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matthew-gray-gubler-lover · 1 year ago

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Sex With Spencer Reid All Seasons (season 3)

If you are under the age of 18, please do not read this story. Thank you.

This will cover what I believe sex would be like with Spencer Reid from season 1 to 15. Warning contains adult situations, Sex. Dirty talk, Orgasms, Crying, Spoilers for all seasons and Spencer Reid being a sex God.

Also includes fingering and oral sex. (Female receiving only.)

These are a little bit longer than I anticipated them to be because I wanted to give a back story as to why the sex is the way that it is for each season. To give it in depth feeling of why Spencer was the way that he was in bed that season. So I will be posting them by each season rather than all at once. I hope this gives you something to look forward to, and please leave comments, I will be leaving links to the next season below.

You are a new agent at the BAU and Spencer Reid's girlfriend, the one who takes his virginity and has sex with him for all 15 seasons and beyond.

Spencer Reid knew the first time he saw you walk through the doors of the BAU that you were the one that he was going to love forever. The first time you smiled, he knew it was the only smile that he ever wanted to wake up to. The first time he touched your hand, he knew yours was the only hand he ever wanted to hold. The first time he kissed you, he knew your lips were the only ones that he ever wanted to have pressed against his own. and the first time he made love to you, he knew you were the only one he ever wanted to do this with, and he also knew he would never be the same you or his life now, his love and his only desire.

season 1

season 2

Season 3

In Season 3 Spencer is getting used to the idea that he no longer has Jason Gideon and now has a new team member David Rossi. he obviously still misses Jason Gideon, as he was a very good friend of Spencer's. He's also a big fan of David Rossi's writing, so he's thrilled to have him be a part of the team. The team also thought that they were going to lose Penelope

During that time, she was shot by a killer who she thought was someone who liked her. even After Morgan advised her not to go out with this man, it resulted in JJ having to kill him. It also introduced Penelope to Kevin Lynch, the man who would eventually become her boyfriend.

In Season 3 Spencer finally decides to dabble in the world of oral sex. Something that shocked you since the way he feels about germs and touching people. But he never had a problem

kissing you. Or touching you in any way. So it really shouldn't have been much of a surprise to you. But you were both very eager to try it out. You knew that he had to be good at it, since he's

good at everything else. And you have to admit, since you lost your virginity with Spencer and had never had oral sex yourself. But you've heard about how good it is. And but judging by the

way that he licks his lips all the time, you know he has to have a skilled tongue. He waited until a night that he knew he was going to have the next day off so that he could spend as much time

with you as possible and practice this new skill that he was wanting to learn. He waited until the night that he knew you both had the next day off, so that he could spend as much time with you

as possible and work on learning this new skill that he's so excited to try. You laid in the middle of the bed and opened your legs wide for him, something that he always loved the sight of, but

tonight is even more excited for a different reason, since it's the first time he's actually going to taste you. "Are you ready?" He asked you looking in your eyes with love. When you shake your

head in pant yes, equally as excited as he is, he made his way down to the edge of the bed and licked his lips before licking you for the first time, a feeling that almost drove you right over the

edge. The moan that you let out caused Spencer to chuckle and look up at you. "Honey I've only barely licked your clit tip once and you're already ready to orgasm?". You panted and told him "I

can't help it. It felt that good God are you good at everything that you do?".

"I sure hope so" he told you before licking you once more. still not to sure of himself he keeps asking "how am i doing?"

"does it feel good, "are you enjoying it?" He was the best oral sex giver that you could have ever hoped for. The licking, the sucking, the way his thin long fingers slid into you with ease, making it feel

even better than you ever imagined, this moment was even more magical than you could have ever dreamed of. After he gave you four orgasms, he finally was ready to be inside of you.

Actually, he was ready to be inside of you after the first loud moan that you let out. Needless to say, the two of you enjoyed a very sexy and pleasurable weekend together before you were called the way on yet another case.

A case that would Threaten Spencer to spiral back into the drug world. A teen boy being killed in front of him. A boy who he tried to help but was not able to. Something caused by a girl named Lindsey, a girl who would haunt him later in his life.

Spencer ended up attending a meeting in hopes that he wouldn't reenter the drug world. Thankfully he did not re-enter the world of drugs and used his abilities to be able to save another young man Named Owen.

After Hotch talked with Spencer on the jet, Spencer really no longer felt any need to use the drug that once destroyed him.

Spencer was happy to get back home with you and get into bed. The one place that he always felt safe and loved.

#doctor spencer reid #dr spencer reid #dr reid #spencer reid #spencer reid smut #criminal minds #reid

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littlethingwithfeathers · 1 year ago

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I'm grumpy about Silent Hill again...

TW for discussions of suicide, self harm, abuse (both parent to child and amongst peers) and general spookiness. Y'know... the usual Silent Hill rigmarole of trauma and despair. Also be warned that I'm going to spoil a lot of the Silent Hill series, in particular Silent Hill 2 and the Short Message game that just came out. ***

So... one of my most popular posts out there is this one. It's about Pyramid head and the loss of subtlety in media. And I couldn't help but feel like we hadn't moved an inch from when I posted that back in... *checks date on post* hrrk. my bones... 2017. I'm going to die soon. Anyway. Today I watched Second Wind do a run of the short, free-to-play Silent Hill: Short Message. I admittedly had a good bit of trepidation going in just because of the marketing. Which, for all of you marketing majors out there, that is called "Not a good sign." Marketing should make you want to play a game... especially if you're a fan of the series already. But this... it was a bit of a wet blanket, largely due to the fact that it spoiled a lot of the focus of the game. It basically said "this is a game about how bullying and being chronically online is real bad. We're gonna be spooky about it now." And... straining to push aside how incredibly reductive that is... why give it away? Why say it out loud? Why did you tell us what you are doing? Can you imagine Silent Hill 2 if we'd known it was about James killing his wife from the jump? We didn't. We hadn't the first clue. We knew nothing other than that he was looking for her and she was maybe dead? But we didn't know how... possibly lung cancer or TB given that she had the most pointed coughing sequence since the movie Tombstone. And hey... the last game had someone looking for a loved one too. Maybe that's the deal with Silent Hill. Who knows? No one did at that point. It was still a big old mystery for the most part. And then the E3 trailer... like there's the weird pretty lady in jail? But what's she talking about? Who the fuck is Mary? Is that... his wife? Well then who the hell is Ms. Miniskirt? No wait... is that his wife in the VHS tape? What the hell is going on? Oh look gameplay! And... a little girl? And a weird guy with a gun... This soundtrack slaps. I'm gonna go see if it's up on Napster yet. (this was 2001... again... my bones etc) I remember combing over low-res copies of that video for HOURS when it came out. Why are the nurses different? It's not snowing? Who are all these people... And why do they all sound like they put ketamine in their coffee. It was like a great big puzzle to work out and we had a ball theorizing and researching so when it came out we were HYPE. And that was largely because in short... we knew SOME things at release. Fog. Nurses. Big stick. Weird people. Banger soundtrack. Dead (but probably not) wife. And we presumed or supposed more... cult activity? New beasties? Radio maybe? But we effectively knew nothing about the plot. And the best part was, while they had a solid hook (Find dead lady who we love so huggy buggy much) and instant intrigue (Angela in the cemetery being weirder than a film by David Lynch), and a very familiar setting (we may have improved draw distance on the PS2, but we don't have to use it!), we still didn't really know what was going on. The plot was essentially unfolding out of a black box. Silent Hill 2 was quite content to be a slower burn than trying to boil the Lake Superior with a signal flare. You don't even see the main "villain" Pyramid Head until a few hours in and, as I pointed out in that other post, there's no flashy cut scene to introduce him and go WOOOOOO SCARYYYYY. He's just chillin' behind some prison bars (which that totes is normal in an apartment complex) and staring at you like I stare at the inside of my fridge when I really would like some cheese to materialize.

