#10 year of malcontent for the person I was
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Therapeutic, 10 years of holding myself to the God awful standards I held myself to in highschool, gone.
Holding myself and always thinking of myself ad the long hair, weirdo, that was never confident, gone. Fucking changed so much I hated about myself, but hearing it from everyone that knew who I was 10 years ago, fucking cathartic.
#10 year highschool reunion#10 year of malcontent for the person I was#10 years of actively changing into a better person
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M*A*S*H - Season 8, misc. notes
Welcome to March M*A*S*H-ness, the season in which I finish M*A*S*H
Here are some reduced notes from S8, I hadn’t forgotten! No approach this time, just whatever made the cut.
Oh you know actually there is a theme it's thighs???
— — —
Start of this season gotta be the collective skinniest this cast has ever been, babes what was going on in 1979! Mike Farrell has always been a sapling, but Loretta Swit seems to have gotten even tinier this year, Alan Alda rushed into a frame partly undressed looking markedly thinner than the last time I saw him, and when Gary Burghoff comes back?! Positively a shadow of himself!
The other notable thing is that their doctors coats are now fully "blush." [Elliott Gould voice] It’s fine by me.
I appreciate that we simply all dislike Zale
The slipshod “Previously On”s they do for the two-parters finally worth it for the implication that Hawkeye hurting his finger is going to be just as emotionally impactful as anything else going on.
Sitting Awards. And in the pink shirt.
The company clerk job going from Radar to Klinger is like a reverse Henry Blake to Sherman Potter, huh. I confess to being a little stressed.
Ohhh okay okay, I can see it, oh boy okay I can see how we pull this off: Klinger CAN be a good clerk, he just has to be a totally different kind: a renegade little rascal. Radar is like a London cabbie with the Knowledge: knows the entire map of the war and every rule and person in it. Klinger can be an improv artist, a con artist, schemes upon schemes. Oho, I would like this! Ed. note: hey I was pretty much on the money!
Okay don’t make me cry….. ah too late
Hoooooooooooo all of Hawkeye’s boyfriends simply have to kiss Radar and tell him to pass it along, huh. WHAT a way to reference when Trapper left…. !
Hey gang we’re still crying! :(
The most impactful way they could do this bit with BJ’s toddler thinking Radar was her dad is if it isn’t commented on again, we just have this wordless moment where he’s so visibly stricken by the fact that his child doesn’t know who he is.
Ah never mind, it’s the whole episode.
Y’know, when drunk BJ smashed up the still and hit Hawkeye, I thought well this is a lot to deal with, but it’s him later sobbing to him, quote: “I’m so torn up with envy I almost hate him! And I feel the same way about Trapper, and I never even met him. But he built that still with you, and…” that had me staring wild-eyed, repeating a strangled “Pause pause pause pausepause” while my hands search blind & desperate for the remote to give me a fucking MOment---
Just, the DARK GALAXY BRAIN, M*A*S*H, to go hey, how about BJ got violent because he’s jealous of your ex
...God the absolute nuclear event this episode would have caused if it aired during the Internet….we all would have aged 10 years.
“Well what else am I good at? Being a malcontent? Silliness? Booze?” The three Graces.
“Colonel, you wanted to see us?”
“Not really, but it’s the only way I can talk to you.”
Hahaha, Potter like, I’ve seen enough.
Whoa! Transition alert! I don’t even know how to describe this, it was like an in-camera PowerPoint wipe? Jaunty!
BJ grabbing his hands to get him to stop doing CPR, and Hawkeye just letting him hold them while he gets his own breath back. See, and now you do this…and I just…..!
Ah, I know exactly what you mean, Father. Hawkeye would ‘make a fine priest’ in the sense that he could write a good sermon. And he could write a good sermon in the sense that Danny Boyle, M. Night Shyamalan, Martin Scorsese—they were all on their way to seminary school before veering off into filmmaking. Because: they liked the storytelling. They liked getting at meaning, at feeling, through words delivered a certain way. Commanding an audience, and trying to get them to understand. Who does this apply to most in camp?
Line delivery of the episode once again goes to David Ogden Stiers, for “What is your name?”
I want to be playing poker in the sunshine with Klinger, Hawkeye, BJ, and Margaret with her sleeves pushed up her shoulders.
The way Klinger comfortingly trilled a little “Brrrr” to freezing Hawkeye as he pulls a blanket around his shoulders has gone right to the cockles of my heart. You sweet weirdo I love you!
INCREDIBLY dynamic of them to take five minutes from us for the commercial break, I yelped
Oh, SOLID Potter impression, Jamie Farr!
I like whenever they make grim jokes about this being a “police action,” not a war. Can you believe we were doing this shit all the way back in the ‘50s…. Potter, in his lil lilting gravely grandpa voice: “Believe me, boys and girls: this is a war.”
Father Mulcahy’s sad war song: it moved this reporter
Big ups to Kellye teasing Hawkeye behind the bar at Rosie’s in the most gender way possible
“Hawkeye, you’re really cute, and probably a wonderful dancer—” thanks, Scully
What does PDQ mean, Potter
Hawkeye is spelling “theremin” in Scrabble
With Radar leaving, Charles has probably taken the mantle of funniest character on this show per minute. He kills me. <3 His silly presh baby chatter, then segueing into “I talked to everyone in camp, which, by the way is a first for me—”
To everyone else they’re Class A’s, to Pierce they’re “Sunday go-to-court-martial clothes”
Uuuugh the loosened ties and unbuttoned cuffs of an off-duty Class A….
Are they using the Officer’s Club a lot more this season, or is this just me
Image set idea: every group shot where Hawkeye is half horizontal on some surface half asleep
Loretta Swit wins first actor on this show to feel for an elevated temperature correctly: back of the hand
Sometimes I wanna get at Alan Alda with Glossier ‘Boy Brow’ and just see what happens. I mean by all rights this man should have eyebrows
Wait, it’s MAXWELL Klinger. Maxwell Q! Quentin? Quincy? Quinn??
I like night in the camp when everything is quiet
Kind of appreciate that by this point putting Captain Pierce in charge is just routine. It’s only the third time but Potter’s like, it’ll be the charm. And then he’s right, it’s entirely uneventful.
I know I’ve cried at the last two episodes in a row and yet already can’t remember much of them. Truly this season is so odd.
The return of Alan Alda’s actual dad, and the emergence of Loretta Swit’s BIG HAIR. A lot to take in in one episode.
Oh and naturally EVERYONE’S FREEZING, ALANNN
That was his bROTHER????!?! Other Alda????!!
I mean we really need to bring the drag back because so far Klinger’s whole experience as the new company clerk has been essentially “god forbid women do anything”
At least Sidney’s here :)
I’m already so into the COLD & DREAMS episode and we haven’t even hit the DREAMS
AH HERE ARE THE DREAMS
Oh Klinger that’s brilliant. Warm up the blood against the bodies it wants to be back in.
The sense of spatial arrangement and time and perspective all so mutable…it’s really, really good. Most cinematic dreams are fantastical but overall too sequential—this nails that “and now this is happening” quality.
The bit where as Father Mulcahy nods off this soldier's words become nonsense?? So neat and so effectively rendered!!! Huge commendations to this actor’s seamless transition, god I loved the sensation of watching this.
Ohhhh this is not what I though Hawkeye’s nightmare would be like, and ho-ly shit
Very rare that you actually see someone in the real life swallow convulsively—5 narrative fiction points to Alan. No you know what: 7
Smitten with her deep voice. I have as the kids say, a crush.
“This is BJ, the doctor that put you back together, and this is Hawkeye, who uh, seems to be falling apart.” She’s so clever and so fun, hell yeah Mike.
WAIT “LET ME SHOW YOU MY ETCHINGS” HAS BEEN A JOKE SINCE AT LEAST 1980?? What is this from!!!!! I thought my theatrical design friends made this up in 2009!! Update: WOW! We’ve just all been making this same inside joke no one knows the origin of for over 100 years!!
I know I’ve had two hot toddies but all I want is to spend the night with Margaret and Aggie and just talk into the night while lotioning our arms, maybe flirt a little, who knows
Charles: “Klinger, as the poets would say: [lowers three inches] hubba hubba.” This episode is the most fun I’ve had all season.
Huh. Oh huh. It’s Hawkeye’s comment about how the war threw Aggie and Scottie together and now they care about each other, that cracks it for BJ. Now he can pin his feelings on the war. You gave him an out—both a way to reframe it and a tool to end it. I half-think you knew what you were doing, too.
“Everyone knows the civilian M.D.s pack away the dineros.” Excuse me?? Is ‘De Niro’ a homonym for money?? Is his name Bobby Money???? Update: Spanish for an old Roman coin. Incredible.
Just started chanting “Math! Math! Math!” through a mouthful of cake. Okay, average of 7 bowel resections a week, for 546 total = 78 weeks. Hawkeye has been there 1 and a half years. In Season 5, it was already 2 years. This has been: the Jeremy Bearimy Corner.
Potter: “Pierce, you’re like an unbroken colt, and all I can do is give you reign until you wear yourself out.” Help that’s astute.
Okay I still need to figure out what PDQ means, Sherm….. Oh hey it means “as quickly as possible,” but why...? PRETTY DAMNED QUICK ! Fuck this is going in my vocab immediately.
BJ grinning to himself at learning Hawkeye has squirreled a Jeep away somewhere as part of his “payment,” and receiving a warm conspiratorial grin in return, then later slyly stealing another Jeep for him—this is what I love.
Aaah yay they’re doing it again! Charles was eventually proven to be wrong and immediately starts apologizing and complimenting them and shaking their hands. This is very consistent!
Whaaaat we never shoot the tent from this angle??
Whaaahahahahaat is THIS ANGLE ALSO
Get your camera out from between his legs, this man is a father!!
Oh and in closing, the numbers on this season:
- 3 episodes written & directed by Alan Alda
- 2 episodes where they’re all so cold
- Venn diagram is a completely contained circle
In the third one he wrote & directed Hawkeye still ends up under a blanket being doused in ice, and another he just directed someone else's script—and put everyone in jackets and turtlenecks. I still don’t know what this means, but by god it sure is important. To me.
— — —
Season Viewguides
These
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Saturday, 2 December, 2023
Classes at 0730 and at 0930.
"On a misty-moisty morning
When cloudy was the weather,
I met an old man all dressed up in leather."
I really didn't think anyone would workout except Linda and I, but you surprised me as you often do. Ten of you came for the 0730 session when it was seriously raining, and another 14 came when the rain was only a drizzle.
Warmup
3 Rounds
With Naked Barbell
10 Bench Presses
10 Skull Crushers
Skull crushers had to be demo-ed and explained why for several of you. And then some of the Maiden-Lady Members were suspicious of the "Naked Barbell" part and refused to participate even when I explained and re-assured. I'm glad they didn't ask me to explain "Dumb Bells".
Strength
Bench Press: 10 / 10 / 10 / 10 All 60 To 70%
5 Ring Rows Super Sets Between Bench Press
Shane/Armando/Chase (tried)=185 Bernie/WG=165 Coach=145 Paul/Jon=125 Dyer/Smoothie/Ed/Rodney=115 Tim/John T=105 Cheri=65 Sandy/Warren A=40(2 DBs) Shannon/Joe/Sue/Linda=25 (2 DBs) Lew/SC/and a few others=did it.
WOD
3 Rounds
Only 1 Dumb Bell Needed (50/35/20)
30 Alternating Dumb Bell Snatch's
30 Dumb Bell Goblet Squats
Row-Ski 1000 / Bike 2000m
Joe=21:55 Chase=21:59* Jon=22:13 WG=22:24 John=22:50 Shane=22:52* Rodney=22:57 Sue=23:19 Warren A=23:27 WaCoach=24:14 Cheri=24:38 Bernie=24:44* Armando=25:50* Tim=27:00* Ed=27:18* Dyer=28:07 Paul=28:30* Shannon=28:45 Smoothie=28:53* Sandy=29:50* Lew/SC/Linda=did something
Notes:
I thought that was good hard fun. Never-the-less (I love to use that term), the usual malcontents fussed about the programming before they started. Being such a big hearted forgiving charitable person, I was able to ignore them and charge it to the rain.
No, it wasn't Robert this time. He doesn't walk over here on rainy days 'cause his bare skull can't tolerate the chill.
Somebody, (it wasn't Sue this time) ran over an orange traffic cone last week. It would have been a hit-and-run if the cone hadn't lodged under his engine and made a loud scraping noise as it disintegrated when he sped away. Embarrassed, and aware that he was seen, he had Amazon deliver us some definitely upgraded traffic cones today. They are taller, more robust, more expensive, and will even glow in the dark. Sue will not get away with it next time.
Yesterday, all CrossFit affiliates were informed that affiliation fees were increasing. All Grandfathered and free affiliates would increase to $4,500 annually. Unsurprisingly, the CrossFit LLC personnel don't know what their right and left hands are doing. Today I received the annual renewal for our LHCF affiliation and the fee was WAIVED as it has been for the last 12 years. Naturally, I signed and returned it in about 10 seconds. They already sent me a "PAID IN FULL" receipt. Please stand by.
Sunday at 0730 and 1 PM.
WE NEED WATER IN PLASTIC CANCER CAUSING BOTTLES.
Apropos of nothing, Jackie "O" died of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma in her lungs, obviously caused by excessive spraying of ROUNDUP on Aristotle Onassis's Yacht.
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BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCE CASE STUDY ANSWER | IIBMS CASE STUDY ANSWER | MBA CA...
Behavioural Science Case Study Answer
Behavioural Science Case Study Answer
Q.1 Case study
In ten years, Plant World had grown from a one-person venture into the
largest nursery and landscaping business in its area. Its founder, Myta Ong,
combined a lifelong interest in plants with a botany degree to provide a
unique customer service. Ong had managed the company’s growth so that
even with twenty full-time employees working in six to eight crews, the
organization culture was still as open, friendly, and personal as it had been
when her only “employees” were friends who would volunteer to help her
move a heavy tree.
To maintain that atmosphere, Ong involved herself increasingly with people
and less with plants as the company grew. With hundreds of customers and
scores of jobs at any one time, she could no longer say without hesitation
whether she had a dozen arborvitae bushes in stock or when Mrs. Carnack’s
estate would need a new load of bark mulch. But she knew when Rose had
been up all night with her baby, when Gary was likely to be late because he
had driven to see his sick father over the weekend, and how to deal with
Ellen when she was depressed because of her boyfriend’s behavior. She kept
track of the birthdays of every employee and even those of their children.
She was up every morning by five-thirty arranging schedules so that John
could get his son out of day care at four o’clock and Martina could be back
in town for her afternoon high school equivalency classes.
Paying all this attention to employees may have led Ong to make a single
bad business decision that almost destroyed the company. She provided
extensive landscaping to a new mall on credit, and when the mall never
opened and its owners went bankrupt, Plant World found itself in deep
trouble. The company had virtually no cash and had to pay off the bills for
the mall plants, most of which were not even salvageable.
One Friday, Ong called a meeting with her employees and levelled with
them: either they would not get paid for a month or Plant World would fold.
