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thatswhatsushesaid · 1 year

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hard/soft head canons for jgy pls (or if u have one for jgy already in ur inbox, gimme ur hcs about sms!)

I do not have one for jgy yet!! but bless u because I love talking about him for literally any reason

I have a few hard headcanons for jgy! which, to be clear, is not the same as saying that this is what I believe the canon itself indisputably says; it is just that this is the interpretation of the text that I find most supportable and enjoyable, and which I like to work with in fic and RP. anyway, I'll list them out and try to be succinct:

I don't think jgy killed jrs, for all the reasons that I've written about already, as well as for the many reasons outlined in other people's thoughtful meta. I think he thought about it and contemplated how he might do it even before the assassination attempt, but I don't think he did it.

jgy didn't hate mo xuanyu and wasn't afraid of jgs replacing him with mxy specifically. he is also not the source of the rumours regarding mo xuanyu sexually harassing him, because no matter which way you dice it, it straight up does not make sense for a man who carefully calculates his risks before he takes them to intentionally spread a rumour implicating him in an incestuous entanglement with his half-brother while he is literally married to his own half-sister. so when I write jgy, I tend to write him as having fond and affectionate feelings for mxy initially (which I believe is supported by the text, given how mxy worshipped him), that quickly become uncomfortable, and ultimately result in him wanting mxy to be as far away from him as possible.

connected to the above, jgy is never intentionally impolite or unkind to mxy, even when arranging to have him removed from jinlintai.

jgy's feelings for lxc are deep and genuine and rooted in mutual respect and understanding! I think this much is pretty much indisputably canon whether you decide to interpret the relationship romantically or not. but this is a headcanon meme, and my headcanon is absolutely that they have intense romantic feelings for each other, and that they definitely do want to fuck about it. more often than not my headcanon is that they don't have a sexual relationship in the novel for many reasons (most of which are tied to the tenuousness of jgy's position and the care he takes with his reputation). in cql, jgy's position is still similarly tenuous and he works hard to preserve his reputation, but good fucking god, the chemistry between lhk and zzj when they're on-screen together is off the charts. like I have a harder time coming up with justifications for why they haven't fucked. because damn, lads, really? right in front of chifeng-zun's salad? anyway--

jgy isn't a sadist and doesn't enjoy causing pain (have I written about this recently, I for sure think I have written about this recently), and I wish I saw less of this in the search results when I go hunting for xiyao fic on AO3. that said I do think that he enjoys having the power to either cause pain to those who have wronged him, or withhold it as a gesture of mercy, or to intercede to protect someone he cares about from experiencing pain.

man I definitely have more hard headcanons for jgy but at this point I feel like I'm veering into arguing for what I believe is canon vs what is just my personal preference when interpreting the character. ok soft headcanons, aka stuff I still feel pretty strongly about and feel is supported by the text, but won't necessarily throw me out of enjoying a fic or w/e if I encounter a story that approaches things differently:

I don't think jgy hated nmj at the time of his death and believe his tears while witnessing nmj's qi deviation were a genuine expression of both horror and grief, but I do think he hated nmj, in the moment, when nmj punted him down the steps of jinlintai and denigrated him and his mother publicly in front of his entire sect. and frankly, I think just about anyone else would too.

related to the above, I don't think jgy expected nmj's death to be as horrific as it was, and I think nhs being wounded by nmj in the process remains a real regret that follows him for the rest of his life.

tangentially related (again!): let jgy be a sugar daddy please, let this man spoil rotten the people in his life that he loves and cares for! give me modern AUs where jgy slowly woos lxc through the power of transforming him into a clotheshorse, but a clotheshorse only for the high quality clothes that jgy gifts to him. let jgy win him over with very soft cashmere and silk and cufflinks and antique musical scores that his newly acquired and hard won wealth has allowed him to enjoy. let lxc be super hot for it.

my read on jgy in bed is that, when he feels secure enough to explore sexual intimacy, he is an extremely generous lover who derives half of his pleasure from ensuring that his partner (who, lbr, is going to be lxc 9/10 for me) has all of their needs met before he contemplates his own.

okay I must stop!! or I never will!!!

#asks answered #ask meme #mdzs meta #jin guangyao #he did crimes??? good for him 😌

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andrewlovely · 1 month

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Sam Bankman-Fried

[I don’t know if my thoughts about Sam Bankman-Fried ultimately amount to an exercise in casuistry or just to an honest consideration of the other side. But writing about this case led me to some interesting reflections on the nature of justice in modern human society, as well as to questions about the hidden, perhaps even taboo realities of our financial system.] I've been reading about the case of Sam Bankman-Fried and I've yet to see any definitive proof that he was guilty of willful intent to defraud. Everything about his profile confirms eccentricity, naïveté, ignorance of how the world actually works, negligence, worldly incompetence, and recklessness, yes. But even recklessness does not necessarily indicate an intent to defraud; it may merely be indicative of a person oblivious to the realities of the world and maybe even of a person almost unfathomably foolish - but a criminal actor with evil intent this makes not.

There have been many criminal actors with clear and willful intent to defraud, but they mostly took advantage of poor and middle class working people, so naturally they never saw the inside of a prison cell, and they probably never will. Sam Bankman-Fried didn’t swindle a bunch of poor people out of their hard-earned money; if he had, he wouldn’t be in prison right now. No, he just played a bit too fast and loose with a bunch of rich people’s money. Now, he didn’t intend to lose their money, and he certainly didn’t intend to steal their money, but he effectively did. He lost a bunch of rich people’s money. And that’s why he’s in jail right now. That was his real crime – let’s be real here.

But how could someone so sharp and capable also be so reckless and foolish at the same time? Surely he must have known what he was doing.

In the 2023 film Oppenheimer, Matt Damon's character General Leslie Groves often wonders how J. Robert Oppenheimer, someone so obviously brilliant otherwise, could be so oblivious to so many aspects of human society and everyday interpersonal relations. Casey Affleck and Robert Downey Jr's characters detect or suspect something more sinister in Oppenheimer, but they're actually just projecting these malignancies onto him from within their own corrupt and sadistic worldviews.

People wonder, "How could he be so stupid?" Whether it's Oppenheimer giving an interview to Boris Pash and openly divulging information that could make him the target of a DoD investigation, or Sam Bankman-Fried giving open interviews soon after the collapse of FTX and repeatedly incriminating himself with idiotic statements, people might say, "What a stupid Russian mole!" or "What a dumb financial criminal!" respectively, but could they actually be assuming, or worse, projecting criminal intent onto these individuals when there is none? After all, a person who continues to make self-incriminating statements to both the press and to the authorities, is this the mark of a criminal mastermind, or the sign of a hopeless fool? The US government wants us to believe that Sam Bankman-Fried is both, but I find this conflation to be incongruous.

There are two kinds of people who do not remain silent when they clearly probably should: foolish criminals and the even more foolish innocent. The US government has tried to portray this guy as some kind of an evil genius, some kind of a nefarious puppet master, but I just don't see it. I don't see a person who was operating in bad faith. I just see a person who was probably insulated from the everyday realities of the world his whole life, and who was almost unfathomably oblivious to those realities and their dangers. Clearly he ran his companies in an almost unbelievably idiotic and reckless fashion, but willful intent to defraud this makes not. Criminal negligence also carries penalties, but far less severe. I also find it interesting that Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas the day before he was scheduled to testify before the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services. A cynical person might conclude that they didn’t want him to testify. Well, why not? After all, it would save them the trouble of having to extradite him from the Bahamas, and unless he planned on pleading the fifth for every committee member’s question, his testimony could only work against him in a court of law.

I suppose an even more cynical person might conclude that the authorities did not want to give Bankman-Fried any opportunity to rebut or clarify any of his replacement’s (FTX bankruptcy CEO John J. Ray III) scathing indictments and accusations of him before the American public.

A still even more cynical person might notice the benefit that Bankman-Fried’s arrest in the Bahamas and subsequent extradition to the US would have for the prosecution’s case, as it might help to create the appearance of absconding and evading justice on the part of Bankman-Fried, while arresting him in the capital after his testimony to the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services would not… reinforce the desirable narrative. In fact, it might foil it completely.

Yes, a skeptical person might find it curious that Sam Bankman-Fried was not allowed to testify before the American public in an official capacity which would allow him to give detailed and extensive answers to every question, as well as to offer rebuttals and/or clarifications to any one of his replacement’s criticisms. Were they worried he might “muddy the waters” or “corrupt our minds”? So low is their estimation of the American public’s critical faculties and powers of discernment, that he could not be allowed to testify?

A discerning person might stop to consider that if the prosecution felt that Sam Bankman-Fried’s testimony before the American public might hurt their case, then maybe they didn’t have such a strong case to begin with! Or maybe his full testimony would have been detrimental to other interests, such as the law firms which oversaw FTX’s bankruptcy and raked in exorbitant fees, especially considering that Bankman-Fried would have been able to respond to his replacement’s criticisms on the spot, as well as answer any questions from the members of the House Committee – a House Committee whose opening statements did not indicate an honest intention to seek out the truth, whatever it may be, but rather projected a need to reinforce a specific narrative right from the get go – as if the truth had already been decided. FTX customers would have undoubtedly been interested to hear about the astronomical fees the law firms overseeing its bankruptcy were charging – drawing from funds which could have been used to recoup investors’ losses. Again, there was a narrative here that did not want to be disturbed.

I find the prosecution’s manipulation of appearances to be most cynical of all, what with the needless extradition of Bankman-Fried from the Bahamas (which no doubt must have cost taxpayers a good chunk of money) and the effective barring of Sam Bankman-Fried from testifying before the House Committee on Financial Services. And in cases like these, I always wonder, if the prosecution’s charge is truly so noble, so steadfast and true, then why resort to such scummy tactics? Why go to such great lengths to make things appear a certain way, when the truth is supposedly so self-evident?

A wise man once said, "In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity."

I don't know if Sam Bankman-Fried's conviction is a testament to his actual guilt so much as to the tendency of conventional people to see guile and malice in the hearts and minds of those they cannot understand, or simply do not like.

It's understandable that when so much money is lost, people want to feel like "We found the one responsible! We found our man!" But the fact remains: if you're hit by a car in which the driver wasn't paying attention, you can't charge the driver with vehicular homicide in the first degree. You can charge him with involuntary manslaughter, yes, which can also carry heavy penalties, but you can't charge him with vehicular homicide in the first degree just because there's a public outcry for swift punishment and severe penalties. That's not justice.

And ultimately, going beyond even the legal implications, a car with an absent driver is almost the same as a car with no driver. Then who is to blame? People struggle to accept this ultimate reality, which is why it is not reflected or considered in our legal system.

The reality that at times there is no one driving our car, and likewise that we are often surrounded by driverless cars, this makes us profoundly uncomfortable. Yet this is probably closer to the truth; the idea that every single car always has its corresponding and accountable driver is simply more practical and appealing to us. It allows for a functioning society but it isn't necessarily rooted in truth.

We collectively accept this conventional conception not because it's true, but because it allows us to function. This is a nuance that I think most people ignore, or are not even aware of. Hence why so many people are possessed by an almost sadomasochistic zeal for crime and punishment, thinking that this is justice.

No, justice is much more delicate than that - a higher virtue which requires careful thought and honest deliberation. True justice should never be a means by which the collective can seek out its scapegoats and its sacrificial lambs, in order to project all its own sin and iniquity onto the blank slates of the gifted airheads, and exorcise its demons through the slaughter, torture, and bloodshed of those same empty vessels. The wicked are often so eager to get to Hades they kill every psychopomp on the way there! This is not justice; this is the blood ritual of a death cult.

True justice is restorative and rooted in community and goodwill; in other words, it is a thing foreign to the modern human being of the polis, and native still only to the numerous indigenous tribes scattered across the globe. It has become a thing foreign to us and twisted, perverted. Sadomasochistic. A poor substitute indeed... an unconvincing imitation.

But anyway, I digress...

In terms of the Sam Bankman-Fried case, which I must emphasize do not necessarily relate to the more general reflections on the nature of justice I just expounded on, the questions I'm left with are:

a) How much of this was the result of what some might call "hostile takeover" tactics on behalf of Binance, and would FTX have collapsed if not for all its customers trying to withdraw all their funds at once?

and

b) How many companies/institutions have had similar holes in their accounting that were never exposed because all their customers/constituents never tried to withdraw all their funds at once?

