#whether or not the prophecy is well used or makes sense in hindsight i love it as a plot device. hell yeah hang over those demigods heads

[un-pearable]

i know it’s been years and it’s basically irrelevant now but i genuinely love the green ninja prophecy if only for how much it must have tortured wu and garmadon. how long have they known it!! how did they find it, this script dooming them to forever be on opposing sides!! by the time morro rolls around, wu's spent most of his adult life with this looming over his head - this threat that there's some great evil out there that even their father didn't prevent, and then his brother leaves and adopts the very title that the prophecy foretold against. and then a ridiculously powerful elemental practically falls into his lap, with an uncanny command of his element without even unlocking his true potential, and with another threat already on the horizon (the serpentine) and the rest scattered (not to be brought together until years later), that was all he could do. it's been at minimum decades, at most centuries of the two of them having to carry this burden over their heads - of garmadon succumbing and of this unknown dark lord attacking. when do you think they made the connection. the wrong connection sure, but it makes sense. and it makes sense that years later, after wu is proven wrong and his brother returns to him and his son leaves him, and after his brother threatens to leave him again, he'd work backwards. collect the elementals, rebuild what he can of an alliance, and hope he's proven wrong again. and then kai steals his bag by accident and the rest is history.

#text✨ #ninjago #is normal (is thinking about ninjago season one in TWENTY TWENTY THREE) #sorry yeah this is just building on/restating the last post i just made however: wu is fascinating #and these brothers are SO fucked up i love exploring it. this is w/o my personal hcs for how this whole thing shaked out bc THOSE #are being saved for a fic for my spinjitzu bros collection. #hot damn do i need to read those books. they torment me (the brothers spinjitzu doomed from unknown mystical creation) #whether or not the prophecy is well used or makes sense in hindsight i love it as a plot device. hell yeah hang over those demigods heads #like a noose. hell yeah tragically shape the entire narrative and the lives of entire families just bc people don't know how to reach. just #bc they made the wrong assumption and got their child killed. just bc they wanted so badly to be important and almost got their #soon-to-be brother killed. this thing is a fire hazard

[sol1056]

set it up and pay it off

This was going to be part of another post which I ended up breaking into two. Finally had a chance to get to this tonight. 

I’m watching tDP and istg I’m trying my hardest not to compare it ... but every mistake [other shows] made, tDP is doing a right (and an amazing right). But in terms of writing?? The fact that they solve small issues without dragging it to the next season making the audience tired and not interested?? Amazing!!

Hello, payoffs! Not only does tDP do setups and payoffs right, it knows how to gracefully remind us, and then delivers those payoffs that’ll have the most bang for the screentime.  

For those unfamiliar with the term, if the classic chekov’s gun is the setup, the moment the gun is used (in whatever way) is the payoff. Payoffs are delightful things, and very little compares when it comes to satisfying readers (regardless of the nature of the payoff). Humans like getting the answers to questions.

Behind the cut: types of setups and payoffs, four things to remember, choosing payoffs and their role in the narrative, the dangers of doing them cheaply, and how to destroy a payoff’s weight. 

Spoilers for the first episode only; everything else is vague or uses non-tDP examples to illustrate.  

a bit about setups and payoffs 

When the story asks a question or raises a possibility, that’s the setup (aka the gun on the mantle), and the payoff is the answer. This is not the same as a character asking a question; setups and payoffs are designed for the audience. 

Frex, talking about bad weather is effectively asking, ‘what if the weather got really bad?’ Now when the tornado strikes, the audience was primed for the possibility. A setup can be to show a character’s skill, so the audience isn’t surprised when the character devises an ingenious solution in the finale. Odd descriptions and curious hints will spike the tension and raise the question, ‘what if this house is haunted?’ long before a ghost even appears on the page. 

Most stories have an overall question, like ‘can A win the Kentucky Derby’ or ‘can B find true love’ --- this is often what we call the throughline. But stories are also full of ongoing questions for the characters, and also about them (or their world, their backstory, their perspectives). Some get answered right away, some explained later, and some, well, never. 

Nearly every conversation between Viren and Harrow raises about twenty questions and answers perhaps five. The characters know (or think they know) the answers to a lot of these questions; their dialogue works on the level of exchanging information, and also to provoke or establish possibilities in the viewer’s mind. When we later see Ruunan’s skills or Amaya’s rank or some other detail that resolves the setup, it’s an aha! moment.  

four things to remember

1. Setups should make sense at that point in the story. If a character is busy trying to master unfamiliar machinery, it’s probably not the most appropriate time to mention the character is a croquet champion. If the character is in a room with no windows in the building’s interior, it’s going to be awkward if you decide it’s time for them to worry about the strange weather. 

2. A setup needs to make sense in hindsight. If the ghost died by drowning, and your tension-raising questions are all prompted by lightbulbs breaking and the smell of an open fire... that’s not going to make much sense, thematically. 

3. A setup must be intriguing. Say a story raises questions about a character’s animosity or honesty. If the reveal is, well, he always looks like that, or she’s always nervous, the reader’s going to apply that retroactively and decide that question had no point. (That’s a fast track to losing an audience’s trust, by the way.) If your setups are boring, the audience will find the payoff boring. 

4. Don’t delay all your payoffs until the end. You don’t want to answer everything too fast, or you’re losing a great source of tension. But you can’t put off answering for too long, or the audience will get frustrated and quit. (Or they’ll hold on just long enough to get the one answer they really want, and quit then.) 

answer this, not that

As tDP’s three protagonists move through the season, they know nothing of the larger intrigue going on, and they have no clue what lies ahead. Resolving any of those other questions might answer some world-detail for us, but they’re not an immediate concern for the protagonists. That makes those setups less valuable for an emotional payoff, because they don’t hold as much story-weight, comparatively.

What tDP did so well was that it never lost sight of the protagonists’ own questions. The writers then identified what they could answer without giving everything away --- and of those questions, they chose to answer the ones with the greatest urgency and emotional weight. 