The news hit the employees hard. Many counted on the Friday pay check to
buy groceries for the week. The local unemployment rate was low, however,
and they knew they could find other jobs.
But as they looked around, they wondered whether they could ever find this
kind of job. Sure, the pay was not the greatest, but the tears in the eyes of
some workers were not over pay or personal hardship; they were for Ong,
her dream, and her difficulties. They never thought of her as the boss or
called her anything but “Myta.” And leaving the group would not be just a
matter of saying good-bye to fellow employees. If Bernice left, the company
softball team would lose its best pitcher, and the Sunday game was the
height of everyone’s week. Where else would they find people who spent
much of the weekend working on the best puns with which to assail one
another on Monday morning? At how many offices would everyone show up
twenty minutes before starting time just to catch up with friends on other
crews? What other boss would really understand when you simply said, “I
don’t have a doctor’s appointment, and I just need the afternoon off”?
Ong gave her employees the weekend to think over their decision: whether to
take their pay and look for another job or to dig into their savings and go on
working. Knowing it would be hard for them to quit, she told them they did
not have to face her on Monday; if they did not show up, and she would
send them their checks. But when she arrived at seven-forty Monday
morning, she found the entire group already there; ready to work even
harder to pull the company through. They were even trying to top one
another with puns about being “malcontents.”
Questions:
(2 × 10 = 20)
1. How would you describe the organization culture at Plant World?
2. How large can such a company get before it needs to change its
culture and structure?
Q.2 Case study
The New England Arts Project had its headquarters above an Italian
restaurant in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The project had five full-time
employees, and during busy times of the year, particularly the month before
Christmas, it hired as many as six part-time workers to type, address
envelopes, and send out mailings. Although each of the five full-timers had a
title and a formal job description, an observer would have had trouble telling
their positions apart. Suzanne Clammer, for instance, was the executive
director, the head of the office, but she could be found typing or licking
envelopes just as often as Martin Welk, who had been working for less than
a year as office coordinator, the lowest position in the project’s hierarchy.
Despite a constant sense of being a month behind, the office ran relatively
smoothly. No outsider would have had a prayer of finding a mailing list or a
budget in the office, but project employees knew where almost everything
was, and after a quiet fall they did not mind having their small space packed
with workers in November. But a number of the federal funding agencies on
which the project relied began to grumble about the cost of the part-time
workers, the amount of time the project spent handling routine paperwork,
and the chaotic condition of its financial records. The pressure to make a
radical change was on. Finally Martin Welk said it: “Maybe we should get a
computer.”
To Welk, fresh out of college, where he had written his papers on a word
processor, computers were just another tool to make a job easier. But his
belief was not shared by the others in the office, the youngest of whom had
fifteen years more seniority than he. A computer would eat the project’s
mailing list, they said, destroying any chance of raising funds for the year. It
would send the wrong things to the wrong people, insulting them and
convincing them that the project had become another faceless organization
that did not care. They swapped horror stories about computers that had
charged them thousands of dollars for purchases they had never made or
had assigned the same airplane seat to five people.
“We’ll lose all control,” Suzanne Clammer complained. She saw some kind of
office automation as inevitable, yet she kept thinking she would probably
quit before it came about. She liked hand-addressing mailings to arts
patrons whom she had met, and she felt sure that the recipients contributed
more because they recognized her neat blue printing. She remembered the
agonies of typing class in high school and believed she was too old to take
on something new and bound to be much more confusing. Two other
employees, with whom she had worked for a decade, called her after work to
ask if the prospect of a computer in the office meant they should be looking
for other jobs. “I have enough trouble with English grammar,” one of them
wailed. “I’ll never be able to learn computer language.”
One morning Clammer called Martin Welk into her office, shut the door, and
asked him if he could recommend any computer consultants. She had read
an article that explained how a company could waste thousands of dollars
by adopting integrated office automation in the wrong way, and she figured
the project would have to hire somebody for at least six months to get the
new machines working and to teach the staff how to use them. Welk was
pleased because Clammer evidently had accepted the idea of a computer in
the office. But he also realized that as the resident authority on computers,
he had a lot of work to do before they went shopping for machines.
Questions:
(5 + 5 + 10 = 20)
1. Is organization development appropriate in this situation? Why or
why not? (10)
2. What kinds of resistance to change have the employees of the
project displayed? (5)
3. What can Martin Welk do to overcome the resistance? (
Q.3 Case study
A public sector consultancy organisation recruited Mr. Alok an expert in a
particular field of technical specialisation with Ph.D. and other high
qualifications at a senior level, one level below that of a director of the board.
The company had a managing director and three functional directors on its
board apart from government directors. Mr. Alok at the time of recruitment
to the company was working as No.2 in a Central Government research
organisation.
Since he failed to get selected to the No.1 slot in that organisation for
‘political reasons’, according to him. He chose to join the public sector
company at one grade higher than that held by him in the government. After
joining the company, Mr. Alok represented to the Management that he
should be granted at least three advance increments since in the
government research organisation where he had worked, he used to get
extra honorarium to the extent of Rs. 50,000 per anum for undertaking
outside consultancy work. The management of the company refused to grant
the advance increment to him since they felt that Mr. Alok’s request cannot
be dealt with in violation and it will lead to similar requests from other
senior managers in the company. After waiting for a few months, Mr. Alok
submitted his resignation from the company. His superior, viz., the
functional director concerned (Mr. Rajeev), advised the managing director
that Mr. Alok was resigning because his request for higher salary has not
been agreed to and that the matter needs review because it would be
difficult to recruit another expert of the same caliber as Mr. Alok. The
Managing Director however, accepted the resignation of Mr. Alok and
ordered that the post be advertised for fresh recruitment.
As the recruitment process was on, Mr. Alok on his own chose to withdraw
his resignation and re-joined the company apparently on a tacit undertaking
given by Mr. Rajeev that his request for higher salary would be reconsidered.
The managing director reconsidered the request and approved the grant of
three advance increments to Mr. Alok provided he would serve the company
at least till the date of his superannuating, which was two years away. The
decision was communicated to Mr. Alok. Mr. Alok once again felt insulted by
being asked to agree to an unacceptable condition, viz., undertaking to
continue in the company for two more years for the grant of additional
increments to his salary, he thought he was fully justified in his case. He did
not agree to the condition and after two months again submitted his
resignation. Mr. Rajeev discussed the matter with the managing director.
The managing director stated that in return for the additional salary being
granted to Mr. Alok which was not being given to any other senior manager
of his status, he should display some commitment, to serve the company.
Without such a commitment Mr. Alok might wait for an opportunity to look
for greener pastures and leave the company after gaining a higher salary,
vis-a-vis his other senior colleagues in the organisation. The other
employees would feel that Management can be blackmailed by the so-called
experts into granting more benefits with the threat of resignation and the
management would lose its credibility. The managing director, therefore,
decided to accept the resignation of Mr. Alok. But Mr. Rajeev and other
functional directors of the company were not happy with the decision as
they felt that competitors of the company would gain by Mr. Alok’s
departure and, therefore, allowing Mr. Alok to quit would jeopardize the
company’s business interests.
Questions: (Any Two)
(2 × 10 = 20)
1. Do you agree with the Managing Director’s approach to the problem?
2. Do you think that Mr. Alok had reasons to be aggrieved or was he trying
to exploit his expertise?
3. What would be your solution to this case?
Q.4 Case study
Betty Kesmer was continuously on top of things. In school, she had
always been at the top of her class. When she went to work for her uncle’s
shoe business, Fancy Footwear, she had been singled out as the most
productive employee and the one with the best attendance. The company
was so impressed with her that it sent her to get an M.B.A. to groom her for
a top management position. In school again, and with three years of
practical experience to draw on, Kesmer had gobbled up every idea put in
front of her, relating many of them to her work at Fancy Footwear. When
Kesmer graduated at the top of her class, she returned to Fancy Footwear.
To no one’s surprise, when the head of the company’s largest division took
advantage of the firm’s early retirement plan, Kesmer was given his position.
Kesmer knew the pitfalls of being suddenly catapulted to a leadership
position, and she was determined to avoid them. In business school, she
had read cases about family businesses that fell apart when a young family
member took over with an iron fist, barking out orders, cutting personnel,
and destroying morale. Kesmer knew a lot about participative management,
and she was not going to be labelled an arrogant know-it-all.
Kesmer’s predecessor, Max Worthy, had run the division from an
office at the top of the building, far above the factory floor. Two or three
times a day, Worthy would summon a messenger or a secretary from the
offices on the second floor and send a memo out to one or another group of
workers. But as Kesmer saw it, Worthy was mostly an absentee autocrat,
making all the decisions from above and spending most of his time at
extended lunches with his friends from the Elks Club.
Kesmer’s first move was to change all that. She set up her office on
the second floor. From her always-open doorway she could see down onto
the factory floor, and as she sat behindher desk she could spot anyone
walking by in the hall. She never ate lunch herself but spent the time from
11 to 2 down on the floor, walking around, talking, and organizing groups.
The workers, many of whom had twenty years of seniority at the plant,
seemed surprised by this new policy and reluctant to volunteer for any
groups. But in fairly short order, Kesmer established a worker productivity
group, a “Suggestion of the Week” committee, an environmental group, a
worker award group, and a management relations group. Each group held
two meetings a week, one without and one with Kesmer. She encouraged
each group to set up goals in its particular focus area and develop plans for
reaching those goals. She promised any support that was within her power
to give.
The group work was agonizingly slow at first. But Kesmer had been
well trained as a facilitator, and she soon took on that role in their meetings,
writing down ideas on a big board, organizing them, and later
communicating them in notices to other employees. She got everyone to call
her “Betty” and set herself the task of learning all their names. By the end of
the first month, Fancy Footwear was stirred up.
But as it turned out, that was the last thing most employees wanted.
The truth finally hit Kesmer when the entire management relations
committee resigned at the start of their fourth meeting. “I’m sorry, Ms.
Kesmer,” one of them said. “We’re good at making shoes, but not at this
management stuff. A lot of us are heading toward retirement. We don’t want
to be supervisors.”
Astonished, Kesmer went to talk to the workers with whom she
believed she had built good relations. Yes, they reluctantly told her, all these
changes did make them uneasy. They liked her, and they didn’t want to
complain. But given the choice, they would rather go back to the way Mr.
Worthy had run things. They never saw Mr. Worthy much, but he never got
in their hair. He did his work, whatever that was, and they did theirs. “After
you’ve been in a place doing one thing for so long,” one worker concluded,
“the last thing you want to do is learn a new way of doing it.”
Questions:
(12 + 8 = 20)
1. What factors should have alerted Kesmer to the problems that eventually
came up at Fancy Footwear? (8)
2. Could Kesmer have instituted her changes without eliciting a negative
reaction from the workers? If so, how?
Q.5 Case study
A vice president’s position is about to open up at Ramsey Electronics, maker
of components for audio and visual equipment and computers. Whoever fills
the position will be one of the four most powerful people in the company and
may one day become its CEO. So the whole company has been watching the
political skirmishes among the three leading candidates: Arnie Sander,
Laura Prove, and Billy Evans.
Arnie Sander, currently head of the research and development division,
worked his way up through the engineering ranks. Of the three candidates,
he alone has a Ph.D. (in electrical engineering from MIT), and he is the
acknowledged genius behind the company’s most innovative products. One
of the current vice presidents—Harley Learner, himself an engineer — has
been pushing hard for Sander’s case.
Laura Prove spent five years on the road, earning a reputation as an
outstanding salesperson of Ramsey products before coming to company
headquarters and working her way up through the sales division. She
knows only enough about what she calls the “guts” of Ramsey’s electronic
parts to get by, but she is very good at selling them and at motivating the
people who work for her. Frank Barnwood, another current vice president,
has been filling the Chief’s ear with praise for Prove.
Of the three candidates, Billy Evans is the youngest and has the least
experience at Ramsey. Like the Chief, he has an M.B.A. from Harvard
Business School and a very sharp mind for finances. The Chief has credited
him with turning the company’s financial situation around, although others
in the company believe Sander’s products or Prove’s selling ability really
deserves the credit. Evans has no particular champion among Ramsey’s top
executives, but he is the only other handball player the Chief has located in
the company, and the two play every Tuesday and Thursday after work.
Learner and Barnwood have noticed that the company’s financial decisions
often get made during the cooling-off period following a handball game.
In the month preceding the Chief’s decision, the two vice presidents have
been busy. Learner, head of a national engineering association, worked to
have Sander win an achievement award from the association, and two weeks
before the naming of the new vice president, he threw the most lavish
banquet in the company’s history to announce the award. When introducing
Sander, Learner made a long, impassioned speech detailing Sander’s
accomplishments and heralding him as “the future of Ramsey Electronics.”
Frank Barnwood has moved more slowly and subtly. The Chief had asked
Barnwood years before to keep him updated on “all these gripes by women
and minorities and such,” and Barnwood did so by giving the Chief articles
of particular interest. Recently he gave the Chief one from a psychology
magazine about the cloning effect—the tendency of powerful executives to
choose successors who are most like themselves. He also passed on to the
Chief a Fortune article arguing that many American corporations are
floundering because they are being run by financial people rather than by
people who really know the company’s business. He also flooded bulletin
boards and the Chief’s desk with news clippings about the value of having
women and minorities at the top levels of a company.
Billy Evans has seemed indifferent to the promotion. He spends his days on
the phone and in front of the computer screen, reporting to the Chief every
other week on the company’s latest financial successes—and never missing
a handball game.
Questions:
(12 + 4 + 4 = 20)
1. Whom do you think the Chief will pick as the new vice president? Why?
(12)
2. Whom do you think should get the job? Why? (4)
3. What role might impression management play in the decision?
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Malcontent 11/?
Rated: T
Relationships: Wednesday/Xavier (wenvier), Wednesday & Enid, Wednesday & Bianca
Preview:
The Library of Nevermore was impressive but was failing to yield the kind of information she wanted. The books on the vast varieties of outcasts failed to illuminate what kind of creature she was dealing with and while there was some mention of the Addamses in the History of Nevermore it was a passing note. The school was founded about a hundred years after Jericho was founded so the Addamses and Joseph Crackstone were really only mentioned to give some context to the location. It was aggravating and Wednesday didn’t like to be stymied so she gave in finally and did something she’d been desperately trying to avoid.
Asking her Aunt Desdemona for help.
She and Enid caught her still in her classroom after last period. Her aunt was a tall, curvaceous woman with a retro haircut and meticulously winged liner. Her outfit for today was a ridiculously tight leather pencil skirt, a green cheetah print blouse and heels so high Wednesday would’ve considered them a torture tool personally.
“Aunt Desdemona.”
Read on AO3
————————
once again I forgot to post the update on here about chapter 10 lol B) I thought about how I needed to post it multiple times and then forgot to do it. Here’s a link to it for those who just want to go immediately to Chapter 10.
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I posted 375 times in 2021
42 posts created (11%)
333 posts reblogged (89%)
For every post I created, I reblogged 7.9 posts.