#thoughts #Sam Bankman-Fried #Andrew Lovely #Andrew Eugene Lovely #questions #considerations

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oyasuminto · 3 years

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So say someone were to want to start writing for Lawrence and Ren. Would you perhaps be willing to share a small characterization sheet? Like a little guide on keeping them in character?

I can certainly try!!

Lawrence

I kind of use myself as inspiration. I've mentioned this previously, but I used to be a reclusive, severely anxious and depressed, and pretty pessimistic and cynical. When writing Lawrence, I tend to look back at that part of my life, harness the emotions I felt, and project them onto Lawrence.

It’s important to remember some of Lawrence’s main traits; he’s anxious, paranoid, unused to human interaction, hateful of society, impulsive, unfocused, and views himself as a burden to others.

Lawrence’s mind is warped from years of rot and opioid abuse. His addiction is not just a way of numbing the pain of being ‘alive’, but is also likely a way of regaining control over his life. He chooses when he visits the river. He chooses to damage his body.

This is also why he hates other people trying to dote on him, Lawrence views it as him giving up control to someone else, which terrifies him.

His necrophilic tendencies aren’t just because he finds corpses attractive, it’s also because corpses can’t fight back or judge him. They’re compliant, empty husks that Lawrence can project whatever he wants onto.

He doesn’t really intend to hurt people, but he can’t handle being reminded of his sins. Sure, Lawrence might agree that he should be locked up, but he’ll still get upset if his most recent victim calls him a monster. In fact, it could send him into a rage.

Lawrence is filled with an ever-present urge to dismantle things. Including—or perhaps especially—things he likes. This can be anything from his plants, animals, or even you.

According to Gato, Lawrence has the ability to pull people out of The River, though in doing so he gains some vague control over them. I interpret this as Lawrence being able to influence their thoughts, replacing anything that was washed away by The River with his own desires.

His fixation on death infects every part of his existence. He feels most at ease around things that are rotting and dying. It’s why autumn is his favorite season; he’s surrounded by the scent of rotting pumpkins, dead leaves crunch beneath his feet, so many things are dying and no-one can stop that.

Lawrence is permanently surrounded by an aura of decay. This causes perishables to go off long before their printed expiration date, and kills small carrion eaters who are driven crazy by the presence of death and rot. It also contributes to his complicated relationship with animals; they can sense something is wrong with him, and they react accordingly.

He values predictability. Lawrence likes knowing what’s going to happen, throwing sudden surprises in his face can result in him panicking and lashing out.

Interestingly, he does have a creative side, though that creative side involves dismembering corpses and cadavers and arranging them around some kind of strange forest shrine.

Finally, Lawrence is prone to intense mood swings. One moment he’s calm, shy, and struggles to even greet cashiers. The next, he’s cold, eyes full of malice, filled with sadistic desires, and violent.

Ren

Our favorite fox boy comes in three distinct stages; punching bag, normal man, and Strade Jr. He’s easily influenced by his surroundings and the people around him. especially those he cares about.

While under Strade’s control, Ren is timid, jumpy, spineless, and eager to please. The way he talks about Strade shows that he’s also prone to developing Stockholm syndrome.

After the events of the first game, Ren’s grown a backbone, and is more assertive and confident, though still a little withdrawn. Despite being more well-adjusted, life with Strade has undeniably warped his thought patterns.

He may even start acting like Strade if his captive reminds him of his old self; cowardly, a cry-baby, pathetic. The main difference is that’s he’s more patient and analytical than his former captor.

More than anything, Ren just wants to be loved and accepted, even if that means doing some awful, cruel things. He’s not necessarily sadistic though, at least, he won’t hurt someone for the sake of hurting them. If you’re obedient, kind, and don’t fight him too much, he’ll treat you very well. At least, as well as he can treat you in that situation.

Ren is affectionate and has a rather high sex drive. He wants to spoil his lover; buy them gifts, new clothes, merchandise, pretty much anything they want. In return, he wants to dress them in cute, skimpy cosplay.

Now, while Ren may be more well-adjusted than Strade or Lawrence, that doesn’t mean he’s not a little fucked in the head. Strade really did a number on his mental state and understanding of healthy relationships.

He doesn’t really see anything wrong with chaining someone to a way, or carving a love-heart into their chest, or perhaps even his own name. In his eyes, he’s doing it out of love, it’s not like he’s doing this to hurt them!

This also works in the reverse; Ren could easily get himself into an abusive relationship, so long as his abuser sprinkles kind words, gifts, and affection in-between beatings. They’re not as bad as Strade, they must actually love him, don’t they?

His toxic tendencies get particularly bad in his Strade persona. He’ll scar you up, make you watch snuff videos, and feed you raw chicken hearts, all without a hint of true malice. Hell, if you push him away, he’ll see it as you being ungrateful. He put all this effort into looking after you, showing you love, and you’re rejecting all of it.

I feel like all the time he’s spent watching anime and burying himself in fiction has given him a borderline-nice guy outlook on relationships. He’s not full m’lady, I showed you basic human kindness, you are now legally obligated to suck me off, but it can get pretty bad.

#Boyfriend to Death #Lawrence Oleander #Ren Hana #Character Analysis

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dreamsmp-au-ideas · 3 years

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Hogwart Gremlins Au- If we think about the three lives thing still being a thing- Voldemort or Crouch Jr. or someone else killing Purpled or Ranboo and everyone just- having a mild breakdown until they gasp awake, healed but with a slight magic scar. This would lead to quiet explanations with the teachers and lots of worried glances at Tubbo's scars because,, maybe he didn't live through those after all-

The three life system doesn’t apply here but man does it intrigue me. It intrigues me a lot and so I’m writing some things about it.

So in an alternate reality where the three life system does apply, we most likely have it that Purpled is the first one to figure out. Most likely in the Tournament mess of everything.

Purpled’s just been exhausted of all of the info he has and is refusing to say more to Crouch Jr. and that’s when Purpled’s outlived his usefulness and just gets a painful death or such. Either just gets magically sliced, or Avada Kedavad.

Now we got two options, one is that his body is thrown into the chest again as a way to hide it and also a bit of sadistic liberties and he wakes up in there, the other and more angsty option is that Purpled wakes up on the floor again after seemingly being killed.

(Don’t worry he lives guys)

Anyways after Purpled is found again it’s eventually told that the Three Life System applies to them but Hardcore applies to everyone else. It sort of gives them some relaxation for Purpled and Ranboo but also some panic because someone is going to go and blab their mouths if they ever see them come back from the dead again.

First time it’s public though goes and gives a lot of people some bad implications that Tubbo did actually die through the fireworks and oh dear. That’s bad. Oh no.

#dream smp #dream smp au #harry potter #gremlins in hogwarts au #ranboo #purpled #tubbo #ask #shortstack757575

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nicklloydnow · 3 years

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"Sadism now defines nearly every cultural, social and political experience in the United States. It is expressed in the greed of an oligarchic elite that has seen its wealth increase during the pandemic by $1.1 trillion while the country has suffered the sharpest rise in its poverty rate in more than 50 years. It is expressed in extra-judicial killings by police in cities such as Minneapolis. It is expressed in our complicity in Israel’s wholesale killing of unarmed Palestinians, the humanitarian crisis engendered by the war in Yemen and our reigns of terror in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. It is expressed in the torture in our prisons and black sites. It is expressed in the separation of children from their undocumented parents, where they are held as if they were dogs in a kennel.

The historian Johan Huizinga, writing about the twilight of the middle ages, argued that as things fall apart sadism is embraced as a way to cope with the hostility of an indifferent universe. No longer bound to a common purpose, a ruptured society retreats into the cult of the self. It celebrates, as do corporations on Wall Street or mass culture through reality television shows, the classic traits of psychopaths: superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance; a need for constant stimulation; a penchant for lying, deception and manipulation; and the incapacity for remorse or guilt. Get what you can, as fast as you can, before someone else gets it. This is the state of nature, the “war of all against all,” Thomas Hobbes saw as the consequence of social collapse, a world in which life becomes “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” And this sadism, as Friedrich Nietzsche understood, fuels a perverted, sadistic pleasure.

The only way out for most Americans is to serve, as Biden does, the sadistic machine. The impoverishment of the working class has conditioned tens of millions of Americans to accept being recruited into the service of the militarized police that function as lethal armies of internal occupation; a military that carries out reigns of terror in foreign occupations; intelligence agencies that torture in global black sites; the government’s vast network of spying on the citizenry; the theft of personal information by credit agencies and digital media; the largest prison system in the world; an immigration service that hunts down people who have never committed a crime and separates children from their parents to pack them in warehouses; a court system that condemns the poor to decades of incarceration, often for nonviolent crimes, and denies them a jury trial; companies that carry out the dirty work of evictions, shutting off utilities, including water, collecting usurious debts that force people into bankruptcy and denying health services to those that cannot pay; banks and payday lenders that burden the destitute with predatory, high-interest loans; and a financial system designed to keep most of the country locked in a crippling debt peonage as the wealth of the oligarchic elite swells to levels unseen in American history.

(...)

We know what this sadism looks like. It looks like Derek Chauvin nonchalantly choking to death George Floyd as his police colleagues watch impassively. It looks like Andrew Brown Jr. shot five times by police in North Carolina, including once in the back of the head. It looks like Abner Louima, who had a broomstick pushed up his rectum by police in a bathroom at the 70th Precinct station house in Brooklyn, requiring three major operations to repair the internal injuries. It looks like Navy Seal Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher randomly shooting to death unarmed civilians and using a hunting knife to repeatedly stab to death an injured, sedated 17-year-old Iraqi prisoner and then photographing himself with the corpse. It looks like Iraqi civilians, few of whom had anything to do with the insurgency, naked, bound, beaten and sexually humiliated and raped, and at times murdered, by army guards and private contractors in Abu Ghraib. Prisoners in Abu Ghraib were routinely dragged across the prison floor by a rope tied to their penises and chemical lights were used to sodomize them or snapped open so the phosphoric liquid could be poured over their naked bodies. It looks like women who are tortured, beaten, degraded and sexually violated, often by numerous men, in porn films, who are then discarded after a few weeks or months with severe trauma, along with sexually transmitted diseases and vaginal and anal tears that must be repaired surgically.

Sadistic societies condemn segments of the population – in America these are poor Blacks, Muslims, the undocumented, the LGBTQ community, radical anti-capitalists, intellectuals – as human refuse. They are viewed as social contaminants. Laws, institutions and bureaucratic structures are built in sadistic societies that function, in the words of Max Weber, as an “inanimate machine.” The machine forces most people into the mass, but it allows some willing to do its dirty work to rise above the multitude. Those that carry out the sadism on behalf of the power elite fear being pushed back into the mass. For this reason, they energetically carry out the degradation, cruelty and sadism the machine demands. The more they insult, persecute, torture, humiliate and kill, the more they seem to magically widen the divide between themselves and their victims. This is why Black police and corrections officers can be as cruel, and sometimes crueler, than their white counterparts.

The sadism eradicates, at least momentarily, the sadist’s feelings of worthlessness, vulnerability and susceptibility to pain and death. It imparts pleasure. I was beaten by Saudi military police and later by Saddam Hussein’s secret police when I was taken prisoner after the first Gulf War. The goons carrying out my beatings clearly enjoyed them. Israel’s abuse of the Palestinians, the assaults of Muslims and girls and women in India and the denigration of Muslims in the countries we occupy are part of a global breakdown that extends beyond the United States. Wilhelm Reich in “The Mass Psychology of Fascism” and Klaus Theweleit in “Male Fantasies” argue that sadism, along with a grotesque hyper-masculinity, rather than any coherent belief system, is the core of fascism, although communist regimes in China and the Soviet Union could be as murderous and sadistic as their fascist counterparts.

Jean Amery, who was in the Belgian resistance in World War II and who was captured and tortured by the Gestapo in 1943, defines sadism “as the radical negation of the other, the simultaneous denial of both the social principle and the reality principle. In the sadist’s world, torture, destruction, and death are triumphant: and such a world clearly has no hope of survival. On the contrary, he desires to transcend the world, to achieve total sovereignty by negating fellow human beings – which he sees as representing a particular kind of ‘hell.’”

