#with no real connection to my perceived crime or sin

[ourceliumnetwork]

mmm not liking today's Lore Revelation about myself. Unfortunately pretty sure i'm Right about aspects i don't wish to be right about, but on the other hand at least if true i can start working on it properly by addressing those things in the future.

[shadesoflsk]

MILLION DOLLAR BLOODLINE — Traición

Dealing with the case in hand, you come across with some valuable clues. Check my million dollar bloodline masterlist for general warnings.

Chapter 1 Chapter 2

pairing: Vampire/Agent Leon x Fem Detective reader

warnings: Sexism (from the press again) few mentions of gore and death, fucked up government, scent (First glimpes of Leon's vampire qualities yay)

author's note: hi... I'm writing this with one eye closed... exhaustion is taking over me and it may show in this chapter. as always, if you see any mistake, you don't. don't even perceive them. thank you so much and love yall.

“Thank God a man stepped in!”

A new headline, a new story being told. It’s rather frustrating to know that no matter what, reality would be twisted to the journalists’ desire and let the only person who actually cares about the case burn in the flames of depiction and hatred just for the ‘sin’ of being a woman. 

The same shameless and brutal words are printed in a bright red that resembles the fresh blood of those leaders of the city. In many readers’ eyes and minds, they were expecting to finally see a man taking the case and bringing ‘success’ even though it’s doomed to fail.

No one grieves more than someone who has lost everything—but your right to fight is still running deep in your veins. With a grunt, you throw the newspaper on your desk, almost spilling the black coffee you were previously drinking. 

It’s been less than a day since the candidate was found dead. The cause of death? Suicide which was, in a way, surprising. From the number of politicians who have “left this cruel world,” Mr Clark's scene of the crime gave enough proof that you were facing a real self-homicide case. 

In front of you lay countless folders and confidential documents that the police department has collected from the first victim to the last one. The only obvious connection all of the victims shared was that all of them were Tier A individuals. People who wouldn’t disappear to find ‘the real meaning’ of life and would surely not kill themselves without a murder weapon. 

So, even a rookie detective could surmise that most of those crimes were the smokescreen of something way bigger brewing in the shadows of the city. A city whose beliefs and faith in the government are so cracked now that not even the most nationalist citizens could find peace in their hometown.

A sigh leaves your lips, one that shows the tiredness in your system and heart. Sometimes, the feeling of walking in circles clouds your judgment and overall sanity. In hindsight, a detective ought to be a rightful and morally white person who would walk on fire just for the sake of truth and justice. But each time your eyes land on the atrocious clues you have gathered, the desire to throw away everything gets harder to bear.

Next to the pile of documents and boxes, on your desktop, is a photo frame which shows a younger version of yourself. Beaming pearly white smile with shiny eyes that could blind the camera itself, saying that you were happy was an understatement, you were delighted.

Truthfully speaking, you were naive. You loved to tell everyone you were going to be different, the exception of the rule, the one and only, justice bringer. But in reality, the sole fact you didn’t feel sympathy for those rich people tells you that maybe you weren’t so different. 

Or were you?

Fighting between your drowsiness and the obligation to continue working on this case, you grab the envelope Leon previously gave you. A yawn gets stuck in your throat, not allowing any sign of exhaustion to show in your face right now. 

The first thing that greets you is a document you quite don’t understand at first. The black words are blurry, proof of how much you need to sleep. A body can’t function without resting but you can’t function if work is due. Soft slaps around your face and a long-needed sip of the black caffeine liquid will do for now. 

“Life Insurance…” Your lips work on their own as you read the title, written in black ink. The font style proves the authenticity of the document. Dated July 1979, the legal paper started with the log of a woman’s name and age. 

Patricia Clark Powell, 28. American, caucasian. Marital status: Married. Children: 2. Now this is something. 

Reading each word carefully, leaving no detail off the table, a rather big number got your attention. After a long overview of this woman’s life details, you come across a table that shows the life insurance payout.

The main and only beneficiary was Robert Clark, he'd inherit the absurd and grotesque amount of 5 million dollars. 

But the catch here was that the only requirement to claim the insurance was the death certificate of the insured party, meaning that Patricia had to pass away.

You set aside the document for now. Your fingers graze over the corner of the paper to turn it.

A picture, no, several pictures come into your vision. All of them are colored and clear as water. The shoot is not perfect, as if someone was hiding while taking those photos.

The camera is positioned on a table. Hence the awkward angle it shows, nonetheless the main focus is on two people sitting down. 

The table, the walls, and overall decorations are an obvious giveaway of the place they were in. An expensive and pretentious restaurant that only the rich can afford. A stroke to their damned egos knowing that they could buy and eat a whole cow if they wanted to. Not before wiping any crumbs with a one thousand-dollar check.

You squint your eyes and even lean forward to try and inspect in great detail each part of the picture—detective skills kicking in, you may say.

The man on the right has a neatly trimmed mustache, and bushy eyebrows that match his hair color, black. He's wearing a navy blue suit with a gray tie. Very office-like and rather different from his counterpart next to him who wears a hoodie and a cigarette between his lips. The angle showing the faintest details of a tattoo on his right hand, which holds the cigarette. 

Flipping through the pictures, you see many more of them but just from different positions. Yet the main highlight is the now obvious identity of the man who exposes himself to the camera's lenses. 

Robert Clark. 

The last document is a newspaper headline. “CRIMINAL FUGITIVES” it reads and shows several mugshots of criminals who escaped prison over these last five years. Under the pictures, a text box includes some characteristics of the ex-prisoners. Your attention falls on a specific name. 

The picture shows a man with brown hair and brown eyes, a stubble growing on his jaw and cheeks. Why was he convicted? Organized crime and contract killing, a hitman in other words. The text described the man as a 5’9 male with no moles and no notorious scars. 

But a tattoo on his right hand.

Before you can even process everything you have read and seen, the ring of a phone breaks the solemn silence that has set in your office. Sliding to where the phone was, you pick up the call.

And before you could even utter a word, someone started the conversation first.

“Hey there, Sherlock.” A man’s voice greets you. Deep but smooth tone, easy to distinguish. 

“Mr. Kennedy.” You reply, brushing off the nickname he just gave you. “What a timing.”

“Why is that?” Playing dumb, Leon shoots his question. 

“I just finished reading the documents you gave me.” A seed of confusion is planted in your statement as you try to make up your mind with the information you just registered. “Where did you get all of this?” You say pressing the speaker closer to your mouth, whispering the words.

“Feeling curious, aren’t we?” Mock oozes from his tone, but there is a hint of genuine playfulness in his speech, as if delighted to be the one providing the confidential information. “You know… As much as I want to tell you, I just can’t.”

“Why?”

“Oh? Am I being questioned?” If you were next to him, you’d see the smirk that has formed on his face. And if you indeed were, a slap would be planted on his cheek, for sure. 

Leon continues being a puzzle you couldn’t solve. From the first (and only) moment you met him, his odd and shared disdain for the rich baffled you. You can’t seem to break through the world inside his head.

“Does it feel like I'm questioning you?”

“Kinda.”

“Forget it.” You shrug, leaving the topic as it is. There’s no point in trying to make Leon spit the truth. At least, not now. “But this is truly a key piece to this investigation.”

“That I know,” Leon replies. “But as I told you yesterday, don’t do anything stupid.” 

Silence fills the call as you take in what Leon said, or rather, repeated. 

“Oh?” Bitterly, you retort. “So you think I’ll do something stupid? It’s funny, all of my male colleagues always told me that.”

“I didn’t mean it like tha—”

“Oh course you didn’t.” Sarcasm was dripping from your words. “Nobody does.” You add with an exhausted sigh coming out from your lips.

“No, but I truly didn’t mean it.” He finally finishes his sentence as your pause allows him to interrupt you. 

“Look, sorry… I’ve dealt with these people ever since I remember and It’s just so… fucked up.” He adds. “You’re better than those dickhead detectives. I assure you.”

Now that you think about it, you may have overreacted. But then again, it wasn’t your fault. Being surrounded by people who discriminate and minimize every hardship you face, built a hard shell no one could break through. 

Instead of sticking to the awkward topic and Leon’s reassuring words, you decide to change the direction of this exchange. 

“Why did you call, Leon?” You ask, a tear forming in your eye due to the lack of sleep and the imminent yawn that threatens to escape from your mouth. 

The polite and tactful pattern was broken as soon as his name slipped from your lips. No agent nor Mr. Kennedy. For now, he is just Leon. 

Carrying a hint of embarrassment given his previous poor choice of words, he replies to your question.

“Mr. Clark’s wife is holding a funeral for him. I was going to tell you in case you wanted to go.”

His words catch your attention, the funeral could be the perfect opportunity to secretly investigate Patricia. In hindsight, a hunch tells you she isn’t involved—at least directly— in the candidate’s death. But it could give you some clues you may have overlooked.

“Are you going?”

“I might.”

You absentmindedly nod, acknowledging his answer. 

“Got it…” You play with the phone’s cord. “I’ll see you there, I guess.”

The chapel shimmers with almost blinding lights. Even though the nature of a funeral is dull and gloomy, the contrast is obvious. The whole setting is the perfect opportunity to show off, once again, the money that was being spent on it. The air is filled with raw indifference and overall pure narcissism. 

The lack of mourning and tears throw you off, especially when you feel like an outsider, you don’t belong here. Besides the fact that, of course, no matter how much you worked you could never afford the type of brand every individual was wearing—there is this feeling you can’t brush off. 

Your eyes travel over the room, searching for the wife now a widow. It is easy to get distracted by the mingling of certain guests and hushed laughs. Time and place… you thought.

What is supposed to be a thousand agonies and a sea of sorrow turns out to be the perfect act of grief. Let God be the judge of these people who surround themselves in the miseries of others. 

Amidst your judgment of everyone in the room, your task of finding Mrs Clark comes to an abrupt stop as a figure you recognize makes its appearance. Now wearing a dark blue suit, Leon’s frame is unmistakable. 

He’s next to a woman, brunette hair that reaches her back. A black fascinator is perfectly placed on her head, a wave of cringiness washes over you for the choice of fashion she went with. That must be Patricia Clark.

Confident but subtle, the cackling sounds of your high heels mix with the hushed chit-chat of those in the room. At last, it comes to a stop as you find yourself behind the widow and Leon who had previously acknowledged your presence. 

And for a moment, your eyes lock with the agent’s who wears an expression that could only be described as an attempt to warn you about something. But for now, you drift your attention towards the task at hand.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Clark.” You extend your hand while you introduce yourself. “I’m so sorry for your loss.” 

Manners, of course. You couldn’t feel sorry, especially now that you know that besides being an empty-headed politician, Robert Clark was an almost-murderer. 

However, you regret the fact that you chose the polite way of approaching as soon as your hand reached the air instead of the brunette-haired woman’s hand. Then, you realized this wouldn’t be as easy as you had thought.

A bemused expression forms in your face but it fades rather quickly as you remember your objective here. Taken aback, you pull your hand away before bringing them both behind your back. 

Leon doesn’t seem surprised by the blatant uncordial treatment Mrs. Clark just gave you. A sneer is present in his face as if he were saying ‘I told you so.’

“Don’t take it personal, darling.” Her voice tone reeks of arrogance and a know-it-all feeling. “I’ve been here for God knows how long. My hand may as well fall off if I keep shaking hands.”

There was no reason to feel amused by the whole interaction, you have dealt with these types of people before. But, the coldness and tactlessness of her words throw you off.

“I understand.” You feign agreement as if the fact that her husband is fucking dead is merely a minor detail. “But please, allow me to share my condolences. A woman as young as yourself shouldn’t be experiencing this.”

You resort to false praise words. There’s nothing else these fuckheads love more than people licking their shoe soles and acting like they are the only people living in the world. 

“It’s indeed difficult.” The woman brings her hand to her eyes, wiping the nonexistent tears that were supposed to be there. “My husband preferred to shoot himself instead of continuing being the man of the house.”

What a bitch.

Glancing at Leon, you find him crouching down in front of an infant. Given his brown hair, he must be one of the two Mr. and Mrs. Clark's children. 

“Is that your son?” You ask. 

“Yes…” An exasperated sigh again. As if she doesn't want to be here. In a sense, it is comprehensible but her overall personality wouldn't allow you to feel an ounce of sympathy. 

“How's he dealing with everything?” And after that question, you believe Mrs. Clark will snap at you any time now.

“Like every other kid would.” She replies, sparing not even a glance toward her own child. “He prefers her nanny anyway.”

Mentally cursing the mother, your lips tug a forced smile, one that doesn't reach your eyes but symbolizes the end of this meaningless conversation.

Your eyes travel until they land on Leon and the kid. The little one's eyes seem wet with tears that he so bravely holds back. 

Talking to children and elderly people was always the most difficult part of this job. Ever since you took it, those were your soft spot and Achilles’ ankle.

Leon notices your hesitation and motions you to join him. Scooting a bit, he gives you some space for you to crouch down too.

Greetings haven't been exchanged yet, instead of a hello, Leon welcomes you with a name.

“Lucas.” He whispers as you lower yourself to be at eye level with the infant. 

You nod. 

Lucas looks no older than 5 years old. A mop of brunette curly hair adorns his head. 

“Hi Lucas…” You give the little boy a gentle and warm smile. He blinks some tears that fall from his cheeks to the ground. 

There's no response, which it's okay. Unlike his mother's behavior, you know this innocent human is actually grieving. 

You take your time as tiny hiccups and soft sobs keep Lucas from forming actual sentences. 

“Lucas, this my friend.” It was Leon’s turn to speak. His usual chatty tone was replaced by an almost fatherly voice. “You told me you like making friends, didn't you?”

You watch as the little one slowly nods and wipes away the tears that keep rolling down his face. But this time, his sobs are coming to a stop.

“Are you daddy's friend?” He finally asks. However, the question was one you didn't expect. 

“Yes.” You lie, as a detective you are used to telling white and not so white lies just for the sake of finding a bigger truth. But lying to a child wasn't something you were looking for. 

“Okay…” Lucas responds and looks at both of you and Leon. A flick of light between the living hell of those pretentious people who act like they care.

“Daddy must be proud to see how strong you're right now.” Leon speaks once again and you witness how he ruffles Lucas’ hair in an attempt to cheer him up. 

“You think so?” Lucas’ voice, for one, is higher than just a whisper. And for the first time, you notice how he's missing one of his teeth. “Daddy always told me to be as strong as him every time he went to the doctor.”

The word doctor set both of you and Leon off. According to Robert Clark's medical history, he was a healthy individual. No illness and not even allergies. 

“Doctor? Was your daddy sick?”

“Weren't you daddy's friend? You should know…” You didn't expect to be outsmarted by a kid.

“Your daddy didn't want us to worry.” Second lie on the day, you're keeping count. “That's why he never told us.”

A pause lingers in the air as you reply to the child. It takes a while before he can answer your question as if conditioned not to talk about his father's doctor visits.

“He sometimes went to the doctor,” Lucas explains after a few seconds of reluctance. “He told me not to tell mommy or nanny. Maybe he didn't want them to worry too.”

“Was your daddy sick?” Leon asks in the same gentle tone he has kept throughout the conversation.

“Dunno…” Lucas pouts. “Doctor was also daddy’s friend.”

The kid’s naivety is providing you with more information than his mother could give you. Of course, his guileless wouldn’t serve any purpose legally speaking. But, it can give you some insight into Mr Clark’s background and motive.

And once again, you don’t have time to process the information as the rumbling of a stomach guides your attention toward Lucas.

“Sir?” Lucas’ eyes meet Leon’s blue ones. “Mommy said she’s busy… But I’m hungry.”

Leon offers Lucas a kind smile.

“Tell you what, kiddo. There’s a coffee shop near here, I’ll buy you something to eat.”

Lucas’ eyes seem to get brighter at the prospect of eating, it leads you to think how long has it been since he last ate something. 

When you are turning your back to follow Leon out of the chapel—because there was no way would stay there for a second longer— you feel a tiny hand wrapping around your sleeve. 

“Miss.” A pause and a deep breath. “Do you think daddy’s in heaven?”

“...”

“Yes, he is.” The third and last lie.

You tag along with Leon, both of you walking down the street until you reach a coffee shop. No words are exchanged and a rather awkward silence sets between both of you. 

Your mind is somewhere else while your body works on its own. You don’t even notice when Leon asks you something, too worried about the case, too scared something bigger than you may eat you whole if you keep poking your nose where it doesn’t belong. 

However, as stubborn as you could be, justice needs to prevail. 

While biting the inside of your cheeks, Leon’s words bring you back from your trance. “Hey? I asked you if you wanted something.” 

You come to notice that you have already walked towards the cash register. Both the cashier and Leon’s eyes fall on you. 

“An Americano.”

You come up with the quickest answer you could think of. You watch Leon take out his wallet and pay with cash. 

Eventually, both of your orders plus Lucas’ are called and you decide to take a break albeit your attempt at telling Leon there was no time to lose. 

“So… any luck with Mrs. Newly Widow?” Leon asks as he takes a bite of his sandwich. 

