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beyondcuckoo · 9 months

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Mount Shasta—Reality or Hoax? has been published on Elaine Webster - http://elainewebster.com/mount-shasta-reality-or-hoax/

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Mount Shasta—Reality or Hoax?

(Shared from ‘Mu the Motherland‘)

Mount Shasta is a dormant volcano rising 14,179 feet in the Cascade Range of Northern California. The mountain is composed of four major volcanic cones built of layers or strata—each one created in its own eruptive period and overlapping with the others. There is a fifth cone, the Red Fir Cone, which outcrops lower on the mountain at 6340 feet and is often referred to as ‘Ancestral Mt. Shasta’ with rocks dated back about 590,000 years. (Most of what can be seen is less than 200,000 years old.) In comparison, the Shastina cone is only about 9700 years old and the last eruption was about 200 years ago from the Hotlum cone.

Image Source: College of the Siskiyous Library

The Cascade Range is part of “The Ring of Fire”, a chain of volcanic arc and trenches that border tectonic plates, so it’s no wonder that those that are sensitive to earth energies feel an intensity in this area. It is also not unusual for Native Americans to gravitate towards these energies. In fact, Shasta is a modernized spelling of “Sastise” the name used by Klamath Indians to describe an enemy tribe on the other side of the mountain; suggesting that they regarded the peak both as protection and a power source. The mountain was first summited in 1854 by Elias Davisson Pierce and party. Author Joaquin Miller spent four years in the area and John Muir survived an overnight snowstorm on the summit in 1875. Did any of these people, see or hear anything unusual? If they did, they didn’t report on it. However, advance to 1987 and Shasta was labeled a power point site for the Harmonic Convergence—the first synchronized peace meditation. Many consider the mountain to be one of the Seven Sacred Mountains of the World and Native Americans consider the area to be a place of balance between earth and the universe.

So, where did all the speculation begin about mystic temples hidden within the mountain and the advanced Lemurian civilization that is believed to live there? Well, it started with a teenager—a resident of Yreka—Frederick Spenser Oliver and his book ‘A Dweller on Two Planets’. Oliver wrote about mystical beings, sacred brotherhoods, temples, mysterious lights, and spaceships, but he insisted that he was not the author, but was channeled by ‘Phylos the Thibetan’. Oliver died at the young age of 33 and the book was published posthumously in 1905 by his mother and a group of friends.

Then, the ball seems to have been picked up again in 1931 when Wishar Spenle Cerve (pseudonym of Harvey Spencer Lewis) wrote and published through the Rosicrucian Order, ‘Lemuria, The Lost Continent of the Pacific: The Mystery People of Mount Shasta’. Cerve wrote that Lemurians were tall, graceful, and agile, with larger heads and much larger foreheads than average humans. If you peruse the local bookshops you will come across many accounts of Lemurians coming into town for supplies, often paying with gold nuggets. It was these stories that spurred the metaphysical tourism that is still prevalent today.

In 1934 author Guy Warren Ballard (pen name Godfre Ray King) wrote a memoir, ‘Unveiled Mysteries’, describing his meeting with “Saint Germain” on Mount Shasta. Yes, this is the same Saint Germain who worked at the Court of France during the French Revolution. His wife, Edna (after her husband’s death in 1940) continued to publish information about these encounters for the “I AM” movement and the group she formed continues to visit Mount Shasta.

There is so much written, filmed, and presented about Mount Shasta—the list of information is endless and easily accessed on-line. However, the one account that struck me as valid and unexplainable is the widely reported incident of a 3-year-old boy. In September 2011, a 3-year-old-boy and his dog wandered off from Fowler’s Campground at McCloud Falls, which is down the hill from Shasta sparking a desperate search of the area. The dog was found, wet and cold, but alive near some rapids. The search continued on the assumption the toddler might have been swept away in the rapids. Local news covered the search and the boy was found. However, his rescue came with an interesting story of being captured by a robot and taken to a creepy place. He described a cave and a woman, a grandmother, who told him he was from outer space and he was placed in his mother’s womb. This same woman took the boy back to the river and told him to wait for the searchers, which he did and was found. Most people dismiss the story as an over-active imagination of a small boy. However, it’s interesting that the dog was found first, alone, and the boy appeared later. Hmmm.

Finally, Pluto’s Cave, north of the mountain was prehistorically occupied by Native Americans and after the gold rush, secret societies conducted initiations and rituals there. Today many believe that it is a portal into Inner Earth and an underground secret city. The cave is managed by Klamath National Forest and is a lava tube that can be hiked into for approximated 1200 feet. The cave itself is larger than those found in the Hawaiian Islands. There are multiple lava flows visible in the cave walls. Most expert on the supernatural nature of Shasta and these tubes is author, Dustin Naef, who says that numerous hikers have reported seeing people literally walk into the rocks walls and disappear, presumably to enter the Hollow Earth and possibly the secret city of “Telos”.

Critics and skeptics argue that the Lemurian legend and the idea of an underground city beneath Mount Shasta are nothing more than imaginative folklore and unsubstantiated claims. They point out the lack of concrete evidence and scientific support for these beliefs. Skeptics argue that the stories surrounding the Lemurians and the Subterranean City of Mount Shasta are primarily based on subjective experiences, personal anecdotes, and channeled information, which are difficult to verify or validate.

Despite the lack of empirical evidence, the allure of the Lemurian legend and the Subterranean City of Mount Shasta persists. For believers, the stories offer a sense of wonder, hope, and spiritual inspiration. They find solace in the idea that there may be a hidden realm of enlightenment and higher consciousness accessible to those who seek it. The myth of the Lemurians and Mount Shasta also serves as a metaphorical representation of humanity’s longing for a more harmonious and spiritually connected existence. One thing that is undeniable is that Mount Shasta exudes power—physical and spiritual power. How each of us use nature’s power is an individual preference, but it will not and cannot be denied.

Additional Reference Source: College of the Siskiyous Library Mount Shasta Fact Sheet

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lucemferto · 3 years

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WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT PH1LZA (or Why Philza is a Victim of Narrative Circumstance)

Heyo! Per request I am posting the script to my video of the same name here on tumblr. I must warn you that just reading the script will probably not give you the full experience, so I would encourage you to watch the video (linked above).

There might also still be a lot of grammatical errors in the text, because I don’t proofread.

Intro

LAST TIME ON LUCEM FERTO

Okay, so! I don’t want this to turn into a reaction channel OR a Dream SMP channel for that matter! [echo]

Well, I lied.

[Intro to “Luc is pretentious about the funny blockmen. Episode 2”]

I swear, I’m working on other stuff. It’s just that my dumb lizard brain has only capacity for one interest at a time!

So, something you might not know about me, is that I am on tumblr – who am I kidding, most of you will know me from tumblr. Before starting this whole YouTube thing, I thought that website died years ago – but as per usual reality proves me wrong. I’m also on Twitter and Reddit, but I get the most engagement on tumblr – by far! – and I need those sweet, sweet numbers for the serotonin!

Anyways, one of my favourite past-times on tumblr is to razz Philza Hardcore Minecraft – that’s his full name – for being a frankly awful father [clicking away] – wait, wait, no! Philza fans, this isn’t a hit piece on him, I promise! Please come back!

This is video is meant to be a companion piece to my previous video about Technoblade and the Doomsday event – you can tell by the shared nomenclature – so you should probably watch that one before you proceed. Unless you don’t want to, which is also perfectly understandable.

DISCLAIMER: This video is mostly about the character Philza plays on the Dream SMP. Whenever I talk about the content creator Philza, I will say so properly. Also, Spoiler Warning for Dream SMP Season 2.

… What is that? You’re wondering what the Dream SMP is? Well, if you had just watched the other video like I told you to do, you would know, because I explained it pretty well there. But in case you don’t know, here’s the cliff notes.

Dream SMP is the hottest New Media Series on Twitch right now! It has it all: gaslighting, child soldiers, Machiavellian political intrigue, Hamilton roleplay, desecration of the dead, shounen protagonists, SO! MUCH! AMNESIA! Filicide, furries, a red egg that’s definitely homophobic and teenagers inventing nuclear warfare. And it’s all done in Minecraft – yes, the funny block game where the only way to emote is to crouch.

And you say the perfect brief doesn’t exist!

Now, you might be wondering, why do I want to talk about this? Well, it’s because Content Creator Philza is one of least controversial internet personalities that I can think of. That man exudes pure comfort. So, it’s just very, very amusing to me that his character became one of the most controversial figures on the SMP, only outshone by Tommy and Technoblade.

And it’s not just amusing, it’s also extremely interesting! I want to dig deep to uncover and discuss the dynamics behind why that is. How did it come to this point? How did a man who appears genuinely so pleasant create a character that inspires so much discourse!

Now, if you watched that Technoblade video – like I told you to twice now! – you might know, that I am the resident character analyses hater of fandom! And that impression is false and slanderous! Don’t tell other people that I hate character analyses! I love them!

It’s just that, in the Dream SMP in particular, there is an abundance of character analyses! Every streamer has at least two very good essays written about them, exploring every possible angle to view their characters and backgrounds and everything. All I’m saying is: I don’t have anything to add on that front.

So, instead I want to pursue a different approach – something, that I feel is a bit underrepresented in the fandom! And I’m not just talking narrative analysis – that’s right, this episode we’re going even more pretentious! – I’m talking Transtextual Analysis!

Now, what is Transtextuality? Well, unfortunately it has very little to do with actual Trans people – #transrights, just in case that wasn’t obvious – but instead describes a mode of analysis with which to put – to quote French literary theorist Gérard Genette – “the text in a relationship, whether obvious or concealed, with other texts”.

Basically, you know how the L’Manburg War of Independence heavily quotes and borrows from the hit musical Hamilton? That’s transtextuality! A lot of the analyses surrounding how Tommy mirrors the Greek hero Theseus, who was invoked by Technoblade multiple times in the series, are already doing transtextual analysis! So, it’s really not something that’s new to the Dream SMP fandom.

But how does this apply to Philza and how he is looked at and judged by his parental skills? Well, there are multiple forms of transtextuality, two of which we will discuss today.

But before we continue, I gotta do that annoying YouTuber thing. I know these videos don’t look like much, but I spend a really long time making them. I work fulltime and I try my best to keep up, but sometimes I can’t. So please, like, subscribe, comment to give me some algorithm juice – I really need it – and most importantly share it! Share it with your friends, share it with your family – I’m sure Grandma is very interested in what I have to say about Philza Minecraft.

And I’m trying to be better! If I sound at all different for this video, it’s because I finally bought a new pop filter, so I can hit my plosives without it sounding like there’s a thunderstorm in my room. I hope it makes a difference; it was a very cheap pop filter, so maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it sounds worse – that would be bad!

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, CHILD NEGLEGT!

Intertextuality: Why is Dadza?

You know what’s really interesting about the Dream SMP – aside from, you know, most things about it? Very few of the characters have concrete, fleshed-out backstories – and that’s pretty weird! In no other medium or genre could you get away with something like that – at least for long-form storytelling!

So, how does Dream SMP get away with this? Well, it’s because every character on the Dream SMP is basically a self-insert – and I don’t mean that in the “This character is based on me”-kinda way, but in the “This character, for all intents and purposes, is me!”-way. This, like many things that are fascinating about the Dream SMP, is owed to the fact that this series didn’t start off as a continuous drama – it started off as a Let’s Play.

And while we can talk about how someone’s on-camera/on-mic persona is in some ways a character, it’s still miles off of being an actual, fully-realized, separate character in a storyline.

This is where Intertextuality comes in.

Intertextuality is a subset of Transtextuality. It describes how the hypertext, which is the text, you’re currently engaged with, uses another text, the hypotext, to supplement itself. The interconnection the hypertext establishes with the hypotext, through stuff like allusion for example, uh-hum [Hamilton], can colour how an audience interprets the hypertext. Basically, Hamilton and Theseus are the hypotexts; the Dream SMP is the hypertext.

So, what does this have to do with backstory? Simple: The backstories of the characters in the Dream SMP consist basically of nothing but intertextual references. Through intertextuality their content effectively substitutes their character’s backstory.

You can see it everywhere. Wilbur’s and Schlatt’s relationship and rivalry is hugely enriched, if you are aware of their shared history like SMPLive, for example – I think anyway. I haven’t watched SMPLive, because … there’s only so many hours in the day and I cannot keep up with the Dream SMP and catch up on SMPLive and live a healthy life – which I already don’t do, so…

BadBoyHalo’s and Skeppy’s relationship, which has become the crux of the Crimson-Storyline of Seasons 2 and 3, is hugely supplemented if you know that they’re also very close as streamers and in real life.

