#what jimmy did was deplorable

[sisigull]

Fuck Jimmy

[dykedvonte]

people act like wanting to discuss how anya being male would affect the story/the themes erases the actual game from existence, like is gone or somehow cheapened by fans doing what fans do

i think you don't like those (happy) ending baby aus and neither do i but it kind of feels similar where the exploration of possibilites is discouraged entirely or considered disrespectful towards the source material or a sign that the fans don't understand the original message which is such a weird viewpoint to have

especially because i think the game lends itself to these kind of conversations/fan content... bc yeah while it wouldn't be the same if anya was male, but that doesn't mean you can't use a male anya au to criticize the patriarchy/rape culture? it would maybe help some people to look deeper into an au like that especially bc it would require THEM to use their brain and maybe confront their own biases

It’s like a ridiculous thing to be so upset about in my mind because it comes from a place I keep seeing in this particular fan space of people interpretaing personal views as like canon analysis.

It’s a game that deals with multiple sensitive topics on a lot of different fronts and of course a lot of the fans are going to go about engaging with it in different ways. Too many people are getting mad at others for depicting things in ways they don’t like even if it comes from a place of personal experience with the subject matter or other real life lived experiences.

I don’t like the idea that Anya has to keep the baby but it’s not unheard of that victims end up having to and it’s not evil or missing the point to admit that or explore it through an au. It’s not happy nor do I think it’s a post canon fix it like some are deposited as but from what I’ve seen of them I’ve only gotten ones that are real and upsetting and deal with the stress of having to care for your rapist child. Again, the concept of Jimmy refusing to take responsibility and forcing it on to others even when they shouldn’t have to.

With the idea of male Anya and female Jimmy the conversation of autonomy, patriarchy, sexism, misogyny and rape culture can still very much happen. It is a lot more nuanced and muddied just due to how male victims are addressed, if addressed at all, but to think it disregard the points of the game means you have a shallow understanding of all of the themes at play in tandem. The idea it’d affect his life less completely misses the point he would feel a shame and guilt about being assaulted by a woman but it fostering a child. Many people in real scenarios would assume he’s only saying it wasn’t consensual because he doesn’t want the kid despite discomfort and fear around Jimmy. Theres the idea that Jimmy would guilt him to care for the baby and thus her back on earth which furthers the idea of being stuck with you abuser along with how Anya may be compliant because men who defend themselves are still seen at fault. If everyone’s gender is swapped it opens the discussion of how women can be complacent in n rape culture too.

I think a sign of a good piece of media is if enables transformative conversation on the subject matter. I think the issue people are having is not understanding that there isn’t one right way to act in the scenarios we were given, that victims find themselves in. It’s a lot of people getting upset at others who react differently and acting like putting those opinions out there is damaging when it’s just another real perspective someone is either opening up and sharing or trying to depict.

[mister-lucky-bunny]

I don’t wanna throw the baby out with the bath water, but damn Mouthwashing has already reached the “fandom infighting” stage of its life cycle huh

[franki-lew-yo]

Mouthwashing and fandom discourse as a whole.

So I recently explored the tag for Mouthwashing after watching two no-commentary lets plays of the entire game. I'm seeing a lot of posts pointing out how annoying it is that this game has a fandom and that this fandom is doing fandom things and stanning/"uwu-ing" characters from this incredibly nuanced, raw and not-fandom friendly piece of art. To paraphrase someone I just saw "you don't want mouthwashing; you want Among Us ocs but darker". And

for a moment I wanna talk a bit about how I absolutely agree with this statement while also talk for a moment about how and why fandom and catharsis fan fics exist and shouldn't be shamed inherently. Or, I guess, not in theory.

The "come on! Stop trying to make everything shippable/cutsey/memey/have a happy AU and face unpleasant emotions someone's trying to tell you about!" is SUCH a vibe with me. I felt this way in the 9 fandom a lot as a kid and that was just 9. Mouthwashing is like 9 on bathsalts emotions and theme-wise. It's a game where you play as both the flawed but caring captain of a doomed ship who's life becomes a Johnny Got His Gun-nightmare, and also a deplorable, hateful piece of garbage who got himself and his friend in that nightmare situation to begin with. Both characters, moreso Jimmy but Curly too, are the causes of their own misery. They're complex dealing with one of the two committing SA and doing nothing really about it/dodging the responsibility and humanity needed to support the victim whom they've wronged.

I fully admit it's groan-inducing seeing people be shipped up Anya with anyone on the ship considering what happens to her. On a pure pr level I think it would be illegal even since romance between coworkers in a workplace is considered conflict of interest/harassment as it so often is. (NOT that what Jimmy did to Anya is 'romance'. I'm talking about the shipping of Anya with the other three guys. I know there's people out there who do ship Jimmy/Anya; you don't have to tell or show me I believe you and also I already hate it.) It's ALSO groan inducing to see people ship Curly and Jimmy considering all Curly does to him- and just the fact that this incredibly tragic, toxic one-way-gone array friendship is reduced to "toxic yaoi teehee". It's annoying AT BEST.

I get the hostility towards fandom-tastic stanning and fandom behavior in general...the issue is it's still hostility and I wish some of you guys got that. Like it or not (you don't have to like it) fandom culture is inevitable to some degree. You can and should complain about your hangups but that's all you can do besides avoiding tags and just not engaging with that side of the fandom at some point. Save your call-outs and rage for when you see active deplorable bs being committed that people are excusing for dumb fandom reasons, like lolicon, hatespeech or harassment. I'm sorry but you can not actively go after and try and take down the innocent people involved in your trigger that aren't directly hurting you by liking the thing that triggers you; ie. people who get all shipping and fandom-brained about Mouthwashing's characters which you find offensive to do at all.

This type of convo is the crux of most 'antifandom' v profandom discourse in general; for Antis I think there ought to be a difference between the people that set you off bcuz of fandom nonsense vs sociopathic 'got mine'-creepiness. There's a difference between someone who draws r34 v Shadbase. For profandom types you out to face the fact that yes- maybe NOT EVERYTHING is meant to be shippable/memed. Maybe try practicing that a bit. Yeah it's most harmless and makes you feel happy, but considering how people outside of your hyperfixation-of-a-hyperfixation is a thing. The thing about the "don't like, don't read" argument is it goes both ways. If you're truly a "good fan" like you say you are than you have to realize that people will not like your problematicisms. Learn to interact with characters and stories without the possibility of shipping sometimes- or at least understand that that's the crux of what makes a story like Mouthwashing engaging, even if you also partake in the fandumb and AUs on the side. You can call Curly your babygirl and ship him or make him happy all you want but PLEASE acoknowledge that the game doesn't woobify him or excuse what he did to Anya as well. You can make some kind of AU scenario where Jimmy gets out somehow and becomes/is a slightly better person for all I care...so long as you PLEASE remember that he is canonically a r@pist and awful. Also, even if I'm okay with your fan decisions, note that myself and others are still going to be critical and be upset that you wrote it at all because of what kind of character Jimmy is. 'Critical' =/= declaring something evil.

Fandom behaviors are not souly a destructive parasocial outcome of brainrot; they're also a natural reaction to what happens canonically and the emotions you have to experiencing a story. It's normal and rational to sympathize and love Curly and despise and hate Jimmy. You can love/like/enjoy a problematic-to-DEEPLY DISTURBED-character based on their complexity in canon. They are fiction. They are not real. The reason you are so invested with them is because of that complexity and yes because they are fiction they are your 'toy' and you can doll them up in any kind of speculative AU crap you make. That's fanfiction, baby. Make yourself a fixit fic if you really want

BUT-

remember: it stays as a fixit fic. DO NOT cross the streams, or insist that your active misreading of the text is the same as the text itself. EVER. You should care about your special interest's escapism as a means of self-care. What you shouldn't do is demand that EVERYONE ELSE LOVE your coping mechanism and that any complaints by people on their own terms on their own blogs is #badfaith or an inherent attack against you. It isn't. You'll know when it is an attack against you and that's when you, the profandom-type, need to be prepared and save your call-out posts and blocklist for.

To me that's the fragility to fandom debates and fandom as a whole. You can not/should not police or control an entire group of people and how they perceive or interact with media. That's not fair and it's definitely not sporting or decent of you in a community. You have to share your community -your fandom- with people who hate ur fav and people who love your least fav. Agreeing to disagree means not tagging your nOTP as their shipname or by tagging your shipname loud and clear. It means filtering out posts with those topics but enjoying and/or reblogging the fandom takes you do share with your fellow fandom-mite that obviously posts abt those topics.

When schmit REALLY goes down and some assface reviewer/fan/SOMETHING is being an assface or doing something amoral under the guise of fandom-ing, that's where you out to put your foot down. Callouts and complaints are for people who did an egregious thing and refuse to take responsibility(lol) for it. They're not for "soandso likes the thing that triggers me, kill them"/"so and so is hating on the thing I'm kinning because it triggers them, kill them". Be an adult.

Your DNI lists should consist of "lolicon defenders" not "proshippers", as those ARE NOT one in the same. Same goes the other way around. List off "bigots, purity culture bs", not "antis and critics". These positions ARE NOT interchangeable. If you make them interchangeable than you're making things a lot harder for yourself.

-sincerely, a message from autistic ADHD/OCD woman who likes horror and media analysis as much as she loves popcorn fanfic schlock.

We don't all have to be friends and buddybuds. I just hate us hurting each other over being different kind of fandom-folk rather than for when someone sincerely mucks up and does something bad. Can't we all stick to our guns and just boycott Harry Potter like god intended?

[phasewashere]

really not normal about mouthwashing that was haunting. the fucking. continued theme of responsibility. from anya to curly to swansea to daisuke. they all are gnawing at each other to suck it up and "tale responsibility" and as you go along you realize it isn't just a matter of work place bitching its so. its so fucking insane. nobody will step up. nobody will step up to save anya or daisuke or the people they care about. this avoidance. curly won't give anya the gun because jimmy is his friend. his fellow man. he can't take responsibility. jimmy can't take responsibility because he doesn't believe he's wrong. he knows what he did was wrong. but is he guilty? is he guilty because of what he's done or is he guilty because of what they think? because of the kind of man that makes him? a deplorable one. you can't go about fixing others before fixing yourself. does it not say to remove the beam from your own eye before removing the splinter in your brothers? and it's not just about responsibility. it's about perception. over and over we see these tied together. how jimmy perceives anya as lesser. as a faulty nurse. hysterical and unable to take RESPONSIBILITY. swansea and his alcholism. swansea and daisuke. daisuke and his family. curly and jimmy. there's a responsibility in how you appear to others. how you appear to your children and then to your friends and then to the people you work with. its so. man its so fucked up. somebody could say it better and go over the theme of masculinity and avoidance and responsibility and how it all comes to anya and how they view her and how she was violated like that. its so fucked. great game

[ucetheones]

Why Didn't You Tell Me? (Part two)

Jimmy is officially public enemy #1 after costing Jey everything tonight!! I am officially a Jimmy Uso anti, but sadly... I still love him. (I always will, tbh.)

This fic does not depict that love!!!