And then... like we're not even really sure what the hell is going on for the longest time. We meet our wife's hot twin with the key to a strip club and she keeps getting killed over and over... and things keep getting increasingly rapey and lewd in a way that's just uncomfortable more than anything... But even at the end. Even with the big reveal of "You killed your wife." they still don't ever explicitly state "And you killed her because you couldn't have sex with her anymore." It wasn't until you finished the game, and talked to someone else about it, or let your brain cook on it for a bit that you went... heyyyy... he's a horndog! (In fact... if I'm going to chide SH2 for anything it's that right at the very VERY end they tried to frame James's actions as understandable because the woman who was dying and frightened and in pain was mean to him. Yes, being a caretaker is hard. But Christ... pick a topic for discussion.) But contrast all that with Short Message. The marketing and such all said out loud "THIS IS ABOUT BULLYING" so even going in... I was already like "yep. The bully is probably us, but we had reasons because we have to be complicated and you aren't allowed to make the player feel bad" And lo was I correct. There was no... intrigue. I was never curious about the character or the people around her because I knew this story. They already told me what story they were telling so I could practically sing along, especially as a millennial that had to grow up watching little videos and skits in school about the evils of bullying. And when you are going to tell a trope-ish story, and you tell the audience what the trope is, it becomes "say the line" writ large. This isn't me advocating for super twisty unexpected plot arcs (looking at you, Supernatural). Far from it. You absolutely should tell a story in such a way that the audience understands how you got from point A to point Z, even if there are some surprises along the way (See Sixth Sense for that masterclass). Rather, what I'm missing from this (and frankly a lot of the Silent Hill games and honestly... media in general these days) is a sense of restraint. A sense of trust in their audience to "get it." They can't just plonk us in the fog with a radio and a stick and say "You're here to find your best friend/dog/cousin/wife/business partner. Good luck. Here's a weirdo to prattle cryptically at you in order to unsettle you immediately. Bye!" No! They have to tell us what kind of story they're telling and what themes are important. They can't just... give us a Silent Hill Game and trust that we know what to do with it. It's... insulting frankly. Especially as a longtime fan of the franchise who remembers when they did trust us and they did have faith in their work. I will say this in compliment to Short Message. The environment design was pretty cool. Especially the sticky-note hallways... they looked like leaves... and sometimes teeth... and like tightly packed bones in an ossuary. It didn't... say anything really. But it looked cool. And you can't go wrong with Akira Yamaoka's soundtrack. But... while I'm on the subject of design. Y'all. An animate sakura tree in an oversized hoodie is not scary. But bless you for at least having the restraint to not make her Pyramid Head.

#silent hill #silent hill 2 #silent hill 4 #silent hill short message #horror #writing #story telling #suspense #video games #video game design #horror games

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eddie-redmayne-italian-blog · 6 months ago

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Inside The Day of the Jackal, Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch’s ambitious new hitman series

GQ speaks to the cast and crew behind Sky’s reimagination of the classic Frederick Forsyth assassin novel

By Jack King26 July 2024

1973’s The Day of the Jackal is one of those classic thrillers that dads pass down as a rite of passage. Failing that, you might’ve caught it on ITV 2 on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Edward Fox plays the titular Jackal, a killer for hire who is commissioned by the French militant far-right to assassinate president Charles de Gaulle in 1963. The film’s first act savours his scrupulous attention to detail: buying a bespoke rifle that can be broken down into innocent parts, and fake documents from a forger, for example, who he murders with his bare hands after an ill-judged extortion attempt. He’s a shapeshifting lone wolf — well, jackal — we learn little about, aside from how good he is at killing people.

Such a rich character whose mark is felt on no end of hitman movies (see David Fincher’s 2023 genre homage The Killer) is ripe for reinterpretation. Not that it went especially well last time: the last, loose attempt to contemporise The Day of the Jackal came in 1997, starring Bruce Willis and Richard Gere, and the critics called it a dud. But 27 years later, Sky & Peacock have armed up for their own present-day reimagination of the source material, thrusting the Jackal into our fraught world of political division and ever-present global danger. The script was written by Top Boy writer Ronan Bennett, and the series executive produced by Downton Abbey's Gareth Neame and Nigel Marchant, alongside its stars Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch.

“We both loved the book, and we saw the film when we were kids — I’ve seen the film many times through my life, and always really respected it,” Neame, alongside Marchant, tells GQ. While they were at first cautious to tackle source material that carries with it such esteem, to expand the story across episodic TV seemed too good an opportunity to turn down. “It’s such an iconic, gripping story, that to revisit that in a contemporary context, with all the benefits of a multi-episodic show … we thought that would be really interesting to take this much-respected IP and develop it this way.”

Marchant concurs. “I think that [this] kind of title is in so many peoples’ consciousness … And then yeah, what’s the benefit of telling this with a bigger canvas?”

Marcell Piti/SKY/Carnival

The most obvious difference about this version is that it takes place in the modern world. “If we’d stayed in the past, why do it? You can’t better the film,” Neame says. But in classic The Day of the Jackal style, Redmayne’s hitman still rocks up to more European cities than a gap year interrailer.

And so we begin the series with the Jackal in Munich. Not that we immediately recognise him: he is decked out in wrinkly prosthetics, fake hair, and wears contacts and fake teeth, disguised as an elderly German janitor. This is his way past security and into the campaign headquarters of a divisive far-right demagogue, for the purposes of a mission that we daren’t spoil further. Once he has done what he needed to do — ruthlessly dispatching half the staff with a silenced pistol en route — he makes a daring escape by absailing from the roof, just as the police arrive. So, to illustrate the vibe: think Mission Impossible meets Daniel Craig’s Bond, if he went really rogue.

It’s not a one-to-one adaptation, but fans of the original text and film needn’t worry — there’s a distinct air of reverence for them both throughout, and this version broadly covers the same plot beats, though the story is expanded for TV. As for the Jackal himself, Redmayne’s performance both evokes Fox’s classic turn and feels of his own making. “[Fox’s] performance will always be in my mind, because I loved it so much as a kid,” Redmayne tells GQ. “But at the same time, I wanted the audience to be able to oscillate between this sociopathic coldness, and a human being who wants a life, and happiness.” He points to Natalie Humphries’ costume design as an explicit example of homage. “She spoke specifically about the kind of dandy, slight peacock-y quality of the [original] movie, and how we wanted to keep those elements,” Redmayne says.

“If you know the original [film], you get these Easter eggs through the show — even some of the lines are exact matches, and scenes were shot literally shot-for-shot from the original,” Marchant says. “So there are treats along the way if you know it, which felt important to us [with] our love of the original as well.”

Some time after that first job, the familiar story begins, after a mysterious would-be client on the dark web offers the Jackal retirement-grade money for the biggest hit of his career. (Given the contemporary setting, the target obviously isn’t Charles de Gaulle, but that’s as much as we’re allowed to reveal.) And throughout the series, in another noticable departure from the source material, we delve into the Jackal’s backstory and the whys and wherefores of his chosen career path. (Again, I’d love to say more, but there’s a red laser dot hovering over my chest and I value my life.) Redmayne was initially cautious about digging too far into the Jackal’s background — traditionally, the whole point is that you know nothing about him — but was won over by the script.

“Edward Fox’s performance is so brilliant because it’s two and a half hours of [an] extraordinarily charismatic enigma,” Redmayne says. “So my challenge, as a fan of that, was to go, Wait, I only want to take this on if I feel like there is a way that unpacking [the backstory] doesn’t feel glib.”

The chance to explore the Jackal’s past, Neame says, was always the point. “We knew right from the beginning that we wouldn’t make a 10 part television series where the main character is only ever a ghost,” he says. “So that’s where the whole idea of the private life, the personal life — the fact that he’s trying to juggle this extraordinary professional world with a normal lifestyle [came from].” Later on in the series, Neame notes, another character tells him what should’ve probably been blindingly obvious: in this line of work, a healthy worThe Day of the Jackal isn’t just about the titular contract killer, of course. Much of the story unfolds as a thrilling cat and mouse, as hot on the Jackal’s heels is the Sherlock to his murderous Moriarty, French detective Claude Lebel, played in 1973 by Michel Lonsdale. In this new adaptation, the character is reimagined as a wily MI6 agent, Lashana Lynch’s Bianca, whose counter-terrorism training and firearms expertise make her the Jackal’s ideal foil. (Despite the connection you might make to one of Lynch’s more recent roles, this grounded, bureaucratic vision of His Majesty’s secret service bears little resemblance to Bond.)k/life balance just isn’t sustainable.

“When you have a character that is in either a powerful position, or works for a powerful organisation, there is this danger that happens whereby women get boxed into one of two things: either the strong one, or the damsel in some way. Both of them are actually unfair,” Lynch says. “The Bianca that I read in the first three episodes was someone who had a strength that was born from vulnerability, had confusion [around] her own identity and her meaning to her work … There was so much within her world, and within her being, that felt like a real person.”