To understand why you’d answer those in the middle of the story, it helps to understand what payoffs do, in the narrative. 

the role of payoffs in the narrative 

I’ve talked before about the promise of the premise, and the payoff of the setup is a parallel to that concept. When the story sets up a question (a premise), that payoff is where it delivers on the promise. It’s not always good news. Payoffs are consequences; sometimes it’s more powerful to have everything go wrong. 

Here’s an example of a mid-story payoff that doesn’t have emotional weight, vs several that do. In LotR, the fellowship is forced to go through the Mines of Moria. This is a double setup: one, can Gandalf remember his way through the labyrinthine halls, and two, can they get through without alerting whatever now lives in the mines. The tension hangs on those setups, and the story delivers four payoffs for it. 

Gandalf halts the party while he tries to remember which branch in the path is correct. When he does, it’s a payoff, and it does double duty: yes, he remembers enough to guide the fellowship (what a relief) and now they can proceed (as opposed to spending the rest of the book wandering around in the dark). We readers get a breather from the oppressive tension, and the story is pushed forward.

For at least a chapter or so, Gimli’s been insistent they should go through Moria. A marvelous place, distant kin sure to show them dwarven hospitality, etc. Seeing Moria is a question that only appears once they reach the mountains, and Gimli’s interest in it is mostly from a need to impress: his constant talk becomes another setup.

The second payoff comes Gimli forces a detour to investigate a tomb. We get a short passage where Gimli reads the eye-witness account of the mine’s last occupants. It’s an emotional payoff... but only for Gimli. It’s certainly not much of a payoff from the perspective of a reader who’s focused on the urgency driving them through the mines. Had the mines been a planned part of the route from the beginning, with the entire company desperate for the safe shelter, the mine’s disaster might’ve carried greater emotional weight.  

When Pippin knocks a helmet down a well, it’s a third payoff, addressing the setup created by Gandalf's strict warning about stealth. The tension rises but it’s alleviated in another way: the setup has been fulfilled. Now to find out the consequences: a fight scene, a chase, and the situation turns dire.

Gandalf’s fight with the Balrog is the fourth payoff, pushing the setup to its limit (whether they can all get through safely), but also resolving a setup planted much earlier in the story. That is, that Gandalf is what will make the journey possible, and keep them safe (and together). 

That setup (of Gandalf’s necessity) is fulfilled when the story yanks him out of the picture, and it comes with substantial emotional weight. We’ve had seventeen chapters showing how much Frodo admires, even adores, Gandalf. Not only is the result of that setup potentially threatening the fellowship’s success, it’s also emotionally devastating for Frodo and the other hobbits. 

In sum, payoffs do three things in the narrative: they remind readers of the stakes by delivering smaller consequences along the way, they deliver emotional beats (including the catharsis of laughter if the payoff is the punchline to a humorous setup), and they regulate the story’s tension and pacing.  

disingenuous setups make for cheap payoffs

If you look at some of the turning points in tDP, there are payoffs previous to the final episode. Think of every place the story is begging a question, and you end up with a whole lot of chekov’s guns; tDP practically has three mantles’ worth. 

If the elves swear an oath to fulfill their duty, what happens if they fail? If the boys can’t protect their prize, what will happen to them, to Rayla, to the humans and elves? If the boys trust Rayla with their prize, will she betray them? If the elves assassinate King Harrow, will the other human countries march to war? And what’s the deal with that mirror, anyway? 

What makes tDP especially satisfactory is how it plays with closure before any payoff. This can be a little tricky; it requires a narrative voice that’s gained the audience’s trust. In short, you take any given question, let the characters acknowledge the consequences of failure, and then let them accept this as the price of making their choice. Skip this step, and any reversal will feel cheap. 

Take the pivotal moment in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. From the moment Edmund meets the White Witch, he’s set on a path to betray his siblings. With Narnia’s prophecy hanging on the need for all four children to sit on the thrones at Cair Paravel, the story has setup Edmund’s actions to have significant payoff. If the White Witch kills him, the prophecy won’t be fulfilled. 

When the Witch delivers her ultimatum, and Aslan decides to offer himself as substitute sacrifice, Susan and Lucy end up bearing witness. Aslan explains his choice (but not all of his intentions), and the moment is heavy with emotional weight as the girls realize the consequences of their brother’s actions. The story doesn’t shirk from their grief, either; it’s a long passage of their distress as they do their best to undo --- or at least ease --- the worst of the Witch’s damage. 

The contrast of that seeming abject loss with Aslan’s return --- and his explanation of the loophole that only he knew about --- could’ve been a cheap trick. What makes it such a pivotal moment is that neither of the point-of-view characters (Susan and Lucy) have any idea of what lies ahead, nor does the story ever slyly wink in the reader’s direction. 

In tDP, there’s an ongoing looming consequence of Rayla’s choices, and she goes through the stages of handling that with all the gravity of what she believes to be true. The story never contradicts her beliefs; in fact, it reinforces them repeatedly, closing each additional option until only one terrible consequence remains. 

We can hope that some loophole might exist, but the story never winks in our direction: it does nothing to reinforce that hope, instead pushing the setup inexorably towards its logical payoff. Like tLtWatW, nothing breaks the looming anguish of the setup’s apparent consequences, just as Aslan’s resigned wish for the girls to look away closes the door on hope that he'll at least fight his fate.

embrace the weight of a payoff

There’s an excellent video that deconstructs the use of bathos in Marvel movies (good to watch if this paragraph confuses you). Bathos is an abrupt turn from the serious to the trivial, which parallels a cheap payoff in that it tips its hand. It tells viewers: hey, we’re not taking this seriously, so no reason you should, either. 

This is where tDP --- like Trollhunters --- really shines, because it never raises the veil to show the writers behind the curtain. Too often, stories (especially in current media) back away from committing to the payoff; it’s almost like we’ve got a generation of TV/film writers afraid to show any depth of emotion. The tension gets above a 2, and the writers retreat to a joke.

