#you were bullied in a nearly unimaginable way but you were also loved on a scale that is nearly incomprehensible

[1ddiscourseoftheday]

Liam was a boy, and then a man, who suffered so much trauma and pain. He was bullied as a child and then lived a nightmare that I think none of us can really imagine of having that triggering experience replicated on a literally global public scale. He became a man who inflicted trauma on others. He was an addict who was unable to find a way out of that disease, and now never will, but who was open and vulnerable about his struggles. He was an incredibly talented musician and artist and an absolutely integral part of one of the most important bands of a generation; his voice and songwriting and skill in the studio shaped every aspect of what One Direction became at their best. He loved that band and being a part of that experience with his whole being and would never have stopped celebrating what they meant to us and to the world. He had problems and did bad things; that doesn't mean he was a bad person who didn't deserve to be loved and helped to heal- everyone deserves that- and the fact that that's not something that can ever happen now is devastating. I was very distressed by many of his actions; and I cared deeply about this man I didn't know and wished for better for him than this outcome.

I'm so deeply, deeply SAD tonight. I'm sad for Liam, who will never now have the chance to look back on this hard time and reflect on how far he's come, and for Liam's family, for his parents and his sisters who loved and supported him so much, and for everyone in the 1D band family and circles. And I'm sad for us. It feels like nothing will ever be quite the same, and that's hard and sad and shocking. It's a special kind of doubled grief, to mourn the loss of the person, and also of what he meant to us in this strange world of parasocial fanning, for the real him and also for the version of him that we made up and attached so much meaning to and for the escape that brought us. For him, and also for the easy uncomplicated joy of listening to those beautiful songs from happier times, which might never feel the same again. For the other boys, who we love so much and wish we could shield from suffering and loss and pain. For our fellow fans, who we also worry about the impact of this on. Everything about this is terrible, and I am sending so much love out to all of you. We are not alone, and it's okay to feel complicated emotions and it's okay to mourn and it's okay to care about how it effects you and your life, whatever you're feeling- it's okay. We are here with you. We are 1D family.

[iheardarumorthings]

Umbrella Academy Season Three Thoughts

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

TW MENTIONS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT AND GORE

Okay, my friends! Let's get this show on the road! I woke up at about 5:40 this morning to watch this season and I finished it by about 1:30. So, what did I gain from this binge? We'll find out!

Let's start with the Sparrows...

We came into this thinking that they were going to be bullying our precious brellies throughout the entire season. However, most of them disappeared after episode three, I believe. There was almost nothing that was gained from that- it's almost at the point where they didn't really have to incorporate the Sparrows at all. There was no point!

The Ben arc was interesting, but not fascinating enough. I just feel as if it could've been executed much better; the creators are on point with almost everything in this show, it's just the execution that pisses me off.

Despite this, their interactions with the Umbrella Academy were most definitely not flat. However, I do believe this is because of the lack of loyalty both groups lack. This disappointed me considering the amount of growth everyone had underwent in season two; the only ones who did not regress in some way or another would be Luther, Diego, and Klaus.

Okay, now onto our babies

I AM IN LOVE WITH NEARLY EVERY ONE OF THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY MEMBERS.

The show really screwed the pooch with Allison this season, though. And while I understand that she has gone through unimaginable trauma and disappointment, I also understand that does not equate to her s**ually a**aulting Luther.

However, on that point, while I will never forgive her for that, I will also focus on another point: she used her rumor for that. Like she had said at some points in this season, Claire and Ray were the only things holding her together. They became her humanity, her hope. They were the people who had her stop using her rumor, for one reason or another. Without Claire, without Ray, all of that was gone.

BUT IT'S ALSO THE FACT THAT SHE HAD FELT SHAME FOR WHAT SHE HAD DONE THROUGHOUT THIS SEASON THAT GIVES ME HOPE THAT SHE WILL BE RECEIVING ANOTHER REDEMPTION ARC FOR SEASON FOUR (hopefully).

OKAY...off the topic of allison because my heart is hurting.

Klaus. Klaus Klaus Klaus Klaus Klaus you adorable child of mine, I love you to the moon and back. Forever. Please. He was absolutely WONDERFUL this season!!! One thing I love about Klaus, is that he almost never fails to attempt to find the best in people. This includes Sir Reginald Hargreeves, the old bastard who has hurt him in unforgivable ways. He tried to see the best in the new timeline, he tried to hold out hope for Ben and for Reginald. However, it backfired on him but that just makes me love him more. You know? He didn't deserve it. He placed his trust in them, and only one of them didn't totally f him up for it.

Diego, my good sir, as much as I love Lila's aesthetic, she definitely just put me off of my rocker this season. At some points I love her, at others, I despise her. I kinda feel like you do now.

One thing I loved about Diego this season was how he stepped up. Even after finding out that Stan wasn't his child, he didn't back down from finding the kid. He continued to look with the same amount of artier (i think that's how you spell that). He adored that child, just like he clearly does with Lila and the baby on the way. Despite some of his more questionable choices in the final episodes (i.e. quit locking Lila in closets, Diego, she'll kick your ass for it), those decisions still show how much he cares for his family. It shows how much he will always love them and that's why I adore this show. Nearly always, these characters will always have to trust one another, and they will always have each other's backs in some ways, if not all.

OKAY NOW ON TO THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: Luther's romance with Sloane.

My initial thought was that it was incredibly rushed. It was rushed, and it was a disgrace, and it shouldn't have happened and the show would've been better if it hadn't. BUT, now that I've given it a few hours, I am beginning to think differently. BEFORE Y'ALL COME AT ME HERE IS MY REASON WHY: it was not love. It was puppy love that was spawned out of pure, sexual attraction.

It was teenage-like.

Luther and Sloane are reliving what they never got to have- they get to start over. It's showing how they are kind of progressing. They are acting on their more adult urges. Puppy love doesn't spawn over time, it's just there like a snap of the fingers.

Luther and Sloane literally just got married acting on that puppy love, which is another reason why Ben and Five were making faces during the announcement.

I can guarantee you, nearly everyone, save for Klaus because let's not lie he is a pure angel, thought it was ridiculous. They were just in it to support their siblings and to let loose before everything went to shit...even though it kinda went to shit while they were letting loose. Thanks for that, Five, my darling, you really do know how to fuck shit up while you're drunk even if it wasn't your fault...baby. baby. love you five ❤❤❤❤

I JUST LOVED THIS ROMANCE BECAUSE IT KIND OF GAVE ME HOPE, YOU KNOW? LUTHER IS MOVING PAST HIS...WELL, PAST INCLUDING ALLISON WHICH IS A HUGE STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION BECAUSE HE IS KNOWN FOR NOT BEING ABLE TO LET THINGS GO

Along with this, it brought the family together. And the one part that couldn't be fixed, people ended up trying to mend in some ways or others. Allison just did not have a good season, but hats off to Emmy-Raver Lampman because her acting was phenomenal. Truly, despite me hating how they threw Allison's character arc out the window, you have to admit, Lampman killed it this season. And in every season, really, it just showed more this time.

SO, IN SHORT, I HATE WHAT THEY DID WITH ALLISON AND THE LACK OF BONDING THEY HAD IN THE LAST FEW EPISODES

The Ending

This is going to be a short section, but I'm going to spit out my thoughts here anyway because damnit they're worth sharing before I get to my precious husband *dolores who?*, five hargreeves <3

So, to get on with the point, the ending pissed me off due to one thing: the siblings went their seperate ways, including five who still looks like a child (yeah, people aren't going to be asking questions then. just because he's in a suit, does not mean he still doesn't look like...16 - because he does look a little older, ya know?)

These siblings who have fought so hard to be with one another, to keep each other and the world alive just split. Just like...that? That's it? That's all they got?

And I get it: they totally fell apart this season; from each other, from their ideals, from what they held true, even from themselves. BUT THEY HAVE FINALLY, PHYSICALLY LEFT ONE ANOTHER ON THEIR OWN ACCORD.

There was no goodbye. There was nothing.

Five and Viktor were the only two left, and I can't say that the look they shared was two-sided, because Five picked up his thoughts and just...left. That may symbolize the last fuck he gave. He never gave up on his family. That might've been his breaking point, especially after the shit he'd just seen his family pull. He can't really trust any of them anymore, can he? But, then again, that may be for his section (ALONG WITH VIKTOR'S WHO IS COMING UP RIGHT BEFORE HIS TEEHEE)

Viktor

First of all, I'm loving how he spells his name because...yes.

Another thing I would like to address is how they handled Viktor's coming out. I personally think they did it well! I really think, considering all the emotional stunting in that family, they handled it well and gave it a warm reception (by their standards).

Diego literally made sure that Viktor felt loved. HE ASKED. HE WAS LIKE LUTHER WANTS TO THROW YOU A PARTY SO YOU FEEL LOVED DO YOU FEEL LOVED?

AND THE LITTLE SMILE ON VIKTOR'S FACE JUST MADE MY DAY BECAUSE YES HE DESERVES ANY BIT OF HAPPINESS HE CAN GET.

Another thing is the lying. The betrayals. His talk with Five. Those were just... *chef's kiss, though i do not approve of betraying your family*

I think that Viktor's character did regress this season, but not by that much so I can forgive it.

Five

Five has always been a pretty damn consistent character, and I have always been consistently in love with him. That's it. That's the shpeel.

I JUST WISH THEY COULD LET HIM BE RETIRED AND HAPPY LIKE YOU COULD SEE THE DEFEAT ON HIS FACE WHEN HE REALIZED THE KUGELBLITZ WAS A KUGELBLITZ BECAUSE HE WAS JUST...DONE.

He was just done with it all. He didn't want to go through another bullshit few days for no thank yous and more blame placed on him and his actions that were only done to save his family.

Like seriously, this man deserves so much more appreciation.

Also, can we talk about the scene with Dolores? THAT WAS HILARIOUS YET SO SAD. Hilarious, because of Jayme's faces made throughout and the animation, but sad because of the same things. and a little more...

like, can you imagine that? he missed her so much. he loves that god damn coping mechanism of his.

also, on the topic of love, to mister five hargreeves himself... i won't try and kill you in your sleep. i promise. i'll love you forever and won't try to kill you in your sleep...date me?

LIKE IMAGINE SEEING YOUR WIFE AND THEN HAVING THE OTHER PERSON WATCHING YOUR LOVE (WHO HAPPENS TO BE A MANNEQUIN, QUIT JUDGING JAYME) AND HAVE THEM BE LIKE... ARE ALL OF YOU PERVS?

THE ANSWER TO THAT IS ALMOST ALL OF THEM IN THEIR OWN WAYS, BUT THAT WAS TOO FAR DUDE TOO TOO FAR

okay, i'm going to be talking a bit more about him in the next section!

Questions Raised by this Season and Some Answers that are Probably Wrong

So, let's talk about the tattoo and the arm...

Five got his tattoo and had his arm severed by that guardian samurai of the hotel oblivion created by sir asshat hargreeves. He gained his hand back after escaping the hotel...so does that cancel out 100 year old five? does that force him to not found the commission? does that make him...not the founder anymore?

because now, he's...normal. traumatized terribly, but no one but his family and himself knows that. there's nothing to hold on to except each other.

so, that poses my question...does the commission no longer exist? or does someone else found the organization?

OKAY ONE MORE QUESTION

how the hell are they going to get their powers back?

and the last, i promise, but probably second most important question is...what was the jennifer incident? and how did sparrow!ben survive it?

thank you for coming to my ted talk that took me over an hour to type up

[bnhaven]

A Potential ‘Hidden Quirk’ Idea

To begin: I am so sorry. Truly. I swore I’d be a writer of fluff, and yet here we are...again...whoops.

Anyways, let’s get on with it! 

So, if there’s one thing we love about our innocent cinnamon roll of a boy, aka Izuku “Deku” Midoriya, it’s that he’s willing to go beyond (plus ultra style) in order to save the day, even going so far as to break his bones to the point of disfiguration. Adrenaline helps him fight through the pain, and even then I’ve heard a lot of people talk about his insanely high pain tolerance.

Like, ridiculously high. I mean, the Overhaul fight??? Where Izuku just destroys himself so that Eri doesn’t Rewind him out of existence? Wild. It’s like, unimaginable. Even with the decade of bullying to get used to pain, it’s almost unreal for the green bean to be able to push through so much naturally.

Which is where I say: what if it wasn’t natural?

Look, some Quirks are probably hidden ones. Ones that you can’t immediately see, ones that aren’t emitter types. Quirks that just affect the wielder, not anyone else. Like Nedzu’s High Spec, for example. But what’s another Quirk that no one would be able to see?

One that negates pain. 

Now, I don’t think that Izuku would have always had this Quirk. I think it’s one that needed the right conditions to form. Like, let’s say...a really hard punch, something with an almost explosive force.

Lucky for Izuku, he has a classmate with a very painful Quirk, and a penchant for using it on those he deems weaker or lesser. Thus, when the bullying started, Izuku’s Quirk finally kicked in after one hit went too far.

The Issue: Nobody realizes that Izuku got his Quirk. Not even Izuku realizes it. Why? Well, Izuku thinks it’s just a high pain tolerance. He still feels Bakugou striking him, he just...doesn’t feel much else. He knows that he feels pressure, so he must have just gotten used to Bakugou’s hits. (And with all of the burn scars that Izuku is gaining, he wouldn’t be surprised if he’s lost some nerve endings due to the damage.)

And Izuku would definitely have burn scars in this AU (I’m not really sure if canon gives him said scars, I’ve done more reading for this fandom than watching, oops.) But no matter what happens in canon, this Izuku would have burn scars for one reason: Since Izuku doesn’t feel pain, he doesn’t cry out. Since he doesn’t cry out, Bakugou thinks his explosions aren’t strong enough to hurt...so the boy uses stronger blasts in an attempt to prove his ‘point’. (There is definitely an inferiority complex going on here, where Bakugou subconsciously worries that his Quirk is weak if ‘Quirkless Deku can stand there and take one of my hits without a single flinch’.) He pushes himself harder, lets more force into every controlled blast, etc.

So Izuku has no clue that he has a Quirk, Bakugou uses crazy amounts of explosions on the boy, neither realizing just how much damage is happening because Izuku can’t feel any pain.

Canon continues. The Sludge Villain stuff goes as usual, and All Might chooses Izuku as his successor just like always. The training montage from hell might actually be more self-destructive, not only because Izuku feels the need to catch up but also because he doesn’t feel so exhausted/sore. (Along with pain, the boy also doesn’t really feel when his muscles and body are sore, so he doesn’t realize he needs to take a breather.) But that isn’t the focus, so let’s move on!

The Entrance Exam occurs, and wow that really should have clued someone in. Because Izuku breaks his limbs for Uraraka and when he hits the ground, instead of dragging himself away he tries to stand up. He actually manages to find a 3-pointer, and breaks two more of his fingers by flicking in its direction, destroying it with a gust of air before he collapses to the ground.

But wow, everyone is just like ‘this boy is wild’ before completely forgetting about how they heard his bones crunching with every step. 

Continue on. 

Quirk Apprehension Test? Izuku doesn’t really get why Aizawa is complaining about how he shatters himself. Like, he doesn’t need to stop just because his arm is apparently broken. It’s fine, he can still use it. Still, he settles on breaking a single finger because he can’t risk expulsion, and he definitely doesn’t have the courage to talk back to a teacher. 

Hero v. Villain Fight? Izuku doesn’t even collapse after the final blast, instead walking off without batting an eyelash. Iida ends up corralling him to Recovery Girl’s room, because first Izuku protested having to leave without getting to watch the other teams, then he got distracted by the school and nearly got lost.