"You gay, Uce?"

The sound of Jimmy's voice had Jey freezing. It felt like his blood had run cold, and there was a vice gripping his heart. 

There was so much malice in the question, that Jey couldn't fight the full body flinch that followed.

He wanted to answer, but no words would come out. He wanted to deny it, but doing so felt wrong. Jey wasn't sure what he was, even if gay felt like the easiest way to describe himself. Even with the complications that came with the label. 

"Josh! You just gon' sit there when I'm asking you something?" Jimmy's tone was growing angrier with each moment the room was enveloped in silence. Rhea had gone still, her eyes darting warily between Jimmy and Jey.

She gave the latter a small nudge, noting the way the boy seemed to shift closer to her.

Clearing his throat, Jey shakily replied, "y-yeah. I think I am…" The relief he felt at the confession was short-lived because his twin was immediately scoffing at him. 

"So everything Pops said is true…"

Jey wants to deny that. It's not true. He's not disgusting, or deplorable for maybe liking men. But, Jimmy is so visibly angry. Angrier than Jimmy has ever been at him. His fists are clenched at his sides, his lips downturned in a heartbreaking frown.

If no one else, Jey thought he'd always have Jimmy in his corner, but as it was, his brother was no longer a safe space. And if Jimmy was no longer safe, that meant Roman was sure to follow. 

Jey wanted to cry, to put it plainly. But crying was weak. Crying was for faggots his father's voice echoed in his head.

Shaking his head, Jey stood and quickly crossed the room to where his brother was.

A mistake in the making, if Rhea's glance at him said anything. 

She couldn't be here for this. She couldn't see whatever was about to go down.

"Let Rhea leave before you rip into me, Jon. She don't deserve to see none of that."

By some miracle, Jimmy nods and steps out the way, motioning to her.

It's clear to Jey that Rhea wants to object. 

She doesn't want to leave Jey in the hands of anyone who could do him damage, but even the glare she aims at Jimmy does nothing to quell his evident anger.

"Out."

Swallowing her protests, Rhea walks over to Jey and whispers, "fight back, Josh. Please." Her eyes are pleading with Jey to stand up for himself in a way he's never been able to. She's basically asking him to do the impossible. 

Jey gives her a subtle nod. It's a promise of sorts, but Rhea can't decipher what that promise is. 

Not while she's walking out the room, and ultimately the house. 

The last sound she hears before the door shuts is a body being slammed against the wall.

When she gets home, Rhea feels sort of like a caged animal. She regrets coming inside, knowing her father wouldn't just let her scurry out the front door once more. She'd barely made it to Jey's house without her dad getting pissy about it.

She could go out the window. Her dad never bothers to check on her once she's gone in her room. 

But where would she go? What would she do? 

Going back to Jey's house was out of the question. Whatever was happening was clearly not supposed to concern her. But it did! Jey might've been her fake boyfriend, but he was her very real best friend. He was the person she went to for everything. Jey didn't deserve whatever bullshit was going to happen to him.

Calling the cops crossed her mind, but she shook it away. Jey wouldn't forgive her if she did.

But Rhea wouldn't forgive herself if something terrible was happening to Jey in that house and she just let it happen.

She reasoned with herself that she'd give Jey an hour to text her before she'd be sneaking out her window to drive back to his place. 

An hour came, but before she could text Jey, he called her.

"Jey! Are you okay?"

It was silent for a second, there was only some rustling and random background noise.

"Yeah, Uce. I'm ight…" He sounded winded, and like he was nursing injuries somewhere on his body. 

His ribs maybe.

"What happened? Do you need me to come get you?"

"Take a breath, Rhea, yeah?" 

She nods, though she knows he can't see her. 

"I'm with Roman right now. He broke me and Jimmy up, and dragged me to his house. My aunt was not happy to see me drippin' blood on her new carpet." His words broke off into a laugh, which quickly morphed into a groan.

Despite her worry, Rhea found herself chuckling too. She'd met Roman's mother, so it wasn't too hard to imagine her distraught look.

"You sound hurt."

Blunt and too the point, she supposes.

Jey sighs from over the line. It sounds tired. Too tired for anyone his age to sound. "I am hurt, Uce. He's my twin. He 'posed to be the one fucking person in this world who has my back…but instead he fuckin' beat my ass like I fucked his girl."

Rhea can almost feel Jey shaking through the phone. She can see the tears gathering in his eyes, and it shatters her heart. 

She doesn't know what to say, but it doesn't seem to matter because Jey is on a roll now.

"When Roman came in that room and Jimmy told him…I thought he was gone help him, Uce. But he helped me."

"Did you at least get a few licks in?"

Her question makes Jey chuckle. It soothes something inside of her.

"Yeah, I did. I ain't gone lie, I had Jimmy leakin' something fierce."

She can hear Roman's boisterous laughter in the background. 

"Jimmy ain't gon' put his hands on Jey again, Jey had his ass on the ground when I walked in."

"Roman, don't take this the wrong way, but I'm surprised you didn't side with Jimmy…" Rhea trails off, worried she might've upset the other, but she was always one to speak her mind.

"All I'ma say is, I'm not gonna lie and pretend I was shocked to hear Jey was gay. Jimmy shouldn't have been either."

Rhea can hear a slap to skin, followed by laughter. 

"This guy, he's a fuckin' comedian tonight! 

Aye, Rhea; I'ma catch you tomorrow. We can get breakfast or something. My aunt gon' bust the door down if Ro' and me don't go to bed soon."

Rhea easily agrees to breakfast, if for no other reason than to see with her own two eyes that her best friend was actually okay.

In bed, she goes over the events of the night. She isn't sure how they went from movies and junk food, to Jey and his twin brother apparently fighting to the point of blood. She knows trying to piece the night together will just drive her insane, but something about it sits wrong with her.

Aside from the obvious things that transpired, there was something coming that made Rhea's chest tighten. 

She tried to ignore it in favor of getting some rest. Jey was an early riser, and she knew he'd be at her door the second her father's car peeled out the driveway that morning. 

She'd worry tomorrow, after seeing Jey in person.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: David Remnick

Date: Feb 6, 2023

Note: this is a very long article, so I won't post it in full, but I wanted to share some excerpts.

[..]

In Tehran, Ayatollah Khomeini was ailing and in crisis. After eight years of war with Iraq and hundreds of thousands of casualties, he had been forced to drink from the “poisoned chalice,” as he put it, and accept a ceasefire with Saddam Hussein. The popularity of the revolutionary regime had declined. Khomeini’s son admitted that his father never read “The Satanic Verses,” but the mullahs around him saw an opportunity to reassert the Ayatollah’s authority at home and to expand it abroad, even beyond the reach of his Shia followers. Khomeini issued the fatwa calling for Rushdie’s execution. As Kenan Malik writes in “From Fatwa to Jihad,” the edict “was a sign of weakness rather than of strength,” a matter more of politics than of theology.

A reporter from the BBC called Rushdie at home and said, “How does it feel to know that you have just been sentenced to death by the Ayatollah Khomeini?”

Rushdie thought, I’m a dead man. That’s it. One day. Two days. For the rest of his life, he would no longer be merely a storyteller; he would be a story, a controversy, an affair.

After speaking with a few more reporters, Rushdie went to a memorial service for his close friend Bruce Chatwin. Many of his friends were there. Some expressed concern, others tried consolation via wisecrack. “Next week we’ll be back here for you!” Paul Theroux said. In those early days, Theroux recalled in a letter to Rushdie, he thought the fatwa was “a very bad joke, a bit like Papa Doc Duvalier putting a voodoo curse on Graham Greene for writing ‘The Comedians.’ ” After the service, Martin Amis picked up a newspaper that carried the headline “execute rushdie orders the ayatollah.” Rushdie, Amis thought, had now “vanished into the front page.”

For the next decade, Rushdie lived underground, guarded by officers of the Special Branch, a unit of London’s Metropolitan Police. The headlines and the threats were unceasing. People behaved well. People behaved disgracefully. There were friends of great constancy—Buford, Amis, James Fenton, Ian McEwan, Nigella Lawson, Christopher Hitchens, many more—and yet some regarded the fatwa as a problem Rushdie had brought on himself. Prince Charles made his antipathy clear at a dinner party that Amis attended: What should you expect if you insult people’s deepest convictions? John le Carré instructed Rushdie to withdraw his book “until a calmer time has come.” Roald Dahl branded him a “dangerous opportunist” who “knew exactly what he was doing and cannot plead otherwise.” The singer-songwriter Cat Stevens, who had a hit with “Peace Train” and converted to Islam, said, “The Quran makes it clear—if someone defames the Prophet, then he must die.” Germaine Greer, George Steiner, and Auberon Waugh all expressed their disapproval. So did Jimmy Carter, the British Foreign Secretary, and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Among his detractors, an image hardened of a Rushdie who was dismissive of Muslim sensitivities and, above all, ungrateful for the expensive protection the government was providing him. The historian Hugh Trevor-Roper remarked, “I would not shed a tear if some British Muslims, deploring his manners, should waylay him in a dark street and seek to improve them. If that should cause him thereafter to control his pen, society would benefit, and literature would not suffer.”

The horror was that, thanks to Khomeini’s cruel edict, so many people did suffer. In separate incidents, Hitoshi Igarashi, the novel’s Japanese translator, and Ettore Capriolo, its Italian translator, were stabbed, Igarashi fatally; the book’s Norwegian publisher, William Nygaard, was fortunate to survive being shot multiple times. Bookshops from London to Berkeley were firebombed. Meanwhile, the Swedish Academy, the organization in Stockholm that awards the annual Nobel Prize in Literature, declined to issue a statement in support of Rushdie. This was a silence that went unbroken for decades.

[..]

Since 1989, Rushdie has had to shut out not only the threats to his person but the constant dissections of his character, in the press and beyond. “There was a moment when there was a ‘me’ floating around that had been invented to show what a bad person I was,” he said. “ ‘Evil.’ ‘Arrogant.’ ‘Terrible writer.’ ‘Nobody would’ve read him if there hadn’t been an attack against his book.’ Et cetera. I’ve had to fight back against that false self. My mother used to say that her way of dealing with unhappiness was to forget it. She said, ‘Some people have a memory. I have a forget-ory.’ ”

Rushdie went on, “I just thought, There are various ways in which this event can destroy me as an artist.” He could refrain from writing altogether. He could write “revenge books” that would make him a creature of circumstances. Or he could write “scared books,” novels that “shy away from things, because you worry about how people will react to them.” But he didn’t want the fatwa to become a determining event in his literary trajectory: “If somebody arrives from another planet who has never heard of anything that happened to me, and just has the books on the shelf and reads them chronologically, I don’t think that alien would think, Something terrible happened to this writer in 1989. The books go on their own journey. And that was really an act of will.”

Some people in Rushdie’s circle and beyond are convinced that, in the intervening decades, self-censorship, a fear of giving offense, has too often become the order of the day. His friend Hanif Kureishi has said, “Nobody would have the balls today to write ‘The Satanic Verses,’ let alone publish it.”

[..]

