2019 in books:

David McCullough, 1776: A highly accessible, if somewhat naive, depiction of the year that defined the prospects for American independence. I wouldn’t go there for deep, critical analysis. But for a story of a year, it is well done.

Michael Palin, Erebus: HMS Erebus was a British naval vessel that spent much of its career in Arctic and Antarctic exploration. If you are interested in Victorian era explorations of hard places, a fascinating read.

Emilio Corsetti III, 35 Miles from Shore: The story of an airline crash in the early 1970s in the Caribbean. What happened, why, how, who survived and what we learned. Interesting if not brilliant.

Raymond Thorp, Crow Killer: Old-fashioned tale of the inspiration behind the Robert Redford movie Jeremiah Johnson. As much fantasy as history. But it offers a flavor of a time and a subgroup few Americans would know.

James Corey, Caliban’s War: The second book of “The Expanse” series. The protomolecule is working its mojo, and Earth, Mars and the Belters are none too happy with one another. A fun read of a massive space opera.

Walter Kempowski, All for Nothing: Set in the context of the collapsing Eastern Front during WWII, this story proceeds from the fractured point of view of the Germans who are about to be turned into refugees fleeing oncoming Soviet forces. The book, notably, does not make these Germans sources of sympathy: the mood is dissonant and disordered. A real piece of literature.

Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall: Because who doesn’t want a point-of-view account of a key counselor to Henry VIII, one who rose to extraordinary wealth and power despite his humble birth and then managed the, how shall we say, removal of Kathrine as Queen? Replaced by Anne Boleyn? Who wouldn’t want to read it? It’s excellent, by the way.

James Corey, Abaddon’s Gate: Book three of The Expanse, and the protomolecule has remade humanity’s relationship to the universe. But we’ll probably screw that up, too. Another good story, filled with actual thought about the problems of space travel and space living.

MIchael Krondl, The Taste of Conquest: The Rise and Fall of the Three Great Cities of Spice: Venice, Lisbon and Amsterdam each in their turn dominated the global spice trade -- a trade that was one of the main stimuli for early colonialism and imperial conquest, and which strongly influenced the rise of the modern corporation as a linch-pin of global capitalism. The book is not as good as it should be, but the story is one that few people know, but should.

Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies: Hey, it’s time to get rid of Anne Boleyn everyone! Or, at least, to separate her head from her body. And let’s manage the English Reformation, too ... all just a few years before losing our own head. Welcome to the early/middle 1500s in England everyone!

Leigh Perry, A Skeleton in the Family: Who doesn’t have a skeleton living in their house who helps solve mysteries. I mean, who doesn’t?

JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: So my son has started reading Harry Potter. So I have started reading Harry Potter. I liked this book: it’s tight, it’s focused, it’s a fun read. I see the appeal.

Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: The answer to the questions: “What if the angels and demons charged with over-seeing Earth as humans go from the Garden of Eden to Armageddon decide that they like Earth and don’t want Armageddon to happen (even if their allies do)? And what if the Anti-Christ were raised in a perfectly mundane family in a perfectly mundane English village? How might it all turn out?” To delightful and funny effect.

JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: Meh. Okay. Not as good as book one. But still a good story.

Gilbert King, Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America: A broad pastiche of events surrounding one of the many civil rights cases of the 1940s and 50s: the abuses and murders of several African American men accused of raping a white woman in Lakeland, FL, in 1949. With a whole lot of associated discussions of other cases, the NAACP, corrupt and criminal law enforcement, race riots, and the like. A good read. And how can it be that the bastard George HW Bush, put Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court to fill a seat once held by the staggering legal figure that was Thurgood Marshall. Shameful is the only word.

JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: Certainly better than the Chamber of Secrets. A darker turn. But beginning to get padded as readers demanded “more” if not “better.”

James Corey, Cibola Burn: Book 4 of The Expanse ... and I didn’t like it. It seemed like filler, a book written to a contract deadline. Maybe it will pay off in the end. But another one like that and I’m not going to care.

Tom Phillips, Humans: A Brief History of How We Fucked It All Up: Did you know our oldest known ancestor, Lucy, probably died by falling out of a tree? If stories about how people have messed things up, have suffered both intentional and unintentional consequences, turn you on, do I ever have the book for you. Schadenfreude much?

JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Dear lord is this book long. Why? No doubt because the fans wanted it to be. But it is as gratuitously padded as any book I have ever read. It’s okay. But I wasn’t particularly impressed. Perhaps another six Quidditch matches would have helped ....

Adam Higginbotham, Midnight in Chernobyl: Thought the HBO miniseries was scary? It was tame. I mean: the Soviets, with their level of “technical prowess” and their industrial “quality control checks” ran the facility. Heck, Chernobyl wasn’t even their first disaster. Let’s just put it this way: the actual fuel piles in each of the FOUR Chernobyl reactors were so big that: 1) different sections had different characteristics, and didn’t all operate at the same rates or temperatures; and 2) the monitoring equipment couldn’t record how all of the pile was operating at any time. Happy now? Russia still has 10 Chernobyl-style reactors in operation. Enjoy your good night’s sleep everyone!

JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Yes, yes: I know. This isn’t Order of the Phoenix. Well, I read Order of the Phoenix many years ago, and thought it was deeply annoying. A pile of words with little point. A way to keep the audience happy with long passages about very little.

Meanwhile, I, like my son, roared through Half-Blood Prince. A ripping good tale. Much tighter than the last several of the series.

JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: A fine read. A bit slow getting going: let’s go here! Let’s go there! Let’s recap the plot! But after the first 1/3 or so, the story got moving and I enjoyed it. Didn’t expect great literature; didn’t get great literature. But then again, I deeply appreciate how much pleasure my son got from this, and how excited my daughter is to engage with it. If it hadn’t been conceived and written, it seems like there’d be a Harry Potter sized hole in the universe.

Neil Gaiman, American Gods: In all honesty, I didn’t really like the first 2/3 of this book: too many tangents; too many sub-stories for the sake of sub-stories. And I’m still not sure I think it was a great book. But I really enjoyed the last third of it, and there were moments, vignettes, and sentences that truly blew me away. So I am glad I stayed with it.

Kameron Hurley, The Light Brigade: A sci fi story of soldiers apparently engaged in a war with Mars who are transported to the battlefield as beams of light. One gets unhinged from time. I am not sure it was worth the work, and I came to understand it was based on a short story and so, at times, it seemed a bit one-trick pony-ish. But it had its share of moments.

Daniel James Brown, The Boys in the Boat: A bit slow going at first, but it grows more compelling as it moved forward. This is the story of the 1936 crew (rowing) team at the University of Washington that went to Berlin and won the gold medal as Adolf Hitler watched. An interesting story about crew as a sport (about which I knew basically nothing), and life in Depression-era Washington state -- with a little, somewhat gratuitous, commentary about life in Nazi Germany layered in. One takeaway? The actor Hugh Laurie’s father was the lead oarsman on the British crew at Berlin in 1936. Hugh Laurie rowed crew at Cambridge as well.

James Corey, Nemesis Games: The next in the Expanse series. Much more enjoyable than the last one, but still a bit strained. One heck of a plot “twist.” A perfectly lovely way to relax; didn’t change my life. Some interesting character twists. But also a lot of “here are some giant developments (a lot of giant stuff) that give us lots of things to write about going forward!”

Alan Stern and David Grinspoon, Chasing New Horizons: the story of the New Horizons mission to Pluto. Interesting behind the scenes look at how the mission got funded, planned and implemented. Accessible in terms of the explanations; thick with bureaucratic story-telling and summary. It turns out this stuff is really, really hard. Interesting, but it didn’t blow me away.

And to end the year, I am reading: Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal: What if 13 year old Jesus had a buddy who, 2000 years later, wrote a gospel that filled in those missing years of Joshua’s (as Biff calls Jesus) life? Well, here’s your answer.

Conversation with Anne Rice on Blood and Gold

Q: Blood & Gold is your eighteenth novel about the vampires. Do you find it difficult to work within the narrative framework established by earlier stories?

A: Actually, it's a challenge, a real dare. The Vampire Chronicles vary radically in form. Some are tales told to others. Some are written memoirs. Some involve vampires talking directly to us. I feel there is enough flexibility for me to do just about anything that I want. In Queen of the Damned, for example, I worked with whole chapters in the third person, claiming that the Vampire Lestat received the material telepathically from his soul mates and passed it on to us in that form. But for the most part I stick with the heat and intimacy of the first person voice because I love it, along with its obvious drawbacks, and I feel most at home with the puzzles it presents. How do you make a first person narrator handsome and lovable, for instance. I feel I meet that dare all the time.

Q: Do you view your novels as stand alone entities? Will new readers enjoy Blood & Gold even if they are not familiar with your backlist?

A: Absolutely. Each Vampire Chronicle is a stand-alone book. There is enough information in it to make any first-time reader comfortable immediately, and perhaps a little curious about the other books. Blood & Gold is no exception. If anything, Blood & Gold is a bit easier for the first-time reader than, say, The Vampire Armand because Marius is two thousand years old and he begins his memoir in the year 200 AD and follows his own lonely and stark path through the centuries. His great loves, his great losses, his great revelations are all described in rich detail, right up to the point where he becomes the mentor to the Vampire Lestat, sharing the secrets of Those Who Must Be Kept with Lestat, and eventually suffering when Lestat reveals those secrets to the world. But for the new reader it ought to flow easily. The focus is really on Marius himself and his approach to history as well as his existence as a blood drinker and a myth maker.

Q: Marius, Lestat's beloved mentor, appears in your novels The Vampire Lestat, The Vampire Armand, and The Queen of the Damned. What inspired you to write his story?

A: I was reading through The Queen of the Damned and I felt a new contact with Marius and with the anger he suffered when Akasha, the Queen of the Vampires, rose from her four thousand year slumber and more or less contemptuously deserted him. I felt it was time to go deep into Marius and tell his tale from the beginning?omehow explain the type of love he had felt for Akasha which was really warmer than worship. I knew it would be difficult to live up to the high standard I had set for Marius' character in the Chronicles and I was exhilarated by it. Marius is the noble Roman, the ethical man of reason, the diplomat, and the undying optimist. I had to get into all that. I felt ready for it. Also, I think I felt challenged by the fact that Warner's was making The Queen of the Damned into a movie. I wanted to tell Marius' story before they delivered their version of Marius to motion picture audiences. No matter how detached I try to be from motion pictures of my work, they ultimately affect me.