I added 99 tags in 2021
#this blog needs a tag for my bullshit - 48 posts
#ask - 12 posts
#❤️❤️❤️ - 8 posts
#anonymous - 6 posts
#anon - 6 posts
#fic rec - 5 posts
#steter - 5 posts
#i love this - 3 posts
#asks - 3 posts
#stiles - 3 posts
Longest Tag: 136 characters
#and in the beginning he keeps dating villains because he only recognizes that he’s having a strong reaction to this person and he’s like
My Top Posts in 2021
#5
I love the idea of Stiles going thru it like, “Ok werewolves are real. Ok magic is real. Ok demons are real.” And then at the end of it all going, “you know what isn’t fucking real?? THIS GENDER.” And then just fuckin ditching that shit.
183 notes • Posted 2021-06-30 05:10:42 GMT
#4
I just had a migraine dream that Peter and Stiles were both secretly trying to microchip each other to make it easier to keep track of them, but they both found out about the other trying to do it and instead of talking about it, it became a silent competition to secretly microchip the other person first, and also an opportunity to bitch about it to other pack members like “oh my god I can’t believe he thinks he needs to microchip me, I’m not the one who got arrested in Vegas twice last year” and “of course I don’t want to be microchipped, if he can find my location at all times then I can’t do fun sexy surprises for him, like stealing his car.”
260 notes • Posted 2021-09-14 19:47:51 GMT
#3
See the full post
287 notes • Posted 2021-06-23 04:30:24 GMT
#2
mmmmmmm you know what’s some good good shit? some tasty words?? some delicious delicious fiction???
Peter taking care of Stiles after the Gerard Beatdown.
Here’s a list of fics that have that, but not a comprehensive list because I KNOW I’ve read more than these. Feel free to add if you think of more!
The Fort Fic by @cywscross
Do you remember - back when you were a little kid - the forts you used to make at home out of blankets and pillows and overturned furniture? Like all those kids, Stiles does. Unlike all those kids, Stiles never quite outgrew it.
The Alpha Thief by @hotpinklizard
Something changes around the time Peter turns thirty. His wolf becomes malcontent and angry. His control, impeccable since he was a child, starts to slip, that inner rage leaking out. Talia's iron clad control over the pack chafes him. He can't explain why, but it feels like his world shifts. Pack members he's grown up with suddenly leave with barely an explanation, without a goodbye. His parents' deaths, something that occurred over five years ago, suddenly feel raw, everything after their passing he remembers feeling stilted and wrong.
Or
What if Malia's existence wasn't the memory Talia took from Peter? And what if memories weren't the only thing she stole?
Razor Edge of Danger, also by @hotpinklizard
It starts with Gerard. After the clusterfuck of Stiles crashing into the kanima with his jeep, Jackson's 'death' and werewolf resurrection, Lydia and Jackson go off together, Scott goes after Allison, and Derek, broken and hurt from yet another betrayal and use of his body against his will, takes Isaac and leaves, unable to look at any of them. That leaves Stiles standing next to his battered jeep, arms wrapped around his aching ribs. No one so much as looks his way. Except for Peter.
A Meeting in the Dark by LeeBlack
He’d no sooner stepped in the kitchen when the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end and he froze in place, having gotten the crash course on being able to tell when an apex predator was watching him.
“If you’re going to kill me, just get it over with,” he said, with a bravado he most certainly did not feel.
The back door opened enough for someone to slip inside and close it, flipping the deadbolt shut.
“You should keep this locked. Beacon Hills isn’t as safe as it used to be,” came the response.
(baby) maybe that matters more by @lavender-lotion
“Well, well, well,” drawls a familiar voice that Stiles hadn’t even considered he might ever hear again. “The token pack human, left all alone?”
A Little Tender Love and Care by @ambersagen
Peter's back from the dead.
Stiles is fresh from a beatdown.
It's the perfect opportunity for a certain half mad wolf to get what he wants this time around.
Luckily for Stiles what Peter wants is what the boy needs.
Would You Forgive Me if I Called You Hope, Peter Hale? @whispering-sumire755 (I could have sworn this one was post-Gerard beatdown, but it’s actually post- A Different beatdown. I’m including it anyway because it fucks.) (not literally it’s rated T)
Stiles has scars. He owns that, he accepts it, he's cataloged and memorized every single one, he's hyper fucking aware of them all.
//
"What do you want, Peter?" Having the more untrustworthy of the Pack getting protective weirds him the fuck out, leaves an odd fluttering in his chest, like moths, waiting perilously and suicidally to be burned.
He doesn't like it.
"You're injured," the man says, "and whatever it is, it's put you in enough pain that I nearly fainted when I-"
"- Used your werewolf mojo on me without my permission?" Stiles smirks, and Peter gives him a black look, crossing a leg over his knee and smoothing out some invisible wrinkle on his pants.
"Tell me the truth Stiles, how bad is it?"
[Or: The one where Stiles has scars, is more than a little fucked up, and Peter notices. He helps.]
391 notes • Posted 2021-04-03 21:03:13 GMT
#1
Stiles, age 8, on Ask Jeeves after finding a skeleton in the woods:
What do bones eat
Pet Bones
Can I have a Pet Skull
Skull terrarium
Enrichment for bones
Do teeth eat the same things as regular bones
405 notes • Posted 2021-04-15 19:13:13 GMT
Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →
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Movies I watched this week #62
My Brilliant Friend, a spellbinding and heartbreaking adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s 4 Neapolitan Novels. I binged the first two seasons in one go, deeply impacted by the intensity of Elena Greco and Lila Cerullo friendship. Two strong-willed and exceptional little girls, struggling to escape the limited destiny forced on them by their poor working class post-war Naples neighborhood, the quiet Elena succeeds and the rebellious Lila can’t. Deeply feminist and anti-bourgeois time travel piece about female oppression and the Italian class divide. (Photos Above).
Since the story is told by Elena, it is framed as if the ‘Brilliant Friend’ is the doomed Lila. But eventually, it is disclosed that this is how Lila describes Lenù. An absolutely magnificent masterpiece! Can’t wait for season 3. 10/10.
🍿
L'Eclisse, Antonioni’s last black & white masterpiece, the 3rd part of his art trilogy of malcontent. With iconic-looking Alain Delon and Monica Vitti. Visually stark landscapes and vacant, moody lives pursuing a “fragile peace”. Rome looked so much like Tel-Aviv of the same time. 8/10
🍿
Léa Seydoux X3:
🎦🎦🎦 She is sublime in France, playing a complex television journalist superstar who suffers an existential crisis after running over a motorist in her car, her always-on public persona meshes with deep personal sadness. With an actual cameo of Emmanuel Macron(!). Best film of the week.
🎦🎦🎦 Re-watch: In Blue Is the Warmest Colour she is terrific, but the film clearly belongs to the amazing Adèle (Exarchopoulos), too young and vulnerable, the one who caused the destruction of their relationship. This is a simple first love story, genuine and heartbreaking. As a porn-lover who has a hard time finding mainstream movies that depicts sex honestly, this is one film that does it well. (In spite of some ‘Male gaze’ problems). Also, I love how sensual was the simple act of eating the red spaghetti dish, which was repeated 3 or 4 times. 9/10
🎦🎦🎦 It’s Only the End of the World, however, was highly disappointing. It’s a small Canadian drama about a young writer who returns to his family after not seeing them for 12 years, to tell them that he’s dying, but can’t find the courage to do so. But the dynamics between the 5 characters were incoherent and without any insight, as all felt bitterly abandoned. 4/10.
Still, in the last one she looked very much like the young actress from On s'embrasse? (Shall We Kiss?) which is always good for a re-watch.
🍿
The Real Charlie Chaplin, a new biography of the greatest film comic that ever lived, with some new and interesting interpretations as well as newsreels. It starts, and ends, with groundwork interviews by young preservationist Kevin Brownlow’s. (Also, I didn’t realize that Chaplin and Hitler were born within four days of each other!). I loved it. 7/10.
🍿
Nicholas Ray X 2:
🎦🎦🎦 Humphrey Bogart plays a hothead Hollywood screenwriter in Rays’ film noir In a Lonely Place. It’s not clear if he is, as suspected, a murderer, but it’s certain that he has a violent temper and an abusive personality. Kudos for him for playing a morally-grey role at the height of his career. I still consider his deep baritone voice his most distinctive trait.
🎦🎦🎦 First watch: James Dean’s final film Rebel Without a Cause, a 50′s style, but early examination of disaffected “young people”, lost teens, juvenile delinquents, trying to figure out why their middle-class lives suck so much. With 19-year-old blond Dennis Hopper.
Judy… You want to see a monkey? (hands her the mirror)…
🍿
In the post apocalyptic debut film The Calm Beyond, all of Hong Kong was destroyed by a giant tsunami, and a woman, one of the few survivors, builds a fortified little world for herself on the roof of a submerged skyscraper. Then she finds a young girl and takes her under her wings. Mixed dystopian ‘Waterworld’ style, spoken in Chinese and English.
🍿
Éric Rohmer‘s Changing Landscapes, a short visual essay about the industrialization of the French countryside in and around Paris in the early 1960s.
🍿
The Intouchables, a light French buddy comedy with François Cluzet as a very wealthy quadriplegic who hires an energetic black live-in caregiver without any experience. It broke all kinds of box office records in France and elsewhere, in spite of being full of sentimental stereotypes.
It had one laugh-out-loud joke (at 1:44 when Driss shaved Philippe, mischievously leaving him with a toothbrush mustache). 4/10
🍿
2 for Adora:
🎦🎦🎦 Turning Red is the new coming-of-age animation about a 13-year-old Chinese-Canadian girl, and the first(!) one - out of 25 Pixar films - to be directed by a woman (Hello, John Lasseter…). It’s also the first film to deal with the onset of female puberty, including and specifically menstruation, body changes, hormonal mood swings, etc. As they focus on new international markets, and after creating stories with Pacific Islander, Mexican, Colombians, Italian, Black heroes, Disney picked this time an ‘Asian’ background. The mother-daughter generational clash was lovely but the usual supernatural, mystical climax of ancient spirits and superhuman powers (The usual Disney profiteering) was trite. Doesn’t strand up to Inside out, Coco or Soul - or to Domee Shi’s earlier jewel ‘Bao’.
🎦🎦🎦 When Adora was 6, we watched Man on Fire together (but only the Dakota Fanning scenes), and after that we would listen to Linda Ronstadt’s ‘Blue Bayou’. So yeah, the first half of this Tony Scott bodyguard film is cool enough, and especially the bonds between Denzel and the bright little girl. The revenge vigilante second half is just action. 5/10.
🍿
Stanley Tucci directed the respectable bio Final Portrait with Geoffrey Rush as Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacomett. A “cultural” exercise in hi-art that is, after all is said and done, quiet boring.
🍿
The Shadow In My Eye is a new historic drama, about a Copenhagen Catholic school full of children that was accidentally bombed by the RAF during WW2. This is the third film by Danish director Ole Bornedal that I’ve seen this year (after ’Nightwatch’ and ‘Small time killers’). The first two were terrible, and so was this one. No more Ole Bornedal for me!
🍿
I read that Mrs. America was one of 2020 best TV-series. The story of paleo-conservative reactionary Phyllis Schlafly who fought (and eventually won over) the US Equal Rights Amendment. But I could only watch the first episode. It was so disgusting, in spite of good performances from Cate Blanchett and John Slattery.
- - - - -
(My complete movie list is here)
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Debris: speculation and things we know so far about...
Finola
Her mother, Jenna Goldland, died of cancer. Natural causes? Genetics? Debris side effect? All speculative.
Her father, George Jones, was an astrophysicist that allegedly took his life because he couldn't cope with multiple disorienting losses in his life (his wife, his work, his sense of self and purpose) and was revived by debris.
She took her dad's watch after staying with him in the morgue.
She holds Maddox partly responsible for his death, which leaves a certain unresolved tension between her and Bryan since Bryan considers Maddox a mentor just shy of unimpeachable.
Her semi-estranged sister Dee Dee has problems with substance abuse. (1x01)
Despite her claims to not get along well with Dee Dee in episode 2, Finola craves and clearly misses familial connections because she feels so alone. It's a slow and steady burn. Which is why she goes out of her way to repair and protect families for other people. Whether it's talking to Isla in episode 1 about her mother's grief, or trying to break bad news to Caroline about her father in episode 7, episode 4 where she nearly touches Efrain's arm before deciding to reunite him and his family, or episode 3 where she watches from a distance as Nicole and Richard Hegman, a father and daughter separated for years and connected by dreams — that George only ever thought to study in order to solve differential equations— touch hands through glass, reunited. That's why she begs her father to make room for her in episode 8 and why it's such a personal sacrifice to give up a version of her father in episode 10 that tells Finola he loves her.
She and Bryan share an unspoken bond over dealing with grief.
Finola is very go-with-her-gut but not in the same sense as Bryan who is pragmatic, nor her father who is empiric, but an amalgam of pragmatism, data, and a majority largely composed of empathy. She knows how to read and respond to people, and she bases many of her decisions on the human cost. So whereas Bryan trusts his instinct to take split second, impulsive risks where time is the essence, Finola trusts her gut to weigh out the cost overall before taking the decisive risk.
It's unclear as to what she did before MI6 and Orbital. She reports to Priya Ferris, but it's not said how close the professional relationship is.
She grew up in the UK and spent at least part of her childhood in the Isle of Wight. Since joining Orbital, she has a stateside apartment in DC.
Favorite Finola quotes
"I know what grief can do to a person...I was completely lost, just closed off from everyone." 1x01 Pilot
"I always find when I give a part of myself, I get so much more back. Connection is all we really have to keep us on the ground here." 1x01
"I can't help but wonder what aspect of you I would have seen that matters most... You're more than just a federal agent [Bryan] but it's the only thing you've shown man and that's the least important thing." 1x02 You Are Not Alone
"So there's a whole secret peeps subculture then?...I asked them to get the stalest ones they could find." 1x02
"Let's just look out for each other." 1x02
"If we're not willing to use this technology on these people then we're not worthy to have it." 1x03 Solar Winds
"You know, when they designed it, I really don’t think NASA engineers intended that to be your personal toaster oven, Bryan." 1x06 Supernova
"It's not aliens [Niels]" 1x10 I Am Icarus
"You get a cereal box. Honey Nut Malcontent." 1x10
"You know, you could just pull up a chair to the buffet [Bryan]." 1x07 You Can Call Her Caroline
"I really understand how important your work is to you. I just wished there was room in there for me." 1x08 Spaceman
"They are liars, all of them." 1x08
"You're not getting [my father] either [Ferris]. I know what you did...I will let you know what you need to know when I know it." 1x08
"I did it because it was right." / "People deserve to know what happens to the ones they love." 1x04 In Universe
"You fight so bravely because you have nothing and you want nothing because you are afraid to have something to lose. Because if you did, your heart would no longer be steel." 1x09 Do You Know Icarus? A slightly less than subtle illustration of a causal loop that proliferates the reality arc: in being afraid to have something to lose, your heart is no longer impervious and steeled. This means you have something, which is why you fight so bravely— regardless of whether you are able to admit it.