Another great example of intertextuality is basically Technoblade’s entire deal. If you just look at him completely within the text of the Dream SMP and try to transplant his entrance to any other medium: It would be extremely weird! Like, he’s just this guy that comes in in the middle of a very climatic arc, no build-up, no explanation what his deal is, and he’s treated like he has always been there. In any other medium that just wouldn’t work – at least not without a flashback or some sort of exposition!

But because of stuff like Minecraft Mondays, the Potato Wars, his Duel against Dream and SMPEarth, we understand that he is a Big Deal!

Anyways, to bring all of this back to Philza Minecraft: What kind of hypotext informs how the audience sees his character? Well, this is where I will have to talk about SBI.

SBI is an acronym that stand for State Bank of India, the 43rd largest bank in the world and…

It also stands for Sleepy Bois Incorporated. Sleepy Bois Incorporated is a loose assembly of content creators, consisting of Philza, Wilbur Soot, TommyInnit and Technoblade. It is most well-known for its very endearing family dynamic – a dynamic that is frequently acknowledged and played up by the creators involved. Tommy is the youngest brother, Wilbur and Techno are the two older brothers and Philza is of course the dad. And when I say, it’s played up, I really mean it! Wilbur seems to be especially enamoured with the idea and leaves no opportunity untaken to bring it up – which we will come back to.

And I’m not saying that they’re faking this and this is somehow an act. While I know none of these people personally, it appears to me, that this is genuinely how they interact – if a little exaggerated for the streaming experience. Even when they’re not consciously playing into the family dynamic, their interactions still very much lend themselves to that interpretation by the viewers.

Philza especially just radiates Dad-Friend energy – so much so that it has become a huge part of his brand identity – yay, I can bring that back (check out my Christmas video if you want to hear me ramble about that). The nickname Dadza stuck even before SBI was a thing.

So, even if we completely disregard SBI – which we shouldn’t for reasons I’ll get back to – Philza has cultivated an image of strong paternal guidance. He is, in my opinion completely deservedly, regarded very positively. He is highly respected and in turn seen as a voice of reason.

All of this would eventually inform the hypotext of the character Philza within Dream SMP.

Interlude: Before Dadza & November 16th

Okay, so now we have established that a) Dream SMP heavily hinges on intertextual readings by the audience to supplement character backstory and b) that Philza’s entire deal is that he’s the dad-friend – more specifically that he’s the dad of SBI (not the bank). I think you know where this is going.

So, yeah, ever since it was on the table that Philza could join the Dream SMP, it was immediately assumed that he would take on the paternal guardian role all these traumatized people on that server so desperately needed – and with good reason! Like I said before, the audience at this point was trained to take intertextual interpretations as basically canon or at the very least canon-adjacent.

I want to emphasize that this is most likely not done deliberately. I’m sure content creators Wilbur and Philza didn’t sit there and said: “Yes! We will rely entirely on the audience’s inclination to interpret our characters intertextually to define character Philza!”. Like, obviously that did not happen.

But it’s also important to remember that unlike with traditional media and the fanbases cultivated there, the separation between the Dream SMP and its audience is almost non-existent – and purposely so. The story events are streamed live, Chats are acknowledged in canon and even outside of livestreams creators are extremely involved with the fandom. So, the weight of fan-expectations is equally amplified and will more likely be incorporated into the writing process. Case in point:

[Wilbur “I miss Philza”/Philza about Wilbur]

During Wilbur’s villain arc, even before his official involvement, Philza became a prevalent point of discussion. The hope that he would be the one to snap Wilbur out of his downward spiral was not only wish-fulfilment on behalf of the fans; it also very much played off of the intertextual reading of the SBI-dynamic in relation to the Dream SMP.

Of course, this still doesn’t make Philza and Wilbur canonically blood-related – but it definitely used the “paternal”-dynamic of SBI to build-up tension and drama.

And that ultimately brings us to November 16th. The Grand Finale of Season 1 and Philza’s first canonical appearance on the SMP.

Now, for this I want to pull back from the transtextual analysis and talk about simply narrative analysis: What is Philza’s narrative purpose on November 16th?

Philza serves as the last threshold on Wilbur’s Villain’s Journey – to appropriate Vogler’s version of the monomyth for a minute here – he is what Vogler calls the “Threshold Guardian”. He is the last enemy the Hero faces before completing his quest – in this particular case Wilbur’s quest is to blow up L’Manberg. Multiple people have at this point tried to dissuade him from this course of action: Tommy, Quackity, Niki and others. So how come this Philza moment is not redundant in terms of dynamics compared to these prior scenes?

Well, it’s through our intertextual understanding of Wilbur’s and Phil’s relationship. Because Philza does not just occupy the role of the Threshold Guardian – he is also implicitly the Mentor. Before Phil there was no character in the storyline that held a higher position of moral authority than Wilbur – Dream and Schlatt, while at points more powerful in terms of actual authority, were never positioned by the narrative as Wilbur’s superiors in the same way as Wilbur was to Tommy, Tubbo or even Niki.

Before November 16th all challenges Wilbur faced were from people narratively subordinated to him. But that trend is broken with Phil. That is why he is the Threshold Guardian, why this confrontation is at the climax of Wilbur’s arc. Because Phil is the last thing tethering Wilbur to whatever morality he held before his villain arc; Phil is the last, moral obstacle Wilbur has to discard before gaining his reward.

And, just a quick sidenote, because I’ve seen it around the fandom a bunch: When I’m referring to Wilbur denouncing his morality, I’m using that in terms of narrative analysis. I’m mentioning it, because Wilbur’s character can very easily be read as mentally ill or neurodivergent and some people have – rightly! – pointed out that the excessive vilifying when talking about his character is … problematic, to say the least.

So, I just want to make clear, this isn’t a character analysis, I’m being purposely broad when talking about Wilbur and Phil.

In the end, Wilbur takes that final step and gets his “reward”: As his final request his mentor takes his life and vanquishes the evil – the dragon of Wilbur’s story slays the dragon of L’Manburg. It’s very Shakespearean in its tragedy – but beyond the larger theatrics it’s not really used to further characterize Phil – at least in the context of Season 1. There’s not a lot of focus on his characters internal conflict during November 16th.

Phil, like Techno, is very utilitarian in how content creator Wilbur writes him: He serves as a moment of hype; an obstacle Wilbur has to face; a participant in the tragic climax of Wilbur’s character and ultimately takes on his implicit and expected role of mentor and guiding figure to the rest of L’Manburg.

I think not a lot of people talk about how Philza does not join Technoblade during November 16th. He takes the side of L’Manburg – he fights against the withers and he joins Tommy, Tubbo and the others at the L’Mantree, thus framing him as loyal to the L’Manburg administration – even though Season 2 would make his loyalty to Techno central to his character. But more on that later.

What’s also important about November 16th is that this is the day when the general intertextual interpretation became canonized text.

[You’re my son!]

Wilbur is made Phil’s canonical, biological son. The intertextual interpretation of SBI as it pertains to these two characters on the SMP was completely reinforced by the narrative. Or to put it in Fandom terms: The headcanon became actual canon. At least when it came to Wilbur … but what about Philza’s “other” children?

Well, that leads to our second form of transtextual analysis:

Paratextuality: Is Dadza?

These titles are just getting better and better.

The Paratext is defined as all those things in a published work that accompany the text. It comes in two forms: One of them is the Peritext, which are non-diegetic elements directly surrounding the text – like chapter titles, author’s notes, and stuff like that. Translated to the medium of the Dream SMP, it would be stuff like this:

[Examples]

And, trust me, I could make a whole separate video about how people on the SMP use their peritext as a tool for storytelling – I’m looking at you, Ranboo – but that’s not what we will talk about in the context of Dadza.

Instead, we will focus on the second form of Paratext, the Epitext, which consists of all authorial and editorial discussions taking place outside of the text. That’s stuff like interviews, private letters or J. K. Rowling’s Twitter Account – you know, before she decided to become a full-time asshole.

[Wilbur: Transrights]

After Season 1 ended, Wilbur indulged pretty heavily in providing epitext for the Dream SMP, something he had not done prior to November 16th. His paratextual additions ranged from the playful, like assigning DnD alignments to various SMP members, to the extremely impactful, like the whole three lives system!

You probably think, you know where this is going. Wilbur provided some epitext about how Tommy and Techno either are or are not biologically related to him … and I have to be honest I thought that too. But then I began looking into the impenetrable web that is the SBI-canon on the Dream SMP and found this!

[Ghostbur explains family]

So, it wasn’t paratext, it was just straight text. Said in character, in canon, without any implication that we the viewers should question this. The text of the SBI family dynamic was explicitly linked to Dream SMP-exclusive lore, namely Fundy being Wilbur’s and Sally the Salmon’s son. This is as clear as Philza’s anguished declaration on November 16th in establishing the intertext as text. And because Wilbur also had a very heavy hand in the discussion of paratext around that time, it gave his character’s words even more “canonical” weight. Metatextually speaking, this very much read like the author giving exposition through his character – exposition that we should understand as reliable.

And, by the way, before I continue, I need to give a huge, huge shoutout to kateis-cakeis on tumblr, I hope I pronounced that right, who was just so quick in providing me with these crucial clips. Without him I would have looked for days because these people don’t archive their shit! And the Dream SMP Wiki was NO help, by the way! I love what you guys do, but stuff like this belongs in the Trivia section on characters’ pages!

Anyways, basically during the entirety of early Season 2 the SBI family dynamic was basically canon to the SMP. Sometimes it was only alluded implicitly, again letting the intertext fill out the rest.

[Philza clips]

But just as often it was just explicitly talked about – both in the text and in the paratext.

[Fundy clip/Wilbur “Twins” clip/Tommy clip]

So, I know what you’re thinking: “Why is this part called paratext, if the entire family tree is just textual”. Well, that last clip might give you a hint, as to what I will talk about. Notice how Tommy, one of the people most directly impacted by the canonization of SBI lore, is both unaware of and seems generally unenthused about it, to put it nicely? Well, that would soon turn out to be a much bigger deal than anyone could have imagined as he wasn’t the only one.

[Technoblade decanonizes SBI]

Yeah …

This happened on 20th of December. Regular viewers of this channel will remember that I put out a 90-second joke video, where I complain about this very development. And while I was mostly kidding around, the core idea is still true. The paratext provided by Technoblade and established text were in direct contradiction with one another – and that brought a lot of confusion into the fandom. Confusion, that would soon be followed by frustration.

Because Techno only decanonized himself as part of the SBI family dynamic – but what about Tommy and Tubbo, the latter of which was incorporated into the dynamic exclusively within the lore of the Dream SMP. Was this still canon or wasn’t it?

What followed was a muddled mess of contradictions, intertextual implications, text and paratext in conflict with each another. It was for the most part inscrutable to figure out how Tommy and Philza related to one another. I’ll spare you every comment made about this – mostly because I want to spare myself from looking for all of them.

In the end, the current status is that their familial relationship is … unclear. Philza said, again in paratext, that it’s ultimately up to the writers to decide, whether or not Tommy is his son … which, I personally think he and Tommy should be the ones to establish that, but I’ll come back to that later.

But why is all of this important anyway? Why would this ambiguity create such an uproar, such controversy – especially when it comes to Tommy’s character? What makes Tommy’s and Philza’s relationship such a target for discussion in the fandom?

Well … this is where we will have to talk about the storyline of Season 2.

Interlude II: Tommy’s Exile and Dadza in Season 2

Okay, Season 2. This is where the spoilers are, so I will just sneakily drop this again. It took me five seconds to google this gif and I will milk it for every penny it’s worth!

At the beginning of Season 2, Philza’s narrative role has not changed much from where Season 1 ended. He is in L’Manburg dispensing earthly wisdom, being a paternal figure to Fundy, Ghostbur and Tubbo, helping with the nation’s rebuilding efforts; just generally occupying the role of the mentor.

[clips]

And then came … the Exile. The Exile Arc took place between December 3rd and December 15th during Season 2 of the Dream SMP. It revolves around TommyInnit getting exiled from L’Manburg and slowly getting psychologically tortured and broken down by Dream. It’s a really great arc, at least in my opinion, that explores and deepens a lot of Tommy’s character relationships, whether that be Tommy and Dream, Tommy and Tubbo or Tommy and Ranboo. One relationship, however, is noticeably missing.

So, yeah, Philza spends basically the entirety of the exile doing pretty much nothing of consequence. And that’s not a problem specific to him – One big criticism I would levy against the Exile Arc is that a lot of characters are left spinning their wheels. Which is why we get zany stuff like El Rapids, Drywaters, Eret’s Knights of the Roundtable, Boomerville – anyone remember Boomerville, that was a thing for 5 seconds, wasn’t it? – basically a lot of storylines are started and then unceremoniously dropped. Now, I will talk more about this, when I make a video about Season 2 of the Dream SMP … in ten years, look forward to it.