Q: Marius lives through many periods and in many countries. Which era of Marius' life did you find most seductive? Which did you most enjoy researching?

A: The Italian Renaissance was my favorite period of Marius' life, a time during which Marius became a person in the mortal world, a rich Venetian gentleman who paints the walls of his palazzo for his own pleasure, an enigma to those around him. I did a ton of research on the period to make everything as nearly correct as I could. I also enjoyed researching ancient Rome, the Rome of 200 to 50 AD, during which time Marius saw Christianity become the legal religion of the Empire, and also the barbarian sack of the Eternal City itself, a disaster that sent Marius into a long slumber in the shrine of Those Who Must Be Kept from which he didn't want to wake again to reality. There again, I consult volumes. I had so many books around me when I wrote that sometimes I couldn't escape from my computer. I had to climb over piles of books. I was stumbling. One day I called my research assistant, Scott, on the phone and begged him to come upstairs and help me find a book that was somewhere at my feet but which I couldn't find without an archaeological dig. Of course it was all wonderful fun. I want my vampires to move through real history, not some airy realm of half-truths and mistakes and vague generalities. I want the facts, the smells, the colors, the names, and the dates. When Marius meets Botticelli in Florence, I used Botticelli's correct street address in so as far as history records it.

Q: In Blood & Gold, Marius paints and repaints murals, and his companion Daniel, the interviewer from Interview with the Vampire, creates acres of model cities. What is the role of art in the lives of vampires?

A: Vampires are hyper-sensitive to art. They see color and form with the heightened vision of the perpetually stoned. Art can seduce them as the model cities have seduced the boy, Daniel, who doesn't know yet how to handle his obsessions. Art can also save them because it offers a continuity that life itself may not offer to a human being. As time passes, brutally deteriorating everything meaningful to a soul, art endures, and grows ever richer and more evocative with the passage of time, so that it comes to seem prophetic in retrospect, or at least timeless in the finest sense of the word. Throughout the Vampire Chronicles, art has been key. But Marius laments that though he has lived fourteen hundred years, he cannot create art to rival that of Botticelli. He falls in love with the man and must separate himself from the man lest he hurt Botticelli and thereby affect Botticelli's destiny. Maharet, the ancient one, weaving her red hair into a thread and that thread into chains, is in a sort of thrall as well, much like that of Daniel with his model cities. Weaving comforts Maharet. Marius at various stages in his long life is comforted by nothing.

Q: How does humor work in your narratives?

A: Humor is spontaneous with me. It just happens and I don't try to repress it. I have a wild sense of humor and sometimes I have to avoid the satirical side of what I am writing. I have to not sacrifice the finer feeling to the humor of the moment. But in general I let my humor come out with certain characters more than other. Lestat, for example, has a profound sense of humor and a blasphemous sense of humor. Marius is more serious, and more tragic.

Q: Marius believes that anger is weakness. Do you believe this?

A: Yes, I believe that anger is weakness. Marius is one of those characters who for the most part expresses ideas which are mine. I couldn't have an in-depth relationship with Marius if he didn't express my ideas, and I do feel that anger distorts, weakens, and warps. You have to reach beyond anger for a finer sense of a situation before you respond, or make a move. Marius has a terrible temper and so do I. Marius ruins two moments of his life with anger, and possibly even more. But I don't want to give away the plot.

Q: Memory is crucial for vampires, who are immortal. How is memory important for us mortals?

A: Memory is essential to the attaining of wisdom. There is no wisdom without memory, because there can be no perspective and no deep learning without memory. One has to profit by experience and observation in order to become wise, and memory is the keeper of all fine experiences and observations, memory is the index, the table of contents, the full library. Without memory, one runs the risk of being simplistic and flippant.

Q: Can you give us an update on the progress of film and television projects of your work?

A: For once, there is much to report. A mini-series based on The Feast of All Saints will appear on Showtime in November. After that it will appear on ABC. It will be four hours, and spread over two nights. I've seen it and I think it's lush and sensuous and very faithful to the book, and that readers will love it. It's top notch, and Showtime has spared no expense. I visited the set when they were shooting. I was rocked. John Wilder, the scriptwriter and executive producer, did a fantastic job of adapting the book to the four-hour format.

The Queen of the Damned, a feature film based on The Queen of the Damned and The Vampire Lestat, is scheduled for release by Warner Brothers on February 15, 2002. I have not seen it, but it does seem to be engendering considerable excitement. Stuart Townsend, the young Englishman who plays Lestat, is very appealing and a very fine actor. There are other impressive names in the cast.

We are presently in negotiations with regard to "Earth Angels," a new series that we are developing for television, about a group of big-city based angels who work undercover on earth to fight supernatural evil in all its forms. The series is based on an original concept created by me. I'm extremely excited about it.

We're also in negotiations with a producer and a network with regard to making a long miniseries out of The Witching Hour, Lasher, and Taltos. The present discussion involves a plan for 12 hours of TV time. I'm very excited here as well. I like everyone as well, and want for John Wilder to do the script. I feel that after what he did with The Feast of All Saints, he can do a bang-up job.

I'm also happy to report that Ramses the Damned (The Mummy) is also in development. It's owned by James Cameron, and a new screenwriter was recently hired. I've spoken with her and found her pleasant. Again, I've got high hopes.

So I read your fic ‘in my cardboard walls’ and it was AMAZING so do you have a rec of the other ones you’ve written? Or a rec of your fav Merthur or Wolfstar fanfics? I’d really appreciate it!(I think a lot of your followers would too)

Hey, Anon! Thanks so much for reading, In My Cardboard Walls and for this lovely comment! ♥

That’s my only multi-chapter Merthur/Wolfstar fic, but I’ve written a few one-shots.

Merthur:

Note to Idiot

Arthur and Merlin are members of the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad who work different shifts and share the same office. Arthur, who works the day shift, can’t stand the rain. Merlin, who works the night shift, can’t concentrate without it.

When they both get tired of changing the weather in the magical window in their underground office, is there a more British way to settle their differences than with a few passive-aggressive memos?

First Year (prequel to Note to Idiot)

The summer Arthur turns eleven, with the memory of his father’s reaction when his sister got her Hogwarts letter still fresh in his mind, he spends almost the entire holiday in dread that he’ll get one too. However, when the inevitable happens, he gets far more than just a spot at a magic school – he gets a family. Well, that and an inconvenient acquaintanceship with a strange dark-haired kid, who Arthur definitely does NOT like. Not at all.

Dandelion

The routine has been the same for centuries: Arthur begins a new life in wherever they are in time, he and Merlin meet, Merlin’s memory spell lifts, Arthur’s memories eventually flood back, the idiot has a chuckle at his expense, hugs him senseless and then cries for a bit when it hits him that Arthur’s really with him again. After that they pick up from where they left off until Arthur’s life in that time ends and it all starts again in his next life.

Except this time, when Merlin’s memory spell proves too strong to be lifted simply by their meeting, Arthur is forced to win Merlin over the hard way: with small-talk and dandelions.

You Should See The Other Guy

Arthur doesn’t think it’s unreasonable to be worried when his boyfriend keeps turning up beat-up and bruised (even if Merlin is still perfectly happy and doesn’t seem that concerned about it). But when it gets the worst it’s ever been, Merlin is forced to admit something to Arthur that changes everything.

[This isn’t angsty at all, and there’s a good reason Merlin keeps showing up injured.]

Designated Driver

Arthur has Nystagmus, is legally blind and can’t drive. Gwaine is supposed to be the designated driver but after accepting drink after drink from the hot bartender who has a crush on him, he’s far too drunk to walk let alone operate a car. To make matters worse, Arthur’s left his wallet at home so he can’t even call a cab. Thankfully, his luck changes when he gets approached by a hot stranger.

The First Batch Always Flops

Merlin is used to occasionally walking into the kitchen to meet the sad and embarrassed eyes of the last person to go through Gwaine’s bed. What he’s not used to is finding them irresistibly good-looking and suddenly having the strange urge to make them pancakes to make up for Gwaine’s carelessness. Arthur seems to be a special case.

Mona Lisa’s Smile

“Merlin is the only reason he hasn’t snapped yet. Arthur’s tired and exhausted and just so so sick of art but seeing how Merlin’s face lights up when he sees one of his favourite pieces or how the tips of his adorable ears flush read as he excitedly babbles on about the brushwork and use of colour (even though he knows Arthur can’t tell if it’s good or bad one way or another) fills him with so much affection that he knows he’d happily spend the hundred or so days that he now knows it would take to see each and every piece. Arthur would do anything to keep that childlike mirth alive in his features.

The small velvet box in his pocket suddenly feels a lot more heavy and insistent.”

Nos Galan Gaeaf

Merlin knows from the heart-stopping moment that the fallen branch impales and rips his tent almost in half, that he hates, nay loathes camping and to his horror, it’s the annoyingly posh rich bloke with the top-of-the-range camping gear who comes to his rescue.

However, it soon becomes clear that there’s a reason that the two of them ended up at the camping ground next to what is rumoured to be one of the most haunted and powerful forests in Britain on the last day of October, and it’s far bigger than either of them could have ever imagined.

Wolfstar:

The Daily Grind

Sirius, a new barista, finds himself fascinated with one of the customers. When James tells him that his name is Remus Lupin and that he suffers from severe social anxiety, Sirius finds a creative way to get to know him.

James’ Next-Door Neighbour

Based on the prompt “okay buddy you’ve been serenading the wrong window for about five minutes now, time to let you know my neighbor is out of town.”

Remus is a light sleeper and any little noise at night wakes him up, which is why he’s so annoyed when someone stops their bike right outside his house one night and, to his horror, begins serenading his window. It gets worse when Remus realises that it was actually intended for his next-door-neighbour James, and worse still when Remus and the biker discover that James might have orchestrated the whole thing.

Twenty Minute Shift

Sirius knows he’s picked a bad day to visit his friend at work when, as soon as he walks in, James all but throws his work uniform at him. Things look up when the only client unfortunate enough to come in looking for a bath bomb while Sirius is on duty turns out to be pretty cute. 