USJ? Izuku goes a little more feral, fun times.

Sports Festival? Oh honey you know things are going to get wild here. Broken bones left and right, yeehaw it’s shatter city baby!

Izuku ends up with even less self-preservation with every passing problem, basically. Since the boy can’t feel pain, he assumes that any injury that he does get isn’t that bad. After all, wouldn’t he be crying and, you know, hurting if it was bad? Izuku knows what pain feels like, and this isn’t it!!

It’s only the realization that breaking bones so often could end his career early that causes Izuku to try new approaches to the whole Quirk-using situation. Even then, the boy has no sense of when to stop, and as such pushes himself to the point of passing out from either exhaustion or blood loss multiple times.

-One such time was after getting impaled. The boy didn’t realize he had a broken pole halfway through his back until Kaminari screamed and passed out from seeing Izuku bleeding, a giant rod jabbing out of him. Izuku tried to shrug it off.

Sometime around the impalation incident, people begin to notice that Izuku has a freaky high pain tolerance. 

But nobody really connects the dots until Bakugou goes too far in training.

The bad news: his opponent loses a limb.

The good news: It is Shouji, and it’s one of the regrowable ones.

The bad news: the following dialogue occurs after school…

Bakugou: What the fuck? But that’s barely anything!

Aizawa: Bakugou. That explosion had enough force to sever your classmate’s hand off of his limb due to how you directed it. You should know to limit yourself by now.

Bakugou: But I was! That one is so weak that even Deku can walk away without flinching! 

Aizawa: There is no way that Midoriya would be able to move on without needing medical attention after a hit that bad.

Bakugou: He has.

Aizawa: ...I beg your pardon?

Bakugou: Deku fucking has! How do you think I learned my limits, huh? Deku has taken a hit like that directly to the chest and didn’t even flinch! I know how weak I am!

Needless to say, Aizawa proceeds to lose his absolute shit. He makes Izuku stay after class the next day, and questions him about whether or not Bakugou has ever used his Quirk on him. 

Izuku, a boy who is unafraid of breaking three limbs to save a girl from a giant robot, but who is terrified of teachers most of the time, cracks without too much pressure. He admits that Bakugou has used his Quirk on Izuku for years, but ‘It wasn’t bad, sensei! They were like love taps, I never even felt a thing!’

And Aizawa knows something is wrong with this, something isn’t adding up because if Shouji lost a limb to Bakugou’s hit, Izuku has to be lying...or there’s another factor in this equation.

Aizawa dismisses Izuku, and spends the night trying to figure it out.

And then he does.

The next day, he makes Bakugou and Izuku stay in the classroom during lunch. He questions them on their past. Bakugou complains about how ‘weak’ he’s always been, Izuku brushes past the concern without much thought because it never hurt, and sure there were markings but-

Aizawa: Markings?

The scars are revealed. Well, the ones on his upper body.

This is when Bakugou begins to realize that he’s fucked up.

During training, Aizawa pulls Bakugou and Izuku off to work with him separately. He

brings out machines that test how much force a blow gives off, and has Bakugou throw his ‘weak’ explosions at them.

As it turns out, Izuku should have been in crippling pain from everything Bakugou did. And then Aizawa drops the ‘I think you have a pain-related Quirk’ on Izuku, and yeah.

I didn’t really plan an end, sorry. I just think it’d be interesting, you know?

On the bright side, at least Izuku isn’t constantly in pain!!! He just got his body a whole lot more damaged than he would have, and has maybe half of the self-preservation that his canon counterpart possesses.

Finally, for an extra bit: Izuku only feels pain when Aizawa erases his Quirk. It’s not pleasant. (And, to make him even more oblivious, Izuku believes that the pain is because his Quirk is being ‘severed’ in its connection, not that this is lingering pain that comes from having bones shattered over and over without hesitation.)

[turquoisemagpie]

Do you know what’s worth fighting for,
 When it’s not worth dying for?

I wear a chain around my neck. It’s not that obvious as I keep it tucked away when engaged in a mission; I don’t want it getting damaged or lost. ‘Saving the world’ can be exhausting at times, painful most of those times, and at the end of each mission I take I wonder why I carry on doing this to myself. The bullet answers that wonder all the time. Any given break I get, I take the time to take a look at it. 

I got the bullet on the day I was taken away. I was 9 years old. A week before I was taken away my mother’s body was finally found after 2 months searching for her when she went missing. My father went to the crime scene with the police, and when he came back he quickly packed our things and we left the house, never to come back to it. At the time he never explained to me why we left, or why everywhere we went that he looked over his shoulder ever now and then, or why I was never to answer any phone calls we got to any of the apartments we moved too and fro from. 6 days into leaving the house I asked him what was going on. He pulled out a piece of paper and drew a symbol. 

 I recognised the symbol. From 5 years old, people in white coats started coming to our house; just a day after I had punched a bully in school and got him badly hurt somehow. On their first visit they asked me if I felt more ’special’ than the other kids. My mother interrupted before I could answer them, telling the people in the white coats to leave and never come back. They left, but they came back. Once every month. Every visit my mother and father were nervous around them, but whenever the white coats started talking to me or tried to get close to me, my parents would stop them. They were odd people, I thought. And on their coats they wore this symbol. 

My father said that same symbol was carved into the flesh of my mother’s belly.  

He told me to never trust them if they would ever approach me when I was alone. I asked him what they wanted with me. He didn’t answer. 

On the 7 day, they came. My father heard their grey vans pull up on the street outside the apartment we were staying in. He grabbed me away from the window and grabbed our already packed bags. But it was too late; the main stairway and the fire exit stairway was already packed with armoured soldiers in grey. We were cornered inside the apartment, left only to wait for the shouting and heavy boot steps to get closer and closer. My father took this time to hug me close, apologise for everything 30 times over, and telling me he loved me 50 times over. 

Something welled up inside me. I knew we were in big trouble; if we weren’t going to be killed, then we’d be hurt very badly, for reasons that had everything to do with me. I felt responsible for it all. I wasn’t going to cower from it. I parted from my father and stood in front of him as the soldiers burst through the doors. 

10 bullets were fired. 5 of them entered my father’s torso, 3 of them ruptured the aorta of his heart, killing him within seconds. 4 of them went into the wall of the apartment. 1 of them, I caught with my hand. I reached out feebly as the bullets were fired, thinking that would stop us getting hit. I didn’t know what to expect, I didn’t expect anything. Except death. Then I felt it hit the palm of my outstretched hand and I clasped as the sensation hit me. My eyes were closed and I was too scared to open them for fear of seeing a gruesome hole in my hand. But when the bullets finally stopped and the room went silent, I peeked. 

My hand seemed fine, white and pulled at the skin from squeezing my fist so hard, but still in one piece. In the few strange seconds of nothing, when the soldiers lowered their guns and stared at me, when my father’s body slowly slumped over to the floor, I opened my hand to see what had happened to the bullet I caught. It was a copper colour, and very shiny, it would otherwise have been a very well polished bullet. But there, in my tiny 9 year old hand, it was crumpled and twisted, the outline of my tiny chubby fingers indented in the metal. 

That’s when it hit me. That’s when all the questions I had been asking nearly all my life had suddenly been answered. 

This brass nugget of metal, that was only a few seconds ago a bullet aimed to pierce through my flesh, was the reason these soldiers had shown up in the first place. It was why we had regular visits from the people in white coats, who kept asking me how my day at school was. It was why my mother had always pulled me close to her when people gave us mean looks as we walked down the street. It was why my father kept himself at a yard’s distance from me when I threw a tantrum. It was why I was fed medicine and antibiotics, instead of being given injections. It was why I didn’t feel much pain when the bullies threw rocks and brick pieces at me. And it was why the soldier fired straight at me in order to only kill my father. 

I was a very special child, and the men in white coats wanted what I had.

I reached for my father. I don’t know whether it was the instant acknowledgement and fear of being taken away, or whether it was the absolute certainty that my father was definitely dead, either way I was screaming for him, crying my eyes out, grabbing at his shirt and pulling at for any sign that he was still alive. The soldiers had to pick me up, and I kicked and screamed the whole time they carried me out of the apartment. As soon as we were out they rushed me into one of their grey vans, where a white coat was waiting for me. They sat me down in a seat and strapped my arms and legs down in thin metal clamps, but I broke through them easily. They had to hold me down themselves, two men on each of my limbs. The white coat approached me by my head. She had a soft voice, she hushed at me, yelling me calmly and quietly that everything would be ok. Then she strapped the silicone mask to my mouth and nose. Everything went blurry after that. 

I spent 11 years in the white coat’s facility. They did the usual stuff you’d expect a secret evil testing facility would do; severely beating subjects when they disobey, drugging subjects, keeping subjects confined in small quarters, no personal possessions, set meal times, lights out and wake up calls, setting up exercises and tasks for subjects to complete, success was awarded with very little and mistakes were punished severely. For me, their exercises and tasks involved pushing me to my fitness and physique’s limits. They were pleased with how quickly I learnt and how tolerable I was to pain; they enjoyed zapping me with electric probes when I least expected it, just to see what I’d do. 

One day I had had a bad night’s sleep, the food was cold and very little, and the task observer had laughed a little too hard when I was zapped for the 5th time. I’d had enough. I left, as easy as that; they trained me up enough for it to be as easy as it was.

They chased me for a good 5 months, but I managed to stay ahead every time. I ran them in circles in every city we ran through and eventually, like threading a thread through a maze of wooden pegs, they got tangled and couldn’t move any further to catch up with me. They seemed to have accepted their loss and I haven’t seen them since. 

Somehow, throughout everything, I still managed to keep the crushed bullet with me. The white coats never took it off me, I don’t even think they knew or cared that I had it. Which is good really, because the bullet means a lot to me. It’s bittersweet, the meaning behind it. The bullet symbolises the moment I knew I had a power that could change the world; it also symbolised the only bullet out of the many that I managed to stop before it hit my father. It symbolises how ineffective I was to save a life, I had unimaginable power and strength but I still couldn’t save the one life that mattered to me. 

I don’t intend to ever let that happen again. I keep this bullet with me everywhere I go, looped around a chain on my neck. 

Any given break I get, I take the time to take a look at it, and make sure the memories come flooding back to remind me why I’m doing this.

[r0sequarks]

Dumbledore is totally not a Gryffindor and I spent an hour writing an essay about it because i am a giant nerd so check under the cut if you want to read my really well thought out conspiracy theory 

Dumbledore is not a Gryffindor. While he does have courage and bravery, so does he he value hard work and loyalty, and is intelligent and witty - having the traits does not define being part of a house, as seen by Hermione Granger being the smartest witch of her age but still a Gryffindor - no, it is what drives you, and what is at the core of your being, and Dumbledore shows no signs of being driven by bravery. While he does frequently fight, he prefers to take a more passive role, manipulating others into fighting for him, acting as a leader over others. Throughout the series, he takes the role of a chessmaster, placing Harry so that he can develop as the means to kill Voldemort, even though theoretically it may be within Dumbledore's means to slay the man himself. Above all else, he is not brave, but smart - and not smart in a studious manner, but 'street smart', although he certainly is well-learned. His primary intelligence lies in manipulation, in resourcefulness, leadership, cunning, ambition. Albus Dumbledore is undoubtedly a Slytherin based on his actions, which leads to the question - why does his Chocolate Frog card say he is in Gryffindor.

Dumbledore is undoubtedly in a position of power, especially within Hogwarts. At the time we discover he was allegedly in Gryffindor, he has been headmaster for twenty years, and has been teaching at Hogwarts for over seventy. He is one of the most well known and respected wizards, and one of the older, and given that two world wars and one wizarding war have passed since he was at Hogwarts, it is likely few remain who remember his actually attending the school. It is well within his means to change records, and to claim that he was in Gryffindor, and unlikely anyone would say otherwise, as his house in school is ultimately a minor matter for anyone who doesn't currently attend Hogwarts. From there comes the question of why - why would Dumbledore lie about his house? Well, from there, we look to none other than Dolores Umbridge.

Dolores Umbridge is the most hated character in the entire series. Everyone despises her. When faced with the question of who is worse - Voldemort, who is trying to commit genocide, and Umbridge, who while incredibly abusive is not a murderer, most need a moment to think about it. That's because evil on the scale of Voldemort is difficult to comprehend, while a bad teacher and abuse are something most everyone can understand and relate to. It is hard to know what to do, against massive evil - it is the minor evils that draw our attention. When we focus on systemic oppression, most often we focus on acts, and even better, individuals. So, to draw the focus on to a group like the Death Eaters, it can be easier to use a smaller, more relateable target - like school bullies. There is a mental association commonly present that Slytherin is Evil, and Gryffindor good - that Slytherin are junior Death Eaters. This connects simple school bullies to the massive, unimaginable evil - and draws the students, especially Gryffindor students, in to the mindset of child soldiers early on.

This also has the opposite effect - framing Slytherin students as evil gets rid of their chance to escape their families, and furthers the push of these students in to the ranks of the Death Eaters. If this was done purposefully, then Dumbledore must have willingly been able to sacrifice the minds and even the lives of children, to turn other children in to soldiers, all in an attempt to bring down Voldemort. This Machiavellian scheme seems unfitting to a man who plays the role of kind mentor, and who impresses the point of the power of love, but it is not without more prescient canonical evidence. Dumbledore leaves the young Harry with his Aunt and Uncle, despite the fact he could quite easily place him anywhere without question. Following that, he repeatedly sends Harry back to live with them, even knowing that it is an incredibly abusive environment. The argument can be made for the protective spell - but Hogwarts is just as protected. Dumbledore made the choice, to send Harry back instead of keeping him in Hogwarts, because he believed that it was necessary. Dumbledore has been shown to put the greater good over the safety of a child, and so these actions fit entirely within precedent.

It is of course possible that none of this is true - that he was a Gryffindor, that the Slutherin/Gryffindor divide is perfectly natural, and that there was no master plan. After all, we only truly see Dumbledore late in life, and the hat sees the present, not the future. Manipulation can be learned, and bravery and courage can take way to reason, especially over a century. The theory is based on the fact that DUmbledore was a Slytherin in his school years, after all, and not that he is one now. It all comes down to one phrase - the greater good.

Inscribed on the gates of Nurmengard, the prison which Gellert Grindelwald built and later inhabited, is the phrase, for the greater good. It is a phrase which defines Grindelwald's philosophy - to do evil for the greater good of the world - and one which Dumbledore himself coined. The Dumbledore we see glimpses of in an early life is decidedly even more of a Slytherin than the modern man, because he is defined by his ambition. While some say it is the fault of his infatuation with Grindelwald, Dumbledore readily plans out an attempt to overthrow the Wizarding World and form a benevolent dictatorship over the world - admittedly, for the greater good. This is an undeniable sign of his Slytherin nature, and provides even more evidence for the cover up - Dumbledore doesn't want anyone to know that he was friends with Grindelwald, how close he became to being a dark lord himself, as it would discredit him as the savior of the wizarding world and as a mentor to Harry. The friendship is one of Dumbledore's best kept secrets, as shown by the book Skeeter released following his death, revealing their relationship, something that few of Dumbledore's allies were able to believe, and that Harry only bought given evidence. The life and lies indeed.

Slytherin becomes Gryffindor, and the history books of the modern age become much cleaner - the grand hero who defeated Grindelwald was not his friend, and it is Gryffindors who save the day against the evils of Slytherin. Dumbledore, ever the Slytherin, is nothing but not resourceful. The lie protects him, forges Gryffindor in to a receptacle of young soldiers to be in the war, and even gives cover for his spies in the Death Eaters. The view of Slytherin as evil becomes effectively true - not by any inherent nature, but because people fill the roles in which they have been cast. Continuing on with this belief does nothing but further Dumbledore's manipulations of events.