In the case of Philza, this inaction was especially damning, because at this point it was still a considered canon that he was Tommy’s dad. So, the fans were left with a situation, where just a few weeks prior Philza was occupying a paternal role for Fundy and Ghostbur … but now, that his youngest son was in a very concerning predicament – to put it lightly – he was nowhere to be found.

So why is that?

Well, the most obvious answer is that Dream and Tommy didn’t write him into the storyline. We’ve seen that Tommy wasn’t particularly interested in exploring a familial relationship to Philza, at least at the time. And it would just not fit in with what Dream and Tommy tried to do with the Exile Arc: they wanted to tell the story of Tommy being isolated, completely under Dream’s mercy, slowly worn down and manipulated. If Philza had been constant presence for Tommy during that time, it would have definitely shifted the narrative focus. That doesn’t mean that they couldn’t have done that, it’s just a matter of fact that they didn’t.

This also reveals another truth about content creator Philza’s character work, that I think is extremely crucial: He takes what the writers give him. Outside of a few choice moments, he doesn’t seem particularly interested in expanding or even solidifying his character on the SMP.

What I’m saying is that he is very go-with-the-flow: Wilbur wants to enact a Shakespearean tragedy? Philza’s up for it. Fundy wants him as a parental figure and mentor? Philza’s here for him. Tommy, conversely, doesn’t want him as a paternal presence, even though it would make sense for Philza’s character, as it was established so far, to be there? Philza will oblige.

The reason I’m mentioning this is because, while Tommy and Dream were unwilling to utilise Philza in their storyline, someone else was more than happy to. Which leads us back, like it always does, to everyone’s favourite Porky Pig-kinnie in a crown: Technoblade.

Technoblade and Philza, from everything I’ve seen of them, seem to be very good friends – and they share a lot of history even outside SBI. So, it’s commendable that they would collaborate on a storyline together.

A consequence of that, however, is that Philza’s narrative purpose shifts completely with very little transition. His entire character changes from being the Mentor-figure of L’Manberg to being pretty much exclusively defined as Technoblade’s ally; his man on the inside. It is a very sharp turn from the end of Season 1. Their relationship is once again informed via intertext – this time the Antarctic Empire on SMPEarth serves as the hypotext – but there isn’t a huge effort made to smoothly integrate that aspect of Philza’s character into the larger narrative framing around him.

How much the narrative utilisation of Philza has shifted can be very easily observed through the Butcher Army event on December 16th, a story event that I like less and less the more I think about. Here Philza is used to show just how corrupt and violent Tubbo’s administration has becomes. He is no longer the respected mentor, he is now the stand-in for the oppressed populace, similar to Niki’s role in Season 1. On a narrative level, he is here to prove a point.

If you’ve seen my Technoblade video, you know how I feel about … just that entire storyline, so I will not reiterate too much on it. I just want to make clear that I’m not principally against this development – if they wanted to truly explore Tubbo going down a dark path and getting corrupted by power, so much so that he would even treat the person who effectively raised him like a prisoner, I would be extremely here for it, I cannot stress that enough.

The problem I have is that it’s just so sloppily done. It is not coherent with how these characters behaved and, more importantly, how they were narratively framed prior to the Butcher Army event. Fundy gets one token line about Phil being his Grandfather – a far cry from the very emotionally complex relationship they had established at the beginning of Season 2 – and Phil then callously disowns him.

The major problem simply is that we don’t see how Philza changes from Mentor-figure to embittered, oppressed citizen. And there was enough time to build to that. During the entirety of Tommy’s exile Tubbo was pretty much spinning his wheels and Quackity and Fundy were opening up plot cul-de-sacs that didn’t end up going anywhere. This is time they could have spent on developing their relationship to Philza and the dark path they were going down – but again, Season 2 video.

There is not much to say on Philza’s narrative purpose and framing beyond the Butcher Army event. He remains pretty much exclusively Techno’s consigliere with his role as Mentor to L’Manburg a distant memory. He has some cute character moments with Ranboo, because content creator Philza is just big dad-energy whether he wants to or not, and whenever he and Ghostbur share a scene suddenly the narrative remembers that there are people other than Technoblade that should exist in Philza’s inner world. But aside from that, Philza’s storyline in Season 2 remains … pretty definitive is the nicest way I can put it.

Most importantly his relationship with Tommy continues to be completely unexplored – whether by chance or choice – and that combined with ever vaguer paratext leaves “Dadza” in a very peculiar situation.

Conclusion: Is Dadza a Good Dadza?

So, the question to end all questions. The big, obnoxious text, that I will probably have put in the thumbnail – I haven’t made it yet, but I know myself. The honest answer is: I couldn’t tell you.

I have, in the past, been expounding the virtues of narrative analysis. That is because I feel that Narrative Analysis and Textual Analysis, like in this video, can provide certain tools that Character Analysis lacks. Often times I see people trying to get at a writing problem or query and getting frustrated because they’re not using the toolset, they need to figure out what they want to figure out.

But I’d be a hypocrite if I pretended like everything could be solved through the modes of analysis I prefer. And I think the Dadza-issue is exactly such a case.

I set out to explore why the Philza-Tommy-“Dadza”-relationship has become so controversial. It’s a combination of expectations build up through intertextual readings, that were partly canonized – something that is very common for the Dream SMP – conflicting pieces of paratext, which only serve to muddle the issue further and a text that is not only completely uninterested in actually exploring Tommy’s and Philza’s relationship – as it stands right now they might as well be strangers, narratively speaking – but also completely changes Philza’s narrative purpose as it relates to characters like Fundy or Tubbo about half-way through with little to no transition.

That is why I say, that Philza’s character is a victim of narrative circumstance. Because unwittingly, through all of these factors and decisions, there is not coherent reading of Philza that frames his parental skills in a particularly kind light.

The question of how we can judge Phil as a paternal figure ultimately falls within the purview of the character analysis – and that’s a very multifaceted issue, highly dependent on which POV you focus on and how you interpret the other characters in that POV’s periphery.

To put my cards on the table, I think that Philza is a very flawed father/father-figure – and I find that absolutely okay. Flaws are the spice of character building. He is not Cinderella’s Evil Stepmother – but he’s also definitely not Mufasa. If we were to read Philza as a paternal figure, then he would have made a lot of mistakes and decisions to the detriment of his “children” – least of all everything that happened on Doomsday.

But I also have sympathies for Philza fans who are tired of the Dad-Debate and would like to have his character judged independent from his relationship to Ghostbur, Fundy, Tubbo and Tommy.

Ultimately, to bring it all to a point, I’d like to end with saying, that I think that Philza, out of all the characters on the SMP, has the potential to be on of the most intriguing, multifaceted ones. There are all of these different patches of story, character moments and narrative and transtextual implications, that, if brought together, could create a beautiful tapestry of the character Philza.

You have his relationship with Techno, which holds the potential for so much emotional conflict and vulnerabilities, you have his time as mentor of L’Manburg, which is just criminally underused; the complex relationship between him and Ghostbur/Wilbur; and – for me, personally – most intriguingly this weird, almost uncomfortably distant non-relationship with Tommy. That last one is intriguing to me, because it contrasts just so much with our intertextual understanding of the characters and streaming personas – and it just holds the potential for so much conflict, so much drama, so much angst. Which I live for!

And, yes, I do believe that most of this is narrative happenstance, that this was largely not intended by Philza or really any of the writers. It’s just what happens when hybrid-roleplay-improv a long-running, livestreamed storyline in Minecraft.

But I want them to realize the potential they have on their hands, because it could – with barely any adjustments – turn Philza from a victim of narrative circumstance to a champion of it!

Outro

Thank you so much for watching this video. Usually, I don’t record outros this standard, but after this beast of a video I felt it necessary. I hope that whether you’re a Philza fan or a Philza critical or just completely uninvolved in the whole thing, there is at least a little entertainment you could get from this.

I want to take this opportunity to say that my next few videos will probably not be Dream SMP related – a sentence which undoubtedly lost me a bunch of subs – simply because I don’t want to burn out on it. I genuinely enjoy watching the SMP and being exhausted by it would be something I wouldn’t want to force on myself.

But who knows what will happen? The Karl Jacobs video was something I did spur of the moment because the idea just came to me – so I can’t guarantee that the next video won’t be a three-minute joke about Purpled or whatever.

Anyway, my concrete plans for future Dream SMP videos are essays on Season 1 and Season 2 as well as one for Tales from the SMP.

Before that I have a longer video in the works, which I’ve already teased a bunch, so I hope it will finally be finished sometime. And I also may be working on something … eboys-related? Maybe. I’m not making any promises!

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noordledoordle · 4 years

Photo

“There are fundamental things about ourselves that we know to be true. It's important to remember those things when you find yourself in a tough situation, or you need to make a decision from the heart, but it's equally important to know that you can surprise yourself, too...”

Novel-sized post under the cut:

I don’t say much on my art posts or on Tumblr in general, but as we’re in the home stretch before SU leaves forever, I thought I’d leave a bit of commentary for the five people who may happen across this.

I started watching the original series a couple weeks after Friend Ship aired in 2015, mostly because I love MST3K’s Joel Hodgson and heard he was playing Mayor Dewey. I know it’s a common refrain that you have to sort of “endure” SU up to Mirror Gem, but that was not the case for me. The kookiness, the gentle nature of the characters, the overarching mystery of the setting - SU had me hooked right off the bat.

I loved all the characters (and I still love all the characters! Even if Ronaldo is best left as a background role and Resident Plot Oracle), but I was especially fascinated by Steven. Outwardly, he was as laid-back as his dad, and seemingly took a lot of stuff in stride, even his odd living situation. And every time a Big Reveal happened that re-contextualized the episodes prior, he would react a little bit in the moment, but never too much. Like clockwork, this pattern kept repeating itself. He would continually focus outward on the immediate problem or person in front of him, and get deeply emotional for their issues instead of his own. He’d also get emotional for surface-issue things, like Cookie Cats and snakes.

I found that odd. And intriguing. At first I figured it was just a narrative device since he was the MC and my window into the world of SU, but it happened so often that I finally got suspicious. What was it going to take for this kid to really express himself? He was so good at getting others to open up, why couldn’t he do it, too? Yes, he had times and even a couple episodes where he’d tip his hand for a bit and show something deeper, but they were oh-so-fleeting.

As I started watching the remaining S2 and S3 episodes as they came out, this pattern kept up. The layers of the world and its characters slowly unwrapped, but Steven stubbornly kept to himself and was mostly content to point the audience away from him. (Not a bad thing, narratively, as the stuff with Peridot and the latter half of S3 were wild rides!) Back then, I felt pretty alone in giving a shit about him as a character when it seemed a lot of others didn’t, but, dammit, he was my favorite little mystery regardless and I just hoped his reticence was going somewhere, especially as the show’s stakes got higher and higher.

Sweet, sweet vindication came when Mindful Education aired. The second he started giving terrible advice to Connie, I knew we were finally due to for a good look into his brain. And then came the butterfly on the sword, and well, everything else. Yeah, he’d dropped enough breadcrumbs prior to Mindful Education implying he was proper fucked up about his identity, but this was a whole loaf of fresh French bread. It was now clear beyond any shadow of a doubt that Steven was bottling up the majority of his issues and probably had been from the start.

I mean, damn, the Pink Diamond reveal? Amethyst couldn’t drag more than a couple grumpy lines out of him over pizza, and like most things Rose related, was more about his feelings towards her than what that meant for him. When he flipped out at a hologram of his mom or cried for his dad, his family wasn’t present to hear his inner thoughts. Regardless, after CYM happened and he’d resolved his identity crisis, I was content enough that they’d acknowledged his constant deflection and almost tyrannical need to help others as character flaws and would have been fine with what we got as an ending. Still, there was a lot about Steven that had been left unsaid, and I was excited to see was S6 was gonna be about...

And then the movie and SUF came along, and I swear to God I don’t even know what to do with all this vindication. Rebecca Sugar may as well have beamed into my living room and screamed “LOOK HERE ARE 20 EPISODES OF CONTENT TAILOR-MADE JUST FOR YOU.” Finally, they’re really unwrapping the mystery of our main character. They’re tearing him apart right down to the core of tragic nougat at the center of his being.

So, anyway, here we are at the lowest point of Steven’s long story. He’s burned King’s Landing. He’s crossed the Rubicon. My son, my boy, has shut out everyone he loves and has an honest-to-goodness kill count, and it can’t be justified by saying he was backed into a corner or that he was fighting to protect someone. He didn’t mean to shatter Jasper, but it’s clear he meant to hurt her.

I was always adamant that he’d never shatter anyone, but now that he has, I get why.