“Nope.” You stir your coffee and blow some air. “Didn’t know she would be so difficult to deal with.”

“Well, she’s no more difficult than you.” He replies jokingly with a feeble smirk on his face. 

“Oh, you’re funny. How many times have you used that one with other people?” You retort, the sarcastic answer flying so gracefully out of your lips as if you have been ready for one of his remarks. 

“See! That’s what I’m talking about.” He gestures at you. “I’m trying to be friends with you but you push me away.”

Silence dawns upon both of you as you exhale. Although Leon has been nothing but respectful—in his own way— the fear of looking polite and weak with a colleague is still very much present. 

Dropping the act of being cold and emotionless isn’t something that you are looking for nor planning to do. Not until you could show the world that you are, in fact, as capable as any other man. 

“Look, Leon,” You speak in a calm tone. “I don’t make friends, not in this field and especially not with men.” 

As you say so, you reach for a sugar packet. No americano tastes good without sugar.

“Sorry.” You add. 

There is nothing to feel sorry about. Your feelings and boundaries shouldn’t depend on someone else. Yet, a part of you couldn’t help but regret your bold choice of words.

“Hey, nothing to apologize for.” And even though he was the one who suggested the whole friendship thing, he is also the one who is soothing the waters. “I know men in general can be a pain in the ass.”

That causes a huff to slip out of your mouth. “Trying to win points?”

“Not really.” He says while chewing on his sandwich. “Besides, you’re too smart for that.”

You chuckle, finally ripping the material of the sugar packet. “Finally we agree on something.”

Drumming his fingers against the hard wooden material both of your gaze into the distance, not adding anything else to the conversation. The aroma of coffee fills the area where you are sitting with Leon. 

“Lucas, Mr. Clark’s kid… you were good with him.” It slips off your tongue rather easily. A tinge of sincerity washes over your statement. 

And you can observe how Leon’s face went from a resting and soft expression to a stunned one. However, after your previous comments, the awkward and uneasy feeling shifted into an amiable one. 

“Was I?” Almost incredulous and even insecure. A slight trace of a vulnerable side you haven’t seen nor expected. “Thanks.”

Judging by his expression, Leon either had a soft spot for kids just like you or there’s something else you don’t know. Most agents show themselves as cold-hearted creatures who give no shit about anyone but themselves or their missions. 

But it’s none of your business.

“What Lucas told us, about the doctor. Do you think it may be related to the case?” You ask, back to your normal and professional self.

“I believe it can help us to investigate further,” Leon replies. “but I fail to see how this doctor could be of any help in this case.” 

“Maybe not on this one…” You murmur not even noticing the words that fell from your lips.

“What do you mean?” Leon notes your slight behavior change. Clearing your throat, you shake your head dismissing your previous words. 

“Nothing.” For now, the missing civilians’ case doesn’t need to be exposed. You fear the government is behind it and the one you’re currently investigating. You don’t need Leon to follow each step you take, especially given his association with the nation’s leaders.

Taking one last sip of your drink, you raise your wrist and read the time. Going back to the chapel wouldn’t bring you more information. Not when everyone seemed more focused on their conversations rather than helping.

Searching through your wallet, you pull a 10 dollar bill and place it on the table, next to your empty cup of coffee.

“What is that?”

“For my coffee.” You respond, getting up from the chair and looking back at Leon. “I don’t like owing to people.”

“You don’t have to, you know?” Leon chuckles and shakes his head. “It’s on me.”

“Well…” You reply. “Then make sure to give it back to me one day.”

Ephesians 6:10-18

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness

Leon’s hands are clean, metaphorically speaking. But his mind is not.

He wasn’t directly involved in the numerous deaths of politicians and CEOs. He just provided the right amount of information for them to kill each other. Playing God amongst them, in a way only he could recognize and embrace.

Death has rejected him but he brings that destiny upon those who sought to destroy the peace settled in the city and therefore nation. That’s the role he accepted once the curse of immortality ran deeply in his veins. 

It all started with hints he would drop in the middle of conversations. Twisted words that would seed doubts among elitists. Alliances were broken easily, that he needn’t worry about. But some partnerships were harder to break, sly statements would get him anywhere.

So, direct accusations were made. Obviously, under a fake name or rather an anonymous identity which would prompt people to feel paranoid even in their own homes. It took less than a week for lesser pawns to be found dead or disappear under odd circumstances. Of course, those who own the city would leave no trace of their crimes—so even for him, a federal agent, it was impossible to reach them without his mission being discovered. 

So, as soon as he was assigned to help you in this mysterious case, he was delighted. He’d play his pieces right and boom, he’d wriggle his way into the elite that control the city with their tainted and bloody hands and root out the evil.

However, he wouldn’t have thought that his “eternal suffering” disease would act the first moment he saw you. 

Ever since he was transformed, the adaptation path was rough and difficult to deal with. Nonetheless, he made a promise to never act upon his instincts, no matter how unbearable they could get.  

When he first saw Mr. Clark’s body, it wasn’t surprising. He knew he would choose the path of dying instead of facing his crimes and past. They’re all like that. Cowards, good for nothing, worthless, usel—

A sugary and pleasant aroma flooded his senses which immediately put him at ease amid the gruesome scenario lying underneath his frame. 

It wasn’t coming from the dead bastard, that he knew. So what is it? The smell was getting even more prominent each second that passed. It made him dig his short fingernails into the palm of his hand, forming tiny half-moons on the thin skin. 

His senses were never that heightened nor his body was that sensible to even the softest of draughts. 

And his body worked on his own as soon as the doorknob tweaked, he turned around and acted as if his work was the only thing on his mind.

As if his eternal life wasn’t about to change forever. When forever only meant pain and sorrow, at least for Leon.

[troquantary]

Cutting Hair as Punishment in the Twilight Saga

Okay, I’ve been trying to organize my thoughts around this into a sort-of-essay format for a while, because I find it disturbingly mean-spirited: Meyer has a pattern of using hair-cutting as a form of punishment for characters, especially female characters, who fail to embrace Bella and the Cullens with open arms. I’m talking particularly about Leah and Lauren, both of whom, while not outright antagonists like Victoria or James, are situated along with Rosalie as “against” Bella throughout the series. The Quileute pack, meanwhile, is situated largely “against” the Cullens, meaning Jacob and the rest of the pack get the Haircut of Shame, too.

(Also, I’ve been creeping through @panlight ‘s blog because I thought she had a recent post relating to this -- I was probably thinking of this submission and her addendum, which does discuss Meyer’s “punishment” of certain characters, but that post was about characters suffering for not waiting for True Love, or daring to do the Devil’s Tango before marriage. Still, it’s on-theme and very much worth reading, like all her stuff!)

So here’s the general outline: first I’m gonna talk about the shapeshifters and how their overall lack of choice frames cutting their hair as something forced on them and therefore punitive. Then I’m going to discuss Meyer’s FAQ response where she reveals that Lauren was tricked into cutting off most of her hair over the summer before New Moon, and how this adds an extra fun misogynistic element to the hair-cutting theme with respect to Lauren and Leah. I also use way too many words to do it, sorry.

Punishment | The Shapeshifters Are Given No Other Option

I don’t have the background or knowledge to discuss the significance of long hair to indigenous culture and identity in detail, and my understanding is that different tribes ascribe different meanings to it. What I’ve read it about it suggests that, generally, long hair represents strength of one’s individual spirit and of the community. It’s a source of pride, and is only cut off voluntarily in extraordinary circumstances, often as an expression of grief, or to mark a significant life change.

This sort of works in the context of the shapeshifters all cutting their hair -- phasing into a giant wolf, discovering the existence of the supernatural, and assuming the role of protectors is a major life event for these characters. But the negative associations make it a troubling choice on Meyer’s part, and that’s without even getting into the problem of her imposing her own worldbuilding onto the legends and culture of a real tribe. Because of the lack of choice involved in becoming a shapeshifter, the whole situation feels like a scenario in which the Quileute characters have their hair forcibly cut -- a degrading and traumatic act that (depending on their particular tribal belief) might symbolically sever them from their sense of cultural identity and connection with the rest of their tribe.

It all kind of begs the question: why does Meyer even have shapeshifting work this way? What narrative utility is there in having the length of their hair in human form determine the length of their fur as wolves, thereby compelling the shapeshifters to cut it so it isn’t a physical impediment? It’s another sign of the changes in Jacob, sure, but he’s already being uncharacteristically cold and distant, plus suddenly has the physique of a fit twenty-five-year-old; Bella already knows something’s very wrong. His short hair is just another jarring thing for Bella to notice and mourn, like the loss of Jacob’s “baby face” and general sunniness.

It does work as a symbolic thing, representing another sacrifice Jacob has to make and the change in how he now has to perceive himself -- but he’s already got a literal giant wolf form to represent that change in identity/self-perception. Forcing him to cut his hair too just feels like piling on. My argument here, which I hope will be supported when I discuss Lauren and Leah further in, is that it’s not just piling on, but actively punitive -- because much like Leah and Lauren are “against” Bella, the pack at large is “against” the Cullens pretty much through the end of the series.

The Quileute pack is definitely not a Cullen fanclub. The entire purpose of their existence is to destroy vampires, and the truce they have with the Cullens isn’t friendly. They still don’t particularly like or trust the Cullens even after allying with them in Eclipse, and in Breaking Dawn Sam is fully prepared to go to war against them to enforce the treaty. Bella expresses frustration with Jacob and the pack for not appreciating the Cullens more, yet is curiously less willing to scold Alice, Edward, or Rosalie when they call the Quileutes dogs and complain about their smell. (I think she might reprimand Edward for it at some point, but I don’t remember the exact passage.) Bella even starts throwing around “dog” and “mutt” as an insult herself -- I think we know whose side ol’ “Switzerland” is on, here, and whose side Meyer is on as well. The Quileutes aren’t exactly enemies, and in fact are crucial to the Cullens’ survival in both the newborn and Volutri conflicts, but they’re punished nonetheless because they aren’t wholeheartedly Team Cullen from the get-go.

So to explain why I’m so convinced that there’s a link between hair-cutting and punishment in particular, let’s talk about Lauren. There’s a definite gendered element to it this time, too -- by being tricked into cutting her hair, Lauren isn’t just diminished/shamed, but rendered (*thunderclap*) unfeminine.

Lauren Was Rude To Bella Like Twice, Let’s Humiliate Her

I think Meyer’s answer to the question “What happened to Lauren’s hair?” on her FAQ page speaks for itself:

Ha ha. I had fun imagining this one—I only wished that it had fit into the book somewhere. Lauren fell victim to the “model discovered in the mall” scam. An alleged modeling agent approached Lauren in a mall in Victoria, B.C., and told her she was a natural model. Lauren ate it up. The agent told her that if she did something edgy with her hair, and took some high quality head shots, her future was assured. Lauren followed the instructions—dropping fifteen grand on the pictures taken by the agent’s partner—and waited for her career to begin. She’s still waiting. Snort.

It’s pretty obvious that this was done spitefully. Here’s the list of Lauren’s crimes against humanity Bella at this point in the series: 1) she was jealous of the attention Bella was getting as the new girl; 2) she talked behind Bella’s back once, saying Bella might as well just sit with the Cullens now (and she isn’t wrong); 3) she eyed Bella “scornfully” the day of the La Push beach trip; and perhaps most damningly, 4) she’s blonde.

Post-haircut, she has the gall not to be thrilled that Bella’s deigning to speak to the lowly non-Cullens again, then sides with Jessica after Bella uses Jessica to make a point to her dad, is shitty company, and then risks getting them both raped and murdered in Port Angeles so she could get off on her hallucination of Edward’s voice.

I think it’s pretty common knowledge that long hair is tied to patriarchal notions of femininity and attractiveness. Women with short hair are still derided for being ugly, or assumed to be lesbians in a derogatory sense, or simply considered less feminine and therefore less desirable/worthy (because a woman’s worth depends on her desirability, after all). For many women and girls, losing their long hair -- whether because of illness, or gum getting stuck in it, or whatever -- is very upsetting and a hard blow to their self-esteem. Just look at Alice as an example of Traumatic Short Hair; her hair was shorn like that because she received electroshock “treatments” in an asylum. (Although in Alice’s case, I don’t think her having short hair is punishment, but a facet of the traumatic backstory all female characters in Twilight have to have for some reason. Plus, she started the series with short hair, which distinguishes her from the pack and Lauren, who were tricked or compelled into cutting their long hair during the series.)

But Lauren’s so bitchy, so she deserves it, right? Ha ha, she was mean to Bella and cared about her appearance too much, so now she’s ~ugly!

Leah Has It the Worst and It Makes Me Want To Burn Everything

The misogynistic aspect of hair-cutting as punishment is taken up to like, twelve with Leah. Not only does she suffer for being “against” the Cullens along with the rest of the pack (and Bella, too, so extra sinning), but she suffers uniquely for being the only female shapeshifter. A bunch of teenage boys regularly see her naked body against her will. Her previously devoted boyfriend imprints on her cousin/best friend, Sam dumps her and can’t even explain why, and the whole pack -- including her own brother -- resents her for being upset about it, even though she can’t help the lack of mental privacy. Because of that same lack of mental privacy, she has to hear every gripe the boys have about her, plus every enthralled thought Sam has about Emily while she’s still deeply wounded by their breakup.

She blames herself for her dad’s death, because she phased at the wrong time. We don’t get any indication that her fellow shapeshifters or the elders are trying to reassure her otherwise.

And of course, because she’s a shapeshifter, she has to cut her hair. In addition, because Leah’s a woman, this has the same misogynistic connotations as it did with Lauren. In Leah’s case, though, the de-feminization is compounded by her sudden infertility. It’s clear that Leah attaches her sense of womanhood to her fertility, rightly or wrongly -- she bitterly calls herself a “genetic dead end” in Breaking Dawn and thinks of herself as a freak. She feels like there must be something wrong with her, some un-womanly flaw, that made her one of the shapeshifters at all.

Then, just when Jacob starts to see her as a human being worthy of compassion, he imprints on Renesmee and doesn’t give a shit about anyone or anything else anymore. No more bonding with Leah, no blooming friendship to help her heal and come to terms with the new realities of her life. (This is one of those dropped threads that aggravate me to no end -- what was the point of having Leah opening up to Jacob, or starting Jacob on the path of realizing he was being a dick to her this whole time and that she’s a person with  value, if he was just going to spend the rest of the book as Renesmee’s love-zombie and never think about it again? Disgusting.)

Leah was a lot more forgiving of Jacob than he deserved at that point in the story, for all the good it did her -- I think she’s mentioned maybe once in Book 3 of Breaking Dawn. At least she got her god-tier moment of yelling at a deranged, pregnant Bella Swan.

Speaking of Bella...

I’m just going to note, for no particular reason, that in Breaking Dawn we get to hear explicitly that Bella’s got hair that falls “almost to her waist” and that she looks like “a freaking supermodel” because she’s so “beautiful and pale.” It just strikes me as a telling contrast at this point.

[pilferingapples]

LM 1.1.4

Well this chapter escalated quickly.  Family gossip!  A little snark about grudging charity! Musings on the nature of sin and forgiveness! Abuse of the legal system by the prosecutor to destroy a family! PUBLIC EXECUTION. 

-the bit with the Countess is obviously mostly silly, but--I'm not sure how to say this? -- but ...like,we're told, repeatedly, by the narration and the Bishop , that their family Lost Everything and was in exile and had no one after the Revolution.  But here's this Countess, whose children have such great expectations and such a Promising Future in a very Inherited Position kind of way, not even one generation out from the Revolution.  I don't know if Hugo meant it (for once) , but to me it speaks to just how deeply  entrenched the old power structures were/are.   There was a disruption in the lines of power, but it clearly wasn't a permanent severing...

-I'm curious about the visiting priest and his speech! He may not have moved Geborand (...who I can only assume is a dig at someone Hugo knew , because aren't they always) to especially impressive heights of charity, but it's apparent that his sad little "pennyworth of paradise" is more than Myriel had been able to convince him to give. Is it maybe because Myriel , being Hugo's Ideal Priest , doesn't deal in Threat sermons and that's the only thing that gets Geborand's attention--not hope, or compassion for others,  but a threat to his own wellbeing?

-I love the "fall onto the knees" speech/section for a lot of reasons ( despite the Bahorel who lives in my head rent free definitely adding unintentional lols to that line) .  It introduces so many running through-lines? 

- Gad, the slow horror of the Counterfeiter case.  Sentencing the counterfeiter means leaving the mother and child without support --he was already committing crime to take care of them, so things must be desperate! -- and it means destroying what seems to have been a sincere love on both their sides.  It's very likely the mother and child won't live, or won't both live--and if she can't keep the child alive on her own , it's just as likely this prosecutor or another will be getting to accuse her of infanticide for her failure to survive the justice system.  It's such a direct study in how the systems of power convince people to act against their own interests ??   I'm Upset. 

- The death penalty case!  Beccaria namedrop!  And also first Joseph de Maistre namedrop, and yeah I see how that's already being set up in opposition to ..everything this book is in favor of , really

Abolishing the death penalty is one particular issue Hugo really could claim to have fought for all his life (unlike the republican politics, which, wellllll). He'd had personal acquaintance with it  since he was very young , with his mother's lover/his godfather, General Victor Fanneau de La Horie, being executed for treason in 1812. 