I can’t think of many Wolfstar fic recs, but here are a few Merthur ones I’m obsessed with:

Merthur Fic Recs:

There Are No Gays In Football by Malu_3 (Grianne)

When a deeply-closeted Arthur Pendragon finally earns a spot in Camelot’s first XI, he’s dead set on breaking records, not one of sport’s last taboos. But life, like football, is a funny old game, and sometimes the only way up is out. Especially once he realises he’s arse over tit for the new physio.

A queer Arthurian tale of courage, love, and football.

Comments: This is my absolute favourite fic of all time from any fandom. I’ve just finished rereading it and was reminded of how absolutely amazing it is. It’s equal parts hilarious, angsty, eye-opening and hot. You’ll never be able to look at photosets of Bradley in football gear the same way again.

M-RYS by mornmeril

The year is 2355 and Arthur Pendragon is the darling of Albion’s capitol, Camelot. He’s rich, handsome and the heir to Pendragon Enterprises, the world market leader of technology.

Of course behind the facade, Arthur’s life is far from perfect. His father is a demanding man and the betrayal of his ex-girlfriend has left him with even more issues than before, while through it all he’s doing his best to take care of his mentally ill sister.

But things really start to escalate when Arthur is put in charge of launching a new series of android models, the M-RYS line, and he discovers a malfunctioning model that seems more like a human than a computer.

Things only go downhill from there.

Between struggling with his ever growing feelings for Merlin and discovering one strange thing after the other, Arthur’s world is completely upended as he and Merlin embark on a mission to discover his father’s secrets.

Comments: Oh man I will never not love a sci-fi AU based on a high fantasy series. It’s such an interesting take on the Arthur/Merlin dynamic and is full of so many twists and turns that, if you’re anything like me, you won’t be able to stop reading until it’s done.

The Raven by boywholivednotdied

Will’s antics had always been ridiculous, but when one of his dumb capers causes Merlin to inadvertently fall in love with a boy on the internet, things start getting a little complicated. Modern Day AU. Based on the movie ‘You’ve Got Mail’

Comments: It’s a modern-era royalty AU based on You’ve Got Mail - what more could you ask? It’s beautifully written with amazing characterisation, is hilarious and sweet, and low-key (read: high-key) makes me want to meet the love of my life online.

Hope this is helpful, anon! ♥

10 of Emmerdale's best Ross Barton storylines as he prepares to leave for good

It's been a wild old ride.

It's the end of an era in Emmerdale this week as we prepare to say goodbye to the one and only Ross Barton. Actor Michael Parr is bowing out of the soap after playing the dodgy mechanic for the last five years. And what a hectic half decade it's been for Ross!

Having been at the heart of countless hard-hitting storylines – and bed-hopped his way around the village – Ross is finally putting his troubles behind him as he seeks a fresh start with girlfriend Rebecca. (Whether she'll end up going with him is another matter.) Let's hope his new life will be a lot more relaxed, because his time in the Dales has been anything but.

Thanks for the memories, Ross. Here are your ten best bits...

1. His dramatic entrance

Ross took the meaning of keeping it the family to whole new level when he began bedding Debbie Dingle. Not only had he already sampled the delights of her mum, but Debs was also engaged to Ross's big brother Pete at the time. That didn't seem to bother Ross too much though, and after weeks of flirting up a storm, the naughty duo embarked on a hot and heavy affair.

2. His doomed relationship with Donna

After establishing Ross was a bit of a wrong'un, it didn't take long to realise he was also something of a womaniser. His early conquests included bedding Charity, but it wasn't until he secretly started dating copper Donna Windsor that we saw Ross was capable of having a relationship that went beyond rumpy-pumpy.

Unfortunately, the lovers ended getting themselves mixed up in a deadly game of cat and mouse with dodgy club boss Gary North. Ross agreed to carry out a job for Gary in order to protect his family, but it all went terribly wrong.

During a tense showdown on the roof of a multi-storey car park, Donna (who was terminally ill with lung cancer) took Gary over the edge with her, killing them both instantly.

3. His unlikely friendship with April

For anyone who'd written Ross off as a one-dimensional villain, his bond with Donna's 4-year old daughter April was enough to prove them wrong. The unlikely pair's magical friendship was formed when Ross was dating Donna, and much to everyone's delight, continued in the months following her tragic demise.

One of our all time favourite memories of Ross will always be when he dressed up as Captain Jack Sparrow to put a smile on his little pal's face as she faced a painful first Christmas without her mummy. See, there was a softie lurking inside.

4. Who's the daddy of baby Moses?

Just as well Ross was a natural with gorgeous April, as it stood in him good stead for the next child who was about to enter his life. In 2015, the writers created a "Who's the daddy?" plot when Charity gave birth to a son called Moses while in prison. Ross was one of the potential baby daddies, along with Cain, and Charity's former husbands Jai and Declan.

The mystery was finally solved months down the line when Moses needed a life-saving operation and Charity summoned Ross to the hospital to introduce him to his boy. The bombshell rocked Ross's world as he struggled to believe one bunk-up in the back of the chop shop had created a life. The situation was made doubly awkward by the fact Ross was secretly sleeping with Charity's daughter Debbie at the time…

5. Sleeping with his brother's missus

Ross took the meaning of keeping it the family to whole new level when he began bedding Debbie Dingle. Not only had he already sampled the delights of her mum, but Debs was also engaged to Ross's big brother Pete at the time. That didn't seem to bother Ross too much though, and after weeks of flirting up a storm, the naughty duo embarked on a hot and heavy affair.

Debbie seriously considered ditching the dull brother for the dangerous one, but their plans to do a runner were thwarted when Cain revealed Ross was Moses's father. Ross found himself dumped, while Debbie ploughed on with her plans to marry Pete, completely unaware of the death and destruction their wedding day would bring.

6. His fake death

As predicted, some serious shiz went down at Debbie and Pete's wedding. Her affair was revealed over the airwaves during the bride and groom's first dance, then a helicopter crashed into the village hall well and truly brought an end to the reception. When Pete finally caught up with his brother a brawl broke out, with Ross ending up unconscious.

Pete thought he'd killed his betrayer and buried his body in the woods, and we all believed Ross had breathed his last. Even Michael Parr thanked fans on Twitter for their support, saying "it's goodbye from me".

A petition was launched to bring the character back, but just three weeks later it was revealed the whole thing had been a sneaky ruse, when Ross opened his eyes in a hospital bed.

7. Getting even with Pete

No-one does revenge quite like Ross. After initially pretending he was totes fine with the fact that his brother had left him to rot under a pile of leaves, Ross let his real feelings be known. After kidnapping his brother, Ross beat Pete unconscious. His victim awoke to find himself hanging head first over a viaduct by a winch.

Ruthless Ross enjoyed every second of his power trip, gently lowering the winch as his scared sibling pleaded for his life. He even went as far as demanding Pete sent a suicide text to their dad James. In the end, Ross couldn't go through with killing his own flesh and blood. What did we say about him being a softie?

8. Shooting Robert Sugden

Pretty much every single Emmerdale storyline in 2015 centred around a certain RB, and the 'Who Shot Robert Sugden?' plot was no exception. Ruthless Rob was public enemy number one in the village at the time he took a bullet, so there was no shortage of suspects for carrying out the crime. The writers came up with a genius way of revealing whodunit, which broke with their usual style of storytelling – a rewind episode.

During the gripping time warp, which aired on the soap's 43rd anniversary, the audience witnessed Ross enter into a murderous pact with Andy Sugden, as the boys agreed to kill each other's brothers. Ross kept true to his word, by pulling the trigger on Robert (although he lived to tell the tale), but Andy wussed out on his promise to do away with Pete.

9. Who pushed Emma?

Pete wasn't the only member of the Barton clan who Ross seriously considered doing away with. Having always experienced a turbulent relationship with mum Emma following her abandonment when he was a kid, Ross was the prime suspect in the frame for her murder. As well as a general disdain of his mother, there was also the added motive that Em had murdered his father and been responsible for the death of Ross's little brother Finn. Plus, Emma had tried to drown Ross when he was a child.

But despite dragging Emma to the viaduct she fell to her death from, and telling her to jump, Ross wasn't actually the person who pushed her. After the real murderer Moira had scarpered, Ross revealed to Pete that he had returned to the scene to save Emma, only to discover her sprawled dead below the bridge.

10. The horrific acid attack

The writers took Ross on his darkest journey to date in February of this year when he fell victim to a savage acid attack. It was a case of wrong place, wrong time for the mechanic when he agreed to help Debbie get even with her ex Joe Tate. Debs had arranged for drug dealer Simon McManus to beat up Joe, but in a case of mistaken identity, it was Ross who was targeted with a corrosive substance when Simon decided to use acid.

After suffering life-changing injuries, Ross began to rapidly spiral, becoming crippled by an addiction to prescription painkillers to block out the agony over his disfigurement.

Emmerdale airs Ross's final scenes on Friday (November 2) at 7pm on ITV.

Ross Barton says goodbye in Emmerdale

Interstellar Novella - Searching for Smoke

A/N: This month's Roll-A-Drabble over at the @hermiones-haven was Marauders Era themed which meant time travel was automatic. Then we were rolled for a trope to go hand in hand with time travel as well as who the other piece of our pairing was.

This month I was assigned Severus Snape and Creature. I am saying this now, this is not a true blue creature fic. I've never written a creature fic because it is not something that I am interested in and I'm only writing it because that's what the dice said I was writing. Please don't hate me if this isn't what you were expecting.

This little drabble was beta read by the wonderful @gaeilgerua. She's a life saver when it comes to needing a beta.

Title: Searching for Smoke Rating: K Pairing: Sevmione Summary: A brief interaction after a time travelling mishap leads to a discovery that could help to save a friend.

Check me out on social media if you enjoy my writing style! I hang out under my penname all over the place.

Hopefully I didn't screw things up to badly! Be sure to let me know what you think!

Love always,

~starr

Hogwarts 1993

Hermione sat on the edge of her bed and stared at the Time-Turner in her hands. She wondered where it might take her if she took the chance and gave it a spin. She always wondered what it would be like to just use the device to explore the past, even if it wasn't always the safest method of travel and she could royally screw things up with one wrong step.