Bianca is seen as an irritating disruptor by the people she works for; early in the first episode, her boss scribbles a mid-meeting note calling her a pain in the arse. But her unrelenting drive and commitment soon gets results. “She pushes people’s boundaries. She is annoying. She does not stop. And her boundary pushing gets very dangerous,” Lynch continues. “But [she is] also really well intentioned. She has a good heart, she just doesn’t know how to use it. Which is exciting to play, and exciting to watch.”

Ultimately, the Jackal and Bianca have more in common than they might initially realise. “The entire premise of these two protagonists that are deeply flawed human beings, and yet also compelling human beings who are kind of mirroring each other, and yet on a one way path to collision, I found that interesting,” Redmayne says.

“You’re on side with both of these people, despite the horrendous choices they’re making.”

The Day of the Jackal will premiere on Sky and streaming service NOW in the UK (and Peacock in the US) on 7 November.

https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/the-day-of-the-jackal-preview

#eddie redmayne #the day of jackal #peacock #new look #new article #gq magazine uk #sky #now tv #eddieredmayneedit

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theharpermovieblog · 8 months ago

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#HARPERSMOVIECOLLECTION

2024 MOVIE LIST

www.tumblr.com/theharpermovieblog

I watched After Blue (2021)

Give it up for French sci-fi. It certainly is something all it's own.

On a planet of only females, a young woman and her mother are tasked with finding and killing a criminal, whom the young woman previously freed.

French director, Bertrand Mandico, directed a film called "Les Garcons Sauvages" (The Wild Boys). A film about several delinquent boys (played by women) who kill their teacher and are placed into the care of a grizzled ship's captain. This captain takes these delinquents on a journey to a magical island which slowly alters their gender. As a person who has explored my personal gender identity, and as a movie fan, I found "Les Garcons Sauvages" oddly fascinating. The film was stylish, with a classic black and white look mixed with a sparkling dreamy quality. It was, if nothing else, interesting and provocative.

So, when I came upon "After Blue" and found out it was directed by the same filmmaker, I jumped at the chance to see it. Why? Because I love "strange" filmmakers.

I often forgive flaws in a film if that film is of a unique style. Filmmakers like David Lynch, Guy Maddin and Bruce McDonald make zero compromises. Maybe their films are too weird for the mainstream and maybe I don't like some of their work, however I immediately and veraciously seek it out. Each of them makes a film as a piece of unique art, which no other director could have, or would have, made in the same way. Truly original, and true to their singular vision. For me, Bertrand Mandico can now count himself among these filmmakers.

"After Blue" is a very strange film. One that proves to me that Mandico is obsessed with female sexuality and gender. Here, he lays the foundation of a sci-fi/western story to hold up themes of sexuality and gender, but also themes of loneliness, morality and guilt. And, while the film is deeply sexual in nature, the sexuality on display is more than mere physical desire or exploitation. Mandico uses sexuality to explore his character's wants and desires in all aspects. Doing so in a glittery dream world where sadistic women with hairy arms and blind androids with tentacle dicks roam around freely.

I very much liked this film, but I very much like weird shit that I don't get to see other places, which may taint my opinion slightly.

With it's fake-y sets.and over stylized visuals, "After Blue" looks like a stage-play and a music video had a three-way with a soft core porno, but not in a bad way. Mandico is still able to build an interesting enough world with what he has at his disposal and the story he's telling. Even if that world is often too strange for its own good.

Now, I can't exactly recommend this to anyone like it's a normal film, but if you're the type of person who's attention can be held by weirdness and sex and slime and guns named after fashion brands and a killer named Kate Bush...this is for you.

#after blue #bertrand mandico

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kevinsreviewcatalogue · 10 months ago

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Review Double Feature: Dune (2021) and Dune: Part Two (2024)

Dune (2021) and Dune: Part Two (2024)

Rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence, some disturbing images and suggestive material (Part One)

Rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence, some suggestive material and brief strong language (Part Two)

Score: 4 out of 5

Yep, we're doing the Kill Bill thing again and grading two movies together as one singular whole. And that's because, much like Kill Bill, this is no ordinary pair of movies. Rather, they're a two-part adaptation of the absolute monster of a novel that is Frank Herbert's Dune. A landmark of science fiction, it is no pulpy airport paperback, clocking in at 896 pages and covering everything from the ecology of a desert world to the use of religion as a tool of control to the fall of empires to the nature of power to a deconstruction of "chosen one" mythologies and everything in between. It's a novel that typically comes up on shortlists of the greatest science fiction novels of all time, one that's been compared to J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy in fantasy in the canon of modern speculative fiction. (Ironically, Tolkien disliked Dune, though he didn't really say why in the interest of remaining diplomatic.)

It's not a book you take lightly, is what I'm saying.

What's more, the very things that have made it so tempting to adapt to the screen are the same things that have long given it a reputation as "unfilmable". Attempts to make a movie out of it have bedeviled nearly every filmmaker who's tried, including some of the greatest of the modern age. David Lean was offered the film, but turned it down. Alejandro Jodorowsky tried to adapt it in the '70s and failed. David Lynch actually managed to get his movie made back in 1984, producing a film that's widely remembered, not least of all by Lynch himself, as a psychedelic mess. The Sci Fi Channel produced a miniseries in 2000 that faithfully adapted the text of the book and, despite a very large budget for a TV show at the time and a huge marketing push, proved to be just as divisive among sci-fi fans. Its influence wound up coming less through its own adaptations and more from other authors and filmmakers inspired by it to make their own, less categorically weird stories, including a number of films that emerged directly from the ashes of Jodorowsky's abortive production. (You might've heard of a few of them, like Alien, The Fifth Element, Warhammer 40,000, and even Star Wars.)

So when Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve decided that he wanted to adapt Dune, many critics, film journalists, and fans predicted it would be his Waterloo. Sure, he's a modern wunderkind who's never made a bad movie, up there with Christopher Nolan as a darling of today's film buffs (and, in my opinion, one who has a better track record). Sure, he'd already done the impossible by making a sequel to Blade Runner, one of the greatest science fiction films of all time, that was just as good as the original. But if Jodorowsky and Lynch couldn't do it, then how in the world was Villeneuve, somebody whose background was chiefly in gritty, spectacle-light thrillers like Prisoners and Sicario, going to pull off adapting a novel as famously trippy as Dune?

What Villeneuve did was largely stick to the text of Herbert's novel as the miniseries did, cut a lot of the backstory and many of the psychedelic elements, and instead focus heavily on both the ecological themes of the story and the events of its present, especially its political subtext and its commentary on "chosen one" narratives. What emerges is a film duology that feels like a dark retelling of Star Wars (or at least A New Hope) in which the story of Luke Skywalker, instead of a tale of a straightforward hero saving the day, is instead a tale of the rise of the Antichrist -- and, incidentally, a far better take on the idea of "what if the chosen one turned out to be the bad guy?" than the Star Wars prequel trilogy. It's not a perfect adaptation, and honestly, I'm still not sure if a "perfect" adaptation of a novel like Dune is even possible outside of a miniseries. (Jodorowsky's version would've been ten to fourteen hours long.) But whether I was watching it at home on a big-screen TV (as I did with Part One to get caught up) or in a packed movie theater (as I did with Part Two), I got a gorgeous, compelling, slow-burn sci-fi epic filled with a rich cast of complicated characters that sets up even bigger things to come but still ends in just the right way, without a doubt the best adaptation of Herbert's novel so far and one that I expect to endure in the canon of science fiction classics just like the novel.

Our story starts over eight thousand years into the future, with humanity ruled by the Imperium, an empire in classic medieval fashion where power is divided between the Emperor and the various Great Houses of the nobility. Arrakis, a harsh desert planet that is strategically vital for its supply of spice, a drug that is necessary for faster-than-light travel to be possible, has just been transferred by the Emperor from the control of House Harkonnen, which ruled it for decades, to House Atreides. The Atreides patriarch Duke Leto knows that this is a power play by the Emperor to thwart the growing power of his family, as control of Arrakis paints a giant target on their backs for other families to go after, not least of all a bitter House Harkonnen, but he also knows that he can't openly defy the Emperor's wishes and turn down this white elephant of a gift. Sure enough, exactly what he feared comes to pass. However, when House Harkonnen took back the planet, they didn't count on one man: Paul Atreides, Leto's teenage son, who survives the initial attack with his mother Lady Jessica and runs off into the desert to live with the Fremen, the tribal native people of Arrakis who have always resented the power of outsiders over their world, and plots revenge. Unbeknownst to Paul, however, a secretive religious order called the Bene Gesserit, one that includes his mother, has plans for him, and has set in motion events that will lead to his rise as a mythical savior of humankind called the Kwisatz Haderach... but unbeknownst to the Bene Gesserit, Paul, who's been having visions of himself causing a galaxy-scale spree of death and destruction, has his own ideas as to what kind of man and leader he's going to be.