 The most obvious place that he first deals with it seriously is in the Diary of a Condemned Man; as (IIRC) @prudencepaccard once pointed  out, Bishop Myriel here is something like the ideal priest the prisoner of that story hopes for, one who can truly bring comfort and a sense of his God, and offer real sympathy and connection.  There's a lot to say about that--but what's sticking with me this time is the effect that the execution has on Myriel.  Aside from his obvious trauma about it (and this is the first time it's occurring to me he probably had friends and family executed, sight unseen by him, in exactly this way, and that...cannot be making it easier) , there's his speech: 

"I did not think that it was so monstrous. It is wrong to become absorbed in the divine law to such a degree as not to perceive human law. Death belongs to God alone. By what right do men touch that unknown thing?"

--which feels to me like it's hitting a lot of the same thematic notes as Enjolras does in the "Love, Thine is the Future" speech, but almost from the opposite direction? there's so much to say about the two of them in narrative conversation (the two genuine idealistic priests of their respective ideals, who are actually able to change and grow , who in their own way represent the Just) but..agh, this chapter write up is so long already? well, put a pin in it for later, I guess.><  

..And this read through is the firs time I've consciously made the connection-- Works Like Words, Les œuvres semblables aux paroles , that is, they're both based on the Gospels. Small thing , but it's zoomed past me all these years!

A Final Note for this chapter: I remain highly entertained by the concept of the Phantom of Social Justice haunting Myriel like a Woke Opera Ghost.  PRACTICE CHARITY!  PRACTICE CHARITY,  MY PRIEST OF JUSTICE!

[whatsyourcolor]

Psycho-Pass 3 - Episode 8 review [SPOILERS]

After going through all the stages of grief yesterday, here are my thoughts on episode 8 of Psycho-Pass 3 and of this season overall if anyone cares to read. If you have been reading my other reviews, you have an idea of what this will be, so read at your own discretion. This last episode manifests the vision for the whole season and what they tried to accomplish and how they failed in doing so. I tried summarizing the episode, but got bored, considering the first 20 minutes or so are random clips thrown together with no coherent transitions between them, so I’ll just deal with the aspects that interest me. 

1. Kei breaking bad and the ills of tokenism

Mao confesses her “sins” to Kei which include a lukewarm sense of revenge and a lack of reasonable online practice (such as not trusting people online.) Her story is clumsily connected to the incident where a PSB inspector died and the other one was institutionalized. It would’ve been mildly interesting if Mao had been the active agent in informing Asuzawa of the investigation because of rightful anger at a perceived injustice, causing the death of someone in Division 1 (Irie, for example) and then having a redemption arc where she helps bring the sucker down. But no, we get the story of a coward who got involved with bad people, got scared, and hasn’t followed any of their instructions since, hoping that they’ll forget about her. 

So the writers have her telling this story to Kei, just so that they can justify his ambivalence later in the episode. What if, he too, could get what he wanted? So many ways to plant the seeds of this internal conflict that we now have to explain to ourselves because the writers didn’t have the time for it. Instead Kei frowns, grunts and punches so that we, the viewers, can see he’s upset. But where’s the chipping away at an inherent sense of morality and at his psyche to the point where he’s abating a congressman in his escape? What’s the switch?  Some people say it’s Maiko, even though just one episode before Kei was telling her that they should believe in Sibyl and that her hue will recover. So which is it? Does he trust the system or does he not? Why do we have to guess? Where was all this ambivalence throughout the season? The writers could’ve set up his internal conflict so much better, tie it with the corrupt ideals of the terrorists, show him tempted to go down that path. He’s the immigrant, he’s the one who can offer the point of view that’s so muddled and lazily written for the other immigrants.  

Time to start cooking meth, Kei. 

To add insult to injury, Kei becomes a Fox not because of a deliberate, motivated decision, but because, like Mao, he clicked the wrong link and now he owes them a favor. What if they hand’t spent the whole season demeaning the power of Sibyl, putting it in the background as an inconvenience, instead of a real system of control with real consequences (the, ummm, whole premise of Psycho-Pass)? Just how the whole terrorist plot was rationalized as a way to make Sibyl “pay for its crimes against immigrants,” even though we don’t see what actual crimes Sibyl committed, why it committed them, we don’t even know what Sibyl’s stance is in regards discrimination and xenophobia. Crap on a cracker, we don’t even know why Sibyl deemed that allowing immigrants in was a good idea. They could’ve set up Maiko and Kei as protagonists of this season, giving us their point of view as conflicted immigrants who survived war and famine, who have to dye their hair, answer “yes ma’am,” endure xenophobic insults and be powerless in order to keep each other. Have them lose each other, their own values, their own morality as power appears in the form of an invitation to be a fox and get back at the system. Have Maiko be deemed a latent criminal who’s beyond all recovery be the switch, but that would only work if Sibyl is still the big, bad guy and Bifrost appears as the preferable bad guy in the eyes of Kei.  Give us flashbacks of Maiko and Kei’s traumas together, show us why he’d make the decision to flip to have her back with him. A reason doesn't not equal a motivation. The latter suggest a process, an acquiring of a view through experience, a lie that the character believes or a truth that they hold. “Maiko’s been in jail for a day, so I accidentally became a fox” would be laughable (and believable) if one didn’t care an ounce for this show. 

It seems like the writers wanted the world of Psycho-Pass to be relevant to today’s issues and so they used the topic of immigration to signal that. It worked in the PP Movie (warlords, refugees, etc) because they had kept the same philosophical thread about human will, power and systems of authority since Season 1. The complexities of that dialogue are lost in this season. They wanted to make some characters neutral, such as Karina or Venerable Auma, or the sister or O’Bryan, have them pass as misunderstood or misjudged and have the whole conflict of immigration be a problem that could be resolved if all these people just got together and sang Kumbaya. 

2. Arata is Jesus and Asuzawa is a troll

When you need other characters to remind you of the importance of the protagonist or the villain, it’s perhaps because those characters are poorly written and can’t stand out on their own. When Toyohisa Senguji smokes from a pipe made from the bones of Rikako Oryo, you know the man is the most sinister psychopath that was spawned upon the earth. You don’t need anyone to tell you that. 

Arata seems to have a destiny imprinted on him that he is special, or so we’re told. Sybil wants to integrate him, Mika wants him to stay a detective, the Bifrost is interested in him, his father appeared to be an important dude, yet I can’t think of a single thing he’s done that’s special or unique. He could’ve also have much more of an internal conflict, but we only get hints (yes, even in the last episode) that his dad was a complete prick. It’s never clear beyond “curiosity for humans” what his deal with Karina is and why he gives her a pass, to the point of snubbing Kei, even when Karina is a total hypocrite who fired her immigrant secretary. Yes, the one who threw herself in front of her kidnappers to protect her. 

It happened right after she donated her kidney to me, true, but she did always put too much sugar in my coffee. I can’t have someone like that in my team! 

With Asuzawa something similar happens. He’s called “clever” and “cunning” and we’re meant to believe it. He’s supposed to be deft, predicting the next bend of the road, being two steps ahead of everyone, but that takes time to write, so instead let’s make both the MWPSB and MOFA look incompetent and let’s have Asuzawa be called a “mastermind” just because. The whole mission to capture him is ridiculous. Asuzawa meets the congressman, says he’s going for smokes and never comes back. Kei meets him, helps him escape. Kogami and Ginoza let the pathfinders escape again. The only new revelation we have about him is that he’s an ex-enforcer who was tortured by Arata’s dad. According to Asuzawa’s secretary, Shindo senior used to manipulate people with his powers. 

Who you callin’ Spookie Boogie? I’m known in the commufield as Growly Grumpy. Credit to @azweidos​ 

3. Locking horns for incompetence

Finally the MOFA and the MWPSB meet to share intel on the Bifrost and they know as much as we know, but this meeting was needed because otherwise they couldn’t have inserted Kogami and Gino in the whole mission to tackle Asuzawa. Mika and Frederica are still competing to see which one of them is more obnoxious, while Asuzawa leaves through the front door of the building as if he hadn’t caused 95 of the 100 traffic accidents in Tokyo that year. 

Well, so much for carrying a gun! Not an obstacle for this octogenarian. 

4. In defense of criticism

There’s this general feeling nowadays that criticizing something means you’re spreading negativity, like we’re supposed to be part of a like-minded cult or a mental hive like Sibyl that’s perpetually content, even when given a mediocre product. The problem with this season is precisely that: it’s not bad. It’s perfectly mediocre. And it’s not because the old Division 1 isn’t there. It’s not because Akane is in jail (and we still don’t know why). It’s because they couldn’t deal with the elements that they themselves created for this season. The idea of the world of Psycho-Pass spreading is brilliant, the idea of an elite that’s exempt from Sibyl's judgement is brilliant, the idea of an outsider point of view is brilliant, but they overestimated their own abilities and underestimated their viewers. There’s only so much disbelief and rationale we can suspend before we realize they’re playing us like a fiddle. There’s only so much a villain can grin to hint at us that they knew what they were doing all along. 

Some argue that this is because the creators want to make Psycho-Pass into a franchise as if that means everything and anything is justified to the point of bastardizing the ideas of the show and reaching the point of absurdity where it parodies itself (you think I didn’t notice those Madeleines?) Is the hope of the creators to bury Psycho-Pass into the ground while they laugh their way to the bank? Why should I care about their money, or how much money they hope to make? I care about the end product and that’s what I base my judgement on. 

5. The Shinkane reunion 

See, the creators aren't dumb. They knew they had to bait us somehow because this season alone won’t stand. Not only that, but they know us so well they saved their budget to keep the best quality for this scene. I’ll just paste what I said about it yesterday.

I thought it was sweet how Akane backpedals against the door with a tinge of pleasure on her face, like she wants to hear his voice and feel that he’s on the other side. I loved the smiles they gave to each other and how he comforts her. I think it’s evident this is not the first time he visits her. 

It was lovely. It would’ve been lovelier if it had been tied to the overarching plot of this season, but that plot barely held itself together. So let’s bask on those few seconds we got until they bait us again to watch the 2020 movie. 

[oscopelabs]

The Murder Artist: Alfred Hitchcock At The End Of His Rope by Alice Stoehr

“Rope was an interesting technical experiment that I was lucky and happy to be a part of, but I don’t think it was one of Hitchcock’s better films.” So wrote Farley Granger, one of its two stars, in his memoir Include Me Out. The actor was in his early twenties when the Master of Suspense plucked him from Samuel Goldwyn’s roster. He’d star in the first production from the director’s new Transatlantic Pictures as Phillip Morgan, a pianist and co-conspirator in murder. John Dall would play his partner, homicidal mastermind Brandon Shaw. Granger had the stiff pout to Dall’s trembling smirk.

The “interesting technical experiment” was Hitchcock’s decision to shoot the film, adapted from a twenty-year-old English play, as a series of 10-minute shots stitched together into a simulated feature-length take. This allowed him to retain the stage’s spatial and temporal unities while guiding the audience with the camera’s eye. In the process, he’d embed a host of meta-textual and erotic nuances within the sinister mise-en-scène. Screenwriter Arthur Laurents (Granger’s boyfriend, for a time) updated the play’s fictionalized account of Chicagoan thrill killers Leopold and Loeb to a penthouse in late ‘40s Manhattan. There, Phillip strangles the duo’s friend David—his scream behind a curtain opens the film—immediately prior to a dinner party where they’ll serve pâté atop the box that serves as his coffin. It’s a morbid premise for a comedy of manners, and Brandon taunts his guests throughout the evening. (Asked if it’s someone’s birthday, he coyly replies, “It’s, uh, really almost the opposite.”)

Granger deemed the film lesser Hitchcock due to two limitations. One was the sheer repetition and exact blocking demanded by its formal conceit, the other the Production Code’s blanket ban on “sex perversion,” which meant tiptoeing around the fact that Brandon and Phillip—like their real-life inspirations and, to some degree, Rope’s leading men—were gay. That stringent homophobia forced Hitchcock and Laurents to convey their sexuality through ambiguity and implication; the director would use similar tactics to adapt queer writers like Daphne du Maurier and Patricia Highsmith. (“Hitchcock confessed that he actually enjoyed his negotiations with [Code honcho Joseph] Breen,” notes Thomas Doherty in the book Hollywood’s Censor. “The spirited give-and-take, said Hitchcock, possessed all the thrill of competitive horse trading.”) The nature of the characters’ relationship is hardly subtext: Rope starts with their orgasmic shudder over David’s death, then labored panting after which Brandon pulls out a cigarette and lets in some light. A few minutes later, Brandon strokes the neck of a champagne bottle; Phillip asks how he felt during the act, and he gasps “tremendously exhilarated.”

Like Brandon’s hints about the murder, the homosexuality on display is surprisingly explicit if an audience can decode it. The whole film pivots around their partnership, both criminal and domestic. In an impish bit of conflation, their scheme even stands in for “the love that dare not speak its name,” with David’s body acting as a fetish object in a sexual game no one else can perceive. The guests, as Brandon puts it, are “a dull crew,” “those idiots” who include David’s father and aunt, played by London theater veterans Cedric Hardwicke and Constance Collier. Joan Chandler and Douglas Dick, both a couple years into what would be modest careers, play David’s fiancée Janet and her ex Kenneth. Character actress Edith Evanson appears as housekeeper Mrs. Wilson, a prototype for Thelma Ritter’s Stella in Rear Window, and a top-billed James Stewart is Rupert Cadell, who once mentored the murderers in arcane philosophy.

This was the first of Stewart’s four collaborations with Hitchcock. It cast the actor against type not as a romantic hero but as an observer and provocateur, his gaze shrewd, his dialogue heavy with irony. The role presaged his work in the ‘50s, with Mann rather than Capra, emphasizing psychology over ideology. Rupert, like L.B. Jeffries or Scottie Ferguson, is rooting out a crime, and in so doing comes to seem more loathsome than the villains themselves. “Murder is—or should be—an art,” he lectures midway through Rope, eyebrow arched, martini glass in hand. “Not one of the seven lively perhaps, but an art nevertheless.” Half an hour in real time later, having seen David’s body, he flies into a moralizing monologue: “You’ve given my words a meaning that I never dreamed of!” It takes up the last several minutes of the film, with Rupert snarling from deep in his righteous indignation, “Did you think you were God, Brandon?”

Stewart was a master of sputtering, impassioned oratory, and his facility for it renders Rupert’s hypocrisy especially stark. He taught these murderers; he can’t just shrug off his culpability. The Code decreed that “the sympathy of the audience shall never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, or sin.” Every transgression reaps a punishment. The ending of Rope abides by the letter of this law, as Rupert fires several shots into the night, drawing a police siren toward the building. He sits, deflated, while Phillip plays piano and Brandon has one last drink. But none of David’s loved ones get to excoriate his killers. The one man here with no integrity, no moral authority, is the one who gets the final, self-flagellating word.

The Code forbade throwing sympathy to the side of sin, but if Hitchcock meant any character in Rope as his stand-in, it was Brandon, not Rupert. The top to Phillip’s bottom, he’s the director of the play within a film. He’s storyboarded it to perfection. Janet, realizing he’s toying with her, cries that he’s incapable of just throwing a party. “No, you’d have to add something that appealed to your warped sense of humor!” Hitchcock, who’d built a corpus of corpses, must have gotten a chuckle from that line. Whereas Phillip fears discovery, Brandon puts symbolism above pragmatism, prioritizing what Phillip dubs his “neat little touches.” He needs to have dinner on the chest, the murder weapon tied around antique books, and his surrogate father Rupert in attendance, much as the film’s director needed to shoot in long takes—not because it’s pragmatic, but because it’s beautiful. He went to great lengths for verisimilar beauty here, as Steven Jacobs details in The Wrong House: The Architecture of Alfred Hitchcock. Miniatures in the three-dimensional cyclorama seen through the broad penthouse window were wired and connected to a ‘light organ’ that allowed for the gradual activation of the skyline’s thousands of lights and hundreds of neon signs. Meanwhile, spun-glass clouds were shifted by technicians from right to left during moments when the camera turned away from the window.

Jacobs notes as well that a painting by Fidelio Ponce de León hanging on Brandon and Phillip’s wall actually belonged to the director and had previously hung in his own home. Rope is avant-garde art wrapped in a bourgeois thriller, about avant-garde art wrapped in a dinner party, pushing moral and aesthetic boundaries while collapsing any distinction between the two. In this nested construction, Brandon the murder artist becomes a figure of auto-critique or perhaps apologia. Did you think you were God, Alfred? By 1948, he’d already made dozens of films, often obliquely about sex and violence, across decades and continents. He’d become the world champion sick joke raconteur. Rope is a reckoning with the ethics of his genre.

By 1948, the world had changed. A few years earlier, Hitchcock’s friend (and Rope co-producer) Sidney Bernstein had asked him to advise on a film about Germany’s newly liberated concentration camps. As Kay Gladstone writes in Holocaust and the Moving Image, Hitchcock worried that “tricky editing” would let skeptics read its footage as fraudulent and asked the editors “to use as far as possible long shots and panning shots with no cuts.” The director took his own counsel to heart.