Dumbledore is not the villain - and the revelation that he was a Slytherin, and the extent of his manipulations, doesn't change that fact. But, then again, neither is he the hero. The problems that are faced in the series are, inevitably, his fault - and it is only through him that they are fixed. This simplifies things, and removes the extent of certain actors agencies, but it is not entirely inaccurate. The similarities between Tom Riddle and Harry Potter extend well beyond sharing part of a soul. They are both orphans, raised in abusive muggle environments, who suddenly find themselves to be wizards. While it is not stated, it is most likely that Riddle was not sent back to the orphanage over the summer - in fact, given his in depth knowledge of the castle and its secrets, it's probable he stayed at Hogwarts for these vacations. What makes Riddle a villain is not, as what can be claimed, that he was a child of rape, but that he was someone with no power who quite suddenly became one of the most powerful in the world. With nothing to grant him humility, his arrogance grew, leading to his seeking more power, through the Horcruxes. It is not to say that Harry would have gone the same road - but it so easily could be. In the end, Harry is a pureblood, and he is a very wealthy one at that. He has immense power, and as they say - power corrupts. There are two factors that are the most prevelant at seperating Harry from power - the fact he lives with the Dursleys, and the fact he is a Gryffindor. The Dursleys, through their abuse, remind Harry of suffering, of what it is like to not be on top, something key in the development of empathy. And the reason he stressed that he wasn't a Slytherin? Because Slytherin is evil, and Gryffindor good.

That is not to say that without Dumbledore, Harry would have turned in to a second Voldemort. That is an unreasonable extreme. More likely, however, is that he would have turned in to a second James. James Potter was, ultimately, a good person, but he was also an arrogant bully, and it was only trying to win the love of Lily Evans that reversed that. A Harry more like James may have died at Voldemort's hands, too self confident, or not nearly as versed in the powers of love. Or, perhaps, he could have defeated Voldemort, but become corrupted by the power and fame. This isn't an apocalyptic ending, but it's an ending that ensures the status quo remains in place, whereas the Harry that we know, given that power and attention, is undoubtedly trying to change and fix the world.

Is it worth it? Is it worth putting a child through such pain, to better ensure his survival when he is pit against a genocidal maniac, and ultimately, to change the world? It is not something a Gryffindor would ever be able to do. But, the world needs Slytherins for a reason - for the Greater Good.

[mallyvu]

Harvey Weinstein Is My Monster Too

By Salma Hayek

Dec. 12, 2017

Harvey Weinstein was a passionate cinephile, a risk taker, a patron of talent in film, a loving father and a monster. For years, he was my monster.

This fall, I was approached by reporters, through different sources, including my dear friend Ashley Judd, to speak about an episode in my life that, although painful, I thought I had made peace with.

I had brainwashed myself into thinking that it was over and that I had survived; I hid from the responsibility to speak out with the excuse that enough people were already involved in shining a light on my monster. I didn’t consider my voice important, nor did I think it would make a difference.

In reality, I was trying to save myself the challenge of explaining several things to my loved ones: Why, when I had casually mentioned that I had been bullied like many others by Harvey, I had excluded a couple of details. And why, for so many years, we have been cordial to a man who hurt me so deeply. I had been proud of my capacity for forgiveness, but the mere fact that I was ashamed to describe the details of what I had forgiven made me wonder if that chapter of my life had really been resolved.

When so many women came forward to describe what Harvey had done to them, I had to confront my cowardice and humbly accept that my story, as important as it was to me, was nothing but a drop in an ocean of sorrow and confusion. I felt that by now nobody would care about my pain — maybe this was an effect of the many times I was told, especially by Harvey, that I was nobody.

We are finally becoming conscious of a vice that has been socially accepted and has insulted and humiliated millions of girls like me, for in every woman there is a girl. I am inspired by those who had the courage to speak out, especially in a society that elected a president who has been accused of sexual harassment and assault by more than a dozen women and whom we have all heard make a statement about how a man in power can do anything he wants to women.

Well, not anymore.

In the 14 years that I stumbled from schoolgirl to Mexican soap star to an extra in a few American films to catching a couple of lucky breaks in “Desperado” and “Fools Rush In,” Harvey Weinstein had become the wizard of a new wave of cinema that took original content into the mainstream. At the same time, it was unimaginable for a Mexican actress to aspire to a place in Hollywood. And even though I had proven them wrong, I was still a nobody.

One of the forces that gave me the determination to pursue my career was the story of Frida Kahlo, who in the golden age of the Mexican muralists would do small intimate paintings that everybody looked down on. She had the courage to express herself while disregarding skepticism. My greatest ambition was to tell her story. It became my mission to portray the life of this extraordinary artist and to show my native Mexico in a way that combated stereotypes.

The Weinstein empire, which was then Miramax, had become synonymous with quality, sophistication and risk taking — a haven for artists who were complex and defiant. It was everything that Frida was to me and everything I aspired to be.

I had started a journey to produce the film with a different company, but I fought to get it back to take it to Harvey.

I knew him a little bit through my relationship with the director Robert Rodriguez and the producer Elizabeth Avellan, who was then his wife, with whom I had done several films and who had taken me under their wing. All I knew of Harvey at the time was that he had a remarkable intellect, he was a loyal friend and a family man.

Knowing what I know now, I wonder if it wasn’t my friendship with them — and Quentin Tarantino and George Clooney — that saved me from being raped.

The deal we made initially was that Harvey would pay for the rights of work I had already developed. As an actress, I would be paid the minimum Screen Actors Guild scale plus 10 percent. As a producer, I would receive a credit that would not yet be defined, but no payment, which was not that rare for a female producer in the ’90s. He also demanded a signed deal for me to do several other films with Miramax, which I thought would cement my status as a leading lady.

I did not care about the money; I was so excited to work with him and that company. In my naïveté, I thought my dream had come true. He had validated the last 14 years of my life. He had taken a chance on me — a nobody. He had said yes.

Little did I know it would become my turn to say no.

No to opening the door to him at all hours of the night, hotel after hotel, location after location, where he would show up unexpectedly, including one location where I was doing a movie he wasn’t even involved with.

No to me taking a shower with him.

No to letting him watch me take a shower.

No to letting him give me a massage.

No to letting a naked friend of his give me a massage.

No to letting him give me oral sex.

No to my getting naked with another woman.

No, no, no, no, no …

And with every refusal came Harvey’s Machiavellian rage.

I don’t think he hated anything more than the word “no.” The absurdity of his demands went from getting a furious call in the middle of the night asking me to fire my agent for a fight he was having with him about a different movie with a different client to physically dragging me out of the opening gala of the Venice Film Festival, which was in honor of “Frida,” so I could hang out at his private party with him and some women I thought were models but I was told later were high-priced prostitutes.

The range of his persuasion tactics went from sweet-talking me to that one time when, in an attack of fury, he said the terrifying words, “I will kill you, don’t think I can’t.”

When he was finally convinced that I was not going to earn the movie the way he had expected, he told me he had offered my role and my script with my years of research to another actress.

In his eyes, I was not an artist. I wasn’t even a person. I was a thing: not a nobody, but a body.

At that point, I had to resort to using lawyers, not by pursuing a sexual harassment case, but by claiming “bad faith,” as I had worked so hard on a movie that he was not intending to make or sell back to me. I tried to get it out of his company.

He claimed that my name as an actress was not big enough and that I was incompetent as a producer, but to clear himself legally, as I understood it, he gave me a list of impossible tasks with a tight deadline:

1. Get a rewrite of the script, with no additional payment.

2. Raise $10 million to finance the film.

3. Attach an A-list director.

4. Cast four of the smaller roles with prominent actors.

Much to everyone’s amazement, not least my own, I delivered, thanks to a phalanx of angels who came to my rescue, including Edward Norton, who beautifully rewrote the script several times and appallingly never got credit, and my friend Margaret Perenchio, a first-time producer, who put up the money. The brilliant Julie Taymor agreed to direct, and from then on she became my rock. For the other roles, I recruited my friends Antonio Banderas, Edward Norton and my dear Ashley Judd. To this day, I don’t know how I convinced Geoffrey Rush, whom I barely knew at the time.

Now Harvey Weinstein was not only rejected but also about to do a movie he did not want to do.

Ironically, once we started filming, the sexual harassment stopped but the rage escalated. We paid the price for standing up to him nearly every day of shooting. Once, in an interview he said Julie and I were the biggest ball busters he had ever encountered, which we took as a compliment.

Halfway through shooting, Harvey turned up on set and complained about Frida’s “unibrow.” He insisted that I eliminate the limp and berated my performance. Then he asked everyone in the room to step out except for me. He told me that the only thing I had going for me was my sex appeal and that there was none of that in this movie. So he told me he was going to shut down the film because no one would want to see me in that role.

It was soul crushing because, I confess, lost in the fog of a sort of Stockholm syndrome, I wanted him to see me as an artist: not only as a capable actress but also as somebody who could identify a compelling story and had the vision to tell it in an original way.

I was hoping he would acknowledge me as a producer, who on top of delivering his list of demands shepherded the script and obtained the permits to use the paintings. I had negotiated with the Mexican government, and with whomever I had to, to get locations that had never been given to anyone in the past — including Frida Kahlo’s houses and the murals of Kahlo’s husband, Diego Rivera, among others.

But all of this seemed to have no value. The only thing he noticed was that I was not sexy in the movie. He made me doubt if I was any good as an actress, but he never succeeded in making me think that the film was not worth making.

He offered me one option to continue. He would let me finish the film if I agreed to do a sex scene with another woman. And he demanded full-frontal nudity.

He had been constantly asking for more skin, for more sex. Once before, Julie Taymor got him to settle for a tango ending in a kiss instead of the lovemaking scene he wanted us to shoot between the character Tina Modotti, played by Ashley Judd, and Frida.

But this time, it was clear to me he would never let me finish this movie without him having his fantasy one way or another. There was no room for negotiation.

I had to say yes. By now so many years of my life had gone into this film. We were about five weeks into shooting, and I had convinced so many talented people to participate. How could I let their magnificent work go to waste?

I had asked for so many favors, I felt an immense pressure to deliver and a deep sense of gratitude for all those who did believe in me and followed me into this madness. So I agreed to do the senseless scene.

I arrived on the set the day we were to shoot the scene that I believed would save the movie. And for the first and last time in my career, I had a nervous breakdown: My body began to shake uncontrollably, my breath was short and I began to cry and cry, unable to stop, as if I were throwing up tears.

Since those around me had no knowledge of my history of Harvey, they were very surprised by my struggle that morning. It was not because I would be naked with another woman. It was because I would be naked with her for Harvey Weinstein. But I could not tell them then.

My mind understood that I had to do it, but my body wouldn’t stop crying and convulsing. At that point, I started throwing up while a set frozen still waited to shoot. I had to take a tranquilizer, which eventually stopped the crying but made the vomiting worse. As you can imagine, this was not sexy, but it was the only way I could get through the scene.

By the time the filming of the movie was over, I was so emotionally distraught that I had to distance myself during the postproduction.

When Harvey saw the cut film, he said it was not good enough for a theatrical release and that he would send it straight to video.

This time Julie had to fight him without me and got him to agree to release the film in one movie theater in New York if we tested it to an audience and we scored at least an 80.

Less than 10 percent of films achieve that score on a first screening.

I didn’t go to the test. I anxiously awaited to receive the news. The film scored 85.

... Read the rest at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/13/opinion/contributors/salma-hayek-harvey-weinstein.html

[cutur1]

Have you ever wondered which dogs are considered today’s “world’s most dangerous dogs?” Do you want to read about the most dangerous dogs on the planet? Every dog has the capacity to cause unimaginable hurt and danger, but certain breeds are more prone to have negative reactions and even death if they are not properly trained.

Observing outbursts and suspicious behavior might be beneficial to a dog parent. Practically every breed may break a negative habit with the right training. Nonetheless, we must be aware of the dangers and responsibilities that come with owning a dog. Here’s all you need to know about the most dangerous dog breeds.

1. Caucasian Shepherd dog

Caucasian Shepherds, also known as Caucasian Ovcharkas, are a huge breed that can weigh up to 200 pounds. That weight alone can be difficult for someone who is unfamiliar with such massive creatures. However, with the right training, this dog could blossom into a wonderful companion. An adult male’s life expectancy is 10-12 years.

2. Pit Bull

This breed is created by combining the excitement and agility of terriers with the body structure and strength of a bulldog. Some experts believe that the increased number of Pit Bull attacks is due to the species’ growing popularity. They have been bred for fighting throughout history and are frequently abused or mistreated. If properly looked for, this intelligence breed may be quite pleasant and playful.

3. German Shepherd

German Shepherds have been around for over a century and are among the world’s most beloved dogs. They began out as service dogs and are now extensively used by military and police enforcement professionals. According to the CDC, German Shepherds thrive on defending the people they care about.

4. Rottweiler

Rottweilers are powerful dogs that were once used to pull carts and guard homes. This canine breed is known for its viciousness. These dogs are one of the first agricultural animals to be employed for herding. Many people believe the species is intelligent, active, and requires a lot of care and exercise. If these goods aren’t present, Rottweilers can get hostile.

5. Alaskan Malamute

They are powerful pack animals that require tight training and strong leadership. Many people believe that if the breed isn’t properly maintained, it will become confused, charge at humans, and possibly become dangerous. They have a great desire to hunt prey, thus they should be maintained properly! Another important factor is that they learn at a slow pace, requiring a lot of patience during training!

6. Kangal

The Kangal dog is a Mastiff breed that is large and powerful enough to defend against predators such as wolves and bears. It’s a large sheepdog descended from Turkestan. Depending on its habitat and treatment, this breed can be a family’s watchful eye or their worst nightmare.

7. Siberian Husky

A Siberian Husky puppy may resemble a cuddly stuffed animal toy, but as the breed matures, it transforms into a large and protective ball of energy that is nearly always eager to play. These four-legged buddies are outgoing creatures who want to please you unless you rub them the wrong way. This breed belongs to the Spitz genetic family.

8. Belgian Malinois

The Belgian Malinois, sometimes known as the Belgian Shepherd, is a thin and adaptable breed of dog. Because of its ability to adapt to any climate, the breed creates excellent hunting dogs. It should come as no surprise that because this bright and energetic dog is involved in hunting, he could turn dangerous.

9. Doberman Pinschers

The Doberman Pinscher, sometimes known as the Doberman, is a medium-sized domestic dog breed that was first found in 1890 by German tax collector Karl Friedrich Louis Dobermann. Doberman Pinschers have a reputation for being sensitive, compassionate, and protective of the children they were raised with. This companion is strong and energetic, making it an excellent family security dog. Their excessive activity and protectiveness, on the other hand, can be problematic at times.

10. Chow Chow

It’s easy to forget that the Chow Chow has a dangerous reputation because of its name. However, beneath their fluffy coat, these dogs have lion-like mouths. This breed is known in China as “Songshi Quan,” which translates to “Puffy Lion Dog,” according to The Chow Chow Club. Its origins are in East Asia.

11. Boxer

The Boxer is a medium to the large short-haired dog breed that originated in Germany. The stature of boxers does not correspond to their personalities. They’re smart, quiet, and reasonably simple to train. These lively and loyal critters are pleasant to children and other dogs. If they aren’t properly trained, though, they will typically waste their time attacking small fluffy animals.