There’s plenty of humor in tDP; it’s filled to the brim with witty lines even funnier in context. What keeps it from being bathos (too much) is that it’s rarely an intentional quip on the part of the characters. Rayla is deadly serious when she tells the boys, “I’m not falling for that flashing frog trick, again!” If the writers expected me to laugh, the narrative doesn’t allow even a beat as indication. The story treats its characters --- and every payoff --- with a sincere gravity. 

I think the crucial ingredient comes in how the narrative understands itself: as an intimate portrayal of a character in this situation, vs that of an actor onstage before an audience. You may’ve heard that over-quoted bit about ‘dance like no one is watching’ --- the same is true for stories: they must unroll as if there’s no audience other than the characters in that scene, in that moment. 

This goes back to a setup that revolves around characterization such as honesty or duplicity. If a character cries in private, the reader’s assumption is that this character’s grief isn’t meant to be seen as feigned. With no audience (as far as the character knows), there’s no reason for pretense. If the payoff later is a reveal the character was faking all along, the story did worse than laughing at its own characters: it lied to the audience. 

It set up a premise which the audience trusted as valid, only to deliver a payoff that hinged on the audience's gullibility. If bathos trivializes an emotional payoff, a story’s duplicity mocks the audience’s engagement. 

A story can lie to its characters, can mislead them into thinking they have options when they have none, can maneuver them into thinking they have no options beyond one... but a story should never, ever, lie to the audience. If there’s a setup, its payoff must be honest. 

To paraphrase Gaiman, a story doesn’t have to be real to be true --- and the place we most often glimpse a story’s truth in how it handles its payoffs.  

#the dragon prince #writing #story structure #setups and payoffs #sol thinks about stuff

[turtle-paced]

Revisiting Chapters: Dany X, ADWD

Girl wanders around plains nearly dying, how interesting and informative can that be?

The story so far…

After flying away from Daznak’s Pit and Meereen in its entirety on Drogon, Dany finds herself in a bit of a predicament, and with a lot of thinking to do.

The Physical

This chapter is pure Dany. Not just in the sense that this chapter features Dany and only Dany, no other named human character at all, but in the sense GRRM keeps us in touch with the needs and experiences of Dany’s physical body. She’s not in a great way, throughout. I mean, this is how she starts the chapter, climbing down from Drogon’s rock, which she dubs ‘Dragonstone’ and which I will be calling Other Dragonstone:

By the time she reached the bottom she was winded. Her muscles ached, and she felt as if she had the beginnings of a fever. The rocks had scraped her hands raw. They are better than they were, though, she decided as she picked at a broken blister. Her skin was pink and tender, and a pale milky fluid was leaking from her cracked palms, but her burns were healing. 

She’s injured and tired already, and it only gets worse from here.

Dany also starts this chapter making concrete plans as to her own survival, both short- and long-term. She might be able to manage for a bit on Other Dragonstone, with shelter and Drogon’s scraps, but that’s not a long term solution. She’s not dressed for the weather - she’s literally in her underwear all chapter - and so she’s too hot during the day and too cold at night. When she starts walking, she quickly gets a headache from the sun on her scalp (most of her hair having burned off, again). She needs a hat. As she herself recognises. Finally, someone with sense.

There are good sensations, too, as she feels warm earth between her toes, but those are few and far between.

Food and water quickly become a pressing issue for her. The first place she walks is to a stream she’s spotted from Other Dragonstone, only to be disappointed when it’s a shallow, thin stream, warm from the sun. The walk is miserable for her. All she has is the shift on her back and a whip, which she uses to help keep herself walking.

The stream bent this way and that, and Dany followed, beating time upon her leg with the whip, trying not to think about how far she had to go, or the pounding in her head, or her empty belly. Take one step. Take the next. Another step. Another. What else could she do? 

At night, she finds the ruins of a village, consisting of a low stone wall and some circles where there were once huts. That wall is her only shelter, and unsurprisingly she gets very cold, to go along with the discomfort of fresh blisters and resting on hard ground. When she wakes up, she’s covered in ants and ant bites.

When she returns to the stream, the only means she knows of returning to Meereen, the water she drinks makes her stomach cramp. Hunger forces her to eat strange berries, and she spends the rest of the day throwing up. Then it gets worse, as Dany ends up with diarrhea and then dehydration from losing so much water from the diarrhea, and as she falls asleep she’s not sure whether she’s going to live out the night.

When she wakes up from that, it’s to find that she’s got blood all over her thighs. At first she thinks she’s shat herself in her sleep, then she thinks it might be her period, though she can’t recall exactly when she last had one of those. Unfortunately, through the day, she keeps bleeding, heavier and heavier. It’s explicitly different to Dany’s normal periods, and it is highly likely that this was a miscarriage.

What’s the point of all this? Well, first, physical privation is the bulk of the external action of the chapter, the backdrop to Dany’s internal revelations. Second, it helps us keep in touch with Dany the human being. Destiny and dragons don’t stop her feet from blistering, or stop her nearly dying from diarrhea. No. Blood of the dragon or not, she’s still a human with all the vulnerabilities of a human.

To Go Back

At the start of the chapter, Dany makes plans to go back to Meereen. Somehow.

Two days ago, climbing on a spire of rock, she had spied water to the south, a slender thread that glittered briefly as the sun was going down. A stream, Dany decided. Small, but it would lead her to a larger stream, and that stream would flow into some little river, and all the rivers in this part of the world were vassals of the Skahazadhan. Once she found the Skahazadhan she need only follow it downstream to Slaver’s Bay. 

Pointedly, she cannot return to Meereen on Drogon. Drogon won’t do it. He won’t take her there. If Dany wants to get back to Meereen, she has to do it herself, without her dragons. She’s made the attempt. And so she walks.

Her home was back in Meereen, with her husband and her lover. That was where she belonged, surely. 

Keep walking. If I look back I am lost. 

There speaks someone who isn’t sure at all. After flying on Drogon and realising just how good it feels, she’s not eager to go back to Meereen.