Amery’s point is important. A sadistic society is about collective self-destruction. It is the apotheosis of a society deformed by overwhelming experiences of loss, alienation and stasis. The only way left to affirm yourself in failed societies is to destroy. Johan Huizinga in his book “Waning of the Middle Ages” noted that that the dissolution of medieval society provoked “the violent tenor of life.” Today, this “violent tenor of life” drives people to carry out police murders, evictions of families, court-ordered bankruptcies, the denial of medical care to the sick, suicide bombings and mass shootings. As the sociologist Emil Durkheim understood, those who seek the annihilation of others are driven by desires for self-annihilation. Sadism imparts the rush and pleasure, often with heavy sexual overtones, which lures us towards what Sigmund Freud called the death instinct, the instinct to destroy all forms of life, including our own. When enveloped by a death-saturated world death, ironically, is embraced as the cure.”

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buzzdixonwriter · 3 years

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Ellison’s Law

Even for the early 1960s, Burke’s Law was a silly gimmick show.

The gimmick? Millionaire Amos Burke, despite inheriting fabulous wealth, always wanted to be a detective so he joined the LAPD and worked his way up to captain of the homicide bureau.

Basically Batman without the trauma or costume.

And like Batman of a few years later, an exercise in camp.

The show was rigidly formulaic, but for practical reasons. It relied heavily on stunt casting celebrities as suspects or witnesses and as such it had to be flexible enough to handle rewrites and re-castings in the middle of production.

The typical episode began with someone found murdered or shown getting killed in some unusual manner, cut to Amos Burke flirting with a lady only to be called away by his police duties. Cue the opening title as Burke and his driver hurry out of his relatively modest Beverly Hills mansion to his Rolls-Royce (actually producer Aaron Spelling’s car which he rented back to the production) as a sultry female voice incants: “It’s Burke’s Law” then after the first commercial break Burke arrives at the scene of the crime and finds clues pointing him to four or five suspects.

Said suspects are the celebrity guest stars, recruited either to give them some manic scenery chewing time or -- more rarely -- an intense dramatic scene.

After three more commercial breaks, Burke intones one of his “laws” (“Burke’s law: Never ask a question where you don’t already know the answer.”), pulls a rabbit out of his hat / solution out of his butt, and fingers that episode’s duly appointed murderer.

The problem with the series as a whole is that it could never quite decide on what tone it wanted to take and stick with it consistently. The British series The Avengers found the perfect balance of tongue-in-cheek / derring-do but Burke’s Law bounced all over the spectrum, frequently in the same episode.

So why bring up this mediocre TV show at all?

Two words: Harlan Ellison

. . .

I’ve posted many times before on Harlan’s career and the impact of his writing and friendship on me.

He was in the mid 1960s at his zenith as a TV writer, and while his writing career as a whole encompasses so much more than that, his brief run as one of the meteors streaking across the Hollywood sky only lasted 4 years.

Oh, he kept writing for TV after that, but the old zing was gone. He supplied stories for other series, created and fought hard to keep The Starlost on track but eventually had to walk away from that heartbreak, adapted several of his own short stories to a Twilight Zone revival, as well as numerous development deals that went nowhere (including two great ideas for The Name Of The Game, another Gene Barry series, that would have fit perfectly into that show’s oeuvre).

If you find his second book of TV criticism, The Other Glass Teat, check out his first draft for “The Whimper Of Whipped Dogs” episode of The Young Lawyers (not to be confused with his short story of the same title).

It’s one of the most powerful / gut wrenching things you’ll ever read…

…but by the time the studio and the network got through with it, the final product was virtually unrecognizable…and unwatchable.

Such was Harlan’s fate after 1967 in Clown Town (as he referred to it).

But from 1963 to 1967, he was golden.

. . .

Harlan’s rocky personal history went through many highs and lows before coming to Hollywood in 1962.

Harlan’s first breakthrough as a writer was with his series of stories and essays on juvenile crime in New York in the early and mid-1950s..

Drafted in 1957. following his discharge, he settled in Chicago with his second wife and her son, editing Rogue magazine, a Playboy imitator.

Feeling his personal life becoming untenable, he called in favors from a friend, drove out to California with his soon-to-be ex-wife and stepson (aware the marriage was over, she also wanted to relocate away from Chicago), made his first sale to TV (his short story “No Fourth Commandment” to the TV show Route 66), then briefly found a sweet spot with Burke’s Law, writing four teleplays for their first season.

Burke’s Law is a good crucible for examination because of its silly, gimmicky nature and rigid format requirements.

These scripts represent a pivotal point in Harlan’s writing career, but more importantly, they mark the only sustained run he enjoyed on a non-anthology show, and as such make a good benchmark in comparing his growth as a writer and how his unique perspective played out in in relation to the constraints of episodic television.

While a couple of Harlan’s better science fiction / fantasy stories were written before 1963, the meteoric rise of his career in those genres began with his classic short story “’Repent, Harlequin!’ Said The Ticktockman” in 1965, followed by a host of other groundbreaking short stories and novellas, and his original anthologies Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions in which he recruited other science fiction and fantasy writers -- many of them already well established pros -- to follow the path he blazed in the genre.

His experience on Burke’s Law occurs squarely between what he once was to what he was becoming, and as such is worthy of attention.

SPOILER: There are no great hidden gems here.

There’s a lot of amusing writing, and a few flashes of the emotional intensity Harlan could provide, but by and large this is journeyman level stuff: Better than most, but not the best.

. . .

”Who Killed Alex Debbs?” was his first script for the series, and he pitched it to producer Aaron Spelling at a cattle call after a screening of the show’s pilot episode.

Harlan jump started the pitch process by improvising an idea off the cuff at the end of the screening, and Spelling took him to his office to hear how Harlan planned to resolve it, then hired him on the spot.

It’s unclear if Harlan was actually a staff writer on the series or simply hung out at the studio a lot, but he used his skills as a quick study to start working his way up the food chain.

His first script fulfills all the requirements of a Burke’s Law episode and shows off two of Harlan’s main strengths: An ability to hone in on intense emotion and a keen eye for the culture around him (in this case, very specifically Hollywood of the early 1960s).

On the downside, logic gaps render this story more implausible than most -- and as noted, Burke’s Law as a series wasn’t famous for its plausibility.

A flaw of almost all Burke’s Law episodes is that the victim is typically found dead under mysterious / bizarre circumstances, and the impression we get of them is constructed entirely through the words of suspects and witnesses.

It’s not an unworkable approach, but not the best suited for episodic television.

In this instance. victim Alex Drebbs is a Hugh Hefner-like men’s magazine publisher and monarch of a mini-empire of key clubs ala the Playboy Clubs of the era. Harlan captures that milieu well but here’s where the logic gaps hit hard: There’s no way a Hefner-like figure would be alone long enough for someone to kill him without being noticed, there’s no way his disappearance wouldn’t be immediately noticed by employees needing his attention, and it sure as hell wouldn’t have happened in a deserted club on the afternoon of its big opening.

On the plus side, there are some great character scenes including Arlene Dahl as a bitter ex-investor in Debbs empire now reduced to licking saving stamps to keep her decay mansion in repair, Burgess Meredith as a men’s magazine cartoonist who is nothing but a bundle of neurotic twitches and tics, and finally Sammy Davis Jr as Cordwainer Bird, the humor editor for Debbs’ magazine.

This was at the Robin Williams stage of Davis career, when all you had to do was point a camera in his direction and let him go. Harlan supplied the corny gags but Davis launched them over the top with his antics, and while he brings the proceedings to a complete disruptive halt, his brief scene is the most entertaining in the entire series. (Harlan later used Cordwainer Bird as his WGA pseudonym when he wanted to indicate displeasure at what had been done to his scripts.)

By his own account, Harlan had less luck with Diana Dors -- “the British Marilyn Monroe” -- and treated her condescendingly during the shoot. (By comparison, William Goldman in his memoir Adventures In The Screen Trade shows a much more sanguine / roll-with-the-punches attitude, and that might explain part of the reason his screenwriting trajectory was far different than Harlan’s.)

All in all, an uneven example of both the series and Harlan’s abilities.

. . .

”Who Killed Purity Mather?” was Harlan’s second script for the series and one of the few that played with the rigid format of the series insofar as the victim is seen alive for a few moments before being killed in a rather sadistic and spectacular manner (splashed with acid then trapped in a burning house, and the high angle shot used to show her demise must have been incredibly risky -- and thus costly -- to film).

It also drops a very subtle clue that I’ll reveal in the footnote.*

This is Harlan going so far over the top he emerges on the other side. Plotwise it features more logic gaps than his first script, but the whole thing is so silly it’s pointless to complain about it.

Purity Mather is a professional witch (!) who speeds up the investigation into her own demise by mailing Amos Burke a recording saying she’ll be killed along with a list of five possible suspects (that she doesn’t mention them by name in the recording reflects the show’s desire for standalone scenes, enabling them to recast and rewrite plotlines more easily; the scene where Burke reads the names to his team was doubtlessly shot after the guest cast was locked in).

Burke & co. start shaking down suspects, including Telly Savalas as Fakir George O'Shea, a Muslim holy man / cosmetics chemist (!!); Charlie Ruggles as I. A. Bugg, an eccentric elderly millionaire who likes to chase -- but not catch -- prostitutes around his apartment while dressed in lederhosen(!!!); Wally Cox as Count Carlo Szipesti, vampire for hire (!!!!); and Gloria Swanson as Venus Hekate Walsh a fright wig bedecked self-proclaimed goddess of free love (!!!!!).

The episode might as well have had a laugh track. It’s amusing with several daft touches only Harlan could provide, but the daftness comes from his take on Hollywood culture of the time.

I’d go so far as to say elements of Cox and Swanson’s characters were based on real life people living in and around Hollywood at the time, in particular some science fiction fans Harlan had come in contact with.

It’s a romp but a disappointing one. The logic gaps are too big in this one (case in point, if you’re the captain of the homicide bureau and you come home to see a masked figure climbing out of your second story window in broad daylight, you don’t simply shrug and let them run off) and the ending is one of those annoying ah-yes-now-that-you-caught-me-I-will-admit-everything-even-stuff-you-don’t-know cappers that Joe Ruby and Ken Spears would have rejected for Scooby Doo.

In short, a script whose parts are better than the whole.

. . .

”Who Killed Andy Zygmunt?" is another slight story that pays off with an insight into Hollywood pop culture of the era. The victim is “a pop artist” (no, he’s not; he an assemblage sculptor) impaled on his own artwork.

He’s also revealed to be an extortionist who acquires embarrassing evidence that he affixes to his assemblages then blackmails his victims into buying the art to keep their secrets safe.

Once again Burke is conveniently handed a list of suspects, in this case the people who bought the last five pieces of art from the exhibit.

This is one of the few times the series had more than one suspect in the same scene as there’s a big gathering in Burke’s office midway through the story (it also includes Michael Fox, a semi-regular on the series playing the coroner, so it represents a pretty sizeable filming day for the show). The suspects include Macdonald Carey as Burl Mason, the star of a popular TV detective show (Harlan gives his scenes what we would now call a meta-fiction touch by playing off Barry’s fictional TV detective dealing with a fictional fictional TV detective); Jack Weston as Silly McCree, a kid’s show host who destroys his career with an on air anti-child rant; Ann Blyth as Deirdre DeMara, a rival “pop artist” who creates her art by spraying women with paint and having them roll around on giant canvases (a gimmick later used in the bizarre 1966 Ann-Margaret comedy The Swinger); Aldo Ray as Mister Harold, former pro-wrestler turned poodle groomer; and Tab Hunter in a surprisingly well done scene as a sky diving playboy.

Hunter’s scene in particular shows Harlan getting his hyperbole under control, much more laconic and evocative than other characters he wrote for the series. As mentioned above, Burke’s Law occurs just on the cusp of Harlan’s huge success in print; he’s beginning to harness the lessons learned to maximum effect. (He would have some setbacks, too, in his screenwriting career, and to be honest part of that can be attributed to his failure to consistently apply the lessons learned, part of it can be attributed to his reputation preceding him, and part of it can be attributed to just bad luck.)