The first film opens with Chani giving a vivid description of the beauty of the desert ecosystem of Arrakis, and it's clear that the environmental themes of the story were where a lot of Villeneuve's attention lay. He keeps the exposition indirect in order to fit as much of the book into five-plus hours as he can, instead preferring to show us how the world functions: a mouse-like alien creature wiping the sweat off its ear and drinking it again, the fact that nearly all of Arrakis' human development is either underground or otherwise shielded from the brutal sun, the human population being consequently nocturnal, the status of mountains and large rocks as islands of safety amidst the sea of dunes and its terrifying sandworms, fresh water being a resource as precious as gold. This short of "show, don't tell" exposition extends throughout the story. We don't need to be told that the proliferation of personal protective force fields that only slow-moving objects can get through has made guns obsolete in industrial warfare and led to a revival of melee infantry weapons like swords, pikes, and daggers, nor do we need to be told that, against the Fremen who don't have those fancy shields, guns are still very useful. We can figure that much out just by watching how these devices function and figuring out the implications, and then doing the same with all the other neat stuff about the worldbuilding. In the book, Herbert explained the setting's retrofuturism and lack of computer technology with a lengthy backstory about a war between humans and AI called the Butlerian Jihad in which humanity's victory was followed by a thorough backlash against "thinking machines". None of that makes it into the movies, but it didn't really need to, not when the films do an expert job of crafting a society that thinks it's too good for computers, and not when it's resting on the visual shorthand of countless past space opera flicks like Star Wars. A rare case where the fact that the source material has inspired countless great movies actually works in the favor of its own adaptation, letting it spend less time on the parts of the worldbuilding that we've all seen before and instead focusing on the parts that stand out from the pack.

And the part here that stands out is a big one. Over a decade before George Lucas played a "chosen one" sci-fi story pretty much straight (and over three decades before he made the prequels as a deconstruction of such), Herbert wrote a story that portrayed prophecies, Great Man narratives, and organized religion as tools that could be easily exploited by a tyrant. Paul Atreides may have meant well, hoping to liberate the Fremen from tyranny, but by inserting himself into their struggle (with help from shadowy figures who had their own agenda in paving the way for his reign), he built something terrible, and the psychic visions he has throughout the story make it clear that his accomplishments will end in tragedy. Timothée Chalamet plays Paul initially as a rich kid struggling with the pressure placed on his shoulders, one who takes to Arrakis astoundingly well to the point that, when he's forced to leave his safe and secure life at the palace, he winds up comfortably integrating right into the Fremen's society. Throughout the films, we get hints of darkness within him, especially in Part Two once he starts delivering bombastic speeches to enraptured crowds that at some point start to sound uncomfortably like the speeches that the villains normally give in these sorts of movies. Even more than the psychic visions he has of the death and destruction to come, it was in these moments when I was both captivated by Paul's power and, more importantly, scared of the kind of leader he was growing into: a harsh, unforgiving warlord who's willing to resort to extreme measures to secure the independence of the Fremen. He's an easy guy to root for, but there's always a pit in your stomach as he slowly but surely pushes the boundaries right up to the breaking point. It's here where Chani, her role considerably expanded from the books, emerges as the film's voice of reason, serving as Paul's lover but also somebody who realizes that the Fremen are trading slavery at the hands of a colonial overlord for slavery at the hands of a cult leader, even without knowing the behind-the-scenes machinations that put Paul in his position.

That said, if it wanted to completely stick the landing here, there was one final shoe that needed to drop but didn't. Paul's psychic visions merely show him ominously as a leader with Hitler-esque undertones, as well as him in battle. The book went a lot further when it came to having Paul's visions showing him with far more than just undertones, sketching vivid displays of the misery that he is fated to cause: famine, genocide, the apocalypse on a galactic scale. What the films show us is designed to make us uneasy about Paul, while letting Chalamet's performance do the rest in making him look like a budding villain, but there's a point where "show, don't tell" can be taken too far, and that's when you're talking about prophecies of disasters to come that you can't linger on for too long in the film itself and can only tell us will happen. I was only a bit freaked out by Paul, when I should've been picturing myself in Germany in 1933. I was getting all the cool and badass parts of a great villain, but the things that actually make him a villain are still to come, and that, I think, undercut some of the menace and unease I was supposed to get from Paul. It wasn't a huge problem, but it was still a not-insignificant blotch on what's otherwise a great pair of films.

Fortunately, once you're past the plot, as a sci-fi epic this duology is gorgeous to behold. Villeneuve has always been a guy who, like Christopher Nolan, has an affection for gritty realism even when he's working with big blockbuster epics, and he made the most of the desert environments that give the story its name. He does a great job in particular imagining what big melee fantasy battles would look like augmented with futuristic technology, in which the pikemen and knights charging their enemies in the field are supported with artillery lasers. The cast is absolutely stacked and excellent all around, with Chalamet shining in the central role but everybody around him also doing great work, from Zendaya as the skeptic Chani to Rebecca Ferguson as Paul's mother with her own agenda to Austin Butler stealing the show in a surprisingly brief amount of screen time as the Emperor's depraved nephew who gets sent in in Part Two to stop Paul. It was perhaps a bit overstuffed; Florence Pugh wound up getting lost in the shuffle, not an easy feat with an actor of her caliber. I understand why Villeneuve decided to split this movie in half, because there is no real way this story could've been effectively told otherwise.

The Bottom Line

Villeneuve accomplished an impossible task here, crafting with two movies an adaptation of a legendarily dense novel that does it justice. This one has its faults, and there are things that the otherwise inferior Lynch version does better (especially with regards to its psychedelic elements), but even so, it is gonna go down in the ranks of all-time sci-fi classics. I give it a solid recommendation if�� you have even the slightest interest in science fiction.

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ideahat-universe · 1 year ago

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It's still Halloween right?

Lets talk about Twin Peaks inspired stuff. There's this game called "Who's Lila?" that gets it. Twin Peaks inspired quite a lot of people to create very weird and off beat stories about small town America but almost none of them, even the complete ripoffs really get what's going on with it. I mean to be fair, it was only a few years ago that someone made a really huge video breaking down what Twin Peaks was actually about with references and sources galore. Without that you could be like Jay Bauman and just consider the existence of the series of a fun novelty that is barely worth thinking about.

Almost treating a highly influential show as if it were some shlock that you watched for an internet retrospective.

So what do people get wrong? Well, the whole point of Twin Peaks was that the murder is the hook but the town itself is what causes you to stay. It's not that Laura Palmer's death doesn't matter, in fact it's the opposite. Laura Palmer's death is so substantial that you don't want to move onto to the next murder, you want to get to know the world that Laura left behind and who Laura was when she was alive.

David Lynch hated the fast food style murder mysteries were being written and wanted to make the ultimate anti murder mystery.

And, he failed. But not because he's a hack fraud writer. Both fans of the show and the producers wanted a resolution to the murder case. Once they did that Laura could be discarded mentally and the show declined. He made Fire Walk With Me to reignite value in knowing and caring about Laura Palmer but David Lynch is a moon man that doesn't want to spell things out even when it would benefit him greatly to do that maybe like once? Ya know. If it would save his entire franchise?

But no. After many years a season 3 is made but it's just Lynch killing his franchise as a way to curse those who were just too ungrateful and blind to see his vision.

Twin Peaks inspired media make the same mistake but without even knowing what David Lynch really wanted from the show so you get weird quirky middle America stories that either have a weird mystery cult or goes from one murder to many murders (and in the case of Deadly Premonition it's both).

And it's not all bad. In fact most of these things are good. Gravity Falls is probably the best show to ever do the face value aspect of Twin Peaks right.

But only Who's Lila has managed to capture the meta of Twin Peaks and what David Lynch was trying to do with it.

A user named Flawed Peacock has made a 7 hour video breaking down the game (oddly enough about as long as the video breaking down Twin Peaks) but you can play it for yourself if you like ARGs (and you have to if you want to figure out everything for yourself). But if you just want me to tell you now....