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Motherland Fort Salem
Just some observations, questions, fuzzy notions
1. Fantasy map has twenty nine states and the Cession, fantasy CGI flag has thirty pentacles*, all the live action flags are fifty star flags
2. Why is all the tech old? Box TVs, HMMWVs came out in the 80s, haven't seen a cell phone
3. Why is it the smallest witchdraft in years? Too many dodgers? Too many dispensations? Not enough momma witches having baby witches?
4. If Alder dies, does the Accord die with her?
5. Raelle's mom was Willa Collar, who was V. Collar? Raelle never mentions an aunt.
6. Can witches create a vacuum? Great way to defuse a popper, it busts but the sound goes nowhere in the vacuum, would render an adversary unconscious too
7. When Raelle met Scylla, I don't think she was playing hooky as much as being drawn away from an elementary exercise to a weapons range where real power was being exercised - it hints at her real power
8. I hope they never come up with a hokey stupid story about Raelle's scar, just leave it undiscussed
9. Writers could have done more with the Demerits bit, as well as employing Attagirls for good stuff
10. Raelle's momletters, when I was a new dad I wrote letters to my kid(s) up until about the time I became a single dad, they're still in a box, the kids can have them when I'm dead or when they have kiddos of their own
11. "Live a little" says the necro
12. Alder calls the Spree "agents of the end" akin to the true believers we must contend with in the likes of Pence
13. "Inability to vocalize can render a soldier powerless" was where I first imagined using a vacuum, but the writers went with a tech-response to cancel the sounds the witches make and gave the camarella (sp?) The dunelike weirding modules in Ep10
14. A draftee military is a mistake, ideologues and draft dodgers don't want to he there (re: Carlin and Hendrix) they become morale-sapping malcontents, a poison to unit cohesion and tend to get people killed.
15. Scylla says "I've been burned before" yeah, we've seen it, remember kids - do not do self harm, we love you and want you to come to us and ask for help and keep asking until you get it (don't join terrorist organizations either**)
16. Witches hollering at the witch boys reminded me of when I was at BCT and 1SG Hurley's daughter and a friend showed up in daisy dukes and bikini tops and the company got smoked for whistling and hollering (I missed all that, I had KP that day)
17. Hags at the Hague, seems appropriate, still rather disappointed there are male witches at all
18. Reveille, the Army magazine, it would make a fun fan magazine
18. Scylla's room is 243, my old battalion was 2/43
19. The Spree plan hinged on a kid who was defiant and showed initiative (like crashing a party) - that kind of person tends to make their own decisions (like not handing their love over from one master to another master) - so it should not have come as a shock to the Spree when Scylls defied them
20. "...or your future is bleak..." is not the kind of thing that inspires a great deal of faith in leadership.
21. When Adil and Khalida show up at the Army OP, why wasn't there a gate guard?
23. How will Tally's role among the Biddies affect Alder, since she knows (and disapproves) that Alder lied and puppeted President Wade "no more secrets" Tally said
24. "The Spree protect their own, we are nothing like you" says Scylla under duress, but I fear she may find she is expendable
25. Why did Scylla go back to the Spree? What happened to the defiant initiative taker? What will Quartermain do know that she knows of one of the safehouses? Did Quartermain leave a suggestion in Scylla's mind to go back to them?
26. Witch soldiers are strong because they allow themselves to feel pain and express emotions like sadness - they ought to be able to avoid a lot of the pitfalls common to male toxicity
27. Great people do not prey upon the weak, great people protect the weak and help them to grow strong
28. When one side says to you "now is the time you stop being complicit in their evil" and then immediately hand you a weapon of mass destruction so you can go and commit an act of evil is when you stop being complicit and begin to actively collude
29. Tarim fear capture of their songs by govts and armies, what about corporations (I hope nobody fears govt but then thinks corporations are okay) ostensibly, a liberal democracy is accountable to the people but a corporation is accountable to nobody
30. How tightly the Tarim must control every aspect of every individual's life to prevent one strong willed individualist from selling out their songs
31. Did the Swythe family own the Bellweathers?
32. I like some of the music, I really liked the dance scene at Beltane, I wish more guys had worn kilts, it'd be nice if MFS could afford Bear McReary to do some of the music
33. Can we shoot season two in more colors than yellow and brown? Is this done to contrast with the blue of Raelle+Scylla scenes?
34. Do Army witches get to retire? Is there a troops to teachers program? Are there Navy witches?
35. I'd like to see a little more development of the foreign witches, especially General Sharma (maybe that wasn't her name)
36. Old Box TVs, the day room, one TV and all the soldiers had to share
37. WADE 2020!
#motherland fort salem#i think a star in a circle is a pentacle#sometimes you don't realize it is a terror org until it is too late
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Mythic Visions: making of eragon
I will react
1. it was beyond Christopher Paolini’s wildest dreams that within a few years a major Hollywood studio would do exactly that (make a film)--
this just makes me sad
2. Stefen Fangmeier had that. He came in with a very strong vision of this world- are you sure
3.”it was very exciting to make everything as real as possible”- again are you sue Stefen
4. we wanted to have a contemporary edge, to not feel that you’re in Ye Olde Town- sigh
5. the tattooed Urgals are like mythical Stone Age Men- violent and primitive-- this is just a pile of no
6. “we could not even mention the name of Lord of the Rings, we were forbidden by the heads of Fox”-- there is a lot to unpack there really
7. Wolf Kroeger was from the adventurous school of muscular movie-making
just what is all of this
8. in the film Eragon meets a clairvoyant named Angela in Daret
so wrong
9. costume designer: I wanted (Farthen Dur) to have the feeling of a cultural melting pot
- some thing about this rubs me the wrong way
10. ensemble emphasised both the fierce and feminine aspects of Arya’s nature
but still why the skirt? also the costume designer mentioned that they barely had the chance to read the script before being flown out the night before filming began from Los Angeles to Budapest, and had to redesign five months of prior work (pg 68 i think)
11. In the movie Brom is a malcontent who drinks away his evenings
12. about the design for Saphira: looking at other images of dragons online person decided that “they all looked very reptilian. it was important to create a character we could relate to, so we could feel the bond Eragon has with her”
- again something that I can’t quite pinpoint what is wrong with it
13. costume designer: our hero had to ride a dragon and fly and fight and be handsome and young and heroic- please refer to above comment
14. Murtagh is a figure of instant suspicion among the Varden.. because he carries the sword of Morzan
15. fun thing: helicopters had to land on narrow terraces in the set up of the battle scene
16. Jeremy Irons: and think about the sequels after- haha
Conclusion:
- I feel sorry for the actors who spent so much time working on this film and enjoying it like Ed Speelers had a moment “where he felt the full impact on of the sudden turn his life had taken” atop a mountain which to me kind of feels similar to moment where Eragon discovers his true name
- the person who played Arya was very good because in pages 82 - 84 she describes the relationship she had with the horses she had to ride in the film which i find great (she can play one of the elves that ferry Eragon and Saphira to Ellesmera can I just say)
- this has been said before but again I just feel bad about the wasted potential of the film and the actors because not many could have acted so well with a CGI creature in 2005 can they
Some Pictures: many of which where taken because I like something about it and some of these are very out of order
or they were just weird pictures
congrats for making it to the end, I’m proud of you
#inheritance cycle#the film reaction is coming I just have to find the DVD#long post#very long post#text post#pictures
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#1yrago My RSS feeds from a decade ago, a snapshot of gadget blogging when that was a thing
Rob Beschizza:
I chanced upon an ancient backup of my RSS feed subscriptions, a cold hard stone of data from my time at Wired in the mid-2000s. The last-modified date on the file is December 2007. I wiped my feeds upon coming to Boing Boing thenabouts: a fresh start and a new perspective.
What I found, over 212 mostly-defunct sites, is a time capsule of web culture from a bygone age—albeit one tailored to the professional purpose of cranking out blog posts about consumer electronics a decade ago. It's not a picture of a wonderful time before all the horrors of Facebook and Twitter set in. This place is not a place of honor. No highly-esteemed deed is commemorated here. But perhaps some of you might like a quick tour, all the same.
The "Main" folder, which contains 30 feeds, was the stuff I actually wanted (or needed) to read. This set would morph over time. I reckon it's easy to spot 2007's passing obsessions from the enduring interests.
↬ Arts and Letters Daily: a minimalist blog of links about smartypants subjects, a Drudge for those days when I sensed a third digit dimly glowing in my IQ. But for the death of founder Denis Dutton, it's exactly the same as it was in 2007! New items daily, but the RSS feed's dead.
↬ Boing Boing. Still around, I hear.
↬ Brass Goggles. A dead feed for a defunct steampunk blog (the last post was in 2013) though the forums seem well-stocked with new postings.
↬ The Consumerist. Dead feed, dead site. Founded in 2005 by Joel Johnson at Gawker, it was sold to Consumer Reports a few years later, lost its edge there, and was finally shuttered (or summarily executed) just a few weeks ago.
↬ Bibliodyssey. Quiescent. Updated until 2015 with wonderful public-domain book art scans and commentary. A twitter account and tumblr rolled on until just last year. There is a book to remember it by should the bits rot.
↬ jwz. Jamie Zawinski's startling and often hilariously bleak reflections on culture, the internet and working at Netscape during the dotcom boom. This was probably the first blog that led me to visit twice, to see if there was more. And there still is, almost daily.
↬ Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society. Curios and weirdness emerging from the dust and foul fog of old books, forbidden history and the more speculative reaches of science. So dead the domain is squatted. Creator Josh Foer moved on to Atlas Obscura.
↬ The Tweney Review. Personal blog of my last supervisor at Wired, Dylan Tweney, now a communications executive. It's still going strong!
↬ Strange Maps. Dead feed, dead site, though it's still going as a category at Big Think. Similar projects proliferate now on social media; this was the wonderful original. There was a book.
↬ BLDGBLOG. Architecture blog, posting since 2004 with recent if rarer updates. A fine example of tasteful web brutalism, but I'm no longer a big fan of cement boxes and minimalism with a price tag.
↬ Dethroner. A men's self-care and fashion blog, founded by Joel Johnson, of the tweedy kind that became wildly and effortlessly successful not long after he gave up on it.
↬ MocoLoco. This long-running design blog morphed visually into a magazine in 2015. I have no idea why I liked it then, but indie photoblogs' golden age ended long ago and it's good to see some are thriving.
↬ SciFi Scanner. Long-dead AMC channel blog, very likely the work of one or two editors and likely lost to tidal corporate forces rather than any specific failure or event.
↬ Cult of Mac. Apple news site from another Wired News colleague of mine, Leander Kahney, and surely one of the longest-running at this point. Charlie Sorrel, who I hired at Wired to help me write the Gadget blog, still pens articles there.
↬ Ectoplasmosis. After Wired canned its bizarre, brilliant and unacceptably weird Table of Malcontents blog, its editor John Brownlee (who later joined Joel and I in editing Boing Boing Gadgets) and contributor Eliza Gauger founded Ectoplasmosis: the same thing but with no hysterical calls from Conde Nast wondering what the fuck is going on. It was glorious, too: a high-point of baroque indie blogging in the age before Facebook (and I made the original site design). Both editors later moved onto other projects (Magenta, Problem Glyphs); Gauger maintains the site's archives at tumblr. It was last updated in 2014.
↬ Penny Arcade. Then a webcomic; now a webcomic and a media and events empire.
↬ Paul Boutin. While working at Wired News, I'd heard a rumor that he was my supervisor. But I never spoke to him and only ever received a couple of odd emails, so I just got on with the job until Tweney was hired. His site and its feed are long-dead.
↬ Yanko Design. Classic blockquote chum for gadget bloggers.
↬ City Home News. A offbeat Pittburgh News blog, still online but lying fallow since 2009.
↬ Watchismo. Once a key site for wristwatch fans, Watchismo was folded into watches.com a few years ago. A couple of things were posted to the feed in 2017, but its time has obviously passed.
↬ Gizmodo. Much has changed, but it's still one of the best tech blogs.
↬ Engadget. Much has changed, but it's still one of the best tech blogs.
↬ Boing Boing Gadgets. Site's dead, though the feed is technically live as it redirects to our "gadgets" tag. Thousands of URLs there succumbed to bit-rot at some point, but we have plans to merge its database into Boing Boing's and revive them.
↬ Gear Factor. This was the gadget review column at Wired Magazine, separate from the gadget blog I edited because of the longtime corporate divorce between Wired's print and online divisions. This separation had just been resolved at the time I began working there, and the two "sides" -- literally facing offices in the same building -- were slowly being integrated. The feed's dead, but with an obvious successor, Gear.
↬ The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. Required reading at the time, and very much a thing of its time. Now vaguely repulsive.
↬ i09. This brilliant sci-fi and culture blog deserved more than to end up a tag at Gizmodo.
↬ Science Daily: bland but exhaustive torrent of research news, still cranking along.
The "Essentials" Folder was material I wanted to stay on top of, but with work clearly in mind: the background material for systematically belching out content at a particular point in 2007.
↬ Still alive are The Register, Slashdot, Ars Technica, UMPC Portal (the tiny laptop beat!), PC Watch, Techblog, TechCrunch, UberGizmo, Coolest Gadgets, EFF Breaking News, Retro Thing, CNET Reviews, New Scientist, CNET Crave, and MAKE Magazine.
↬ Dead or quiescent: GigaOm (at least for news), Digg/Apple, Akihabara News, Tokyomango, Inside Comcast, Linux Devices (Update: reincarnated at linuxgizmos.com), and Uneasy Silence.
Of the 23 feeds in the "press releases" folder, 17 are dead. Most of the RSS no-shows are for companies like AMD and Intel, however, who surely still offer feeds at new addresses. Feeds for Palm, Nokia and pre-Dell Alienware are genuine dodos. These were interesting enough companies, 10 years ago.
PR Newswire functions as a veneering service so anyone can pretend to have a big PR department, but it is (was?) also legitimately used by the big players as a platform so I monitored the feeds there. They're still populated, but duplicate one another, and it's all complete garbage now. (It was mostly garbage then.)
My "Gadgets and Tech" folder contained the army of late-2000s blogs capitalizing on the success of Gizmodo, Boing Boing, TechCrunch, et al. Back in the day, these were mostly one (or two) young white men furiously extruding commentary on (or snarky rewrites of) press releases, with lots of duplication and an inchoate but seriously-honored unspoken language of mutual respect and first-mover credit. Those sites that survived oftentimes moved to listicles and such: notionally superior and more original content and certainly more sharable on Facebook, but unreadably boring. However, a few old-timey gadget bloggers are still cranking 'em out' in web 1.5 style. And a few were so specialized they actually had readers who loved them.
Still alive: DailyTech, technabob, CdrInfo.com, EverythingUSB, Extremetech, GearFuse, Gizmag, Gizmodiva, Hacked Gadgets, How to Spot A Psychopath/Dans' Data, MobileBurn, NewLaunches, OhGizmo!, ShinyShiny, Stuff.tv, TechDigest, TechDirt, Boy Genius Report, The Red Ferret Journal, Trusted Reviews, Xataca, DigiTimes, MedGadget, Geekologie, Tom's Hardware, Trendhunter, Japan Today, Digital Trends, All About Symbian (Yes, Symbian!), textually, cellular-news, TreeHugger, dezeen.