Steven is all about that duality. He’s human and Gem, burdened with Special Magical Destiny yet supposedly free to choose his own human path. The closer he gets to discovering his future, the deeper he has to dig into the past. He’s a cute little critter who can quietly drool on himself while napping on a road trip and also an angry teenager frustrated over a life he never had. He’s trapped between reality and facade - all those healing Rose-style powers he worked so hard to get in the original series were a cover for something older, more ancient, more destructive. And, most pertinent to Fragments - he adores soft things like romance and weddings, yet also values tough things like strength and power.

And he’s having trouble walking the tightrope between all these contradictions. When it comes to power, for example, he loves gaining new powers in order to feel useful to his family, but, in fights where he isn’t pink, he’ll always stop just short of using them to their fullest and stay on the defensive as long as he can possibly get away with it. He’ll even apologize or warn his opponent if he tries to do something big. He’ll nearly always fall on the side of softness over power, but the power is still very much there, if unused. And even up to this last episode, he’d always stop just short of going full feral even when he was pink. Part of this is because Steven is a good kiddo at heart, but also afraid of what he can do to someone unchecked.

And now, here at a bad point in Steven’s life when he’s loaded up with PTSD and cut off from his usual support, Jasper (who is also...going through some things) gives him permission to indulge in the sort of thing he’s avoided since that day he summoned a shield with an ice cream bar. She tells him to not hide a part of himself, so for just this fucking once, he lets go. The ecstasy of battle overtakes him. He doesn’t tap into the soft, rounded Rose-style powerset for even a second. No bubbles, no shield, just that raw diamond geometry. And when he gets to the moment of the KO, there’s no stopping, no break to talk things out, no “yo watch out!” He even pins her down to make damn sure she can’t get away. It’s a surprising facet of Steven we have never seen, but it’s still absolutely him, just another one of those parts he squirrels away out of view. He didn’t need that “training” at all... it was always there.

When he told Jasper he’d been holding back, he meant it. He’s been holding back for years, in so many ways.

#steven universe #steven universe future #my art #steven universe spoilers #steven quartz universe

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imagine-loki · 4 years

Text

The Naughty Poltergeist

TITLE :The Naughty Poltergeist

CHAPTER: #1 of ?

AUTHOR'S: lokilover9 & velvetzybanshee

RATING: M

NOTES: This one shot is based on Loki having paid penance for ruining Thor's coronation. He never fell from the bifrost, nor attacked earth and is now free. Not to discount his true history, we just thought he deserved some happy. As for Felipe, he's based on the Spanish character Agador Spartacus, from the movie The Birdcage and speaks in broken english.

EXTRAS: Madre = mother niña = girlfriend panocha = pussy

Original Imagine

Imagine thinking your new house is haunted. No one knows Loki lives there because he's always invisible and conjures furniture as needed. Disgruntled by your presence, he behaves like a poltergeist until one day you've had enough."I'm not leaving! Show yourself dammit!" Nothing happens for days and you think he's gone. Then while giving friends a tour, you find him naked on your bed drinking whiskey. "Cheers, darling. You did say show myself." Only you can see him and he follows you around like that for the remainder of their visit.

Loki was content residing on Midgard. With Thor King of Asgard remaining heavily influenced by Odin, he felt displaced as ever and decided to travel abroad. It was aloud providing he didn't hide from Heimdall and returned were the realm threatened, but that didn't mean he behaved. Midgard's continents teamed with beautiful maidens and Loki spent months at a time seducing them across the globe. Yet an introvert by nature, the constant socializing became exhausting. He needed intervals of solitude to rejuvenate his mind and cock. Indecisive of where, he conjured a world map, closed his eyes and randomly chose a location.

First attempt. "A Frost Giant in the Amazon? I think not."

Second. "Middle of the Bermuda Triangle? Know enough aliens already, thank you."

Third. "Inside and active volcano? Fenrir's arsehole." He scoffed.

Fourth. "Very well. Maine it is."

The god settled in a vacant Victorian evicting its two following buyers with 'ghostly' shenanigans. Yet to the king of this miniature palace's annoyance the next didn't frighten so easily.

Alexis was proud having bought her own house after a long divorce. Closer to friends and hours from meddling family, she'd thought herself free of troubles until sensing the place haunted. While unpacking, items started going missing and resurfacing in different places like her keys, clothing and once her vibrator after an evening of ménage à moi, disturbingly appeared in her dishwasher the next morning. Doors would slam, electricity short circuited, faucets unexpectedly ran, but most disconcerting was a voice randomly whispering 'mine' into her ear. Whether in the shower, her yard, doorways, the ghost didn't care. Alexis burned sage, had the house blessed, held a seance with a local paranormal group, but nothing helped. When returning after a long day at work to find half the main floor repacked, she angrily shouted into the air.

"Ha ha, trickster! You don't scare me and I am 'not' leaving!" She held up a large envelope. "This is 'my' crib and here's the deed to prove it. Show yourself dammit!" Nothing happened so she put everything back, showered, grabbed her vibrator and stormed into the upstairs corridor. "And one more thing! See this? Touch it again and I'll summon your ass with a ouija board and douse you in holy water!"

Loki inwardly chuckled. 'I'll be sure to bring a towel.' When she fell asleep reading in bed, he snuck a peek at what had intrigued her. 'Smutty fanfiction? Tisk, darling. Who could your heartthrob be? The name sounded familiar so he googled it. 'Ah, the actor from Crimson Peak. Good movie, but I'm much better looking. 'A wicked grin curled his lips when she moaned Tom's name. 'Maybe I need to play a little 'dirtier.'

With the next several days uneventful, Alexis thought she'd frightened the ghost off when in reality he was buying time. Since moving her in friends offered extra hands in their free time, but it was her befriended neighbor, a single gay man with a flamboyant, funloving personality who'd helped the most. They met one afternoon when she peered over his fence to complain about blaring Salsa music as he hosted a pool party. Felipe was sunbathing in a yellow thong, wearing sunglasses with enough bling to impress Liberace and choked on a shot of tequila when she whipped a pebble at his head. He invited her over with a promise to adorn shorts, they hit it off and became besties.

Alexis planned to have other friends over for dinner one month after moving in, but with all the goings on had postponed twice. Now with a set date, Felipe was invited too and asked what she planned to cook.

"Who said anything about cooking? I suck at it Amigo and prefer no one hurling on my lawn."

She waved a take out menu and he dramatically gasped. "Chinese food for eight people? Where you gonna put up you blow job booth to pay the mortgage after?"

Alexis smirked. "You're such a slut, Felipe."

He shrugged. "Happy whoopie stick makes a happy me."

"I think I've forgotten what they look like."

"I show you mine, but no touchy touchy." She laughed, knowing he was kidding. "Too long without sex causes brain damage, niña. How long its been for you?"

"Since my ex and I separated nineteen months ago."

"Ay dios mio. I lend you my Dustbuster for the cobwebs down there."

"Not funny, Felipe."

"See. Abstinence makes everyone bitchy. My sister Maritza too. She was happy single before becoming a nun. Now she's Oscar the grouch with eyes like the chucky doll."

"How come you can pronounce words like 'abstinence' and 'cock' so well yet not others?" Alexis teased.

"Don't make me spank you. Come, we go shopping."

"For what?"

"I help you cook. We stay home and talk about cock, mine will curse me in Spanish. He's lonely too."

Alexis slipped on footwear.

"Why you wearing those?" Asked Felipe.

"What's wrong with flip flops?"

He stepped onto the porch. "You need something sexier, like bitch boots."

"It's ninety degrees in the shade today."

"So?"

Loki sighed when the door closed, relieved for some peace. He thought Felipe annoying enough as a neighbor yet worse as a guest who never stopped talking. So much so, he'd pondered concocting a tongue numbing spell, sneaking into his house and applying a heavy dose while he slept. But knowing his flair for drama, he'd run panicked to Alexis in the Boo from Monsters Inc. robe worn onto his deck every morning, carrying a note pleading to stay and until recovering, would hysterically sob each time he couldn't sing along to one of the show tunes on his phone. Loki opted to tolerate him for now. He'd be gone once Alexis left.

The day of feasting came and while she handled finishing touches around the house, Felipe prepared guacamole dip and ingredients for fajitas while mixing margaritas. Hearing music, Alexis snuck to the kitchen and started recording him singing to Bad Girl, by Donna Summer while dancing like a hussy.

"Toot toot, hey, beep beep

Toot toot, hey, beep beep

Hey mister, have you got a dime?

Hey mister, do you want to spend some time, ooh yeah

I got what you want, you got what I need

I’ll be your baby, come and spend it on me…"

He startled when noticing her. "Girlfrien', you post that on social media, I kill you."

Alexis propped her phone on the counter and joined in wildly shaking her chest.

Felipe tried the same. "No fair. I need big titties like yours to jiggle. Next time I bring tangerines and a bra."

Loki secretly watched on. 'Fucknuts.'

The three couples soon arrived. One, old neighbors of Alexis, Blake and Deidre, the others, her friends, Sage, Lisa and their newest flames Colby and Grant. She started a tour on the main floor then the upper leaving her bedroom for last. Excited to show it off, she was already opening the door as they shuffled out of the second.

"And this is my creme de la...eep!" She quietly squeaked once inside.

The resident spookster sat perched against her headboard sporting only what the Norn's delivered him to the universe in and winked pouring himself a whiskey. "You did say show myself, yes?"

She hurried out, slammed the door and her friends froze on approach. "Erm..wouldn't ya know I forgot to make my bed. Anyone for a drink?"

Alexis passed them for the stairs and cringed when Deidre spoke. She was nice enough, but sometimes persistent when it wasn't welcome. "Nonsense, friends don't care. Right everyone?"

Alexis continued down. "Enter at your risk then."

Felipe watched her rush by into the pantry, close the door, followed and closed it too. "What you are doing?"

"I can't go back out there."

"Why?"

"He's upstairs naked on my bed." She anxiously whispered.

"Which boyfriend? I take up the wooden spoon."

"No, the fucking ghost!"

"It's a man? Is he hot and what do I tell your peeps? You afraid to come out of the closet?"

"Felipe!"

"Sorry, it's the margaritas."

"I thought you the one person who believed my stories."

He eyed her sympathetically. "I do. You want I go bribe him to leave with a mcsqeezy?"

"Will you be serious? Ghosts aren't supposed to be naked. One look at him and everyone will think I invited them for an orgy."

Blake and Grant came down first catching bits of their conversation and quietly conversed.

"Can't believe she's still imagining this ghost." Blake wise cracked. "I always told Deidre she had a screw loose."

"Nah." Said Grant. "Lexi's a smart cookie. Sounds more like she needs a man. There's one inside with her. Maybe they'll shag, knock some shit off shelves."

Felipe stuck his head out the door. "You not so quiet, cumquats. I gay. You want I show you my jolly green giant and shag 'you' inside against the creamed corn?"

Loki rubbed the back of his neck. 'I sacrificed prowling beaches of the French Riviera for this?'

Hearing the ladies coming, Alexis approached Blake and quietly inquired. "Still peeing in your wife's pond at night, murdering her koy? I'd see you through my bedroom blinds. Who's a few cans short of a six pack?"

"Oooh snap." Said Felipe.

Grant nudged the arse. "Let's chill in the dining room. There's a makeshift bar and appetizers."

The ladies entered the kitchen. "Who's a nincompoop?" Asked Deidre.

Felipe almost answered but pursed his lips together when Alexis loudly cleared her throat. "You know, just my ex."

"He sure is, honey."

"Your bed's made, girl." Said Sage. "The room looks great."

They all agreed passing through while thirty year old Lisa's younger boyfriend lingered. "Pretty awesome digs ya got here."

"Thanks." Replied Alexis.

Colby slid his hands into his pockets. "Soo..Lisa says you think it's haunted."

"Yep."

He spaced out for a second, staring at the floor. "I once thought a bat in our house was my dead uncle Howie haunting my parents for selling his mannequin of Vlad the Impaler. But hey, sometimes weird shit happens when you're stoned right?" Alexis and Felipe were saved when Lisa called him. "She misses me already. Laters."

"He looks fresh from his madres panocha." Commented Felipe.

"That's the way Lisa likes them. Says the younger they are, the easier it is to train them."

Loki rolled his eyes. 'Age is irrelevant.'

Felipe feigned fright by playfully biting his nails. "She bad. Maybe Colby wear a leash and bark like a good doggy for her?" He goofily imitated one in a deep voice. "Woof, woof..woof. Or maybe he sound like an angry chihuahua?"

Alexis smirked. "I have my own problems. A streaking phantom who now makes unexpected appearances."

Felipe gave her a margarita. "Cheers. These make everything better."