The motives this time are fairly edgy for a 1963 TV series, and combined with the slices of Los Angeles life Harlan provides give a fair example of the cultural zeitgeist of the era.

. . .

”Who Killed ½ Of Glory Lee?” can be explained as Benjamin Glory, half owner of Glory Lee Fashions, with Gisele MacKenzie as the other half, Keekee Lee.

After breaking the budget with his spectacular demise of Purity Mather, Harlan staged this murder as an inexpensive off camera elevator plunge.

This time the plot is a wee bit more plausible, with control of a profitable business being the apparent motive for the murder.

But Harlan loaded up this episode with a more powerful emotional punch than most of his others, and while the dénouement may feel a bit farfetched, it certainly rings true emotionally.

He certainly gave Nina Foch and Anne Helm plenty to work with regarding their characters’ complicated mother / daughter relationship, yet at the same time found room for a playful scene in which Buster Keaton pantomimes his answers to Burke’s questions.

Yet at the same time one senses an impatience behind the keyboard. The opening scene has a squad of female elevator operators (yes, once upon a time there needed to be somebody in the elevator to push the buttons for you) discussing pop culture references of a generation before -- Harlan’s generation.

And while the key emotional conflicts are played out well, several of the other scenes feel rather perfunctory…yet at the same time this is probably the most cohesive whole of any Burke’s Law script, whether written by Harlan or not.

It’s as if after a brief but profitable run on a network series, Harlan realized he’d absorbed as much of the practical end of the business as he could and his next moves should be into broader, edgier territory.

* SPOILER: Purity Mather is the murderer; she connives a career nudist (!!!!!!) to participate in a magic ceremony then disfigures and kills her, leaving evidence that she hopes will convince the police the body is hers. The subtle clue Harlan drops is the victim, wearing a long black negligee, complaining about how she doesn’t like the feel of the clothes. A nice touch, but undercut by Purity then going to the nudist camp her victim operates and waiting in the buff by the front gate for the police to show up and question the career nudist -- whom Purity has mentioned as a suspect in her faked murder. While it works insofar as Purity doesn’t try to pass herself off to anyone else at the camp as the career nudist, it doesn’t scan that she would know when the police would come to investigate or if they could be easily convinced at the gate and not come in to question other patrons.

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snicketstrange · 4 years

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The possibility of influence of destiny on ASOUE and TBL

This possibility is raised by Lemony in TPP, which preceded the publication of TBL. Note this excerpt:

TPP chpater 1: "destiny" is a word that tends to cause arguments among the people who use it. Some people think destiny is something you cannot escape, such as death ... Other people think destiny is a time in one's life, such as the moment one becomes an adult ... And still other people think that destiny is an invisible force, like gravity, or a fear of paper cuts, that guides everyone throughout their lives, whether they are embarking on a mysterious errand, doing a treacherous deed, or deciding that a book they have begun reading is too dreadful to finish. In the opera La Forza del Destino, various characters argue, fall in love, get married in secret, run away to monasteries, go to war, announce that they will get revenge, engage in duels, and drop a gun on the floor, where it goes off accidentally and kills someone in an incident eerily similar to one that happens in chapter nine of this very book, and all the while they are trying to figure out if any of these troubles are the result of destiny. They wonder and wonder at all the perils in their lives, and when the final curtain is brought down even the audience cannot be sure what all these unfortunate events may mean. just as I wondered, on that fateful evening long ago, as I hurried out of the opera house before a certain woman could spot me-if it was the force of destiny that was guiding their story, or something even more mysterious, even more dangerous , and even more unfortunate. "

The duality in TBL exists to what extent you believe that Fate (or "divine" interference) is a force present in the life of Lemony, Beatrice I and Beatrice Jr. At first I strongly dismissed this idea. But from the moment I thought about the purposeful duality in TBL, I realized that this is a valid idea. To understand the concept of "divine" interference in a literary work, I will quote an episode of Looney Tunes that I watched a long time ago called Duck Amuck. Wikipedia describes this episode as follows: "It stars Daffy Duck, who is tormented by a seemingly sadistic, unseen animator, who constantly changes Daffy's locations, clothing, voice, physical appearance and even shape, much to Daffy's aggravation and rage. Pandemonium reigns throughout the cartoon as Daffy attempts to steer the action back to some kind of normality, only for the animator to either ignore him or, more frequently, to over-literally interpret his increasingly frantic demands. In the end, the tormenting animator is revealed to be Bugs Bunny. " Well, this episode illustrates a simple truth: the author of the work is like a god for the characters, he has the power to do whatever he wants with them, even if it breaks all the laws of logic and coherence that exist in our universe. The influence of Destiny that Lemony claims to feel, may actually be the real influence that exists in the fact that Daniel Handler (from our universe) has full power over what would happen to each of his characters, as well as what they would think or write.

So it is possible that in TBL Daniel Handler wanted to further explore this concept. Now, thinking about it, look at the dualities that arise when thinking about the poem My Silence Knot and the fact that some words used by Lemony in letters to Beatrice I were almost repeated in letters from Beatrice to Lemony.

My Silence Knot poem: In this poem, written by Beatrice I, there are things that seem prophetic. For example: "A piece of mail fails to arrive one day." In addition, "My silence knot is tied up in my hair, as if to keep my love out of my eyes". At the time the poem was published in Lemony's universe, Beatrice and Lemony were still dating and planning to get married.

If you believe in the force of fate influencing events in Lemony and Beatrice I's life, you may believe that Lemony and Beatrice's future was already written, and that somehow "god" made Beatrice write about it many years before of her death. After that, in the 200-page letter she remembered the poem she had written, and realized that there was a prediction for the future and a code there. And so she asked Lemony about what was written, according to letter LS to BB # 5. This possibility seems to be reinforced by a very evident factor in TBL: the anagrams of the book formed by the detachable letters. These anagrams come from letters and photos of objects collected by Lemony. It was not Lemony who organized these letters to form words and phrases throughout his life. If we think as if we were a character in Lemony's universe, we would have to recognize that either these letters were chosen by chance and by coincidence they form anagrams related to the life of Lemony and the Baudelaires or that there was in fact a mysterious force that was influencing life of them, trying to send an enigmatic message to them. We know that this "force" is called Daniel Handler in our universe and that it is real.

But if you don't believe in the force of fate influencing the events of the ASOUE universe so intensely, you will believe that Beatrice wrote those words using her ability to deduce, that she was talking in a few sentences about some past event, and that she may still have tried to send a secret message to Lemony for middle of that poem.

The phrase "the curtain falls just as the knot unties, The silence broken by the one who dies", can be understood that Beatrice planned to fake her own death after the end of a play. In this case, the play played by Beatrice would be her own marriage to Bertrand. This would explain the sentence at the beginning of the poem: "A pem about a play about a story of two people who ... written by the person in the story (in the play in the poem) who ..." Despite the final words of each line being impossible to see, it is very likely that they were "die" and "dies", due to the end of the poem. And in this case, when Beatrice practically asked Lemony to remember this poem and the fact that the poem had a secret message while asking if he would continue to love her no matter what happened or how much time passed, you will believe that Beatrice planned to fake her own death and stay with Lemony after the curtain fell, that is, after the wedding ended.

If you believe in divine interference in ASOUE, you will believe that Beatrice Jr used the expression My Silence Knot and that she became a Baticeer as well as Beatrice I because "god" wanted it that way. Of course, it is possible that the Baudelaires talked about this poem with Beatrice Jr.

But you will agree with me that if Beatrice I talked to them about it, then they decided to talk to Beatrice Jr about it and she decided to write to her uncle using exactly the name of that play as a type of code would be a strong divine influence. Similarly, you believe that most of Beatrice Jr's letters to Lemony have expressions very similar to Lemony's letters to Beatrice I because of divine interference. (In fact, there are so many similarities, that some may even believe that Beatrice Jr is some kind of reincarnation of Beatrice I).

But, if you don't believe that, and you believe that Beatrice I survived for many years after the fire in her house, you will believe that some of Beatrice's letters to Lemony are actually from Beatrice I to Lemony. in this case she used the name "My Silence Knot" and expressions similar to those that Lemony had used to identify herself in the letter and try to touch his heart.

#asoue #asoue theory #asoue theories #the beatrice letters #the penultimate peril #Lemony Snicket

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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Hamilton and 10 Other Ways to Watch the American Revolution

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Hamilton will debut on Disney+ on July 3rd, the start of a long holiday weekend. The Walt Disney Company paid good money for the Broadway phenomenon, a reported $75 million for the rights to the film, which features performances by the original cast (we wrote a primer on the cast and where they are now).

If you’re healthily avoiding crowds and already had your fill of fireworks, here are 10 more movies and TV shows that explore the American Revolution from different angles.

1776 (1972)

Making the Founding Fathers sing was truly revolutionary when Sherman Edwards’s musical debuted on Broadway in 1969. The plot traced how the Second Continental Congress decided on independence; there are lots of fun character moments but really no other story. After the show won the Tony for Best Musical, Hollywood mogul Jack Warner hired most of the cast and director Peter Hunt to make a movie. Then Warner cut a big production number (now restored) to please President Nixon. This is John Adams’s view of history, so he’s the hero and John Dickinson the antagonist—but Dickinson still comes off better than eminent jurist James Wilson. Recognizing 1776 as an inspiration, Lin-Manuel Miranda gave the song “Sit Down, John!” a shout-out in Hamilton.

More of This: For rollicking fun in the 1700s, everybody should see Tom Jones, the 1963 film by Tony Richardson that made Albert Finney a global star.

April Morning (1988) and The Crossing (1999)

Howard Fast, proud leftist author of Spartacus, published April Morning as a novel about the Battle of Lexington and Concord and The Crossing as a nonfiction account of the Battle of Trenton. Now we recognize both as historical fiction. Fast’s robust stories were adapted into television movies with stellar leads: Tommy Lee Jones played a Lexington farmer guiding his teen-aged son in 1988, and Jeff Daniels portrayed Gen. George Washington trying to get across the Delaware in 2000.

More of This: In 1984 and 1986, CBS dramatized the life of George Washington over 10 hours. Barry Bostwick played George and Patty Duke Astin played Martha, so they got the height differential right.

The Book of Negroes

At the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783, British authorities evacuated thousands of Loyalists of African descent to Canada. The names of free black refugees were recorded in a document labeled “The Book of Negroes,” and Canadian novelist Lawrence Hill borrowed that title. (In the U.S., his book was retitled Someone Knows My Name.) In 2015 Hill turned his award-winning novel into a six-episode miniseries with writer-director Clement Virgo. This globe-spanning story follows a woman kidnapped in Niger, enslaved in South Carolina, and evacuated to Nova Scotia; she then returns to Africa to help found Sierra Leone. The Book of Negroes thus explores personal and political liberty, war, and nation-building—but not confined to the U.S.

More of This: The 1990 biopic Divided Loyalties profiles Joseph Brant, leader of Britain’s Mohawk allies during the Revolutionary War. Why do we see such side-eye on the American Revolution from Canada? Oh, yeah…

The Devil’s Disciple

It’s always fun to watch Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas work together, enjoying each other’s company and trying to steal scenes. How about adding Laurence Olivier to the mix as real-life British general and playwright John Burgoyne? All in a 1959 adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s first successful play, set in upstate New York during the crucial 1777 campaign. You might think the battle scenes acted out by wooden dolls are the most unrealistic part of this film, but wait till Lancaster blows up a room full of redcoats and stays on his feet. Because he’s Burt Lancaster, dammit!

More of This: To be frank, John Ford’s 1939 adaptation of Drums Along the Mohawk with Claudette Colbert and Henry Fonda is a better Hollywood movie set in upstate New York during the Revolution, but a more conventional one.

John Adams

HBO’s seven-hour miniseries from 2008 remains the gold standard for Revolutionary drama because of the terrific acting by Paul Giamatti as John Adams and Laura Linney as Abigail Adams. The screenplay throws John into the center of events even more than his own autobiography did, and historical shortcuts often shortchange the facts. But the smart, cantankerous, high-minded spirit of the Adamses shines through.

More of This: Back in 1976, PBS covered the same ground in its thirteen-episode series The Adams Chronicles, which continued into the next two generations. Compare and contrast.