Rushdie was hospitalized for six weeks. In the months since his release, he has mostly stayed home save for trips to doctors, sometimes two or three a day. He’d lived without security for more than two decades. Now he’s had to rethink that.

Just before Christmas, on a cold and rainy morning, I arrived at the midtown office of Andrew Wylie, Rushdie’s literary agent, where we’d arranged to meet. After a while, I heard the door to the agency open. Rushdie, in an accent that bears traces of all his cities—Bombay, London, New York—was greeting agents and assistants, people he had not seen in many months. The sight of him making his way down the hall was startling: He has lost more than forty pounds since the stabbing. The right lens of his eyeglasses is blacked over. The attack left him blind in that eye, and he now usually reads with an iPad so that he can adjust the light and the size of the type. There is scar tissue on the right side of his face. He speaks as fluently as ever, but his lower lip droops on one side. The ulnar nerve in his left hand was badly damaged.

Rushdie took off his coat and settled into a chair across from his agent’s desk. I asked how his spirits were.

“Well, you know, I’ve been better,” he said dryly. “But, considering what happened, I’m not so bad. As you can see, the big injuries are healed, essentially. I have feeling in my thumb and index finger and in the bottom half of the palm. I’m doing a lot of hand therapy, and I’m told that I’m doing very well.”

“Can you type?”

“Not very well, because of the lack of feeling in the fingertips of these fingers.”

What about writing?

“I just write more slowly. But I’m getting there.”

Sleeping has not always been easy. “There have been nightmares—not exactly the incident, but just frightening. Those seem to be diminishing. I’m fine. I’m able to get up and walk around. When I say I’m fine, I mean, there’s bits of my body that need constant checkups. It was a colossal attack.”

More than once, Rushdie looked around the office and smiled. “It’s great to be back,” he said. “It’s someplace which is not a hospital, which is mostly where I’ve been to. And to be in this agency is—I’ve been coming here for decades, and it’s a very familiar space to me. And to be able to come here to talk about literature, talk about books, to talk about this novel, ‘Victory City,’ to be able to talk about the thing that most matters to me . . .”

At this meeting and in subsequent conversations, I sensed conflicting instincts in Rushdie when he replied to questions about his health: there was the instinct to move on—to talk about literary matters, his book, anything but the decades-long fatwa and now the attack—and the instinct to be absolutely frank. “There is such a thing as P.T.S.D., you know,” he said after a while. “I’ve found it very, very difficult to write. I sit down to write, and nothing happens. I write, but it’s a combination of blankness and junk, stuff that I write and that I delete the next day. I’m not out of that forest yet, really.”

He added, “I’ve simply never allowed myself to use the phrase ‘writer’s block.’ Everybody has a moment when there’s nothing in your head. And you think, Oh, well, there’s never going to be anything. One of the things about being seventy-five and having written twenty-one books is that you know that, if you keep at it, something will come.”

Had that happened in the past months?

Rushdie frowned. “Not really. I mean, I’ve tried, but not really.” He was only lately “just beginning to feel the return of the juices.”

How to go on living after thinking you had emerged from years of threat, denunciation, and mortal danger? And now how to recover from an attack that came within millimetres of killing you, and try to live, somehow, as if it could never recur?

He seemed grateful for a therapist he had seen since before the attack, a therapist “who has a lot of work to do. He knows me and he’s very helpful, and I just talk things through.”

The talk was plainly in the service of a long-standing resolution. “I’ve always tried very hard not to adopt the role of a victim,” he said. “Then you’re just sitting there saying, Somebody stuck a knife in me! Poor me. . . . Which I do sometimes think.” He laughed. “It hurts. But what I don’t think is: That’s what I want people reading the book to think. I want them to be captured by the tale, to be carried away.”

Many years ago, he recalled, there were people who seemed to grow tired of his persistent existence. “People didn’t like it. Because I should have died. Now that I’ve almost died, everybody loves me. . . . That was my mistake, back then. Not only did I live but I tried to live well. Bad mistake. Get fifteen stab wounds, much better.”

As he lay in the hospital, Rushdie received countless texts and e-mails sending love, wishing for his recovery. “I was in utter shock,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the Nigerian novelist, told me. “I just didn’t believe he was still in any real danger. For two days, I kept vigil, sending texts to friends all over the world, searching the Internet to make sure he was still alive.” There was a reading in his honor on the steps of the New York Public Library.

For some writers, the shock brought certain issues into hard focus. “The attack on Salman clarified a lot of things for me,” Ayad Akhtar told me. “I know I have a much brighter line that I draw for myself between the potential harms of speech and the freedom of the imagination. They are incommensurate and shouldn’t be placed in the same paragraph.”

Rushdie was stirred by the tributes that his near-death inspired. “It’s very nice that everybody was so moved by this, you know?” he said. “I had never thought about how people would react if I was assassinated, or almost assassinated.”

And yet, he said, “I’m lucky. What I really want to say is that my main overwhelming feeling is gratitude.” He was grateful to those who showed their support. He was grateful to the doctors, the E.M.T. workers, and the fireman in Chautauqua who stanched his wounds, and he was grateful to the surgeons in Erie. “At some point, I’d like to go back up there and say thank you.” He was also grateful to his two grown sons, Zafar and Milan, who live in London, and to Griffiths. “She kind of took over at a point when I was helpless.” She dealt with the doctors, the police, and the investigators, and with transport from Pennsylvania to New York. “She just took over everything, as well as having the emotional burden of my almost being killed.”

Did he think it had been a mistake to let his guard down since moving to New York? “Well, I’m asking myself that question, and I don’t know the answer to it,” he said. “I did have more than twenty years of life. So, is that a mistake? Also, I wrote a lot of books. ‘The Satanic Verses’ was my fifth published book—my fourth published novel—and this is my twenty-first. So, three-quarters of my life as a writer has happened since the fatwa. In a way, you can’t regret your life.”

Whom does he blame for the attack?

“I blame him,” he said.

[..]

[ Archive: https://archive.is/uiRsY ]

==

I'll state it plainly: Rushdie was betrayed by people who not only should have known better, but did know better.

They took a faux-moralizing position in order to keep themselves out of the firing line. When the bully goes on the rampage, you side with the bully to save your own skin. One of the earliest modern day incarnations of cancel culture, joining the outrage mob so as not to be their target.

That's understandable in a way, but there's a profound cowardice in the people who took such a self-interested defensive posture in the 1980s, who scolded Rushdie and anyone who defended him, and yet still today have not admitted their contributions and collaboration with what happened. I've yet to see any of them admit "I/we got it very wrong."

[andthroughthewire]

You’ve heard me whine before but I wish so much there was more good Chuck meta that wasn’t just “he’s evil bye” (no he’s horrible *and* complicated) or the brain breaking take that I saw recently of “Chuck was right and it’s okay that he treated Jimmy badly even when Jimmy was a small child because Saul was always there” like I love every single person actor or creator talking about how fucked up these brothers are but that’s a finite resource

I'll compare Chuck and Walt since the show itself did and, well... they're both insufferable pricks but Walt is 'allowed' to be one because he represents this power fantasy to an unfortunate amount of viewers while Chuck is just a regular man with a laundry list of deep-rooted issues, he doesn't make bombs from God-knows-what and brings them to hospitals to blow up a meth kingpin. He also fills the role of the main antagonist and stands in the way of the main character so people are more inclined to just see him that way.

...or that's how it was for the first three seasons. I think his relapse and suicide either triggered some sort of 'do not speak ill of the dead' kind of thing or the same portion of viewers I mentioned earlier turned on Jimmy in a way they never did with Walt, probably because (for the most part) we are talking about normal people with normal problems and it's harder to justify a character when they're not larger than life or so far removed from our own experiences, if you get what I mean? As an example, I've never seen long dissertations about Lalo killing the guy from Travel Wire, but I've read countless posts on Reddit about how Jimmy and Kim's actions are somehow more morally deplorable than what Walt does in all of Breaking Bad.

So, in a way, I think that people's opinion of Chuck has more to do with how favourably they see Jimmy than Chuck himself. The same thing happened with Kim and Howard at the end of S5.

It's also just easier to see characters as either 100% good or bad no in between, but if there's anything Better Call Saul asks the viewers to do is to not do that. Not even Lalo is a moustache-twirling villain and genuinely cares about his uncle. Chuck doesn't get the benefit of the doubt characters like Lalo (or Jimmy!) do because he's not charismatic enough... or at all, honestly, which is kind of the whole point of his character and why he resents his brother so damn much and thinks he somehow manipulated his way to a law degree and passing the bar. Never mind the fact that having a way with words is kind of a requisite for being a good lawyer and Jimmy, Kim, Howard and Chuck all have that quality in different ways. But I'm going waaayyy off topic so I'll stop.

[septembersghost]

Hi! I wanted to ask you about your thoughts on “who poisoned Brock” discussion. I’ve spent hours pondering about this and still am unable to arrive to any definite conclusion. I don’t believe, or I don’t want to believe, that Jimmy could ever do such a thing. Knowing him, it sounds like nonsense, partly because I believe that, despite everything, there was a smidge of his core kindness and humanity left in ‘Saul Goodman’ persona, and also because the last episodes of BCS confirmed there are still lines Jimmy wouldn’t cross (he didn’t hit the terminally ill man with his dog’s ashes jar, he didn’t strangle Marion with a telephone cord). The moment Marion whispers “I trusted you”, he looks ashamed and backs away, with a clear look of “what have I done” on his face. This is not a man who can poison an innocent child who likes him and trusts him. Also him doing that would render the ending of BCS kinda pointless, because what would be the point of Nippy, Waterworks, Saul Gone if Jimmy was already so bad and rotten he almost killed a child? There would be no reason to show just how far he’s fallen from grace in Waterworks and no point to his confession in Saul Gone either. So, no, Jimmy, ‘our best friend pathetic little meow meow wet can of a man’ Jimmy didn’t do it. But who? It was Walter White’s bidding, of course, he poisoned Brock, but I can’t see him doing it himself because it’s somehow… physically impossible? The first time Andrea and Brock met him was in Jesse’s house after Gus Fring’s death, they didn’t know him or ever spoke to him before that. Did he just sneak into their garden, all ninja-like, put lily of the valley berries there and hid behind the bush, waiting until Brock eats them? Did he have someone deliver them anonymously – if yes, who? Would Andrea just let her kid eat some strange berries that came from who knows where? Or maybe he did meet Brock but without Andrea around – maybe followed Brock to his school like some creep and gave him the berries at the schoolyard? I don’t know which of these versions is creepier or more unsettling. (pt 1)