Dead: jkkmobile.com, Business Week Online, About PC (why), Afrigadget (unique blog about inventors in Africa, still active on FaceBook), DefenseTech, FosFor (died 2013), Gearlog, Mobile-Review.com (but apparently reborn as a Russian language tech blog!), Robot's Dreams, The Gadgets Weblog, Wireless Watch Japan, Accelerating Future, Techopolis, Mobile Magazine, eHome Upgrade, camcorderinfo.com (Update: it became http://Reviewed.com), Digital Home Thoughts (farewell), WiFi Network News (farewell), Salon: Machinist, Near Future Lab, BotJunkie (twitter), and CNN Gizmos.
I followed 18 categories at Free Patents Online, and the site's still alive, though the RSS feeds haven't had any new items since 2016.
In the "news" folder, my picks were fairly standard stuff: BBC, CNET, digg/technology, PC World, Reuters, International Herald Tribune, and a bunch of Yahoo News feeds. The Digg feed's dead; they died and were reborn.
The "Wired" feed folder comprised all the Wired News blogs of the mid-2000s. All are dead. 27B Stroke 6, Autopia, Danger Room, Epicenter, Gadget Lab, Game|Life, Geekdad, Listening Post, Monkey Bites, Table of Malcontents, Underwire, Wired Science.
These were each basically one writer or two and were generally folded into the established mazagine-side arrangements as the Age of Everyone Emulating Gawker came to an end. The feed for former EIC Chris Anderson's personal blog survives, but hasn't been updated since his era. Still going strong is Bruce Sterling's Beyond the Beyond, albeit rigged as a CMS tag rather than a bona fide site of its own.
Still alive from my 2007 "Science" folder are Bad Astronomy (Phil Plait), Bad Science (Ben Goldacre), Pharyngula (PZ Myers) New Urban Legends, NASA Breaking News, and The Panda's Thumb.
Finally, there's a dedicated "iPhone" folder. This was not just the hottest toy of 2007. It was all that was holy in consumer electronics for half a decade. Gadget blogging never really had a golden age, but the iPhone ended any pretense that there were numerous horses in a race of equal potential. Apple won.
Still alive are 9 to 5 Mac, MacRumors, MacSlash, AppleInsider and Daring Fireball. Dead are TUAW, iPhoneCentral, and the iPhone Dev Wiki.
Of all the sites listed here, I couldn't now be paid but to read a few. So long, 2007.
https://boingboing.net/2017/12/29/my-rss-feeds-from-a-decade-ago.html
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Lycosa Robess - College Student Communist
@chaoticevilfantrolls
I’ve been considering making her a purpleblood, rather than a tealblood. I’d love some ideas for tying that into her re-design, if possible!
Reading her profile, I’m definitely interested in making her a purpleblood. So I’ll absolutely address that as we continue! I think linking her back to teal a little bit may be reasonable, though, given the setting.
Planet: Alternia, AU where she plays SBURB and as well as the age of being shipped of planet is 10 sweeps. Also, caste traits can be mixed up thanks to linked traits and genetic weirdness (like with Vapula).
Name:Lycosa Robess
- Lycosa: From Lycosa tarantula, the animal originally known as the common tarantula. Ties into her lusus, horns, and just about everything else relating to bugs in her theme.
- Robess: From Maximilien Robespierre, one of the most prominent figures of the French Revolution. Connects to her ‘revolution for the sake of it’ ideology, as well as her typing quirk (As the two numbers she replaces are also part of the year of the beginning of the French Revolution).
Oh man… I used to be a bit of a French Revolution nerd. I adore this connection to her revolution for the sake of it ideology. Robespierre was a really chaotic man who was willing to go to some incredible extremes. Nice link!
Age:Typically between 8-10.
Strife Specibus:chainKind. Her iconic weapon is a Kusarigama with a hammer on one end and a sickle on the other.
I See Your Joke And I Love It.
Fetch Modus: Hive Modus. All items are stored within a hexagonal grid, forming rings around a core item. Only items on the current outermost row can be accessed, and each row needs to be completed before items can be added to the next layer. She picked up this modus when she was still really in her bugs phase, which she kind of regrets now that she’s going for a cool hip college communist aesthetic.
Just inconvenient enough to be fun. I also like that even though it harkens back to her old bug interest, it’s also a modus based around the structure of a communal species, making it still count for a reasonable communism reference.
Blood color: Currently Teal, though I’m thinking about making her a purpleblood (maybe a defector from the cult? Especially because her rebellious nature is taken to an idealistic extreme- she doesn’t have a moral end goal, she just wants things to change.)
I do think that a purpleblood defector is a great thing to do. It ties into her theme of a desire for change and development to have her rebel against a structure like that. And even if we change her, we can still link her back to this tealblood root a little bit. See, a desire to change Can be her moral center. Her view of right and wrong can be ‘anything goes as long as it is in the name of change.’ She can have a judicial nucleus built around the conception that change is the ultimate right.
Symbol and meaning: It kinda looks like a bug? I don’t necessarily want to go with an extended zodiac sign, because her symbol is technically from the same family as Vapula’s. Maybe a small adjustment to match the teal sign language would be good, if not changing the symbol to something else entirely (if she ends up as a purpleblood).
Oh yeah, I’ll definitely give her a custom sign. It fits teal sign language well enough that I might leave it mostly untouched even when I change her to a purple.
Trolltag: malcontentMarionette
- Malcontent: Someone who is displeased with their current situation
- Marionette: I feel this would tie in well to making her a purpleblood? She ends up as a sort of puppet, controlled by the violetblood in her session and becoming the leader of his consort army. Additionally, a marionette would tie into the inherent circus theme of most purplebloods, and her status as a mind player (controlling choices in some form).
Oooh I love this… It expresses her original feeling of being malcontented with the state of things and feeling like a puppet of her institution while also acting as foreshadowing for her story… And if she’s a purple, it Does indicate the general clown theme as Well as the chucklevoodoos. And if we do make her a time player (I’m on the fence there… Maybe. Mayhaps), it’s a good reference to that too.
Quirk: Actually has two different quirks, although they’re not used simultaneously.
Originally, she typed in all caps, replacing b with 8 and t with 7, representing insect eyes and mandibles. She would use horizontal emoticons with two sets of eyes (oOwOo) to represent a jumping spider’s face. She also wouldn’t use much ending punctuation, instead sticking to commas to denote pacing.
“MM: 7HE QUICK 8ROWN FOX JUMPED OVER 7HE LAZY DOG oOwOo”
As time goes on, her quirk becomes much more ‘refined’, cut back to proper syntax and grammar, with a distinct lack of emoticons. She maintains the symbol replacements out of some deep, in-borne spite, but that’s about all.
“MM: 7he quick 8rown fox jumped over 7he lazy dog.”
I like it a lot!
Special Abilities:Nothing in particular as a tealblood. As a purpleblood I’ve considered giving her chucklevoodoos that incite feelings of outrage, overconfidence, and anger, which can cause riots and rebellion. Additionally, being able to manifest insects (ala Gamzee creating Lil’ Cal, on a much lower level).
That’d be pretty neat, because chucklevoodoos are said to be a way for purples to keep the lowbloods in check/keep them in line. Her abilities having the direct opposite impact could be good… Maybe her abilities naturally started as an ability that influenced individuals to cause infighting, inducing rage against companions and manifesting visions of insects to get people to swat at each other and exacerbate fights? But she’s been actively teaching herself to move away from that ability because she does not want to be a tool of the system or a tool of control. Of course she could then try to utilize it as a power for unifying feelings of anger and giving it motivational direction.
Lusus: A jumping spider the size of a kitten at most. A sweet, gentle lusus whom Lycosa most definitely doted on when she was younger. Her lusus will knit you sweaters out of web silk.
Oh I love… If we make her a purple, we could just shift that to a sea spider probably. The silk’s still fine. Make some fishing nets out of that silk, little cute spider.
Personality: Lycosa, as a person, is fundamentally unhappy and ill-at-ease, banking on rebellion and change for the hell of it to fill some sort of thing that she can’t seem to place. She doesn’t care about the morality of the change she’s advocating for, as long as it happens, and as long as it soothes whatever emotional turmoil that is bubbling inside of her.
She tends to let herself get swept away on flights of emotional fancy, elaborate stories of ‘what if’ that eventually become ‘it will’. Her belief that she can find all of the answers to her disillusionment in the form of others, or in the form of external relationships is one of those things. She ends up clinging far too much to a fellow player in her session, who uses her fancy to manipulate her into becoming his second-in-command, and an essential puppet under his control.
She also tends to hold back any signs of her old interests, and any traits she has that others might not like. When the violetblood in her session expresses distaste in her interest in insects, she drops any signs of interest besides the most minimal, retaining only her quirk in some subconscious spite, justifying the lack of change as simply matching his.
A big part of her story line is learning to cope with her general malcontent with life in a way that doesn’t involve deep-throating molotovs for revolution, or clinging to the first person who offers her some sense of stability no matter how much they’re using her for their own gain.
The relationship clinging is another of those little teal traits that I really like shining through in her. Picking someone that is bad for her and committing too powerfully to him… With the added purpleblooded fun of the dedication.
I definitely love her. I love her a lot. She’s a very detailed and thorough character with a lot of story growth potential. She has a wonderful character arc here… And she has so many aspects that she’s throwing around that you can develop her in a million directions…
Interests: Lycosa’s interests are few and rather simple, often shoved to the side in favor of mimicking whatever interests her current lover or friend happens to possess.
She spent most of her youth obsessed with bugs, from their physiology to their behavior. She knows how to manage just about any insect, from wasps to butterflies to mosquitos, and she has a deep fondness in her heart for arachnids as well. She can draw detailed drawings of them from memory (which ends up becoming relevant at a point in her quest),
Lycosa also has a deep and involved interest in illegal histories and recovering the names of banished and excised revolutionaries, recovering propaganda, symbols, and techniques they used to further their causes. Not out of any legitimate desire to bring those ideals to fruition, but because they’re a personal aesthetic and something to devote herself to.
Lycosa has a secondary interest in improvised weaponry and field first aid, which she learned as part of her research into revolutionary tactics.
God these are good interests… You’re great at picking a theme and sticking to it STRONGLY. Just to tie into that last bit, you should include interest in guerrilla warfare tactics, laying traps, Disarming traps… Just a little additional information that she could brag about having for theoretical revolutionary purposes.
Title: Her session already has a Void, Doom, Life, and Light player, so unfortunately those are off the table. I’ve been leaning towards Rogue or Thief of Mind or Heart, though.
Rogue of Mind might work for her over-abundance of options, which she has difficulty coping with. Thief of Heart would better show how she takes parts of herself from others, mirroring them more than showing much of herself in a relationship.
Okay… I’m definitely struggling to make a decision here. Right now I’m between Mind, Heart, Rage, and TIME.
Rogue of Mind works for sure. She needs to learn redistribute and allocate all of those choices, needs to learn to balance them out and move them around. To find the right decision among all the crap. And also to take back her own mind, her own free will, her own actions. She’d be able to redistribute logical thought and action. Her inverse is Knight of Heart, which would mean she could actively utilize the strength of her personal will, her emotions…
If she were a heart player, I’d argue she’s a Page of Heart. She’s someone who has a weak identity. She cares so much about her aesthetic and what others think of her and moving herself to their whim instead of being capable of defining her own identity and having her own self confidence. This would leave her in a really malleable and endangered position. She would have to break out of this mold and reach her potential and figure out her identity and confidence in order to start utilizing her power, her soul, to its full capacity. With the inverse Thief of Mind, she’d also be able to steal back the right to action for herself, steal the options and activities while utilizing the strength of her will…
Rage references strongly her malcontent and her firm desire for a little chaos, a little mess, a lack of care for whether something is right or wrong and just a strict need for MOVEMENT. If I were to recommend this I’d probably say Prince of Rage? Someone who is actively destroyed by all this pessimism and this need for everything to be torn down, but who is then able to learn to use this to destroy the systems around her…
And time of course discusses her struggle, her want for social development. But it would also challenge her to engage in active struggle instead of passively accepting things as they come and taking a backseat goal. It would make her need to find a goal to focus on and strive towards it instead of vaguely aesthetically aligning herself with real struggles. I’d probably recommend Page of Time here for the reasons I detailed in the heart segment…
God but it’s really hard to pick. She has so many possible routes… I think I’d personally recommend Page of Heart, but it’s really up to you to decide.
Land: Land of Streetlights and Discord
I almost joked about changing it to Land of Lit Streets and Discord so the acronym would be LOLSAD. But that feels a little rude. I might actually recommend something that implies control/a search of identity more? Maybe Land of Streetlights and Nevron. Nevron is the greek word for string and harkens back to the word for puppet, nevróspastos. It literally means “muscle” as well as sinew/tendon/string, which is a nice reference to the heart if you go with the heart title.
Dream Planet: Derse
Very suiting, especially considering her tendency to hide her interests because of what others think.
Now design fun!:
Hair: Because I moved her to a purple I decided to make her hair a little bit wackier. Not too much, but just a couple more flips and bits.
Horns: I gave her some longer horns. I didn’t really see a reason for her to have two sets since she doesn’t have much link back to goldbloods? So I created a sprite with just one set and a sprite with two sets for your selection convenience.
Glasses: I just edited them a bit darker because they looked awkward at that middling shade.
Eyes: I changed them to purple, obviously. On the right side I also gave her a little facepaint? I knew she’s defected from the cult but it still does at some rebellious visual interest. And it hints casually back to her old insect interest. I additionally added some bags under her eyes because she is exhausted.
Shirt: I changed her jacket to a lighter shade to provide contrast because of some of my other changes. I also lightened her outline on her shirt.
Symbol: I decided to mostly keep it the same. I deleted like a single pixel between the two connecting lines to make a set of four open arc. It matches the teal sign language more than the purple, but I think it’s still at least tangentially similar enough to purple visually to be acceptable.
Pants: I know that fashion is considered an object of consumerism and a lot of communist rhetoric frowns upon it, so I kept the rest of her outfit really simple. But I wanted to use some level of patterns on her clothes, since she’s a purple. So I used the Iconic Communist Yellow Star.
Shoes: Just edited to purple and given some laces.
I love her! Thanks for sharing.
-CD
#chaoticevilfantrolls#lycosa robess#lycosa#robess#tealblood#purpleblood#review#redesign#cd review#submission
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Always listen to your mother, especially if she might be an oracle. by TheNamelessKitty
I was born into a family of deeply rural Greek craftsman. Wilderness and mountains bordered us, which became federal forest after a hard day of hiking. We were—they were; my father was a child in this story—in the middle of nowhere. After a rough time in too much armed conflict, my family liked it that way. The Katsoros family was, by any account, comprised of simple, “earthy” people. They worked hard. They produced fine leather. They went to church. They were not, in any way, weird or mysterious or affiliated with the occult or any of the other things that might make them noteworthy…with the possible exception of my grandmother.