Who Lila is, is a meta question. Lila is a character whose motivations and actions and all the stuff that feels like Twin Peaks is in the game, but WHO LILA IS, is just an idea. The game morphs from the story about a murder to it really being about how a memetic idea is created and takes on a life of its own and exists only in our minds.

Lila exists as long as we think of them, they are an idea that feeds off of people's interest in what it is. Once you stop thinking of Lila, Lila exists a little less but idea's never die so Lila not only exists perpetually in the game but in the real world as well because all it takes is reading the word "Lila". Thinking about Twin Peaks inspired media, maybe even seeing the psone graphics or the art design or the sound design. Maybe just seeing this face

Or thinking of a murder mystery, or the demon Lilith makes you think of Lila and just like that Lila is back.

A demon is in your mind absorbing your thoughts and even though you played the game and you watched the 7 hour break down of the game and you are writing an article on Tumblr about Lila, you can't get rid of Lila.

And this is why Who's Lila is the best Twin Peaks inspired story to exist yet because all David Lynch was trying to do was sanctify the art of film media through the death of Laura Palmer, Laura Palmer was his Lila and the audience was supposed to keep asking who Laura Palmer is but they didn't care. They just wanted to find out who the murderer was and move onto the next case, but no one who plays Who's Lila will be moving onto another case. Sure, once you do absolutely everything, you can come to a conclusion you can settle with but by that point Lila is pretty well cemented into you. She's not a jumping off point for throw away content. It's the heart of the world her story takes place in.

Perhaps now that I understand and have seen this stratagem in action, I too can make a true Twin Peaks meta story....

#video games #twin peaks #fandom #youtube #mystery

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thatrickmcginnis · 2 years ago

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JEAN-JACQUES BEINEIX, PAUL COX, HORTON FOOTE 1989 Toronto International Film Festival

The 1986 film festival was the first I covered as both a writer and photographer, and was the beginning of a quarter century of regular portrait work every September in the rooms of whatever hotels were hosting the guests and publicity suites that year. It was so much easier in 1986, before the big movie PR professionals showed up en masse, and you could still book nearly every shoot and interview through the festival's own press office. Besides David Lynch - my big score that year - I photographed people like Dutch-born Australian director Paul Cox.

I was a fan of Cox after his films Lonely Hearts and Man of Flowers, and he was here promoting Cactus, starring Isabelle Huppert. I wish I'd known at the time that Cox had started his career as a photographer - Google was decades in the future - but it explains why he was so comfortable posing for my camera, despite my inexperience (I had only bought my Pentax barely a year and a half before). Cox was passionate and adamant - he had no patience for the big studios and the mainstream filmmaking that he considered the enemy of small, independent pictures like his. I remember leaving the interview chastened and inspired - practically a convert to his worldview. Cox would continue to make films for nearly three more decades, but this period probably marked the peak of his profile as a festival director. Paul Cox died in 2016.

Another director I photographed at the 1986 film festival was Jean-Jacques Beineix, who I'd first heard about when his film Diva was a huge hit at the festival five years previous. He'd hit a rough patch with his next film, Moon in the Gutter, but made a comeback with Betty Blue, the film he brought to the Toronto festival that year. Films like Diva and Betty Blue, as well as directors like Beineix, Leos Carax and Luc Besson, were dubbed cinéma du look by French critics, and I remember how exciting they seemed at the time. It was, looking back, very much the sort of thing that would appeal to a young man - romantic and stylish and full of angst - and while I think Betty Blue is still worth seeing (though it would never be made today), I'm not sure that Diva has held up well.

Beineix had been through a lot in the last few years and I suppose it showed in these photos. I considered one of these frames unprintable back then, very far beyond my meagre darkroom skills, but I have managed to rescue it today thanks to superior scanning skills and the assistance of neural AI filters in Photoshop. The result looks like a still from an old nouvelle vague film, with Beineix in the role of Belmondo or Delon. Jean-Jacques Beineix died of leukaemia in Paris in 2022.

Horton Foote and his daughter Hallie were at the 1986 film festival promoting On Valentine's Day, the second film in a trilogy of pictures based on his plays set in the Texas of Foote's childhood, which starred his daughter in a role based on Foote's mother. Today everyone probably knows Foote for his Oscar-winning screenplay for To Kill a Mockingbird. He reccommended Robert Duvall for the role of Boo Radley in the film, and years later Duvall would play the lead role in Tender Mercies, which would get Foote another Oscar nomination and win Duvall one for Best Actor.

Foote also wrote scripts for pictures like Baby the Rain Must Fall, Of Mice and Men and The Trip to Bountiful - the latter based on his own 1953 teleplay, which went on to Broadway. Foote was the cousin of historian Shelby Foote, who wrote the 3-volume history that was the basis for Ken Burns' documentary series The Civil War, for which Foote provided the voice of Jefferson Davis. I photographed Horton and Hallie Foote simply, in a chair by the window of a room in the Park Plaza (now the Park Hyatt) hotel; the similarity of the poses and lighting ended up underscoring the family resemblance. Hallie Foote still works, mostly in theatre; Horton Foote died in 2009.

(From top: Beineix, Cox, Horton & Hallie Foote)

#jean jacques beineix #paul cox #horton foote #hallie foote #portrait #portrait photography #toronto #photography #black and white #film photography #director #photographer #some old pictures i took #old work #toronto international film festival #1986

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svenghouly · 7 days ago

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I get a sick sense of satisfaction with people who don’t like David Lynch because okay sure fine. It doesn’t matter if you like him or his films or not. There’s lots of reasons to not like him or his films. They’re too abstract and grotesque for some, but Lynch finds his mummified cat on the ground beautiful for other reasons too. And he absolutely refuses to disclose why. He started out not making film for an audience but to presumably “live the art of life.” To attach onto something that resonates with you and fish it out of the chaotic infinite dream space and let it display itself out in the open, it seems as though he is seeking purity of expression, but I think that is something Lynch realized early on that there is a contradiction inherent to purity. He refuses to explain as dissecting his work would be a disservice and negate the point. His films in a way are a kind of Rorschach test. It can seem obvious also to some with supposed literary skill what is going on in his head: particularly Eraserhead seemed pretty straightforward and relatable in its basic premise to me. But as he dives deeper and the nebulous depictions become more generalized that’s where the frustration lies and interpretation varies. After Eraserhead, Lynch said he wanted to keep his audience more in mind, partly because he didn’t realize it would be so widely seen. I feel that after that, he wanted to share this form of introspection, and it almost seems like a challenge, “figure out what the hell Lynch means by XYZ.” But I think that is not necessarily the point—sure great if your brain lines up exactly with Lynch’s, but that is rather sad and reductive if you visualize art that way. Or is it beautiful that through the chaos two souls have reached a common understanding? Only one interpretation being The Correct One, is it beautiful or suffocating? David Lynch didn’t die, we killed David Lynch and he thanked us for it.

#rip david lynch #is this projection or #death of the author #eraserhead #the unexplainable hilarity of the elevator scene and the family dinner scene give me faith in humanity

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bitter69uk · 6 months ago

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“Connie Stevens was just another Monroe-style starlet with platinum hair and a little girl voice when she first hit Hollywood in the late fifties. Had she appeared on the scene just a trifle earlier, that image probably would have stuck. However, by the time Connie started to make the rounds, the Era of the Teenager was in full flower, so Warners decided to turn her into the girl-next-door type – a sort of singing Sandra Dee … When the time seemed right, Warners paired her with Edd Byrnes on “Kookie, Kookie (Lend Me Your Comb).” She couldn’t miss, and she didn’t. For Connie’s first solo release, Warners provided her with “Sixteen Reasons”, a formula ballad which had Connie pledging her Ten Commandments of Love. The lyrics were corny, but it was a passable slow dance tune and as such hung around the top of the charts for twenty-four weeks … All things considered, Connie Stevens was one of the few studio-manufactured teen stars of the fifties who managed to hold onto lasting stardom. She continues to show up in things like The Hollywood Squares and Grease 2 and of course her celebrity hasn’t been hurt by her much-publicized marriages to actor James Stacey and the inimitable Eddie Fisher.”