(pt 2) Also I was listening to a BCS podcast yesterday covering Uno and Mijo episodes (not Insider, though I listen to that too and enjoy it immensely). It was said that Saul Goodman, as he was in Breaking Bad, would just walk away and leave the twins to die in the desert. I also wanted to know your thoughts on this because I… don’t necessarily agree with this take? It’s obvious that Jimmy ends up doing horrible things and during his Saul Goodman era he’s as morally depraved as ever (except Gene Takovic and his “serial killer” vibes behavior with both the cancer man and  Marion), and he’s perfectly okay to suggest killing Jesse and Combo and there are all his ‘lovely’ Belize references (genuinely, Jimmy, what the fuck), and he’s also A-okay visiting a recovering heroin addict who just lost his girlfriend and suggesting the said addict started making some meth, or came into contact with his abuser so he would start making meth, because money (again, Jimmy, what the fuck). It’s very deplorable. But I also remember him not giving away Jesse’s location to Mike, even though Mike threatened him, even though Jimmy knew Mike was dangerous and he was working for dangerous people. He was putting himself in a dangerous situation to protect Jesse, after all, even though I fully expected him to betray Jesse the first time I was watching and he surprised me. I think that Jimmy gives off this impression of being sleazy, unreliable, treacherous, but there is some humanity left in him, just a little? Maybe if he was put into the same situation with the twins as ‘Saul Goodman’ he would still try to save them? I feel like I really should rewatch Breaking Bad but can’t bring myself to do it.  I think of his Saul Goodman persona there and I just want to cry. Jimmy, what have you become, Jimmy. You’re killing me. I’m sorry for a long rant! As always, it’s very interesting to me to hear your thoughts on this.

the situation with brock's poisoning has always been a bit ambiguous and confusing - as is lydia's poisoning with the ricin - and one of those moments where we have to stretch credulity and believe walt was capable of doing these things unnoticed, because i believe (iirc, it's been a LONG time since i listened to interviews about brba, so if anyone has a clearer picture of this, please chime in!) bryan always stated that walt carried those things off himself. walt somehow got the lily of the valley into something brock ate, school is the most likely option, we just don't know WHEN because we don't see it. it's doubtful he'd entrust anyone else with that mission given how sensitive and heinous it is, and how he NEEDS jesse to believe it was gus. and walt sneaks the ricin into the stevia packet and reseals it, which we also don't see. my personal take - even before getting to know jimmy as well as we do - was saul (and huell by extension) didn't know what walt was planning (walt doesn't trust them or find them entirely competent anyway), what they DO is steal the ricin back from jesse's cigarette pack without knowing the reason. but when saul says he didn't know the kid was going to end up in the hospital, i just don't think he had any cognizance that brock would be poisoned at all, because i still do think there are lines he would've drawn. that plan is so maniacal, it has to be purely walt in my mind to make sense.

i can't remember if i mentioned this before (i feel like i did?), but i saw someone on twitter say that their difficulties with S6B were not saul becoming gene, but rather jimmy becoming the final iteration of saul, because they couldn't bridge some of those characterization gaps, and i...apologize for saying this, but i agree. i don't think they ever logically showed us how jimmy, who watched howard die in front of him, who lost kim because of that tragedy, could be okay with casual murder in any circumstance. trauma isn't enough for me to explain that. descending into the greedy, ostentatious depravity of the saul persona isn't enough to explain it either, it's a very big leap from him being concerned about things going too far or people being killed (see: his worry about domingo) to casually mentioning shankings. personally i feel like they fell so in love with jimmy that they never wanted him to get to dark enough of a place, and we did too, but it makes that a bit jarring. but even at his worst, like you said, he doesn't hit the guy over the head (that was super horrifying for me, a person who has her beloved dog's ashes...), he doesn't harm marion and does come to his senses as soon as she says she trusted him. it's a LOW bar at that point, but there is still humanity in him. i honestly don't believe saul would've stood there and watched two hapless but innocent guys get murdered in the desert - and even out of self-preservation, because once they're dead, what's to stop you from getting knocked off too? i don't feel he'd ever have actually been okay with murder committed in front of him. he's visibly shaken about mike. he DOES make that choice to protect jesse.

I think that Jimmy gives off this impression of being sleazy, unreliable, treacherous, but there is some humanity left in him, just a little? so much is a facade and him trying to perpetuate it, but there definitely is humanity in him and we do see that come to the surface on occasion. furthermore, if he DIDN'T have that, he would never have done what he did at the end, and would've taken the easier way. much as i struggle with some of how that was presented, the point remains that he reclaimed his name, his humanity, and his love by doing that and by telling the truth. someone devoid of those things wouldn't bother.

i agree that rewatching (either show) will be very difficult now because that tragedy is far more palpable than it even was before. i'm glad i've seen them both several times through, because i'm not sure when i'll have the emotional fortitude to go back. they're so exquisitely done and i'm very grateful for them, but it is undeniably a heavy toll on the heart.

[madamlaydebug]

👁DivineReRa

🗣HERE WEGO 👁KNOW YALL GONNA SEE THIS AND WILL NOT EVEN ATTEMPT TO 😳UNDERSTAND THAT READING IS FUNDAMENTAL. 👋🏽😱ITS HOW WE LEARN FROM BOOKS 📚 AND NOW EACH OTHER ON THIS INTERNET CONNECTION.

😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱

During the presidency of Jimmy Carter, Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski - a National security adviser and political scientist - wrote a paper that was sent to all state department government agencies telling them they had to do everything within their power to prevent African Americans from uniting with Native Africans politically, culturally, and economically.

( Dividing Africans globally strips us of our global numerical advantage and robes us of all hope of defeating global White Supremacy. ) To meet this objective, white propaganda designers were hired to exploit those of us that are ignorant, gullible and naive by creating false propaganda campaigns claiming that we African Americans are not Africans. However, DNA genetic testings reveal that African American average genetic makeup is 80% African, 19% European, and just 0.8% Native Americans.

There was also the discovery of three 500 year old frozen Native American children and physical racial type and DNA are consistent with the racial type of those that are currently recognized as Native American Indians. Their racial type is also consistent with many Indians found through the entire Americas. ( North, South, and Central America)

The claim that we African Americans are the true indigenous Americans is based upon ridiculous theories, speculations and conjunctures sewn together with possibilities, but it's still nothing more than a weak theory nonetheless. DNA's testings irrefutably confirmed that we African Americans are from Africa.

HERE IS HOW THE WHITE GLOBAL MEDIA IS BEING USED TO TURN NATIVE AFRICANS AGAINST AFRICAN AMERICANS:

The media images shown to Native Africans - of we African Americans- are those that depicts African Americans in a unflattering, buffoonery and culturally disconnected manner. Furthermore, African Americans are made to appear as criminals and thugs. And as being a part of a treacherous, frightening, and insane fringe. These images reinforces negative stereotypes about African Americans and produces fear of them in the minds of many Native Africans. It therefore, shouldn't come as a surprise that many Native Africans develop negative opinions of about African Americans. As a result of these media depictions, some Native Africans come to the United States looking down upon African Americans-- who could very well be of their own blood relatives.

For some Native Africans the programming against African Americans is so strong that some even insist that their children marries only other Native Africans. Many Native Africans have also given reports of being told by government immigration official upon arriving in the U.S. to stay clear of African Americans.

HERE IS HOW THE WHITE GLOBAL MEDIA IS USED TO TURN MANY AFRICAN AMERICANS AGAINST NATIVE AFRICANS:

To turn many African Americans against Native Africans the white media controllers negatively distorts the image of Africa; they turn it into a source of shame and humiliation for many African Americans. By only showing the poorest parts of Africa this is intentionally being done to make all Africans that have been spread throughout the diaspora by slavery to feel grateful that slavery happened because it took them away from the backward land of Africa.

African Americans are being shown, for the most part, only those images of Africa that our intentionally designed to produce shame of their African heritage. They are constantly subjected to seeing only those images of a war-torn, famine-ridden, rampantly illiterate, and disease-stricken Africa. Some African Americans have been so demoralized by the US negative distorted portrayal of Africa that they'll now accept any fable that allows them to separate themselves from Africa.

These deplorable depictions of Africa displaying only its poorest communities are in fact designed to make African Americans feel grateful that it was their ancestors enslaved and bought to America. These images intentionally conveys the subliminal message that African Americans were the lucky ones to have been taken away from the backwardness of Africa.

This propaganda campaign also prevents African Americans from pursuing the reparation debt that the U.S. government still owes them. This is because it causes many African Americans to perceive the enslavement of their ancestor as being more of a rescue mission from the terrible place of Africa rather than the true brutal Black Holocaust it truly was. This psychological warfare campaign is also designed to break down African Americans’ sense of Black racial heritage and allegiance towards Africa--thus meets the ruling white elites' divide and conquer objectives. This media campaign causes many African Americans to look down upon Native Africans.

To further turn many African Americans against Native Africans white historians also rewrote the history of the African slave trade to favor themselves. Their revision intentionally makes the white invaders appear more humane, and shifts the blame of the African slave trade more greatly upon native Africans. The history of the African slave trade taught to Diaspora African students deliberately hides the brutal massacre of countless African Warriors that died in battle trying to rescue their captured love ones from the slave ships. As the African warriors charged the beaches the ship's crew shot cannons and countless of bullets into their bodies. Leaving thousands of blood soaked Black bodies laying on beaches.

The number of Africans that died in battles fought against the white invaders far exceeded, many times over, the number of any African's that may have assisted in the slave trade. The hiding of these fierce battles and massacres is deliberately done to perpetuate the lie that most Africans were merely sold away. To further convey the falsehood that most African slaves were sold away by other Africans, several white artist were hired to create pictures of Africans selling their fellow Africans to the white invaders. These propaganda arts are design to shift the culpability of the African slave trade away from the white invaders and place that blame onto the native Africans. Reproductions of those drawings and paintings can still be found within America's school text books today. Therefore, every time that an African American students reads about the African slave trade those pictures are placed between the texts subliminally conveying the message that it was the Africans that wronged you and not the white invaders.

Furthermore, to believe that the greedy white invaders ( they that bloodily brutalized our Black ancestors during slavery here in the U.S.) went into Africa with weaponry advantage [of guns and cannons] but rather than maximizing their profits, they instead shown kindness, and mercy by purchasing most of their slaves is absolutely preposterous. Because such a claim totally contradicts over 500 years of demonstrated behavior by whites in regards to Black people and making profit.

Moreover, critically think, and ask yourself this question: If Africans owned all the natural resources of gold, diamonds, oils, minerals, and animal skins, fur, and wine, and Western money had no value in Africa, what then could the white invaders trade to get MOST of the slaves? What possible commodity did the white invaders have that was of such great value, and they possessed in such high abundance that they could give to the Africans in exchange for over 60 millions of Black people?

And why wouldn't the greedy white invaders maximize their profits by using their weaponry advantage of riffles and cannons to steal most of their slaves? However, yet through miseducation millions of these African Americans ( and even some Africans) have been brainwash to believe the perpetuated falsehood that most of their African ancestors where sold away by other native Africans. This shifting of culpability is intentionally done to create psychological feelings of hurt and resentment among many African Americans towards native Africans.

Some African Americans have been so demoralized by white media’s depictions of Africa that they will now accept any frivolous premise that allows them to claim themselves as being anything other than an African. This anti Africa media propaganda programming is so deeply entrenched into the minds of some that they continue to ignore the fact the millions of African Americans have taken DNA's testings that irrefutably confirmed their African ancestry.