Rope was also his first color film, the start of his fascination with dull palettes. (A quarter-century later he’d limn Frenzy’s London with every shade of beige.) Genteel browns and grays dominate the penthouse, the hues of men’s suits. Only after nightfall does the apartment glow with, in Jacobs’ phrasing, “the expressive possibilities of urban neon light.” The dinner party takes place at the crest of postwar modernity, a world away from the camps. Here, among the East Coast intelligentsia, murder’s merely a thought experiment. When David’s father mentions Hitler, Brandon dismisses him as “a paranoiac savage.” Yet even in polite society, the evening can begin with a secret killing and end with that iniquity brought to light. “Perhaps what is called civilization is hypocrisy,” says Brandon. “Perhaps,” David’s father concedes.

In 1948, the world was changing. That year saw the publication of Gore Vidal’s landmark gay novel The City and the Pillar and the first of the Kinsey Reports. Antonioni was a documentarian about to make his first feature; Truffaut was a delinquent catching Hitchcock movies at the Cinémathèque. Rope’s amorality and pitch-black humor augur a world and a cinema that were yet to come. It’s thorny gay art through a straight auteur. The film’s last thirty seconds show Rupert’s back to the camera while Brandon sips his cocktail and Phillip plays a tune, the trio lit by flashing neon. In this denouement lie decadence and damnation, art and death, the Code-closeted past and a disaffected future.

[thisiswhatwereupagainst]

Silhouette Chord of the New Warriors is a Marvel character that I’ve had an interest in for some time, and I finally got around to reading her stuff. And....well, I have an issue with it. I don’t mean to be persnickety and always find problems with how Marvel handled this or that, I don’t want to be THAT kind of fan (fandom complaining about everything exhausts me tbh), but like...I can’t help NOTICING, you know? The problem with how Silhouette is written isn’t really anything that’s done WITH her, it’s more what’s NOT done with her.

Silhouette is nearly always a background character. She never gets an arc or a story focused just on her. She’s usually just Dwayne Taylor/Night Thrasher’s girlfriend. She’s why Dwayne has her evil twin brother Aaron Chord/Midnight’s Fire as his nemesis, because said brother blames Dwayne for her paralysis, yet Aaron never has any interest in interacting with Silhouette herself, only Dwayne, despite this supposedly all being over her. It’s pretty obvious that she’s just a prop by the writers to facilitate their feud, but has no actual importance in her own right. She might as well be an object or pet that the other broke or stole. And like...this is a comic book, when someone has an evil twin brother, traditionally the brother is THEIR nemesis? Normally I like avoiding cliches, but making her brother only care about Dwayne doesn’t seem like a subversion in this case so much as just sexism by shoving him in what I’m pretty sure would be Sil’s role if she were male. Hell, Aaron even calls Dwayne his “mirror brother”, something you would call, you know, your TWIN! Like they’re playing it as if DWAYNE is Aaron’s twin and Sil is just...some girl. And this continues when Sil breaks up with Dwayne and hooks up instead with Donyell, aka Bandit, his half-brother. She continues to just be nothing more than the lead guy’s girlfriend, with nothing in her life besides that, and when Donyell takes on the role of Night Thrasher and gains Midnight’s Fire as a foe, he and Aaron end up as enemies and Silhouette just...doesn’t matter. Even though this is HER brother and he has NO past with Donyell like he did with Dwayne. And when Sil finds her dad, he has more of a relationship with, you guessed it, Dwayne! And when it gets found out that her evil brother has a daughter, and that daughter has to be rescued from him? Well, Dwayne isn’t in that issue...and neither is Silhouette! Nova and Iron Man save her instead! Sil might not know she exists! The biggest slap is the Folding Circle story, though. See, Silhouette and her brother were born with their powers, they don’t know why, they probably assumed they were mutants. In actuality, their father and several other men stumbled upon a secret temple of Cambodia while serving in the Vietnam War. The woman leading the temple, Tai, explained that this temple was built upon a well of mystical energy, and the people here had practiced years of selective breeding to produce children that could harness its magical energies. The last step would be to wed women of this temple with men from the West, and for those children to be raised in the West, so they would be children of both East and West, and thus conquer the world. All but one of them, Dwayne Taylor’s father, agreed to do so and married one of these women. Sil’s father, Andrew Chord, brought his Cambodian bride, Miyami, back to the states. Miyami was in fact Tai’s own daughter, and she knew her mother wanted to use the children of the pact in her own evil schemes. So she faked her death and that of the children, then abandoned the twins in Chinatown where they would grow up with no connection to her that Tai could use to find them. Their father believed them all dead all this time. Except of course Tai eventually realizes they’re alive, she tracks down all the now-adult children of the Pact and tries to fulfill it anyway for her own ends, and meanwhile said adult children have gathered into a group of their own, the Folding Circle, who want this power for themselves instead, and act as both foes to the New Warriors as well as allies to them against Tai. So...this is Silhouette’s origin, this is her lost past she never knew and why she has her powers, it involves her discovering who her father is and what happened to her mother,  this features one of her family as the main villain and another as an enemy-turned-ally for this, and yet...it’s really about Night Thrasher again. And like, there is reason for that--his father is the one who broke the pact and refused to take a Cambodian bride because he was already married, and Dwayne thus should have been a child of the pact like Silhouette and her brother, but was not, which was why Tai forced Sil’s dad to kill Dwayne’s dad and mom, and then went on to become a mentor to Dwayne, the child whose parents he murdered. So this is important for him and his story too. But like...it should also have just as much, if not more, focus on Sil. It’s HER past too, it’s all orchestrated by HER evil grandmother, it involves the sins of HER father, it brings in HER villainous brother, it explains why she has HER powers, why SHE has no parents, and SHE is a child of the pact, unlike Dwayne. But she’s treated as a mere extra in this story almost to the degree that the other New Warriors are. She’s not even inducted into the Folding Circle like the other pact children, her brother is, while Tai just kills her (she survives) because I guess having her brother means she can lose the spare? She gets some focus in that we find out about her mom and what happened to her and of course with Chord being her dad all along, but like...she’s not the focus or the star, Dwayne is by far. Tai and Midnight’s Fire and Left Hand (leader of the Folding Circle) are all focused on Dwayne. Sil is just, yet again, Dwayne’s girlfriend, no matter how much claim she has to greater plot relevance, and she gets very little development in this despite the revelations about her family. So like...she’s been around since 1991, she was a member of this team like anyone else, but she just never seems to get any real development. Maybe I’m not reading closely enough or just don’t understand/perceive it, that’s totally possible, but it seems like she’s a background character whose roles mainly come from which guy she’s with. And like...I feel like so much more could be done with her, given her fascinating family background, discovering her heritage, being brought up on the streets from a young age, her relationship with her brother and her recently discovered niece Julia, not to mention her status as a mixed-race WOC who is very visibly physically disabled as well as perceived as a mutant in most instances. Silhouette has a lot going on, someone just needs to use it, and it’s kinda bogus to me that she’s been neglected this way since she’s NOT actually a background character, she’s a full cast member who is just treated like a background character. It’s...weird and unfortunate, especially considering that she is the only WOC on the team and the only disabled member as well. I’m not prepared to say that’s WHY she’s neglected, just it makes it extra unfortunate and frustrating, especially since she’s SO COOL! I mean come on, SHE FIGHTS CRIME ON CRUTCHES! And when she gets a personality, I really love it, like she seems very hopepunk to me? There’s this one issue of Spider-Man where she says “ I know I can't stop all evil, but I can stop some. You only do what you can---but you HAVE to do that." and told a bad guy "It doesn't take strength to hurt people like you. It takes strength NOT to." which I just LOVE so much. And she’s really developed to personal growth, like she broke up with Dwayne because he was obsessed with grimdark vengeance and being Night Thrasher to the point she felt neither of them was growing...and she also once manipulated and lied to him pretty shittily to facilitate said personal growth. So she’s GOT a personality, and it’s interesting, when it’s paid attention to. Also, for what it’s worth, her disability is never handled badly from what I can tell (note, I am able-bodied so I may not be a good judge of this)---she’s never treated as pitiful OR as inspiring, there’s no “oh poor crippled thing” or “omg she’s so positive she overcomes her disability!”, nor is it forgotten about or ignored, she just uses crutches and that’s that. It’s never EXPLORED deeply in any way, but it’s not mishandled either that I can tell (again, from my privileged POV) And I think some writers are starting to remember she exists and see her potential; towards the end of the “Ironheart” series in 2019, she teams up with Shuri, Riri, and Okoye against her brother, who wants to recruit Riri and make her his heir! It’s awesome!

[kitsune-translates]

SCI 谜案集 [English Translation] Case 1: Number Killer

Previous

Number Killer 26 Command

The moment Zhan Zhao’s words left his mouth, Bai Yutang feels his hairs standing up, “Cat… you mean, those researchers are going to commit murder or suicide? When? How…”

“Calm down, I will explain it in a short while.” Zhan Zhao says in a hurry, “The important thing now is to gather everyone here, this place need to to be locked-down.”

“Okay…” Bai Yutang rushes out, but stops in his track, “What about you, you alright?”

Zhan Zhao smiles, “I’m fine. I’m just a little tired from concentrating on those things for too long.”

“Hm! I can’t just leave you here like this.” Bai Yutang says, picking Zhan Zhao up in a bridal carry and dashes out.

“Ah!” Zhan Zhao doesn’t even know where to place his hands, “White mouse, what are you doing! Put me down!”

When Bai Yutang rushes out with Zhan Zhao in his arms, everyone seated in the hall are alarmed. They have been through a lot this couple of days, having just seen Gongsun being carried out from the incineration room, and now Zhan Zhao. They come up to Bai Yutang anxiously.

Zhan Zhao has gone completely red in the face, he would really like to find a hole in the ground to hide in. But in this situation, the more he struggles, the weirder it would seem to be, so he could only pretend to be an ostrich against Bai Yutang.

Bao Zheng has gotten a fright as well. Bai Yutang puts Zhan Zhao down and reports Zhan Zhao’s findings to Bao Zheng.

Everyone on scene are dumbfounded. Bao Zheng immediately calls the head of the research centre in to question him on the number of staffs in the centre, and about those who were in charge of Zhao Jue’s imprisonment and had close contact with Zhao Jue. Arrangements were made quickly to calm the involved parties and locking down the research center temporarily.

After the entire messy episode, everyone in S.C.I. can finally take a breather.

“Cat, explain to me, what exactly is this suggestion thing?” Bai Yutang lets out a long sigh and settles himself into one of the conference rooms in the research center. Bao Zheng, Wang Chao, Ma Han and the rest of the team fills the remaining seats and waits for Zhan Zhao’s explanations.

Zhan Zhao looks much better after resting, he is quiet for a while as if trying to think of how to organise his words, “Hmm…”

“If we were to talk about crimes committed using psychological suggestions, the most famous one is no doubt the millennium concert stampede that occurred in Ohio, 1999.”

Bai Yutang nods, “I have heard of this case, hundreds died in that incident, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Zhan Zhao says, “While on a brief glance, it seems like an unfortunate accident that happened due to the fervent fans, but in fact, it is because the singer, Venelson had put a psychological suggestion on everyone.”

“How?” Ma Han and the rest look amazed.

Zhan Zhao explains patiently, “The steps to psychological suggestion can be demonstrated with a simple example. If you want to teach a dog to sit, first, you will speak the word ‘Sit’ to it, to get it used to this command. Then, when it sits down, you give it food as reward. Repeating this procedure for many times, and the dog will subconsciously link ‘the command to sit – the action of sitting – food’ these three things together. Which means that though the dog doesn’t understand the word ‘Sit’, it would still instinctively sit down when it hears the command, because he associate it with the reward of food.”

Everyone nods in understanding.

Zhan Zhao then pulls out a piece of paper, and jots down a few numbers in series and says, “In summary, psychological suggestion has four stages: Issuing the command; Completion of the command; Giving out reward; Familiarisation of the command.”

Bao Zheng rubs his chin, “Be more specific, how did the singer complete the suggestion process?”

“First, Venelson issued each audience with a ticket shaped like a foot. This insinuates the impression of ‘Foot’ into everyone’s mind. What separates people from dogs is that people can think associatively from shapes. So what action comes to your mind when speaking of foot?”

The listening crowd exchanges a look with each other, and says in unison, “Step!”

Zhan Zhao nods, “Indeed, which means, the first stage had already been complete. The audience had received the command, in the shape of a foot, and connected it to the action – step!”

“Then, Venelson started his concert. Because his band was a heavy metal hard rock band, so their music tends to be very influencing on the audience. Throughout the entire duration of the concert, Nelson keep making the ‘Steping’ action and repeatedly ask the excited crowd to follow his action. He even pushed his bassist onto the ground and stepped on him. In this way, he had completed his second stage, the completion of the command ‘Step’.”

Everyone listens attentively with a horrified expression.

“The third step, is to give reward. The reward here, is not in terms of material, but something more spiritual.”

“Spiritual?” Bai Yutang frowns.

“If you like somebody, what would you like to see him do at you?” Zhan Zhao asks Bai Yutang.

“…” Bai Yutang is speechless, his face burning a little, and thinks to himself ‘You are one ruthless stupid cat. The person I like is you, and what I want the most is you throwing yourself at me…’ But this really isn’t something that can be spoken aloud.

“Erm…Smile at me?” Wang Chao answers instead.

Zhan Zhao nods, “Indeed, or more accurately, for him to notice you, and show affection towards you, isn’t that right?”

“Yes!” The listeners nod in unison.

“Those who went to the concert are mostly Venelson’s fans. They already like him a lot, and Venelson took that to his advantage by using his smile as a reward.” Zhan Zhao continues.

“Smile?” The listening crowd looks confused.

Zhan Zhao suddenly smiles at Ma Han, Wang Chao and the neighbouring officers sweetly.

…!!...

They inhale sharply and eyes widens stupidly, but internally they are screaming, “Sinful! This is too sinful… He is too cute…”

Zhan Zhao asks immediately, “Who do you think I was smiling at just now?”

They look at each other, faces turning red in silence, thinking that they were too mesmerised by Zhan Zhao’s smile that they didn’t notice who Zhan Zhao was smiling at.

Zhan Zhao doesn’t seem to detect the strangeness in the air and continues, “I was just smiling at that general area, rather than a specific person. But, to those watching, it would feel like I am only smiling at you, isn’t that right?”

Everyone nods stupidly. In fact, no matter what Zhan Zhao says now, these people would just nod obediently. They have been charmed silly.

Bao Zheng holds back his laughter at the back, while Bai Yutang is grinding his teeth. This ignorant cat, has no idea of the effect he has on others. He glares at his subordinates and thinks to himself, “You morons, dare to look at Cat like this? When we get back, get ready for punishments!!”

Everyone is still too dazzled by Zhan Zhao’s smile to notice that Bai Yutang’s annoyed expression.

Zhan Zhao continues his explanation, “Venelson’s concert had huge LED screens, and he would smile frequently at the location where the stomping noise is the loudest. This results his fans to stomp more and more.”

Bao Zheng lights up a cigarette, “Which means, he got those people used to the command, and the suggestion is complete!”

“Yes!” Zhan Zhao nods, “The last stage to his plan was at the end of his concert. The area was already excessively crowded. The screens suddenly showed the foot icon from the concert ticket, and the music was also played at the same time. Some people started to stomp aggressively reflexively --- this is how the tragic accident came about.”

Everyone lets out a long breath, but the appal on their face still haven’t worn off.

“Then, Zhao Jue…” Bai Yutang seems to recover first.

Zhan Zhao turns his gaze down, and draws a huge bug on his paper. It looks like a beetle. He shows it to the rest, “What is this?”

Everyone examines it carefully. Each person had a different idea, some says it’s a beetle or a cockroach, while Bai Yutang claims outrageously that it looks like a mouse riding on a cat…

Zhan Zhao rolls his eyes at him, “This is the famous ‘Rorschach Test’. In general, because each person has a different way of looking at things, the same shape would look like different things to different person But, what the shape looks like to one person, is determined by their brain, rather than their subconsciousness.”

“What? Subconscious cognition…”

Zhan Zhao draws three circles on the beetle with a red pen. Taking a closer look, it is three English alphabets “D-A-D”

“Dad?” Everyone looks confused. “Father?”

“Exactly!” Zhan Zhao taps the table steadily with the pen in his hand, “When you are looking at this drawing, your subconsciousness has already accepted the message ‘Dad’. At the same time, you hear me tapping on the table. So when I hide this drawing away,” Zhan Zhao puts the piece of paper away, and taps the table again, “Do you see that image in your brain when you hear the tapping sound again?”

Everyone considers, and nods.

Zhan Zhao puts down his pen, “This means that, upon hearing the tapping, your subconsciousness has already associated it with the concept of “Dad”. Only that, I did not give you any specific action to complete, so… you guys only perceived it, but didn’t have anything to act on.”