/ From Rock’n’Roll Confidential by Penny Stallings, 1984 /

Born on this day: bouffant-haired, baby-voiced singer, actress, ultra-kitsch sex kitten in the tradition of Ann-Margret and Joey Heatherton, Vegas headliner and proprietress of her own skincare line – Miss Connie Stevens (née Concetta Rosalie Ann Ingolia, 8 August 1938)! Baby boomers will remember Stevens best as Cricket Blake on TV’s Hawaiian Eye (1959 - 1963). For children of the seventies, she was a regular guest star on the likes of Love Boat and Fantasy Island. More recently, David Lynch made haunting use of her 1959 hit “Sixteen Reasons (Why I Love You)” in Mulholland Drive (2001). I love Stevens best for her storming girl group-style 1963 song “Little Miss Understood”, the 1974 so-bad-it’s-a-camp masterpiece made-for-TV Marilyn Monroe biopic The Sex Symbol (find it on YouTube!) and the 1976 exploitation flick Scorchy (“She’s killed a man, been shot at, and made love twice already this evening … and the evening isn’t over yet!”).

Connie Stevens on the set of “Hawaiian Eye", early 1960s.

#connie stevens #sex kitten #starlet #kitsch #scorchy #the sex symbol #sixteen reasons why I love you #david lynch #mulholland drive #Hawaiian eye #lobotomy room #bouffant hair #white lipstick #grease 2

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daviddshiki · 10 months ago

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The Adventures of David Dashiki-Stories of an African American Hero...Year of the Black Man-2024

The first and greatest Black orator of the twentieth century was not, as a young printer in Jamaica, a natural speaker: this young, private, intense activist taught himself through trial and humiliation until he learned to speak with fiery immediacy to audiences of any size." The excellence and power of Garvey's oratory was the single most uncontroversial of his attributes, Garvey's enemies were as dazzled by his speeches as his admirers. The fluency of his speeches lay in the fact that he had something to say, something which touched so deeply that it constituted an outpouring from the heart and found response in his hearers." (Historian's reflection on the impact of the oratory of Marcus Garvey).

I was raised in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York-(Daddy Dashiki speaks). If you have never heard of it, it is the sports capitol of the universe. We played everything with ball in it...Punch Ball, Stick Ball, Baseball, Softball, Stoop Ball, Box Ball, Dodge Ball, Football and when Bill Ware's brother discovered a new kind of ball at his local high school, we played Soccer in the streets. Injury comes with sports part and parcel. The mash unit for me was the kitchen table and the doctor was DeDe Dashiki, my mother.

With so many scrapes and bruises, I suffered battle fatigue. One day, I asked Mama De De if there was not another remedy besides IODINE . It was as painful as Hell. I explained to her. Well, not in that language. She stared me down. " Would you prefer to do this yourself? You need to act like the man you profess to be. All puffed up but only air inside. Of course, it hurts. That is what tells me it's working. " To this day, I remember those words. " There are times when we have to suffer and sacrifice to achieve a cure. That pain shows us that we are moving toward our goal. For what we want to accomplish in this Year of the Black Man 2024..will require a little sting. Our forefathers understood that. They endured that pinch in spite of the fact that there was no safety or relief in sight. What we overlook is that our opposition wants us to focus on the imminent pain and not the goal. Since we are what we think about most of the time, focusing on the impending discomfort will make the racist living conditions of being Black in America more palatable in comparison to the prick. De De was right as always. There were greater sacrifices made. Dr. Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, Herbert Lee, Roman Ducksworth, Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Caroline Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, Louis Allen, Henry Hezekiah Dee, Charles Eddie Moore, Oneal Moore...Those were the fighters who did not run from conflict. They stood fearlessly. The sting did not threaten them. Therefore , we have a responsibility, a mandate to be unafraid, to be steadfast in this struggle. In this way, we honor our dead.

We must act for the freedom promised. We must act because we are in a war against our existence but has never been declared . We must act for so many lives have been lost. We have suffered but America has even more so. With all of the killings, lynchings, segregation, discrimination, prejudice, racism , bias, bigotry, injustice, inequity and hatred, what has America gained? What it has lost is the full and complete contribution of an erudite, scholarly, creative, dynamic, dignified, loyal and industrious segment of its citizenry, Badass Black Folks. We are not where we should be or could be since all of us are not free.

Black Men, we must respond because our country needs us to keep the vision of America ever present in the mind and heart of its people. Why should we be the victims of a mentally deficient few? Why do we suffer the indignities and insults of the injured illiterates? Why should we have to fight for rights granted every other ethnic group in the country save us? . No! We stand up and make our desires, rights and wishes known. We prepare ourselves and especially our children for a life that white people in America enjoy. We fall no longer for the strategies inflicted upon us daily. There is nothing wrong with us except that you refuse to release us from the bonds and chains of racism. We have long ago paid our dues. In this moment, we want to collect on the debt you owe us. We have worked for it. We have earned it. We deserve it and we are willing to endure the IODIE to attain it.

This is what we know and are ready to act on. America has not made any commitment about securing for African Americans all the rights guaranteed all of its white citizens,

There has been a war declared on Black citizens by white citizens to prevent them from acquiring said rights. This is evident in every state in the union. There is a uniformity of negative treatment toward Blacks in America

The effort to maintain a state of second -class citizenship for Black Americans is fostered through the school system.

Black schools are providing an inferior product of education for its Black children.

Whereas white education is designed to prepare white children for success in the world with the complete and full cooperation of the system , parents, and political power brokers.

Black children who demonstrate high academic achievement are in the minority in Black schools and considered an anomaly. The rate of failure far exceeds high scholarship. The schools have inferior outcomes and more children are referred to special education than to specialized high schools. It is a system designed toward genocide rather than academic freedom.

There is no concern that these schools have been failing Black children for decades. If they were NON -profit enterprises, they would go under, have to close shop. These institutions of learning in a sentence can be described as follows, " Throw them into special education and close the door."

Black Men , We have to organize and act. Forget the IODINE. ACT!!!!!

#education #politics #culture #quotes

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hellsitesonlybookclub · 11 months ago

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It Can't Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis

Chapter 33-34

CHAPTER XXXIII

WHEN the Falcks and John Pollikop had been arrested and had joined her father in prison, when such more timid rebels as Mungo Kitterick and Harry Kindermann had been scared away from New Underground activities, Mary Greenhill had to take over the control of the Fort Beulah cell, with only Sissy, Father Perefixe, Dr. Olmsted and his driver, and half-a-dozen other agents left, and control it she did, with angry devotion and not too much sense. All she could do was to help in the escape of refugees and to forward such minor anti-Corpo news items as she could discover, with Julian gone.

The demon that had grown within her ever since her husband had been executed now became a great tumor, and Mary was furious at inaction. Quite gravely she talked about assassinations—and long before the day of Mary Greenhill, daughter of Doremus, gold-armored tyrants in towers had trembled at the menace of young widows in villages among the dark hills.

She wanted, first, to kill Shad Ledue who (she did not know, but guessed) had probably done the actual shooting of her husband. But in this small place it might hurt her family even more than they had been hurt. She humorlessly suggested, before Shad was arrested and murdered, that it would be a pretty piece of espionage for Sissy to go and live with him. The once flippant Sissy, so thin and quiet ever since her Julian had been taken away, was certain that Mary had gone mad, and at night was terrified.... She remembered how Mary, in the days when she had been a crystal-hard, crystal-bright sportswoman, had with her riding-crop beaten a farmer who had tortured a dog.

Mary was fed-up with the cautiousness of Dr. Olmsted and Father Perefixe, men who rather liked a vague state called Freedom but did not overmuch care for being lynched. She stormed at them. Call themselves men? Why didn't they go out and do something?

At home, she was irritated by her mother, who lamented hardly more about Doremus's jailing than she did about the beloved little tables that had been smashed during his arrest.

It was equally the blasts about the greatness of the new Provincial Commissioner, Effingham Swan, in the Corpo press and memoranda in the secret N.U. reports about his quick death verdicts against prisoners that made her decide to kill this dignitary. Even more than Shad (who had not yet been sent to Trianon), she blamed him for Fowler's fate. She thought it out quite calmly. That was the sort of thinking that the Corpos were encouraging among decent home-body women by their program for revitalizing national American pride.

Except with babies accompanying mothers, two visitors together were forbidden in the concentration camps. So, when Mary saw Doremus and, in another camp, Buck Titus, in early October, she could only murmur, in almost the same words to each of them, "Listen! When I leave you I'll hold up David—but, heavens, what a husky lump he's become!—at the gate, so you can see him. If anything should ever happen to me, if I should get sick or something, when you get out you'll take care of David—won't you, WON'T you?"

She was trying to be matter-of-fact, that they might not worry. She was not succeeding very well.