Drogon had bent before the whip, and so must she. She had to don her crown again and return to her ebon bench and the arms of her noble husband. 

This is how much she hates Meereen. She thinks of her rule there as “bending before the whip.” Not a metaphor she’d use lightly, given what Dany’s seen of whips and their uses. Furthermore, throughout ADWD Dany’s suitors represent her political options, most clearly seen in the contrast between Hizdahr and Daario. Hizdahr represents the compromise Dany finds so unappealing, and as she doesn’t want to go back to him and his “tepid kisses,” so too does she find ruling Meereen as she has been distasteful.

As Dany walks, we see her perspective on her flight from the Pit. There was danger on all sides - Drogon was in danger, Dany was in danger, and the people in the Pit were in danger. In the midst of this death and destruction, however, Dany found real joy in flying on Drogon. At the end of the previous Dany chapter, we saw Dany anticipating flight in terms more than a little bit sexual; now we see that she loved it as much as she thought she would.

Up and up and up he’d borne her, high above the pyramids and pits, his wings outstretched to catch the warm air rising from the city’s sun baked bricks. If I fall and die, it will still have been worth it, she had thought. 

As she flies, she spies the Valyrian road west, and thinks of it as “the road home.” It does not lead to Meereen.

As she walks, she’s tempted to return to Other Dragonstone, where food is reasonably certain and she could continue to fly on Drogon, but she regards that as not the life she was born to. Even if she loves flying, even if she’s free of her responsibilities.

Dany also recalls her husband’s reaction to Drogon.

He wanted Drogon dead. I heard him. “Kill it,” he screamed, “kill the beast,” and the look upon his face was lustful. 

If he wants her dragon dead, then what does he think of her, the dragon’s mother? Dany considers whether Hizdahr poisoned the locusts he wanted her to ate (and that Strong Belwas did eat). She can think of a few other possible suspects, but comes to no firm conclusion. Other than that she really doesn’t like Hizdahr.

After she gets sick and hallucinates Viserys, Dany picks herself up and tries to continue along the stream. She accidentally thinks of Meereen as ‘home,’ and realises something.

Meereen was not her home, and never would be. It was a city of strange men with strange gods and stranger hair, of slavers wrapped in fringed tokars, where grace was earned through whoring, butchery was art, and dog was a delicacy. Meereen would always be the Harpy’s city, and Daenerys could not be a harpy. 

She cannot stay in Meereen. It is not her place. There’s nothing for her there.

To Go Forward

We start this chapter, which focuses on the rebirth of Daenerys Targaryen, on a dragonstone.

The hill loomed larger down here. Dany had taken to calling it Dragonstone, after the ancient citadel where she’d been born.

Dany’s in tune with the symbolism this chapter. Just as her life itself started on Dragonstone, she’ll start reassessing that life from a hill she named for the place where her life began.

Which also means we’re going to recap Dany’s journey thus far. From Other Dragonstone she moves to thinking about her (first) time on the Dothraki Sea. In hindsight, she regards that time as a happy one.

Ser Jorah had been with her then, her gruff old bear. She’d had Irri and Jhiqui and Doreah to care for her, her sun-and-stars to hold her in the night, his child growing inside her. 

As we can see, this account is heavily filtered through Dany’s nostalgia. There’s no mention of Jorah’s then-current treachery, Viserys is suspiciously absent from her thoughts, and even her misery on her way to the Dothraki Sea is unmentioned. If she looks back, she is lost. It’s easier for her to think on how her time with the Dothraki ended than it is for her to consider that her happiness then was not the simple and complete contentment she just portrayed it as. We do get a key reminder of how Drogo’s khalasar split, though.

Afterward Drogo’s great khalasar had shattered. Ko Pono named himself Khal Pono and took many riders with him, and many slaves as well. Ko Jhaqo named himself Khal Jhaqo and rode off with even more. 

Could be relevant later.

When Dany sleeps in the ruined village, she dreams of Quaithe and the prophecy she received from her back in ACoK.

“To go north, you must journey south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward, you must go back. To touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow.” 

She is further reminded:

“Remember who you are, Daenerys,” the stars whispered in a woman’s voice. “The dragons know. Do you?” 

This is the central theme of this chapter. Who is Dany, really? Who should Dany be?

It’s not the last dream she has this chapter. After falling asleep from exhaustion following her bout of diarrhea, she dreams of Viserys looking just like he had the last time Dany saw him - that is, hideously burned and in obvious pain from having molten gold poured over his head. He accuses Dany of being insufficiently faithful to her Targaryen heritage. We can definitely see how far she’s come in how she responds to dream!Viserys.

“I loved you once.” 

Once, he said, so bitterly it made her shudder. You were supposed to be my wife, to bear me children with silver hair and purple eyes, to keep the blood of the dragon pure. I took care of you. I taught you who you were. I fed you. I sold our mother’s crown to keep you fed. 

“You hurt me. You frightened me.” 

Only when you woke the dragon. I loved you. 

“You sold me. You betrayed me.” 

Viserys in Dany’s dream is true to life. The entitlement that killed him is evident even here. He threatens Dany and calls her a whore. But the note he leaves her on is this:

Why did they give the dragon’s eggs to you? They should have been mine. If I’d had a dragon, I would have taught the world the meaning of our words. 

That, Dany doesn’t get to respond to directly. Instead, she watches Viserys’ jaw fall off in a rush of blood and gold, and then wakes up. Pleasant dreams she has. She tries to rebut Viserys once she’s awake, but her subconscious is not letting up on her.

“I am the blood of the dragon,” she told the grass, aloud. 

Once, the grass whispered back, until you chained your dragons in the dark. 

“Drogon killed a little girl. Her name was ... her name ...” Dany could not recall the child’s name. That made her so sad that she would have cried if all her tears had not been burned away. “I will never have a little girl. I was the Mother of Dragons.” 

Aye, the grass said, but you turned against your children. 

The fact she can’t remember the name of the little girl (Hazzea) is another one of those symbolically important things. She can’t recall why she locked her dragons away, and with her dragons locked away, she can’t be the Mother of Dragons.