Liberty’s Kids

PBS, DIC Entertainment, and a slew of celebrity voices taught Gen. Z about America’s Revolution in this 40-episode animated cartoon. Three years before Avatar: The Last Airbender debuted, this series showed a bunch of teens navigating a world at war. The young heroes managed to go almost everywhere the action was, and also not to age much between 1773 and 1789.

More of This: For another animated take, seek out Disney’s 1953 short “Ben and Me.” To see teens caught up in the start of the Revolution, Disney also offers Johnny Tremain from 1957. Even better, read the novels by Robert Lawson and Esther Forbes.

Mary Silliman’s War

This is undoubtedly the most historically accurate film about life during the Revolutionary War. Mary Silliman was a housewife in Fairfield, Connecticut. Her husband was a militia officer imprisoned by the British, and she pursued his release while managing their farm and evading a Royal Navy attack. Educated and pious, Silliman kept a journal, which Joy Day Buel and Richard Buel, Jr., studied to write The Way of Duty. That biography was the basis of this independent drama from 1994 directed by Stephen Surjik, whose more recent work includes episodes of Daredevil and The Umbrella Academy.

More of This: The 1997 documentary A Midwife’s Tale dramatizes crucial moments in the life of midwife Martha Ballard while focusing on how historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich recreated that life from the bare bones of Ballard’s post-Revolutionary diary.

Revolution

After making the so-very-British Chariots of Fire, very-British Hugh Hudson turned in 1985 to the American War for Independence. And he cast not-at-all-British Al Pacino and Nastassja Kinski as British colonists caught up in the fighting, plus Canadian Donald Sutherland as a sadistic British sergeant. The result was widely derided as an epic mess, but there are some powerful visual sequences. Hudson later made a director’s cut that’s unusual in being 10 minutes shorter than the original version, as well as more coherent.

More of This: The next time Hollywood tried a Revolutionary War epic with a foreign-born director, Roland Emmerich delivered The Patriot, starring Mel Gibson. Such an invincible hero, such cartoonish villains, such whitewashing of the period’s sticky issues—it made Revolution look better.

Sweet Liberty

This 1986 comedy by Alan Alda hinged on the making of a movie about the 1781 Battle of Cowpens. Alda played a local professor and reenactor trying to stand up for historical accuracy. Michele Pfeiffer and Michael Caine were over-the-top actors come to South Carolina to star in the movie within the movie, and Saul Rubinek and Bob Hoskins played the crass filmmakers. It’s a mild satire of Hollywood clashing with genuine folk, but dedicated eighteenth-century reenactors who trained the troops in The Patriot say this film is the most accurate reflection of their experience.

More of This: For real drama behind Revolutionary reenactments, check out Nyier Abdou and Adya Beasley’s 39-minute documentary Being George on YouTube.

Turn: Washington’s Spies

From 2014 to 2017, this 40-episode AMC series told a highly fictionalized account of the Culper Spy Ring that operated on Long Island, slipping information from British-occupied New York to the American command. Later seasons covered Benedict Arnold’s betrayal and carried through to Yorktown. Though most of the main characters were inspired by real people, only Ian Kahn’s portrayal of George Washington felt deeply rooted in history. But adherence to the documentary record wasn’t the point of Turn—melodrama was, and the plot twists and romantic entanglements are many.

More of This: For more eighteenth-century melodrama, check out the 2013 filming of Moonfleet on Amazon. (But beware: The website offers cast info about Fritz Lang’s 1955 version instead.)

The post Hamilton and 10 Other Ways to Watch the American Revolution appeared first on Den of Geek.

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arabellaflynn · 4 years

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Life continues. Kind of.

I have a place to go as of this end of this month, although I still have no idea how the fuck to move my stuff during Plague Times. I don't own that much, but I also don't have a car. I am tempted to not bother moving the mattress, but I am very much afraid that if I don't I will literally never manage to own a comfortable bed ever again. Being someone who discombobulates joints on a regular basis, not being in extra pain every time I wake up is kind of important for my quality of life. I could eventually figure out how to replace the futon I use as a topper, but a futon alone is not enough padding -- I've learned the hard way that I can very much feel the hard floor or the hard pipes of a futon frame through one of those things, and it is Not Good for my sleep.

Massachusetts is, as of this writing, continuing with their re-opening plan. We've hit the phase where the dance studio has been cleared for operation, with appropriate procedures. I'm going back. Like millions of other people, I have a job that I cannot properly do without at least some access to specialized work spaces. In my case, dance is also a substitute for physical therapy that is far more expensive and difficult to access than it ought to be. I've kept myself in reasonably good nick over the past four months, but there's a lot that I just can't do. Two of three housemates work from home, both involving teleconferencing, and I can't get to the bathroom or kitchen without going through the common spaces, so I'm more or less stuck in my bedroom during working hours. There's nothing I can use as a barre in here, and not enough room to spin, kick, or use props without whacking something, and I'm not sadistic enough to do anything rambunctious in the kitchen at 2 am.

Not gonna lie, it's reassuring that one of the instructors who opted to come back is actually an MD moonlighting as a dancer. His day job is with Harvard Public Health. Masks are required, but since we've dropped the standard from "filter virus particles" to "try not to breathe too moistly on your fellow man", I've got some I can deal with. (Moisture-wicking t-shirt fabric! The mask eventually gets damp, but it stays away from both other people and my own personal face, which is what you want.) It's not fun but I also didn't pass out during class, so that's something.

Other people are freaking the fuck out. I want it noted that what MA is doing is exactly the thing I have been advocating for months: Giving people the option (but not the requirement) to go out into the world and interact with others, with harm reduction practices. You cannot keep people locked in their houses forever. You can issue the order, but they're not going to do it. Counting on "never go out" to stop the spread of coronavirus is like counting on "never have sex" to stop the spread of HIV. You can try to apply official consequences, and unofficial shaming, but people are going to sneak out and fuck anyway. They just won't tell you. And, as we are now finding out for unrelated reasons, there do not exist enough police officers in the world to make everyone do as you say.

Everyone is aware of the assholes who think the very concept of a mask is an infringement of their human rights, but I find the pathologically cautious almost as upsetting. There is a loud minority who think nothing should re-open at all anywhere until it's "safe". I'm not sure what they think "safe" means. No chance of catching anything ever? That level of safety never existed. You just don't think about measels and MRSA and TB and tularemia and Lyme disease because those are normal risks that have been around all your life. Leprosy continues to be a thing, you know. I went to college on the edge of the Colorado Plateau, where bubonic plague and hantavirus are endemic. I could argue that if you never got a warning letter about mono or meningitis when you were in the dorms, you didn't have the full residential campus experience. Wash your hands, keep your distance, try not to breathe on other people, and realize that you cannot control every single variable in the entire universe. There is a non-zero chance that Fate will kick you in the head every time you get out of bed in the morning. I am a pedestrian in Greater Boston, ffs, I have accepted my own mortality. You can't be "totally safe". You can be "safe enough".

The Late Show is back from hiatus. Colbert is badly in need of a haircut; he slicked it back on the first Monday but opined that the look was a little too "Don Jr" for him, and vowed to come on camera without hairspray after that. Judging from the headbanging a couple nights later, he meant it. He did the first few home tapings in a suit (although, as he demonstrated to camera, no shoes), but then Twitter told him they'd rather see him more casual, so he's been wearing button-ups with the sleeves rolled to the elbow. Gray has started to come in at his temples. I'm sure he could fix that at home if he really wanted to, but he's opted to point it out on camera instead.

He's even more contemptuous of 45 than he was when they were still taping in the theater, which I was not sure was physically possible. Our TV comedians are making stirring speeches about working together whilst our actual President babbles nonsense about dishwashers. I want to ask how this happened but I'm pretty sure I know. People who have no good options have been known to choose the bad option that takes the enemy down with them. Although I feel the need to point out that Joe Exotic also ran for POTUS in 2016. We all started quarantine watching Tiger King on Netflix and the Drumpf debacle on CSPAN -- if we had all voted for the other reality TV idiot, we could potentially have 100% juicier sex scandals and 100% less interference with the CDC right now.

I wonder how Colbert is coping with all this. When he first took over the Late Show, he did a bunch of interviews where he talked about the difficulty of finding a balance between being your authentic self on stage, and still being performative enough to read well to the back of the house and keep the show rolling along. If he made great strides in his first year out of character, quarantine production has sent him into freefall in the same direction. I find it disquietingly relevant to my own life. I'm about to embark on a couple of projects that will mean I have to stay physically and mentally camera-ready, or at least ready to be camera-ready, pretty much all the time for a while, but first I have to figure out what I think camera-ready looks like for me, and how much work I'm willing to put into it.

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relishredshoes · 5 years

Photo

Interview given to The Severus Snape and Hermione Granger Shipping Fan Group. (sharing here Admin approved)

https://www.facebook.com/groups/199718373383293/

Hello Aurette and welcome to Behind the Quill, thank-you for letting us get to know you a little better.

I'm deeply honoured to be asked.

A true titan in the world of SS/HG fic, many of our readers will have broken their hearts over your story The Tattered Man.

Okay, let’s jump right in.

What's the story behind your pen name?

Honestly, it was a whim. Long before I thought of writing, I needed a login name to read fanfic. It was a play on Auror. I had no idea it was an actual name.

Which Harry Potter character do you identify with the most?

Hands down, Snape. I know that might sound strange, but he was the one that clicked. My niece introduced me to the books. Being in my 30s at the time, I already had kids of my own, so I didn't identify as one of the students. I loved Harry from the start but he had this uncanny ability to keep being wrong about nearly everything. The character who best expressed adult annoyance with that was Snape. And I do love a good jerk. Snape was a jerk.

Do you have a favourite genre to read?

I'm a sucker for fantasy and science fiction. I hated reading as a child. All there was available when I was a kid was Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys and it was insipid. I glommed on to mythology early but once I'd read all the books in my library on the subject, I gave up reading at all. That was about 4th grade. Children's books in the 70s were total garbage and YA books only had one author: Judy Bloom.

Ironically, my first job was working in a bookstore. It was a college bookstore, so it was all textbooks. I wasn't even a student, so I had no interest in any of them. One semester. A Lit prof assigned Fahrenheit 451. The cover art caught my eye and I read the blurb. Then started reading the book. I finished it in about 5hrs. It blew my mind. I had no idea writing like that existed. And the book was about someone discovering the value of books. It was intellectual Inception waaaaay before that was a thing.

After that, it was like a switch flipped in my head. I sucked up books air. I was never without a book or two. Or three...

Do you have a favourite "classic" novel?

Obviously Fahrenheit 451. I'm going to go ahead and say Les Miserables as well. I was in my 30s when I finally read it and sobbed like a baby at the ending. The care and tenderness Hugo showed when portraying these disposable lives were so unique for that age. Sadly, even today. A lot of our culture is wrapped around the belief that only the wealthy have value and beauty is a pathway to wealth. The poor and ugly are a constant plague to be shunned or dealt with, not humans with crushed dreams that deserve to be valued in their own right. Look at how often fanfic recreatesSnape as handsome or Hermione as gorgeous. Those are always the least interesting stories. (hops off soapbox)

At what age did you start writing?

Whatever age I was when I wrote Safe House. Probably 40ish? That terrible little fanfic is literally the first thing I ever wrote beyond shopping lists and emails. It's an ugly child, but my first, so I love its pointy head. I intentionally leave it up so new writers can see my learning curve. No one starts out good. Read my stories in reverse chronological order and you'll see they get a little worse each time. That's how much I grew as I learned the craft.

How did you get into writing fanfiction?

Reading tons of it. I was at a total loss after the book Deathly Hallows came out and it was all over. Reading it had become an event in my house. My husband and I would snatch the book out of each other's hands "You've had it long enough. My turn." And then there were no more...

I couldn't even tell you how I found fanfic, but it kept me sane. I keyed in on SS/HG because at the time there was a noticeable difference in the talent level in that ship. I must have read SS/HG fanfic for a solid 2 yrs before I took a leap and wrote my own. I was inspired by the amazing stories, but also by the crappy ones. "Heck, I could do better" became its own form of allowance. So I had a small 'what if' and just went for it. Of course, it was crap, everyone's first is. But taking the leap and writing it was a huge thing for me to have done.

What's the best theme you've ever come across in a fic? Is it a theme represented in your own works?