Alexis gulped down the beverage as he watched with raised brows. "Thanks. Next time that streaker appears, I'll just ignore him."

"Next time I give you smaller glass. Go enjoy you friends, niña"

She gave a thumbs up on her way out. "I got this. Easy peasy right?"

Loki mischievously grinned. 'Darling, I'm just getting started.

#Loki #others #submission #Submitted fic #velvetzybanshee #lokilover 9 #chapter 1 #The Naughty Poltergeist

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tabloidtoc · 3 years

Text

People, April 19

Cover: Brad Paisley and Kimberly Williams-Paisley -- love, family and giving back

Page 3: Chatter -- Thandiwe Newton on using her birth name years after it was misspelled in her first acting credit, Barack Obama on daughter Malia and Sasha being embarrassed by him, Martha Stewart on the reaction to her viral pool selfie, Katherine Schwarzenegger Pratt on raising daughter Lyla with husband Chris Pratt, Jennifer Lopez teasing her favorite cookie recipe, Chris Hemsworth on bulking up for parts

Page 4: 5 Things We're Talking About -- Ariana Grande joins The Voice, Michael Strahan minds the gap, Brad Pitt is sharing the tea, Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively battle over beanies, Rege-Jean Page exits Bridgerton

Page 7: Contents

Page 8: StarTracks -- stars' best friends -- Prince Harry hit the beach to play fetch with his rescue dog Pula in Santa Barbara

Page 9: Rachel Brosnahan took a break from filming season 4 of The Marvelous Mrs. Masiel to pet a pup who passed by the set in NYC, Mariah Carey celebrated Easter with two of her dogs

Page 10: Famous Families -- Amy Schumer masked up to play with son Gene at the NY PopsUp festival at Astoria Park in NYC, Jessica Alba and her husband Cash Warren celebrated Easter with their three children Haven and Honor and Hayes, Beyonce posted a rare selfie with her and Jay-Z's oldest daughter Blue Ivy, Victoria and David Beckham got in the Easter spirit with children Brooklyn and Harper and Romeo and Cruz, Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes and fiancee Brittany Matthews celebrated their first Easter with daughter Sterling Skye

Page 11: LeBron James deemed his youngest child daughter Zhuri his workout partner when she joined him in the gym for some flexing, Kate Hudson relaxed in the tub with her daughter Rani Rose

* First Look -- inside Angelina Jolie's scorching return to the big screen -- in the upcoming thriller Those Who Wish Me Dead, Angelina returns to action as a smoke jumper who encounters a traumatized 12-year-old boy played by Finn Little who needs her help

Page 12: Inside Robert Downey Jr.'s modern mansion -- for the spring issue of Purist magazine, Robert and his producer wife, Susan, opened their doors to give a tour of their futuristic Malibu home -- their Binishell, a type of of energy-efficient, dome-shaped house, sits on seven acres and runs on wind turbines and a solar-generated water system that reduce energy consumption

Page 13: StyleTracks -- bold and bright at the Screen Actors Guild Awards -- Viola Davis, Mindy Kaling, Jamie Chung, Helen Mirren, Kaley Cuoco, Kerry Washington

Page 15: Tiger Woods' car crash -- new questions, tough recovery

Page 16: Aaron Rodgers and Shailene Woodley take their love on vacation

Page 18: Heart Monitor -- Vanessa Hudgens and Cole Tucker heating up, Lily James and Queens of the Stone Age bassist Michael Shuman new couple, Michael Buble and Luisana Lopilato happy anniversary, Brian Austin Green and Sharna Burgess getting serious

Page 19: Idris Elba and Caleb McLaughlin horsing around

Page 20: Brandi Carlile shares her struggles

* Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli had an emotional homecoming on Easter weekend after he was released from federal prison

Page 21: Blake Shelton looks back on 20 years of fame

Page 22: Jeannie Mai and Jeezy's backyard fairy tale wedding in Atlanta

Page 29: Passages, Why I Care -- Robert Irwin is helping the planet by being an advocate for Prince William's Earthshot Prize

Page 31: Stories to Make You Smile - Aimee Takaha of Aimee's Farm Animal Sanctuary in Arizona is offering cow-cuddling sessions for those who miss hugs during the pandemic, to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary Carolyn and Kelly Gay re-created their original wedding photos

Page 33: People Picks -- Law & Order: Organized Crime

Page 34: Them, Spy City, Rhiannon Giddens -- They're Calling Me Home, Q&A with David Alan Grier

Page 36: The Serpent, One to Watch -- Mortal Kombat's Lewis Tan

Page 37: The Nevers, Iyanla: Fix My Life

Page 39: Books

Page 40: Cover Story -- Brad Paisley and Kimberly Williams-Paisely -- you have to focus on the love and laughter -- after a pandemic year that sidelined their careers, the singer and actress found joy in family time and purpose in giving back to their community

Page 46: Inside the sparkling, rainbow-filled world of JoJo Siwa -- she began as a kid who loved dance, then found fame on reality TV and YouTube and built her brand to mogul status. That was all before she came out as LGBTQ. She's just getting started

Page 52: Double Talk -- Melissa McCarthy and Octavia Spencer's 25-year friendship -- long before they were famous, the two stars forged a deep personal bond. After more than two decades, the finally got to work together

Page 56: The Lost Kitchen's Erin French turning a painful past into a delicious new life -- addiction and divorce nearly cost her everything, but now she's running one of the most loved and hardest-to-book restaurants in America

Page 60: Solving a 40-year-old murder mystery -- justice for Helene Pruszynski -- four decades after a young woman's brutal rape and murder, new DNA technology leads to her killer

Page 62: Emily VanCamp -- growing up on TV & finding love -- how the busy actress, now costarring on both The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and The Resident, still makes time for what matters most: her family

Page 64: My Mother, Eartha Kitt -- 12 years after the entertainer's death, her daughter Kitt Shapiro reveals a mother like no other: fierce, fabulous and a fighter at heart

Page 69: Why I'm Helping Others Get Vaccinated -- fighting for my patients -- Detroit nurse Monique Morris almost died from COVID-19, and now she's doing her part to help put an end to the pandemic

Page 70: Earth Day Special -- a room-by-room guide to saving the planet -- combating climate change is a daunting challenge, but these small fixes around the house can make a big difference. Plus, inspiring stories of four everyday environmental heroes

Page 73: Jerome Foster II, rallying youth against climate change

Page 74: Katharine Hayhoe, bringing moms together

Page 76: Laura Turner Seydel, carrying on a family tradition

Page 78: Carl Smith, fighting to save his home

Page 88: One Last Thing -- Catherine Zeta-Jones

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kassamigos · 4 years

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welcome back to gallagher academy, KASSANDRA SUTTON! according to their records, they’re a FOURTH year, specializing in ADVANCED ENCRYPTION + “MACGUYVER” SURVIVAL SKILLS + NAVIGATION; and they DID go to a spy prep high school. when i see them walking around in the halls, i usually see a flash of (bouncing copper hair, a million-watt smile, a sticker-covered macbook, and green eyes rolling at her own corny jokes). when it’s the (sagittarius)’s birthday on 12/05/1998, they always request ICE CREAM CAKE from the school’s chefs. looks like they’re well on their way to graduation.

NAME: Kassandra Felicity Sutton

KNOWN AS: Kass

BIRTHDATE: December 5, 1998

ASTROLOGY: Sagittarius sun / Cancer moon / Leo rising

HOMETOWN: Virginia Beach, VA

RESIDENCE: Roseville, VA ( Gallagher Academy )

GENDER: Cis female ( she/her )

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Bisexual

HEIGHT: 5'5"

HAIR COLOR: Brown

EYE COLOR: Green

TATTOOS: None

KNOWN LANGUAGES: English, French, Spanish, Mandarin, German, Italian

IMMEDIATE FAMILY:

Laura Sutton: Mother, President of Gallagher Academy ( Amy Adams FC )

Henry Edwards: Father, accountant & undercover spy, deceased ( Chris Pine FC )

Valeria Sutton: Younger sister, second year at Gallagher Academy ( Danielle Rose Russell FC )

background.

Kassandra Sutton was born the eldest of Laura Sutton and Henry Edwards. As a child, her favorite bedtime story had been hearing about how they had met, a chance run-in while both in Washington DC – her mother a legacy spy, and her father a simple accountant from England. It had been a quick and steadfast love, and within a year of meeting they were married. Not long after the couple moved to Virginia Beach, where Kass and eventually her baby sister Valeria Sutton were born. Most spies keep their career a secret from their family, but Henry had been clued into the family from the start, and the two raised their daughters with the same privy information. Knowing this had always made Kass feel like there were no secrets in their family, and that she could tell her parents everything, a trait that never seemed to leave her.

She was eight years old when her father was killed in a car crash, and it changed everything. Having done a lot of traveling throughout their early childhood, Laura now needed a job stable enough to raise her two daughters alone. So when her alma mater Gallagher Academy offers her the President position during one of the roughest times for the university, it’s hard to turn it down. The Sutton family are given a small apartment in the mansion tucked away from where the students live, and the three of them slowly make it their home and new normal.

Despite permanently being under the same roof as their mother, Laura Sutton had come into the position with a lot of issues to fix, and she used this opportunity to dive into her work. So Kass picked up the slack, packing lunches for her and Val and helping her sister with her homework every evening, trying to shoulder the weight for her mother as much as possible. It caused her to grow up a little quicker than others, but she doesn’t hold any resentment towards her mother for it, because she knows Laura did all she could. Besides, it made her bond with her sister closer than ever, and to this day Val will always be the most important person in her life. If there’s one place she knows like the back of her hand, it’s Gallagher Academy.

One of the hardest things she ever had to do was leave home ( or more specifically, her sister ) to go off to boarding school in Wyoming, practically halfway across the country. But whereas she spent her childhood going to school with normal students and excelling leaps and bounds ahead of them, Kass enjoyed being able to be around like-minded individuals with families more similar to her own. It’s there that she grew into herself, developing her affinity for computers and figuring out who she was outside of Val’s older sister. It’s also when she came out as bisexual, and had her first taste of a relationship with one of her best friends.

It was a strange transition to go from being just another student in prep school to the eldest daughter of President Laura Sutton when she arrived back at Gallagher, this time as a student. Unlike in prep school, there were a lot of students who wanted to befriend her, and Kass had a hard time trying to decipher who wanted to be her friend because of her mother’s legacy, or for her. So she worked hard to make a reputation for herself, using her knowledge of Gallagher to make others feel more welcome and at home, while making an effort never to refer to her mother as President or bringing her job into the conversation. Everyone already knows who she is; they don’t need Kass to remind them.

gallagher academy, third year.

The merging of Gallagher Academy and Blackthorne Institute Kass’ third year had been an unprecedented one, but unlike other Gallagher students, she had no qualms with inviting boys to the school. It was nice to see some of her old prep school friends and family friends under the same roof as her. Learning that Blackthorne had been a school for assassins was surprising, but she didn’t think ill of those who had gone there. After all, it’s not like she had been blind to the possibility of others ending up in that field.

Spring semester was rough for Kass; her two best friends had started seeing two boys, leaving her to feel lonely and forgotten. It didn’t help that her feelings for one of her best friends had returned, and the pressure of others constantly coming to her for advice or their problems had begun to weigh on her. The Valentine’s Day dance turned three-day lockdown only made matters worse, especially after finding out one of the two students who had been murdered was Amelia Taylor, Kass’ ex-girlfriend.

Not like after having a falling out with one of her best friends, an anonymous email is sent around campus, outing students’ parents as previous members of the Brotherhood, an organization behind the death of Amelia and the witness protection student. Imagine her surprise when her father’s name – the normal, civilian accountant – had been on that list. Unable to cope with the betrayal she feels, Kass pushes away her friends and family, and goes off on a rebellious streak, uncharacteristically getting drunk and having a few messy hookups.

It takes Val calling her out on her shit for her to come back to reality, and Kass finally confronts her mother. It’s only then that Laura Sutton tells her the truth: her father had been a Blackthorne alum and Brotherhood member before working as a double agent to help take down the organization, and it was his part in the operation that had gotten him killed. ( You can read the self-para on it here. )

After the news settled, Kass was able to repair the relationships she may have strained, and the imprisonment of Amelia’s killer and the Brotherhood being defeated had her feeling more like her old self. She’s ready for her fourth and finally year at Gallagher in the fall, and to see what the future holds.

personality.

Kass is a total nerd, spending most of her time behind her laptop screen working on hacking jobs or researching whatever her current interest is. Her IQ isn’t abnormally high and she doesn’t have a photographic memory, but she’s quick to be able to pick things up, especially anything binary related. She is also full of useless information that she’s garnered through her many, many nights lost on Wikipedia or Reddit at three in the morning. She’s curious to a fault, often sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong – and being able to break through firewalls and access her mother’s records certainly doesn’t hurt.