So she drew out, from the small fund which her father had established for her after Fowler's death, enough money for a couple of months, executed a power of attorney by which either her mother or her sister could draw the rest, casually kissed David and Emma and Sissy good-bye, and—chatty and gay as she took the train—went off to Albany, capital of the Northeastern Province. The story was that she needed a change and was going to stay near Albany with Fowler's married sister.

She did actually stay with her sister-in-law—long enough to get her bearings. Two days after her arrival, she went to the new Albany training-field of the Corpo Women's Flying Corps and enlisted for lessons in aviation and bombing.

When the inevitable war should come, when the government should decide whether it was Canada, Mexico, Russia, Cuba, Japan, or perhaps Staten Island that was "menacing her borders," and proceed to defend itself outwards, then the best women flyers of the Corps were to have Commissions in an official army auxiliary. The old-fashioned "rights" granted to women by the Liberals might (for their own sakes) be taken from them, but never had they had more right to die in battle.

While she was learning, she wrote to her family reassuringly— mostly postcards to David, bidding him mind whatever his grandmother said.

She lived in a lively boarding-house, filled with M.M. officers who knew all about and talked a little about the frequent inspection trips of Commissioner Swan, by aeroplane. She was complimented by quite a number of insulting proposals there.

She had driven a car ever since she had been fifteen: in Boston traffic, across the Quebec plains, on rocky hill roads in a blizzard; she had made repairs at midnight; and she had an accurate eye, nerves trained outdoors, and the resolute steadiness of a madman evading notice while he plots death. After ten hours of instruction, by an M.M. aviator who thought the air was as good a place as any to make love in and who could never understand why Mary laughed at him, she made her first solo flight, with an admirable landing. The instructor said (among other things less apropos) that she had no fear; that the one thing she needed for mastery was a little fear.

Meantime she was an obedient student in classes in bombing, a branch of culture daily more propagated by the Corpos.

She was particularly interested in the Mills hand grenade. You pulled out the safety pin, holding the lever against the grenade with your fingers, and tossed. Five seconds after the lever was thus loosened, the grenade exploded and killed a lot of people. It had never been used from planes, but it might be worth trying, thought Mary. M.M. officers told her that Swan, when a mob of steel-workers had been kicked out of a plant and started rioting, had taken command of the peace officers, and himself (they chuckled with admiration of his readiness) hurled such a grenade. It had killed two women and a baby.

Mary took her sixth solo flight on a November morning gray and quiet under snow clouds. She had never been very talkative with the ground crew but this morning she said it excited her to think she could leave the ground "like a reg'lar angel" and shoot up and hang around that unknown wilderness of clouds. She patted a strut of her machine, a high-wing Leonard monoplane with open cockpit, a new and very fast military machine, meant for both pursuit and quick jobs of bombing... quick jobs of slaughtering a few hundred troops in close formation.

At the field, as she had been informed he would, District Commissioner Effingham Swan was boarding his big official cabin plane for a flight presumably into New England. He was tall; a distinguished, military-looking, polo-suggesting dignitary in masterfully simple blue serge with just a light flying-helmet. A dozen yes-men buzzed about him—secretaries, bodyguards, a chauffeur, a couple of county commissioners, educational directors, labor directors—their hats in their hands, their smiles on their faces, their souls wriggling with gratitude to him for permitting them to exist. He snapped at them a good deal and bustled. As he mounted the steps to the cabin (Mary thought of "Casey Jones" and smiled), a messenger on a tremendous motorcycle blared up with the last telegrams. There seemed to be half a hundred of the yellow envelopes, Mary marveled. He tossed them to the secretary who was humbly creeping after him. The door of the viceregal coach closed on the Commissioner, the secretary, and two bodyguards lumpy with guns.

It was said that in his plane Swan had a desk that had belonged to Hitler, and before him to Marat.

To Mary, who had just lifted herself up into the cockpit, a mechanic cried, admiringly pointing after Swan's plane as it lurched forward, "Gee, what a grand guy that is—Boss Swan. I hear where he's flying down to Washington to chin with the Chief this morning—gee, think of it, with the Chief!"

"Wouldn't it be awful if somebody took a shot at Mr. Swan and the Chief? Might change all history," Mary shouted down.

"No chance of that! See those guards of his? Say, they could stand off a whole regiment—they could lick Walt Trowbridge and all the other Communists put together!"

"I guess that's so. Nothing but God shooting down from heaven could reach Mr. Swan."

"Ha, ha! That's good! But couple days ago I heard where a fellow was saying he figured out God had gone to sleep."

"Maybe it's time for Him to wake up!" said Mary, and raised her hand.

Her plane had a top of two hundred and eighty-five miles an hour— Swan's golden chariot had but two hundred and thirty. She was presently flying above and a little behind him. His cabin plane, which had seemed huge as the Queen Mary when she had looked up at its wing-spread on the ground, now seemed small as a white dove, wavering above the patchy linoleum that was the ground.

She drew from the pockets of her flying-jacket the three Mills hand grenades she had managed to steal from the school yesterday afternoon. She had not been able to get away with any heavier bomb. As she looked at them, for the first time she shuddered; she became a thing of warmer blood than a mere attachment to the plane, mechanical as the engine.

"Better get it over before I go ladylike," she sighed, and dived at the cabin plane.

No doubt her coming was unwelcome. Neither Death nor Mary Greenhill had made a formal engagement with Effingham Swan that morning; neither had telephoned, nor bargained with irritable secretaries, nor been neatly typed down on the great lord's schedule for his last day of life. In his dozen offices, in his marble home, in council hall and royal reviewing-stand, his most precious excellence was guarded with steel. He could not be approached by vulgarians like Mary Greenhill—save in the air, where emperor and vulgarian alike are upheld only by toy wings and by the grace of God.

Three times Mary maneuvered above his plane and dropped a grenade. Each time it missed. The cabin plane was descending, to land, and the guards were shooting up at her.

"Oh well!" she said, and dived bluntly at a bright metal wing.

In her last ten seconds she thought how much the wing looked like the zinc washboard which, as a girl, she had seen used by Mrs. Candy's predecessor—now what was her name?—Mamie or something. And she wished she had spent more time with David the last few months. And she noticed that the cabin plane seemed rather rushing up at her than she down at it.

The crash was appalling. It came just as she was patting her parachute and rising to leap out—too late. All she saw was an insane whirligig of smashed wings and huge engines that seemed to have been hurled up into her face.

CHAPTER XXXIV

SPEAKING of Julian before he was arrested, probably the New Underground headquarters in Montreal found no unusual value in his reports on M.M. grafting and cruelty and plans for apprehending N.U. agitators. Still, he had been able to warn four or five suspects to escape to Canada. He had had to assist in several floggings. He trembled so that the others laughed at him; and he made his blows suspiciously light.

He was set on being promoted to M.M. district headquarters in Hanover, and for it he studied typing and shorthand in his free time. He had a beautiful plan of going to that old family friend, Commissioner Francis Tasbrough, declaring that he wanted by his own noble qualities to make up to the divine government for his father's disloyalty, and of getting himself made Tasbrough's secretary. If he could just peep at Tasbrough's private files! Then there would be something juicy for Montreal!

Sissy and he discussed it exultantly in their leafy rendezvous. For a whole half hour she was able to forget her father and Buck in prison, and what seemed to her something like madness in Mary's increasing restlessness.

Just at the end of September she saw Julian suddenly arrested.

She was watching a review of M.M.'s on the Green. She might theoretically detest the blue M.M. uniform as being all that Walt Trowbridge (frequently) called it, "The old-time emblem of heroism and the battle for freedom, sacrilegiously turned by Windrip and his gang into a symbol of everything that is cruel, tyrannical, and false," but it did not dampen her pride in Julian to see him trim and shiny, and officially set apart as a squad-leader commanding his minor army of ten.

While the company stood at rest, County Commissioner Shad Ledue dashed up in a large car, sprang up, strode to Julian, bellowed, "This guy—this man is a traitor!" tore the M.M. steering-wheel from Julian's collar, struck him in the face, and turned him over to his private gunmen, while Julian's mates groaned, guffawed, hissed, and yelped.

She was not allowed to see Julian at Trianon. She could learn nothing save that he had not yet been executed.

When Mary was killed, and buried as a military heroine, Philip came bumbling up from his Massachusetts judicial circuit. He shook his head a great deal and pursed his lips.