Bao Zheng finishes his cigarette, and contemplates in silence for a while, “So what’s in Zhao Jue’s drawings?”

Zhan Zhao sighs and pulls out a sketch, “This is the drawing that was taken from Zhao Jue’s room just now.” He makes several circles on the sketch and shows it to the watching crowd. Four alphabets stand out, “K-I-L-L.”

“Kill…” Bai Yutang inhales, “Oh my God…”

Zhan Zhao frowns, “I checked all of the sketches. It’s on every single one of them, it goes way back, in years.”

“That guy is a real nutcase!” Ma Han says in disbelief, “He can still hurt people when he is already in that state?!”

“So… how can we help the research staff with treatment?” Bao Zheng rubs his forehead.

Zhan Zhao shakes his head in distress, “It will be very difficult. It is important to know what command Zhao Jue used! He wanted people to kill, but he didn’t give specific instruction on whether to kill other or kill yourself. And Zhao Jue is an expert in psychological suggestion, his work won’t be as simplistic as ordering a puppy to sit down.”

“How so?” Bai Yutang questions, puzzled.

“The timeline for his suggestion to take effect is too long,” Zhan Zhao considers, “Long enough, for those people to seek out the reward by themselves.”

“Seek out reward by themselves.” Everyone opens their mouth in bewilderment.

“Cat, this is so confusing~” Bai Yutang rubs his brows.

Zhan Zhao looks slightly upset and thinks to himself, “This is a very complicated matter~”

Bai Yutang changes his tone immediately and coaxes, “Continue, continue, it’s our fault. We are too dense to understand.” --- He is so cute!

Zhan Zhao continues, “To put it simply, everyone has something they want, right?”

Everyone nods.

“What a person thinks about most every day, is what the person wants the most. This means that the suggestion would seep deep into the way those people think, and become a part of the subconsciousness… Which means, in order to get what he wants the most, he will make use of this specific method to get it.” Zhan Zhao finishes his explanation, and takes a sip of his tea and blinks at those around him --- Did everyone understand??

Everyone nods obediently.

Bai Yutang stands up, “I get it, it means that once the person identifies something he wants, and when he or she received the command, then that person will kill to get what he or she wants.”

“Exactly!” Zhan Zhao gives Bai Yutang a praising look as if he is one of his exceptional brilliant students. Bai Yutang swears in his mind, ‘What breed is this cat? He is too cute~’

Bao Zheng taps his chin, “Which means, in order to treat everyone, we have to know what command Zhao Jue used first, is that right?”

“Yep!”

“But he can’t speak!” Ma Han looks confused, “How did he manage to give command without speaking?”

Zhan Zhao considers, “I have searched everything just now, there wasn’t much to go on, but…”

“But what?” Bai Yutang sees Zhan Zhao’s hesitation and asks.

“I think…” Zhan Zhao looks up at Bai Yutang, “Your brother might know…”

“What?” Bai Yutang says in surprise, “You mean that accident back then…”

Zhan Zhao nods, “Command, or rather… the intent… The only lead we have right now, is likely to be inside your brother’s memory.”

Translator’s Footnote:

The Ohio accident isn’t a real case.

[And yes season 2 is confirmed. I’m not crying there’s just something in my eyes]

Next

[sanoiro]

Hi. I'm wondering if you happen to have a link to the most accurate list of the Top 10 Lucifer episodes that's based on ratings

A link no but let’s make a list according to IMDB, shall we? :) 

The Answer is:

1)     9.8____3x24 - A Devil of My Word 

2)     9.6____3x23 - Quintessential Deckerstar 

3)     9.5____2x13 - A Good Day to Die

4)     9.4____3x07 - Off The Record 

5.1)  9.3____1x13 - Take Me Back to Hell 

5.2)  9.3____2x06 - Monster 

5.3)  9.3_*__2x10 - Quid Pro Ho 

6.1)  9.2_*__1x09 - A Priest Walks Into a Bar 

6.2)  9.2____1x12 - #TeamLucifer 

6.3)  9.2____2x12 - Love Handles 

(If we take them by first airing date the above are the Top 10 if we consider the rating a tie then…IF you want to know according to the people who actually voted then check the bold asterisk  _*_ between the rating and the episode number)

6.4)  9.2____2x18 - The Good, the Bad, and the Crispy 

6.5)  9.2____3x10 -The Sin Bin 

6.6 ) 9.2____3x20 - The Angel of San Bernardino 

7)     9.1____3x13 -  Til Death Do Us Part 

8.1)  9.0_*__1x06 - Favorite Son  

8.2)  9.0____2x05 - Weaponizer

8.3)  9.0____2x07 - My Little Monkey

8.4)  9.0____2x09 - Homewrecke

8.5)  9.0____2x16 - God Johnson

8.6)  9.0____3x06 -Vegas With Some Radish 

9.1)  8.9_*__1x11 - St. Lucifer 

9.2)  8.9____2x08 - Trip to Stabby Town 

9.3)  8.9____2x11 - Stewardess Interruptus 

9.4)  8.9____3x09 - The Sinnerman 

10.1) 8.8_*__1x07 - Wingman 

10.2) 8.8____2x04 - Lady Parts 

10.3) 8.8____3x01 - They’re Back, Aren’t They? 

10.4) 8.8____3x03 - Mr. and Mrs. Mazikeen Smith 

10.5) 8.8____3x19 - Orange Is the New Maze 

Season 1

1x01- Pilot 8.9

Lucifer has left Hell to take up a life on Earth. When a friend of his is murdered Lucifer joins forces with the good side of the law to discover who the perpetrators are and to give them what they rightfully deserve.

1x02 - Lucifer, Stay. Good Devil. 8.4 

When a movie star’s son is killed after being chased by the paparazzi, Chloe takes a deep look into the case with a little help from Lucifer. Meanwhile, Maze and Amenadiel continue to encourage Lucifer to go back to hell.

1x03 - The Would-Be Prince of Darkness 8.4 

An up-and-coming quarterback calls Lucifer after finding a corpse in his pool; Lucifer asks Chloe to help investigate, which leads them into the world of big-money sports.

1x04 - Manly Whatnots 8.7

In an effort to get over his infatuation with Chloe, Lucifer decides that he must seduce her. Meanwhile, the two team up on a missing girl case and Amenadiel confronts Maze about his concerns about Lucifer.

1x05 - Sweet Kicks 8.3 

When Lucifer is attending a fashion show, a girl gets murdered. He then volunteers to help Detective Decker solve the homicide. Mazikeen goes behind Lucifer’s back.

1x06 - Favorite Son 9.0 

A robbery gone bad leads to Lucifer and Chloe working together. Dan has an unusual encounter with Mazikeen. Chloe suspects Lucifer might be a criminal. Linda chooses to play Lucifer’s game.

1x07 - Wingman 8.8 

Lucifer gets help from an unlikely source while trying to find the contents of his stolen container; Chloe uncovers a vital clue.

1x08 - Et Tu, Doctor? 8.5 

The murder of a therapist prompts Lucifer to enlist the help of Dr. Linda to search for a suspect.

1x09 - A Priest Walks Into a Bar 9.2 

A priest seeks out Lucifer’s help when he suspects an underground drug operation has set up shop at a neighborhood youth center. Meanwhile, Malcolm manipulates a way to keep an eye on Dan.

1x10 - Pops 8.6 

Lucifer and Chloe suspect a restaurateur’s son played a part in his death; the return of Chloe’s mother sends her life into upheaval.

1x11 - St. Lucifer 8.9 

When philanthropist Tim Dunlear is found dead, Lucifer explores his good side by becoming a benefactor for Tim’s glitzy Los Angeles charity.

1x12 - #TeamLucifer 9.2 

The team investigates the death of a woman whose body with “Hail Lucifer” message was found lying in a pentagram.

1x13 - Take Me Back to Hell 9.3 

When Lucifer is framed for murder, he and Chloe must work together to clear his name and prove the identity of the true killer.

Season 2

2x01 - Everything’s Coming Up Lucifer 8.7

Lucifer and Chloe look into the murder of a stand-in actress; Chloe’s faith in Lucifer is tested.

2x02 - Liar, Liar, Slutty Dress on Fire 8.7 

Lucifer suspects his mother may be involved in a ghastly murder for which she claims she’s innocent.

2x03 - Sin-Eater 8.4 

Lucifer and Chloe investigate a gruesome murder after a video of the crime surfaces on social media. When a second video appears, they realize they have a serial killer on their hands.

2x04 - Lady Parts 8.8 

After the bodies of two young L.A. transplants are found poisoned, Chloe and Lucifer hunt for the killer. Upon Maze convincing Chloe to go out for drinks, which the detective perceives as an act of friendship, but is actually part of a bet between Maze and Lucifer, the two make a shocking decision.

2x05 - Weaponizer 9.0 

Lucifer’s brother Uriel shows up as he investigates the murder of his favorite action hero.

2x06 - Monster 9.3 

Guilty and self-destructive, Lucifer clashes with Chloe during an investigation, leading her to team up with Dan instead. Meanwhile, Amenadiel bonds with Charlotte, and Maze takes Trixie trick-or-treating.

2x07 - My Little Monkey 9.0 

After the man convicted of killing Chloe’s father is murdered, new clues suggests he was framed; Maze looks for a job; Lucifer tries to learn how to be normal by watching Dan.

2x08 - Trip to Stabby Town 8.9

0Lucifer seeks Azrael’s blade when he discovers it’s been used in a string of violent stabbings linked to a local yoga studio.

2x09 - Homewrecker 9.0

Lucifer goes to great lengths to protect his home when the owner is murdered and the new owner wants it demolished.

2x10 - Quid Pro Ho 9.3 

Charlotte is determined to get Lucifer to leave Earth by turning Chloe against him. Meanwhile, Amenadiel has begun working as Charlotte’s soldier, which makes Maze question his loyalty.

2x11 - Stewardess Interruptus 8.9 

The tension between Lucifer and Chloe makes it difficult for them to investigate the murder of two victims who happen to be Lucifer’s old flames.

2x12 - Love Handles 9.2 

Lucifer and Chloe investigate a mysterious masked killer who is poisoning college students. They also try to make sense of their new relationship, after a long-awaited kiss. Meanwhile, Charlotte visits Linda for advice on a touchy subject.

2x13 - A Good Day to Die 9.5 

Lucifer returns to hell to find an antidote for Chloe and his mother goes to hell to bring him back.

2x14 - Candy Morningstar 8.6 

Lucifer has gone off the grid and cut off all contact from his family and the police department, following Chloe’s near-death. But the murder of an up-and-coming guitarist causes him to resurface - with a new mystery woman. Meanwhile, Lucifer’s mom realizes she may have found a way to finally get them back to Heaven.

2x15 - Deceptive Little Parasite 8.5 

Lucifer attempts to control his emotions when he learns the flaming sword is the only way the family can return home. In the meantime, a therapist and head of admissions at a prestigious private school is found dead.

2x16 - God Johnson 9.0 

When a grisly murder takes place at an insane asylum, the prime suspect calls himself God. Lucifer, unsure this may be his father, tries to find the real killer.

2x17 - Sympathy for the Goddess 8.6 

Charlotte helps Lucifer and Chloe find out who killed the man who had the last piece of the Flaming Sword.

2x18 - The Good, the Bad, and the Crispy 9.2 

Charlotte accidentally burns a man to death, leaving Lucifer to keep Chloe from figuring what really happened, so he puts Maze in charge of locating Charlotte and Amenadiel, who have both gone missing. Meanwhile, Lucifer seeks a permanent solution for the ticking-time-bomb that is his mother.

Season 3

3x01 - They’re Back, Aren’t They? 8.8 

Lucifer enlists Chloe to figure out how he wound up in the desert with his wings back.

3x02 - The One with the Baby Carrot 8.5 

Lucifer takes a sudden interest in a case while continuing to track down the Sinnerman.

3x03 - Mr. and Mrs. Mazikeen Smith 8.8

Maze heads to Canada to get more out of life, but Chloe suspects she’s being deceived by a conman.

3x04 - What Would Lucifer Do? 8.4

Lucifer and Chloe investigate the murder of a youth counselor.

3x05 - Welcome Back, Charlotte Richards 8.6 

When a food chemist is found dead, Lucifer and Chloe’s investigation pits them against an unexpected face - criminal defense attorney Charlotte Richards. Everyone is caught off guard when they see her back in the precinct. As Lucifer tries to understand her return, he makes a shocking discovery that helps solve the case.

3x06 -Vegas With Some Radish 9.0 

When Lucifer discovers Candy has gone missing, he hightails it to Las Vegas with Ella in tow. They work to find her, but interesting secrets could compromise the investigation. Meanwhile, Chloe is upset that Lucifer left on her birthday.

3x07 - Off The Record 9.4 

A reporter seeks revenge after he discovers that Lucifer has been sleeping with his estranged wife. However, when it’s revealed who the estranged wife is, things get messy. Lucifer’s reputation and safety are on the line, especially when a serial killer from the past resurfaces.

3x08 -Chloe Does Lucifer 8.5

When a murder is connected to a celebrity dating app, Lucifer and Chloe question all they know about the world of social media in order to solve the case. Meanwhile, Amenadiel helps Linda deal with the death of her ex-husband.

3x09 - The Sinnerman 8.9

Lucifer and Chloe come face-to-face with the Sinnerman.

3x10 -The Sin Bin 9.2 

With the Sinnerman in custody, Lucifer is determined to get his devil face back, but his conscience is in question when another victim’s life is on the line.

3x11 - City of Angels? 8.7 

A flashback episode about Lucifer’s first days on Earth.

3x12 - All About Her 8.7 

Lucifer tries to earn Chloe’s assistance in his investigation of Pierce. Meanwhile, Amenadiel deals with a personal health issue.

3x13 -  Til Death Do Us Part 9.1

When there’s a murder in a suburban neighborhood Lucifer and Pierce have to go undercover to find the killer.

3x14 - My Brother’s Keeper 8.5 

While investigating a death of a diamond thief, Chloe and Lucifer hone in an unexpected suspect. Meanwhile, Charlotte upsets Linda with a request.

3x15 - High School Poppycock 8.5 

Lucifer fights a mental block, Chloe has silly fun while solving a murder, and Maze helps her friends get some resolve.

3x16 - Infernal Guinea Pig 8.7 

A murder investigation reveals the dark side of Hollywood. Chloe puts her life on the line.

3x17 - Let Pinhead Sing! 8.7 

When a superstar singer’s life is threatened, the team is thrust into the world of big-ticket stadium shows, crazed fans and divas, giving Lucifer a run for his money. Meanwhile, Charlotte tries to help Linda and Maze repair their friendship.

3x18 - The Last Heartbreak 8.6 (1,875) 

Chloe and Lucifer track down a serial killer targeting couples in love and Pierce realizes the case is connected to a murder he solved in 1958.

3x19 - Orange Is the New Maze 8.8

Lucifer and Chloe enter the world of bounty hunting to investigate a murder.

3x20 - The Angel of San Bernardino 9.2 

Lucifer and Chloe investigate a murder where a witness claims a winged guardian angel saved her life; Pierce and Chloe’s relationship takes an interesting turn; Lucifer discovers something that could change everything.

3x21 - Anything Pierce Can Do I Can Do Better 8.4

When a ballerina is brutally murdered, Lucifer helps Chloe solve the case; Amenadiel begs Charlotte to help him with an important plan; Maze remains devoted to a task from which Pierce asked her to back away.

3x22 - All Hands on Decker 8.4

When Chloe takes some time off, Lucifer is forced to work with Dan on a murder case involving a dog show. Meanwhile, Charlotte and Maze have differing ideas for Chloe’s party and after a wild night, Chloe rethinks a life-changing decision.

3x23 - Quintessential Deckerstar 9.6 

When Lucifer and Chloe investigate the death of a woman, they discover that they may be pursuing the wrong suspect. Then, Charlotte risks her safety when she decides to take matters into her own hands, and just as Lucifer makes a huge confession, Chloe gets a tragic phone call that changes everything.

3x24 - A Devil of My Word 9.8

Shocked by someone’s death, Chloe, Lucifer and the rest of the team work together to investigate and take down the killer. Then, Lucifer has an epiphany, Maze decides to mend a broken friendship and Chloe finally sees the truth.

3x25 - Boo Normal 8.5

As Lucifer and the team investigate the murder of a child psychiatrist, Ella thinks about a big childhood secret that she’s been hiding.

3x26 - Once Upon a Time 8.5 

Set in an alternate universe where God changed one little thing, which affects Lucifer, Chloe and the people around them.

[ghostmartyr]

I love this chapter as long as I can completely ignore the real world implications behind Gabi and Kaya’s talk. The Jewish parallels were one thing, because at least the Marley Eldians were clearly the victims, but Gabi listing off imperial japan’s worst war crimes and the narrative framing her as being wrong for feeling bad about them left a really bad taste in my mouth. In the story context, she’s wrong. If you look at what isayama is saying about the real world through her... yikes.

So, I have never once taken a world history class in my life, and that’s where I’m left approaching this kind of thing. It makes it easier to let fiction be fiction, but obviously that leaves gaps. I’m not very knowledgeable about a lot of stuff I should be.