Despite being a complete dork, she is extremely personable and has the ability to make friends with just about anyone. Those who welcome her into their life have a fiercely loyal friend on their side that will always drop everything at first call. Kass is optimistic and often quick to trust people, but isn’t as naive as she appears, especially after learning the truth about her father.

She’s also a total romantic, in love with the idea of love, and loves nothing more than to assist other people in their love lives. However, when it comes to her own love life, Kass is notorious for ignoring red flags and going for the first person. Her relationship with Amelia ended in heartbreak after not being on the same page and thinking it was more than it was, so since then she’s learned to protect her heart a little better.

Just call her a golden retriever, because she will lick just about anyone’s face and be their best friend at first meeting.

more information / headcanons:

Kass is a pretty experienced traveler, used to flying from a young age when they would visit her dad’s family in England at least once a year. Once Val went off to prep school and the three Suttons were separated more often than not, they would plan big summer trips during Laura’s time off, visiting places like Italy, France, and Hawaii. Venice is one of her favorite destinations ( it just seemed SO romantic ) .

Her favorite place in the world is Washington DC. The fascination started at a young age when she would daydream about her parents meeting there, but since getting older she’s grown to love all the museums and monuments and make her own memories. Her plans post-grad are to move to DC and get a cyber security job at an agency.

She still has her childhood bedroom in her mother’s apartment, that she does visit at least once a week, mostly because her ball python named Siri lives there. She tried having Siri in her dorm her first year at Gallagher, but one of her roommates wasn’t too keen on living with a snake, so now she keeps her at her mother’s.

One of her most prized possessions is her rock collection, a mixture of different minerals and rocks, as well as rocks and sand from places she’s traveled.

She’s really big into birthdays, and all her friends of hers receive a freshly baked birthday cake from her. They’re not made from scratch – despite enjoying baking, Kass is particularly great at it – but it’s the thought that counts !

Kass has an appetite like Jughead Jones and a diet like a Gilmore girl.

An easy way to her heart is through flowers; sunflowers are her favorites.

TL;DR: Kass is the eldest daughter of President Laura Sutton and has lived at Gallagher Academy since she was eight years old, so she knows the place like the back of her hand. She basically raised her younger sister Val and is an extraverted computer nerd with a thirst for knowledge ( or more accurately, useless facts ) and an optimistic approach on life, though it’s not without hardship.

current & wanted connections here

#this is nothing new my extra ass just wanted to redo the graphic yet again #and tumblr keeps crashing whenever i try uploading it to the original post #gallagher:intro #dont look at me

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simmy-ships · 3 years

Text

✎ Simmy’s Writing Desk ✎

It's been a long time since I posted something, and while I've been writing in my own time I just haven't posted my fics here. So let's change that! Let's start off with a favorite of mine with the ikevamp boys!