12. Akita Inu

The Akita is a big dog breed that evolved in the hilly regions of northern Japan. The Akita Inu may appear calm and collected at first glance, yet beneath its massive coat and the curled tail is a huge, heavy dog. When it comes to their favorite humans, the Akita Inu is friendly and gentle, but not so much with strangers or other animals.

13. Perro de Presa canario

The “Canary Island Catch Dog,” or Perro de Presa Canario, was used to direct livestock or scare away and remove predators back in the day. Training and socialization are now required for this dangerous beast. If they feel threatened, these canines can surely pack a punch with their large paws and muscular bodies.

14. Fila Brasileiro

The Brazilian Mastiff, also known as the Fila Brasileiro, is a large working dog that originated in Brazil. It’s known for its exceptional tracking abilities, ferocity, and harsh, impetuous personality. For an experienced dog owner or someone who is physically capable of handling a large animal, the Fila Brasileiro can be a fantastic pet. They are often aggressive creatures with a sturdy and boisterous demeanor who can become aggressive towards strangers or anyone who threatens them.

15. Great Dane

It’s not a small horse, but rather a Great Dane. When it comes to children, the enormous breed is often gentle and patient. From shoulder to ground, they can reach a maximum height of 32 inches. Great Danes can be taller than most people standing on their hind legs, according to the American Kennel Club.

16. American Bulldog

The American Bulldog, which was originally bred for guarding, difficult farm work, and combat, has a stellar reputation. If raised in a loving and caring environment, they can be kind, friendly, and loyal. If they are not raised with direction and care, they can become temperamental.

17. Saint Bernard

According to the American Kennel Club, Saint Bernards are one of the most popular dog breeds in the world. These huge dogs are native to the Swiss Alps and are recognized for their ability to do snow rescues in subzero temperatures. While this breed is normally intelligent and kind, if it is not properly socialized, it can become vicious.

18. Basenji

The Basenji is a 5,000-year-old breed of dog. Since then, they’ve need constant stimulation. Because they are unable to bark, these mammals are known as “barkless dogs.” Instead, they converse by yodeling. It makes understanding what the animal is trying to convey more challenging, which could be a problem.

19. Gull Dong

The Gull Dong is the result of crossing a Gull Terrier and a Bully Kutta. These were the first to be crossed in colonial India. The Gull Dong breed has a lengthy history of aggression. According to Inside Dogs World, this breed is not suitable for homes with other dogs, small animals, or young children. This difficult-to-train puppy, which may weigh anywhere from 90 to 140 pounds, will take a lot of time and effort.

20. Boerboel

via cutur1

[howardschatzphotography]

On Seeing: A Journal - #259 June 12th, 2018

"Above & Beyond with Adam Gopnik”

Adam Gopnik is a Renaissance Man’s Renaissance Man. A long-time staff writer at The New Yorker, he is an essayist, a critic, a playwright, a novelist, an author of children’s books…in short, the epitome of the enlightened human. I read his writing avidly, and, a few weeks ago, invited him to our studio to participate in my project “ABOVE and BEYOND.” A three-time winner of the National Magazine Award, Gopnik has amazingly broad knowledge of many areas, including: Art and art history, culture, politics, music, even sports. His first essay in The New Yorker, "Quattrocento Baseball," appeared in May of 1986, and he served as the magazine’s art critic from 1987 to 1995. During our interview, he spoke in perfectly structured, literate English, as clear and precise as his written words. Here are some of Gopnik’s thoughts that I found especially compelling from our interview: HS: So prolific, I wonder how you organize your life. When do you write? When do you read? When do you think? When do you go to museums, see friends, have a life? You must have some efficiently organized method in order to produce as much as you do. AG: I have a very standard routine. I start drinking strong coffee early in the morning. I go off to my little study and I write for four hours. I have many sisters, one of them a distinguished psychologist, and she says that you can only do creative work intently for four hours at a stretch. So, I do four hours from nine til one, every day. I try not to do anything else. I’m just there to write. I do it in a way that makes it maximally uncomfortable for anyone else who intrudes on me, because I can only write if I’m playing extremely loud rock music from my high school years: Jethro Tull; Eric Clapton with Derek & The Dominos, that great Layla album; Jimi Hendrix; all of that music. HS:  You play this music, and loudly, as you write? AG: I can’t think if I don’t have the music, that’s the funny thing. I also overheat terribly as I’m writing, so I have to keep the windows open in the middle of winter. I’ve had a series of wonderful assistants just coming out of college, and they’re sort of excited about the job. You know, “I’m going to be a writer’s assistant and see the elegance of a New Yorker writer’s life," and instead it’s just a little man, four hours a day, in a brutally cold room with incredibly loud music playing, and that’s their experience. So, they’d retreat into the hallway and spend the time talking with my wife.

HS:  Where and how do you think your work has had greatest impact given the political and cultural bias of The New Yorker? AG: Writing for The New Yorker, which is a traditionally liberal magazine, of course you ask yourself a question, "what am I really affecting here?" because I’m writing to people who agree with me in advance. But, if you look at the greatest political editorialists who have ever lived, Albert Camus, for instance, they were writing themed journals that were directed to people who were inclined to agree with them in the first place. What we do, I think, as citizens, writing, is not so much to change minds as to bear witness. What you want to say is not, “here’s an argument that will convince you of the opposite of what you believe already, but here’s the kind of argument you ought to be making to the people who don’t agree with you." HS: We live in a time with a bully in the White House. And, yet, despite the mean-spirited and hypocritical behavior, there are still thirty to forty percent of Americans… AG: Who love him. HS: And my question on changing people’s minds comes from something you wrote in your wonderful book, "At the Strangers’ Gate," that was astounding. I’d like to read it and perhaps you can comment on it: "No one really surrenders an illusion in the face of a fact. We prefer the illusion to the fact. The more  facts you invoke, in fact, the stronger the illusion becomes. All faith is immune to all facts to the contrary, or else we would not have such hearty faiths and such oft-resisted facts. If your faith is in life’s poetry, as ours was, a tiny room inadequate by any human standard and designed to make life borderline impossible looks appealing. The less possible it becomes the more beautiful the illusion looks. Such illusions – call them delusions; I won’t argue now – grow under the pressure of absurdity, as champagne grapes sweeten under the stress of cold ground." AG: Yes, I think that’s true. I mean, I was writing specifically there about the reality that when Martha, my then girlfriend, now wife for many years, and I moved to New York, we were enraptured with an idea of poetry, a kind of metropolitan poetry. And, the apartment we moved into was 9x11 basement room overrun by cockroaches in which there was about as little poetry as you could expect to find in the world. But, we weren’t disillusioned by it. We simply doubled-down on the myths that we were self-creating, and I think that’s generally true. You know, no one is ever argued out of a religious faith by contrary facts. No one is every argued out of a political ideology. That’s the problem we’re faced with: You can’t resist a figure like Trump by appealing to the facts, by saying he lies all the time, because the people who admire him like the fact that he lies all the time. The lies, in a certain way, are appealing to them because it gives them license to indulge their own fantasies. In other words, if somebody tells you three million people voted illegally in California, it’s an outright, absurd lie. But, that an authority figure says it gives you a right to believe in it. If your question is what do you do then, when you have a leader who is completely allergic to facts and who appeals to an audience that’s resistant to facts, I think the answer is that you can’t fantasize that you’re going to convert those folks. What happens is that you get new generations who just don’t buy it. If you think about the great social changes, the great positive social changes of our time, they tend not to happen because you have people who are entrenched in a bigoted or old-fashioned reactionary position who are converted. What tends to happen, is the young generations who come along simply don’t enlist in the bigotry.

HS: I’d like to talk about the natural history of creativity, its life-cycle. There’s sort of an apex, a fertile period of creativity, then a downturn. Recently, I heard Dylan say when asked about his seminal work of 50 years ago, "Who writes like that?!" Probably everybody’s curve is different and maybe some people have a second curve. Do you have any thoughts about that? AG: I think that any honest, creative person is bound to confess that when one looks at other artists and creative people, you tend to see that they have a high period and then a falling off period. Bob Dylan is a remarkable character, but there’s no question that the Dylan between 1966 and 1974, between Blonde on Blonde and Blood on the Tracks is the Dylan who we’ll remember. Paul McCartney is a musician of limitless melodic invention, but the McCartney we’ll remember is between 1965 and 1969. So, there’s a lot be said for the idea that artists ought to retire in a way that fighters ought to retire before they get punch-drunk and lazy-legged and all the rest of it. However, what I do think is true is that even if you accept that all creativity is cyclical and has a falling off point, there’s still an enormous value in artists persisting, because artists don’t just give us the gift of their products, they give us the gift of their example. Dylan 2018 is not writing songs the way Dylan 1968 did, but it’s wonderful to see him continuing to stand up there with his croaky voice and his little mustache bearing witness to what it is to have been Bob Dylan. HS: Do some artists have two periods of great work? AG: Yes, I think they do. Matisse did unimaginably beautiful work between 1905 and 1920; went on doing interesting, not nearly as profound work and then, suddenly, as an old man changed his medium, started using scissors instead of a paint brush and, once again, did utterly sublime work. De Kooning, another artist who had a great late blooming. Philip Roth, to take a name that doesn’t seem to sit with de Kooning and Matisse, maybe, at first, through sheer dint and intelligence continued to blaze new kinds of witness, new kinds of writing, in part, because he had the enormously smart idea that he should write about what it was like when he was young again. Instead of trying to bear witness again and again to the new world, he wrote very much about New York in the 1940s. I don’t think silence is a good answer for an artist, even if an artist is aware that it’s a general rule that you do your best work at a particular moment; the work that people will remember most. HS: What are your thoughts on the larger issues of the day, especially fake news and how, in a way, it threatens our democracy? AG: Fake news is one of those things that has managed, through the mendacious spin of a very mendacious man, to totally reverse meaning. When fake news was first talked about people meant actually manufactured fraudulent stories that were being passed around on the internet, very often to the benefit of Donald Trump. He turned it around to make it an accusation at people who were actually doing real news: CNN, The New York Times and so on, who do their work in the same flawed and imperfect way that we all do our work, but who genuinely are trying to report the world as it is. It’s Trump, the man who speaks loudest about fake news, who is the most culpable of spreading fake news… “three million people voted illegally, I had the biggest crowd," and on and on and on. So, I don’t feel fake news is as big a problem as the people crying about fake news. In other words, it’s when the governing class decides to demoralize the population by telling them they can’t believe anything that they’re being told. That’s when you get the crisis. I’m not worried about fake news. I’m worried about fake politicians.

[buddaimond]

Harvey Weinstein was a passionate cinephile, a risk taker, a patron of talent in film, a loving father and a monster.

For years, he was my monster.

This fall, I was approached by reporters, through different sources, including my dear friend Ashley Judd, to speak about an episode in my life that, although painful, I thought I had made peace with.

I had brainwashed myself into thinking that it was over and that I had survived; I hid from the responsibility to speak out with the excuse that enough people were already involved in shining a light on my monster. I didn’t consider my voice important, nor did I think it would make a difference.

In reality, I was trying to save myself the challenge of explaining several things to my loved ones: Why, when I had casually mentioned that I had been bullied like many others by Harvey, I had excluded a couple of details. And why, for so many years, we have been cordial to a man who hurt me so deeply. I had been proud of my capacity for forgiveness, but the mere fact that I was ashamed to describe the details of what I had forgiven made me wonder if that chapter of my life had really been resolved.

When so many women came forward to describe what Harvey had done to them, I had to confront my cowardice and humbly accept that my story, as important as it was to me, was nothing but a drop in an ocean of sorrow and confusion. I felt that by now nobody would care about my pain — maybe this was an effect of the many times I was told, especially by Harvey, that I was nobody.

We are finally becoming conscious of a vice that has been socially accepted and has insulted and humiliated millions of girls like me, for in every woman there is a girl. I am inspired by those who had the courage to speak out, especially in a society that elected a president who has been accused of sexual harassment and assault by more than a dozen women and whom we have all heard make a statement about how a man in power can do anything he wants to women.

Well, not anymore.

In the 14 years that I stumbled from schoolgirl to Mexican soap star to an extra in a few American films to catching a couple of lucky breaks in “Desperado” and “Fools Rush In,” Harvey Weinstein had become the wizard of a new wave of cinema that took original content into the mainstream. At the same time, it was unimaginable for a Mexican actress to aspire to a place in Hollywood. And even though I had proven them wrong, I was still a nobody.

One of the forces that gave me the determination to pursue my career was the story of Frida Kahlo, who in the golden age of the Mexican muralists would do small intimate paintings that everybody looked down on. She had the courage to express herself while disregarding skepticism. My greatest ambition was to tell her story. It became my mission to portray the life of this extraordinary artist and to show my native Mexico in a way that combated stereotypes.

The Weinstein empire, which was then Miramax, had become synonymous with quality, sophistication and risk taking — a haven for artists who were complex and defiant. It was everything that Frida was to me and everything I aspired to be.

I had started a journey to produce the film with a different company, but I fought to get it back to take it to Harvey.

I knew him a little bit through my relationship with the director Robert Rodriguez and the producer Elizabeth Avellan, who was then his wife, with whom I had done several films and who had taken me under their wing. All I knew of Harvey at the time was that he had a remarkable intellect, he was a loyal friend and a family man.

Knowing what I know now, I wonder if it wasn’t my friendship with them — and Quentin Tarantino and George Clooney — that saved me from being raped.

The deal we made initially was that Harvey would pay for the rights of work I had already developed. As an actress, I would be paid the minimum Screen Actors Guild scale plus 10 percent. As a producer, I would receive a credit that would not yet be defined, but no payment, which was not that rare for a female producer in the ’90s. He also demanded a signed deal for me to do several other films with Miramax, which I thought would cement my status as a leading lady.

I did not care about the money; I was so excited to work with him and that company. In my naïveté, I thought my dream had come true. He had validated the last 14 years of my life. He had taken a chance on me — a nobody. He had said yes.

Little did I know it would become my turn to say no.

No to opening the door to him at all hours of the night, hotel after hotel, location after location, where he would show up unexpectedly, including one location where I was doing a movie he wasn’t even involved with.

No to me taking a shower with him.

No to letting him watch me take a shower.

No to letting him give me a massage.

No to letting a naked friend of his give me a massage.

No to letting him give me oral sex.

No to my getting naked with another woman.

No, no, no, no, no …

And with every refusal came Harvey’s Machiavellian rage.

I don’t think he hated anything more than the word “no.” The absurdity of his demands went from getting a furious call in the middle of the night asking me to fire my agent for a fight he was having with him about a different movie with a different client to physically dragging me out of the opening gala of the Venice Film Festival, which was in honor of “Frida,” so I could hang out at his private party with him and some women I thought were models but I was told later were high-priced prostitutes.

The range of his persuasion tactics went from sweet-talking me to that one time when, in an attack of fury, he said the terrifying words, “I will kill you, don’t think I can’t.”

When he was finally convinced that I was not going to earn the movie the way he had expected, he told me he had offered my role and my script with my years of research to another actress.

In his eyes, I was not an artist. I wasn’t even a person. I was a thing: not a nobody, but a body.

At that point, I had to resort to using lawyers, not by pursuing a sexual harassment case, but by claiming “bad faith,” as I had worked so hard on a movie that he was not intending to make or sell back to me. I tried to get it out of his company.