She was an interesting woman. Kind, simple, and respected the land. Even so, “Witch” may have been the right word. She once whispered “oracle” into my ear, so quietly that even the walls couldn’t hear. Her oddity wasn’t some obvious thing. There were no vague, riddle-laden prophecies. She didn’t wear a blindfold and toga, she wore homemade dresses that were just a little out of style. She didn’t cook potions, she cooked delicious desserts.
She was never called an oracle, but people knew to listen.
It’s a weird thing, in Greece: you live with all these stories that even we call “mythology” now, but you still end up paying attention. You know they weren’t always myths. You could be an Atheist, or maybe a good Christian who decried pagan superstition, but if you wander too far into the deep forests, amongst pools and mountains and monuments that have been here since the 8mythological* days, you can’t help but feel something. You can’t help but sense something other than fish in the water. You can’t help but avoid a too-perfect clearing. And you can’t help but remember that some things are much bigger than common sense. Your “common sense” is limited by knowledge and experience. Whether you were 10 or 80, the land had a head start of millennia.
Anyway, while the land may have known better than any mortal, my father’s mother was in second place. If she wasn’t, he wasn’t about to tell her so.
“Stop right there, Vas!”
The boy froze with the front door ajar, caging a groan with his teeth as he tried to figure out what he’d forgotten. His chores were done. He had no homework. It wasn’t cold enough for a jacket, even by his mother’s looser standards. He was at a loss.
“Vasilhs Katsoros! You will not be traipsing off into the forest without your filhata.”
This time, he failed to restrain a malcontented noise.
It earned him a harmless swat. In almost the same moment, he felt a leather cord dangle in front of his neck while his mother clasped it in back. A large charm featuring a stylized eye—a traditional defense against the evil eye—came to rest just above his collarbone.
“Mom, I’m not a baby! Adults don’t wear these.”
“Smart ones do,” she retorted. “And you even got to design yours to be ‘cool.’”
“There is nothing cool about wearing baby charms.”
“Well, while you’re being off being a big, safe loser in the forest, be careful and be home for dinner.” She kissed his hair and headed back inside. (Dad recalled this interaction in great detail. She really did use the words ‘big, safe loser.’ She sounds fantastic.)
Vasihls sighed, tucking the necklace under his shirt before some lost bus of cute girls could break down in front of the house and laugh at him. That kind of thing happened. He had seen television. Vas had learned other things about girls from television, too: crushes, hilarious mishaps, grand gestures, and so on. In the end, the hero would always a) get the girl, or b) end up with the girl who was right for him all along. He wanted in on that. He wasn’t sure what “that” was, exactly, but he thought a girl at school was pretty and that “going out” at least meant they’d be best friends. Good deal.
So, per his fiction-fueled romantic wiles, he strode through the forest that day with intent and a pocket knife. The air was cool, sunlight filtered through a thick, mostly deciduous canopy. Vas had been born on this land, and he knew where to find the grandest oak tree in this part of the woods. As with every time before, he had to stop upon arrival to just…admire. It was beautiful, with branches so broad and heavy they arched towards the ground all around, offering shelter to countless animals and unbelievable climbing for small humans. Despite its tremendous size and age, the tree was unmarred. There were no hearts or initials or graduation dates anywhere.
That probably should have been a red flag.
Vas, however, was oblivious : far too intent on scrambling upward and finding the perfect spot to carve his initials alongside his crush’s, thus ensuring their love. After dismissing many identical patches of bark, he found the perfect place. Perfect. (Also, he couldn’t easily climb any higher, and it would be hard to show off if he did.) And so, just over the gentle curves of a heart-like burl, he began to carve, grinning as he pictured his charming self from a narrator’s point of view.
By the time he finished the V, there seemed to be a lot of sap. He may have expected it in early spring, but not now. But, it was just sap, and he shrugged it off. As he started on the second line of the “K” (it looks the same in Greek,) the knife finally stilled to acknowledge Vasihl’s growing unease. As more and more sap ran from his passionate carvings, its unsettling crimson hue became more apparent. The scent of iron overwhelmed what should be a sweet, pleasant smell. He cringed, hesitated, and finally reached out to touch it. Despite its thick, sticky texture, the color sticking and unsticking between his fingers left no doubt: the tree was bleeding. Bleeding like a person. Before he could process his horror, the undergrowth began to rustle.
At first, ten-year-old dad barely acknowledged the disturbance due to the safety of his perch. He was still focused on the eerily red sap. The rustling continued. Vines that had previously surrounded the great oak slowly drained into distant undergrowth. Their deep roots followed, largely unbroken, and entire plants disappeared. All the while, every leaf for what sounded like miles began to rattle. Now, he was scared. Saplings that stood taller than his current perch trembled all the way up their boldest branches. Their undergrowth was thinning, too. More roots snaked towards something he couldn’t see through the dense flora at the edge of the clearing. Vas’s heart hammered. The saplings themselves all tilted in the same direction as though bowing to the little human. Then, they were dragged down, too, disappearing meter by meter into a strangely dense patch of forest he’d taken for a boulder.
The air was starting to feel wrong. The world was starting to sound wrong. Something big was starting to breathe. The survival instincts the boy had managed to accumulate thus far were conflicted: run, or climb higher and stay out of reach?
By the time his feet hit the ground, they were unanimous. RUN.
Vas had never moved so fast, but frequent stumbles hobbled his retreat. At first, he thought speed was to blame. He didn’t know better—not for certain—until he hit the ground again, scrambling through litter, and his hand landed on a thick stem. Before he could launch himself upward, the plant slithered back towards his pursuer, dragging his hand with it and pitching his face unceremoniously into the dirt. When the vine became aware, somehow, of the human’s touch, it curled. Vas stared in mute horror as it wrapped around his hand. His muteness didn’t last for long. Neither did the plant’s unfinished grip. It reached longingly after the screaming child as Vas tore free and sprinted away.
The sounds behind him felt all-encompassing. He imagined a grasping hand crawling after him on clawed fingers the size of trees. Or some kind of dinosaur blob-monster. Or the literal devil grown to gargantuan proportions. The boy sprinted past plants. Plants slithered past him to be consumed by the roaring thing he didn’t dare turn to look at. *You died if you looked back. * TV and mythology agreed on that point.
The forest was blurry. Vasilhs wasn’t sure whether the world was changing or it just looked that way through his tears. Probably both. (It was breathing.) His neck stung. Vas clawed at it as he ran. The vines he’d expected to be choking him were absent. His throat was just raw from screaming. He hadn’t realized he was screaming. He couldn’t even hear his screaming over that other thing. (It stomped and breathed as it chased him.) He couldn’t run any farther. He was going to fall. He was going to die. The forest was trying to retract its entire floor and drag him back to the thing, and he was going to die. His head swam. More plants wrenched from under his feet and whipped towards whatever was pulling them. (It was GROWING.) He skipped and stumbled, wheezing, fighting to stay on his feet and terrorized equally by thoughts of falling and his pursuer. (It was CLOSER.)
A wordless exclamation he couldn’t define exploded from the boy’s mouth as he burst into the meadow containing his home. He didn’t slow until he reached the door, pounding and bawling and screaming for help. For some reason, it didn’t occur to him to open it. Of course, it didn’t take long for his mother to tear open the door. She stared, alarmed, at her bloodstained child…until she looked over his head at whatever had pursued him. (It had stopped at the treeline.) Then, she went pale. With an utterance Vas didn’t understand, she dragged him inside, slammed the door, and dropped to her knees behind him.
The child still snuffled and sobbed while his mother frantically checked him for injuries, seeking the source of the bloodbath marring his front side. When the “blood” stuck to her fingers like molasses, she lost what little color she’d retained. She was silent for some long seconds. “Vasilhs,” she finally whispered: “what did you DO?”
“I didn’t-”
She grabbed his shoulders, started to speak, and then closed her eyes, trying to calm herself. It was a long time before managed. At least, it felt that way to him. “Vasilhs,” she resumed, more softly, “Vasilhs…” she hugged him through a cracking sob. (That scared him more than his unseen pursuer.) “All of the forest guards a dryad,” she whispered, “and you wear her blood. You…we, are in a great deal of trouble, Vas.”
Luckily, my grandmother understood the situation, somehow. I don’t know whether it was passed down or intuitive, but it was life-saving in any case. She called my grandfather, who was in the village at the time, and told him to stick to the main road coming home. No unpaved shortcut. He didn’t understand, but trusted his wife. When he arrived home, he spent a long time standing outside, staring at the groaning, crackling shadow behind the trees.
He said nothing when he walked inside. The pallid laborer just hugged his small family without a word. After a relating his story too many times to remember and just enough to go hoarse, Vasilhs was directed to the bath and then put to bed. He listened to his parents speaking quietly throughout the night. He wished he could hear what they were saying. And he really wished the insects hadn’t all gone silent.
The next day dawned quiet. Vas didn't need to be rousted after years of country labor and shambled hesitantly into the kitchen. It smelled amazing. His mother had put together a huge meal that included everyone's breakfast favorites. No one had much appetite. No one spoke. After nibbling whatever portion of the meal they could manage to swallow, the family rose at some unspoken signal. Vas's father moved to clean up.
His mother, solemn-faced, led her son into the bathroom. "We're going to fix this, Vasilhs," she promised. "But, you will not like this part."
Considering the sharp knife she carried, he believed her. He teared up again, but stalwartly set his lower jaw. Nonetheless, the child was relieved when she set aside the knife in favor of paper and a marker. "Please show me exactly what you carved," his mother instructed. He nodded and went carefully to work, agonizing over the angle of the V and the placement of the K. His mother never once hurried him. (Her eyes were soft, he said, in retrospect. She was savoring the moments for what they were, unsure of what would come next. She’d touched his hair often.) Finally, he hesitated on the K's second line, and trailed off into a thin mark. "This is where I stopped," he declared.
"Are you sure?" He hesitated, but then nodded. She returned the gesture. "Alright. Take off your shirt, Vas." The woman studied the drawing.
He started to comply, but hesitated as she retrieved the knife. "W…what are you going to do?" She tried to smile. The smile looked pained. "I'm so sorry, Vasihls. But, to make things right, I'm going to do to you precisely what you did to that tree."
As a kid, I was horrified for my dad at this part of the story. I mean, I am. But, looking back at it now, I can’t imagine how his mom felt. Dad didn’t remember his exact words, but he was sure there was pleading involved. He felt guilty, looking back, for making it even harder on her. He assured me that he screamed “like a little girl who’s not nearly as tough as you” when the cutting began, but got himself under control as his mother continued. I believe him. He was a stoic man and learned it young. Still, it’s a horrible scene to imagine. Finally, with a terrifying amount of blood soaking the old sweatshirt she’d tied around his waist, she eventually finished. It was time to go.
Dad, Vasilhs, was in a lot of pain. His father waited silently in the living room. The boy had never seen his father’s current expression on anyone. They shared a hug. Then, led by his father, all three headed outside. Vas was surprised to see a large wheelbarrow of compost waiting. He was to push it, his mother explained. They would go with him, but he had to push alone. He nodded. He’d have nodded at anything she said, fixated as he was on the monstrous shadow still glowering at them from the treeline.
He could see it a little, now. It was a conglomeration of dying, shocked, and outright vivacious plants, from moss to whole trees, contorted vaguely into the shape of a man. Very…very vaguely. Its “eyes” were tangle-clad rifts leading to some unwelcoming core. Its maw split both horizontally and from neck to forehead, from which Venus fly-trap teeth stabbed outward at every conceivable angle. The monstrous forest guardian clearly possessed both arms and legs, but its arms had extended to the ground and taken root overnight. (It didn’t slouch like a gorilla. The arms were really long.) Its legs were also buried in the soil. Despite this, considering the uneasy undulations of said roots, no wise man would test the giant’s mobility.
Finally seeing his pursuer ranked below yesterday’s horrified flight on Vas’s list of life-altering traumas. In a moment, it would drop by one.
His mother urged them all forward with a quiet command. He couldn’t move at first. He didn’t move for the first minute. Despite having been raised to quickly follow directions, like most children of rural laborers, he couldn’t obey. He couldn’t… until he did. Once the wheelbarrow lumbered forward, the little family set off towards the monster together. Vas’s eyes drifted uneasily between his parents. He couldn’t help but notice his father’s unarmed state. A hand, one per parent, clasped each of his shoulders. Both grips were so tight they hurt. So long as they held him, he didn’t mind.
As before, the giant didn’t leave the trees. Even so, the agitated quickening of its undulating, snakelike component-plants removed any doubt that it saw them. By now, its roots churned the packed earth like so much sand. The stench of too many rotting plants choked the humans as they approached. The Goliath glared down at them, then tore its massive arms out of the earth with two tremendous explosions. They glided upward with all the majesty of ancient trees. They should have been immovable. Instead, they were unstoppable. The creature was ready to receive them.
As the trio drew closer to the enraged and yet infinitely patient forest colossus, Vas’s mother squeezed his shoulder more tightly with a shaking hand. Then, rolling her own shoulders back, the woman strode boldly ahead of them. She drew close. She approached the despite the ability of any wooden limb to liquefy her. Despite how any one of those writhing tendrils could thrust right through her soft, fragile body. She strode forward. She trembled. And yet, she walked with her head high. The giant allowed her to approach. The abyssal pits in its face angled almost straight down to watch the bold ape approach, both splits in its maw drifting slightly further apart. Its flytrap-teeth were made of sharp stakes. Vas screamed for her to run. His father pounced onto him, clapping a weathered hand over the boy’s mouth and holding him so hard it hurt. The startled child would only realize in retrospect that his attacker was crying.
His mother, Vas eventually realized through his feral thrashing, was speaking in a loud, declarative tone. He stilled to listen. It wasn’t their language. Not quite. It was old, Hellenistic Greek. He could only pick out certain parts.
SON. ATONE. OFFERING.
They weren’t good parts. Vas’s eyes bugged.
The monstrous plant-construct didn’t react immediately. It didn’t seem to like moving fast, unless riled. Finally, its dual-axis “mouth” opened to bellow a single sound in a gut-twisting bass, so low as to dip below the range of the human ear and seem far quieter than it must be. “COME.” Vas’s mother turned to look back at the men. She smiled a loving, reassuring smile while the great forest entity turned around. It didn’t physically rotate, but rather, reassembled its pieces and repositioned its “face.” She turned to follow when its thundering steps resumed.
Vasilhs had never realized his mother was so beautiful. He’d never thought anyone could so beautiful or so brave or so perfect. He never thought he would see her again as she walked fearlessly through a wide swath of destruction. He had no words for the subarctic sense of loss. He found himself following, unsure whether moved of his own initiative or his father’s nudge. It didn’t matter. The frightened boy realized, as he put his back into pushing the heavy wheelbarrow, (the cuts in his chest stung and bled with renewed vigor,) that he wasn’t sure when his father had released him from the aggressive bear hug.