I'm a sucker for a story where characters overcome emotional adversity, both external and internal. If you squint. You'll see that theme repeated throughout my fics.

What fandoms are you involved in other than Harry Potter?

None. Nothing else ever grabbed me as a sandbox I wanted to play in before or after HP.

If you could make one change to canon, what would it be? Do you have a favourite piece of fanon?

Gosh, I don't think I would change a thing about JK Rowling's work. Things I would change would only be me forcing her story to fit my preferred ideal. However, if you think about it, her world, the good and the bad, challenged all of us to churn out 100,000+ what ifs. Some out of anger. Heh.

As for fav piece of fanon, probably that Malfoy jr was Snape's godson. He's totally not, but whoever started that created a great layering of the dynamic between them that you can share in so many tones.

Do you listen to music when you write or do you prefer quiet?

I was a stay-at-home mom when I was writing most of my fanfics, so I wrote in a chaotic and very noisy environment. I didn't listen to music when I wrote, but music was often the inspiration. When I would get stuck in writing, I would leave it and go listen to music that was emotionally similar to where I wanted the story to be while I thrashed out plot points. Colossus by Afro Celt Sound System is amazing for plotting a prelude to a battle.

What are your favourite fanfictions of all time?

Gosh, there are so many. Sadly, many of the authors who first inspired me are gone and pulled their fics off the web, like my fanfic bestie Dressagegrrrl. I would have to call out Pet Project by Caeria as the one I found most inspiring. Anything by ApolloniaV is pretty high up there in my book. There are dozens I'm forgetting. There was one called Resurrection Man about Snape accidentally creating a hilarious Zombie apocalypse. Best. Fic. Ever. It disappeared from the web when the author moved on. An incredible loss.

Are you a plotter or a pantser? How does that affect your writing process?

Total pantser. The obvious effect is to drive the story right off a cliff and be unable to salvage it. It's why I vowed to never start posting until I had a rough draft ending. Too many dead stories waiting for an ending that never came. But an outline for me is a killer in disguise. I lose interest in telling the tale because I already did in the outline. The fun part is over. Sitting at a keyboard typing your fingers off, while muttering, "What the hell are these people doing? Who's writing this stuff?!" is an amazing experience.

What is your writing genre of choice?

In fanfic, I ran with every genre there was. Mostly I wanted to see if there was one I couldn't tackle. Most of my o-fic is a hard-to-define mishmash of fantasy and sci-fi. I want to write romance, but it always turns into something complicated and angsty that no longer fits the box.

Which of your stories are you most proud of? Why?

The Tattered Man.

Did it unfold as you imagined it or did you find the unexpected cropped up as you wrote?

It came off exactly as I'd planned in my head. A rare occurrence for me.

What did you learn from writing it?

I could make people cry with my words. Up to that point, I'd made readers laugh and yell and blush, but to get a reader to the point of actually weeping? That's not easy. JK Rowling did it with ease. It was a challenge.

How personal is the story to you, and do you think that made it harder or easier to write?

It's very personal. My father had just died. He'd had cancer, and it might have got him in the end, but what actually killed him was being sent home with a feeding tube and the wrong instructions. None of the homecare nurses realized the mistake until his kidneys shut down. It was devastating. When I next took up writing, I was still hurting so I tried to make others feel what I felt at a death that didn't have to be. It was crazy easy to write. I wrote it all in one day. Based on the reviews, I achieved my goal. It helped me work through my loss. Pretty sure I gave a few readers PTSD. My bad.

What books or authors have influenced you?

My all-time favourite book is Iain M. Banks' Use of Weapons. Definitely a classic among the eighteen people in the United States that read it. The man was a shockingly gifted author and I was devastated when he passed away. His ability to just drop you into the action from the first page and not bother to explain what's going on is sadistic genius.

How do you think that shows in your writing?

It led to my belief that a writer is always better when they assume their readers are smart. Grab their interest and just run. They'll catch on and even pass you with their theories of what's going to happen next. I've no patience with stories that spell out everything in minute detail. They're tedious and insulting. Less really is more. On the other hand, writing over your reader's head is just as annoying. Intentionally using obscure SAT words in your story just makes you a pretentious twat. Unless your character is a pretentious twat and it's part of the dialogue. In that case, twat away. *gigglesnort*

Do people in your everyday life know you write fanfiction?

My family all knew. They were tremendously supportive. Especially Mr. Aurette, my personal Snape. Outside of my family, I was less forthcoming. Mostly because it was so crazy hard to explain. I think it's a lot less weird now, but back then? It was far more stigmatized.

How true for you is the notion of "writing for yourself"?

That's a hard one. For someone who'd never tried to write a story before, it was an amazing journey to realise what I could do. That changed me forever. Having the instant feedback of reviews was intrinsic to that experience. The downside is you can get sucked into writing for reviewers, and they will tell you clearly what they want and expect. That can stifle. I knew no one wanted The Tattered Man to end the way it did. I was pretty terrified of the reaction. But it's what I wanted. It was the entire point. I wrote that ending for myself, but I cowered after posting.

How important is it for you to interact with your audience? How do you engage with them? Just at the point of publishing? Through social media?

I absolutely loved interacting with my readers. I made some real-life friends and some really great fic buddies all over the world. I watched them become friends in reviews too. It was a really great experience. Spam-posting a fic would often take on a festival atmosphere. Unfortunately, when my review count started to really take off, I couldn't cope with the sheer numbers the same way. There weren't enough hours on the day to reply to everyone. Trying to personalize my response to a review grew overwhelming. I actually grew quite depressed over it. Connecting on a more removed, professional level seemed cold. I connected the most on Livejournal when that was a thing. But I had to back off. "Aurette" became far more witty and wonderful than I was in real life. Everyone wanted a piece of her. I couldn't keep up with the bitch. Lol. I faded away from most interactions on social media out of self-preservation. Even tiny fame can make you whacko.

What is the best advice you've received about writing?

There's a few that come to mind.

1-If you want to be a better writer, kill every adverb you come across.

2-Read your words out loud to yourself. If you run out of breath, your reader will run out of patience at that exact point.

3-Dressagegrrrl was the one that finally made me see how playing POV ping pong within a scene was something that marked my writing as an amateur.

4-Stop trying to be clever. Be clever, if you are clever, but don't try. It comes off hamfisted every time. Readers hate that.

5-Never, ever, ever post something you wrote that day. You've left half of it in your head and you can't tell. It's awful.

6-If you're not even a little embarrassed by something you wrote 6 months ago, you're no longer growing as a writer.

What do you do when you hit writer's block?

That's a bit of a sticking point. Stress is a muse-killer. Anything you can do to rid yourself of stress will help. Writer's block is usually the result of something going on elsewhere in your life. Fix that and the creativity will come back.

That said, my life has turned into constant stress with the result being I no longer write at all.

Has anything in real life trickled down into your writing?

Everything has. 'Write what you know' is true for fantasy too. Whether it's heartbreak, or a drunken hookup that turned into love (Hello, Mr. Aurette) or a moment when you were a child and ignored or teased, or maybe the bully, all of it makes it's way into the emotional truth of a scene or character, no matter how outlandish the setting.

Do you have any stories in the works? Can you give us a teaser?

I have a Dropbox full of stories I've run into the wall or had to leave half finished, both fanfic and o-fic. No teasers, because at this point I don't think they will ever see the light of day. Never say never, but the light of hope is dim.

Any words of encouragement to other writers?

Anyone can write and everyone has something to say. Be open to the process. Part of that process involves having a stranger tell you that your shiny new love is really shit. Being defensive only prolongs your shittiness. Embrace criticism. Sometimes, the process of justifying something can actually buttress your choice, so you double down with better results. Other times, you'll see your idea wasn't working after all. Be ruthless in your editing, but don't delete. That scene you cut because it caused everything to go off the rails could be a different story trying to get out. Take that leap, you fail at everything you don't try, so why not try something you really want?

Thanks so much for giving us your time.

It's been my pleasure. Thank you for the opportunity. *waves to my readers*

#fanfiction #fanfic #writing #severus snape #snape #pro snape #pro snape community #snamione #hermione granger

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ameliegardot · 5 years

Note

‘ we aren’t a thing. ’

"You think I don't know that?" She folded her arms and stood her ground. "Seriously, what kind of creep-a-zoid do you think I am, Wheeler? Do you think I just sit back in English class writing 'Mrs. Amélie Wheeler' in the margins of my notebook?"

She was really beginning to get herself worked up. She just thought it would be nice to invite him to the arcade with her since they'd been at each other's throats since the whole drawing fiasco. Did this guy seriously think she was that smitten by him?

News flash, asshole! Not every babe in a bomber jacket wants to fuck you!

Sometimes, people are just considerate of others! Maybe he should try it sometime. Like, was he some sort of sadist? Where the fuck did he get off talking to her like that? Why did he constantly feel the need to act as if she was a step away from kissing his boots to get a date with him. If she was going to bend over backwards for someone, it would be Patrick Swayze or Robert Downey Jr. or something. Hell, it'd be Molly Ringwald! It certainly wouldn't be him.

"Cause guess what, dickhead? I don't!I might be some virgin loser, but I still don't want to be with you. And, wait a minute-- doesn't that reflect badly on you? That not even someone as 'lame' and 'desperate' as you think I am would want to sleep with you? Now that's a whole new level of sad, Zachary."

She had to admit, it felt good to really lay it out there. It felt damn good to be forward and be a real bitch to him! After all, when would she ever have the excuse to be mad again?

Still, the lingering feelings for him that she harbored all the way from middle school tugged at her heart strings. Her heart said to apologize and that he was still nice somewhere inside, but her brain said to kick him where it hurts because he deserved it.

She settled for a disappointing neither.

"Why don't you go jerk off in the bathroom and take a chill pill." She rolled her eyes. "Remind me not to be nice to you next time I try. You aren't worth the effort."

Below the snarky comments and the forced strength to say it, her heart hurt. Was she really so bad to be around? She wasn't even at the bottom of the high school food chain. She was in the dead middle. No real reputation. So what was the deal? She couldn't even talk to him without him trying to give her some weird fucking reminder that they weren't romantcially involved?

In what world would she think they were? That there was even a chance?

#OOF #she didn't hold back

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knb-badboys · 6 years

Note

Haizaki, Seto, Hanamiya, Hara, and Nash play keep-away with their s/o, only for her to tackle him down with a sneak attack to get her item back. If I may also request, after getting it back, she says 'and if you're a good boy, i'll tackle you for a FUN reason.'

Thank you for your request, I had a lot of fun writing this. I decidedto cut Hara out because I was running out of ideas but I hope you like itanyway.

Haizaki Shougo:

- He has the annoying habit to stealthings like your phone or a book you need. You tell him every time how much youdislike his little games but he ignores you pleadings to stop. He enjoys thepounding face you make all the time when you realize he’s too huge and strongand therefore there’s no way for you to get your stuff back except he gives itto you freely.

- He smirks all the time whilestealing your stuff and it makes you furious (what makes him smirk even wider).How dare he annoy you like this? Haizaki plays such games at least twice a weekjust because he likes how you react. He appreciates upsetting you way too muchfor your liking.

- One time you have the brilliantidea to tackle him down in hope you get your stuff back before you lose yournerves but to your surprise he overpowers you within seconds. You don’t evenget the chance to do anything to him because he shows you how much stronger heis.

Seto Kentaro:

- Seto loves sleeping like nothingelse. Dealing with all these stupid people in his school makes him tired.Unfortunately, you decide to interrupt his sleep way too often in his opinion.He understands you want to spend time with him but he needs his relaxing time.To pay you back he steals important things from you. He always puts out hishand just to pull away a second before you can reach it. It makes him smile tosee you jump as high as you can in order to get you item back because in hiseyes that’s just adorable.

- But already after a few minutes hegives the item with an apological smile back. Except for one day where hewanted to push your boundaries a bit. Even afterseveral minutes he doesn’t have the grace to give your stuff back.

With your brilliant mind you createa foolproof plan to get your items back. You plan a well-conceived sneak attackand after you finally throw him on your bed you lose no time and begin totickle him. Your shocked as you notice Seto isn’t a bit ticklish.