He claimed that my name as an actress was not big enough and that I was incompetent as a producer, but to clear himself legally, as I understood it, he gave me a list of impossible tasks with a tight deadline:

1. Get a rewrite of the script, with no additional payment.

2. Raise $10 million to finance the film.

3. Attach an A-list director.

4. Cast four of the smaller roles with prominent actors.

Much to everyone’s amazement, not least my own, I delivered, thanks to a phalanx of angels who came to my rescue, including Edward Norton, who beautifully rewrote the script several times and appallingly never got credit, and my friend Margaret Perenchio, a first-time producer, who put up the money. The brilliant Julie Taymor agreed to direct, and from then on she became my rock. For the other roles, I recruited my friends Antonio Banderas, Edward Norton and my dear Ashley Judd. To this day, I don’t know how I convinced Geoffrey Rush, whom I barely knew at the time.

Now Harvey Weinstein was not only rejected but also about to do a movie he did not want to do.

Ironically, once we started filming, the sexual harassment stopped but the rage escalated. We paid the price for standing up to him nearly every day of shooting. Once, in an interview he said Julie and I were the biggest ball busters he had ever encountered, which we took as a compliment.

Halfway through shooting, Harvey turned up on set and complained about Frida’s “unibrow.” He insisted that I eliminate the limp and berated my performance. Then he asked everyone in the room to step out except for me. He told me that the only thing I had going for me was my sex appeal and that there was none of that in this movie. So he told me he was going to shut down the film because no one would want to see me in that role.

It was soul crushing because, I confess, lost in the fog of a sort of Stockholm syndrome, I wanted him to see me as an artist: not only as a capable actress but also as somebody who could identify a compelling story and had the vision to tell it in an original way.

I was hoping he would acknowledge me as a producer, who on top of delivering his list of demands shepherded the script and obtained the permits to use the paintings. I had negotiated with the Mexican government, and with whomever I had to, to get locations that had never been given to anyone in the past — including Frida Kahlo’s houses and the murals of Kahlo’s husband, Diego Rivera, among others.

But all of this seemed to have no value. The only thing he noticed was that I was not sexy in the movie. He made me doubt if I was any good as an actress, but he never succeeded in making me think that the film was not worth making.

He offered me one option to continue. He would let me finish the film if I agreed to do a sex scene with another woman. And he demanded full-frontal nudity.

He had been constantly asking for more skin, for more sex. Once before, Julie Taymor got him to settle for a tango ending in a kiss instead of the lovemaking scene he wanted us to shoot between the character Tina Modotti, played by Ashley Judd, and Frida.

But this time, it was clear to me he would never let me finish this movie without him having his fantasy one way or another. There was no room for negotiation.

I had to say yes. By now so many years of my life had gone into this film. We were about five weeks into shooting, and I had convinced so many talented people to participate. How could I let their magnificent work go to waste?

I had asked for so many favors, I felt an immense pressure to deliver and a deep sense of gratitude for all those who did believe in me and followed me into this madness. So I agreed to do the senseless scene.

I arrived on the set the day we were to shoot the scene that I believed would save the movie. And for the first and last time in my career, I had a nervous breakdown: My body began to shake uncontrollably, my breath was short and I began to cry and cry, unable to stop, as if I were throwing up tears.

Since those around me had no knowledge of my history of Harvey, they were very surprised by my struggle that morning. It was not because I would be naked with another woman. It was because I would be naked with her for Harvey Weinstein. But I could not tell them then.

My mind understood that I had to do it, but my body wouldn’t stop crying and convulsing. At that point, I started throwing up while a set frozen still waited to shoot. I had to take a tranquilizer, which eventually stopped the crying but made the vomiting worse. As you can imagine, this was not sexy, but it was the only way I could get through the scene.

By the time the filming of the movie was over, I was so emotionally distraught that I had to distance myself during the postproduction.

When Harvey saw the cut film, he said it was not good enough for a theatrical release and that he would send it straight to video.

This time Julie had to fight him without me and got him to agree to release the film in one movie theater in New York if we tested it to an audience and we scored at least an 80.

Less than 10 percent of films achieve that score on a first screening.

I didn’t go to the test. I anxiously awaited to receive the news. The film scored 85.

And again, I heard Harvey raged. In the lobby of a theater after the screening, he screamed at Julie. He balled up one of the scorecards and threw it at her. It bounced off her nose. Her partner, the film’s composer Elliot Goldenthal, stepped in, and Harvey physically threatened him.

Once he calmed down, I found the strength to call Harvey to ask him also to open the movie in a theater in Los Angeles, which made a total of two theaters. And without much ado, he gave me that. I have to say sometimes he was kind, fun and witty — and that was part of the problem: You just never knew which Harvey you were going to get.

Months later, in October 2002, this film, about my hero and inspiration — this Mexican artist who never truly got acknowledged in her time with her limp and her unibrow, this film that Harvey never wanted to do, gave him a box office success that no one could have predicted, and despite his lack of support, added six Academy Award nominations to his collection, including best actress.

Even though “Frida” eventually won him two Oscars, I still didn’t see any joy. He never offered me a starring role in a movie again. The films that I was obliged to do under my original deal with Miramax were all minor supporting roles.

Years later, when I ran into him at an event, he pulled me aside and told me he had stopped smoking and he had had a heart attack. He said he’d fallen in love and married Georgina Chapman, and that he was a changed man. Finally, he said to me: “You did well with ‘Frida’; we did a beautiful movie.”

I believed him. Harvey would never know how much those words meant to me. He also would never know how much he hurt me. I never showed Harvey how terrified I was of him. When I saw him socially, I’d smile and try to remember the good things about him, telling myself that I went to war and I won.

But why do so many of us, as female artists, have to go to war to tell our stories when we have so much to offer? Why do we have to fight tooth and nail to maintain our dignity?

I think it is because we, as women, have been devalued artistically to an indecent state, to the point where the film industry stopped making an effort to find out what female audiences wanted to see and what stories we wanted to tell.

According to a recent study, between 2007 and 2016, only 4 percent of directors were female and 80 percent of those got the chance to make only one film. In 2016, another study found, only 27 percent of words spoken in the biggest movies were spoken by women. And people wonder why you didn’t hear our voices sooner. I think the statistics are self-explanatory — our voices are not welcome.

Until there is equality in our industry, with men and women having the same value in every aspect of it, our community will continue to be a fertile ground for predators.

I am grateful for everyone who is listening to our experiences. I hope that adding my voice to the chorus of those who are finally speaking out will shed light on why it is so difficult, and why so many of us have waited so long. Men sexually harassed because they could. Women are talking today because, in this new era, we finally can.

[splintersfeelings]

When I arrived in Hong Kong this January...(May 2017)

I set four goals for myself. They were:

1. Practice more Cantonese.

2. Learn more about the city that my parents grew up in.

3. Understand my cultural heritage as a 2nd generation Chinese/HK-American.

And –

4. Post confusing, self-referential meta-humor on social media that only Josh Barwell will fully appreciate.

Four months later, I’ve only managed to get about “halfway” through each one of these goals (although I’d say I’m closest to accomplishing 4. I got him to concede the self-referentiality of one of my post, despite the fact that he claims to have been “waiting for a hilarious punchline" until the bitter end, whereupon he was left sorely disappointed).

Reflection:

1. I wanted to practice more Cantonese. The intro Cantonese class seemed trivial to me, yet the intermediate class was far too difficult (an inability to fit myself into existing categories came to be a reoccurring theme during my time in Hong Kong). That was in addition to the awkward scheduling, since the class was the credit-equivalent of two full classes. There weren’t many situations where I was forced to speak Cantonese because so many Hong Kongers speak such good English. Even when I wanted to speak in Cantonese, locals would recognize how bad my Cantonese was and would immediately switch to Mandarin without prompting. However, I did get a lot better at buying things (especially food, I can order food with reasonable comfort and I can make my way around Taipo market). I also got to listen to a lot of Cantonese. The most practice I got was in my cultural studies class on nationalism (which was conducted in Cantonese with English lecture slides) and in my brief conversations with the cleaning lady (yesterday she inquired about my recipe for baked eggplant, which I clumsily provided).

2. I wanted to learn more about the city my parents grew up in. But when I arrived, I realized that such a city no longer exists. It’s been several decades since my parents left, and the Hong Kong of the present is radically different than the one that preceded it. Hong Kong has changed from a British colony to a part of the People’s Republic of China (a fact that has permeated my own life, having been born just two weeks before the handover). And with new political organizations come new forms of culture and economy. Nearly everyone in the Hong Kong speaks Mandarin now for the sake of business, which would have been unimaginable in my parents' time. The literal shape of the land has been changed by land reclamation, the coastline being extended by several kilometers in some places in response to soaring real estate prices. The housing crisis has been especially hard on the working class, who are forced to spend a huge proportion of their income on cramped housing.

3. I wanted to learn more about my cultural heritage. But I didn’t end up learning much about my cultural heritage that I didn’t already know before my exchange. I ate dim sum, I listened to Cantonese, I visited relatives. What I gained instead was a better understanding of what I am not. I remember (naively) thinking four months ago that I was “coming back” to Hong Kong, returning to a home that I had never known. In hindsight, I visited merely as a tourist. The Hong Kong in my head was a memory of a memory, a simulacrum of an island that no longer existed, a city of ghosts (in multiple sense of the word). It was faithfully recorded and transmitted to me via the stories of my parents, stories that so captivated me when I was growing up. But as a (purportedly wise) man once said of a different island: “What’s past is prologue.”

I learned that in America I’ll always be ethnically Chinese, and that in Hong Kong I’ll always be American-born. I’m invisible until the moment I'm asked to open my mouth, whereupon whoever is forced to bear witness to the language I speak can peer into my soul and find unintelligibility. Not white, not “mainland,” not local. I'm the curator of Cantonese cuisine for my white friends, the expert on American culture at the English tutoring center, my mother’s son at family gatherings. I’m not at peace with that yet, but I’m a step closer. I’ll let my dislocation guide my critique. In the coming years, I’ll be examining the cultural objects that are presented to me and determine what prevents the world from becoming a better place. Maybe along the way, I'll find my own space to inhabit.

4. The post in question that earned such high praise from my dear friend was my analysis of bullying, which unfortunately lacked a hilarious one-liner doubling as closing statement. Your feedback has not gone unnoticed Mr. Barwell, and will be considered in future posts. Additional shout-out to the rest of the people who tolerate my obnoxious, self-indulgent rants, or who have spoken to me online or in-person the past few months (I would tag, but I know I'll miss someone if I try to remember so I'll let you all figure it out yourselves). I don’t know why you guys keep me around after all this time, but I appreciate it. Super-special commendations to the Discord fam (you know who you are) for letting me pit them against each other in glorious 5v5 battle on Summoner’s Rift purely for the sake of my own entertainment. The only thing I love more than the sound of my own voice is the sweet, sweet sound of your collective voices screaming at each other in comms.

Now, I suppose, is the time where I wrap this all up. There’s a simple moral to this story which concisely summarizes everything of value that can be gained from reading this post:

When you are abroad, make sure to set more than four goals – it increases the odds that you succeed on at least one of them.

[colanah]

Dream Diary: Entry 3

Of Flowers, M.A.S.H., Dragons and Dinosaurs

The dream began viewing myself asleep on the ratty leather sofa from the home in which I grew up. That’s often a sign to me that the dream will contain stressful elements since home means safety. It’s a reoccurring pattern in most of the dreams I’ve had all my life.

I was sleeping, likely taking a nap while my family went about various activities at home. Mama was cooking, I think my little brother was playing a video game nearby on one of the armchairs. I couldn’t see my eldest brother but sensed he was home as was my little sister.  From

From viewing myself, I drew closer and closer to my own body until passing into it and like the curtains of a stage parting wide, I saw darkness give way to a lovely illumination.

Flowers & Dragons:

It was a wide, impossibly gorgeous field beneath a crystal clear sky dotted with a few clouds. A picturesque scene made all the more surreal because of a battle being waged in the center.  Men in armor of chain and helmets were battling monsters and what looked to be a thick root of a knotted vine thick and tall as a sequoia. It was a budding, I knew that. Or the man nearby was saying ‘they’re fighting a bud.

I don’t know where he came from but it’s a dream. These things happen.

Soon enough, I found myself entering a kingdom right out of a fantasy novel.  Colorful rooftops, intriguing peasantry and somehow,  I was nabbed to join the fighters. It turns out that they needed able-bodied individuals and were glad to have t he stories of a stranger.  I’m not sure how they figured I was competent enough to fight but they did.

Among the Knights of this realm was a red haired woman who wore the color blue. An elf who looked like Legolas’ cousin. It turns out he was a representative of a silver dragon in the realm but rather controversial as once, his dragon had been gold before his Flowering.  There were other knights. A dark haired man who wore white and red like a Templar, an older gent in green and white and me, dubbed the Lady of Dusk.

Through the dream, I learned the history fo that realm. That the people had lived peacefully until a star fall which brought the first buds from heaven like a calamity.  Since then, creatures had appeared, as much plant as an animal, some vaguely human but all murderous.  The realms had found these beasts and beings difficult to combat but in nearly all places, a Champion had arisen or arrived, gifted with seemingly impossible abilities that let them face those foes.

The elf was a curiosity because of his dragon friend, a spirit or creature, which had changed colors and temperament after the buds fell.  Where once the golden dragon of his town (I hate that I can never remember the names of things from the dreams) had been aloof but benevolent, this silver version wished to battle and his people feared for its life.

The strange man who’d mentioned the bud to me initially recited this history of sorts. It seems he was the only person trying to document everything happening while others felt it better to fight and survive.  The buds came from spores of large flowering grottos but if they fell on a creature, it was possible the animal would mutate and warp.  “What the people don’t know, is that the budded creatures and their champions are one in the same. Each knight you see passed through a flower.  The buds are seeds, undeveloped and wild. Most plants will create an environment to bloom safely.  The (unrecallable name) flower fashions a nest of vines and once the inside is safe, its flowers change colors and do naught but bloom and bloom and bloom.  The poor things they’re fighting ran into those vines so they’re fighting to keep the center safe. Our Knights passed through the center of such nests I bet.  They encountered the safer flowers and gained powers, but not a one will say where or how.”

M.A.S.H. Up

After his explanation, I went to the castle with the others because some horror was coming and the towering structure was the safest place to be. Inside, it was like a cathedral, full of high stairs and dark secret corners. Here, I ran into Hawkeye and Radar.  Radar had been asked what the phrase ‘those idiots’ meant and in his nervous way, he explained it meant the officers.When pressed by Burns as to who taught him that word, Radar sheepishly pointed the finger to Hawkeye.

Well, that just pissed off the officers in question, Burns and Houlihan. As a punishment upped Hawkeye’s rank. He was now an Officer’s Officer and heaped with all kinds of responsibilities which being Hawkeye, he hated. Hated and tried desperately to sabotage to stick it to the man.

Yes, I’m aware he had at least a rudimentary respect for some rules and was an officer himself, but it’s a dream. Where’s logic in those?

Well, that dream segment ended when Hawkeye was sabotaging a test for the new recruits by making the questions into a cipher that had the answers built into them!  Houlihan, of course, caught on and was going to bust him when The Beast broke through the outer walls and both M.A.S.H. officers....who were also Knights, had to race out to help fight it.

It was around this point that wakefulness started edging in and a sleepy dream me was being told it was time to go to the mall to pick up an outfit. My little brother was feeding his pet brontosaurus which had mistaken my braids for leaves and we were trying to get my hair untangled from its teeth.  Somehow, the creature was huge and yet small enough to fit in a split level home.

We left him at home since he said he wanted to play his game to beat the next level as well as keep the dinosaur company.  We arrived at the mall at night and of course, things were closed.  That’s when I met The Bitch.

Divas and Opera Day:

The mall wasn’t simply the usual storied encapsulation of businesses, but also a kind of entertainment venue built in. Today was Opera day and each store within had a theme for Phantom of the Opera. Marble twisting staircases, crystal chandeliers, candelabras and stone pillars were more a feature of this high-class store than plain escalators and foam mannequins.