Starting with the fictional side, I will say that I don’t think Gabi is presented as being wrong for being upset over all the horrors of the Eldian Empire. Her target is wrong, but if there’s one thing the story has always been upfront about, it’s that genocide and war crimes are wrong.

That’s why you have the Restorationists clinging to the idea that their people never did such things. They invent their own history where the Eldians were the good guys and the rest of the world couldn’t handle it.

Again, that’s something that is vividly depicted as misguided, and it’s deeply connected to Grisha’s own ruin. The man who’s claiming Eldia could do no wrong is the man who abuses his son into becoming a fanatic capable of turning his parents in for the cause.

Paradis is not the Eldian Empire. Characters wanting it to be are painted as dangerous, and they are. Paradis, very specifically, is an island built by someone who wanted the Eldian Empire to be overthrown. Karl Fritz sought peace. He locks himself and his people away, and hands over the fate of the remnants to Marley to do with as they will, since they are the primary victims.

As part of this, Karl rewrites the memories of everyone he takes to his island, and murders the rest.

Comparing Paradis to the current Marley, you’ve got easily defined good guys and bad guys.

Paradis in a vacuum is fucking horrifying. It’s built on one ruler making executive decisions for thousands of people. He enforces those decisions by stealing their memories of the world and murdering anyone he might not be able to control. His closest associates are aware of this, and continue the program. For a hundred years, the people with the greatest chance to change things are forced to follow a dead man’s will.

After Wall Maria falls, twenty percent of their population is thrown to the wolves so that everyone else can live. They don’t call it a culling. They call it a mission to retake the wall.

Twelve-year-olds join the military because that’s when they are eligible, and it’s a mark of shame not to. During their training, it is a common occurrence for recruits to end up dead.

Before Uprising, the government is still fine telling its people lies to get rid of what they perceive as threats to their power. They frame an entire military branch to maintain the status quo. They express willingness to let even more of their own people die to keep themselves alive.

The new government is established with the hopes of doing better, but as we see in this very chapter, things are sliding. A regime that starts out with the intent of being honest with the people is putting soldiers in jail for telling those people the truth. They have offered their verbal consent to use their monarch as a breeding tool so that her children will be weapons of war.

Paradis is not all that great. Parts of it actively suck. The reason they’re generally cast as the heroes is because they are working to undo the cycles that created Paradis. The reason the story is so dark at the moment is that it looks like they’ve failed.

Then we take a look at Marley, and… oy.

Marley uses up Eldian bodies like gunpowder. From a very young age, every little Eldian is taught that they’re making up for the sins of their former Empire, and the roots of that Empire still exist on the devils’ island. In order to prove that they are not like them, they’re actively encouraged to become Warriors. Weapons of mass destruction that will expire in thirteen years.

For Eldian children in Marley, one of the greatest things you can wish for ends with being eaten alive. That is the grand dream. Laying down your life for the lie that your people will be recognized as good Eldians, not like the bad Eldians.

Very straightforward, very fucked up.

The initial snag in it is that Marley itself has taken over from the Eldian Empire. They do not have the range the Empire is said to, but they use the same tools. They don’t force people to have children, but Eldians in internment camps know that if their child becomes a Warrior they receive special treatment. They go to war with child soldiers as their primary weapons, and terrorize their enemies. They rob Eldians of their sentience and throw them to a battlefield they have no choice in entering.

For the majority of the story on Paradis, titans are a force of nature. They’re mindless eating machines. Much of the terror they inspire is linked to that. There is nothing there to negotiate with. There is nothing you can do to bargain or beg. When you come against a titan, you will die, and it will not care. It is an inhuman, indifferent monster.

The walls live in fear of them. Not actively until the fall of Wall Maria, but every part of their lives, as far as they’re aware, has been designed to hide them away from the titans.

Titans are a weapon of mass destruction by virtue of their size, but their greatest use is as a weapon of fear.

Marley utilizes that fear against their enemies and their own recruits. They have no qualms setting the monsters loose. They have no problem creating more of the monsters that symbolize the terror of the Eldian Empire. They have no compunctions about drilling the fear of becoming those monsters into every Eldian child so they won’t dare disobey an order or question their lives.

“Eldians spent thousands of years using the power of the titans to rule and oppress the world! They stole away the cultures of other peoples! They forced them to have children they didn’t want! They killed countless human beings!”

Those are the crimes of the Eldian Empire, for which Paradis is blamed.

Every single point is something that Marley is actively, presently, complicit in.

Marley has created a boogeyman in Paradis for their Eldian prisoners, and they’re attempting to translate that to the world at large. All these evil things? All this awfulness? The only cause of it is a dead Empire. Their sins were so great that it is just to continue punishing every bloodline connected to it.

Pay no attention to the present day. All that matters is what they did.

From a real world context, Paradis is… possibly a dodgy bit of wish fulfillment. It isn’t simply that a hundred years with no contact with the rest of the world has gone by; every person on the island is forcibly enslaved by their King’s revisionist history. Except for key figures in a corrupt cabinet, the citizens of Paradis have been supernaturally removed from the actions of the Eldian Empire.

The extensiveness of that removal means that Paradis is as close to a blameless victim as you can make out of a country. Even though the Empire Paradis is initially part of is definitely not.

In the real world, no, people do not have magical brainwashing powers. They still have corrupt officials invested in denying the truth of their nations’ past crimes and teaching that denial to citizens as gospel. There are atrocities that have been committed that countries would rather deny entirely than admit to being an agent of.

As I understand it (which is an understanding that is severely limited), the specific language Gabi uses is a red flag, because those are all the things Japan insists did not happen, and for very obvious reasons, that rightfully pisses off a lot of people.

Putting that justified outrage in the mouth of a child who has been abused and brainwashed into believing that the evil she is fighting for is really the good guys’ squad… I can see why that would be a concern to audience members. Especially the ones who remember the tweet from a few years back. There are some topics that are best received with caution.

The problem I have with drawing a direct line to the real world is that you have to cut the context almost clean off to get there.

No one except for the Restorationist cult thinks the Eldian Empire was a good thing (and the framing cuts them to pieces for it). Everything we’ve heard about it suggests that it’s better off not existing. Karl Fritz, who is perfectly fine committing mass brainwashing and genocide against his allies, designs the Eldian Empire’s downfall because it is just that awful. He is the highest moral standard of that era.

He’s a dick, in case I haven’t made that clear enough.

What the Eldian Empire is said to have done is probably accurate enough, but Paradis is another victim of its crimes, not a perpetrator denying its involvement. Again with the conceivably dodgy wish fulfillment, but as far as the story is concerned, Paradis has had nothing to do with the rest of the world for a hundred years.

Marley is claiming that crimes that took place a hundred years ago–crimes that Marley itself adopted, crimes that no living person (except maybe the Founding Titan) remembers–is reason enough to justify slaughtering all of them.

That’s the rhetoric Gabi has been indoctrinated with her entire life.

My world history is nonexistent, but I do know a thing or two about American history. The crimes Gabi shouts that Eldians are guilty of are crimes that every perpetrator of genocide in the world has been guilty of. It is not a particularly creative endeavor. The United States slaughtered Native Americans, poisoned them, raped them… honestly, it’d be faster to come up with human rights violations they didn’t check off.

The world Isayama has concocted is one where the people who are loudest about the evils of genocide are the ones currently committing it.

I do not know how loaded it is for a Japanese man to be using that language in such a way. The real world context is lost on me. However, the fictional context is on the up and up:

It is wrong that these things happen. Marley has weaponized that morality in its Eldian citizens. They believe in that wrongness so thoroughly that they’ve become blind to their participation in it.

The monsters aren’t titans. The machinations of evil don’t belong to a single bloodline. The monsters are humans.

I don’t think Isayama is always the most subtle of authors. Especially when it comes to darkness. Several people I know stopped watching the anime when its second season opened with Mike’s death. They felt it was gratuitous and unnecessary. Most of my complaints about the series follow that line. When he wants to make something obvious, he hammers it in.

Marleyan Eldians don’t just wear identifying markers in their internment camp, it’s a damn star.

Isayama borrowing from the real world to enhance the reality of his fiction is a tried practice, but when you’re writing a story about the evils of genocide, and your borrowings include some of the language discussions of real world genocide has brought about…

You have to work to keep the fiction as the primary consideration when someone is overly familiar with the reality it comes from. Otherwise that reality imposes itself on the fiction.

When the reality you’re borrowing from is at odds with its use in the fictional story… Congratulations, you have formed a mess, you should have maybe not done that. Most of the people upset about genocide nowadays are not perpetrating it or hysterically brainwashed. That role tends to go to the deniers.

The story is blunt enough about what it thinks of genocide that one of its common criticisms is that the antagonists are cartoonishly evil. Its morals and themes are not remotely subtle.

That doesn’t mean its application of language can’t be really stupid.

I don’t think there’s anything suspect about Kaya and Gabi’s conversation from a fictional perspective, and even from a meta perspective, it’s still being very clear about what it thinks of the harms done to children by evil, and what’s defined as evil unquestionably is.

Gabi isn’t wrong to hate the evil in the world. She’s been lied to about where it is. She has a stronger connection to the Eldian Empire than the people of Paradis, but she doesn’t hate herself or her fellow Marleyan Eldians. Just Paradis.

All present day Eldians are victims of the Eldian Empire and Marley. Paradis comes to be from the last Eldian Empire King ripping away their agency, and Marley makes sure every Eldian under their watch knows to hate themselves, and that the world never forgets to hate their abilities.

The story is very anti-genocide. It’s very supportive of the victims. The conversation might have shades of a reality that doesn’t belong to those messages, but the overwhelming feel is that these are children, and because some people thought genocide was a gr9 strategic aim, they’re all horrifically traumatized.

So they help each other.

Falco offers Kaya closure. Kaya offers them a way to make it back home. They’ve been too hurt to want anything but healing, so when they see someone in need of it, they reach out a hand.

I don’t know much about the real world, but… the victories in this series are achieved when people embrace their idealism, and try to be better than what came before them. That isn’t a story I have a problem with.

[mephistophelianmusingsxo]

Sin City

It is said that loneliness is one’s lack of social activity, another humans company but true loneliness is isolation, it’s an emotional power to emptiness. It is more than just that feeling of wanting company, true loneliness is disconnection. No matter the amount of bodies that swarm your own with heat you’re still lonely, you’re still cold. It’s an impossible struggle to react and build a meaningful human contact. You’re hollow. Your insides whistle and echo the sounds of voices but they don’t quite reach your ears, the soft haze, the quiet buzz fades still. People fear being alone, they fear they may become lost without constant interaction but I, I chose to be alone. I chose this life. It wasn’t forced upon me, it was what my heart chose. You may ask “What is it like being alone?” And I can truly say, it is critical that you first assess the reason and actions to bring you to this point, whether in reasons for physical violence, emotional anguish, or the degree your mind is willing to go to accomplish this sense of being alone. I mean after all, we’re all, alone aren’t we? No one ever truly understands what it is like to be them, to experience their happiness, their pain, their sorrow and their guilt. So, how can we say that we are in fact not alone? We are. Some people find it easier to be within their own company, smothering their monadic existence from others. Pretending that all is good, life is perfect and they’re hunky dory. Drawing fucking pictures of a life everyone wants but not one single being has. Bullshit. Whether you will like to disagree or agree with my matter at fact, you cannot deny that solidarity is a fleeting feeling. It is universal. Race, creed, social standing. Once in a person’s life it will visit their soul and leave a mark so deep, they will always question if it ever left. Every song, every piece of literature, every painting extracts the inescapable fate of pure loneliness and we somehow are fundamentally distant from this, we protest that we do not have it. The paradox to all human existence for our social entities is to seek connections. May it be with another human or simply an object that holds great sentimental value.

Which leads me to my next point, by now you’ve probably already guessed my life became tangled in ways it never should. A typical story of a child not wanted, and a child gone wayward. However, you would be wrong. My childhood was the exact juxtaposition to expectancy, I was an only child. Sweet little protégé to dear old Dad’s booming company. Showered in love and adoration from the minute I was born, a child couldn’t ask for more. But it was never enough, I never belonged, I couldn’t excel in the areas my father wanted to carry on his heritage, try he might have, he could never tether my soul, could never cage my free spirit. I wanted to explore the world, I wanted to become accustomed to more than what I had growing up, I had a wild zoe for freedom. Academically I excelled in everything I did. From the writing short hand classes my father enrolled me in, to the logistics and statistics courses. In effect, there wasn’t much I didn’t excel in, but it wasn’t me. I didn’t care for flash suits, fancy jobs, exquisite restaurants, nature was more my thing. No convention or obligation, seeking out every unique possibility in each circumstance as it was. Enjoying whatever I deemed appropriate in this socially adverse world, limitations were minimal, and I rather relished in my adventurous unconventional conformity of a woman. Freedom, now freedom is open to arguments; social and political views as something that must be contained and controlled or something that cannot be. It has been across everyone’s lips, touched their tongues but never their actual mind set nor their soul. It has touched every human heart with adept fingers and a shadow that looms. Forever changing but never abandoning.

‘Freedom’. Freedom means many things to many people; politically the freedom to vote and choose your respected candidate, socially for you to choose what and who you like to acknowledge with. Standing free with those that fight for the freedom of speech, distancing yourself from those who fight for an entirely different cause but still freedom. Financial freedom is what got me in to this mess. Where others seek to free themselves from debt, standing credit and foredooming loans, I propelled myself further and further in to the outstanding debt. What’s more surprising is, I don’t particularly wish to be free either. Which is funny, wouldn’t you say? For a woman that has documented nothing but her free spirit doesn’t seem to want to be free of the hold finance has on her. I have to say it is interesting that we all pursue this Liberty as an ends to a means. An end to all our struggles. But what is our deliverance? The no longer outstanding debt, the ability to do what we like? Say what we like? It is not truly being what we all call 'free’. If you look, it is our hearts that drove us in to this mess at the beginning yes? So, who is to say that our hearts will not choose the same path? It will remain unchanged as long as our heart yearns for what it just escaped from. Why? Because we desire what we think we cannot live without. And… Voila! We find ourselves in debt again. It’s a viscous cycle. It eclipses all we know and only serves what we don’t. Feeds off the hunger of curiosity. And well, being a natural spirit of curiosity, I was an easy target. I was the prey awaiting the predator to seize. It was not an approach in the dead of night, it was more an ease of comfort and insurance slinking its way around your body, your mind, your heart until you realise and it’s too late. It’s not a peripheral remedy. It’s simply not something to help you balance your books it becomes your life. Symptoms begin to fester, and you apprehend that it’s a disease, but rather than dealing with it you run. I ran. Intoxicated with the deadness of every human strategy, the knowing that it’s something I could never conquer, my heart fell steadfast into corruption and sin. Captivating and keeping hold of the rebellion that would cause mankind to leap from ignorant innocence to full blown understanding. I do suppose that if my life had taken a left instead of a sharp right, I would never have found myself in this position, but then again, I also suppose that I wouldn’t be happy, I’d be stuck working at my father’s company, lumbered with a healthy pay-check and all the cuttings and trimmings that went with it. At least this way I was gifted with a substantial pay-check for doing what I love. I wasn’t just put on this earth to work and pay bills, that was not a life. Just an existence. There were other places I could have chosen to work, other industries I could have pursued but not everyone finds the labouring of a nine to five exciting and appealing but rather tedious. This line of work is for the ones that don’t have any advanced education or a set of degrees, for the ones that don’t have the looks or the luck, or the ones that don’t have enough gumption to be a pimp; they live a life of has beens and recent regrets. It doesn’t require sets of specific skills and it’s readily available in any city that you step your foot in. Have you guessed it? When the clock hits twelve we deal; cards and crack. Yes! The drug industry, let’s not call it that. That brings unwanted negative connotations, disastrous assumptions to those involved. Instead, I oppose we call it a free trade on the very large capitalism scale. Distributing and supplying to those who live the life in the fast lane, the ones that search for a kick, the ones that become solely dependent on the next hit. I would say I was sorry but I’m not. As long as their struggles line my pocket, I would continue to benefit from transactions, grant them another five gram, ten, the amount is limitless when you have the money. I feed their uncontrollable addictions to illicit drugs, I destroy families; people all alike. There is no age, no specific gender. It is whoever is willing to pay. Drug dealing requires no real hard work, but it’s no fun when you lose, and your balls are in the blender. Your pay-check comes from the clientele and if you slip up and squander your batch, you’re the one that suffers then. You have no income until your next run. It’s all a muddle of colours, a twisted web of lies. To say I had simply lost my way was quite the understatement. To be brutally honest, I had become adrift the many other souls settled in the ruins of their independency. People observe the streets just as people observe the sky, in one single hour a multitude of colours can paint the sky; blues, greys, oranges, yellows. In my line of work, it is crucial that I notice these. I may approach you genially, by no means am I nice. Granted I can be affable when I please, but please; do not ask me to be a friend. I simply can’t. Pick a colour and chose your path. Drug smuggling, runner, courier however you please to perceive. It is my job and as a right in doing so, I notice trends throughout rife city life. When demand is low, I simply move on. I cannot recount a single moment where I have remained in a place for longer than six months, that is until now. New Orleans has become my home, or perhaps I should say my place of work. An advantageous opportunity I could never resist. If I had known what I know now, it is almost probable my deterioration in to crime and misdemeanours would certainly have happened more rapidly. Would you believe me if I told you witches were real? Would you believe me if I told you I work for them? No, no, what if I told you my very purpose in this is to run errands where vampires cannot go? Would you believe me? Of course not. You’d only but believe I am a woman turned insane from her reckless use of narcotics or perhaps an insensate pursuit of an old crazy woman way before her time, my time. However, consider this there isn’t just one monotheistic being – Humans. We are only a minute percentage of the world’s population. Forever persecuting other people, killing them because they’re far more superior than anything mortality is capable of. But immortality, immortality is something else altogether. Creatures of brief season that remain for an eternity. Wherever you look in history, you cannot escape the record of inquisition, they have always been a part of our world. Undertaking, preceding and strengthening what we mortals are unaware. I once claimed loneliness and freedom were my downfall, I believed them to be a disadvantage of no plausible use, but as it turns out being in this new reality grants me the greatest asset of invisibility. Slipping from sunset to sunrise unseen, unnoticed. Free.