Warnings: None!

~~~

Sighing to himself for the millionth time in the last hour, Comte once again walked the familiar halls of the Louvre wistfully watching people stare at the various art forms⁠—that some of his residents have made, he thought to himself—in awe. Despite seeing so many faces come and go throughout his very long life, the pure raw expression of joy always made him smile.

Coming to a halt in front of a random stone bust in the mainroom, he glanced over to see a group of people laughing together and excitedly whispering to each other, speaking in what sounds like both English and French. Hearing them switch languages fluently made the blonde painfully reminiscence, closing his eyes as if to block the sight of something. Purposefully trying to push it away.

It's been 7 months since she left.

It's funny. Usually time moves too fast for his liking and yet here he was, still strung up on the woman that left his manor many weeks prior. He can still vividly remember her last night in the mansion and gentle farewell like it was yesterday, as much as he tried to come to terms with it.

- - -

They all were sitting in the dining room, eating one last full dinner together a little earlier than usual. The air was tense as everyone was acutely aware of what time it was, taking wary glances at Akilah as she quietly ate her meal. She was relieved of her duties and wore her modern time clothes, just like how she first arrived.

People like Vincent or Issac couldn't bother picking up their utensils, instead just wringing their hands together nervously or staring down at their laps. Even Theo and Arthur bit their tongues for the day, not wanting to disrupt her while she packed.

They all were waiting for her final goodbye. For her to just up and disappear right from the table.

She finished first, with Comte a close second, and cleared her throat softly. All of the men stiffened as she stood up, pushed in her chair and walked to the barren part of the room. All eyes were on her and she took a steadying deep breath.

"I'm sure you're all aware of what day it is, so I'll make this brief," She said with a warm smile before bowing, hair gracefully falling along with her. "Thank you, all of you...for everything. Getting the chance to meet and befriend you is something I never knew I needed. This past month has been such an amazing experience that I wouldn't trade it for the world...and would happily do again. Without hesitation. I truly appreciate what you've done for me."

The painter was the first to crack, quickly running up to her and crushing her in a hug, wailing that he's glad he met her too and that he'll miss her deeply. The woman wrapped her arms around him, petting his hair with a small heartfelt laugh.

Then one by one, each man approached her and said their piece, some more tight lipped than others, but she understood what they meant all the same. Even Jean was apprehensive when pulling away from her hug.

By the end, the only person left was Comte, who was silently watching from the back with a forlorn look on his face. Everyone must have figured he wanted to say his goodbye in private, as no one questioned him when he offered his hand to her with a sad grin.

"Ready to go?" He murmured, trying to memorize the shape and warmth of her hand in his own. "I hope you don't mind me walking you to the door."

She shook her head, eyes glittering with unshed tears she tried to blink away. "Not at all."

With a final smile back at the residents, the two of them quietly left, walking together down the empty halls towards the double doors that started it all. The closer they got, the more lonely the place seemed to become. As if she was taking the light and warmth with her.

There sat her bag full of her clothes and other apparel and novelties she gained during her stay here, having to leave most of it behind since she simply couldn't take it all at once. The nobleman held both of her hands with the utmost care, looking down at the woman that not only ensnared his heart, but the other men as well.

"Akilah I…" The blonde never stumbled on his words, having been alive for so many centuries to master it and keep up an air of professionalism at all times, but with this, he was at a loss for words. "Please believe me when I say that you've changed us for the better. Having you here, laughing with you, getting to know you...it's been the most pleasant thing I've ever had the joy of experiencing."

The look of adoration and awe on her face nearly made him want to kiss the living daylights out of her but refrained himself, deciding to use his words instead. He hasn't felt this strongly about something like this in a long time.

"You...you are something very special, ma chérie. No one could befriend those men as easily as you. I'm honestly a little jealous that the people in your time will have you longer than us." Hearing her laugh at that last comment made his old heart warm.

"Thank you Comte, for housing me, protecting me, and helping me traverse the 19th century with ease. If I ever have the chance to come back here, I'd like to try and see all of you again." With that said, Akilah wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him tightly, making him freeze before holding her with just as much tenacity. "I'll miss you."

Breathing in her scent, her familiar perfume deeply one last time with a final squeeze, he pulled away woefully. "We'll miss you too." A clock in a different room chimed the late hour, a dreadful reminder of her last moments here.

It made his heart clench watching her open the door and grab her bag off the floor, stepping a few feet into the dark hallway filled with unused art pieces before turning back to him with a bright smile.

"Goodbye, Comte."

"Farewell, Akilah."

Watching her silhouette fade into the darkness, he slowly shut the door and heard the quiet sound of time whisking her away.

- - -

Taking in a shuddered breath, the nobleman opened his eyes and looked around. The group has moved on to a different exhibit, people around him didn't seem bothered by how long he stood there for. Probably assumed he was deep in thought by the sculpture in front of him, when in reality, all he could see was her.

Pinching the bridge of his nose in self loathing, he didn't notice or care for the sudden influx of people coming into the museum and all of the mingling scents wafting in. He's grown used to these typical aromas and subconsciously blocked them out.

But one caught him off guard. It stood out among the rest and had his heart hammering in his chest instantaneously.

Whipping around, he scanned the crowd. Looking for tan skin, violet eyes, brunette hair, her infectious smile. Was his mind playing tricks on him or is she seriously here? Did she come back…?

After a few more fruitless moments of eagerly searching the masses, he sighed in defeat before deciding to head back home. He already finished all of his errands here for the month, and tonight is when the door opens again. Maneuvering through the dense groups of people, he was accidentally bumped into and the poor kid apologized profusely for the action.

Putting on his best smile, the blonde waved the kid off and continued on his way, but not before he felt someone tap his shoulder. Exasperated, he was about to make a highly out of character comment until the person spoke up.

"Excuse me, monsieur?" The voice said and he felt as if time stopped for the first time in his long life.

Not wanting to believe it was true just yet, Comte quietly looked back and was met with Akilah's breathtaking smile. She wore a simple dress and was dragging a suitcase with her. How she managed to get it through security crossed his mind briefly before his eyes landed on the item in her palm. Emotions welled up inside him.

"I believe you dropped your tie clip, the kid knocked it off when you bumped into each other. May I put it back on for you?" She offered, eyes softening when seeing his normally aloof mask crumble a bit.

He nodded, remembering back to how they first met, with the same scenario. But this time instead of her earring, it's his custom tie clip. Oh, time was a funny little thing.

"Yes," Comte shakily said, pulling her into a much needed hug and breathing in her comforting scent again. His heart swelled when she nuzzled into his chest with a giggle, allowing himself to indulge just this once. "I'll always say yes to you, ma chérie."

#simmy writes #self insert #its a short one but I'm still really happy with this!#and if you want to read my work outside of tumblr click on my carrd link and go to my masterpost!#I update that more than here #ikevamp comte

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maximumphilosopheranchor · 4 years

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Hello!Can you give information about philip ii’s court and people that surrendered him in general?

Hello!

Sorry for the delay. I was pondering a lot drafting my answer how to respond to your question the best because firstly it’s too broad a matter to deal with it here, and, secondly, Philip’s biographies I have read don’t provide as much detailed information on the court under Philip as I would like. Also, I have to say - I haven’t done with reading about Philip and this is something I look forward to learn more about in future.

Anyway, here’s what I gathered. It covers the order after Philip’s return to Spain in 1559.

“The ‘court’ in Madrid had several functions. At the centre was the king, served by his household. There were satellite households, of the queen, the Infantas, and other immediate members of the royal family. Their combined personnel, adding on the staff in the stables and the guards, amounted to a small army. The theatre of their activities was the enlarged and reformed Alcázar [the royal palace, formerly fortress]. The king as chief actor brought three other spheres of activity into this scenario: the functioning of government, the management of diplomacy and ritual, and the direction of public entertainment. Fixing the king’s residence in Madrid gave for the first time in Spain’s history a permanent location for all these functions. (..)

Since the adoption of Burgundian ceremonial in 1548 the size of the royal household had grown enormously. The main component was the king’s household, divided into five main units: household, kitchen, chapel, stables and cellar. Each unit was headed by a nobleman in charge of its administration. The household guard formed an additional unit. Other immediate members of the royal family had smaller households, all financed by the king. The most drastic innovation of these years was the large and expensive retinue which Elizabeth Valois brought and insisted on maintaining, although many of the servants were sent home a few weeks later. The Venetian ambassador felt that it was because ‘the Frenchmen were very ill-dressed, dirty, careless and disrespectful’. Elizabeth’s demands inflated the queen’s household into an entity almost as large as that of the king. (..)

The king’s court in his last dozen years suffered from a lack of social gaiety, due in part to the king’s poor health, in part to his absences and travels. But for the first twenty-five years of the reign there was no lack of vitality. (..) Three factors explain the vigorous life of the royal circle. Most nobles took the court seriously; the queens contributed enormously to social life; and the king himself had an active interest in music and entertainment. (..)

No European court could exist without a client nobility. The Spanish nobles continued to have immense military and economical resources, but these were threatened by rising costs and a high death-rate among heirs. The court offered hope, because it presented the chance of employment and influence, as well as contacts which could lead to marriage. For those who liked such things, there was also the life-style, a welcome relief after the monotony of the provinces. As Madrid grew, more and more nobles gravitated there. ‘It is terrible,’ the king commented, ‘that they all want to leave their estates and become residents of the court.’ A courtly society came into existence, with its own special rules and, later, its own literature. The court of the king, like the courts of the great nobility, was a theatre not only of ritual but also of entertainment, leisure and diversion. (..)

The contribution of the queens to court life was fundamental. Elizabeth of Valois from the beginning tried to reproduce the gaiety of the Renaissance court she had left behind. She enjoyed parties, masked balls, buffoonery, spectacles, outings to her palaces, and picnics. (..) In jousts, she played the part of liege lady to the three young court princes: Don Carlos, Don Juan of Austria, and the prince of Parma. It gave them a romantic scenario which in turn influenced their chivalric ideals. Elizabeth also contributed to the cultural life of court by her love of music, plays and art: she extended her personal patronage to Sanchez Coello and to the Italian Sofonisba. Anna’s [Philip’s fourth wife] role was more subdued and coincided more closely with that of Philip. In the absences of the king’s court, the queens had their own social life in Madrid. Anna loved comedies. In February 1571, she ‘enjoyed herself in the apartments of the princess [Philip’s sister Juana] at a comedy that she ordered to be performed there. At four in the afternoon the Infantas [Philip’s daughters] went to join the queen and enjoyed the play as though they were much older.’

The king’s sisters also played a crucial role. When the empress Maria came to reside in Madrid, she contributed powerfully to the prestige of a city which, during Philip’s absence in Lisbon, had no king. She set herself up in apartments in convent of the Descalzas, where she periodically put on musical entertainments. All visiting dignitaries to Madrid were obliged by protocol to make a formal visit to the empress before calling on any other official.

(..) In his youth as well as during his years abroad, he [Philip] had delighted in jousts and tourneys. The Amadis of Gaul was one of his favourite books (he later approved it as a set text for his son Philip when the latter began to learn French). Whenever possible he presided over tournaments at court. (..) The essential feature of the ‘court’ in Madrid was the royal household. If the king was away, he took most of his household with him. This turned the Alcázar into an empty shell, populated only by its staff, some government officials, and the household of any remaining member of the royal family (..) Practical factors, such as the sheer cost of moving around the kingdom, were beginning to distance European rulers from their subjects. Complex ceremonial further helped to isolate the king. Philip was deeply concerned for his people, but had little effective contact with them. He felt that his accessibility on feast-days, which he tried to maintain all his life, was adequate. (..) As often as feasible, he had his lunch ‘in public’. But this involved no more than lunching (alone) in one of the large reception rooms of the Alcázar, where members of the court and public might see him. (..) He made a rule of being accessible to private petitions while going to or from Sunday mass and deliberately walked slowly, so that people would have a chance to catch up with him.”

Henry Kamen, Philip of Spain

As you can see although Philip had made Madrid the capital city in 1561 he didn’t reside there permanently. He traveled considerably within his Iberian realms and moved among his country palaces which he improved, rebuilt or built - the Pardo, Aranjuez, Valsaín, also known as El Bosque de Segovia, and later, of course, El Escorial where he spent much time after 1571 - and which were located not far from Madrid. In his far distance journeys through the Iberian peninsula the large part of the court went with him but to his country palaces he usually took with himself a small entourage.

“Although Philip made Madrid his permanent administrative capital in 1561 he spent less than half his life there. He resided in his Aragonese lands for several months in 1563-4 and 1585-6, with a shorter visit in 1592; he toured Andalusia in 1570; and in 1580 he left for Portugal and spent three years away from Madrid. Teofilo Ruiz has stressed in A king travels that these long, slow royal progresses involved immense preparation and lavish urban spectacles that often left the king exhausted, and that each of them was ‘inextricably linked to the exercise and experience of power’. At other times the king travelled informally, moving rapidly between his country houses with a small entourage and sometimes alone as he tried to escape the bustle of his court, because ‘tranquility’, according to a Venetian ambassador in 1565, ‘is His Majesty’s greatest entertainment and relaxation’.”

Geoffrey Parker, Imprudent King: A New Life of Philip II

Beside Philip’s wives, sisters, and children at his court in various time periods lived also other his family members: Philip’s illegitimate half-brother Don Juan of Austria, Philip’s nephews Alessandro Farnese, the Duke of Parma, and Arch-Dukes Rudolf, Ernest, Albert and Wenceslas.

On the men who surrounded Philip at the beginning of his reign.

Philip’s closest friend and one of the most important advisers was Ruy Gómez de Silva (1516-1573). He was a Portuguese nobleman and had served Philip’s mother as a page. He and the Castilian nobleman Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, the Duke of Alba, were Philip’s most influential household officers. According to Patrick Williams:

“Technically, his power-base derived from his office of sumiller de corps [court officer in charge of supervising the dressing and undressing of a king and everything to do with the royal bedchamber], in which capacity he controlled the working of Philip’s household, but in reality he owed his political power to his personal relationship with the monarch. Philip had come to trust Ruy Gómez’s judgement and recognised that he needed his moral and practical support as he entered into his kingship. It may indeed have been to prevent Ruy Gomez from exercising too great an influence over Philip that Charles had placed Alba and Gómez in equally strong positions at the head of Philip’s household – Alba as his mayordomo mayor [chief officer of a household] and Ruy Gómez as his sumiller de corps. In England the two men began a struggle for influence that continued until Ruy Gómez ’s death.”

Patrick Williams, Philip II

Apart from this and other posts Philip also created Ruy Gómez the Prince of Éboli and Duke of Pastrana.

Philip’s the second perhaps closest friend after Ruy was Luis de Requesens (1528-1576), the son of Philip’s governor Juan de Zúñiga and his wife Estefanía de Requesens both of whom Philip held in high regard. Unlike Ruy Gómez who was 11 years older than Philip Luis born in 1528 was almost of the same age as Philip and they grew up together, he was Philip’s chief page. He never acquired such power as Ruy Gómez but Philip relied on him greatly and entrusted him important missions which often included controlling the behaviour of someone whose judgement Philip doubted. Philip created him the Grand Commander of Castile and he served Philip as a diplomat and soldier, as lieutenant general to Philip’s half-brother Don Juan suppressing the Morisco revolt, as viceroy of Milan and the Governor of the Netherlands (1573-76).

Among Philip’s personal confidants were also Gómez Suárez de Figueroa, Count and later Duke of Feria (his first representative to Elizabeth I), and don Antonio de Toledo.

Beside Ruy Gómez and the Duke of Alba important statesmen at the beginning of Philip’s reign (not counting those he left in the Netherlands) were: Philip’s secretary Gonzalo Pérez, Francisco de Eraso, secretary of the Council of Finance, Bartolomé de Carranza, Archbishop of Toledo, Fernando de Valdés, Archbishop of Seville and Inquisitor-General, Philip’s confessor Bernardo de Fresneda. During the 1560s a very influential figure was Cardinal Diego de Espinosa whom Philip appointed a member of the council of State, president of the council of Castile and Inquisitor-General. As very important government figures during the second half of the 1560s emerged Philip’s secretaries Antonio Pérez and Mateo Vázquez who was also Philip’s chaplain.

If you have means or access I recommend you to check Maria José Rodriguez-Salgado’s article 'The Court of Philip II of Spain' in R. Asch and A.M. Birke (Eds), Princes, Patronage and the Nobility: The Court at the Beginning of the Modern Age, c.1450-1650 and The Courtier and the King: Ruy Gómez de Silva, Philip II, and the Court of Spain by James M. Boyden.

#Anonymous #ask #Philip II #Philip II of Spain

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vitosscaletta · 4 years

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🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓 Christian, Helena, Gina, Georgie, and Aaliyah!!!

THANK U!!!! sorry this is so late :(

CHRISTIAN

IDK if I ever said this but his whole mansion in Bel Air is modeled after the interior in Versailles - still modern but with STRONG Baroque vibes

His favorite european city - besides Versailles of course - is Venice 😳 he lived there for some time in the 18th century and loved it there... he misses it a lot

He has a ghoul.... his name is Claude, the only living descendant of his favorite sister :(( Christian tracked him down in the early 1900s in Paris and eventually offered him to embrace him, but Claude was like nah... I wanna see the sunlight dude. They’re still living together in Bel Air since they’re the only family they have left :0

Hangs out in LA nightclubs a lot - not the goth ones we see in the game.. the sexy ones where rich people hang out, he mostly feeds from them there.. slurp slurp!

Can speak english, french, italian, german and a few words in latin.. op king. being that old gives you time to learn languages ig

Went into an overdramatic state of fake depression after Helena dumped him.. didn’t leave his mansion at all, just hung around in his room, not eating (... drinking blood..), moping and talking about killing himself bc Toreadors are fucked up. Claude is like.. get up dude -_-