As I said though, the mall was closed. Just then, a pretty young Korean woman approached the guard and through a combination of flirting and low-grade bullying, managed to get my family inside to shop. We hit a high-class plus-sized boutique and the owner, another fabulously dressed Korean woman, said they were closed.

Well, the diva who had decided to help us, again used her skills to get the store opened and my mother and me inside where a young Latin woman was working and offered to help. Diva and store owner were elsewhere and the Diva kept trying to reassure my mother that the bill would be covered since she added my name to some documents that...sounded suspiciously like forgery to me.

Typically, I scoff at high end Plus Size stores since they rarely have anything in my style. And this was no different. Matronly blouses, plain skirts, and tops with unimaginative designs. Tents and drapery. Nothing embroidered, batiked or with a hint of pixie flare.

It took ages to find even a handful of outfits that looked passable and when we purchased them, it was the manager herself who rung us up. she was being unusually nice and from the smile on the Diva’s face,  I got the feeling some flim-flam had taken place.  Once our items were purchased, the Diva turned into a rude and snippy thing at the owner, causing the poor woman to look on the verge of tears.

My Southern can’t abide rudeness so with a glare to the newly dubbed Bitch, I apologized and we all departed to get some food. Downstairs, the mall was getting ready to open f or the day.  Dancers and actors in costume paraded around to practice miniature acts to entertain customers who began to arrive.  We went to a small bar and grill to eat. That’s when waking really began to intrude in the form of thirst and basic necessities.  I’d excused myself from an argument with the Bitch about why she couldn’t just use my name to get stuff, to grab a drink and...that’s when I woke up.

[shaneestumbler]

This Year's Cake: How's That For the Icing On the Birthday Cake?

When I look back and saw all that I gave even when I had so, so little to a person who did not care or appreciate my efforts- I was never good enough- it makes me wonder how I’d be with someone who reciprocated. One day when I have more than so little to give to someone who cares, how special would that be? To love someone who also loved me… Since I had so much to give even when I had nothing, giving my all was just the standard. I wondered how much more and how much more beautiful and lovely it would be to have someone who loves, cares, and appreciates me. I know that what little I had was not enough for you- it was never good enough- but it makes me yearn for something better, more loving and true. For a true love, happily I will wait as I could never anticipate another sustained abuse pro-bono service relationship that added me up to nothing, hardly adequate, and not good enough to be loved causing much more damage than good. So unbearable was I to you that all the love I gave you- you reproved, you even had proof; my painful scars and unhealed wounds. The testimony of my heart you used to prove just how unlovable I was, especially to you. Everyone I ever loved and surely you were no exception all had a mouthful of cruelty to spew and batter me with word’s weapons. I cannot say they didn’t hurt as words are one’s best weapon, they conquer and destroy a man to teach him kind of love’s best lesson. You beat me. I hope you are happy that you win. You beat me hard and you beat me down, and down I went without a sound. I know too well what it feels like going down without a fight to go down without a fight and have nothing to show but a losing plight and as I’m down on the ground grasping for my last ounce of dignity and gasping for my last breath of self respect you show for me no remorse and for any ounce or last desperate breath another dagger you would dig it even deeper in my chest. You sure showed me that I was not good enough and certainly not meant to be roughed up, though you blame me for the battery and abuse I do recognize that you just need an excuse. Beaten to a bloody pulp and left for nearly dead were the reasons you gave for an apology that is still left unsaid. You used the bruises and the physical violence to make me suffer into subservience and silence. Physical violence and domestic abuse are all the examples you used as reproof to reprove all that I am, all of the love, and all of everything that I had to give. You sure showed me what you thought I’d deserve as you exclaimed what I should expect as for what you had in store, you sure showed me that you really had it out for me. The unimaginable and unbearable pain you inflicted upon me to use such excrutiating examples of physical abuse, obediently standing there face-to-face I looked at you with love in my eyes and a smile on my face, to stand I stood and I took more, and endured even more torment in the torrent of another argument, another one of your emotionally battering upheavals; to suffer through the undescribable pain of another hurtful tirade; not far from what they call “emotional rape”. Such a low blow ever did you strike, you took your best shot and you got me real good, but to make sure you didn’t miss your shot with a bullet deadset on me two wasn’t enough so you went for round three. It was not the first strike you took out on me, and harder with a vengeance they came more frequently, it seemed as though the job would never be done when all I asked was for an apology. But how dare I have the audacity to expect a long past due apology. Not able to comprehend is the one who condescends to throw me under the bus is where you had to go and throw me again for such a suggestion. Belittling, berating, condescending, comparing and degrating me with dead-end arguments that never went anywhere, you had to show me that you owe me nothing. So maybe I had to learn the hard way but learn very well I did indeed the difference between what you said and did to me. This is how I came to know your love, and just how much I meant to you. Though the world was everything that you meant to me and everything is all I ever had to give so freely for all of the love given not only was it left unrequitted but you admitted I deserved the acts of physical violence and used them against me to justify another excuse for your unrelenting verbal abuse. As if to say, well everybody beats you up and even your own mom abused you see, it’s because you deserve it. Why else would you be subjected to physical violence and domestic abuse. See, you deserve it and there is the proof. Unimaginable and unbearable was the pain I suffered through from those kind of remarks. After a while and the sooner you realize that the person is a bully the better so you can distance yourself, ignore, and try your very very best not to let them get to you anymore. From that I did learn that the worst things can happen to even the best people. The day I decided to walk away was one of the happiest days of my life. From the outside it may not have looked so pretty. I broke up with him the day before my birthday because I want this year to be one of the best years of my life and my relationship was not going to get any better than that. For all the smiles I had to muster and for trying as hard as I could with every fiber in my body to not let it hurt an ache inside of me so painful that no words could ever shake the raw tenderness of the bloodshed of my 10 times over battered black and blue broken heart that was pulled out of my chest only to be stamped on all over again and again and again through the verbal, psychological, and emotional abuse with every fiber of my body, mind, and, soul did it take me to withstand it quietly as I smiled and nodded my head as if he was doing me some great service. For all the things I did not and could not say for the past 10 months at the brunt of such massive displays of disrespect and cruelty I saved it for my one liner in which I told him that “all I want for my Birthday is for you to get the fuck out of my life!!! For once and for all!!!” (In a text message). So I believe I take the cake this year, it would only be fair considering it was all I wanted for my birthday. As for my wish, I only wish to help others in situations similar to mine that may not be able to escape the silent prison that emotional/psychological abuse is. I got to celebrate my birthday in my own way, happy as could be to be able to live my life free from abuse of any kind. I cannot express the gratitude within my heart that is bursting with thankfulness to be free of that. I see how close I came to not being so lucky as that was just the very beginning and who knows how bad it would have gotten? He said the arguing would stop. I believed him. He said he would change. I believed him. But after 10 months the arguing did NOT stop. Every week I had to ask myself WHY I BELIEVED HIM, AGAIN. I wanted to believe him when he said he would change and told me the arguments would stop. But LITERALLY EVERY WEEK after hearing the same thing, no longer could I hold on to hope. The fighting WAS NEVER OKAY. WE FOUGHT TOO MUCH. IT WAS A PROBLEM (for me). THE PROBLEM WITH HIM IS THAT HE SAW NO PROBLEM. He really thinks it’s okay to treat me that way. It is absolutely NOT okay and under no circustances is it acceptable to willfully cause someone pain and suffering. UNACCEPTABLE. Further, for him to use the physical violence I suffered as an excuse for his verbal abuse is just maddening and mind-blowing. So it was just a thought I had when I finally broke free and started feeling like myself again to open up a hug center and offer hugs to people regardless of what they are going through like free hugs for everyone. I like really needed a hug after that. No one deserves to be treated like that- treated without love or respect. He still has excuses, blame, and no good reason for treating me like shit. So I am happy to have begun a new year of my life free from abuse of any kind and wish to help others that are in or have been in situations similar to mine. The main thing to remember is that people like him NEVER CHANGE. After beating the same dead horse for 10 months with those dead-end arguments and on a weekly basis feeling exhausted, physically spent, emotionally and mentally drained from the psychological warfare of that kind of abuse, it was high time to realize that he was NOT going to change. It may sound sad but it is not. The day I broke free was one of the happiest days of my life, what would have been sad would have been if I didn’t. The worse he got the more I showered him with adoration, basically bowing down to worship the ground he walked on. I have honestly felt that his blatant outward display of disrespect may have made a person who overheard FLINCH. The bottom line is I asked him to stop slapping my ass so hard, and not in public, he did it over and over and over and when I asked him not to do it Again he started getting aggressive. I thought it was a joke at first and wanted to laugh when he said, “woman you listen to me” but he did not mean it to be funny, scary enough, he was dead serious. So I had no other choice but to shutup and take it. I kept my mouth shut, my ears stretched, treated him like the king he thought he was and waited until the coast was clear to break free. I cannot express how grateful and thankful I am to be able to have hopefully gotten away. It was time for me to cut my losses and move on, clearly. As was once written by Voltaire, “one must cultivate one’s garden” what this means is that like a flower, in order to grow needs sunshine and water. When we are in toxic relationships they are like weeds overgrowing in a garden stealing the water from the flowers and stifling their growth. Once the weeds, or toxic relationships in this case are removed then the flowers, or in this case the person will flourish. I definitely feel like the sunshine came back into my life and have been happy to be a source of nurture, love, care and nourishment for myself. A relationship should be a well of nourishment, love, care and nurture leaving us feeling rejuvenated and full of life. When the opposite happens and instead we feel drained and exhausted more regularly than not, it would be a really good time to reevaluate the relationship and perhaps realize that we have to weed out the bad to make room for all the good. To top it off, after calling me a "STUPID B*TCH!!!!!!" The following morning he wished me a Happy White Trash Birthday first thing. He then left for Mexico for a week, but before he left I told him I needed $5 to eat. He had borrowed some money from me so I asked if he could pay me back. I have NEVER asked him for money before because I did not need to. He said when he got back he would send a check. He left me in emotional, physical, spiritual, and financial ruin. If I was not able to cash in my change at the CoinStar, I do not know what I would have done to get groceries. It has been confirmed a billion times over how much he does not give a f*ck. There is nothing that could be said to undo those hateful actions. I, myself, say things I don't mean. Who doesn't? But NEVER have my actions SHOWN such a blatant display of HATRED. He does. He contradicts himself. His words mean nothing. His actions say it all. I couldn't care less what he thinks, or how he feels. I am just stoked I don't have to tiptoe around him anymore not knowing what will set him off next. HE HAS SHOWN HIS DISDAIN FOR ME TOO, TOO, TOO WAY TOO MANY TIMES. So whatever it is that may be robbing you of the life you want to live and the life you deserve you must weed it out in order to grow. I wish to be a radiant, beautiful and happy flower that can grow and bloom to my full potential without anymore weeds. Maybe I will open up a hug center some day and maybe I will not, but hugs are great. I love hugs and who wouldn’t need one after that? Xxoo much love to errrbody out there. Peace Love and Happiness to everyone. Give someone you know today a hug. And let people in your life know how special they are. K. Thank you for reading. I survived!!!Please don’t be shy, hit me up anytime!

[gyrlversion]

JAN MOIR: Prince Harry and his 3.6 million Instagram followers

Hey kids. So what’s the narrative on the Harry-Meghan axis? The theme, the zeitgeisty gist, the Major Issue that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are tackling next?

Hang on to your mouse mat, because the royal Batman and his feisty Robinette are fighting the big one this week; the evils of the internet.

‘Growing up in today’s world, social media is more addictive than drugs and alcohol,’ said Prince Harry on Wednesday, with his usual flair for talking urgent nonsense.

It was a particularly ridiculous thing to say, given that the Sussexes have just launched their own social media account on Instagram, which has already attracted 3.6 million followers and counting. ‘It’s not hypocritical,’ insisted their official spokesman, but many of us would beg to differ.

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex visited the YMCA South Ealing, where he spoke about the effects of social media on mental health

Increasingly, he seems to think there is one set of rules for him and his wife, while everyone else must abide by a completely different moral code. More stringent for a start. Let them eat Meghan’s special recipe austerity soup, they silently cry, while we live like well, royalty, amid the lush and plush of our Soho House set.

In the past, Harry has shot water buffalo, game birds and other hapless critters while campaigning for animal conservationism. Yet we have forgiven him for most of his youthful idiocies.

Recently and more damningly, he encouraged youngsters to act on climate change and environmental issues, while he and Meghan fly around in private jets and helicopters should the opportunity arise.

And now this. At a YMCA centre in West London promoting the Heads Together mental health charity, the Prince claimed online games such as Fortnite were more addictive than booze or drugs.

The Sussexes have just launched their own social media account on Instagram, which has already attracted 3.6 million followers and counting

It is true that the violent natures of such games are reprehensible, but his theory doesn’t even make sense. To an addict, a substance or a habit is either addictive or it is not.

You’d think someone who is always banging on about eradicating public stigma over mental health issues (What stigma, I always ask myself?) would know that, but there is never any joined up thinking where Prince Harry is concerned. He says it, therefore it is.

According to Harry this week, we are in an exciting time, but we are also in a mind-altering time.

We are in good times, but we are also in bad times. We are up and we are down. That is because we are a royal mass of contradictions, aren’t we? ‘Kids need a human connection,’ he said, digging out his prompt sheet, which was surely handwritten in beautiful flowing calligraphy and scented with crushed macaroons.

Instagram is now the go-to for lovely, exclusive pictures of Meghan and Harry doing their good deeds

For when Harry speaks these days, all I hear is the avocado mulch of Meghan’s impeccable socially liberal concerns, filtered through the obliging vassal of her husband.

The concern this week seems to be in urging parents to get children off social media where they might be bullied or have issues. Yet it didn’t seem to cross his princely mind that the place where they have most issues is on Instagram, where his new Sussexroyal account is attracting much attention.

Instagram is a photo-based platform associated with high levels of anxiety, depression and bullying in the young. It is infamous for fostering feelings of inadequacy and depression in millions of kids.

A survey by the Royal Society for Public Health (ironic) found it had the worst scores of all social media platforms when it came to body image and anxiety, especially among girls.

In its way, it probably does as much damage as Fortnite, but who cares? Certainly not Prince H. For Instagram is now the go-to for lovely, exclusive pictures of Meghan and Harry doing their good deeds; a safe space (for them) which is free from criticism or wry judgments about their ocean-going insincerity.

 Harry and Meghan fly around in private jets and helicopters, and could chart their trips on their new Instagram

With all this, plus his dutiful trips to a herbal wellness centre and his exhortations to millennials to find their true north star, Prince Harry is fast becoming the woke dope royal — and I rather wish he was not.

Behind the scenes he still leads a life of unthinkable luxury and entitlement. Yet in public he wants to sound good, he wants to do good and he wants to look good.

They may see themselves as caped crusaders, but people would love Harry and Meghan more if they set an example, rather than just kept telling us all what we should be doing and feeling and thinking.

The problem with Prince Harry is that he has become more Soho House than House of Windsor, and that is not good.

No man has a right to sex

Just when you thought we’d left Gilead and the Handmaid’s Tale for good, a judge has spoken out about the ‘fundamental human right’ of a man to have sex with his wife.

The remark was made by Mr Justice Hayden, who has been asked to consider imposing a court order preventing a man from having sex with his wife of 20 years because she may no longer be able to give her consent.

Local social services believe the woman, who has learning difficulties, may lack the mental capacity to make her own decision.