Even on the unceremoniously-carved “path” left in the guardian’s wake, it was hard to push the wheelbarrow through the forest. The path, actually, was the opposite of helpful due to its spattering of debris. Vas’s dad seemed unable or unwilling to help push, but he did busy himself striding ahead and clearing the worst obstructions from his son’s path. The monster and the comparably tiny woman behind it, for their part, stopped and waited whenever they got too far ahead.
It was a terrifying trip. Not in the same way it had been yesterday, when he’d merely been afraid for his life. Now that the vengeful, boy-eating colossus was in FRONT of him, immediate terror was replaced by a horrible sense of being watched. From everywhere. Every leaf, shadow, and stone felt like it was judging him. Like tiny spirits or well-hidden nymphs peered at the one who had dared to bleed their sister, hating him with all their might and willing infinite shame into every step of his punishment. Their unseen vitriol was so distracting that Vas only just realized that his father dad was carrying a shovel. His dad had a shovel, and his mom had a knife. ”Son. Atone. Offering.” His trembling worsened. It was impossible to tell whether the buzzing in his head and wheezing in his chest were from overexertion or terror. It was both. It was definitely both. He wanted to run like he’d never wanted anything in his life. Turn and run. Join the circus or something. No. That wasn’t true. He didn’t want to run away. Not like that, anyway. He just wanted to run from the monster. From this horrible myth he’d careened into for…what? Carving his initials into a tree? He wanted to run home and hide under his blankets. Eventually, he’d wake up from this horrifying dream and smell breakfast.
His dad must be upset, too. Not paying attention. “Accidents aren’t accidents if they happen because you didn’t pay attention,” he’d been told enough times. The usually sure-footed man stumbled and fell more and more often. That somehow made all this scarier. Even his protector was fallible.
As it turned out, mortal terror had an upside: it took no time at all to get from the edge of the forest back to something that immediately drained all the blood Vas had left: they were back at the great oak. Apparently, the dryad’s tree. His mother waited, all but hidden in the roots of her horrible guide. She stared quietly, smile slain by grief.
Vas’s dad wasn’t looking well. The man’s features had sunken during the course of the trip, skin pale and expression waxen. Still, a firm hand squeezed the boy’s shoulder. “Come on, Vasilhs. Let’s get this taken care of.”
They walked slowly towards the figure between the giant’s feet, which was simultaneously familiar and not. She was wife and mother. She was dignified and almost priestly. She had been crying and worried. Now, she was stoic and sure. Vas felt the strange urge to kneel at her feet. He did. That earned a small, sad smile. Then, the woman turned towards the great oak—which towered above even the guardian-colossus—and raised her hands, falling to her own knees. (The knife was clenched in one.) She spoke again, tone imploring in Hellenistic Greek. Finally, she looked back to the child seated beside her, then turned to face him entirely, blade still raised. Her husband approached with the shovel. Her grip on the knife shifted to plunge it downward.
Vas thought he was scared, but he couldn’t tell. Everything had gone silent and white. He could still see, maybe. Still hear, maybe. But none of it was important enough to crowd into a reality only he and his mother occupied. He could only stare up at her face, vaguely aware of the cold tears on his own cheeks. He didn’t scream. There was no screaming, here. This was his mother. He loved his mother. She had been his everything—everything his father wasn’t, anyway—from teacher to caretaker to spiritual guide to best friend. He loved her. Would he really let her kill him? There, in the silent void, he knew he would. He would, but his heart broke to think that she would. She was speaking. He couldn’t hear the words. The knife drew back. He couldn’t close his eyes. It slammed downward, embedding itself deeply into the soil. “Accept this knife,” he heard his mother cry, once again in Modern Greek, “as we bury the agent and symbol of our aggression! Accept this labor and offering as a declaration of peace from your unwitting, regretful assailant!”
She leaned forward, pressing a hand to the side of his hair to whisper in the opposite ear: “take the shovel, Vas. Bury all the compost you worked so hard to bring here. It should make things right. No matter what, we’re here, and we love you.” She kissed his cheek.
It was long, hard work digging deep enough, especially while being very, VERY careful to not damage any of roots, but Vasilhs hardly noticed. He was relieved to the point of ecstasy. He was pretty sure he knew how Isaac felt after Abraham let him off the altar. Part of him wanted to write off his prior fears as silly. Of course his mother hadn’t convinced his dad to sacrifice him to a dryad in the middle of the forest! It was stupid. Dryads weren’t even real. Not real. Definitely mythological. He definitely wasn’t in the middle of offering a bunch of rotted animal parts to one because he’d accidentally bled her tree, narrowly survived getting chased out of the forest by some kind of plant-monster, and because his mom said so. Dang it.
He wondered whether he’d be allowed to swear after this. He felt as though he’d earned it.
Time passed strangely. It passed with his mother and father standing by and then his mother standing and his father sitting. The hole pressed deep, rich compost covered its bottom, and then nutritious rot filled the pit instead of the wheelbarrow. As the boy finished covering his offering with displaced dirt, patting the area level with the back of his shovel, he felt something amiss, but couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He couldn’t reconcile being finished. That felt like too much to hope for. Was this trip into nightmare-mythology land over? Would he wake up in his bed, now? Would his small, bare chest gleam red with an unfinished “VK” when he did? Was he –
He wasn’t. Not with enormous fingers of bark-striated wood pinching tightly and plucking him from the ground like an early crocus. His mother was screaming. Vas was screaming. He was also running in the air and swinging the shovel, neither of which helped. The colossus somehow managed to lift the squishy little biped without crushing him. With a cacophonous symphony of groaning wood and percussive cracks, its head tilted back as its prey rose directly above its face. (A small trickle ran down one of the boy’s legs.) His mother was attacking the giant for the first time, beating against its leg and pulling at thinner-looking striations, all of which were utterly ineffective. The elder Mr. Katsaros fought just as hard despite his strange fatigue. He achieved as little.
Vas had been staring into chasms that mimicked eyes. They looked uncannily like snake pits from here, with nets of writhing, undulating stems crisscrossing over abyssal gaps beneath. Then, his attention turned wholly to the opening maw. Its great mouth split with the sound of groans and cracking. It had to open wide before a cage of venus flytrap-teeth cleared the way. Vas stopped thrashing and curled into a mid-air fetal position, wide-eyed and all-too-aware that breaking loose would now be bad.
It dropped him. Every human shrieked the same keening, unholy wail. He passed the teeth.
He slammed to a stop.
Vas stared into the flesh-grinding horror beneath him, white-knuckled and unable to comprehend his salvation. When he finally looked up to note the shovel, which bridged the center of its mouth, his shriek turned to giddy laughter in the same octave. After several moments of stillness, the monstrosity’s vertical mouth cracked open. Child and shovel disappeared in a blink.
Dad—Vas—doesn’t remember what happened next. Being eaten by a giant plant golem seems like a reasonable time to black out from fear. He can’t say whether he fainted or just blocked out the memory. The next thing he remembers is the face. Somehow, he went from inside the colossus to being safely deposited high in the great oak’s branches, face-to-face with the initials he’d carved into the bark…and eye-to-eye with something between a relief sculpture and a drawing in the tree’s bark. He couldn’t do anything, petrified as one who had dared to ogle Medusa. But this wasn’t a monster. He wasn’t scared. The face in the tree, which tilted through rippling bark to better observe him, was more beautiful than any person he could imagine. Vasihls swallowed hard. Once. Twice. Three times. Finally, an awe-stricken voice burbled out of him, quiet and nervous. “I’m…I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I’ll be respectful of this tree for as long as I live. I p…promise.”
The face—she was so beautiful, eyes so gentle—tilted in the other direction, continuing to regard the young vandal. Finally, her perfect eyes softened more. She smiled, nodding once. (Dad admitted that, though he loved my mother in a different way, he’d fallen in love with the dryad at that moment and remained there as long as he lived. Many years passed before he’d been able to court human women at all.)
When the spirit nodded, something else began to happen. The plant-golem, the colossal guardian of this perfect being, began to glow softly at its outermost edges. Leaf-like flakes of light broke free and drifted away in great, lackadaisical swarms. The flecks twirled and fluttered in a sudden breeze, as leaves should. Some drifted to the ground. Saplings sprouted where they fell. Saplings, bushes, grasses: the destruction wrought by the guardian’s creation disappeared in a manic rush of new growth. The flow of glowing leaves continually quickened, flying from what was left of the golem’s torso and streaming from its legs to swarm down the ruined swath of woodland. It would be years before large trees grew there, but vibrant green soothed the hurt away.
Vasilhs didn’t know how long he watched all this. He didn’t know how long he stared at the oak after the face disappeared. At some point, he climbed down as quickly as he could safely to do. At the bottom, he hugged both parents tightly. All cried with relief.
Then, right at the happy ending, his father collapsed.
A startled cry of dismay accompanied Vas’s mom as she dropped with her husband, clinging to him for all she was worth and oh-so-awkwardly managing to keep him from hitting the ground full-force. Vas helped with all his ten-year-old might. The man was shaking his head and trying to wave off any assistance by the time he reached the ground, reassuring his wife generally pretending he hadn’t just fallen like a sack of flour. She, being an alarmed Greek woman, paid no attention whatsoever to his bullshit claims of physical sanctity, taking his pulse and feeling his head and looking him over and generally fretting and telling him to stop saying stupid things. Finally, after a long check-up of the man’s suddenly, unbelievably hallow cheeks and drained, dark-veined countenance, the woman cringed.
“Ah! Love, my stupid, stubborn love! You’re not wearing your filhata!” Vas’s eyes widened. He glanced down at the stupid baby charm around his neck, the closest thing to clothing on his upper body.
No way.
His mother snapped back into action, jerking the man’s shirt up and over his head, muffling cries of protest. “Vasilhs,” she snapped, clear and authoritarian, “go back up the tree. Ask the Dryad very nicely to take some of the blood you already drew.”
Well, that sounded like a terrible idea. Some wide-eyed part of him thought that. The rest did as bidden, hurrying up gnarled by gnarl and branch by branch, terribly careful to avoid breaking anything, until he arrived, winded, in front of his carving. The dryad’s face wasn’t there. Vas cringed, looking around. How did you summon a dryad? Did you have to? Was she listening? She, like, lived right in the tree, right? “Um…hey, so I’m still sorry, and I’m REALLY, REALLY sorry, but my dad is sick all of a sudden. Or cursed? Something like that. Like, evil eye times a thousand…oh, shoot. Yeah, I could feel the whole forest staring at us when we were walking back here. Oh my gosh, that’s what happened.” The epiphany left him wide-eyed and covering his mouth. Still, the boy cringed at the sudden memory of the here and now, setting his jaw and looking up as stoically as she could, little shoulders squaring. “My mother asks if I can, please, with your permission, take some of the blood-sap that’s already here. Sorry. Please.”
The beautiful face didn’t reappear, no matter how he longed to see it again. Nor did anyone or anything speak. Vas bit his lip, after a time. He was just about to repeat his request when something tickled his hand. He looked down to see a fresh, bright trickle of the thin sap pooling against it. “Oh. Oh, thank you! You’re beautiful. You’re kind. You’re kind. Thank you. Thank you. Bless you.” As he spat rapid-fire assurances of awed gratitude, Vas—realizing he had nowhere better to put it—scooped as much of the sap as he could get into the palm of one hand, then climbed down the tree as fast as he could with one hand.
His mother looked ready to faint with relief. (For a moment, he was afraid she would, and found himself wondering how to treat the evil eye by himself.) She dipped two fingers carefully into the precious, powerful sap. After several returns to that inkwell, a red eye had been drawn under her husband’s collarbone while Vas looked on in rapt, fascinated horror. Then, she began to say the blessing. Vasilhs didn’t know what all she said. Not exactly. He knew that she was imploring the old Gods, performing the rite much differently than everyone else’s aunt or grandmother and generally saying things the Orothodox Priest wouldn’t approve of at all. He couldn’t be shocked or mad, though. He was too busy watching and being terrified. After the third repetition, the bloody sigil lit up in gold-green. Petros Katsaros gasped. One of his wife’s hands arched over the mark, fingertips pressed lightly into his skin, as she called something else in that archaic tongue. Then, her fingers jerked down, clawing the eye-mark apart.
Its light went dull, then faded slowly to nothing.
There no sound outside everyone’s panting. Finally, the patient gasped a shaking breath, filling his lungs greedily now that he could. His face gained color rapidly, and the pain in his gradually-less-sunken expression faded entirely. There was hugging. There were kisses and blessings and appropriate wonderment expressed towards wife and mother Iro Katsaros, who would march up to a monster or take on the supernatural. For her part, grandma would only dote on them, laughing and tearfully relieved. Or, at least she did for awhile. There was lots of talk about what troublemakers both men were and that this was why you listened when she said to wear your filhata and she was sick of worrying and… insert other Greek stuff here. They lived happily and loudly ever after.
So, that’s the story my dad told me. Unlike the others I tell, I can’t personally vouch for it. I will say, however, that my father was a very honest man who never let me run around without a filhata. I can also confirm there’s a wide scar in the forest, starting at the edge and ending at the great oak, that’s all new growth and young trees.
Though it faded with time, I can also confirm that his chest had that scar until he died.
VK.
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nobody pay attention to this. i just want to rant a bit.
tw: transphobia, homophobia, sexism, misogyny, anxiety, depression
i’ve been feeling really overwhelmed with both my jobs, school, trying to find a different job to replace my super sucky one, trying to rehome my cats, and just everything seems to be bad. Especially my main job. I thought when my movie theater was bought, the new owners would be better than the last ones but I was so wrong in ways i didn’t even think i could be. they’re misogynistic, sexist, transphobic, homophobic, chauvinistic, micromanaging bullies and theyre constantly making my job harder or worse. they have bullied all of the other female managers out of the company by treating them unfairly, refusing to help them or give them what they need, and even just straight up firing them because they “don’t think women should be in leadership and [I] don’t approve of the lifestyle that comes with single mothers.” (The owners words, not mine) My direct manager, who also happens to be the owner’s son, constantly misgendered my nonbinary manager and even when I corrected him multiple times, he wouldn’t use they/them, until he finally broke and called them “it”.
they constantly monitor what we do and we have to send them hourly reports on our sales. they yell at me when i have more than two staff at a time, but also yell at me for not having enough staff on shift. they show up randomly and tell me they’re disappointed in me. They tell me they’re going to show up, so i spend the whole day in an anxious and stressed out mess, but then they don’t come like some kind of mind game to keep me on my toes.
One of the female managers wanted to hire a security guard for her theater because there was a lot of crime in the area and she didn’t feel like she and her staff were safe, but the owners said no. She said if they don’t hire one, she’s quitting and they said ‘then your last day is friday’. This woman worked for the company for 20 years and they dropped her like it was nothing. then as soon as she was gone, they hired a security guard for that theater.
