facing a car whose door was cracked wide open, gasping for breath as pedestrians rushed to my side. I’ve always been a careful cyclist—though perhaps a bit insane riding two years without brakes—but always aware of my surroundings, and that experience shook me even more than when I found out Santa was my parents, and they were broke. Riding hasn’t been the same since, and sometimes my back seizes up, but that motherfucker had to replace his entire windshield, and the spooked look on his face makes me believe he’ll be glancing at his side-view mirror before he gets out of his car for the rest of his life.  

I’m excited and nervous about riding in NYC. I think my FBG status will go over well with the cabbies, but I’ve heard the pedestrians are a nightmare—a plague of pede-philes, so to speak. 

Still, when it comes to cycling, this city will always be home, whether I see it again or not—whether, at the end of my life, I’ve spent more years in other places that aren’t here. The bicycle community here has raised me into adulthood, supported me and helped me turn a life that would’ve felt like I was holding my breath for eternity into one where I breathe real deep and make that “refreshed” sound as I breathe out. So annoying. 

I’ll be cruisin’ with Bike Snob soon, and won’t be around to push you down the hill, but there are plenty of fine people in this community who can help you out. In addition to the obvious, the adventurous James Miska is out to start Salt Lake Bicycle Tours, with the mission to show residents and visitors around this city and its magical spots. “My inspiration for it came from having consistently biked around this town for the past nine years, always going to cool places, and wanting to show those cool places to cool people,” he says. Hit him up over at saltlakebicycletours.com. 

The SLCo Bicycle Ambassadors Program is another relatively new way to stick your toe into cycling, providing one-on-one mentorships that are like commuter training wheels, and you can find them at facebook.com/slcobike. Jack Lasley, the BA’s Program Coordinator, summed it all up real nice, saying: 

“When you ride a bike, you fully inhabit the city. Everything becomes familiar as you begin to notice the details... 

You might avoid the same daily pothole as you did in your car, but on your bike, you notice that it has a yellow lighter inside and you have time to wonder how it got there. You learn that certain blocks have distinct smells and sounds. That every street and intersection feels differently. You start to navigate by names and faces, rather than by numbers and distance. You begin to develop rewarding relationships with strangers, even though most only last seconds or minutes. You have time to wave and smile as you pass another bicyclist or have a quick chat as you both wait at the traffic light. You start to feel like you have friends you haven’t even met yet.”  

Come send me off in style on May 17, celebrating Velo City Bags’ grand reopening with the Clue Cat IV, some Blue Copper coffee, live music and the world premiere of Salty Spokes’ Bad Girls. See details at facebook.com/velocitybags.slc. It’s been real. #FBG4LYFE