Later, stumbling through the stream in her ongoing attempt to get back to Meereen, Dany thinks she hears Jorah Mormont. As with Viserys, Dany knows that Jorah used her and betrayed her, but she cannot rebut what her subconscious has to tell her about her own identity.

You are a queen, her bear said. In Westeros. 

“It is such a long way,” she complained. “I was tired, Jorah. I was weary of war. I wanted to rest, to laugh, to plant trees and see them grow. I am only a young girl.” 

No. You are the blood of the dragon. The whispering was growing fainter, as if Ser Jorah were falling farther behind. Dragons plant no trees. Remember that. Remember who you are, what you were made to be. Remember your words. 

“Fire and Blood,” Daenerys told the swaying grass.

That line, spoken by a starving, ill girl alone and unprepared on a vast and featureless plain, portends some dramatic things for this setting - just as the birth of her dragons back at the end of AGoT did. Accompanied by her revelation that Meereen is not and can never be her home, Dany’s chosen a different path, should she live.

Right on cue, along comes another potential threat to Dany’s life, in the form of grass rustling where no grass should be rustling.

The grass swayed and bowed low, as if before a king, but no king appeared to her. The world was green and empty. The world was green and silent. The world was yellow, dying. I should get up, she told herself. I have to walk. I have to follow the stream. 

But instead of death, it’s a Dothraki scout, who promptly spots Drogon. Her own sight of Drogon revives her as thoughts of Daario didn’t manage, and as soon as the scout is safely away Dany calls for Drogon until she’s hoarse. This time, unlike the start of the chapter, he comes to her call.

The grass bowed down before him. Dany leapt onto his back. She stank of blood and sweat and fear, but none of that mattered. “To go forward I must go back,” she said. Her bare legs tightened around the dragon’s neck. She kicked him, and Drogon threw himself into the sky. Her whip was gone, so she used her hands and feet and turned him north by east, the way the scout had gone. Drogon went willingly enough; perhaps he smelled the rider’s fear. 

Note the repetition regarding the movement of the grass. Out here, Drogon is king. Also note that now Dany has better control over Drogon - she’s cast aside the whip. A dragon is not a slave, and Drogon responds better to a partner than to a master.

Drogon, Dany on his back, swoops on a Dothraki herd and kills a horse. He and Dany eat it right then and there. Her husband would be horrified, she thinks, but her lover would approve and join in the meal.

And with that realisation, and the approach of the Dothraki horde led by Khal Jhaqo, the chapter - and ADWD proper - ends.

Chapter Function

This chapter contains key character development for Dany, and a bunch of relevant symbolism. The most obvious one is the miscarriage; Dany can’t birth a Meereenese peace. I also mentioned what Daario and Hizdahr represent for Dany earlier; some of the last paragraphs are focused on what Hizdahr would think of her actions vs what Daario would think and do in response, and it’s pretty clear which path she’s more open to now. This is important for Dany going forward. After a book of profound dissatisfaction, after feeling she’s compromising away her very identity, Dany decides to reclaim that identity as a dragon.

And we certainly got some editorials on the nature of dragons. A dragon’s first instinct is always to attack. Dragons plant no trees. Our words are fire and blood.

Then Dany’s moved into physical position, with a new attitude and a dragon she can control better now, to confront Khal Jhaqo.

Miscellany

This chapter has some of the most self-consciously empathic environments in the whole damn series, and I do not say that one lightly. Other Dragonstone is every bit as extra as the actual fortress:

Scrub grass and thorny bushes covered its lower slopes; higher up a jagged tangle of bare rock thrust steep and sudden into the sky. There, amidst broken boulders, razor-sharp ridges, and needle spires, Drogon made his lair inside a shallow cave. 

The bulk of the chapter, however, takes place on a vast, featureless, dying plain. GRRM’s cleared out the scenery itself for Dany to think.

Speaking of a dying plain, that indicates autumn’s coming to the Dothraki sea. The grass is starting to yellow.

Barristan’s awkwardness when discussing Daario with Dany is hilarious.

And she wondered how much the Yunkai’i knew about what her captain meant to her. She had asked Ser Barristan that question the afternoon the hostages went forth. “They will have heard the talk,” he had replied. “Naharis may even have boasted of Your Grace’s ... of your great ... regard ... for him. If you will forgive my saying so, modesty is not one of the captain’s virtues. He takes great pride in his ... his swordsmanship.” 

He boasts of bedding me, you mean.

Behind the hilarity is the fact that Barristan hasn’t worked out how to deal with a female superior. Would he be quite so awkward if Dany was a man who asked if a hostile power was aware of a female lover’s status? Could well be aggravated by her youth, too.

Clothing Porn

In the anti-clothing porn vein, Dany spends this chapter wearing a linen undershift that’s stained with sweat, grass, and dirt at the start of the chapter. By the end of the chapter it’s got a strip torn off it, a couple of big old bloodstains from her miscarriage, and a grease stain from when Dany partook in Drogon’s horse barbecue.

Food Porn

Nothing I’d call food porn - Dany’s foraging, and most of what she finds is not meant to appeal to anyone’s sense of taste.

Next Three Chapters

Davos IV, ASoS - Brienne II, AFFC - Jaime VI, ASoS

#ASoIaF #revisiting chapters #cw: violence #daenerys targaryen #a dance with dragons

[nalyra-dreaming]

Will’s state of mind in S3

((this is a follow up post to "Hannibal’s state of mind in S3″, reshared))

I believe Will knows how Hannibal feels about him.

Will says “I knew you’d turn yourself in if I rejected you” when he leaves Hannibal in prison once more.

Now, of course, hindsight is 20:20 and by then Will probably wanted to hurl something pointy at Hannibal for trying to get his family killed by sending the Dragon to them. Because Will is definitely vicious and vindictive, in my eyes even more dangerous because he is a loose canon so to speak - if he permits himself to be.