THE BLACK HEBREWS

The Black Hebrew Israelites’ ideology has actually done more for the benefit of white global supremacy than any other organization in history. It divides millions of Black people in the US from the billions in Africa by teaching its followers that they're not Africans - although millions of DNA results have scientifically confirmed that's we are. They also base this division upon the story of Noah's sons Ham and Shem. They claims that Africans are of Ham and that African Americans are of Shem. However, Shem and Ham never actually existed, the Noah's ark story never happened. It’s not even a Hebrew mythology. It is a totally unadulterated falsehood. The men who wrote the Bible plagiarized it from a Mesopotamian story, “The Gilgamesh Epic.” That Mesopotamia story even includes the mythology that the first rainbow came after God flooded the world. As is typical for writers of mythology, the Mesopotamians took a natural phenomenon they didn’t understand, (the rainbow) and created a fantastical story around it. We also know the biblical flood never occurred, because there have existed great civilizations thriving during that time. They kept good records and never mentioned of a great flood that wiped them from the face of the earth. These civilizations included: The Chinese (Neolithic Dynasty), The Egyptians ( Dynasties 4,5, & 6), Mesopotamians ( Early Dynastic Period) Sumerians, Peruvians and more...In reality, there was never a flood that covered the entire planet and destroyed the world. It's a fairytale.

Furthermore, the Black Hebrew's claim that Africans are descendants from Ham is also totally debunked by the fact that according to Biblical scholars, the Noah’s Flood happened 4,300 years ago. The problem with this biblical timeline is that science have confirmed time and time again that Africans are much older than that date. In South Africa Scientists unearthed ancient bones belonging to at least 15 individuals. These bodies are estimated at between 20,000 and two million years old. There was also the remains called Lucy found in Ethiopia estimated at over three million years old. These findings of African bodies, that are much older than the fictional Biblical Ham timeline 4,300 years proves it irrefutably that Africans did not originate from Ham--because Africans are much older than the fictional Ham origin story. Therefore it's only by ignorance can anyone believe that Africans originated from Ham. Moreover, the Black Hebrews keep insisting that they're not Africans irrespectively of the fact that millions of DNA results have confirms that they are Africans.

Furthermore, when we critically and intelligently think of course the Noah's Ark story is totally untrue. For to believe that the story is true, one would have to believe the ridiculous premise that two of every animal walked from across the entire planet and fitted onto a large wooden boat built by a 500 year old man. That's ridiculous. Furthermore, how could one family repopulate the entire earth without engaging within incest relationships. Clearly the story is absurd. Any religion that promotes the division between millions of Black people across the world based upon a Bible that is easily proven to be false is very foolish.

When black people divide themselves over superstition they are forfeiting all hope to defeat White Supremacy. To renounce your associative power as a black person is to foolishly forfeit your numerical advantage.

Franklin Jones

Learn more at www.theblackpeoplematrix. Com

[goreybaby]

this is the fandom i was referring to in my previous post lmao. but yeah. this. literally this.

jimmy did awful things, but there's no reason for people to literally shun him from their vocabulary, etc. it's immature, it's stupid. you can hate a character, hate the things they did, but when artists are too scared to draw him, write his name or discuss him in any way that is not direct hate, then you suck lol. you're censoring this fandom and pretty much belittling mouthwashing's masterful intent along with its various messages.

the main villain in mouthwashing is pony express. they hired a woman who was not qualified to do her job to assess real people who exhibit symptoms of debilitating mental illness, all because they do not care enough about their staff to do things correctly and safely. they are neglectful to their workers.

throughout the game, the player is constantly bombarded with posters alluding to the repercussions the crew members will face if they go against some very trivial rules.

evidently, jimmy is suffering from some kind of severe mental illness. he has hallucinations, acts in brash, violent ways, and is very detached from all the other crew members. in his psych eval, he claims he has a sexual attraction to cartoon horses — a completely inappropriate and unusual claim, something no sane person would even entertain saying.

jimmy was not given the psychological help he needed to improve. the devs even stated that the ship purposely has little to no windows to enhance the claustrophobic feel — no doubt would this affect someone suffering from whatever illness it is he is forced to endure, where hallucinations are prevalent.

while, of course, what he did to anya was vile and deplorable, if pony express was able to tend to jimmy's mental distress and actually hire someone who knows what they're doing, there is a chance this might not have happened.

now onto curly: people who claim he is at fault for not telling anyone about jimmy, or that he did not act soon enough.

for one, the time between curly finding out about anya's assault and the crashing of the ship was 24 hours. 24 hours of hearing that one of your crewmates has just been violently assaulted by your best friend. it is jarring, he needs time to process, and anya is clearly not someone who can handle high-tension situations well. so, him approaching jimmy and demanding he take responsibility would not only cause her more distress, but may also entice her abuser to react violently towards her. and ultimately, it did: he tried to find the gun after finding out about the pregnancy, and when that was not doable, he decided to crash the ship instead.

curly had to handle this situation with care. he needed time. more time. but he didn't have enough.

on the poster "Polle says lend a hand!" the small print reads: HR complaints about poor team synergy may result in collective punishment.

had curly established an even bigger problem by confronting jimmy, everyone, including anya, would have suffered the consequences. he needed to think about the best way to go about this for everyone, and especially for her, but again, he had no time.

think... pony express, the ultimate villain of the game, would have been willing to punish the victim for coming out about her assault.

look at the bigger picture. stop looking at characters as one dimensional, or as their faults. the entire crew has so much depth, they aren't meant to be taken at face value.

and seriously!! you're allowed to admire characters for their writing and still hate their actions; you can still pity a character who did something immoral.

alright, friends, i might say something you don't like but i think it's important. not just to defend a character, but because i think this is literally making people's experience and relationship with this game worse.

give jimmy like two seconds to exist.

by hating jimmy so much you refuse to even say his name, and judge real, living people for liking him, you are cheapening your experience by boiling down the main character to the most ~yuckiest~ moments. and, by not making a seperate space for hating on him, you are drowning out the voices of people who actually have nuanced things to say about his character. you know, the skilled writers and artists that feed the fandom? limitation is what kills fandoms, you have to know that.

is jimmy a good person? no. is he a good captain/companion/worker? Absolutely Not! he crumbles like dust under any pressure and he immediately shifts blame off of himself, he is an actively harmful individual and it's right to be upset by his actions. i literally had to stop myself from saying "man FUCK jimmy." multiple times because i didn't want to spoil how terrible he got to my friends when i showed the game to them.

but you have to understand; people are more than their actions. thats part of the entire point of the game. thats why its so abstract. you are meant to think about the nuances of their situation.

we can agree that anya was way more as a woman than what happened to her and what she did as a result of it, right? that despite her best efforts, she was a victim of circumstance, and she deserves to be understood and analyzed fully?

then why, seeing a fictional man who has done immoral things, are you so disgusted you won't even draw, write or discuss him outside of hate? what is that doing for you, to ignore literally the main character of the game because of his actions?

now, this is not to say people can't hate jimmy. i understand it! as someone who has been a victim of s/a and abuse, i understand if you hate him and are even triggered by him to the point of avoiding mention of him. (but...why are you in this fandom? ((not aggressive im genuinely asking)))

you can feel however you want about any character, my goal is not to control people. but i thought it was common knowledge to not hatepost about someone in their tag? over actual insight into his character and, you know, the main themes of the game?

jimmy is a man who has struggled his whole life. both him and curly confirm that in the game. he's unable to control his emotional outbursts, and he likely had no idea what to expect from being in fucking SPACE for over a year with people he probably didn't even know before that trip. and pony express and their corporate safety corner cutting certainly didnt help, did it?

for one reason or another, he most likely was never actually taught how to manage his emotions. that's just how it is sometimes, growing up as a man. and it would make sense if he was forced to deal with everything himself, no? he always complains, but he still says he'll handle it. because that's what he's always had to do. and this is just the start of what i could say about what made him the way that he is.

he's a victim too, not only of his own actions.

surprise surprise, people who do awful things can also be victims.

honestly, this entire situation baffles me. how are you going to avoid one of the main characters of the game, let alone the one you play as ninety percent of the time? mind you, curly is also guilty, and i am happy to see at least some people giving him space for nuance. because he is also a victim!!! why is it so impossible to see jimmy as nuanced, when literally every other character also has incredible depth to them??

you're tarnishing and spitting on the beautiful writing of this game just because one character is too icky for you to feel comfortable thinking about for too long. it's horror, you absolute morons. it's supposed to make you uncomfortable.

if you hate jimmy, i dont blame you. but please, please, make your own space for it. be kind to people who want to explore jimmy and the darker themes, and like him for what his character represents. this is a video game fandom, not a witch hunt. and please, learn some fandom etiquette while you're at it, okay? okay. thank you

also just say his name. its not a slur youre not gonna go to hell if you say jimmy. like this isn't as important but still it just feels like a microcosm of this whole thing.

[moonctzeny]

Heaven and Hell

request:

” You had an eternity to live out, but you wished you could spend it all with him in that moment, on that roof of a house party. How could something as nice as what you were feeling right now be so wrong?”

pairing: demon!Ten x angel! reader

genre: angst,fluff

warnings: this fic is probably religiously innacurate, but more based on the bible’s represantation of angels and demons. I didn’t explicitly describe satan on purpose 

word count: 2,298

Being an angel, God’s ambassador and a messenger to humans, meant spiritually guiding them into making righteous decisions. Most times, seeing the mortal beings following your advice into a purer, more honorable lifestyle was extremely rewarding. Other times, like today, it meant attending a high school party, trying to keep impressionable teenagers from drugs, alcohol and sex.

And the being offering these things oh so generously, was no other than the demon who first introduced the feeling of anger in your heart.

Ten was much better than you at blending in, wearing a black shirt that was half-unbuttoned and showed his neck, adorned with chains and devilish signs. A bucket hat covered the two small red horns that were usually peeking out of his locks, a lit up cigarette on his lips. You probably seemed a little lost in comparison, overwhelmed with all the sins already being committed around you. Your wings were tucked awkwardly inside an oversized leather jacket, covering much of the silky ivory dress that always covered your body.

An unseeable force was leading you to him, and you came across his signature smirk when he locked eyes with you. He looks you up and down, smiling at your appearance, as innocent as he always knew you. Taking a drag from his cigarette, he blows the smoke at your face before finally speaking.

“Well, well, isn’t it my favorite little angel. What’s a heavenly creature like you doing in a bad place like this?”

Scoffing at his greeting, you try to fan out the smoke that was making it even harder to breathe around him.

“Trying to save these kids from listening to your terrible advice”

As if to prove your point, Ten pats a boy on the shoulder, offering him two cigarettes.

“Here, my treat. Give one to your girlfriend as well”

The boy smiles at the demon and thanks him before starting to walk away hand in hand with his girl, Ten’s unsuspecting second victim. You try to follow after them, yelling at their direction before they start disappearing into the crowd.

“Did you know that on average, the life expectancy of a smoker is 10 years less than a nonsmoker? Cigarette smoke contains more than 7,000 chemicals, 70 of which are known to-“

Ten puts an arm between you and the teens, keeping you from continuing your lecture.