All of the ways that this could go wrong were flying around her head as she brushed her thumb along the smooth surface. However, regardless of the possibility of things to go wrong, there was a part of her curiosity that just wanted to know what could happen.

"I'll just be extremely careful," she mumbled under her breath as she looped the chain around her head and took a deep breath as she readied to activate it. Closing her eyes, she sighed as she spun the Time Turner around three times.

. . . . . . . . .

Hogwarts 1977

Severus glanced at the ingredient list out of the corner of his eye and furrowed his brow. It appeared that this potion might have been a little more difficult than he had initally thought. He may have been at the top of his potions class, but that didn't mean he didn't have still have a lot to learn.

Regardless of the difficulty of this potion, he needed to figure out a way to make this work. His continued friendship with Lily depended on him making this potion work. If he could help Remus deal with everything that was happening to his body, then maybe James and Sirius would be willing to accept him into their circle of friends. Or at least Lily could convince them to let him into their circle.

Every recipe he tried stated that the potion was supposed to release a burst of blue smoke when it was complete. Unfortunately, he had yet to see the smoke appear at all. Every time he added the last ingredient, he heard a faint fizzle and then the potion turned pitch black in the cauldron. He had no idea what was going wrong, but with advice from Professor Slughorn, he was going to attempt to make some modifications and hope for the best.

Reaching for a vial of moon dust, Severus heard a loud thud on the ground behind him. With his brow furrowed he quickly spun around and noticed a pile of curly hair lying in the corner opposite him. As far as he was aware, there hadn't been a pile of hair there when he came into the dungeons a few hours earlier.

Just as he went to take a few steps towards the hair, it moved. Startled by the motion, he collapsed back against the bench behind him, causing the vials of ingredients to rattle softly. Suddenly standing in front of him was a female he didn't recognize with a gold chain wrapped around her neck.

"Who the hell are you?" he asked, taking a few deep breaths as he moved across the room in her general direction. "And how the hell did you get in here?"

She looked at him for a few moments; her browed scrunched as though she recognized him, but couldn't place how. So he decided to take advantage of her silence and make his own observations of the current situation.

The door to the dungeons was still closed, so obviously she didn't come in through the door. He glanced up at the roof and noticed that it was still intact. That put to rest the idea that she had been lurking in the eaves and just fallen through. Maybe she was a ghost and just travelled through the wall. However, that wouldn't have explained the loud thud he had heard. The only option left now would have been apparition, but he didn't recognize her as a fellow student, and the clothing she wore wasn't familiar to him.

"I'm waiting," he grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Sorry about that," she mumbled, running a hand nervously through her hair. "My name is Herm-" As she was about to say her name, she realized exactly who she was standing in front of. The slick black hair and the nose that was slightly too large for his face. She was in the presence of her Potions Master during his time at Hogwarts. If she identified herself, then she would undoubtedly alter the timeline.

"My name is Hermia Dranger," she replied. "I'm not entirely sure how I got here, but there must be something here that could use my attention or else I wouldn't have appeared."

Biting her lip, she hoped that he would believe her tale. Time Travel was difficult enough to explain without messing up the timeline. She was walking on a slippery slope, and all she could do was hope that he would believe her.

Severus looked her up and down once more. He wasn't sure if the words she spoke were true, but he was struggling to find the right combination to allow the potion to work and he was in need of assistance. Maybe if he let her help, then he might be able to work past the issues he was having and finally brew a successful batch.

"Well," he said, carding a hand nervously through his hair, "I'm currently working on a potion to help a friend out, but I haven't been successful at producing the smoke that signifies the magic is complete. It is safe to assume you are familiar with magic?"

Eagerly Hermione nodded her head and walked toward the bench that Severus was working on. She quickly skimmed over the collection of ingredients spread out on the table and then glanced at the open spell book lying on the table.

"You're working on a potion for the effects of lycanthropy?" she asked, glancing back at him over her shoulder. "Who's your friend?"

"Yes I'm working on a potion for lycanthropy, but who it is for is none of your concern," he replied, shaking his head as he walked up to the bench and stood beside her. "I was just about to add some moon dust when you interrupted me."

"Don't use moon dust!" she shouted, grabbing the vial out of his hands quickly. She recalled a lesson from Potions earlier this year where Snape told them to avoid adding moon dust in any potions if at all possible.

Glaring at her, Severus grumbled something under his breath before letting out a long sigh. "Then what should I use instead?"

Thinking back through her potion lessons, Hermione attempted to recall what Snape had been using in his potions that involved the moon in some way when the name of the ingredient struck her. Her eyes widened, and a smile appeared on her lips as she looked around the dungeon. Spying the bottle along the back wall, she ran over to the shelves and grabbed it. The smile was still beaming brightly from her face when she returned and handed it to him proudly.

"Wolfsbane?" Severus asked, quirking his brow as he looked over the bottle briefly. "I never even thought to use it. The Forbidden Forest has so many of these plants along the edge. If this works, then it could change the future for those suffering from lycanthropy."

"So let's hope it works," Hermione said with a wink.

Slowly Severus added the final ingredient to the potion and stirred it three times, clockwise. They both waited with baited breath as a small cloud of smoke began to form on the surface of the potion. Just as it was about to rise into the air, the smoke turned a brilliant shade of blue.

"It worked!" Severus exclaimed, turning to face Hermia only to find that she had disappeared. Disappointed that he had no one to share in the victory with, Severus took a deep breath and sighed as he reached for a vial. He needed to find Remus so that they could at least test this batch and make any necessary changes.

. . . . . . . .

Hogwarts 1993

"Professor, why is it called Wolfsbane Potion?" Neville asked nervously as he glanced into the potion that Snape was currently standing over.

"Because it's the ingredient that does most of the work," Snape replied through gritted teeth. This potion required his focus, and he didn't have time to be answering ridiculous questions.

"Who determined that wolfsbane should be used?" Hermione asked from the back of the classroom.

Snape looked up and made eye contact with the young witch for a few moments as he thought about his answer. Granger reminded him of the young woman who inspired him to use wolfsbane in the first place, but he hadn't spent enough time around Hermia to know how far the similarities went.

"A wise young witch that I met in my youth," Severus replied, lowering his gaze back to the potion in front of him.

Hermione smiled proudly to herself. Who knew that paying attention to Snape's lectures would have helped to aid in the creation of an antidote for someone that had come to mean so much to her friends.

Michael After Midnight: The Princess and the Frog

After the disaster that was Home on the Range, Disney wasn’t too keen on going back to traditional animation. It took them five years to release a new traditionally animated movie, and… it underperformed. Not super badly, mind you, it had great reception and solid returns, but a combination of bad marketing and going up against James Cameron’s Avatar really hurt the film. That film is, obviously, The Princess and the Frog.

This film’s pretty interesting in a lot of ways. We have our first black princess, our first American (as in, citizen of the United States) princess, we have a film set down in New Orleans in the early 20th century… this is a pretty interesting film for sure. The real question is, is it a GOOD film? Can it stand up with the best of the Renaissance, or is it a weak work that shows Disney made the right move switching over to 3D animation?

So here’s the tale Disney gave us today: Way down in New Orleans in the 1920s, a young black waitress named Tiana is struggling as a waitress to get enough cash to start her own restaurant. Things seem hard until the wily prince Naveen rolls into town, and Tiana’s rich white BFF Lottie is so into this dude she says she’ll give Tiana fat stacks of cash to cater a party so that Lottie can woo the man. But Lottie’s not the only one who wants a piece of this prince; the wicked practitioner of voodoo and sleazy conman Dr. Facilier tricks Naveen into making a deal with him, turns Naveen into a frog, and turns Naveen’s put-upon manservant into a replica of Naveen as part of a ploy to gather up souls for his Friends On the Other Side. Now a frog, Naveen goes to get kissed, like in the stories… so Tiana kisses him! And then… she becomes a frog too! Now these two clashing personalities are stuck in frog form, and embark on a journey to change back before Facilier gets his way. Can they do it, or will these two croak?

One of the best things about the movie is just how well-researched and authentic so many aspects of it are. Most importantly is the voodoo; directors Clements and Musker avoided using any real symbols so they didn’t piss off practitioners or evil spirits, but you can tell they did a lot more research on it than most do. This is most evident in the existence of the character known as Mama Odie, who is a GOOD voodoo practitioner, a shocking rarity in any film that features it. Yeah, there’s more to voodoo than the wicked pincushion dolls and black magic and chicken sacrifices you see in your typical movie featuring voodoo. Beyond that, we have New Orleans native Randy Newman delivering music that feels authentic to the locale, and we have Jim Cummings playing a character with his authentic Cajun accent he picked up working on riverboats (not the first time he has played this sort of character; he did it before in Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island, though, uh… Ray is a much more pelasant character than the one he plays there). Then of course there’s Ray’s lover Evangeline, whose name is a reference to a famous poem of the same name by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a poem considered the unofficial national epic of the Cajun people. Mad props to this movie for going out of its way to go to such lengths to make their setting really authentic.

Sadly, this level of quality could not be packed into our main character, Tiana. She’s… alright as a character, but she’s not very interesting as far as Disney princesses go. Her major flaw is that she’s a workaholic and so has to loosen up a bit; in fact, she spends more time teaching other characters lessons than learning anything herself. And she’s completely removed from the villain’s scheming for the most part, with her only getting targeted because she’s around Naveen. The first time she meets Dr. Facilier is during the final confrontation, for fuck’s sake! I hate to say it, but she reminds me a lot of Susie Carmichael from Rugrats, being the poster child for positive discrimination. Now don’t take this as me saying she’s an awful character, or bad representation, or anything like that; there is stuff to like and admire about Tiana for sure! I just don’t find her particularly interesting, especially considering…

...how colorful a lot of the other characters are! We have Naveen, who is the jerkass egomaniac who develops as the movie goes on, becoming humbled by his experiences and learning there should be more to life than reckless hedonism; this is the kind of characterization I would have liked from my princess, and in Disney movies this is usually the case, with the princess being the character with lots of characterization and growth while the prince is just eye candy with little depth (Tiana is not that extreme a case, don’t worry). Then we have Ray, who is a divisive character, but… I like him well enough. He’s so sweet, and goofy, and voiced by Jim Cummings, so how the hell could I hate him? There’s also a certain scene with him towards the end, which I have to applaud for going against a typical trope Disney loves to use. I won’t spoil it, but you’ll know it when you see it. Then there’s one-scene wonder Mama Odie, who gets a song and very little screentime, but damn she makes her mark! This blind old lady steals the show when she struts on screen! Oh, there’s also an alligator named Louis who wants to play trumpet. He has like one good joke. I find him pointless. Moving on.