Hanamiya Makoto:

- Caused by his sadistic nature, heloves seeing you suffering a little. He knows exactly how much you despise the‘keep-away’ game, that’s exactly the reason he plays it so often with you. Mostof the time you scream at him and complain about his childish behavior butsadly he just can’t stop himself.

- He loves pushing your buttons andhe truly knows which buttons to push in which situation. Hanamiya usually makesyou beg repeatedly until he gives you your stuff back. That’s mostly why hejust loves to hear you beg, when he’s in control of you and your surroundings.In other words you at his mercy.

- Because of this, he takes his time(often hours) until he returns your stuff, so one day you decide you haveenough. You tackle him down with a sneak attack and chain him on the bed withsome handcuffs he presented you once. He’s so shocked, you can clearly see iton his face. Of course he has never expected this. You savor the moment youhave control over your boyfriend for the first time ever and you use the chanceto get your item back and make your way to the living room. Before he’s out ofearshot you say ‘and if you’re a good boy, I’ll tackle you for a FUN reason,’which leaves a furious but confused Hanamiya behind.

Nash Gold Jr.:

- He doesn’t play this game as oftenas the other guys because he knows how much it angers you. But even he can’twithstand all the time. In some moments there is just the perfect opportunityand he has to use this.

- The last time he decided to stealyour smartphone although you needed to read a message sent by your best friendwho just wanted to tell you something interesting. Like always when the two ofyou are alone, you wasted no time before you put him in his place. Unlikelymost of the time, he didn’t give in to keep you happy but provoke you byholding your phone right before your face just to take it away from him again.

- Without a doubt you couldn’t lethim win this easily. Therefore, you ran right towards Nash to tackle him downin an inattentive moment. But someone like him saw right through your littleplan. He dodged you with ease before he pinned you to the nearest wall. “Do youwant to play, love?”

#KNB #knb headcanons #knb x reader #nash gold jr #nash #Hanamiya #hanamiya makoto #haizaki shougo #haizaki #seto kentaro #seto

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fairygirl34-art-writing · 6 years

Text

Deathly Alliance Chapter 2: The Beginning

Tomarry. Death Note AU. Hedwig and Salazar are shinigami. Media-Res. Chapters will be semi-non-chronological order. Chapters will be updated when inspiration hits me.

------

Tom Riddle Jr. doesn't believe in Fate.

But he does believe he was destined for greatness.

It's been his goal since he was a small child to be better than everyone else, to be revered and worshiped. He deserves it after all.

As he stares at the five filled pages of names of criminals he's written and killed, he can't help but feel high off the killings. To think that the innocuous black notebook could have such godlike powers within its pages. Tom wants to covet and and hide it away forever so no being, human or supernatural can ever find it again.

A dark and sadistic laugh escapes his lips. He can now purge the world and filth; shaping it to his liking. At least while the notebook his still in his possession. He has no idea if the book was gifted to him or was dropped by some god, who later might come to take it back, but he is going use as much as possible.

The Death Note.

How fitting this book was for his new persona Lord Voldemort.

The new god of the world.

A knock upon his door startles him from his euphoria.

"What is it," Tom growls out, angered that someone would dare interrupt his glorious work.

"Dinner is ready, Young Master." A maid says from behind the door.

"I'm not hungry." Tom dismisses.

"Please, Tom. You're father specifically asked that you attend dinner." The maid nervously pleads.

Tom scowls. The thought of even eating with his parents makes him want to bash someone's head in. It's not enough that he has to deal with that dreadful woman he's forced to call his his Step-Mother, Cecilia. Even though he's never known his own mother, who died from childbirth because she was weak, he's never been particularly close with his Father either. And when is Father married that vapid cow when he was five, the already unsteady bond between father and son deteriorated into practically nothing.

"Tom?"

Slamming the Death Note closed and placing it in a hidden compartment he created in his desk, Tom prepares himself for the disaster known to be a family dinner.

"Fine. Tell them i'll be down shortly." Tom bites out. He just wants to get it over with, but that doesn't mean he won't take his time going down as much as he can.

When he reluctantly enters the dining room, Tom notices his Father and Cecilia sitting at one end of the long table, with his Father at the head. Tom takes the seat opposite of his Father at the other end of the table. The farther away he is from them, the better for him.

"Tom. I'm glad you finally decided to join us," Tom Sr. says.

Tom says nothing. He watches as the servants bring out trays of food.

Dinner is mostly a quiet affair with stilted questions 'How was school Tom? and answers 'Like any other day.' Only Cecilia manages to fill the dining room with chatter towards her husband, completely ignoring her Step-Son. Which was fine with Tom. He and Cecilia despised each other and did everything to stay out of each other's way. Only Tom Sr. seemed to want to enforce "Family Bonding" time , which both Tom and Cecilia silently agreed that it was a waste of time.

Dabbing his napkin his mouth, Tom asked, "May I be excused? I still have some studying for upcoming exams to do."

"Very well," Tom Sr. sighs, no doubt disappointed with the lack of participation his son had done during dinner.

Tom nodded and quickly left to his room. Locking his room door so no one could disturb him again, Tom turned on his computer and brings out the Death Note.

Hacking into his father's personal computer and work files is a piece of cake when Tom Sr. is constantly working on cases at home. With a maniac smirk Tom continues his duty to rid the world of garbage. Hours pass in this manner until he gazes upon his clock and sees taht it is already eleven p.m.

"I think I've done enough for one day." Tom chuckles to himself, stretching his stiff body.

"I see you've been working hard the last couple of days using the Death Note." A gravelly voice says behind Tom, making him jump,up, knocking his chair over.

Narrowing his eyes and barring his teeth, he growls, "Who the hell are you?"

The being - monster - because it couldn't be anything else stood imposingly tall, long lanky limbs, sharp nails and a face close to a monkey's with sharp teeth, gazes interestingly at Tom.

"I'm the Shinigami Salazar Slytherin who dropped the notebook you're currently possessing."

"Shinigami? What's that?" Tom demands.

The monster may have surprised him, but Tom will turn the situation to his favor. He always manages too.

The monster huffs as if the question wasn't worth answering and that Tom was an ignorant mortal for not knowing.

"A Death God." Salazar says.

Tom relaxes minutely, but never let's his guard down. "Are you here to take back your book?"

"In time," The Shinigami answers. "I was just curious to see what kind of human picked up the Death Note."

Tom is a bit suspicious and fearful. If there is one thing Tom fears above all else...it's Death. The thought of his existence ending, sends a chill down his spine. He doesn't care if the monster is a Death God, Tom will fight with everything he has to keep the Death Note and leave his mark. Dying a a nobody is not on his to-do list.

He was destined for greatness!

And the Death Note was his key to success.

"Are you going to kill me? take my soul?" Tom eyes the other, his mind scheming, discarding, and reorganizing plans should he have to fight the Shinigami.

"Once a Death Note lands in the Human World, it becomes a part of it. You may pass the Death Note onto another, but your memories of the book will be wiped away. Essentially, That Death Note belongs to you."

Tom turns to the notebook laying innocently on his desk. It was his. It was his. He gazes at Salazar contemplatively. "What do you get out of it? It seems like that this is all in my favor with no punishment at all for me for using it."

"Just think of it as you becoming my entertaining to fight off my boredom. But be warned, you will feel the fear and pain known only to humans who have used the Death Note." The Shinigami smiles sharply. "Do we have a deal?"

Tom contemplates the pros and cons of the deal. "Is there any consequence for using the Death Note? Like every time I write down a name, part of my soul splits off?"

The Shinigami chuckles. "No, nothing that drastic. However, when it is your time to die, I will be the one to write your name in the my own Death Note. When that happens, your soul will neither go to Heaven nor Hell. So, again, do we have a deal?"

The silence is heavy in the room for only a moment.

Tom smiles sharply, a determined and maniac glint in his eyes.

"I'll change the world. No, Lord Voldemort will change the world!" Tom laughs darkly.

Lord Voldemort's reign began now!

-----

Hope you guys liked it!

@bookreadervirgo

#tomarry #harry potter #tom riddle #death note au #i was inspired to write another chapter

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candywrappcr · 6 years

Text

* pops up from out of nowhere with all my pockets stuffed with food and said food spilling everywhere * listen ……… i’m not cool enough to introduce myself and i’m not gonna bore you to death ( yet ) . to sum it up , i’m NORA but you can also call me a twenty-one year old idiotic nerd . because that is what i am . i should be studying right now , but writing this introduction for my smoll boy of sin is way more fun right now . so get ready for BARTEMIUS CROUCH JR .

BACKSTORY

to clarify, his dad is an ass and deserves what is coming for him in the fourth book of the series. smiley face.

ok so the crouch family is part of the sacred twenty-eight, but other than the most of the families on that list, they don’t really care about blood status or think that purebloods are better than non-purebloods. the crouch family is just simply known for thinking they are better than EVERYONE.

so, his childhood was basically all about his father expecting him to be the best and barty not living up to the standards. as he didn’t display signs of magic at a young age, he was a late bloomer, his father lost interest in him and went back to concentrating on the only thing he loved, his work.

his other had lost his father’s attention years ago and focused on her son completely, home-schooling him and educating him in a warm and nurturing environment. but, as he grew up and his father grew even more distant, never being home, yet expecting perfection to a degree where not even a single hair can be displaced on his mother’s head or where they had to appear as the perfect family to everyone around them, his mother’s mental health crumbled, disappeared and she fell into a deep depression. barty blames his father for his mother’s state.

from that moment he was pretty much raised by his house elf winky until he went off to hogwarts. at first, he didn’t even want to go, he didn’t want to leave his mother alone and he didn’t want to disappoint his father by not being sorted into slytherin.

eventually, he went to hogwarts, was sorted into slytherin and started to roll with the wrong crowd almost immediately. other than that he pretty much had a normal time at hogwarts? just your basic kinda hermoine style nerd doing his best at excelling in every class, preferring the library to any kind of social event and just, getting by.

he hates going back home during the breaks tho, so he will stay in hogwarts for most of christmas, except christmas eve and christmas day where he is ordered back home for the official christmas ceremony & most of summer break where he stays at his aunt’s place with his mother.

PERSONALITY

there is really two sides of one coin when it comes to barty’s personality. on the one hand, there is the gullible, vehement boy, striving to get attention and recognition, someone who is easily manipulated. then, there is the man he is about to become, apathetic and sadistic, too dexterous for his own good, because he will never get a chance to use that mind for anything morally right.

those two parts of his personalities, the boy he had been for the last sixteen years and the man he is about to become are currently fighting for the dominant place in his character, hence he is terribly unstable, something that is only further amplified by the situation at hogwarts.

he can put on a mask to hide his true emotions as easily as he can put on his slytherin tie each morning, which might be one of the reasons he has extreme trust issues. promises are not real and everything is a lie.

there are three people on this planet that he cares about right now. his mother, his house elf winky and himself.

HEADCANONS

he used to be sad about the fact that he couldn’t spend time with his father, but as he grows up, he slowly begins to despise bartemius crouch sr. instead.

for him, the death eaters aren’t about hating on muggleborns and half-bloods. he is completely indifferent when it comes to bloodstatus, he simply dislikes everyone. the reason why he joined the death eaters however is the community, he got accepted and the attention that he craved. he got the father figure he always needed, and the rebellion against his father and everything his father stands for.

barty is a magic nerd. he mastered the hardest potions, is currently working on perfecting non-verbal magic –– last time he tried he turned the sofa in the slytherin common into a living, breathing, human-craving beast instead of turning it blue –– and is one of the best duelists. the only thing he can’t do is perform the patronus spell as he does not have one single happy memory. he also never had a problem using another wand for magic that wasn’t his own, frequently stealing his father’s wand to break the rules and perform a simple spell outside of school. just to annoy his father.

he is currently planning on taking his o.w.l.s in ancient runes, arithmancy, astronomy, care of magical creatures, charms, defense against the dark arts, divination, herbology, history of magic, muggle studies, potions, transfiguartion. as i said, nerd.

he feels strongly for the house elves and their rights, due to being basically raised by one. he does not tolerate anyone treating house elves bad and will get very aggressive.

barty can’t fly. he loves it, but basically ends up like neville in the first movie every time he even comes close to a broom. so, he will just cheer the quidditch teams from the stands.

he has an unyielding 14 inch alder wood wand with a dragon heartstring core. alder wood is a great wood for people who are not dogmatic, but are easily influenced and prefer to be dependent. it’s also great for non-verbal spells. dragon heartstring is however is a very powerful material, for witches and wizards who perform great spells. it also can learn new spells quickly, perfect for this nerd and is easily lured to the dark side.

his amortentia potion scent is a mix of the rose bourbon whiskey his mother keeps hidden in a small compartment in the sitting room, a compartment he knows how to get in to since he was fourteen, the peaches from his aunt’s garden, the scent of old library books and summer rain. this might change, as he has yet to fall in love.

his boggart is himself, worthless and weak. think that time in rick and morty where jerry was imagined as a slug. it’s the reflection of himself that he sees every time he looks in the mirror and the thing he hates the most.

freckles. so MANY FRECKLES. his hair is never messy but his clothes always look like he took hours to steam each crinkle out of his pants before class. also he’s at 1,9m and towering over everyone. generally just looks like a really preppy leech. bc he is long and boyish-thin. haha. get it. also watch druck i beg of you.