“Darling, darling, stop. They can’t hear you. They’re too busy trying to find a spot to make out with each other. And then maybe do something more”. You turn red at his statement, holding him responsible once more for filling your pristine soul with rage. “Oh, come on, aren’t you all for love and recreation and all that?”

“Yes. When you find the right person, decide to spend the rest of your life with them. Not at the dirty basement of a house party”

He drops his cigarette to the floor, putting it out with his shoe as he steps closer to you. You get startled as he moves one of his hands on your face, moving a strand of hair away from your eyes.

“Sometimes, being with the wrong person feels so right”

His words made you shiver, but you knew better than to succumb so easily to him. You held his wrist, stilling his hand, despite his touch feeling so good.

“Don’t expect me to fall for your devilish preachings like some human”

“What is that I sense my little angel? Anger? Maybe a little bit of superiority against the mortals?”

“Maybe you’re rubbing off on me”

He grinned at that, glad that tonight’s mission got him to spend time with you. He wasn’t lying earlier, you really were his favorite. The mere sight of you made something unfamiliar to him grow in his belly. A feeling of safety, kindness. He was a being of darkness but being around something as divine as you felt natural to him, his own personal sin.

But your little game of push and pull wasn’t over yet. Your intimate moment got interrupted by a teenage girl, disoriented and looking for her drunken friend. Using your powers to find her, you inform her of the location, and take the vodka bottle gently from her hands. Immediately trying to one up you, Ten grabs it from you and makes eye contact with another boy from across the room. You see a red light flickering in his orbs, enticing his new victim to come closer. The boy indeed walks towards you, completely hypnotized by the demon, accepting the booze, and starts to chug the liquid right in front of you.

“You are so annoying! I just helped that girl not to drink”

“If I’m so annoying then why are you still here? You are the one who came to me first, remember?”

You hated it, but he was right. You’d never let the angels hear about this, but ever since meeting Ten for the first time, you

couldn’t stop thinking about him. Lusting over other creatures, let alone a demon was forbidden, but even an angel couldn’t repudiate his looks, sinfully irresistible. You let yourself get lost in his eyes, admiring their red-ish hue that was intensified by the black eyeliner he wore tonight. His voice brought you out of your thoughts, as seductive as it was expected from a Devil’s servant.

“Wanna get out of here?”

You knew there was nothing you could do to deny him, but decided to save face.

“You would miss the opportunity to see Jimmy over there get drunk with the Hennessy you offered him, just to walk around with a creature of heaven like me?”

“Maybe you’re rubbing off on me”

He took your hand in a manner too sweet for a demon, and led you to the roof of the house.

You were alone, as no one would dare to climb up somewhere so dangerous if they didn’t posses a thousand lives like the two of you. Ten sat next to you, lighting up another cigarette while you took your uncomfortable jacket off.

“I am a fan of leather”, he started and took a drag, “but don’t you dare cover up those pretty wings again”

“I didn’t know that demons could grasp the concept of beauty. Aren’t you supposed to celebrate chaos and ugliness?”

He sat and contemplated his answer for a second.

“Yes. But- you’re different. Too beautiful”

You were shocked by his honesty and deeply flattered by his words. He made you feel prideful of your looks, another thing that the angels wouldn’t approve of. You were supposed to be just a servant, void of the need for individuality and any feelings of vanity.

“Then why are you hiding yourself with that hat?”, you retort quickly in an effort to hide your abashment.

Ten grinned at you, taking his hat off and ruffling his hair. He looked so handsome in his carefreeness that you felt your heart skip a beat.

“Did you miss my horns, my little demon?”

“Y-yeah. They’re cute. And since when did you start calling me your little demon instead of your little angel?”

“Since-”, he started and threw the stub of his cigarette off the roof. There was a moment of doubt from him that made you even more aware of the electric atmosphere. He leaned closer to you, a solemn look on his face and once again, you felt a higher power drawing you to him.

“Since now. My angel, my demon, it doesn’t matter. As long as you’re mine”

His lips tasted bitter from the tobacco, but the kiss was sugary sweet. He put one of his hands over yours, thumb comfortingly rubbing shapes on your skin. You melted against the kiss, unable to think about the ultimate sin you were committing.

It felt so right to be in Ten’s arms. To bask in the moonlight with him, sharing kisses all night long and laughing against his shoulder. You had an eternity to live out, but you wished you could spend it all with him in that moment, on that roof of a house party. How could something as nice as what you were feeling right now be so wrong?

 It wasn’t the last time you would meet like that. Going for missions in the same place as him meant sneaking off somewhere together, where you could enjoy each other’s company away from prying eyes. Sometimes, it’d be hard to look away from the small temptations he was planting in humans’ lives, but you knew that in his world, he was sinning as badly as you did.

In your acting moments as a mortal, Ten was always there to protect you from deplorable humans. In your intimate moments, he treated you with care and delicacy. He would do anything to make you smile, and you felt his heart fill up with joy and love, things forbidden in the underworld.

But see, when you work for divinely beings, there are not many things you can

keep hidden. When the angelic host found out about your relationship with Ten, you were banned from heaven, and condemned to hell. You pleaded with them for mercy, telling them that you loved him and love shouldn’t be punished like that, only to respond that your judgement doesn’t mean anything to them.

Ten was right next to you, when you entered the gates of hell. His heart shattered seeing you in your miserable state, immediately pulling your crying mess into a hug.

“Come here baby. We’ll work it out, don’t worry”

A hand rubbed your back to comfort you, the motion only ripping your wings out even more. From the moment you got kicked out from heaven they started falling off, one by one, a tear for a feather.

You felt broken. You didn’t want to face everything you spent all your life fighting against, but if it meant being next to Ten you would give it a shot. Would it be possible to spend your days with him, without guilt, even in a place like this?

Maybe it was foolish of you to think that the devil would allow for a love like this to flourish.

There he stood, the most terrifying and ugly creature you had seen, a morph of everything wrong in this world, eyeing the two of you up and down.

“Banned out of heaven huh? Well, I don’t have enough space in here for the two of you, this isn’t a bed and breakfast for young lovers”

Ten held your hand to ground you, sensing your desperation.

“Oh come on, she defied the angels! There must be a place for her”

Asking for mercy? From the devil? It was futile and Ten knew, with the way the being answered him nonchalantly, as if your fate wasn’t in the line.

“Sorry, but I’m gonna have to send her to the purgatory”

Of course he would say that, what’s more evil than ripping two creatures that are meant to be together away from each other?

“The purgatory? And what am I supposed to do there?” The devil smiled at you, spreading goosebumps all over your skin.

“Nothing. You’ll stay there, all alone in the emptiness. Forever”

You fell on your knees, weeping. You had lost everything, defied your morals and your place in heaven to be with your lover, only to have him taken away for eternity. The fiery rocks beneath you dug through your skin but your heart hurt more.

Next to you, Ten was consumed with another feeling he experienced for the very first time. Guilt. All these sins he had led the humans to commit through the years had never affected him like this. You were the only thing in his life he was proud of. His treasure, that he promised himself to protect and now, you were just another creature who would suffer because of him.

“I’ll go”, he said determined, and you could see him shaking, even through your tear-induced blurry vision. “I’ll go instead of her. And she can stay here”

You got up on your feet and immediately started pleading for him to stop, that he shouldn’t give up his life too, that you loved him so it was worth it. But Ten wasn’t budging.

One might think that the devil wouldn’t really bat an eye at the requested switch, as he made pretty clear that beings so inferior to him such as you and Ten don’t matter to him. Instead, he looked like the throne he sat on was made out of the lava moving in rivers around you, a disgusted look on his face.

“Ugh! How can a spawn of the devil suggest something like that? You expect me to keep you here, Chittaphon? After this whole altruistic, benevolent shit show you played out right now?” You and Ten were frozen in place, holding your breaths, waiting for his next words. “You disgust me, I don’t want either of you here. Since you are both so terrible at being supernatural beings, you go live as mortals. And we’ll see where you both belong to when you die”

 Losing your immortality wasn’t easy. You felt like a little kid experiencing the world for the first time with all the jealousy, sorrow, and anxiety that consumed you in your weakest moments. Ten wasn’t sure how to be nurturing, how to feel wholesome or at peace. You had to guide him through all those new warm feelings in his belly, your first child together teaching him a lot. That vulnerability, that your divine natures weren’t capable of before, deepened your understanding of each other. A new start that made you stronger. And you were sure that even when you go to the other life again, you will still be together.

[okk--maaan]

Bad Kitchen Dreams

Hi. This is very dumb. But I couldn’t help myself when @ellelaconi​ threw out a Pale Kitchen Nightmares AU. So here you go. Feel free to imagine him in a blonde Matt wig and chef’s coat with a British accent.

WC: ~1.7k (whoops)

CW: you’re a really bad chef, Pale degrading you because you’re such a bad chef, pussy eating, fingering, PIV, brief drug mention, OSHA violations

Pale has traveled all over the country doing this. Helping desperate restaurant owners resurrect their businesses from the ashes. But in his twenty years, he’s never seen a situation as dire as this. As dire as yours.

When he pulls up in his big black car, he can tell the restaurant isn’t open. “Who the fuck ain’t open at one o’clock in the afternoon? Fuckin’ bullshit,” he mutters to himself. And sure enough. When he tries the front door - locked. He bangs on the glass and yells, “Hey! Hello! Anybody in there?!” After like five fuckin’ minutes of this, you finally appear -- wearing a dirty disgusting chef’s coat, your hair haphazardly pinned up, shit on your face. You wipe your hands down your front, smearing something orange across the little bit of white left on your apron.

As soon as you turn the lock, Pale pushes his way through with his big body. Without the barrier of safety glass, he can really get a good look at you. Even with all the mess, you’re pretty fuckin’ hot. Stunning really. Makin’ his cock twitch in his dark jeans, with your soft fuckin’ eyes and lips and shit. But he can’t think about that right now. He’s got work to do. Clearly.

He sticks a fat hand out and greets, “Hey doll. The name’s Jimmy. But call me Pale. Everyone calls me Pale. Hate that fuckin’ name in fact. Jimmy. Only person call me that is my fuckin’ wife.” You’re flustered with how quickly he rambles, but you take his hand and introduce yourself. “Well let me ask you something. Why the hell ain’t you open? It’s the middle of fuckin’ lunch,” he wave his hands all over the place like this is the most atrocious thing. And honestly, in his opinion, it might be. “Uhh well no one’s in here,” you try to explain. He scoffs, “Yeah no shit. Kinda hard for people to get in with the door locked and all.” He did have a point there. You wring your sweaty palms together, trying to fight the utter embarrassment. “Thank you for agreeing to help me, Jimmy - uh Pale. Please tell me what I need to do to fix this.” He leans in real close, jabs a thumb behind him, “Why don’t you unlock the fuckin’ door first?” You chuckle nervously and walk past him. Pale can’t help but glance at your ass as you do, just can’t help himself. And damn. You look just as good from the back as you do from the front. And again, his dick agrees.