HELENA

I also dont know if I ever said this but even though shes not the fledgling.. Heather is still her ghoul (she was in the santa monica clinic to get somehting done for la croy and yeah).. she regrets it because Heather is soooo annoying and does all of this shit for her like calling her her master and all that and it’s just so uncomfortable. Especially when she offers her her student loans. Helena is like “oh my god I can’t take this what the fuck?????????? this is yours. okay you know what.. if you insist.. i will take it 😏”

She doesn’t have the heart to kick her out though.. mostly because Helena misses having a roommate :c

The only people who were genuinely sad about her death are her mom and sister jhdsjhds.. the fake rich friends she had before her embrace didn’t really give a fuck about her until they realized they could get attention through it & started posting sob stories on myspace. Helena is mad about it.. those hoes treated her like a third wheel when she was alive 😤

she probably ends up “accidentally” telling her family she’s alive..

what annoys her the most about her death isn’t even the fact that she was killed.. it’s the fact that she didn’t die in a beautiful way, she was just some random nobody with no friends or fame who may have been killed by her boyfriend (except that the official story is that she never arrived at his house). Christian couldn’t have waited until she was an established actress so it could have been more poetic, nah he had to embrace her when nobody cared :((

She liked Christian’s Bel Air mansion but honestly?? her weird old apartment was still better - it wasn’t big and the furniture was a mess but it was still her home

GINA

Grew up with a single mother because her father died early in an accident... he was a construction worker or something :c her mom worked as a maid for a rich family until she got fired for stealing from them jdfkjsd

gets to rapture by assuming some rich girl’s identity. idk how she does that but.. somehow she does. Of course nobody knows about that, it’s her big secret 🤫 to the other rapture residents she’s just a rich heiress who acts a little different from New York’s high society because she lived abroad

she dislikes Rapture’s upper class for living so large when the poor have nothing just like she had nothing growing up.. doesn’t do much about it though.. Gina: *donates like a tiny amount of her wealth to an orphanage* wow helping people feels so good :)

Doesn’t have any real friends in rapture either except maybe Diane.. ironically because she thinks everyone else is fake 🙄

She didn’t like F*ntaine AT ALL because she thought he looked creepy but also because the Bronx accent scared her.. she’s really paranoid that he might have run into her while she was still living there and remembers her even though that’s soooo unlikely 😒 every time they’re in the same elevator together she turns away and pretends to look for something in her handbag

The civil war is just the worst for her bc she doesn’t want to align with the rebels they’re all freaks but there’s also no way in hell she’ll be on Andy Ryan’s side.. she’s just like *reluctantly joins rebels because she thinks its the winning team and because she thinks A**** is hot and doesn’t realize its the same guy she hid from at parties* *doesn’t do shit*

GEORGIE

has a weird relationship with her mom... she died when she was very very young and Georgie really doesn’t remember much about her - almost everything she knows is from her father reminiscing about how beautiful and loving she was but that’s not.. true.. its just how he remembers her, in reality she was a very cold & narcissistic person. she’ll never know the truth though :/

does NOT care about any politician or noble whatsoever but had a soft spot for Jessamine mostly because she made a friendly impression on her (from what she’s seen on posters and all that stuff).. Georgie liked to imagine she wanted to make things better for people like her. (the heart when pointed at Georgie: this bitch digs through garbage cans. freak.)

has little pots with flowers all over her little clinic in the distillery district, it adds a little life to her weird looking little home and makes it look even more goth-ish because they’re all dried out :/

is one of those people who are pretentious about drinking tea

has a weird rivalry with dr Galvani that he doesn’t know about 😒 her clinic is near his home and she's mad jealous of him, this dude has money to fund his research and expensive tools and what does he do with it?? dissect fucking rats? (she heard about it from Granny Rags and yeah she believes everything she says).. she’s out there calling him an idiot, meanwhile Galvani doesn’t even know she even exists

used to be a pickpocket as a kid.. mostly when her dad didn’t make enough money, she still got into trouble for it most of the time though and stopped when she got older -_- its ok though because she got to steal family heirlooms at the Boyle mansion during their masquerades because one of the sisters called her ugly

AALIYAH

unlike the game wants you to believe she’s from Nevarra City rather than Ostwick 😳 the youngest of 5 siblings and the only mage in the family - since Nevarra is pretty chill about magic and has no circles, she grew up without the whole oppression thing that’s going on in the rest of thedas, thus all this templar shit is nonsense to her. We’re fine back home, thank you! Your mages are just fucked up because you put them in prisons!

She was supposed to become a Mortalitasi and have a pretty powerful position in the Nevarran court until idk something political that involved the chantry in one way or another happened and she got shipped off to ferelden’s circle (post blight duh). She managed to escape after a few weeks in its weakened state and joined the mage underground - she never really was a circle mage like in the game 🙄

She and a group of other mages she was friends with were supposed to go to the conclave together to.. vote for mage rights but you know what happened! Also you know this excerpt from a very angry person’s journal you can find in the fade? that was from her best friend who died in the explosion :c She still misses her a lot

The only people she’s close to within the inquisition are Sera, Varric and Dorian.. the rest are either more acquaintances or outright hate her (especially Vivienne.. i love her but BOY did they not get along).. She likes the advisors a little more, Josie is cool they’re not like bffs or anything but they like each other.. Leliana and her got along soooo well I think they were really good friends. Cullen was.. unfortunately her boyfriend but they also hated each other in the beginning. more on that later

The worst thing for her was the attack on Haven it fucked her up sooooo bad :c All those innocent people she wanted to protect dying, she tried her best to save them but it was still too late for some of them despite her best efforts.. it just really messes with her and she hates thinking about it.. she actually tried to run off on one occasion after that 😳

Feels sooo weird about the fact that she’s nevarran because on one hand that’s her home and she’s proud of it!!! on the other hand everyone acts like she’s the biggest freak bc they think she was in a death cult or something and she HATES it :((

#thank u! sorry this is so late #ngl i miss being obnoxious about my ocs but also... not... most of it just happens on twitter and discord at this point #queennymeria

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tessatechaitea · 4 years

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The Invisibles #3

This is exactly what taking drugs isn't.

Our world is composed of geniuses and not-geniuses. That's the kind of statement a not-genius makes because it's so fucking obvious. Do you ever have to say anything that pretty much says "All of the people on the world are either this or that"? Anyway, the point I was making wasn't that I'm one of the not-geniuses even though it's the point I accidentally made. The point was that in the non-genius camp, we have those who are smart enough to recognize genius and those who sit grumpily in their pee-puddles whining about how the high-falutin' elites are trying to make things different. Different, in this case, generally means better but if you're a non-genius who can't recognize geniuses, you're just mad that somebody said french fries might not be the most nutritional side dish (even though you could still live in a world where you acknowledge that french fries are both not even close to nutritional and also the best food on the planet. I mean, you have that choice. But I guess the pee-puddle you're sitting in (which is slowly leaking into your gun cabinet) has probably distracted you from rational thought). Again, that wasn't the point I was going to make (about the french fries!) but I have a problem staying on topic. Partly it's because I've never been able to stay on topic (you should read some of my college essays which I'm not going to release to the public so even though I suggested you should read them, you won't be reading them. Ever) and partly it's because of another reason that I forgot while typing the college paper parenthetical statement. My point might have been that you can recognize a genius because they can state plain what other people are obfuscating in their pronouncements. If you're not smart enough to recognize the genius, you might think the genius is spreading propaganda, mostly because you really want to believe the thing that isn't true because it shields you from guilt or blame or repercussions stemming from following your own selfish desires at any cost. The genius is reviled by people who can't recognize genius and viled by people who can. Or unviled? Previled? Maybe I should have just gone with lauded. You might think I'm saying all of this in regards to Grant Morrison but you'd be wrong. I'm actually saying this about A.R. Moxon, the author of The Revisionaries, whose Twitter handle is @JuliusGoat. He did not pay me to point out that he's a genius although he probably should have. I suppose it's not too late. Being that he's a genius and knows the smart thing to do, I'm sure he'll buy my RPG when he Googles his name and/or Twitter handle and finds me sticking my tongue way up his asshole in this post. I mean, I'm basically saying he's smarter than Grant Morrison! Getting back to Grant Morrison, is he really a genius? I'm not so sure. I think maybe he's just a libertine who did a lot of drugs and traveled to a lot of sort-of-spiritual places (not to be more spiritual but to get his hot genius take on spirituality in a place that smells of burning corpses and goat semen while he shits his guts out back at the hotel high on hashish). Sometimes when you've done acid and other illicit substances, you feel the need to think you've risen above the flock by doing a thing most people will never consider doing. Maybe Grant doesn't exactly feel this way but some of his stuff sometimes comes across as that. I mean, sure, if you've ever done LSD or the like, you've definitely experienced a sort of melding of yourself with the profound and the mundane and the timeless in a way that usually only schizophrenics experience. You have done something that has changed you from the person you were before. But thinking that it has somehow made you different or better than those who haven't done it just means that you've never talked to people who went to high school in the flyover states. I've known some really boring and backwards people who did a lot of acid simply because there wasn't anything else to do out in the cornfields. It really did surprise me, a resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, to discover how prevalent psychoactive drugs were in the Midwest and Plains states. I thought that was just the hippies and children of hippies! What I didn't think, though, was that it made me a non-sheep (like the guy in my San Jose State creative writing class who once wrote a story about how he had broken from the flock because he dared to try LSD. The teacher loved his take and luckily for me, she was blind so she didn't see me rolling my eyes and making jerk-off motions from the back of the class. I mean, wow, dude. You dared to try LSD. I was probably on LSD while listening to the teacher read that stupid ass story!). Okay, maybe my whole take on "Grant Morrison thinks he's better than everybody else" stems from my envy of the idiot jock who wrote a stupid story that the teacher loved while she mostly just reacted to my stuff with "WTF? I guess I see how nostalgia can seem like a dream and the pop culture death of Superman can sometimes be more powerful than the death of a close family member but why did you choose to make none of this linear and what the hell do your Star Wars figures have to do with your future death? Also, the baseball game between Heaven and Hell where Heaven wins because Hitler snarls 'Jew' and then beans Jesus with the pitch to push in the last run was decent." Now that we've resolved some of my issues (I mean, maybe not "resolved" but at the very least "put out there in the open so you know where my biases are coming from"), let's get on with The Invisibles #3. When we last left our homophobic pouting white suburban "my mother doesn't hug me enough" anarchist protagonist, he was about to be hunted to death by a mystical group of human fox hunters in the secret London hidden beneath the one everybody thinks of as the "real London." I sort of hope the kid gets murdered. But then we won't get to see him learn his lesson which allows viewers to also maybe a learn a lesson. It's sometimes why you need characters like Mrs. Oleson from Little House on the Prairie. Although it was kind of enough to have Laura Ingalls who was a selfish devil child who was always learning lessons from humble and righteous Pa (who probably only killed one or two Native Americans, making him a stalwart saint of the frontier). I suppose the audience didn't need an over-the-top scurrilous villain like Mrs. Oleson. Although without Mrs. Oleson, how could the show have glorified the true saint of the frontier, Nells Oleson? The patience and kindness of that man were a testament to, um, patience and kindness!

I'm assuming Dane spends the next twenty pages snot-crying into a used coffee filter.

Dane continues to hang out with Tom of Bedlam because Dane can't survive on the street on his own and he knows it. He's not hard at all. He's a little wanna-be suburban gangster who read half of a book on anarchy and now thinks he's better than the slack-eyed populace going about their normal day-to-day bullshit. But he also thinks he still needs money and a place to live. He's not really great at the anarchy thing. But maybe if he listens to Tom, he'll learn a little bit about life and his heart will grow three sizes. Not because he suddenly cares more about everybody; it'll be a side-effect from learning the Dark Arts. Tom casts a spell so that Dane can look through the eyes of a pigeon as it flies about London. While Dane is seeing the hidden, creepy monsters lurking behind reality that pigeons can see (just as Pigeons can enter the afterlife in Moore's Jerusalem. I'm sure there are other urban horror stories that tell of the magic of pigeon vision. Did Lovecraft ever right any pigeon poems?), Tom tells Dane the secret history of cities. They're a virus that has propelled man from small villages which barely change across the centuries into huge population centers that use up the life force of the hosts as they build more and more and more, bigger and bigger, until, one day, they can build a rocket to propel the city virus into space and onto a new planet. Tom has seen, in visions, other planets affected by the virus, dead planets where the buildings stand as gravestones for the previous used-up races that contracted the virus. It's all very Lovecraftian. Not in the racist way but in the visions of other realities that change the nature of your own reality once you realize their existence. Hmm, that can actually kind of describe racism. I suppose Lovecraft's xenophobia was what made his stories about strange, unknown terrors so compelling. After teaching him loads of magic, Tom decides to teach Dane the most important lesson:

It's a really good lesson but also it's just Tom's attempt to get Jack Frost to appear.

Tom teaches Dane not to be a sheep or, in Tom's words, a robot. It's one of those weird lessons that everybody thinks they learn but nobody really learns it. Like when people read just that one Frost stanza on some poster in their English Lit class from "The Road Not Taken". Everybody gasps in air as the profundity of that single stanza (extracted from the context of the larger poem, much to the detriment of all of us) washes over them and they suddenly believe they've seen what life really is. Life isn't doing the thing you're supposed to do! Life is living to the fullest! Carpe diem! But the feeling of that moment erodes. It is eroded by the path we all take as we pretend we've taken the other path. We stop seeing that their weren't just two paths but many. And we get a job and we get a spouse and we get a house and we get a child and we occasionally think of Frost's single stanza and we decide, "You know what? I'm going to find the time to jump out of a plane!" or "I'm going to climb Everest!" or "I'm going to sleep with somebody of my same sex because I've always wanted to and hopefully my wife won't find out!" And sometimes we do and sometimes we don't; it doesn't really matter. Because the thing about taking the path less traveled is that it's still a path and it still represents the path you took and, you know what, there's that other path over there that I never got to experience and it's just shitting all over the path I'm currently on. Some people somehow block out the phantom possibilities and they're the lucky ones. The ones you can claim they have no regrets and maybe they're speaking truth when they say it. But mostly they just try not to think about it. Because once you start peeling at the wallpaper of your current life because the wallpaper, which others upon first glimpsing might think is beautiful and extraordinary, but which you've looked at every day for thirty years, you're done for. And you don't do it to find the beauty of what's underneath; you simply do it to see something different. And the new thing hasn't been scrutinized and deconstructed and critiqued; there's been no time to obsess over it. It's imaginary and if you happen to be like most people, imaginary must be better because why imagine the worst?! Okay, okay. I've just outed myself as not an anxious or depressive person! But I also don't go peeling at the wallpaper, so who knows? Maybe I do imagine the path less traveled was an intense tragedy?! The Invisibles #3 Rating: A. It's still pretty good and I'm still upset that I only have a few issues. Recently, I was thinking of writing an essay about how the worst thing about growing up is how you stop feeling things. Not that you stop feeling anything at all! Just that you stop feeling feelings that were once overwhelming and all-important. Like the crush you had in junior high. Can you imagine if, at forty, you still felt those feelings so intensely (among all the other ones you've felt across your life)? I understand that feelings must abate over time or we'd all be fucked up from not being able to get over our first crush while simultaneously not moving past the death of our closest grandparents. I get it. And some would say it's a mercy. But lately I've been wondering, "Is it?" Maybe I want to still feel those seemingly inexhaustible passions. I was reminded of wanting to discuss this because Tom says in this issue, "They made you forget how to feel, eh? Remember it now? Like everything new and the sun itself spinning behind your ribs, filling you up with silver. Like the way it was before they made robots of us, sentenced to a life behind bars we're trained to set in place ourselves." Now, that Tom speech was more about the whole "we're the shepherd of our own sheepdom" thing but in a robot and prison analogy. But the other thing about feelings made me remember how I was recently lamenting not feeling all of the things I once felt. Like the basket case from The Breakfast Club says, "When you grow up, your heart dies." And while you can argue whether that's true in the sense that you just stop caring about things, I think it's absolutely true in that it just slowly winds down and isn't capable of feeling how it used to. It's like a rechargeable battery that can no longer keep a charge. When I was in my late teens and early twenties, every single one of my friends, at one time or another, wound up weeping in my basement apartment about something in their lives (usually a woman!). I can't even fucking imagine that now. Maybe they'd be a bit upset or hurt or depressed but hardly disconsolate. I thought I would never get over the sadness at the loss of my grandfather or (and this might sound ridiculous to some but others will understand) the loss of my first cat as an adult, my precious little Judas. And while I obviously won't ever "get over" them (my eyes tear as I write this), I am no longer destroyed by the mere thought of their non-existence. A week after my Judas died, I saw Guardians of the Galaxy in the theater. Judas was always my Raccoon Boy so I almost broke down near the end when one of the characters put their arm around Rocket to console him. I made it out of the theater before absolutely losing it and snot-crying all the way back to the car. And so I can see how retaining that level of feeling over anything would be counterproductive to actually living, I absolutely miss it. I profoundly miss it. I want to be kicked in the stomach until I can't breathe by my feelings. I want this every day even if I know it's the cursed wish of a Monkey's Paw. How can anybody feel everything so palpably for their entire lives? And yet, how can we not?!

#The Invisibles #Grant Morrison #Steve Yeowell #DC Comics #DC #Vertigo

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