There are two characters that rise above the others in terms of how good they are. The first is, shockingly, Lottie. A rich white girl in the 1920s in a movie where the protagonist is a poor black girl… ooh boy, you’d expect Lottie to be nothing more than a self-absorbed spoiled rich bitch. But holy fuck, she is actually the sweetest, kindest, most likable rich person you will ever see in a movie! She absolutely ADORES Tiana, and just goes out of her way to help her. She is the poster child for spoiled sweet; she may be a bit ditzy and silly, but goddamn this girl’s heart is in the right place! It’s so refreshing to see a character like her; it would have been so easy to make her a snobby rich asshole, rather than the bouncy sweetheart that she is.

And then, of course, we have Dr. Facilier, the big bad of the movie. Voiced by Keith David, he is absolutely the highlight of the film. In fact, I’d go so far as to call him the last TRUE classic-style Disney villain until Tamatoa belted out “Shiny;” he’s hammy, he’s charismatic, he has an awesome villain song, he has a great performance from a great actor… he can easily stand alongside the greats like Ursula, Scar, Gaston, Frollo, Hades, and so on. If there’s any problem I have with him, it’s that they could have given a little more info on his problems with his Friends, maybe explored that a little more, but still, what we got is classic Disney villain. And as any great Disney villain, he gets an incredible, nightmarish death, rivaled only by his trippy, terrifying musical number’s visuals! Facilier has got it all! He’s easily one of my favorite Disney villains of all time.

The best way I can describe this is as a lost Disney Renaissance film. It really feels like it could fit in that era alongside films like Aladdin or Beauty and the Beast, especially in regards to the villain. Still, the film isn’t perfect, and does suffer at least a little due to our main protagonist not being quite as interesting as she should be. Still, I’d definitely recommend this to anyone who likes animation, and I most certainly believe this movie deserves better than what it got; it’s an underrated gem, not to the extent of Atlantis or Treasure Planet, but definitely a Disney film that deserves a little more love and respect than it got upon release.

LOGAN REVIEW: End of an Era

The Wolverine finally gets to be himself. The opening seconds of the film already sees Logan shot, beaten, before he unleashes a myriad of violent manoeuvres to put down a bunch of Cholos. You realise how watered down those X-Men films have been. While the X-Men are colourfully blasting foes away with lasers, wind and other magical powers, he’s ferociously decapitating and ripping people apart with those vicious claws, empowered by rage itself. Thus I begin with perhaps the most important point: Logan is M18 and not a film for children. It is the X-Men and kids will want to see it, but this is definitely one for old teens and above. With that said, the age-rating does pave way for a poignant and deeply affecting conclusion to send off a hero we’ve followed faithfully for 17 years. 

It is the year 2029, mutants are on the brink of extinction and Logan spends his days as a chauffeur near the Mexican border. Whatever income he makes goes to medication for Xavier, who is suffering from a neurodegenerative disease – a brain disease on the world’s most powerful brain – resulting in unthinkable devastation. Logan carries a single adamantium bullet, planning to use it on himself should Xavier die. The Professor is the only thing worth living for now, a memento of the past and the only good thing left in Logan’s world. It’s also shocking to see these glorified heroes end up where they are; sick, unmotivated and literally tired of living. However, when a young mutant with similar powers shows up, Logan is forced out of hiding to deliver her to a rumoured safe haven for mutants. I don't agree that Logan is utterly original. Its reluctant heroism / road trip narrative is reminiscent of many Westerns that have come before, but this doesn’t detract from it being a powerful story.

Logan trusts the maturity of its audience and finally allows us to realise the reality of superheroism. As seen in the trailers, “we’ve got an X-Men fan”, Logan smirks as he flips through the page of a vintage X-Men comic, then dismisses it explaining that “only a quarter of it happened, but not like this”. In the real world, there is violence, death and severe consequences. It bravely does away with all its PG-13 instalments, criticising them for dramatising what were evidently agonising times in Logan’s life.

Violence in Logan isn’t just a gimmick, but necessary to convey the desperation of our heroes long after the fall of the X-Men. After all, this is how Logan has always seen the world. Nothing here glorifies bloodshed. Second-time Wolverine director James Mangold wisely modifies the camera work to draw focus on fight choreography rather than fast-paced editing, to deliberately draw focus to the terrifying violence unfolding and pain shown on characters’ faces. Crucially, viewers never get comfortable with what’s on screen. Before engaging into any battle, Logan unleashes a long cry that conveys not just his fury, but reluctance because something precious has been taken that has forced him into violence, often his possessions or loved ones. This has been consistent throughout the Wolverine series, where Logan responds into battle, rather than initiates one. It's a torturous way to have lived, and Logan sees the consequences of a man who has lost everything he’s ever loved that he is unwilling to show any more affection or trust. He can’t bear to lose anything else.

I love the intimacy of the story, in that there aren’t any magical portals in the sky that put the world at stake. In fact, the stakes are personal and very real. Yes Laura does represent the future of mutant-kind but it isn’t fleshed out because none of that matters more than what the characters mean to each other right now; how Logan needs Laura and much as she needs him and what Xavier means to the both of them. Its a meditation on the family and its a refreshing change of pace on Marvel’s part, humanising characters who are larger than life. We open with the Wolverine looking after an old man who would refuse to take his medicine, get angry, curse and sometimes forget Logan’s name. As the story develops, Logan’s own anxieties creep up which are as real as ours - hesitating to care for a child whom he could never do justice to. These are real world struggles they’re dealing with, mirroring our own. Their personal victories make them as much superheroes to us as it is inspiring and sacrificial, more so than having to save our planet. 

Hugh Jackman admitted being difficult to work with in the making of the film, as he wouldn’t allow it to be in anyways imperfect. This had to be a fitting end. It is refreshing to see how Mangold and Jackman have gotten their story told amidst the immense studio pressure to preserve these characters and their lore, which have taken many films to build are plainly brushed aside, while other major characters meet their demise in almost anticlimactic fashion. This is a daring superhero movie – which is the most bar-raising thing about it – in that it dares to do things to these industrially lucrative characters - property - in ways that plenty of studios couldn’t even consider in the name of perfecting the narrative (I’m talking about you Civil War). This is filmmaking done with passion and integrity. 

Commendable work extends to the performances. Jackman’s 17 years of Wolverine ends with a career-high performance. He is utterly committed and evidently owning the role, with every line delivered with complete empathy. It's a pity that Logan is released so early into the year, a winter release would almost certainly stir substantial Oscar buzz. On the other hand however, newcomer Dafne Keen more than holds her own as Laura/X-23. She’s given a tremendous amount to do with little to no dialogue and she delivers with a mature and well-controlled physical performance. I appreciated that the film never made her cute, or had any cheesy back-to-back superhero team ups with the Wolverine. Her portrayal was consistent with the brooding tone of the film, and we are introduced to an angry child that has come from pain herself, seeking refuge and a family in this world that likewise has shown her nothing but violence. In many ways, the responsibility of a father figure to Laura is the perfect end for Logan. She echoes plenty of Logan’s own characteristics and flaws, which require Logan to overcome his own demons in order to help her.

Logan’s success suggests one point that superhero stories can come to an end. And perhaps now we are ready to see our favourite heroes come to terms with what they have done, and come to some form of closure. As the Western craze of the 70s came to a close, films focused on the old cowboys coming out of retirement for one last job – a fitting and retrospective way to see out the era. Similarly, I believe the Superhero phenomena of the past two decades can soon begin its closure, wrapping up an era of thrilling escapism and inspiring entertainment. If the failing DC universe proves anything, we are beginning to see stale work – audiences rolling their eyes at tales retold so much so that parodical works become huge successes, like Deadpool, evidence of our cynicism towards genre conventions. The wave of horror movies came to an undignified conclusion in the 90s, when studios ran out of ideas after their 6th instalments and began amalgamating franchises that had little to do with each other (likewise it was irreverent works like Scream that took the limelight). It would be a tragedy to see the Superhero genre whimper off the same way. Its cheese, but I’ll leave with a quote by the great Harvey Dent that I find most apt

 “you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain”

We won’t get out of the Second Gilded Age the way we got out of the first

A historian explains why we keep comparing today to the Gilded Age.

Andrew Carnegie, steel magnate and one of the 19th century’s richest men, made an offhand remark while bragging about his wealth to a newspaper reporter in early 1892: “It isn’t the man who does the work that makes the money. It’s the man who gets other men to do it.”

Several months later while on vacation in Scotland, Carnegie sent a telegram approving of his deputy’s decision to unleash a private army on strikers and their families at his steel mill in Homestead, Pennsylvania, sparking a bloody gun battle that left at least 10 dead and dozens seriously wounded.

Carnegie was getting other men to do the work.

Accounts like these pepper tales of the Gilded Age, the period in US history roughly from the end of the Civil War to the start of the 20th century. They have made the term “Second Gilded Age” a convenient shorthand for affluent arrogance and economic inequity today.

The term “Second” or “New Gilded Age” has been appearing in print for nearly four decades, describing everything from the junk-bond 1980s to the internet-bubble 1990s, and the Collateralized-Debt-Obligation 2000s to the top-1-percent 2010s.

As a historian of US class relations, I understand the appeal. The comparison — though superficial — keeps working because economic inequality keeps growing, and most Americans associate the Gilded Age first and foremost with excesses and egotism of great wealth.

But those who use the phrase “Second Gilded Age” to criticize contemporary inequality are also paying unintended tribute to Carnegie’s logic. They are trying to get a previous historical era to do the work of offering critiques and solutions for this one’s problems. Our grasp of both eras suffers for it.