With the restaurant officially open, you give Pale a tour. But the condition of the dining room is so deplorable, he doesn’t want to go any further. “Nah doll. I ain’t going in that kitchen. I got half a mind to even let you cook for me,” he throws his hands up in protest. He pulls out the cleanest chair he can find and plops down. Dusting off the tiny table in front of him, he asks, “So what kinda food you serve here?” “I create Mexican Italian fusion dishes,” you respond quickly and proudly. But that pride is short lived, with the way he’s staring at you. “Huh. Fusion. Well I’ll be the judge of that,” he purses his lips as he opens a cloth napkin and sets it in his lap. You take that as your cue to bring out his first course.

“Here we have a baby squid, steamed with lemon and capers,” you say in your best chef’s voice. Steamed? Squid? Pale thinks - knows - what’s sitting in front of him won’t be good. But you’re too fuckin’ pretty for him to flat-out refuse. He wishes he did a bump before coming in this place. By the way he has to stab the fish with his fork, he instantly knows it’s not cooked. “Look, I ain’t eating this. This squid is so raw, I can hear it telling Spongebob to fuck off.” Hot tears prick at your eyes. And he can see it. “No. Come on now. Don’t start that shit. Just - just bring me the next course,” he dismisses you.

You set two overly stuffed enchiladas in front of Pale. They look better than the squid, but his hopes aren’t too high. When he finally musters up the courage to take a bite, he wants to spit it out right away. “These are the worst fuckin’ enchiladas I’ve ever had,” he throws down his fork. You go to remove the plate, but he grabs your wrist and pulls you to his eye level. “Look doll. I know I said I didn’t want to go into that fuckin’ kitchen, but you’re going to take me back there. Right now. Show me with the fuck you got going on.” The way his breath blows over your face and his eyes bore into you, you can’t refuse. “Oh-okay,” you stutter.

As you walk to the kitchen, Pale follows, and you can feel his gaze locked on you. And he is truly mesmerized by the way your hips swing. As soon as he crosses the threshold, he demands any and every other employee leave. “Go clean something. And don’t come back in her til’ I say so. Got it?” All life - including the cockroaches - scatters. Except for you. And him. He stalks over to you liek a wild animal. And you’re his prey. Your ass back up against the metal counter, where he cages you between his strong arms. “How’s this sweetheart. Your restaurant is disgusting, your food is even worse. This place ain’t gonna stay open another month. But you? You’re the best damn thing I’ve seen this side of the Hudson.” He steps in even closer, pressing his hot hot body to yours. “Pale, I-” your eyes drop between your bodies. You can feel the bulge in his pants, insistent on your stomach. Before you can choke out another word, his fingers are digging into your soft hips. In one swift instant motion, he lifts you to sit atop the cold counter and mashing his mouth to yours. Demanding. Hungry. You part your lips for him without protest, let his tongue slide against yours. Your fingers comb and twist into his slicked back hair. He moans and thrusts into you when your nails scratch at his scalp. A sudden burst of confidence implores your hands to move to work at undoing his jeans. But he swats you away, pinches your cheeks between his forefinger and thumb. “Nuh uh doll. You’re not ready for my big cock yet.” When you nod in agreement, he releases your face and finds your own waistband, yanking down your pants and panties at once. With those around your ankles, he spreads you open and admires your glistening cunt. “God. Are you always this wet for every Joe Blow that walks in this joint?” You can feel your face heat up at the comment, but Pale ain’t paying not attention. He’s too busy dropping to his knees and wedging himself between yours. And he wastes no time diving in. You gasp and hiccup at the sudden contact. He licks and sucks at your silky folds, drinking down everything you give him. Occasionally, his proud nose nudges your stiff clit, sending shockwaves down your spine. He grunts and pulls away with a wet pop, “Finally something edible. Finally some good fucking pussy.” Fuck he really wishes he had some coke or a cigarette or a drink, something. He’s already too worked up and he doesn’t want to wait anymore.

So he doesn’t.

Pale stands back to his full, towering height and makes quick work of his belt. He uses one hand to free himself, while he coats two fingers on the other in your slick. “Are you ready to take my big cock sweetheart?” he asks before shoving his thick digits deep into you. You inhale sharply and groan at the intrusion. “Yes Pale. Please.” He shakes his head, his dick now in his hand, where he strokes it slowly. “Nah doll. I want to hear you say it.” It takes every last brain cell not focused on the sensation of his burning hand pumping into you to find the words. “Yes - ah fuck - yes. Please fuck me. I’m ready to take your big cock.” Before you even finish your sentence, he’s lining up and thrusting into you. Hard. Deep. Your head falls back and knocks the steel service pass at the same time his cock head knocks your cervix. “Fuck. Fuck me. I like the way you beg sweetheart.” As he sets his brutal pace, the only sounds you can return are moans and whimpers and gasps. Your sounds of pleasure mix with his grunts and groans and curses and the delicious sound of bare skin smacking on bare skin. The symphony you create together bounces off pots pans plaster walls. “Fuckin’. This tight little pussy is gonna make me bust. Mmnh - fuck. Play with yourself doll. Make yourself cum. Make yourself fuckin’ cum on my cock.” You think you nod your head, but you’re not really sure. Either way, you brace your weight on one hand and use the other to draw perfect tight circles into your needy clit. The extra stimulation, added to Pales’ filthy words and steady driving driving into you, pushes you right over the edge. “Unnhh Pale. I- I’m gonna cu- I’m gonna-” “Yeah. That’s right. Cum on my cock. Cum on my cock in your dirty kitchen. Add to the mess. I’m gonna fuckin’ add to the mess. I’m gonna cum all over you. Fuck it’s disgusting in here,” he babbles and rants. You don’t even care that he’s continuing to insult your restaurant, even when he’s balls deep in you. You don’t even care because you can feel your cunt tightening around him and that ball of fire tightening around your insides. He fucks into one, two, three times more and everything explodes. You lurch forward, eyes pinched tight, cum with a shout. He follows right behind, pulling out of your still convulsing cunt, fucking his fist fast. Shooting sticky thick streams of cum onto one of your thighs, your exposed belly, and the counter. As he groans through the end of his climax, he smacks your undefiled thigh and grunts, “Shut it down doll.”

And you do.

You never enter another kitchen. Never cook another meal.

And never hear from Jimmy - Pale - again.

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

Tagging a couple other pals who expressed interest for some reason lol @direnightshade​ @poetic-solo​ @blackredrose27​ @find-me-with-orion​

[luvsjimmyreed]

Jimmy Reed: On Yasmine Mohammed and Male Feminists

Question: This whole episode with how Dylan has completely castigated Yasmine Mohammed right after she had paid him a nice compliment on his baby photo is quite a prime example of why I generally don't trust male feminists, you being a major exception. I'm pretty sure that he did to her can be considered "mansplaining".

Jimmy Reed: I think you're absolutely right, my lovely! He did, indeed, mansplain to lovely Yasmine - and for no good reason, at all! Methinks Dylan really needs to turn in his "feminist" card! The deplorable way that he treated lovely Yasmine was certainly *not* a feminist act! Then again, he unequivocally stated that he really does not care one iota about the suffering about ex-Muslims. So I just dunno what to make of him as a person. I do hope that, one day, he'll have a change of heart.

[chiseler]

TWO NEW FILMS

Viewed by Henri Duvernois

Le Bataillon des sans-amour [Battalion of the Unloved]

(The Mayor of Hell)

I was greatly moved by this film. The dreadful existence of some delinquent children, I believe, can never be shown enough. And it is not blindly optimistic to declare most of them capable of reform. During my research for a novel, I discussed this subject with the man most qualified to do so, the head of instruction at the Petite Roquette [a Paris prison for boys 7-20]. He told me flat out:

“Eight out of ten, at least, if they are treated kindly, intelligently, gently, are capable of becoming splendid fellows. And I myself would not hesitate to have them associate with my own children. If you write a book on this subject, your surest inspiration will be pity.”

He told me this at a time when France did not yet have a juvenile court, and where judges, broken-hearted—more than once I saw tears in their eyes—were obliged to condemn a poor tubercular starveling of twelve, guilty only of vagrancy and not the slightest crime.

The effect of these films on the public is healthy. There are still too many martyred children—as recent news items show—but there are, above all, unrecognized, too many unfortunate children. Their sad stories do not always end in suicide, like the poor little Rozentweig child, victim of brutish imbeciles [a minor cause célèbre of 1933: Sonia Rozensweig, 13, a refugee Polish Jew, drowned herself after an encounter involving herself, a 7-year-old brother or cousin, and a local shopkeeper, which ended in the police station; leftwing and rightwing papers gave widely divergent accounts of the affair], or the baby slowly tortured by an appalling stepmother. Children are beaten. Children are, morally, abandoned. I was struck by these lines, during the courtroom scene of the film: “I’m sick of supporting him!” says one father, to which the boy replies, “When did you ever support me?”

The battalion of the unloved, then, is made up of young vagabonds left to the streets by the carelessness or poverty of their parents. A director may, through his careful reproduction of life, make a work of art at art’s finest: the sensitive transposition of truth. So it is here. The actors are between twelve and fifteen years old. Each, by his physical appearance, voice, costume, is a chapter of a  novel. Here is the snitch, the traitor, who steals and pillages but can and will sell out his comrades. Here is the leader, quick to deal out chastisement, bolder and more energetic than the others, more dangerous too, in whose generous nature his good and bad instincts are at war. A kind word, a caress may save him. But one must divine his heart and pierce his tough shell to reach it. There is the hate-filled one, who would love with the same fervor if he were given the chance; the fat kid, greedy and lazy; the pickaninny who follows the gang because he’s hungry; the sickly boy who wants to have a little fun before he dies.

The whole gang is condemned to reform school. The latter is directed by one Thompson, whom the film’s authors have perhaps made too starkly a villain. There are (and, above all, there have been) a good many of these civil servants who, without being monsters of cruelty like Thompson, even while undeviatingly pursuing their duty—what they believe is their duty—have produced equally deplorable results.

But there must be a counterforce: Dorothy, the reform school’s nurse. She is not satisfied merely to take care of the boys when they are ill. She wants them to be better treated and better fed. Her smile and her blondeness perform the miracle. An inspector is named, an insouciant young man placed there by crooked politicians. For love of Dorothy, he no longer smiles and approves. He furloughs the savage director and takes his place. Surprise! The mess hall’s foul gruel is replaced by bacon and eggs and cream cakes. The boys are made responsible for organizing themselves; they name one judge, another chief of police, etc. There is laughter and song in what once was hell. But the director returns. By a rather too neat coincidence, Gargan, the inspector, is charged with murder. The other triumphs. Once again the school is a prison. A little TB case, confined to an icy cell, dies of cold. The boys revolt, a torch-bearing mob. Terrified, the director jumps off a roof and falls to his death. Gargan, found innocent, returns. Order is restored and Gargan will marry Dorothy.

The film is full of exquisite details. One, especially poignant, bowled me over. This was not the death of the little TB case, admirably handled though it was. It was the moment when Jimmy, the gang leader, while being upbraided, takes a sheet of paper and a pencil and, in a few strokes, makes a lovely sketch. If someone takes an interest in him, flatters him with a few compliments, he might become a great artist. If he is treated roughly, he will surely become a criminal… The agonizing question of vocation is raised here. And a detail like this honors and illuminates a film.