CONNECTIONS

ok how about someone who is in the deatheater movement and ends up being basically an older brother and mentor for barty? that would be rad. just a head’s up, barty would probably end up workshipping his mentor as he has daddy issues.

someone preferably from year seven who he has a crush on? like it’s obviously never going to work out and his crush is nothing serious, but there would be something about her that reminds him of his mother –– in a non-creepy way i swear –– that would cause him to crush on her? also he might have mommy issues too. just issues.

#sixthyearsquad. because just because.

roommates? yes please?

someone he meets and ends up being like fuck i care about you? what’s happening? might be romantic or not, but dude needs an emotional anchor.

also he needs friends. he has none right now.

but also enemies? because enemies are fun and so angsty. maybe someone he used to be friends of but now “ can’t ” because they are possibly muggleborn or an order member?

now, if you read through all this above, here is a cute vine of a puppy and you can either like this post and i will message you or you can message me directly after reading this because you want to plot with this trashbag.

#000 / ooc . ⏤⏤ ❨ goodbye mission control ; thanks for trying . ❩#epoch.intro

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nyangibun · 7 years

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GoT S07E05 Thoughts

Fuck me.

This might have been my least favourite episode to date and we had Gendry!!! Okay, in all fairness, it wasn’t a bad episode. There was just one particular conflict that I am not looking forward to seeing continue.

And no, it’s not Jon3rys. I couldn’t give two shits about that right now.

But let’s begin, shall we?

For anyone who still believes Dany to be a good person, I honestly suggest going to an optometrist or retaking high school English because how much more obvious can this show get? I didn’t get to write down her full speech, but following this:

“I’m not here to murder...”

With this:

“Bend the knee and join me or refuse and die”

You’re kind of a hypocrite and a really obvious one at that. War is horrible, I get it, and good people do atrocious things in war, but that’s why we, as modern somewhat enlightened (although questionable) human beings, have war trials. People may die in war, as that is inevitable, but there are certain acts that no decent human should perform even in the midst of war.

I know I’m quoting Wikipedia here, but whatever:

Examples of war crimes include intentionally killing civilians or prisoners, torture, destroying civilian property, taking hostages, perfidy, rape, using child soldiers, pillaging, declaring that no quarter will be given, and serious violations of the principles of distinction and proportionality, such as strategic bombing of civilian populations.

Do you think a man as concerned with portraying war as a clusterfuck of morally grey characters would place an entitled figure with weapons of mass destruction which she uses indiscriminately, who commits war crimes, as the main protagonist? Do you think that is a good conclusion? And this is simply going by this episode and not the mess Dany made in previous seasons.

She had Randyll and Dickon Tarly as her prisoners. There was no need to execute them, or at least no need to execute both of them. If she wanted to make an example, she could do so with Randyll, but fine, let’s concede the fact it had to be done. She burned them. A slow, horrible, agonising death. She could have beheaded them, as was customary in Westeros, but no, she chose to burn them because you know why? She likes it. She’s done it before. Burning her enemies gives her great satisfaction of her power, but also it spreads fear into the hearts of everyone there because she knows it’s the only way to get them to submit.

If she allowed them the third option of becoming a prisoner of war, she knows they’d choose that over her. She even says so to Tyrion, because guess what? The people of Westeros doesn’t like or want Dany as their queen. Cersei may be a Grade A Bitch, but she’s the bitch they know. She doesn’t have dragons to burn those who defy her at her will. Yes, she’s powerful and could still easily execute people at a moment’s notice, but they’ve seen her humiliated and frightfully human when she was made to walk naked in shame through the streets of King’s Landing. She is human and she can fall. To them, Dany wields her power like a god and not the kind they worship out of love but out of fear. What kind of ruler is that?

And let’s talk about execution in general here. We’ve seen a lot of it over the seasons, and what we always come back to as a code of honour and true morality in this grey world is this quote from Mr Honour himself, Ned Stark:

“The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. If you would take a man's life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die.”

Mr Honour Jr aka Jon Snow lives by this rule like a life motto. If he must sentence a man to die, he will swing the sword himself, and throughout the show, we’ve seen Jon do this and we’ve seen how this weighs upon him, though the culprits may be deserving. Yes, people die in war and Jon has killed on the battlefield for survival, but executing someone is a deliberate act. It’s taking the life of a human while they are powerless to stop you. Jon doesn’t take any pleasure in it.

But Dany... She’s executed people left, right and center. Burning them in the most unnecessarily cruel way because she can and because it instills fear. Feeding them to her dragons which is even worse. That’s not at her hand. That’s cowardly and sadistic.

You know who else rules through fear?

“The only way to keep your people loyal is to make certain they fear you more than they do the enemy.”

Cersei bloody Lannister.

Yeah, let that sink in. And let’s move on.

Jon meeting Drogon. I hated this scene, although I see how it’s important in establishing Jon as a Targaryen. I didn’t like it mostly because I was still reeling Drogon burning the Tarly’s alive, and yet right after, they have Jon bonding with Drogon like some special moment. But do you think Jon would even touch that dragon if he knew the horrors Dany had made Drogon do? Or the fact that she just executed Jon’s best friend’s family in the worst way possible? Yeah, Sam hated his father, but he didn’t hate his brother. And no matter what animosity there was between them, Sam is a good person and he would still be devastated by this. Not to mention we weren’t given all those Dickon scenes where the man acted with honour, kindness and bravery, just to dismiss him as another faceless enemy of Dany’s. He was Sam’s brother and so much like Sam in a way. I think that’s what made his death in spite only knowing him for 2 episodes so heartbreaking. Also, why this meeting between Jon and Drogon made me angry and disgusted.

Of course, it also establishes some Jon3rys bonding, although more so on Dany’s side. Let’s face it, the Dragon Queen wants familial Dragon D. Her heart eyes for Jon throughout this episode was at least 100x more convincing than previous episodes between them. Jon, on the other hand, has moments where he does seem to think Dany is alright, but I still don’t see the same level of affection on his end at all. As always, he has a one-track mind and that’s the war up North.

And I’m sorry but Dany’s attraction towards Jon seems to predicate on her notion that he’s as heroic and powerful as her. I get that he is and that’s a wonderful reason to fall in love with him, but it’s still falling in love with the idea of him and not who he is, because who Jon is, isn’t that person. He doesn’t want to be a hero or to be powerful. I know Show Jon doesn’t go into this, but Book Jon wants a family, to settle in Winterfell and live peacefully and honourably like his pseudo father. But Dany will never know that about him because she doesn’t know him. Take her asking Jon about whether he got a knife to the heart, the wonder and awe in her eyes as she asks him. She wants him to be just like her (or her delusional perception of herself as some kind of prophesised princess that was promised). Jon is who she thinks she is and she’s attracted to that, which is basically some Game of Thrones version of Narcissus. When she realises he’s a Targaryen, she’ll feel threatened more than relieved she’s not alone, because if she thinks he’s her then she’ll think he wants the Iron Throne and he’s a threat to her ambitions.

There’s a reason why after all that Gilly discovers the Rhaegar and Elia annulment (which btw is such bullshit but whatever). Jon has more right to the Iron Throne than she does.

What’s funny about this episode that even Dany’s Second Biggest Fan struggles to support her. Yes, he still will, but that entire conversation he has with Varys just sounds a lot like he’s trying to convince himself that ‘yes, all rulers burn their prisoners like a sadistic pyroqueen, and yes, Dany is so not like her father’. And the fact that her own loyal subjects are questioning her? Yeah, tell me again how she’s a hero.

Now onto the main reason why I hate this episode: StarkBowl. But oh ho, not Jon and Sansa StarkBowl but Sansa and Arya.

I’ve always loved Arya. She was my favourite character for so many seasons, until I fell madly in love with Sansa, although Arya remains in my Number 2 spot. But this episode, I felt such a burning anger towards her. After all they’ve been through, everything Sansa’s endured, Arya would still hold her accountable for the beliefs Sansa held as a young child. She’s changed and grown so much on account of her experiences yet she will not lend her own sister the same courtesy. It pisses me off because what Arya is doing (judging and accusing Sansa of things she didn’t do or for who she was when she was a child) is exactly what Anti-Sansa’s have been doing for years. And her own short-sighted, ignorant inability to grasp that this woman before her is not the same Sansa she once knew has now led her to being manipulated and conned by Littlefinger.

What I can only hope is that Sansa is smarter than Littlefinger. Bran wouldn’t give Arya the dagger if he foresaw Arya using it on Sansa. And I feel like it is so uncharacteristic of Arya, who has longed for so long to be reunited with her pack, to suddenly break down by childish prejudice at the first miscommunication. Sansa is far more cunning than anyone gives her credit for and I feel that this could all be a long orchestrated con on Littlefinger himself. Arya’s not that stupid. I refuse to believe she’s stupid enough to underestimate LF that way and let herself be manipulated so easily. I feel like perhaps that fight between Sansa and Arya was for LF’s benefit because it felt so contrived, so out of nowhere. I know this speculation is also heavily biased by my refusal to believe that the Starks would fight amongst themselves after all they went through, but I do believe that LF will die this season. It won’t be at Sansa’s hand but it will be because of Sansa’s machinations.

Now, onto Gendry!!!!!

The happiest part about this hell episode because fuck, he’s so hot still. That cropped hair, those muscles, that smile... Yeah, swoon. He’s also hilariously bullheaded (very like a Baratheon) when he ignores Davos, hits those soldiers with his hammer and immediately tells Jon who he is.

In fact, there was this instant spark of chemistry between Gendry and Jon in their first meeting.

“You’re a lot leaner.”

“You’re a lot shorter.”

The gentle ribbing of two strangers is adorable, but it also reminds me of Ned and Robert’s first scene together:

"Your Grace.” "You’ve got fat.”

Now the parallels of Jon as Ned is nothing we haven’t seen before. Gendry as Robert is newer, and Jon and Gendry together as Ned and Robert is so satisfying to watch. It also makes me, a trash shipper, so happy because you know if Jon is being paralleled as Ned in this episode, you know who is being paralleled as Cat?

Yes, that’s right. Strong, confident Sansa, who was called only Lady Stark in the Great Hall meeting.

I know I’m crazy but I’m still not worried about Jonsa. That scene in the Great Hall just kept making me think of Sansa as Penelope. She’s there holding onto Winterfell for Jon’s return as he gallivants off on his many missions and overcomes his many trials. She’s there, always loyal and true to him, and maintains his kingdom for him.

Boatbang may happen (likely), but Odysseus also slept with Calypso, before ultimately returning to his lady love. I believe the same will happen for Jonsa.

Also, who thinks Cersei’s not actually pregnant? I think she’s beginning to question Jaime’s loyalty and needs to firmly hold him in place. And I think when he finds out she’s not after all he’s done for, all the sinful things he did, it might make him plunge that sword into her heart prophecy-style. Or not a sword. I don’t know.

But that’s it for me. My head hurts. My heart hurts. And I maintain that I hate this episode because fuck StarkBowl. And fuck disrespecting Sansa like that.

#game of thrones #jonsa #anti-jonerys #anti-daenerys #asoiaf #got s7 #spoilers #game of thrones s7 #got s7 thoughts #got recap #got review #got meta #long post #anti jonerys

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