[newstfionline]

Turkey Sees Foes at Work in ‘Smurf Village’

By David Segal, NY Times, July 22, 2017

LONDON--Akin Ipek, one of Turkey’s richest men, was staying in the Park Tower Hotel in London when the police raided his television network in Istanbul. The raid was national news, so Mr. Ipek opened his laptop and watched an unnerving spectacle: an attack on his multibillion-dollar empire, in real time.

It was an oddly cinematic showdown. Through a combination of shouting and persuasion, the network’s news editor convinced the officers that they should leave, then locked himself in the basement control room with a film crew. For the next seven and a half hours, until the police returned, the news editor spoke into a camera and took calls on his iPhone. One was from Mr. Ipek, who denounced the government’s action as illegal.

“I was shocked and angry,” Mr. Ipek said in a recent interview in London. “But I thought they would leave after a couple days. There was no reason to stay.”

Actually, the government never left, and the events were the start of a personal cataclysm for Mr. Ipek. His station, Bugun TV, was taken off the air a few hours after that phone call, on Oct. 28, 2015. His entire conglomerate of 22 companies, Koza Ipek, is now owned and operated by the state.

The episode proved to be a dry run for a nationwide series of confiscations that began soon after an attempt to overthrow the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on July 15 last year. Since then, more than 950 companies have been expropriated, all of them purportedly linked to Fethullah Gulen, the Muslim cleric who Turkish leaders say masterminded the putsch.

About $11 billion worth of corporate assets--from small baklava chains to large publicly traded conglomerates--have been grabbed by the government, a systematic taking with few precedents in modern economic history. Several thousand dispossessed executives have fled overseas to cities as far-flung as Nashville and Helsinki. The less fortunate were imprisoned, part of a mass incarceration campaign that has included purged members of the military, judiciary, police and news media, adding 50,000 new inmates to the prisons.

Turkey was once considered one of the world’s great emerging markets, with years of torrid growth and an Islamic government that embraced democracy. Tourism boomed and hundreds of malls popped up across the country. Starbucks arrived in 2003 and has since opened hundreds of stores.

But the political and financial are deeply entwined in Turkey, and the fallout from the coup attempt has damaged the economy. The corporate seizures have also changed the way the country is perceived in the international business sphere, largely because of what they say about the leadership.

The Turkish lira is crumbling and foreign investment has dropped by half compared with last year. All three of the major rating agencies have downgraded the government’s debt to junk status, citing among other factors the bludgeoning approach to companies suspected of having ties to the Gulen movement.

“We’ve seen this new narrative about Turkey as it has taken an authoritarian turn,” said Jonathan Friedman of Stroz Friedberg, a global risk consultancy. “In boardrooms, the country is now a very hard sell.”

Turkey’s war on its “enemies” in business--and the evolution of Mr. Ipek from revered industrialist to public villain--illuminates much about the tumultuous events that have so jolted the country in recent years.

Mr. Ipek stands accused of being part of a treasonous deep state run by Mr. Gulen, a reclusive 76-year-old who fled Turkey in 1999 and now lives in the Poconos of Pennsylvania.

For decades, Mr. Gulen has preached a theology rooted in Islam and focused on peace, science and democracy. The movement he leads is called Hizmet--service, in English--and is best known outside of Turkey for building schools across the country and the rest of the world, including 120 charter schools in the United States. Delegations of American politicians have flown to Turkey on trips paid for by Hizmet.

To Mr. Gulen’s detractors, his good works have all been all a cunning charade, propaganda camouflaging a vast moneymaking enterprise that sought to overthrow the government. He and his followers indoctrinated youngsters at Hizmet schools in Turkey, then encouraged them to find positions in the government, particularly the justice system--as police officers, prosecutors and judges.

For allies in the corporate realm, Gulenists in the government provided invaluable aid. Licenses were approved, permits issued, rivals thwarted. Entrepreneurs in Mr. Gulen’s favor knew that the levers of the state could make them wealthy, and one of his most successful protégés, if the Turkish government is correct, was Mr. Ipek.

Soon after the raid, a warrant was issued for Mr. Ipek’s arrest, stating that he laundered vast sums for what officials call the Fethullah Terrorist Organization. His assets were frozen and have gradually been seized, starting last year with his luxury cars and ending with all of his real estate and bank accounts. Prosecutors announced in June that they would seek a 77-year prison sentence for Mr. Ipek, though he has no plans to return to Turkey.

Now settled in London, Mr. Ipek spends his days trying to clear his name and somehow reclaim his life. No, he says, he is not a financial backer of Mr. Gulen or a beneficiary of favors from his followers. And no, he says, he didn’t flee Turkey with billions of dollars, as the government has charged. He says his current net worth is less than $10 million.

“I have not committed one single crime in my life, not a traffic penalty,” he fumed, during hours of interviews.

It isn’t easy to sort fact from fabrication in the government’s case, and parts of Mr. Ipek’s account of his own life sound nearly as far-fetched. Truth is a slippery, elusive concept in today’s Turkey, a place where the definitions of basic words, like “ally” and “traitor,” keep changing.

At least one allegation against Mr. Ipek is demonstrably absurd. A judge misconstrued a reference to “smurfs,” a term of art for people who launder tiny amounts of money, in a report by a government investigator. Taking the allusion literally, the judge, in his ruling, wrote that Mr. Ipek and a group of others conspired in “Smurf Village” in Ankara.

“For two years I’ve been trying to prove there is no Smurf Village in Ankara,” Mr. Ipek nearly shouted, “because some idiot mentioned Smurfs in a report.”

Of course, even if Mr. Ipek was one of Mr. Gulen’s truest believers, taking companies with scant due process would seem to violate most countries’ legal norms. Many inside and outside Turkey believe that Mr. Erdogan has exploited the failed coup as a pretext to expand his power, tossing people in prison or firing them from jobs for sins as minor as keeping money in a Gulen-connected bank. More than 130,000 people have been suspended or dismissed in the past year, and dozens of hospitals have been closed, along with 1,200 schools and 15 universities.

Mr. Ipek may simply have experienced the wrath of the president before everyone else. During their last face-to-face meeting, in 2012, Mr. Erdogan smoldered while reading aloud every word of a column in Bugun, Mr. Ipek’s newspaper, that he found objectionable.

“He was not reasonable anymore,” Mr. Ipek said. “I told him, ‘Consider me your younger brother and let me tell you some truths. You need to look at the whole wall, not concentrate on one brick. I’ll ask my columnists to be a little more polite, but we want people to be free to express their opinion. We promised them a free press.’”

Mr. Ipek must have realized that his future in Turkey was not secure. In late 2014, he began the process of relocating to London, forming a holding company here called Ipek Investments that would control all of his assets.

The leverage that the government now has over Mr. Ipek includes his younger brother, Tekin, who was imprisoned two years ago without a trial. Mr. Ipek has offered to fly to Turkey and take his brother’s place if the government releases him. Come to Turkey and we’ll talk, the government has countered, in Mr. Ipek’s telling. It is a proposal that he has declined, because he assumes that the government will simply imprison them both.

“I’ve seen them do that before,” he said.

[37h4n0l]

Dear Tumblr, please learn how to be a bad person - a Rant(tm)

Let's get this out of the way; I'm not gonna tell you what 'good' and 'bad' are. My point is, in fact, that I have no authority to tell you. 

[rant under the cut]

Now, just so I can avoid making this entire rant about subjective morality - which I could discuss for ages, just not now - I'll bring up a point about it and then we'll be able to start from a common ground, at least. So, any kind of moral law is arbitrary for the simple reason that you cannot explain where it comes from (or, you could, to be precise, but doing so would only reveal how changeable it really is). There's an argument about tracing morality's origin back to biology, maybe the most convincing one out of all, but that's not the one an average person would use to explain their beliefs on what is right or wrong. Some would bring God into the picture, others would claim that they simply know because it's part of human nature and those who don't are just deviants or evil. It has me dumbfounded sometimes how little rigor we apply in our reasoning on something this basic. 'I simply know' is not an argument, and after a few more 'why?'s it all leads back to instincts of protecting our own species and other impulses overriding each other to different extents depending on the situation. This, however, completely defies the 'higher meaning' one would assume our moral values have and also makes them occasionally dismissible when they go against logic or long-time planning, in much the same way we do, for example, with hunger when we see someone else having a meal and resist the urge to violently try and snatch away whatever they are eating.

Now that we have established the foundation, let's see where it leads us and how we can discuss the concept of immorality in this context. Firstly and most importantly, these values having no logical basis and being mere instincts implies that what is 'right' or 'wrong' can vary significantly, which I'm sure no one would find shocking. But the step that follows is that there is no limit to how much these concepts can shift. Take any act you would find reprehensible - let's say, killing, just to make it simple - and now tell me which is worse between killing one person or killing five. By the usual reasoning of 'every human life is worth the same', we can assume that most people would say five. And there we go, killing one person is suddenly 'right' in the technical sense. Now you might roll your eyes at me and say that both options involved an immoral act, so obviously, committing said act multiple times is going to be 'more wrong'. What if you had to choose between one pregnant mother and five nazis? I'll say more; what about being convinced that the people you kill are going to Heaven and live an eternal, happy life there instead of this earthly existence full of suffering? A well-trained nitpicker will always be able to come up with a situation in which whatever you claim to be bad is not; a fun game to play, albeit tiring after some time. 

It follows naturally, that anything we do we think is a good act might happen to be considered bad by someone else. Yes, there are things that are statistically more likely to be seen as reprehensible, but those are, again, decided instinctively. The reverse might also be true; or, in general, any kind of act has a possibility of being perceived as either good or bad. What does being a 'bad person' mean then, after all of this? If we define it as someone who has committed a relatively large amount of 'bad' acts (or 'one big bad act'), then we have to remember how everything they did, which we classified as 'wrong', could potentially be considered good. Most of the time, in fact, the person committing such things thinks they are in the right. They might have enough awareness to see the problems others could have with their actions, but then again, 'the ends justify the means' comes very handy sometimes. Crimes and sins are nothing more than acts of egoism that hurt just the right amount of people; which is a vast generalization, as the reality of war would have us understand. Precisely because morality varies so much on a case-by-case basis, we keep overstepping our principles constantly, with or without realizing it. 

Human society has made an attempt at building up a common code of ethics out of convenience. It's not perfect, but it works most of the time. It's also easier to cram into people's heads by connecting it to morality (note that I don't use the terms 'morality' and 'ethics' interchangeably; the first one refers to the abstract principles, the second to the practice); after all, it feels better to abide by laws if it makes you think of yourself as a good person. In fact, many social interactions and expressed opinions are part of our striving to 'be good' or being seen as it. We could go as far as saying there's no difference between goodness and its appearance since no one will ever truly know our intent and the entire concept, in and of itself, relies on altruism and being in line with the unspoken rules of a presumed objective moral system. Humans can go incredibly far for the sole purpose of making a good impression, even far enough to bend the rules they are trying to adhere to in the first place. One principle compromises another, and this chaotic process - denominated as virtue signalling - comes crumbling down on itself if taken to the extreme, revealing it as what it's always been, at its core: yet another act of egoism. The need to 'be good' is no more noble or worthy than the need to eat, sleep or drink.

So why am I making a post about this on Tumblr, you may ask. What does this have to do with this website? A lot, actually. Tumblr is basically the haven of virtue signalling, even the site's structure and functionalities facilitate this. I doubt it was an intentional decision (after all, it did backfire on David Karp in the past, with people demonizing him as a 'cis white man'), but it turned out this way now and there's no going back. The way dashboard is built makes it easy to spread any kind of content very quickly, while a highly customizable personal blog gives the false impression of a private sphere, despite even the most intimate kind of content being searchable by keywords on the main page. It started attracting a type of person more prone to this competition in showing off who's more morally righteous, and it's been a vicious circle since then. 

The point I am trying to get to is that many people - especially here, on Tumblr - have become so obsessed with 'being good' that they fail to see how some of their actions to achieve this are vile and underhanded from others' point of view, enough to outweigh the help they offer to a community of their choice. With this comes a stubbornness that serves to justify whatever they do; 'they are doing this for the greater good, after all'. It's a strong as steel conviction to help them ignore their own aspects which could be considered 'bad' and keep living under the illusion that they can do no wrong and aren't hurting anyone. Yes, I'm talking about cutesy bloggers with pastel-coloured themes who participate in callouts and throw the harshest insults at whoever has a different view, dismissing any reaction to their behaviour as 'hate' or an exaggerated offense taken at their obviously perfect opinions. I'm talking about the teenagers (or sometimes people in their twenties) who consider targeted abuse 'sassy' and 'radical' just because their own kind bombards them with positive feedback for it in a fashion statement-style circlejerk, those who will call you a pedophile (an accusation potentially enough to ruin someone's career and social reputation) and get back to aesthetic blogging five minutes later with no qualms. 

There's a sort of moral perfectionism in the Tumblr mindset. Hell, it's there in everyday life, even, but it's more accentuated on this site. It's an expectation of always being righteous and unquestionable. No matter how repugnant a person's views are, they'll be looked down upon more for apologizing than not doing it - because an apology is, besides an exposed weakness, basically a warranty to be mistreated. Despite the alleged moral highground the niche radicals on Tumblr would want you to think they have, there's not an ounce of empathy in them for another human being when they perceive the person as an enemy. Show them that you're sorry and you regret disagreeing with them or attacking them, and they'll turn you into a punching bag within the span of minutes. Becoming a target is part of the deal for them, something you have to put up with if you haven't been on their side from the start. The justification? 'The rightful anger of the oppressed', or something like that. It never occurs to them that you're more than a demographic, that you're a person with thoughts and feelings just like them who's made a big compromise in their favour. 

This necessity for absolute purity is what makes the linch mob think it's right to pull out things someone said several years ago and use them against the person. Once you're tainted, it's forever; whatever you do, you won't wash it off. The only hope for redemption is starting a new account and denying links to the 'dark past'. Once someone starts with the assumption that they are part of the 'clean' ones, on the other hand, it becomes hard to convince them they have made mistakes. In this absence of self-awareness, the only thing that counts is the feedback; and as long as the majority is too afraid to contradict the justice blogger in question, they will proceed with their mistreatment of others. But does the guilt ever kick in? Well, yes, but there are easy ways to completely dismiss it, the most common being mental illness. You might have noticed that many Tumblr users are 'self-diagnosed' with even five or six psychological disorders (which - let's be real - if it were true would cause a massive impediment in everyday functioning). Whenever you do something you know is going to hurt another person, you can simply deny your agency in the situation and claim you're suffering more than them anyway because of your problems - two birds with one stone.

Perhaps the biggest problem with this behaviour - besides being massively damaging for the perpetuator's mental health itself - is the inability to accept being a bad person. Negative things are a part of life, as is acting in cruel and despicable ways from time to time. There is nobody so pure as to have never done something wrong; this is easy to see from what I've explained about the moral perception of actions at the beginning. And I'll dare to say that everyone has to have at least that small amount of self-awareness required to recognize this, even if subconsciously. But it appears that we live in a culture where it's now more fashionable to push these insecurities and regrets in the back of your mind and simply pretend that you've always been right, no matter how many mental gymnastics are required to prove it. Instead of letting people accept some actions as (even a 'necessary') bad, the Tumblr subculture encourages you to instead see them as good deeds. It seems like an insignificant distinction, but trust me, it changes the common mindset radically. And here I share some advice based on both firsthand and secondhand personal experience, as well as extrapolations from what I've said above.

1) This is an extremely common talking point and it has popped up in numerous controversies regarding the Tumblr-mindset; do not apologize. Again, you achieve nothing with this, except for giving up your own dignity. You don't have to compromise with people who are deliberately attacking you, and turning it into a civil debate - something I have personally tried to do multiple times - is impossible. These people don't and will never see you as a friend or even a neutral entity. They're there to bring you down and they will abuse of every opportunity to do so. Stand up for yourself, don't crawl back. If you do, you're feeding the same mentality they have succumbed to by trying to show them that you really are a good person, something they will never believe. 