Lawyers have suggested that a judge might have to bar the husband from continuing to have sex with his wife in order to ensure that the woman is not raped. He has offered to give an undertaking not to have sex with his wife.

‘I cannot think of any more obviously fundamental human right than the right of a man to have sex with his wife — and the right of the state to monitor that,’ he said. ‘I think he is entitled to have it properly argued.’

It is a sad and complicated case. However, I do hope we have reached a point in this country where no man has a legal right to insist upon sex — with his wife or any other woman.

 The Daily Mail has long been campaigning for regulators to have a close look at sharp practices in the funeral industry. Now the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) are on the case. Good.

The thought that the bereaved are regularly being ripped off is too much to bear, especially when they are at their most vulnerable and racked by grief. Not all funeral directors are charlatans, but the CMA has already warned rogue firms who may be taking advantage of distressed customers that they are on notice. Meanwhile, the rising costs of funerals — about £4,000 on average — causes some families real hardship.

Is that because of keen pricing in the funeral industry? Or is the me-generation pushing funerals down the same route as weddings — into an unaffordable extravagance when something simpler would do?

I adore Aintree’s exuberant fillies 

It is Ladies Day at Aintree today, which made yesterday The Day Before Ladies Day, but it was still a fashion eye-opener.

Some like to mock these peacocking racegoers, but I absolutely love these women. They look like they are having a ball, which in these ghastly times is a tiny triumph of its own.

Yes, some of the outfits are side-splitting — literally. Yet there is something about the cheery ostentation that is just so uplifting.

And also the hope over experience that is so killing. Look at these women!

They have planned a sunny weather wardrobe, but were greeted with freezing spring temperatures. Yet there were no cosy cardigans nor comfortable footwear in this exotic paddock of pain. The only ladies I saw wearing smart suits and hats with a darling chequered trim were called policewomen.

Each year Aintree officials say they are going to impose a more demure dress code but, thank goodness, they never do. Ra-ra skirts, plunge front dresses, nightclub curves plus racy underwear? All present and correct. And they’re off!

J.K. Rowling has won her case against the personal assistant who fraudulently obtained £18,734 from her accounts.

Amanda Donaldson spent the money on toiletries, coffees from Costa and Cafe Nero and stationery from Paper Tiger. She also took nearly £8,000 in foreign currency and £2,000 in cash.

Considering that Rowling is worth over £500 million, her thievery was meek, unimaginative — and crushingly sad.

J.K. Rowling had every right to drag her through the courts, but one wonders why she didn’t report it to the police instead.

The publicity that has resulted means that Miss Donaldson’s life and career prospects are in ruins.

Yet she must blame herself for that — and not her merciless employer.

Spare us the shades of grey 

Forget the pink and the blue and the colourful mobiles, grey is now the most popular colour in baby nursery home decor. What more proof do you need that it’s all about the selfish parents, not about the welfare of the little children?

Poor little grubs, growing up in a monochrome prison of dreary asphalt and elephant paint shades.

Their little buggy eyes must yearn for something bright to alight upon, but they have to realise mummy and daddy’s good taste must come first.

John Lewis has reported that the paint trends for the nursery of 2019 finds parents opting for neutral shades in grey and cream. Naturally, Harry and Meghan (them again) are bang on trend.

They are using expensive Auro paints to decorate the nursery at Frogmore. A ten-litre pot of the German brand paint costs £120 — several times the price of Dulux. However, it doesn’t smell, isn’t toxic and it breaks down pollutants, too.

Even the names of the colours are marvellous. Have the royals gone for Wood Spurge, Constance Spry, Meconopsis or Yorkshire Fog Grass? How about Mind Your Own Business? Not being rude, it’s another paint name, for a lovely pastel brown.

Will Barbara be a born again star? 

Before there was Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, there was Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson.

They starred in the 1976 version of A Star Is Born, which was also a huge hit. In that version, Esther (Barbra) told self-destructive John (Kris) that: ‘You can trash your own life, but you are not going to trash mine.’

In similar scenes, a rather more conciliatory Ally (Gaga) told Jack (Bradley): ‘Next time you can clean up your own mess.’ Do we live in kinder times? And is a resurrection planned?

Under a photo of her and Kris, Barbra told fans to ‘stay tuned.’ Like a rose under the April snow, she was always certain that love would grow. Is it about to bloom again?

Be still my hopeful heart.

The post JAN MOIR: Prince Harry and his 3.6 million Instagram followers appeared first on Gyrlversion.

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New Post has been published on Mythology.net

New Post has been published on http://mythology.net/greek/greek-creatures/typhon/

Typhon

Who is Typhon?

Huge, venomous, fire-breathing, and as mean as they come, Typhon is the most feared monster in all of Greek mythology. Soon after his birth, he challenged Zeus for the right to rule over all the gods — and he very nearly won!

Characteristics

Physical Description

The ancient Greek poets all painted a different picture of Typhon and for good reason. The only details they can agree on are that he was immeasurably large — “of such bulk that he out-topped all the mountains, and his head often brushed the stars” — and unimaginably hideous, worse than your most terrifying nightmare. Being immeasurable and unimaginable, Typhon was not an easy monster to describe!

Among other horrors, Typhon has been given: a hundred snake heads with eyes that shoot fire; leopard, lion, bull, boar, bear, dragon, and wolf heads; coils of snake tails below his waist; hundreds of arms and hands, with snakes for fingers; hundreds of wings spouting up all over his body; and one pair of huge dragon wings.

Over time, Greek artists merged and edited all of these poetic descriptions until they had reached a conventional look for Typhon. From the waist up, he was a wild giant with bulging muscles, a long, filthy beard, and shaggy hair. His nose grew out like a dog’s snout, his ears were pointed like a donkey, and his eyes flashed fire. Although he was usually drawn with just two of his hundreds of arms, his fingers were kept unnaturally long, suggesting serpents. A pair of feathery wings unfurled from his massive shoulders. Below the waist, Typhon had two serpent tails in the place of legs. His tails were usually drawn with vibrant red spots and a twisting, tangled look.

Personality

The Greek poets described Typhon as “terrible, outrageous, and lawless,” “fell and cruel,” “strong and tireless,” and “the greatest plague on men and gods.” Without a doubt, he was the biggest bully in Greek mythology—and there wasn’t a kind or merciful bone in his body.

For Typhon, destruction was a game and deformity was beautiful. He reduced villages to rubble for no reason, slaughtered men and attacked gods just because. He was attracted to dark places and monstrous characters—like his wife, Echidna—but even the places and people whom he liked couldn’t gain his loyalty. He spent his life on a solitary path of destruction.

Special Abilities

With so many monstrous parts packed into one body, Typhon never ran out of ways to attack. He could use his serpent heads or fingers to spit deadly venom at you. His dragon heads—or his own terrible eyes—could reign fire down upon you. All the while, his various other heads, from leopard to boar, would daze you with “his warcry, the cries of all wild beasts together” which was so loud that it echoed through the mountains and loosened boulders.

And don’t forget Typhon’s size. He was so large that his footsteps caused earthquakes. His voice was fiercer than thunder. He could use his mighty arms to break open mountains, hurling boulders and molten rock down on the villages below.

Typhon’s famous showdown with Zeus—the prize being no less than the Olympic throne—revealed the full extent of his abilities:

“from the flame of the monster, from his blazing bolts and from the scorch and breath of his storm-winds, all the ground and the sky and the sea boiled, and towering waves were tossing and beating all up and down […] and a great shaking of the earth came on.”

Eventually, Zeus got the upper hand, but even in death, Typhon was deadly:

“Typhon crashed, crippled, and the gigantic earth groaned beneath him, and the flame from the great lord […] ran out along the darkening and steep forests of the mountains […], and a great part of the gigantic earth burned in the wonderful wind of his heat and melted.”

When Zeus saw he had won, he threw Typhon into an endless pit, called Tartarus. Still, volcanic eruptions and winds that swept for hundreds of miles withering flowers and crashing ships, came from that pit where Typhon lay for hundreds of years.

Family

Parents

Many legends swirl around the birth of Typhon.

Some legends say that Gaia, the primordial earth-goddess, was angry when Zeus destroyed her children, the giants. She decided she would have another child, a giant of giants, to replace the children she had lost, but since Zeus had also defeated her husband, the titan Cronus, she needed a new lover. She turned to Tartarus, “the pit,” and with the help of Aphrodite, they were able to produce a child: Typhon.

Other legends claim that Hera had a fit of rage after she discovered yet another one of Zeus’s love-children. She declared that she would have a child without Zeus, since he had so many children without her, and that the child would be even mightier than Zeus himself. Some legends say that Gaia heard her cry and sympathized with her, so she made Hera pregnant with Typhon. Other legends say that Hera went to Cronus, and he gave her two stones covered in his own semen. Hera buried them, and after many months, one grew up as Typhon.

Children

For a bride, Typhon took Echidna, a monstrous snake-woman who lived in a cave and devoured men who happened to pass by. Of course, Echidna didn’t have much luck with devouring Typhon, so she accepted him as a mate instead and bore him many “fierce offspring,” including the Lynean Hydra, the Chimera, the Sphinx, Cerberus, the Gorgons, and Scylla. Together, Typhon and Echidna became as “the father and mother of all monsters.”

Cultural Representation

Origin

Typhon was first mentioned in Homer’s Iliad, which was written around the 8th century BCE, but he wasn’t fully fleshed out until Hesiod wrote his Theogony in the 7th century. Thereafter, countless Greek and Roman poets tackled this great monster; Pindar, Virgil, Ovid, Nonnus, and Seneca all contributed to his legend.

But it’s possible that Typhon has an event older ancestor. The Greeks themselves pointed out that there was a connection between their monstrous Typhon and the Egyptian god Set, who also sparked terrible battles when he tried to seize control from the supreme god.

Modern Appearances

During Greek times, Typhon was connected with all kinds of natural disasters, from droughts to tsunamis to wildfires and volcanic eruptions. Appropriately, his name lives on in today’s culture as dreaded natural disaster: the typhoon.

Typhon has also showed up in many modernized versions of Greek mythology, including Clash of the Titans and Percy Jackson.

[nebris]

By Don Hazen Kali Holloway AlterNet Staff

July 13, 2017, 12:54 PM GMT   

Things are not looking good out there. Manmade climate change has already led to widespread devastation, with more unimaginable horrors on the way. For half a generation, the United States has been immersed in futile wars that have only made the world more unsafe, and recent saber-rattling suggests more conflict is on the horizon. This country has too many guns, too many prisons and too few people holding nearly all the wealth. On top of it all, a hotheaded bully is charged with deciding when to whip out our great big missiles.

This is no time for Pollyannaish optimism. Things will probably get worse before they get better, and the only way to ensure the latter is to come to terms with the former. Gloom and doom isn’t so bad if it serves a purpose. You have to contend with the darkest looming realities in order to have any hope of staving them off.

To that end, we’ve gathered some of the best—or uh, the worst—apocalyptic thinking out there. There’s plenty of bad news on economic, planetary and political fronts, and all of it is represented below. Consider it inspiration for figuring a way out of this mess. Here are 10 visions of the apocalypse—coming soon!

1. The Uninhabitable Earth [5], by David Wallace-Wells

It is, I promise, worse than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible, even within the lifetime of a teenager today...Rising oceans are bad, in fact very bad; but fleeing the coastline will not be enough. Indeed, absent a significant adjustment to how billions of humans conduct their lives, parts of the Earth will likely become close to uninhabitable, and other parts horrifically inhospitable, as soon as the end of this century.

The present tense of climate change — the destruction we’ve already baked into our future — is horrifying enough. Most people talk as if Miami and Bangladesh still have a chance of surviving; most of the scientists I spoke with assume we’ll lose them within the century, even if we stop burning fossil fuel in the next decade. Two degrees of warming used to be considered the threshold of catastrophe: tens of millions of climate refugees unleashed upon an unprepared world. Now two degrees is our goal, per the Paris climate accords, and experts give us only slim odds of hitting it. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issues serial reports, often called the “gold standard” of climate research; the most recent one projects us to hit four degrees of warming by the beginning of the next century, should we stay the present course. But that’s just a median projection. The upper end of the probability curve runs as high as eight degrees — and the authors still haven’t figured out how to deal with that permafrost melt. The IPCC reports also don’t fully account for the albedo effect (less ice means less reflected and more absorbed sunlight, hence more warming); more cloud cover (which traps heat); or the dieback of forests and other flora (which extract carbon from the atmosphere). Each of these promises to accelerate warming, and the geological record shows that temperature can shift as much as ten degrees or more in a single decade. The last time the planet was even four degrees warmer, Peter Brannen points out in The Ends of the World, his new history of the planet’s major extinction events, the oceans were hundreds of feet higher.

2. How Trump could literally tweet his way into nuclear war with North Korea [6], by Laura Rosenberger

If our allies, partners and adversaries all attach meaning to Trump's words that are in no way what he intended, the problem isn't just one of mere confusion. Deterring North Korea from taking dangerous actions and reassuring our allies of the credibility of our defense are both critical. But both deterrence and reassurance are based on credibility and capability—and credibility requires clear signaling of intentions.

Trump's vague, blustery words, unattached to any strategy and without any plan to back up whatever he did mean, will undermine both our deterrence and our reassurance, which we have spent decades building. This could lead to miscalculation by North Korea or our allies. Such miscalculation could lead to war: Trump could literally tweet us into a nuclear war.

We know that Kim Jong-un is thin-skinned and will probably take Trump's comment about "this guy" as a personal insult. Or Kim may be confused—after all, just a few months ago, Trump said he would be "honored" to meet with Kim under the right circumstances. To be clear, I don't care at all about Kim's feelings. But I do care about whether an offhand, hotheaded remark could provoke Kim to take actions that would have real consequences. Picking a Twitter fight with a nuclear-armed dictator is not wise—this is not reality TV anymore.

3. We Have a Year to Defend American Democracy, Perhaps Less [7], by Matthias Kolb

The temptation in a new situation is to imagine that nothing has changed. That is a choice that has political consequences: self-delusion leads to half-conscious anticipatory obedience and then to regime change...Most Americans are exceptionalists, we think we live outside of history. Americans tend to think: “We have freedom because we love freedom, we love freedom because we are free.” It is a bit circular and doesn’t acknowledge the historical structures that can favor or weaken democratic republics. We don’t realize how similar our predicaments are to those of other people...

I wanted to remind my fellow Americans that intelligent people, not so different from ourselves, have experienced the collapse of a republic before. It is one example among many. Republics, like other forms of government, exist in history and can rise and fall...A quarter century ago, after the collapse of communism, we declared that history was over—and in an amazing way we forgot everything we once knew about communism, fascism and National Socialism...

The constitution is worth saving, the rule of law is worth saving, democracy is worth saving, but these things can and will be lost if everyone waits around for someone else. If we want encouragement out of the Oval Office, we will not get it. We are not getting encouragement thus far from Republicans. They have good reasons to defend the republic but thus far they are not doing so, with a few exceptions...I think things have tightened up very fast, we have at most a year to defend the Republic, perhaps less.

4. Noam Chomsky on the prospects for nuclear war under Trump [8]

George Yancy: Returning to Trump, I take it that you view him as fundamentally unpredictable. I certainly do. Should we fear a nuclear exchange of any sort in our contemporary moment?

Noam Chomsky: I do, and I’m hardly the only person to have such fears. Perhaps the most prominent figure to express such concerns is William Perry, one of the leading contemporary nuclear strategists, with many years of experience at the highest level of war planning. He is reserved and cautious, not given to overstatement. He has come out of semiretirement to declare forcefully and repeatedly that he is terrified both at the extreme and mounting threats and by the failure to be concerned about them. In his words, “Today, the danger of some sort of a nuclear catastrophe is greater than it was during the Cold War, and most people are blissfully unaware of this danger.”