The Gilded Age comparison beguiles us — and not even as much as it could

The temptation of the comparison is understandable on storytelling grounds alone. Gilded Age elites cut a detestably memorable and therefore useful profile, from shipping tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt spitting, “The public be damned!,” to financier Jay Gould boasting that he could “hire one-half the working class to shoot the other half to death.”

Railroad sleeping-car king George Pullman knew how loathed he was: he arranged to have his coffin sealed with lead and buried at night in a steel-and-concrete vault 8 feet deep, lest workers desecrate his corpse in revenge for the way he exploited them in life.

Even Gilded Age parties rankle democratic sensibilities. Amid a global depression in 1897, New York millionaires including banker J.P. Morgan and real estate heiress Caroline Astor spent several fortunes impersonating ancien régime royalty at a Waldorf Astoria costume ball while the unemployed huddled in the streets outside.

The very phrase “Gilded Age” conjures cartoon visions of such individuals. They seem an ideal historical comparison for today’s “bailout billionaires” who purchase politicians, award employees accused of sexual harassment with rich exit packages, and spend millions to hire rock stars for birthday parties.

Yet historians such as Steve Fraser and James Livingston have rightly objected to the notion that today we are in a second Gilded Age. They point to the stark economic contrasts in the two eras: industrialization, rising working-class wages, and violent class conflict in the first Gilded Age; de-industrialization, falling working-class wages, and what Fraser calls “acquiescence” to exploitation — including modern phenomenons like mass stock ownership, the gig economy, mass indebtedness, and more — today.

Recent wildcat strikes and the election of democratic socialists to Congress have made this last claim somewhat less tenable than it was before 2016, but relative to the Gilded Age’s literal class war, the upsurge in resistance remains mild.

Yet the problems with the “Second Gilded Age” idea don’t end with the flawed historical similarities. In some ways, those it omits are more telling.

It was during the Gilded Age that African-American men — who had just secured voting rights in the 15th Amendment — were disenfranchised through legal chicanery and racist, state-sanctioned violence. The Supreme Court’s 1883 gutting of the first US Civil Rights Act opened the way for the subsequent consolidation of Jim Crow law.

A hundred and thirty years later, the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, enabling a flood of state-level Voter ID legislation targeting low-income voters of color. Meanwhile, the pairing of a wantonly violent and racist criminal justice system with laws that impede felon and ex-felon suffrage decimates the black vote.

Soon after the Civil War, the US Army accelerated long-running efforts to expel Native Americans from ancestral lands across the continent, sometimes claiming to be fighting “barbarism and terrorism” as a pretext for Gilded Age projects of occupation and natural resource extraction.

Such justifications for imperial military action echo from the 1870s to the 2000s, whether serving to target Sioux gold in the Black Hills or black gold in Iraq.

The Gilded Age also included white nationalist, anti-immigrant movements. Their legislative culmination was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned the immigration of Chinese laborers to the United States.

Last year, President Donald Trump succeeded in imposing restrictions on immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries. He continues, as he has since his 2016 campaign launch, to make political hay by demonizing migrants from Mexico and Central America.

These surface historical parallels seem so obvious. Why don’t they tend to come up in columns decrying our “Second Gilded Age?”

Solutions for Gilded Age inequality won’t work for ours

It might have something to do with how the first Gilded Age ended.

In the liberal historical imagination, the economic reforms of the Progressive Era and New Deal years in the first half of the 20th century — primarily higher taxes, stricter regulations of business and finance, and greater government investment in public enterprise — vanquished Gilded Age inequality.

This happy version of the story has many heroes, most of whom tend to be middle-class intellectuals and technocratic politicians: muckraking journalists like Ida Tarbell who exposed robber barons, government appointees like Frances Perkins who fought to protect workers, and seemingly anti-laissez-faire presidents like Woodrow Wilson and the two Roosevelts.

Little wonder that the usual proposed solution for the “Second Gilded Age” is either a “second Progressive Era” or a “New New Deal.”

But this understanding distorts the history of the demise of the Gilded Age’s inequality and misleads us today.

Although middle-class philanthropists and technocratic politicians gave voice to policies that began to curtail inequality, they did not generate the conditions that made such policies either politically possible or effective. That took decades of widespread, sustained, and explicit anti-capitalist organizing from working people — in labor unions, youth groups, radical political parties, and coalitions of mass protest — from the 1870s through the 1940s. Cold War liberalism’s backlash against such radicalism was fierce and helped fuel the rise of the right.

Progressives and New Dealers also achieved their reforms by reaffirming the Gilded Age’s ideological and legal commitments to white supremacy, imperialism, and xenophobia. The mainstream labor movement marginalized radicals and underwrote imperial nationalism. Signature New Deal legislation — the Social Security Act and the National Labor Relations Act — discriminated against women and African Americans by excluding domestic and agricultural workers, valorizing the white male family wage earner.

The “solutions” that ended Gilded Age inequality, in other words, became a crucial seedbed for our own era’s historically distinct expressions of inequality.

The “Second Gilded Age” is a gilded analogy. We have not been through all this before. We won’t emerge from it by reanimating the politics of the past. New solutions are wanting.

Unlike Carnegie, we don’t have the luxury of getting others to do the work.

David Huyssen is the author of Progressive Inequality: Rich and Poor in New York, 1890-1920. He is working on a new book about the socialist who created the hedge fund, and teaches Modern American History at the University of York in the UK. Follow him on Twitter: @davidhuyssen.

First Person is Vox’s home for compelling, provocative narrative essays. Do you have a story to share? Read our submission guidelines, and pitch us at [email protected].

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10 of Emmerdale's best Ross Barton storylines as he prepares to leave for good

It's been a wild old ride.

It's the end of an era in Emmerdale this week as we prepare to say goodbye to the one and only Ross Barton. Actor Michael Parr is bowing out of the soap after playing the dodgy mechanic for the last five years. And what a hectic half decade it's been for Ross!

Having been at the heart of countless hard-hitting storylines – and bed-hopped his way around the village – Ross is finally putting his troubles behind him as he seeks a fresh start with girlfriend Rebecca. (Whether she'll end up going with him is another matter.) Let's hope his new life will be a lot more relaxed, because his time in the Dales has been anything but.

Thanks for the memories, Ross. Here are your ten best bits...

1. His dramatic entrance

Ross took the meaning of keeping it the family to whole new level when he began bedding Debbie Dingle. Not only had he already sampled the delights of her mum, but Debs was also engaged to Ross's big brother Pete at the time. That didn't seem to bother Ross too much though, and after weeks of flirting up a storm, the naughty duo embarked on a hot and heavy affair.

2. His doomed relationship with Donna

After establishing Ross was a bit of a wrong'un, it didn't take long to realise he was also something of a womaniser. His early conquests included bedding Charity, but it wasn't until he secretly started dating copper Donna Windsor that we saw Ross was capable of having a relationship that went beyond rumpy-pumpy.

Unfortunately, the lovers ended getting themselves mixed up in a deadly game of cat and mouse with dodgy club boss Gary North. Ross agreed to carry out a job for Gary in order to protect his family, but it all went terribly wrong.

During a tense showdown on the roof of a multi-storey car park, Donna (who was terminally ill with lung cancer) took Gary over the edge with her, killing them both instantly.

3. His unlikely friendship with April

For anyone who'd written Ross off as a one-dimensional villain, his bond with Donna's 4-year old daughter April was enough to prove them wrong. The unlikely pair's magical friendship was formed when Ross was dating Donna, and much to everyone's delight, continued in the months following her tragic demise.

One of our all time favourite memories of Ross will always be when he dressed up as Captain Jack Sparrow to put a smile on his little pal's face as she faced a painful first Christmas without her mummy. See, there was a softie lurking inside.

4. Who's the daddy of baby Moses?

Just as well Ross was a natural with gorgeous April, as it stood in him good stead for the next child who was about to enter his life. In 2015, the writers created a "Who's the daddy?" plot when Charity gave birth to a son called Moses while in prison. Ross was one of the potential baby daddies, along with Cain, and Charity's former husbands Jai and Declan.

The mystery was finally solved months down the line when Moses needed a life-saving operation and Charity summoned Ross to the hospital to introduce him to his boy. The bombshell rocked Ross's world as he struggled to believe one bunk-up in the back of the chop shop had created a life. The situation was made doubly awkward by the fact Ross was secretly sleeping with Charity's daughter Debbie at the time…

5. Sleeping with his brother's missus

Ross took the meaning of keeping it the family to whole new level when he began bedding Debbie Dingle. Not only had he already sampled the delights of her mum, but Debs was also engaged to Ross's big brother Pete at the time. That didn't seem to bother Ross too much though, and after weeks of flirting up a storm, the naughty duo embarked on a hot and heavy affair.

Debbie seriously considered ditching the dull brother for the dangerous one, but their plans to do a runner were thwarted when Cain revealed Ross was Moses's father. Ross found himself dumped, while Debbie ploughed on with her plans to marry Pete, completely unaware of the death and destruction their wedding day would bring.

6. His fake death

As predicted, some serious shiz went down at Debbie and Pete's wedding. Her affair was revealed over the airwaves during the bride and groom's first dance, then a helicopter crashed into the village hall well and truly brought an end to the reception. When Pete finally caught up with his brother a brawl broke out, with Ross ending up unconscious.

Pete thought he'd killed his betrayer and buried his body in the woods, and we all believed Ross had breathed his last. Even Michael Parr thanked fans on Twitter for their support, saying "it's goodbye from me".

A petition was launched to bring the character back, but just three weeks later it was revealed the whole thing had been a sneaky ruse, when Ross opened his eyes in a hospital bed.

7. Getting even with Pete

No-one does revenge quite like Ross. After initially pretending he was totes fine with the fact that his brother had left him to rot under a pile of leaves, Ross let his real feelings be known. After kidnapping his brother, Ross beat Pete unconscious. His victim awoke to find himself hanging head first over a viaduct by a winch.

Ruthless Ross enjoyed every second of his power trip, gently lowering the winch as his scared sibling pleaded for his life. He even went as far as demanding Pete sent a suicide text to their dad James. In the end, Ross couldn't go through with killing his own flesh and blood. What did we say about him being a softie?