This film is marvelously interpreted by the boys, headed by Frankie Darrow as Jimmy, very well by Madge Evans and James Cagney as the nurse and the inspector, and with great sensitivity by Arthur Byron as the kindly judge.

La Porte des rêves [The Door of Dreams]

(The Keyhole)  

The Keyhole tells the story of the beautiful Anne, wife of Maurice, her former partner in a dance act. Believing herself divorced, she has married a rich older man, Schuyler Brooks. But the divorce was not finalized. Maurice takes advantage of the situation, blackmailing his ex-wife by threatening to reveal the truth. He makes her meet with him, extorts large sums, tears her jewels from her.

Terrified, Anne asks her own sister-in-law for help. Maurice must be gotten out of New York. He is a foreigner; they will arrange that his return visa be refused. Anne claims she is going to Cuba. Maurice will follow her there and she will be rid of him.

Brooks thinks she is traveling because she is weary of her luxurious but dull conjugal existence and seeks an adventure. He hires a handsome private detective, Davis, to seduce her and become her lover. When he has done so, he is to telephone the husband, who will fly to Cuba and take the couple in flagrante. But Anne falls truly in love with the detective, and he falls in love with her. He saves her from an ambush arranged by Maurice. When Brooks, alerted by his sister, arrives to take Anne back, the ex-husband flees, falls off a balcony, and is killed. Brooks opens the door. Anne is in Davis’s arms, passionately kissing him. The jealous husband has gotten what he paid for…

Of course, any plot summary is derisive for a film of this type, whose worth lies in its dramatic sweep and the talent of its interpreters. The action is here only to serve the actors and give a pretext for ingenious images, marvelously coordinated. There is no question of psychology. In any event, to disarm criticism, the actors in The Keyhole make the heroine a former dancer, accustomed to a certain liberty and who may thus, over the course of a cruise, swayed by sweet music, the sea, and the starry sky, let herself be beguiled by a mere detective, private though he be.

But what delighted me and must be set apart is, in the role of Dot, a little blonde tart, the charming Glenda Farrell. We have already seen her in certain supporting roles where she struck us by her intelligence and acuteness of observation. Glenda Farrell belongs to that small number of actresses who produce true literary creations, through the amused tenderness with which they realize a character who would be, with another, insignificant and purposeless. She was from head to toe the cruise ship charmer who shares her takings with the barman, chooses lonely and naïve men, and drops them when she sees that the game is not worth the candle. More and more, talking pictures will use and showcase talents of this sort. And it is among them that directors must seek future stars, rather than among the immobile beauties, vamps or victims, inherited from the late silent cinema.

Such a reproach is not addressed to Kay Francis, who has magnetism and authority and, above all, that invaluable advantage for a cinema artist: a ravishing and sensitive shape to the mouth. I do not have the space here to develop this argument, but the mouth is of capital importance in film—more so even than the eyes—and not for the final kiss alone. Smile, emotion, irony, fear, radiant youth and sudden aging, it expresses everything. Take, for example, in France, the mouth of Gaby Morlay and, in America, that of Irene Dunne. If so many actresses disappoint us with their monotony, it is above all because nature has refused them this power of expression.

Henry Kolker has naturalness and ease. He establishes the character of a deceived husband and saves it from convention. Finally, the rhythm of the film is excellent and its technique fully mastered, meaning that it does not intrude and serves the story without overwhelming it.

Translated by Phoebe Green

First published in Pour Vous magazine

NUMERO. 259

2 NOV. 1933 

[secular-jew]

Zio Upbringings and Kvetchings in the Trumpian era

Zio Upbringings and Kvetchings in the Trumpian era.

I'm an American Jew who has does not suffer from moral wavering. I'm also an American Reform Jew that is neither Kashrut nor Kosher-observant.

My synagogue growing up was located in the the Boston suburbs, nestled amidst Protestant communities and dotted with Jews who somehow landed a port shy of Ellis Island. Attended shul almost exclusively during important Holidays and Hebrew school weekends through Bar-Mitvah.

At the age of 10, I remember the start to the Soviet-armament-supplied multilateral Arab-state war against Israel, a Pearl-Harbor style event lasting three harrowing weeks and almost wiping Israel off the map.

Word spread fast to reach North American Jews some 5,500 miles (8,800 kms) to the west. I remember hearing the tragic news Saturday morning during Yom Kippur services. The attack occupied 100% of the Sermon delivered by our Rabbi, who was known as Moses because he actually looked and spoke like Moses. He worried aloud that this could portend the end of our homeland, but concluded that the spark of Zionism was eternal: something that could never be extinguished by modern would-be colonizers. This thought that resonated deeply inside my soul.

This was thankfully a war that Israel survived, but was also a battle that Golda Meir ultimately lost, as she resigned just 1 month following her Labor Party's 1974 election win. Remember her final words as Israel's leader: "I have reached the end of my road."

My first physical intersection with Israel occurred in my late teens and early 20's, when I visited extensively what was the modern chapter of an 4,000-year old ancient Jewish story. Exploring 1979-1982 Israel meant stints to some obvious places; Jerusalem, Tel-Aviv, Haifa, Jaffa, Tiberius, and Eilat, Sinai (including a climb up/down Mt Sinai), the northern Golan Heights, the donut-hole known as Hebron, and the Dome of the Rock, the Jew's oldest extant relic. This is the place where Abraham is said to submitted to God's request that he sacrifice his son. Strange how this shrine has now submitted to a colonialist Islamic overlord.

Then came the Kibbutz experience, which meant living the communal lifestyle in Lower Galilee, sleeping on cots in the international guest quarters, up at 4:30am transported out to the fields, and picking pears until it got so hot, you felt like you were standing on the side of the sun.

All well worth the effort as the work day ended around lunch, at which point, we ate a lot of hummus and squeezed copious quantities of ruby-red Israeli grapefruits chilling in large stainless steel refrigerators. After lunch, we cooled down in the community pool, and in the evenings, hung with our Israeli contemporaries while listening to Bob Marley or the Doors, and smoking hashish for the first time. These are two experiences that transcended culture. I felt so at home, and even gained a Sabra girlfriend by the name of Rachel רָחֵל‎ (pictured).

In short, what I considered to be a typical Reform Jewish-American upbringing. (Or American-Jewish?)

Fast forward to present political leanings. Raised a JFK-liberal (liberal in its true meaning; rooted in idea-tolerance and acceptance of diverse views).

As a middle-schooler, I recollect being enamored by McGovern, although not sure exactly how or why. We were all indoctrinated into believing Nixon (one of the greatest friends to Israel, not something I had any clue about) was innately evil. Looking back at that period now, my political stylings appear to have been crafted mainly by academia, the news media, and my peers - all who seemed driven by a sanitized, 1980's version of TDS that could have been called: 'Nixon Derangement Syndrome.'

Once legal age, I was a 'de rigeur' Democrat, which thankfully lasted only a few short minutes. Not able to cast a vote in the 1976 election, I remember nonetheless favoring Jimmy Carter, a folksy down-to-earth ex-peanut-farmer who seemed very popular in the state of Massachusetts where I grew up. Carter morphed into nothing less than a clueless and spineless "progressive" who oversaw the dismantling of principled American leadership.

In high school, a few of us in the dormitory got to stay up late every night to watch "The Iran Crisis–America Held Hostage: Day "xxx" (where xxx represented the number of days that Iranians held the occupants of our U.S. Embassy hostage). The only TV in the building was located in the dorm-masters living room. I watched sitting next to my hall-mate Abdullah Hussein, the same person who became the King of Jordan and who sits on the Hashemite apartheid throne today. We had many discussions in which I defended Israel and lauded her accomplishments in defeating Arab imperialism, while Abdullah retorted with accusations of Jewish occupation and bloodlust at Deir Yassin. I did not have enough knowledge of the incident or of earlier examples of Arab genocide (such as the Hebron massacre and other Jewish genocides) to counter-punch effectively.

During my college years, I tended towards Democrat "moral" policies and candidates, until that goofy Georgian came along. At first, I naively admired Carter's straightforward folksy persona. But eventually, the President’s peanut incompetence drove me to #WalkAway from a party-lone Democrat.

I was proud of myself for making an independent decision (pun intended) and have little idea if any of my peers followed suit, but suffice to say, I have voted forcefully against Democrats up and down the ticket pretty much ever since, with a few exceptions. I consider Trump an pragmatic Independent masquerading as a Republican, not dissimilar to Democrat Bloomberg - who as Mayor of NYC masqueraded as a Republican.

Much as my odium for Carter drove me to #Jexit and advocate for Reagan, my contempt for Obama's virulently anti-America values drove me to become a self-assertive 'deplorable.' Between Reagan and Trump, every other voting-booth decision appeared to present itself as largely a Hobson's choice between a lesser of two evils.

Although Trump possesses virtually no tact and represents the antithesis of my personal style, I appreciate the skill and speed with which he accomplishes things, from building tall luxury residential condos -- to creating a global brand, to the refurbishment of Wolman's Rink in Central Park. His support of Israel, unlike his predecessors, is legion, documented, and consistent. Trump not only moved the Embassy to its rightful place, not only installed an incredible Ambassador, not only praises Israel at every turn, he constantly rebukes Israel's enemies (who should be everyone's enemies). I love that Israel renamed the Golan Heights in his honor. It's almost better than getting the Rec Room in the Ft. Lauderdale condo named after someone rich in your extended family.

Today? There's no political party for me. The Democrats are a shrill hodgepodge of looney-tunes and ill-tolerant blabbermouths who are given way too much airtime on CNN and what I now call MSLSD (aka, MSDNC).

In terms of policy, On social issues like marriage equality, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Liberal. On local/national fiscal issues, I'm a decided Conservative. On international affairs, I'm a Hawk who majored in International Relations while attending Sciences-Po in Paris (an excuse to massively inhale croque-monsieurs) and firmly believe the US had relevant ethical global leadership responsibilities, a mantle given up by Europe. This meant leading from the front, not from behind. My philosophy became characterized by the notion that appeasement of tyrannies led by autocrats or theocrats was a policy doomed to failure, proven again and again throughout every civilization. Appeasement in the face of aggression has led to more death and destruction, and more insecurity, not less.

It's becoming evident, sadly, that history promises to repeat. Why? This seems to happen in a matter of a few generations. Case in point: Millennials (aka snowflakes) who are too far removed from the trauma of warfare to comprehend evil. Millennials steeped and indoctrinated in re-written and falsified academic narratives. Millennials who virtue signal intolerantly through the lens of victimization. The generation that seems to have lost a sense of moral courage and severed any emotional ties to the 'never-forget' tragedies that are meant to not be forgotten.

My thoughts on our homeland:

I'm a devout 2-state (Israel-Jordan) Zionist as per the 1917 Balfour Declaration and affirmed by the 1920 San Remo Conference (attended by Chaim Weizmann). I see Israel as an inherently Jewish state in its DNA, but which is secular in its jurisprudence.

Next year in Jerusalem.