In 1947, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists established its famous Doomsday Clock, estimating how far we are from midnight: termination. In 1947, the analysts set the clock at seven minutes to midnight. In 1953, they moved the hand to two minutes to midnight after the U.S. and U.S.S.R. exploded hydrogen bombs. Since then it has oscillated, never again reaching this danger point. In January, shortly after Trump’s inauguration, the hand was moved to two and a half minutes to midnight, the closest to terminal disaster since 1953. By this time analysts were considering not only the rising threat of nuclear war but also the firm dedication of the Republican organization to accelerate the race to environmental catastrophe.

Perry is right to be terrified. And so should we all be, not least because of the person with his finger on the button and his surreal associates.

5. Is America Past the Point of No Return [9]? by Thom Hartmann

Has corporate/billionaire control of our republic reached such a point that it’s no longer reversible? Have we passed the tipping point where democracy dies? While Republicans are doing the will of their oligarch owners, replacing real scientists with industry lobbyists and shills everywhere from the White House to congressional science committees to the EPA, the media stubbornly refuses to report in depth on it, preferring instead to following the Worldwide Wrestling moves of our tweeter-in-chief.  

While climate change is ravaging the world, the administration of billionaire oligarch Donald Trump has pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate change agreement and is rolling back climate-protecting rules on behalf other oligarchs in the oil, coal and gas business so they can continue to use our atmosphere as a sewer.

From trying to destroy the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (which has returned to consumers billions of dollars in ill-gotten gains from our country’s banksters), to gutting environmental laws, to preventing students from even declaring bankruptcy when their efforts to join the middle class by going to college don’t work out, the oligarchs who now largely run America are solidifying their power and their wealth. This is rule by the rich. It’s here. It’s now.

6. The Age of Anger [10], by Chris Hedges

Neoliberalism, in the name of this absurd utopia, stripped away government regulations and laws that once protected the citizen from the worst excesses of predatory capitalism. It created free trade agreements that allowed trillions of corporate dollars to be transferred to offshore accounts to avoid taxation and jobs to flee to sweatshops in China and the global south where workers live in conditions that replicate slavery. Social service programs and public services were slashed or privatized. Mass culture, including schools and the press, indoctrinated an increasingly desperate population to take part in the global reality show of capitalism, a “war of all against all.”

What we were never told was that the game was fixed. We were always condemned to lose. Our cities were deindustrialized and fell into decay. Wages declined. Our working class became impoverished. Endless war became, cynically, a lucrative business. And the world’s wealth was seized by a tiny group of global oligarchs. Kleptocracies, such as the one now installed in Washington, brazenly stole from the people. Democratic idealism became a joke. We are now knit together, as Mishra writes, only “by commerce and technology,” forces that Hannah Arendt called “negative solidarity.”

7. Doomsday Prep for the Super Rich [11], by Evan Osnos

Last spring, as the Presidential campaign exposed increasingly toxic divisions in America, Antonio García Martínez, a forty-year-old former Facebook product manager living in San Francisco, bought five wooded acres on an island in the Pacific Northwest and brought in generators, solar panels, and thousands of rounds of ammunition. “When society loses a healthy founding myth, it descends into chaos,” he told me. The author of “Chaos Monkeys,” an acerbic Silicon Valley memoir, García Martínez wanted a refuge that would be far from cities but not entirely isolated. “All these dudes think that one guy alone could somehow withstand the roving mob,” he said. “No, you’re going to need to form a local militia. You just need so many things to actually ride out the apocalypse.” Once he started telling peers in the Bay Area about his “little island project,” they came “out of the woodwork” to describe their own preparations, he said. “I think people who are particularly attuned to the levers by which society actually works understand that we are skating on really thin cultural ice right now.”

In private Facebook groups, wealthy survivalists swap tips on gas masks, bunkers, and locations safe from the effects of climate change. One member, the head of an investment firm, told me, “I keep a helicopter gassed up all the time, and I have an underground bunker with an air-filtration system.” He said that his preparations probably put him at the “extreme” end among his peers. But he added, “A lot of my friends do the guns and the motorcycles and the gold coins. That’s not too rare anymore.”

8. How the Student Loan Industry Is Helping Trump Destroy American Democracy [12], by Binta Baxter

[T]he untold story of student loan debt in the United States is that it is being used as a form of economic terrorism designed not only to redistribute wealth from everyday Americans to the elite, but to undermine and degrade American democracy as a whole.

Up until her confirmation as Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos had financial ties to a large student loan servicer in contract negotiations with the Department of Education. PRWatch reported in January that one of the firms DeVos divested from, LMF WF Portfolio, helped finance a $147 million loan to a student debt collection agency called Performant, which had more than 346 complaints brought against it with the Better Business Bureau. The student loan industry is said to be worth $1.3 trillion in total debt owed according to Forbes.

9. Stephen Hawking Warns Trump Withdrawal From Climate Deal Could Turn Earth's Temperature to 250 Degrees and Bring Sulphuric Acid Rain [13], by Reynard Loki

"We are close to the tipping point where global warming becomes irreversible," said Hawking, who is a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. "Trump’s action could push the Earth over the brink, to become like Venus, with a temperature of 250 degrees and raining sulphuric acid."

Trump's decision to abandon the landmark agreement, which was signed by nearly 200 nations to limit the global average temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, puts the accord in jeopardy, as the U.S. is the world's second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, after China.

10. A Language Older Than Words [14], by Derrick Jensen

It’s unavoidable: so long as we value money more highly than living beings and more highly than relationships, we will continue to see living beings as resources, and convert them to cash; objectifying, killing, extirpating. This is true whether we’re talking about fish, fur-bearing mammals, Indians, day-laborers, and so on. If monetary value is attached to something it will be exploited until it’s gone.

Also by Derrick Jensen, The Culture of Make Believe [15]

Let's be honest. The activities of our economic and social system are killing the planet. Even if we confine ourselves merely to humans, these activities are causing an unprecedented privation, as hundreds of millions of people-and today more than yesterday, with probably more tomorrow-go their entire lives with never enough to eat. Yet curiously, none of this seems to stir us to significant action. And when someone does too stridently point out these obvious injustices, the response by the mass of the people seems so often to be...a figurative if not physical blow to the gut, leading inevitably to a destruction of our common future. Witness the enthusiasm with which those native nations that resisted their conquest by our culture have been subdued, and the eagerness with which this same end is today brought to those-native or not-who continue to resist too strongly. How does this come to happen, in both personal and social ways?

Don Hazen is the executive editor of AlterNet.

Kali Holloway is a senior writer and the associate editor of media and culture at AlterNet.

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/aaahhhhhpocalypse-now-10-dark-visions-headed-your-way

[i-constantly-want-to-scream-blog]

Kasey

Kasey was born in a calm family, or at least it was for the first few years of her life. That ended when her mother left with a smile on her face and a hatred to Kasey's father. Last she had heard of her she was a crack whore on the streets, every night was a new party, more drugs, probably ending up with her in a laundromat in a complete alcohol induced blackout. She didn’t understand at first, than she cried. She blamed herself for her mother's abandonment, even though the voices told her it wasn't her fault. It was all apart of the plan. The voices had always been there, they were the only ones that helped her, that cared. They The sadness became resentment and anger towards her mother when she was eight. The voices encouraged her, they told her stories about how they would make sure that her mother and people like her would pay, regret all of their sins. They would feel everything that she had felt. When Kasey's Dad began to abuse her at age nine, the voices became shadows. They made her feel better, told her stories about the great things she could do, how she could help all children like her. She dreamt about having power over the adults, being able to hurt them, make them feel all of the pain she had felt She had friends once, she tried to tell them about the voices and when she did they didn't believe her. They laughed and taunted her about having imaginary friends. From then on her only friends were the shadows, they warned her that all of the other kids would only try and hurt her. That everyone would. All because they couldn't understand how she felt, she was above them all. They only wanted to hurt her because they didn't know what she was. She dreamed of the kids at school that laughed when she fell to her knees in the hallway, crying on their knees in front of her in her own home. That the children who taunted her wouldn't be able to make a single sound as she ripped out their throats with her bare hands. That the teachers that treated her as weak and stupid would beg for her forgiveness while she put them on their deathbeds. She always asked the shadows when she would gain this power, they always told her that when the end comes, it will just be the beginning.she never knew what that meant exactly, but she knew that all she had to do was follow with the shadows and let them guide her and she would gain unimaginable power. She kept her nails cut into small spikes, her naturally blonde hair was always dyed black. When Kasey turned 10 years old, the shadows gave her a gift. She woke up wearing a locket around her neck. It was a shape of a book, and in it held a blade. It about the size of a fifty cent piece and the blade itself was just a bit bigger than what you may find in a pencil sharpener. The shadows told her to never take it off, and never discard the blade, so she never did. At school, the bullying had begun to worsen, when she was 14 the taunting grew and Kasey was absolutely tired of it. She asked the voices for help, encouragement but they only responded with "Soon." Soon. Soon. Soon for what? Kasey was tired of waiting for answers. "Soon" was being replayed in her head, over and over one morning, faintly, just above a whisper. They had kept her up all night, she was so tired when she arrived at school. It was in her fifth period when she had a dream, "Soon!" multiple voices whispered over and over. She was surrounded by darkness. "Soon, Soon, Soon. SOON!" a final voice yelled out waking her. She jolted silently and looked all around the room, hoping to see a glimpse of one of the shadows. They usually formed in corners to stay hidden, but she could tell the difference between them and a normal shadow. She sighed and looked down at her diary to see the same word written on every single line, multiple times. Soon. It made her so livid, she cried out "WHAT IS SOON?" She flipped the pages of the journal trying to see more writing, something, anything. She needed answers. She was broke out of her search when the teacher grabbed the diary out of her hands. "Why are you interrupting class?" she asked and began to flip through the pages of her diary. She stopped flipping through when she got to one of many of Kasey's drawings, a very realistic depiction of a woman in a ditch, stabbing a knife into her own stomach. The caption reading: "When you left you only hurt yourself." She stared at the drawing than looked at Kasey who only smiled and said in an apathetic tone "You only hurt yourself." She nearly threw the book at Kasey and went back to teaching. The bell rang shortly after the incident calling for lunch. Kasey went directly to the cafeteria, not bothering to stop at her locker for her lunch. She went where she always sat in the very back of the lunch table, but today was different. Two girls were sitting there, she noted them from her English class, laughing at something the other had just said. Unwilling to give up her spot, she simply took a seat on the other side of her table and began to slowly examine her diary again. "Whatcha lookin at?" On girl asked. Kasey didn't bother to stop looking up at her notes drawings to respond "Personal" her searching had also come up to and end when the book was suddenly pulled away from her. She stood immediately to grab it but it was already in the complete grasp of someone else. She growled and glared at the two girls. "Give it back!" She demanded as the girls wide-eyed flipped through the journal. Kasey smiled at the looks of horror that masked the other girls face as the saw more and more of her detailed pages. "What the fuck is wrong with you... you freak!" One of the girls shrieked and threw the book down at the table directly into a bowl of soup. Kasey's smile faded into a grimace as she slowly walked around to the front of the table. "It has begun." She heard one of the voices say, she glanced into a corner and saw them, the shadows. "You just threw my book into soup." She said in a monotone voice. She clenched and unclenched her fingers as she turned the corner of the table. One of the girls began to back away out of fear, but the other stood confident and completely unfazed. "Yea, what are you going to do about it fre-" she was cut off by Kasey grabbing her throat. She swung wildly at Kasey, kicking and slapping at her trying desperately to get away from her grip but Kasey stayed relaxed and unfazed. She noted the crowd cheering on whichever girl they wanted, not letting any administration get past. She pushed her sharpened nails into the girl's throat and smiled when she saw the blood begin to dribble from her throat. She yanked her hand away from the other girl's throat leaving long scratches along the girl's throat and neck The girl fell and gripped her own throat. The girl gasped as blood trickled down her throat and chest. When the girl was trying to stand again Kasey dropped to her knees, both slamming into her chest causing the breath to rush from the girl. The children around the fight took note of the blood drawing from the girl and had begun to back away in fear. Knowing it would only be seconds before administration would break through the crowd of students, Kasey began to worry and question herself with what to do when an answer came to her. "The locket" The shadows reminded her of what was in it. She smiled and used one hand to open the locket, the girl gasped for air and tried to pull herself away, but it was too late for her. Kasey took out the blade she had kept in there for all of those years and pushed it against the girl's throat. "You only hurt yourself." Kasey said as she ripped the blade across her throat. Blood poured and spewed from the opening and the girl began to shake. Kasey stood quickly while teachers surrounded her and the other girl as she died. "When the end comes, it will just be the beginning." and she finally understood it. She knew what she had to do. "IT IS NOW!" She screamed, and pushed the blade into her own throat, she felt the blood of the other girl on the blade and her fingers, she laughed maliciously as the pushed it in. It didn't hurt, she felt no pain. She loved the taste of the blood as it gurgled from her throat while she laughed, and laughed. She fell rather quickly due to loss of blood. Her heart tried to pump blood that wasn't there while she laughed, and laughed, and laughed. --- She woke up in her bedroom, in a small panic she began to feel around her neck, the locket was still there. She got up very stumbly and made her way to her small half bathroom. She screamed when she saw her own reflection. She was dead. Her throat was slit. She was dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead! "Hush. It was all a part of the plan..." The shadows said. She watched what was happening behind her in the mirror as they shadows slowly began to appear, a black mass so dark it seems as though someone was photoshopping her surroundings. Suddenly they lurched forward, she felt a horrible burning sensation in between her shoulder blades. She looked up and screamed out as she felt pain ripping through her. She was pushed to the vanity and froze. The pain moved throughout her, yet it started to fade. The color in her eyes was darkening to black as tendrils of the same color began to stream from her eyes and the slash Kasey had made in her throat. And for one of the first times in her life, she felt truly powerful. She smiled at her reflection, her skin was deathly white, and the black in her eyes, her nails, the slash in her throat, and the trails that streamed from her neck and face were all black. She looked so terrifying it looked edited. She loved the way just her appearance would strike fear in the souls of everyone she was targeting for. She opened the locked and pulled out the blade that was held in it. As she walked confidently out of the bathroom she spun it between her fingers, but it wasn't like she would need it. Since she died, all of her nails were sharper than any blade. She stepped out of her room into the living room, she immediately knew who her first target would be. "Oh, hello Daddy." She said sweetly. She stopped spinning the small blade when he noticed her. "Kasey..." He trailed off, a look of terror crossed his face. He stepped back and dropped his whiskey glass, it shattered at his feet while he barely avoided the glass he backed himself into the corner. "Don't call me that," Kasey demanded. "I am not that weak little girl, I'm.." Kasey trailed off. "I'm Shadow." "Quit playing around Kasey, take off that damn make up. Why aren't you in school?" He questioned, stepping from the wall. Kasey jerked forward five feet, faster than the blink of an eye. Her father jumped back and slammed himself against the wall. "What the fuck are you." She blinked forwards again, close enough so he could hear her whisper. "I am your worst damn nightmare, Daddy." She shot her arm out at lightning speed, within seconds her father was lying on the floor, gasping for breath that will never come while blood came out of his mouth, nose, and the slash coming from his throat. "You don't like it when the tables turn, do you daddy?" she said. As the light left his eyes, he stopped moving and struggling. No sound came out, he was dead. And so was Kasey. She looked up at one of the cameras her father put up in the room and said, "You only hurt yourself." It's Shadow's time now.