8. Shooting Robert Sugden

Pretty much every single Emmerdale storyline in 2015 centred around a certain RB, and the 'Who Shot Robert Sugden?' plot was no exception. Ruthless Rob was public enemy number one in the village at the time he took a bullet, so there was no shortage of suspects for carrying out the crime. The writers came up with a genius way of revealing whodunit, which broke with their usual style of storytelling – a rewind episode.

During the gripping time warp, which aired on the soap's 43rd anniversary, the audience witnessed Ross enter into a murderous pact with Andy Sugden, as the boys agreed to kill each other's brothers. Ross kept true to his word, by pulling the trigger on Robert (although he lived to tell the tale), but Andy wussed out on his promise to do away with Pete.

9. Who pushed Emma?

Pete wasn't the only member of the Barton clan who Ross seriously considered doing away with. Having always experienced a turbulent relationship with mum Emma following her abandonment when he was a kid, Ross was the prime suspect in the frame for her murder. As well as a general disdain of his mother, there was also the added motive that Em had murdered his father and been responsible for the death of Ross's little brother Finn. Plus, Emma had tried to drown Ross when he was a child.

But despite dragging Emma to the viaduct she fell to her death from, and telling her to jump, Ross wasn't actually the person who pushed her. After the real murderer Moira had scarpered, Ross revealed to Pete that he had returned to the scene to save Emma, only to discover her sprawled dead below the bridge.

10. The horrific acid attack

The writers took Ross on his darkest journey to date in February of this year when he fell victim to a savage acid attack. It was a case of wrong place, wrong time for the mechanic when he agreed to help Debbie get even with her ex Joe Tate. Debs had arranged for drug dealer Simon McManus to beat up Joe, but in a case of mistaken identity, it was Ross who was targeted with a corrosive substance when Simon decided to use acid.

After suffering life-changing injuries, Ross began to rapidly spiral, becoming crippled by an addiction to prescription painkillers to block out the agony over his disfigurement.

Emmerdale airs Ross's final scenes on Friday (November 2) at 7pm on ITV.

Ross Barton says goodbye in Emmerdale

Expert: Ah, the “Sorrows of Empire.” Its lies these days so easily exposed. Yet, too often ignored. Saturday morning, April 14, 2018, the world released a collective sigh of relief after a week of anguished hand-wringing at the too-likely possibility of our own utter annihilation. US President, Donald J. Trump, a man of massive ego, reportedly small hands and apparently insignificant phallus, had failed, despite direct attempts by the Big Bad Wolf of American military madness, to blow down the retaining walls protecting human conscience… and reality. Or fatally damage Syria. Having witnessed this failed attempt to blow the world to pieces via the winds of war, we, the remaining civilized world, were instead treated to worldwide giddy, heel kicking and side-splitting laughter at the ultimate tepid US military inspired results. Yes, despite a week of US hegemonic huffing and puffing — and tweeting — many of us were amazed to actually wake up once again. This past Saturday, we all discovered that the latest triumvirate of self-serving, sadistic and socially-challenged world leaders (US/UK/ FR)  had suffered a storied defeat…one caused by two little pigs — guinea pigs really — and one black cat. Thanks to these three demur little mammals, who spoke not a word of English, but were likely – if the UK media folly is to believed-  secretly taking Russian language lessons, these three accurately summed up current Western foreign policy: “You can fool some of the people some of the time. You can fool some of the people all of the time, but… You can’t fool all of the people all the time.” This sage advice, of course, was not within the full understanding of Messrs. Trump and Macron, nor Ms. May who instead preferred to believe in their own weakening hearts and minds the much older capitalist mantra: Never give a sucker an even break! Having seen their laundry list of previous cunning political connivinces go almost unchallenged by their own populace in routine acquiescence, their lies became ever bolder. And inexplicable. This lulled them into a false sense of overconfidence that believed they could provide all manner of utter nonsense as long as it was alleged to be attached to the never passe “Soviet Union” better known as “Russia.” So, it was natural for these three myopic world leaders to assume their latest plot would pass easily within the shadows of their own dark souls. Instead, theirs was a comedy show that suddenly snapped the world to the realization: We no longer believe a fucking thing you say! This ultimate and fundamental realization was spawned weeks before this past Saturday’s illegal attack. In the quaint UK town of Salisbury,  former double agent and recent MI-6 participant, Sergei Skripal, had relocated to go out to pasture, retire and die. Little did he know that his long-term goals would turn out to be somewhat premature. Well, almost. UK Prime Minister, Theresa May was, and is, a desperate woman. So desperate is she — after her own recent David Cameron moment of parliamentary disaster — to retain power within the posh digs at No. 10 that she quite willingly proved correct all criticisms of her Conservative Party: She joined forces with the Irish Nazi party, better known as the DUP… and gave them a 1 Billion British pound mortita for their trouble. That’s desperate! Strangely, Ms. May could not understand why, after all this, she was still reviled by all the UK parliamentary parties and most of the British people. Having done her best to achieve Neville Chamberlain style unpopularity, she needed a distraction… no matter how amateurish the production. For she had long ago concluded, as have so many foreign leaders, that her public was just as easily controlled as watering a potted plant in the window of her number 10. Over arrogant, Ms. May sent in her Keystone Cops — MI-6 — to do what had worked so often before in times of political need. So easy. Indeed! As the plot unfurled on a park bench in Salisbury on March 4, 2018, the press dutifully expanded daily on the one proffered set of lies. Nice and smoothly… Russia did it! Who, but a treasonous Brit would possibly argue with such a complete lack of prima face evidence? Yes, all was going so well for Ms. May and her conspirators until their hired media minions made their first fatal and undeniable mistake. Enter the true hero of our story, our savior, Nash Van Drake. Cat. Black cat. Likely Russian agent and the only live witness; one who knew all too well the other fundamental slogan of political cover-up…”Dead men ( and cats) tell no tales”. The two Guinea pigs were already toast, which, of course, fit the UK narrative that the Russian sounding Novichok — quickly renamed that week from its original name, “Foliant” —  had ultimately (after the Government story changed multiple times) originated in… or on… or around the Skripal house, hence the two little Guinea pigs’ timely demise and convenient incineration. However… You see, Van Drake was a black cat: Persian of Arabic descent. In the UK being black and/or Arab is increasingly great cause for caution. After years of living safely curled up on the living room settee watching the daily BBC propaganda reel or evenings on former spy Mr. Skripal’s lap forever watching James Bond reruns on ITV — over and over and over again — when the strange alien-looking men in yellow suits, plastic masks, and oxygen tanks picked the lock on the Skripal’s front door, astutely Van Drake took to these years of imposed TV training and knew just what to do. Run! The poor caged Guinea pigs didn’t have a chance. Once upon a time, the secret services of the dominant world had at least the courtesy to respect the world’s intelligence quotient even when discounting their country’s own. In that era, evil political intentions did attempt to carefully cover the footprints leading to their too many false flag operations. Professional surreptitious skullduggery, however, has now given way to plots of conquest that are really ham-fisted affronts to simple mental logic followed by a near total media cover-up in favor of same. This has so far been all too effective, and with the similarly agendized publishers in the US and UK having control of over 90% of these “media choices,” a media black-out of inconvenient facts has been the de rigueur method of cover-up. This new methodology of political deceit relies on one single, all-important premise, one that evil minds similar to those of Trump, Macron, and May believe to their soulless core: We control the story and …You… are too stupid and willfully ignorant to find the truth. While quantitatively and historically accurate in their belief to date, unfortunately for MI-6 and their resulting worldwide television theatrical performance, Brits are also animal lovers. One might well, then, imagine the look on the faces of the conspirators when, after already disposing of the evidence of the two conveniently dead rodents and thus certifying their claim that the Skripals were poisoned at their home, they were suddenly shocked by the very first serious media question, one for which the co-conspirators collectively had only one confused, nervous, sideways looking answer… “What Cat?!” Like Jack Ruby seeking out Oswald, the cops were off again to fix this glaring omission. Poor Van Drake, still hiding in the dark of his own Palestine under the couch, and now revealed, never had a chance. As the yellow suited masked men dragged him kicking and screaming off to certain chemical weapons death at Briton’s own self-proclaimed Auschwitz, the secret chemical weapons facility known instead as Porton Down, the poor kitty had no way of knowing that his cremation would make him the hero of this hilarious and almost fatal — for us — tragedy. For it was Van Drake, his being alive and next dead, that snapped the world to the proper realization that: one: the highly lethal military grade Novichok/Foliant in question was approximately as deadly as Van Drake’s own flea collar, and better: Ms. May, the Cons, and the vaunted UK press were completely lying out their ass! Finally, it seemed the counter-intelligence services of first world hegemony had actually managed to underestimate the true intelligence of the average Briton and, apparently, the military intelligence services of most of the other nations on earth. It’s one thing to shoot Palestinians for target practice, inflict the world’s biggest cholera epidemic on Yemen while bombing its hospitals and doctors, or terrorize a few hundred thousand Rohingya into abandoning their homes for the pleasure of capitalist pursuits: all these so easily ignored by a deliberate media sedated, flag-wrapped public. But, this time they had gone too far. They had killed… a cat! What a fuck-up! Fast forward to the land — the epicenter — of nationwide mind fabrication. Just as strangely as barely-prime minister, Ms. May, the new White House presidential marionette in orange, despite having been repeatedly for a year bitch slapped into submission by his adversaries on all sides of the aisle, was still having problems with those pesky Democrats and their Justice Department, their attorneys, and this past week, their cops. Worse, to a President who craves personal approval like an American male does Opioids, his popularity ratings were down. What to do? To a man with a golf ball sized IQ, there was only one thing he could do. A choice that would make him popular from the boardrooms of Halliburton to the gun-toting, Jack Daniels-swilling taverns, and barrooms of Tennessee. From the dark shadowy dampness of the Israeli Knesset to the gold lined palaces of the newly anointed Saudi prophet, MBS in Riyadh: A nice “new, shiny, smart” war. Perfect!! But how to start a new war. That chemical weapons false flag rubbish had failed, one, two three… six times in the past. Oh, and that Salisbury debacle — where the Skripal’s were doing just fine all of a sudden — now makes seven failures. But, to hell with a smart guy like Einstein, why not give it another shot. Besides Trump had a specially prepared US media tool awaiting: Those ever handy and timely White Helmets; the ones who always seem better with a video camera than at performing first aid. Fresh off being handed a shiny 2017 Oscar for their star acting role in their own Hollywood propaganda film of justification, surely they could finally get it right this time? Thus we, the civilized world, were treated to another round of intelligence insulting western inspired theatrics. And it might have worked. Almost did. Because, hey, these are the guys who wore the White helmets. White ones. Who could argue with that? Needing a coalition of the willing for his new war, the logical first choice for Trump was to invite his equally flawed counterpart in London to jump into bed with him.  Apparently the salacious allegations of the Steele dossier — which the UK press failed to show as connected to Skripal senior — may be true since Trump showed a continued passion for the kinky in next going French, and inviting another similarly descending political hack to his menage a trois of war. Macron, whose popularity echoes his two concubines in being approximately that of Napoleon bringing the troops home from Russia, was down to his skivvies in seconds. Reduced to attacking farmers and peaceful protesters in his stated effort to bring all things capitalist to bare in traditionally socialist France, he had obviously failed to yet master the emasculation of his own media. Thus the irony of all this, applied to French Napoleonic law, was that in the eyes of his countrymen Macron was at the very least, “guilty until proven innocent.” And, good luck with that. So, when Washington called, followed by a short follow-up ring from Tel Aviv, Macron also knew just what to do. And, off to war it was. For two weeks these three frolicked in a pre-war orgy of selling the exact same pack of lies to their own nation’s public via their own controlled media; lies that continued to include the connection to the Soviet Union Russia via the Skripal chemical weapons attack in Salisbury. Of course, this Syrian attack in Ghouta was real this time. Right? However, in this mad three-nation ramp-up to new war many persons of rational mind and a penchant for self-preservation, persons that included world leaders still in possession of their facilities, continued to wonder about the massive logical and factual problems with the Skripal incident and “the cat.” This was shown in the universal lack of willingness of other countries to enter the fray. When Angela Merkel doesn’t willingly join an American rush to war, you know there’s a big problem. However, many leaders did save face with Israel and half-heartedly attested to the full package of lies being true by abstaining in their UN votes to stop the pending attack. So, our three continued to cavort in pre-war bliss despite the constant interruptions made by John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, scratching and whining at the bedroom door while trying to get in. But, their orgy did continue, the glee of upcoming death and destruction being spawned from their own loins an aphrodisiac far too strong to be controlled. Sadly, despite the inquiries and outrage of the few sharp minds — and cat lovers — worldwide, these three Israeli concubines did finally manage to achieve coitus this past Saturday, April 14, 2018, with the Donald next indiscriminately ejaculating cruise missiles all over Syria. These missiles, having an unusually high mortality rate of their own (71/103), did almost nothing to Syria or Syrians who that new morning danced in streets afterward. But this charade did allow an embattled US president to temporarily forget his troubles, put his golf balls back in his sack and feel much better after having finally relieved himself. Not quite done, it was time for the final act: for the three to prove that, when it comes to congressional or parliamentary oversight for more war: 1) it is far easier to beg forgiveness, than to ask permission and 2) these same legislative checks on war powers are in reality as effective a deterrent as that of a Las Vegas boxing commissioner. A few more calls from Tel Aviv, soon to be Jerusalem, and the little fish in the US congress and the two parliaments were again nicely ketteled into the proper way of retroactive thinking and approving…more war. Well, the moral of this ages-old recurring fable of overconfident governmental, covert operations should be obvious. It should not take one dead cat and a couple of Guineas to shock us all to the proper realization: When it comes to the Governments of our world…it’s all a pack of lies. So, we the intelligent world salute you Nash Van Drake and your tiny brethren. May you all rest in peace in the service of us all. May we together pray: pray that the world quickly awakens to the terminal realizations of poor Van Drake, reluctant hero, as the steel doors of the gas chamber called Porton Down creaked open before him and he swallowed forever his last breath… Not a one of us has nine lives, and our governments are pretty sure that we are all… dumber than a god damn cat! http://clubof.info/