But that means he has thought about why he said it at the very least, probably brooded about it all in the dark of the night when Molly slept. Keeping what Hannibal is and means to him close to himself and only to himself, hiding the letters he gets in his underwear drawer (for heavens sake).

I believe Will rejected Hannibal in that moment because he was at rock bottom, emotional-wise as well, there in that bed in Wolftrap. Now it’s (imho, alway imho) important to remember that, while the events of Mizumono were devastating for Hannibal as well - Jack, Alana and Abigail paid the true price - and so did Will. But Will,…. never intended to go there to betray Hannibal. He allowed himself to be torn open because he realized the depth of the pain he caused Hannibal in that moment, he didn’t even try to defend himself. But he didn’t want that… he WANTED to run away with Hannibal, wanted to kill Jack. Which is something we know from the “red dinner” scene. Jack forced their hands by going there alone. Otherwise… *sighs*

And then Will had to heal there, alone, knowing he had hurt the only one that understood him, just as much as that person had hurt him (though in another way). He discussed -all- of it with himself (through the “ghost” of Abigail), admitting he still wants to go with Hannibal to himself. And so he sets out on a boat, not easily trackable, time for himself to think, trying to track Hannibal down by himself. And Hannibal wants him to, he draws him near, akin to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Will realizes his own need to be near Hannibal, rekindles his relationship in his mind (the stag is his manifestation after all), follows it to the Uffizi after admitting that he “never knew himself as well as when he was with him” out loud to Chiyoh. Who tells him to his face that he is “just like him”.

But Hannibal isn’t ready. He’s getting there but the fight with Jack just before that meeting has left Hannibal without the atonement he was looking for, still unable to properly reciprocate. While the Uffizi scene is undoubtedly romantic it always struck me as more relieved on Will’s side than on Hannibal’s, unbalanced. Hannibal is guarded. He even warns Will not to rush into action, knowing he would need to respond accordingly then.

The next scene is difficult. Because in the script Hannibal has a knife as well, balancing the scene out, the threat, making them equally unsure of where they stand, equally dangerous. The show does not give us this fact and so it’s -not- canon and it unbalances the “why” immensely in my mind. I understand why Will has a knife yes, but why would he draw it in broad daylight on an open place. Except that maybe that was -why-. Maybe that was what was in Will’s mind at that moment, taking Hannibal down in front of witnesses and then being taken down by the police or at the very least arrested. To end the hunt, right there, to give them -both- the satisfaction of Hannibal dying at Will’s hand, in a personal manner. THAT would fit imho. But Chiyoh intervenes.

Then that scene with the shot wound. Will draws Hannibal near but Hannibal does not accept. The academy should give Hugh Dancy a fucking Oscar because it’s all in this little scene where he breaks down against Hannibal’s shoulder and then pulls himself together once more right away. It’s painful to watch.

And then Hannibal drugs him against his will (once more!) saws his head open, and then he’s dragged off and transported over and hung up like meat.

And I would pay real money betting that Hannibal, always so eloquent normally, didn’t know what the fuck to say on that trip in that meat truck. Once more one of those scenes I would have loved to see, but, of course, show-wise it would have been not so clever^^.

And Will is through by the time they reach Muscrat Farm. It’s in every line of his face when Mason has them wheeled into the stable.

But so is Hannibal. THAT is his look when he looks up and -at- Will. Oh, he pulls himself together later, pushing the fun forward, a part of him definitely enjoying the madness. But that there, is rock bottom. For both.

Now, Hannibal, as I’ve said before, will have his epiphany a bit later on. And Will sees them both together in this mess, when he speaks with Alana he is -always- using “us”, not “I”. Will has already been there, in the hospital with Abigail’s ghost, has already realized he needs and then all the shit and now he’s told that people want to cut his face off to eat Hannibal with it. And he’s just… through with it. Not because his feelings have changed, but simply because he cannot take more of the shit. He’s been cut open, thrown off a train, cut open again, drugged, manipulated and then the face… brrr.

When he wakes up in Wolf Trap, the first thing he sees is the book with the calculations to try to change time. Now Hannibal left that there on purpose. It’s probably the closest Will will get to an apology. And Hannibal is very guarded when he sits down because he knows he messed up with the bone saw and the drugging. It’s in every movement in that scene, every expression on his face. They launch into metaphors there but it’s not needed, really. Just look how Hannibal does -not- want to leave.

Will lies to himself regarding the “you delight, I tolerate”. It’s one of his last vestiges, something to cling to, something to carry before him through his marriage with Molly. He does enjoy killing though, and that is what the final fight in TwotL makes chrystal clear. S4 will tell whether the fall was a suicide attempt or a ploy, I for one am firmly with the ploy and have written multiple versions of it.

Why does he reject him? He rejects Hannibal there because Hannibal can still not say it. Does not apologize. Speaks in metaphors. It’s in every interaction in the prison later on, how royally unnvered and pissed off Will is with the games Hannibal plays (remember the eye roll at “I’m not God’s fool I’m yours” when Hannibal ignores him etc etc?). Hannibal has to grow still, emotionally. And Will has to let him go for that.

And so he does. And underestimates how much he hurts himself with it.

As per the actual knowledge of emotions….

Hugh Dancy said at RDC3 that Will is aware of the fact that Hannibal loves him, even before Mizumono. But Will does not believe Hannibal to be capable of the more serene “in love” of this purity of emotion. Will is imho also aware of his own love for Hannibal, which is why he cannot treat him “normally” but treats him like a secret, something to hold close to your chest.

Loving someone does not equal being “in love”. It is both more and less than the other, the meaning quite a bit different. “In love” has more carnal intentions, an ache, a desire for the other more than “loving” has. For me what Hugh said makes sense because there is a difference in intent there. Being “in love” is a much more fragile state of mind than “just” loving someone.

Which is why Bedelia has to spell it out when it finally clicks, why Will has no apparent answer when she asks him if he feels the same. The thoughts are churning in that moment as well :)

And it’s also why I believe Mads and Hugh felt they just -had- to push the “lunge” into that direction. Look at them. Will puts his head on Hannibal’s chest, knowing, accepting and… Hannibal… Hannibal accepts this time. His expression is that of a man finally come home, emotions painful and brilliant everywhere.