2) It's alright to be 'bad'. Firstly, because morality is subjective, but that's besides the point. Everyone has acted in immoral ways at least once and we all know it; hiding it is futile and disingenuous. Don't be afraid to lose friends or ruin your public image, because, believe me, everyone has the same problem. No one is pure. Do what you want to do and spend time with people who accept it - those who don't are not worth your time. But own up to it. Admit it. Come to terms with the fact that it's part of your personality. 

3) 'Don't sink to their levels' is good advice in some situations, but not all of them. You're not ascending to a higher ground by becoming a martyr and a victim. I could go into an entire rant about how we're still suffering the subtle influences of Christian morality despite not being in a situation where it's suitable and adequate - it started out as a coping mentality for a persecuted sect, which Tumblr users definitely aren't - but the main point is that you don't have to turn the other cheek. Someone is setting up an entire group of people to go after you? Who's going to blame you if you do the same right back at them? Don't police yourself if the other side refuses to. 

Ultimately, we're all horrible, corrupt, petty and hateful - in some circumstances and from certain points of view. If someone says they're not... Well, they're lying. Don't let the perfectionism ruin you; it's nothing but a tool for other people to vent their frustration on you and feel more righteous. Do your good things, do your bad things, know them for what they are and let others do the same. I hope this came through.

[mickeys-coming-back-bitches]

Death Note improvised Analysis

Guys I’m re-watching Death Note for the hundredth time and it will never stop to amaze me. Death Note is really the best anime/manga I’ve ever come across, because its depth and clarity on the condition of humans on this Earth is really incredible. 

For the longest of times I hated Light because I only saw him as a narcissist, and a lunatic, who thought he could incarnate justice because he was delusional. But now I can see all of the hidden dynamics within his family, I can see his identification with his father, his complete lack of regard for women because of the submissive, passive lifestyle of his mother, I can feel the void behind his every belief in justice and violence. I can see his illness and I feel sorry for him - I cannot bring myself to hate him like I did once. 

I have found a new appreciation for L, because he is really a vital, energetic person who kept trying to balance his almost suffocating rationality (due to his intelligence) with the irrational and vital need for affection and true interaction and understanding between humans. He knew we need interaction to survive, and his conflict was the wish to search in Light someone he could establish a real connection with, and the knowledge (subconcious, instinctive) that Light was a madman, untrue to himself and to others, destructive and non-affective (both with men and women).

From this point of view, Light and L are really opposites, because they each represent the lack of affection, and the search for affection - the lack of hope in love among humans, and the trust in love who will win on everything.

From a feminism standpoint, Death Note could have done a bit better - there aren’t enough vital, strong, positive feminine figures - but this could be connected to what this manga/anime is all about: censorship, castration, and mental illness. Light is mentally ill - and this is obvious from the way he interacts with others, and with women in particular - he’s completely blind to the world of feminine sexuality, he has no curiosity, no desire - and it’s not like he has any desire for men either - as if he has no sexual identity. 

Misa represent the woman who is fine to be objectified, and who doesn’t have enough self-esteem, enough identity, to reject a man that clearily doesn’t love her, doesn’t see her, completely deletes her every time they interact. She lashes out this void, this lack of affection (which is amplified by the fact that her parents were kille when she was too young to process their loss) by supporting this world of violence which is Kira’s world. 

The Death Note, Kira’s New World, represents the ultimate lack of affection, the loss of hope for humanity, the Catholic way to regard the human race as guilty of the Original Sin that made us all impure and bad. This is why people’s crimes (people’s sins) aren’t seen as something that can be changed, that can be forgiven - and most of all, the reason behind those crimes isn’t searched inside those people’s childhoods, lives, environments, mental illnesses - those crimes are associated with Pure Evil, Satan, something that can only be healed through Death. Kira’s judgement, therefore, isn’t human, it is everything that is not human, everything that is cold and unforgiving and violent and sick and dead. And all the figures who fight to catch Kira are symbols of the deep, strong wish to find ourselves, to find the good within us - to reject this theory that we are all born with Evil inside us (or at least, some of us are born with Evil inside them, and they are without hope - which means to de-humanize humans). The forces against Kira are the research of the human mind, of the human body, they are the wish to understand, to accept, to see, to be free.

Near and Mello aren’t completely healthy figures - Near is too detatched from the world and from other people (for his own health and identity), probably because of fear of disappointment, fear of interaction, fears that are born during our first years on this earth - while Mello is too angry, too sour, too hopeless, and fights Kira because he thinks that becoming Number one will fill his affective void. So, mostly, Mello and Near lack the same things - human affection - but they don’t lack the hope that affection exists, which makes them positive characters overall, and, better yet, allows them to help each other, without knowing it. Near and Mello complete each other when they come together, because they balance each other’s rationality and irrationality, emotion and lack of emotion. Exactly like L did. 

When in the end Near says that ‘together, he and Mello could surpass L’, the meaning behind that phrase is that human interaction is the only thing that can free us, that can make us true humans - we are biologically social animals, and we cannot reject our biological need to interact, to love each other, to discover those who are different from us. L was alone - Near and Mello were two, coming together to form one. 

Human interaction, human affection, love is the ultimate Force that defeated Kira, emptiness, non-affection, death. Not a religious love, not a carnal love, not an unreachable, vague idea of love but a concrete affection that could be perceived. Near protected Mello’s identity (Mello’s life), and Mello realized that he was truly going to win only when he and Near would join forces. 

Wow. This started as a random appreciation post and it turned into an analysis of Death Note. LOL. Sorry about that! If you’ve read all of this, you are definitely among my top-20 favourite people! 

[deythbanger]

Bible Arguments 12

By DeYtH Banger "Our God is good, because he told us he is good. New Yorkers are evil because they are offending his holiness and corrupting our tribe. If you judge our Lenape Lord to be evil, then you are committing blasphemy." - Dan Baker "If we can’t judge God to be bad, then neither can we judge him to be good. To worship God is to judge God. If what look like “bad” actions of God might actually be good, then what look like “good” actions of God might actually be bad, and we are helpless to know the difference. When he tells us he is good, he might be lying, and if believers think he is not, they are judging him. If they can judge God, why can’t I? They say he is good by his decree. I say he is bad by his actions." - Dan Baker "The bible preaches a pessimistic view of human nature. “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”28 There’s that intimidating word “glory.” Notice that biblical wrongdoing is connected not with real human suffering but with offending the deity. We are all bad: “All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”29 We all deserve to die: “The wages of sin is death.”30 Notice here that death is not viewed as a natural event but as a punishment for the crime of not glorifying the deity. “As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive.”31 Without Jesus, we are all doomed." - Dan Baker "…the original sin transmitted to us through Adam. (I never thought of this when I was a preacher, but if “sin” is inherited, is it genetic?) A humanistic view of human nature is neither negative nor positive. It is realistic and optimistic. We recognize that we all fall somewhere across a spectrum of characteristics and tendencies that are a mix of violence and empathy. Some will lean more toward “saint” and others toward “sinner,” but except for a few people at the far end of the curve who are truly mentally unhealthy, most of us are neither wholly “bad” nor wholly “good” by nature..." - Dan Baker "Unlike most believers, most humanists are optimistic about human nature. It’s not that we think we are perfect, or even perfectible, but that we can improve. Many individual genetic predispositions cannot be changed, or cannot be changed easily, but this does not mean that an individual cannot control his or her own actions in spite of those tendencies. This is where education, societal expectation, and humanistic law become useful." - Dan Baker "They are unusual. They are shocking. Most of us, fortunately, are somewhere in the middle of the bell curve and live our lives outside of the headlines. Think of a horrible story you have read in the newspaper or seen on television. When a mother does something unthinkable to her children or a husband brutalizes his wife, what do you think? When a criminal commits a heinous act, what do you say? If you are like me, you say, “What an inhuman thing to do!” We assume that those violent acts reported in the headlines do not reflect basic human nature. We know we are normally kind, empathetic, altruistic, loving, and moral, and that is what makes headlines grab our attention. It is good that most people don’t make it to those headlines. It is only the extreme deviations from the norm that catch our attention, and they shock us because they are not representative of who we really are." - Dan Baker "If you are a believer, is that how you picture yourself? Are you desperately trying to restrain your malicious impulses? If you could get away with it, would you run around like a maniac, looting, destroying property, sexually assaulting, and causing bodily harm? Don’t you simply know that such behavior is a threat to survival? Most human beings who want a good life prefer less violence, less harm. Studies show that societies with less religion are better off,…" - Dan Baker "We can choose to be moral. Instead of making morality a huge mystery, searching for an “absolute standard” or list of rules or external ethical imperative or purpose-driven motivation or other excuse to treat people nicely, why not simply choose to be reasonable, moral, and kind to others? Paraphrasing my Mom: “If you want to be a good person, then be a good person." - Dan Baker "Think about sexuality. The bible says that “God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). It is assumed that Adam and Eve were heterosexual, because they were commanded to “replenish the earth.” Jesus made the same assumption: “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said ‘for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?” (This is also sexist, from the male point of view.) In the bible, anything outside of binary heterosexuality is condemned as an abomination. (See Leviticus 20:13, for example." - Dan Baker "Any identity that does not flip to one side of their toggle switch does not exist. This is a cultural color blindness resulting from religion, a failure to see the shades of reality we are looking at. Forcing homosexuals to live as heterosexuals is like me pretending that my garish red outfit was attractive. It is fitting that the gay community uses a rainbow as a symbol." - Dan Baker "Think about evolution. The bible says, “God made the beasts of the earth after their kind,” and creationists interpret this to mean each species was formed independently. All of life is flat, started at the same moment, existing side-by-side, nothing related. How boring! When you can learn to see the beauty of evolution, the interconnectedness of all living things springing from the same ancestor, it opens up a whole four-dimensional spectrum. We can see ourselves in stereo, in context, as cousins to the other apes, as more distant relatives to every other species on the planet." - Dan Baker "Richard Dawkins, in The Extended Phenotype, talks about this shift in perspective as we look at the natural world. He compares it to staring at a drawing of a Necker Cube, where your mind sees a box in one orientation and then surprisingly shifts to the other orientation. Nothing actually changes on the paper—it all happens in your mind—but it feels like something has changed. Two people can be looking at the same facts but “seeing” something entirely different. Fundamentalist creationists perceive a two-dimensional drawing with little depth or meaning, while evolutionary biologists see a three- dimensional image, actually four-dimensional when you consider time." - Dan Baker "A human being, like the human race, appears on the stage as a full person, they imagine. Adam was formed as a grown man, not a boy, child, baby, or fetus. To the true believer, there is no such thing as a half-developed person, just like there can be no half-soul. It is black or white, absolute, colorless. While the gestating human actually moves through a spectrum of developmental stages—in many of which the human is indistinguishable from other mammals—the religious anti-abortionists view the whole scenario not as a process but as an instantly completed creation, all involving a fully human person. The sperm contacts the egg and Presto, “You” are created. A zygote, blastocyst, embryo, or fetus is the same as a breathing baby in their polarized brains." - Dan Baker

[iammaybelove-blog]

Upper-limit Problem

I am feeling down and misdirected. I was putting all of these bad feelings towards my romantic relationship. Lately I’ve been seeing ugly sides of long-distance relationship. I’ve been feeling disappointed, frustrated and taken for granted. I’ve been thinking why I feel this way when in fact we have a good chemistry. We could’ve had not seen each other in person but I can feel the connection. I felt so loved and I felt that I have so much love to give. And then, this emotion just started telling me to end what we have because the good feeling has suddenly turned into discontent. Although, I was thinking I don’t want to be in this relationship anymore, I refuse to believe that ending it is the best possible solution. At one time, I was so decided to stop it, but I chose not to make drastic decision. I know there is more to this feeling bad than it is suppose to be. Then, I heard this one topic in Laurie-Anne King’s podcast, “upper-limit”. What is it? I didn’t know that such thing exists. I research about it and learning what it is, I diagnose myself to be experiencing that so called “self-imposed upper limits”. In one of the article I read entitled “Overcoming Your Upper-limits” by Gay Hendricks, he define what Upper-limit is. Here is some excerpt from his article. Each one of us has an inner thermostat setting that determines how much love, success and creativity we allow ourselves to enjoy. That thermostat setting usually gets programmed in early childhood. This holds us back from enjoying all the love, financial abundance and creativity that’s rightfully ours.

           This is exactly what hinders me to continually enjoy the good things that are happening to me. Be it in career, financial aspect and on my relationship. So now, I post myself a question, “How do I overcome this?” Now that I am aware that “upper-limit” is causing me all this confusion, what shall I do?

           According to the article by Gay Hendricks, the foundation under the upper-limit problem is a set of four hidden barriers. There barriers appear to be real but the truth is they are just based in fears and false belief about our own selves. So, here are the four hidden barriers.

No. 1 Feeling fundamentally flawed.

           The feeling that one is fundamentally flawed is some way an immense barrier to optimal experience. It brings with it a related fear: If you make a commitment to fully using your unique gifts, you might fail. This belief tells you to play it safe and stay small. That way, if you fail at least you fail small.

No. 2 Disloyalty and abandonment

           This barrier is the feeling that I cannot expand to my full success because it would cause me to end up alone, be disloyal to my roots and leave behind people from my past.

No. 3 Believing that more success makes you a bigger burden

           This barrier is the feeling that I cannot achieve my highest potential because I’d be an even greater burden than I am now.

No. 4 The crime of outshining

           The unconscious mantra of outshining barrier goes like this; I must not achieve my full success because if I did I would outshine someone and make him or her look or feel bad.

Out of these four barriers, I can relate more with number 1. Talking about flaws and insecurities, I would like to say that I am entitled to have that belittling and limiting feeling of insecurities.  A gist from my past, I grew up seeking for my father’s care and love, grew up in a family where I isolated myself thinking I am not part of it and that family could’ve been ideal without me. I’ve been into quite few failed relationships and had three kids with different dad. So growing up, I might have developed that upper-limit syndrome. I been trying to figure out what causes those failure and as harsh the reality could be, I think I am sabotaging my own happiness.

But good news is it’s never too late for me to change what was used to be. Getting myself into restorative state, I am now ready to take step to transcend my upper-limit and utilize the power I have within me. Now, there are five recognizable behaviors or actions I should watch out that limits me as follows: worrying, blame and criticism, deflection, arguments and sometimes getting ill. And best thing and the truth about the matter is I believe upper-limit problem is caused by the enemy. And I am never alone in facing this problem. I can actually ask God to battle with me in overcoming this thing. Below I will list verses in the bible to liberate me.

·         Worrying

Proverbs 3:5-6 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your path straight.

 Philippians 4:6-7 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God. And the peace of God, which transcend all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

·         Blame and criticism

1 Peter 3:10, “For whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit.”

When I blame someone or something or even myself it indicates that I have reached my upper limit and I must realize that by this act I am impeding positive energy to flow in my life.

·         Deflection

Song of Solomon 4:7 “You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you.”

 Psalms 139:14 “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”

 Deflection as defined in the dictionary is the act of diverting people’s attention or criticism away from something. In this case, I have the tendency to oppose or to be shy about any praise about what’s good about me. So, the practice is to learn to expand my ability to feel positive feelings, I must expand my tolerance for things going well in to my life. God sees me differently than how I see myself. I am fearfully and wonderfully made by Him. (Psalms 139:14)

 ·         Arguments

Proverbs 16:32 “Better a patient person than a warrior, one with self-control than one who takes the city.”

           Ecclesiastes 7:9 “Do not be easily provoked in your spirit for anger resides in the lap of fools.”

Arguments often are caused by two people racing to occupy the victim position in the relationship. Once the race for the victim position is under way, each person must find some way to out-victim the other, rather than find room for compromise.

In my case, I notice that I start to argue when I feel I’m in a victim position. That’s where I defend myself thinking I cannot be in that weak spot and it’s all about pride. At that moment I am more concern defending my right than being loving. And it happens, when I am upper-limiting myself. So next time, I have Ecclesiastes 7:9 to think about.

·         Sickness

Psalm 38:3 "Because of your anger, my whole body is sick. Because of my sin, I'm not healthy."

 There was a study associating physical illness with our emotional state. My body responds to the way I think, I feel and act. And it is true to me, headache strikes after I experience too much joy or love and would think they are too good to be true. This is another upper-limiting behavior and being aware of my thoughts and learning to diver it to something positive will improve my physical health.

By nature, I constantly search for ways to better myself by what I read, what I watch and what I experience. In my lifetime, I continually examine the consequences of my words, action and mistakes to recognize ways to deal with challenges with higher degree of understanding and wisdom. But my effort is futile without me recognizing that the only way I could end upper-limiting or whatever form of self-defeating thoughts and behaviors is by the liberating fact that I am not alone in the battle. God is with me. I am His daughter.

  Psalm 139:1-4” 1You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. 2You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. 3You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. 4Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely.”

Psalm 139:23-24 “23Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. 24See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.