Music for New Times

Sometimes marginal music communities do RnD for the culture industry as some commentators have suggested. The Belville Three in Detroit develop techno and within a decade or so capital has invested in global superclub brands and star DJs.

A musical ecology like that one uses ideas from a number of sources. Besides content ideas there is the technique of DJing, the large sound systems, the crowd management including H&S, security etc. All these different areas combine to make substantial investments deliver a return.

There can be other examples of musical ecologies .It has been suggested that the modern mind suffers in various ways because modern labour markets make people feel worthless. Big pharma develops pills to make them feel better and it is also suggested that they rig the diagnostic categories to favour their solutions in effect creating a market with peoples’ unease. An English Prof at Stanford suggests that the this system leaves something out concerning the content of peoples’ lives. Art moves into the vacant space - she cites various artists who illustrate her theory.

As far as music is concerned, we might well have an ecology where alienated and marginalised young people use music as some sort of emotional tool to provide content missing from their work and non-work lives. You can get this far and then take an optimistic or pessimistic turn. Pessimism says it is the system maintaining and reproducing itself. Optimism starts with the thought that art promises something better and indeed may do more.

Different social ecologies will use music in different ways.

If the avant garde does RnD for the culture industry is it only servicing a cycle of fashion? In the Fashion System Barthes provides a model of fashion change. In Anglosaxon terms his model is that fashion doesn’t concern attributes but the only the values of attributes. Take skirts - these entities have attributes including length. The values of that attribute include short, long, medium, ankle length etc. Barthes model says that modifying these values in a systematic way is a method of signalling social prestige.

This Barthes Fashion Semiotics makes no claims to progress. There are simply  ever lasting modifications , early adopters, the mass, late adopters etc. Pop music can easily be fitted into this ecology. There is always something hot and new - just read the current NME.

Andy Powell producer of the first two Kate Bush albums was at the same college as Ian MacDonald who amongst other things wrote Revolution in the Head about the Beatles, a biography of Shostakovitch and articles about Laura Nyro and Nick Drake.

When Andrew Keeling was writing his book about the Court of the Crimson King he asked me for some research given I knew one of the musicians just before the album was made, a different Ian Macdonald. To avoid confusion lets call the Rev in Head one Imac.

I considered the long first chapter of Rev in Hd and decided I disagreed with a key element. Imac argues that the Beatles career is more than part of a fashion system - the classic pop model. There was genuine progress. I think many people would agree that there was serious  progress from album to album. To parody Imac he saw that the Beatles lost the plot when they plugged into the US avant garde particularly in the Apple phase.

From this distance it is easy to frame a counter - in terms of pop development along the series of Beatles albums.Then King Crimson from 1968 picked up many different sets of ideas including some of the avant garde and put them into albums.  King Crimson were obviously harnessing tremendous momentum as Ian Macdonald went from thirty quid gigs at the Middle Earth to global touring in about a year.

Apple is a complicated case. A coincidence made me think of this recently. James Taylor was the first artist signed to Apple and I found a wonderful half hour interview where he reflects on the whole experience. By chance in the nest day or so I went to a concert recording of the BBC Singers performing works of another Apple artist - John Taverner. I think a proper appraisal would have to consider a lot of fantastic content including Taylor and Taverner plus not least the film of the Beatles playing live on the roof.

The Beatles lost their manager and were looking for an alternative way and so Apple was formed. There were also increasing personal tensions. I think it is over simple to see Yoko as bringing the poison of the  US avant garde into the Beatles development and stopping it with modern foolishness. She was I agree a major carrier and developer of the avant garde ideas of John Cage and his circle.

Imac’s career is covered in Nick Kent’s autobiography. He and Imac formed part of a new journalistic era at NME which in simple terms was based on more serious writing and longer articles. This era was replaced by punk and especially T Parsons and J Birchell who in the spirit of punk despatched their elder brothers pretty quick and took over. There is a good film on Amazon Prime which looks at the whole development of serious journalism about rock in the 1970s - the NME tale is part of this.

The narrative  of progress gets much harder to map in the 70s, but arguably in doesn't disappear - considering Steeley Dan John Martyn Television  Little Feat Hall n Oates D Bowie etc  - but it certainly becomes more complicated.

Punk has to be fitted in obviously. I think this has to include France and Situationist ideas,  and both UK and the complex US story from News York Dolls and Patti Smith to Lydia Lunch and No Wave. Not for this article. Nor a consideration of Simon Reynolds’ detailed account of UK post punk in his big yellow book. Then there is the recent Goldsmiths reappraisal of post-punk as well. I think onemight get a narrative of progress up to the mid 80s and the financialisation of culture. Perhaps the Smiths are the last gasp of pop progress?

The pop fashion cycle based on Barthes semiotics doesn't go away - because there are always new generations of teenagers seeking to be different and they want new values for existing attributes.

When the Stones brought out their much praised blues album I went back and looked at their career. There is an interesting multi episode film biography on Amazon Prime. Their great period is seen as the Mick Taylor era from the Hyde Park Concert where KC broke through to his still mysterious decision to leave in the mid 70s. (Incidentally there is a narrative of progress to weave around the succession of Clapton Beck Page Green and Taylor. Compare live Beck with live Clapton these days.)

Ronnie Wood gave the Stones a new foundation on which to work and some decent albums resulted but this was followed by Jagger-Richards warfare in the 1980s which impacted the group output as solo projects became priorities..

It seems to me that financialisation took over the Sones music ecology. They became a cash generating global brand monetising a great back catalogue and using the Situationist idea of the grand spectacle. In the 80s and 90s Stones touring represented a new level of spectacle - lots of new technologies had to come together and large financial investment was need. It was genuinely new, there was a lot of risk and it must have worked. When B Wyman left they brought in Miles’bass player Darryl Jones - must have cheered Charlie up!.  Jones was in Miles comeback band in the early 80s - he went on to be in Sting’s band before joining the Stones.

The upshot of the Jagger-Richards wars was that they realised they had a fantastic creative base. Some insight into this is available through Godard’s film of them making Sympathy for the Devil just before B Jones left.Many of us have been in bands which have trashed their core creativity but various people mistakenly thinking we were the magic and we could go it alone. The Stones nearly fell down the same hole.  Did this keep progress on track?