And Will… Will is at peace.

(((Now that arm there in the last frame, right… That arm has no power. It was stabbed he wouldn’t have been able to pull much. Hannibal lets himself fall, and why the heck does he not hold onto Will there anymore??)))

Will will not turn on Hannibal anymore imho. He’s been there and tried that. He tried to free himself of him and it didn’t work. He’s at peace. He is Hannibal’s mirror, in his mind palace at peace.

There will be some kind of mind-fuckery (as Bryan called it^^) but I don’t think it will be Will changing his mind. I believe we will get to see Will Graham’s becoming in Season 4 - with Hannibal. However that may manifest. Or maybe as Hannibal :)))

And…. there are four settings at that table. Two other chairs and a setting for a wheelchair…. Hannibal was shot after all. Janice dropped at some point that it would be Will and Hannibal (in wheelchair) at Bedelia’s and that they would have Jack as their other … “guest”. With Hannibal in the wheelchair - I believe Will made the cut.

Opinions?^^

#hannibal #meta #follow up post #will graham #hannibal lecter #s3 #hannigram

[la-saffique-blog]

on my “bisexuality”

to preface, i read a post on here mentioning that lesbianism actually consists of two components: being attracted to women, and also not desiring dick. (clumsily paraphrased, to be sure.)

i have called myself openly “bisexual” since i was about 13 or 14 years old. i instinctively knew i liked girls; i used the word to consciously describe precisely that active attraction to girls.

i just never stopped to consider whether my “feelings” boys were actually attraction or not, i just always assumed they were - because everyone else was attracted to them.

i remember being distinctly annoyed and bored by the fact that somewhere around puberty, all your girl peers start to notice boys and talk about them and develop crushes on male celebrities. i just couldn’t understand it: men really look so bland and uninteresting, i’ve never found their bodies “hot”, and the more masculine a man was, the less interesting i found them to look at.

but all the girls were doing it, and i was weird and odd enough already that i wanted to avoid further ostracisation, so i thought i’d give it a go - and on hindsight, i genuinely “trained” myself to be attracted to men’s faces.

unsurprisingly, all the men i have ever been attracted to have been fairly androgynous- or effeminate-looking. the kind of faces where if seen in the right light and you squinted a lil, they could be pretty dykes. (young leo dicaprio, anyone?)

also cue: emo boys, goth boys, 80s hair metal band boys - basically any subcultures where men dressed androgynously, wore make-up, and had long hair. this also tricked me into thinking i was attracted to “both genders”, with transsexual males (transwomen) actually being the “ideal” because it combined both! 

(imagine that - me developing my own garbage version of queer theory in the very early 2000s, well before it became easily accessible and mainstream. transsexual women (transmen) didn’t even “exist”, in the sense that i never heard about them, or saw pictures; they just weren’t talked about by anybody. if i had just seen pictures of them - besides chastity bono - i would have realised that actually, i am wildly more attracted to them than transsexual males, and i wouldn’t have felt so confused about why i actually find most transsexual males, no matter how “well-passing”, ugly.)

and so i slowly and rigorously trained myself over time be “interested” in men. i remember desperately trying to pick a boy to “have a crush” on, because there were no other girls who liked girls - even the one female friend i had seemed to “succumb” eventually, and i didn’t want to be alone.

i started kissing and having experiences with boys, and the physical moments were awkward and uncomfortable; but for a weird girl who had been largely shunned and friendless up to that point, finally receiving attention was intoxicating. 

(plus, i was horny as hell and just wanted to know what kissing anybody at all felt like. we will take a lil walk down memory lane later on, because boy, do i have stories.)

but i really wanted to try kissing girls.

at 14, i was at a lil house party with all my classmates, and i saw two of the girls in my class kissing to the roaring approval of the boys watching them. i was like hell yes! finally! so when i saw one of the girls alone, i nervously asked her if i could kiss her.

the incident is seared forever into my memory, because she looked terrified, squeaked “no”, and literally ran away.

in that moment, i understood a lot of things: if you wanted to actually kiss other girls, you were a freak. just because a girl is kissing girls, doesn’t mean she wants to kiss girls. it was only okay if the men approved it. 

so i packed myself tightly away, knowing that if girls found out i wanted to kiss them without men watching, they would run away from me - nobody could ever know. 

i should point out that in the whole time i was at my school, to this day, i know of only one (1) girl who was openly lesbian. there are many i am suspicious of in hindsight; but i had no lesbian representation in the whole time i was growing up in the south of france. they just didn’t exist anywhere at all, except in hateful stereotypes or straight men’s fucked up fantasies.

with my self-esteem completely eroded for many reasons, i pushed on with boys, ending up in abusive relationships, or with kind boys who adored me but i just lost interest eventually, after the fizz of hormones and novelty wore off. even being a “bisexual” became hard, because when i proudly said it out loud, boys would just roll their eyes and say that all teenaged girls say that for attention; it wasn’t real; girls could only kiss other girls because the boys found it “hot”.

when i first met actual lesbians who were actually my age, it was the first year of university. sadly, i was on my second abusive relationship with a man, completely unaware that it was going to escalate horrifically. he was controlling and obsessed with me “not cheating”, so when i asked him if i could at least experiment with girls since i had always wanted to as a “bisexual”, he said no.

so i became cemented as “the straight girl who talks about being bisexual all the time”, even though secretly i yearned to be with them. france had left me pornsick with severe body image issues, too, so even though they all thought i was hot, i just thought i was ugly - after all, i didn’t look like the lesbians in lesbian porn. why would they want me?

i shied away and jealously watched from my horrible cage as the established lesbians paired up with the other curious and questioning girls. god, i wanted to join in, so much! but no, my circumstances meant i could only watch, so i did - and all those curious girls ended up with men right afterwards. 