"I swear," he said to Emma and Sissy—though actually he did nothing so wholesome and natural as to swear—"I swear I'm almost tempted to think, sometimes, that both Father and Mary have, or shall I say had, a touch of madness in them. There must be, terrible though it is to say it, but we must face facts in these troublous days, but I honestly think, sometimes, there must be a strain of madness somewhere in our family. Thank God I have escaped it!—if I have no other virtues, at least I am certainly sane! even if that may have caused the Pater to think I was nothing but mediocre! And of course you are entirely free from it, Mater. It's you that must watch yourself, Cecilia." (Sissy jumped slightly; not at anything so grateful as being called crazy by Philip, but at being called "Cecilia." After all, she admitted, that probably was her name.) "I hate to say it, Cecilia, but I've often thought you had a dangerous tendency to be thoughtless and selfish. Now Mater: as you know, I'm a very busy man, and I simply can't take a lot of time arguing and discussing, but it seems best to me, and I think I can almost say that it seems wise to Merilla, also, that, now that Mary has passed on, you should just close up this big house, or much better, try to rent it, as long as the poor Pater is—uh—as long as he's away. I don't pretend to have as big a place as this, but it's ever so much more modern, with gas furnace and up-to-date plumbing and all, and I have one of the first television sets in Rose Lane. I hope it won't hurt your feelings, and as you know, whatever people may say about me, certainly I'm one of the first to believe in keeping up the old traditions, just as poor dear old Eff Swan was, but at the same time, it seems to me that the old home here is a little on the dreary and old-fashioned side—of course I never COULD persuade the Pater to bring it up to date, but—Anyway, I want Davy and you to come live with us in Worcester, immediately. As for you, Sissy, you will of course understand that you are entirely welcome, but perhaps you would prefer to do something livelier, such as joining the Women's Corpo Auxiliary—"

He was, Sissy raged, so damned KIND to everybody! She couldn't even stir herself to insult him much. She earnestly desired to, when she found that he had brought David an M.M. uniform, and when David put it on and paraded about shouting, like most of the boys he played with, "Hail Windrip!"

She telephoned to Lorinda Pike at Beecher Falls and was able to tell Philip that she was going to help Lorinda in the tea room. Emma and David went off to Worcester—at the last moment, at the station, Emma decided to be pretty teary about it, though David begged her to remember that they had Uncle Philip's word for it that Worcester was just the same as Boston, London, Hollywood, and a Wild West Ranch put together. Sissy stayed to get the house rented. Mrs. Candy, who was going to open her bakery now and who never did inform the impractical Sissy whether or no she was being paid for these last weeks, made for Sissy all the foreign dishes that only Sissy and Doremus cared for, and they not uncheerfully dined together, in the kitchen.

So it was Shad's time to swoop.

He came blusteringly calling on her, in November. Never had she hated him quite so much, yet never so much feared him, because of what he might do to her father and Julian and Buck and the others in concentration camps.

He grunted, "Well, your boy-friend Jule, that thought he was so cute, the poor heel, we got all the dope on his double-crossing us, all right! HE'LL never bother you again!"

"He's not so bad. Let's forget him.... Shall I play you something on the piano?"

"Sure. Shoot. I always did like high-class music," said the refined Commissioner, lolling on a couch, putting his heels up on a damask chair, in the room where once he had cleaned the fireplace. If it was his serious purpose to discourage Sissy in regard to that anti-Corpo institution, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, he was succeeding even better than Judge Philip Jessup. Sir William Gilbert would have said of Shad that he was so very, very prolet-ari-an.

She had played for but five minutes when he forgot that he was now refined, and bawled, "Oh, cut out the highbrow stuff and come on and sit down!"

She stayed on the piano stool. Just what would she do if Shad became violent? There was no Julian to appear melodramatically at the nickoftime and rescue her. Then she remembered Mrs. Candy, in the kitchen, and was content.

"What the heck you snickerin' at?" said Shad.

"Oh—oh I was just thinking about that story you told me about how Mr. Falck bleated when you arrested him!"

"Yeh, that was comical. Old Reverend certainly blatted like a goat!"

(Could she kill him? Would it be wise to kill him? Had Mary meant to kill Swan? Would They be harder on Julian and her father if she killed Shad? Incidentally, did it hurt much to get hanged?)

He was yawning, "Well, Sis, ole kid, how about you and me taking a little trip to New York in a couple weeks? See some high life. I'll get you the best soot in the best hotel in town, and we'll take in some shows—I hear this Callin' Stalin is a hot number— real Corpo art—and I'll buy you some honest-to-God champagne wine! And then if we find we like each other enough, I'm willing for us, if you are, to get hitched!"

"But, Shad! We could never live on your salary. I mean—I mean of course the Corpos ought to pay you better—mean, even better than they do."

"Listen, baby! I ain't going to have to get along on any miserable county commissioner's salary the rest of my life! Believe me, I'm going to be a millionaire before very long!"

Then he told her: told her precisely the sort of discreditable secret for which she had so long fished in vain. Perhaps it was because he was sober. Shad, when drunk, reversed all the rules and became more peasant-like and cautious with each drink.

He had a plan. That plan was as brutal and as infeasible as any plan of Shad Ledue for making large money would be. Its essence was that he should avoid manual labor and should make as many persons miserable as possible. It was like his plan, when he was still a hired man, to become wealthy by breeding dogs—first stealing the dogs and, preferably, the kennels.

As County Commissioner he had not merely, as was the Corpo custom, been bribed by the shopkeepers and professional men for protection against the M.M.'s. He had actually gone into partnership with them, promising them larger M.M. orders, and, he boasted, he had secret contracts with these merchants all written down and signed and tucked away in his office safe.

Sissy got rid of him that evening by being difficult, while letting him assume that the conquest of her would not take more than three or four more days. She cried furiously after he had gone—in the comforting presence of Mrs. Candy, who first put away a butcher knife with which, Sissy suspected, she had been standing ready all evening.

Next morning Sissy drove to Hanover and shamelessly tattled to Francis Tasbrough about the interesting documents Shad had in his safe. She did not ever see Shad Ledue again.

She was very sick about his being killed. She was very sick about all killing. She found no heroism but only barbaric bestiality in having to kill so that one might so far live as to be halfway honest and kind and secure. But she knew that she would be willing to do it again.

The Jessup house was magniloquently rented by that noble Roman, that political belch, Ex-Governor Isham Hubbard, who, being tired of again trying to make a living by peddling real estate and criminal law, was pleased to accept the appointment as successor to Shad Ledue.

Sissy hastened to Beecher Falls and to Lorinda Pike.

Father Perefixe took charge of the N.U. cell, merely saying, as he had said daily since Buzz Windrip had been inaugurated, that he was fed-up with the whole business and was immediately going back to Canada. In fact, on his desk he had a Canadian time-table.

It was now two years old.

Sissy was in too snappish a state to stand being mothered, being fattened and sobbed over and brightly sent to bed. Mrs. Candy had done only too much of that. And Philip had given her all the parental advice she could endure for a while. It was a relief when Lorinda received her as an adult, as one too sensible to insult by pity—received her, in fact, with as much respect as if she were an enemy and not a friend.

After dinner, in Lorinda's new tea room, in an aged house which was now empty of guests for the winter except for the constant infestation of whimpering refugees, Lorinda, knitting, made her first mention of the dead Mary.

"I suppose your sister did intend to kill Swan, eh?"

"I don't know. The Corpos didn't seem to think so. They gave her a big military funeral."

"Well, of course, they don't much care to have assassinations talked about and maybe sort of become a general habit. I agree with your father. I think that, in many cases, assassinations are really rather unfortunate—a mistake in tactics. No. Not good. Oh, by the way, Sissy, I think I'm going to get your father out of concentration camp."

"What?"

Lorinda had none of the matrimonial moans of Emma; she was as business-like as ordering eggs.

"Yes. I tried everything. I went to see Tasbrough, and that educational fellow, Peaseley. Nothing doing. They want to keep Doremus in. But that rat, Aras Dilley, is at Trianon as guard now. I'm bribing him to help your father escape. We'll have the man here for Christmas, only kind of late, and sneak him into Canada."

"Oh!" said Sissy.

A few days afterward, reading a coded New Underground telegram which apparently dealt with the delivery of furniture, Lorinda shrieked, "Sissy! All you-know-what has busted loose! In Washington! Lee Sarason has deposed Buzz Windrip and grabbed the dictatorship!"

"Oh!" said Sissy.

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