Another female manager was accused of not working the hours she was clocked in for (Which wasn’t true. she was working harder than any of us) and as punishment for that, they were going to move her to a smaller theater and cut her pay down, but she pointed out that the male manager working that smaller theater was making the same amount as her and they got mad that she knew that. They told her they wouldn’t have hired her if they knew she was so young (she’s 32) and that her kids were so young (theyre 6 and 2) and they don’t ‘approve of her lifestyle’ (shes a single mother). a few weeks after this, they called her to another theater under the guise of helping her with her show bookings and when she arrived, they accused her of poisoning her staff with lies about them and spreading malcontent and urging her staff to disobey. (this all happened because a manager at her theater sent corporate an email saying something like they think the general managers aren’t being paid enough for all the work we do, the way they’re running the company won’t work long term, they cause a stressful and negative work environment, etc). She had no idea this manager was sending this email and told them that but the owner said, and I quote, “you can complain to me until you are blue in the face. I think you’re a liar and i don’t believe a word you are saying. you can collect your unemployment but you will never work for me”
The managers make stricter rules for the female managers, like we have to be at our theaters until 10:30pm on Fridays and Saturdays, even though for most of us, that means pulling a 14 hour work day, but the male managers only have to stay until 8pm. They make us work 45 hours a week, but do not pay overtime. I, personally, make $10,000 a year less than the males at similar theaters, and that’s after I negotiated a higher pay.
I’m feeling defeated, depressed, anxious, overwhelmed, angry, but overall, i’m starting to just feel numb. I dont want to work here anymore but i need a new job before i quit or else i cant pay my bills and tuition plus if i quit, i lose my health insurance again. I can pick up more hours at my second job, but that only goes so far. I’ve been neglecting my schoolwork because i just get so overwhelmed with it. i don’t know what to do. i’m more forgetful now, i have a hard time forming thoughts. IDK. I’m lost.
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Post by Aoife
Hands up who isn’t a summer person! Just me? Hardly. There’s a very, very narrow window in the year in which I feel truly prepared sartorially, and that is the three week period in late September/early October when I can wear big red woolly jumpers instead of jackets with just a cheeky pair of black tights underneath, while kicking through golden leaves in lightweight flats, like a contrived Pinterest image come to life. Can’t wait. But in the meantime we have summer to contend with. Sigh.
If you’re a sun worshipper by all means embrace this summer’s trends, including cycling shorts, boiler suits and Rixo dresses (or dresses that give a Rixo vibe), but this sunshine-rejecting malcontent will generally be looking elsewhere for summer style. I’m thinking Riviera, I’m thinking the Med, I’m thinking a classic aesthetic that can be adapted for tricky Irish weather…
…first of all, do yourself a quick favour and set the mood with this video of Gwen Stefani crooning about being cool with her old boyfriend’s new lova, while looking hawt in Lake Como.
youtube
Right. Now we’re talking! 50s style halters and espadrilles and little sundresses and tiny shorts with demure blouses? Heart eyes emoji x 10. x 20!
But brunette, nude lipsticked Gwen is not our only summer style icon, oh no. Here are a few more who will see us through these difficult few months until we’re back safely in our stompy boots and blazers.
Julia Roberts at the Kentucky Derby in Pretty Woman
Tell me you haven’t seen a version of this dress in Dorothy Perkins or Wallis every summer in recent memory and I’ll tell you that you are mistaken, good sir or lady. Only two colours feature on this palette, which makes for an elegant, sophisticated look. You don’t strictly need the gloves. But, like a good rug in a room, they really tie the look together.
Solange in the Losing You video
I frequently turn to Solange in her video for one of the best songs ever written for style inspo when I feel like my mojo needs a bit of a boost. No one does a clashing print quite like Solange. But see how otherwise classic her looks are? High waisted, lil cardis, heeled brogues? Perfection!
Diane Keaton anytime, but especially in Something’s Gotta Give
Shot by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair
I’ve never wanted a black hat and black tuxedo pants and white shirt and brown scarf and monochrome painted nails more. If the sun peaks through that eerie mist though, you might want to lighten the mood by going beige (another key trend this summer, btw), and complimenting it with white. Lovely little white pumps (€4 Penneys!) will complete the nonchalant and effortlessly chic look.
Style Icons for Summer Post by Aoife Hands up who isn't a summer person! Just me? Hardly. There's a very, very narrow window in the year in which I feel truly prepared sartorially, and that is the three week period in late September/early October when I can wear big red woolly jumpers instead of jackets with just a cheeky pair of black tights underneath, while kicking through golden leaves in lightweight flats, like a contrived Pinterest image come to life.
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The US Ryder Cup roster is coming into focus and Tiger Woods is going to be on it
Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson are just two of the very clear four options for Jim Furyk in filling out his roster with captain’s picks.
UPDATE: With Labor Day come and gone, the first deadline for captain’s picks has arrived and Jim Furyk’s choices seems painfully obvious. That does not mean, of course, that it will play out as easily as it should. There is always potential for a curveball or political maneuvering with the Ryder Cup, but that just seems so remote this time around.
The four captain’s picks this year SHOULD be Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau, and Tony Finau. Those are the guys that should round out this roster. It’s a mix of rookies and the two veterans who have overseen the overhaul of the USA approach to this competition. Phil and Tiger, if healthy, always have an argument for a spot, whether you think their play deserves it or not. Their importance to this match play event, their history with it, and their place in the game gives them a leg up compared to every other American golfer out there. It’s the rare exception, as with Sergio Garcia on the Euro side, where current form and season-strength can be discounted.
Tiger and Phil
Furyk enjoys the convenience of both Tiger and Phil playing well enough to deserve a pick, too. Tiger has played like a top 10 to 15 player in the world this season. He didn’t even need to do that to earn a spot. But he did and he’s going to be a pick.
Even with a 2018 win, Phil’s season and recent form do not present as strong an argument as Tiger. But, again given his place in the game and in this process, he’s going to get a pick. Phil landed in 10th place on the points list when that closed on Sunday of the PGA Championship. So even after a spotty summer for Phil, it’s not like Furyk is going way down the list just to make room for the Lefty. Tiger and Phil will be picks and both should be picks.
An American artist in Paris
That leaves the two rookies playing their way onto the team. DeChambeau blew up over his final five holes at the PGA to miss the cut and finish as the first man out in the auto-bid points race. Since then, however, all he’s done is go back-to-back to win the first two tournaments of the FedExCup Playoffs. That’s four wins in his short career, three this year, and two rolling right into the most important stretch of the season for Ryder purposes. This all comes after finishing 9th in the points race. So yes, Le Artiste is going to Paris. He’d already had a strong case, and Tiger has reportedly wanted to play with him. So winning the first two legs of the postseason gives Furyk no choice
Finau and the scheduling problem
That leaves Finau for the fourth and final spot. Finau finished 13th in the points race, behind Bryson, Phil, Xander Schauffele, and Matt Kuchar. But he’s a birdie machine, shown well at the majors this year, and now posted second-place finish and a T4 in the first two events of the FedExCup.
Unlike the other three, he’s not a lock but he should be the overwhelming favorite. There had been some reporting from No Laying Up that Kuchar had the inside position for a pick in the days after the PGA. He’s an elder statesman of the U.S. side and is malleable and gregarious enough to partner with any red-ass malcontent on the American roster. But this spot should, and seems likely to go for Finau.
That brings us to the matter of timing. Furyk will announce three picks on Tuesday, September 4th in a news conference at 5 p.m. ET. The fourth pick will be the following Monday morning. That brings one more FedExCup Playoffs event, the BMW Championship, into play. Would that change the status of Finau and bring someone else into the mix? It shouldn’t, no matter how dramatic things change at the BMW. It’s just one week. This scheduling breakup is a result of the “Horschel Rule,” which I explain below. So should he put Finau on the team now and leave one of those absolute locks, like Tiger, for the announcement next week? It’s an odd dynamic that Shane Ryan illuminated in these tweets too.
if he makes the obvious move and leaves Finau off, and next week Finau is mediocre while someone like Schauffele or Kuchar wins, suddenly he's made the whole thing much harder on himself.
— Shane Ryan (@ShaneRyanHere) September 4, 2018
This will all be over soon, but Furyk’s path to filling out the roster seems pretty clear at this point. Now comes the order in which he does it.
There are a couple concurrent contests running Sunday at the PGA Championship. There is the obvious final round of a major, which Brooks Koepka leads by two and is the heavy favorite to win. And then there’s the Ryder Cup points race, the last dash to automatically qualify for Jim Furyk’s USA roster.
The PGA of America closes the points race, largely based on earnings, after their premier event, the PGA Championship. The majors are also worth double points in the qualifying process so there’s an opportunity, if you play well, to make a big move up the standings. As we start Sunday’s final round, Furyk’s qualifiers are largely set. The top seven of eight are locked in for Paris at the end of September, but there’s a possibility for some movement in that eighth and final spot.
UPDATE: Webb Simpson is your 8th and final qualifier. None of the remaining challengers could overcome his lead in the points race, so it will be Webb and Bubba rounding out the auto-bids for Paris. The first eight on the roster are as follows.
Brooks Koepka
Dustin Johnson
Justin Thomas
Patrick Reed
Jordan Spieth
Rickie Fowler
Bubba Watson
Webb Simpson
Simpson, on the back of his dominant Players Championship win in May, captured the eighth spot in the standings. Simpson is also did not exactly blow it in this final event before the standings closed. He started the final round in a tie for 15th place at 6-under. Here are the pre-PGA Championship standings:
This was supposed to be a weekend of Bryson DeChambeau battling Simpson for the last spot. But The Artiste booted it in the second round, making three bogeys in his last six holes of the second round to go from safely on the right side of the cut line to an early exit with no points. So DeChambeau will have to rely on a captain’s pick if he’s to make the roster and that’s not ideal for a personality that I think fans and content-makers (me) wanted in Paris.
The two primary candidates to jump Simpson on Sunday were Kevin Kisner and Xander Schauffele, and there was the longshot potential for Tiger Woods and Gary Woodland to shoot all way up to an auto-bid with a win. Tony Finau had a chance to jump into the final spot but he made the cut on the number and sits in a tie for 58th. He needed Webb to completely collapse and post some miracle round to shoot into the top five.
The one spot of pressure on Webb, however, was that he likely needed to make it on points. That’s because the competition for the four captain’s picks is stiff and he probably wouldn’t have been an option. It’s almost certain that two places will be reserved for two legends and players that have been integral in overhauling the USA’s entire approach.
With the first eight set, here are your most likely captain’s pick options from the standings above.
Captain’s picks
Tiger Woods (lock it in)
This is not up for debate. Unless he gets injured or wins on Sunday and makes it on points, Tiger is going to be a pick. And he should be. Despite his points ranking, which is diminished by not playing any of the majors last year, he’s played as a top 15-20 player in the world this season. So his game has been good enough and oh, yes, he’s also Tiger Woods and has to be on the team no matter how good or bad he’s looked.
Phil Mickelson (99 percent lock)
This is the first time Phil will not be an automatic points qualifier since 1993. It’s an outrageous run that we probably won’t see ever again, from either side. Phil has not played well this summer. It’s a hard truth but he’s just not been a Sunday factor at any event since he won the WGC Mexico. But he’s got that legend status, is part of the clique that’s running this U.S. Ryder Cup operation these days, and is not THAT far off on the points list. The form has been underwhelming, but he’s still 10th on the points. He’s going to be on the team.
Photo by Rob Carr/Getty Images
Phil is almost certain for a pick, but will he bring Kisner with him?
Matt Kuchar (reports are it’s likely)
Here’s a third veteran that, from all indications, is likely a choice for Furyk. He’s got less of an argument than Tiger and Phil, who can pretty much reserve two spots on US teams whenever they are healthy. Kuchar was 12th in points heading into the PGA, where he missed the cut. While his record is underwhleming, he’s been on the last four Ryder Cup teams and is a mainstay on the Presidents Cup team. You can argue for his spot to go to another young up-and-comer, but Kuchar is malleable and can partner with anyone. Everyone on the team loves him. Maybe that shouldn’t carry weight for winning matches, but it does in this process.
Kuchar may get left off if he plays like garbage during the FedExCup Playoffs. But for this exercise, we’ll operate under the assumption that only one of the four captain’s picks is up for grabs. If Kuchar is left off, expect two of the names below to be the final adds.
Bryson DeChambeau — The last man out on points will be a controversial pick. Tiger, from all accounts, loves him and the way he thinks about the game. That backing matters. But he can also rub people the wrong way. There’s this narrative that has gained steam, based on recent range meltdowns, a choke finish in Europe, and a stupid handshake etiquette controversy, that he might not be well-suited for a team environment and the one that’s the most pressurized in golf. Whether that narrative is just dumb noise or matters to Furyk remains to be seen. He made it harder on himself with his late boot and MC at the PGA.
Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images
Bryson’s early exit at the PGA may be the critical blow to his chance at making the team.
Tony Finau — The big hitter played with Furyk at the PGA and did not make a great first impression, hitting a shank en route to an ugly first round number. But then he showed his stuff on day 2, posting an absurd 10 birdies in one of the wildest major championship scorecards you’ll ever see. Birdies matter more at the Ryder Cup and in match play than anywhere else. Furyk had to love it but is there room for a guy who is likely to be a part of this team in the next decade? He posted top 10s at the first three majors of the year and his style is a strong argument for the fourth spot.
Kevin Kisner — He’s looked great at the last two major championships and was a darling of the team room at last fall’s Presidents Cup. That seems to be one of the stronger arguments for why he might make it. Mickelson may also lobby for him to reprise that successful Pres Cup partnership. As a fan, Kisner would be a great personality to root for but again, there just may not be enough room this time.
Xander Schauffele — The X-man is the reigning rookie of the year but this process can get political and both he and Finau probably have the least capital in that respect right now. If you’re a proponent of getting more young blood on the team, he’s arguably the best option. He continues to post in all the biggest and most pressurized events in the game. There’s just a lot competition for one spot right now. Of all the candidates, I could most envision him turning it on and balling out the next four weeks to make Furyk’s choice for him.
Picks schedule
We can assess the roster based on points, which lock down on Sunday night for the American side. But it’s premature to get too wrapped up in arguing captain’s picks. That’s because so much can happen between now and the selections. Here’ the schedule:
Tues September 4th — Three of four captain’s picks are made following the second FedExCup event in Boston. That leaves three tournaments, including two playoffs events, between the PGA and the first round of picks.
Mon September 10 — The fourth and final pick is made. This adds the third leg of the Playoffs, the BMW Championship, as a potential last-minute proving ground. This is a modification to the so-called “Horschel Rule,” named as such after Billy Horschel became the hottest golfer in the world and won the FedExCup after Tom Watson had made his captain’s picks in 2014. The last time around in 2016, the Horschel Rule put the fourth and final pick coming after the Tour Championship. But that got too ridiculously close to the actual Ryder Cup, with the debate going into that Sunday night at the start of the matches week.
The roster universe feels confined to the options above but Horschel’s run in 2014 is a reminder of how much this can change. He was not really on the radar in 2014. So there’s still a chance the roster is filled out with someone not listed. It will come from that top 25 in standings, but it could be a name no one is discussing if he gets hot enough between now and the final pick. We spend an inordinate amount of time debating Ryder Cup rosters, but it’s one of my favorite biennial exercises and it’s going to consume the next month.
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