trying to understand my “bisexuality”, i would read about it a lot and come across the statistics of how bisexual people most often end up hetero-paired anyway, and i felt deeply disappointed with that. it felt like a death sentence. 

i felt trapped somewhere between “lesbian” (when i read about lesbian culture, i was drawn to it like a moth - but then i felt guilty, because i was a “bisexual” who was prying into a culture that wasn’t meant for her) and “fake bisexual” - the girl who pretends she likes kissing girls, but only when the men are watching; the girl who talks about it for cool points but never follows up on eating pussy; the girl who, even after a passionate relationship with another woman, ends up marrying the ugly straight guy. 

i genuinely feared that’s what i was, because i didn’t like those girls very much at all. i rightly understood why lesbians were wary of those girls, and didn’t want to date them. i despaired that maybe girls don’t really love other girls in the end, they always love boys, and that i was that hypocritical girl because i had all these bfs and no gfs. 

and then i felt locked; i was sure i preferred girls, and i didn’t want to be “bisexual” if that meant marrying a guy, but i had no “proof” that i was a lesbian. and that just made me worse: i didn’t want to just hook up with the first lesbian i met, just so i had “proof” that i liked women.

i had so many confusing questions, so many answers i needed, but “bisexual” never answered a damn one of them. that simple word seems to have become a self-fulfilling prophecy: even though i knew i liked women, for as long as i was “bi”, dick was never completely out of the picture. i never stopped long enough to question whether i was actually into dick or not, i just carried ploughing my way through unpleasant, uncomfortable, boring hook-ups with men.

after over a decade of touching dicks, i can confidently say, i don’t fucking like them. 

#lesbian #coming out #lesbian confessions #closeted #bisexuality #compulsory heterosexuality #lesbophobia #lesbians don't like dick #honestly realising that you don't actually have to like dick at all #was a major revelation for me #sad as it sounds lol

[workingontruth]

Our 2 Kings 7 Kind of Life

Don’t you love it when God shows up?

Have you ever missed it when God showed up?

What about now?

Today, opinions are a dime a dozen. Talk to a dozen people, and you’ll get a dozen different angles on any of a dozen subjects. But in spite of our differences of opinion on any of a wide range of topics, I think we all agree on one thing these days; had I interrupted your Christmas celebration this past December (whether or not I were wearing camel’s hair and in need of a good flossing to extract locust legs from between my teeth), telling you the following list of things would all come true in less than 90 days, you would have labeled me a complete crazy man and would’ve told me to go back beneath the rock from which I had come.

“In less than 90 days,…”

1.       You, over there in the Free Enterprise motor coach pullover (that would’ve been me) … you will be returning to the University of Indianapolis with the Men’s Lacrosse team from South Carolina before playing the final game of your trip–but oddly enough, both teams will be fully healthy, the weather will be ideal, and the trip will have been coasting along without a hitch. Oh, and the university’s administration will also require the other eight remaining U Indy teams, participating in their various collegiate sporting events from Florida to California and everywhere in between, to immediately return to campus as well. And, once you return, your entire fleet of buses will be emptied of fuel, removed from insurance plans, and put out of service–though all machines are mechanically sound and all drivers are healthy and available to drive.

2.       And you, in the red Community Hospital valet shirt (that would’ve be my wife) … you will be in your new role in the front office of the Center for Genetic Health. But having been asked not to congregate with your co-workers in the perfectly suited and newly designed office space the hospital had just finished, you and all of your co-workers will be working from home to reschedule all patient appointments sixty days or more into the future–unless they are willing to conduct their appointment over the phone or via video-chat.

3.       The NBA post-season will never happen, and the balance of the season itself will be stopped cold in its tracks at half-time of a game in the Mountain Time Zone on Wednesday, March 11th.

4.       All NCAA spring athletic events will be cancelled for the remainder of the school year and March Madness won’t happen.

5.       There will be no date set to begin the MLB season.

6.       Grocery stores will have been unable to keep chicken, ground beef, bread and toilet paper on their shelves.

7.       Gasoline will, in some places, be under a dollar a gallon, but few will be filling up.

8.       The nation’s restaurants will be closed for all dine-in experiences while the fortunate will try to stay in business by doing carry-out or drive-through business only.

9.       All shopping malls, strip malls, barber shops and hair and nail salons will be closed.

10.   The Federal Government will be sending $1,200 tax-free cash gifts to the vast majority of American citizens.

11.   The world will have a drastic shortage of personal protective equipment.

12.   The Down Jones Industrial Average will suffer 3 of its worst days since the “Black Monday” market crash in 1987 in the span of less than a week, losing roughly one-third of its value in a matter of about eight days.

13.   State governors will be requesting their citizens “shelter in place” by remaining home but for essential trips for food or health-related emergencies, while in some states it will be a finable offense to travel anywhere but to secure such.

14.   The President and VP of the United States will be holding daily, 2-hour press briefings for weeks on end.

15.   Frequent air travel will be little but a memory, international travel banned, airfares costing less than a good meal out (which will no longer be happening).

16.   The President will sign a presidential memorandum that will require the likes of General Motors to begin manufacturing respiratory ventilators.

17.   Dozens of privately held companies like Michael Lindell’s “My Pillow,” will be transformed into N-95 facemask factories.

18.   Samaritan’s Purse will have set up and be running a fully-functioning hospital in the middle of New York City’s Central Park.

19.   The United States Naval Hospital Ship “Comfort” will have been deployed to New York to help in the cause.

20.   Most people will be wearing PPE masks everywhere they go.

21.   All public concerts world-wide will be on hold.

22.   Churches will be asked not to meet, and nearly all will comply without resistance.

23.   Employees representing nearly every U.S. industry will be furloughed, let go or kept on payrolls with forgivable loans from the Fed.

24.   People will be asked to stand in lines outside Lowe’s stores at six-foot intervals to ensure active shopper customer quotas are kept while both one-way entries and exits are monitored.

25.   Many stores will be required to close down public access to much of their merchandise not deemed “essential,” to help support the cause.

26.   Pork, chicken and other meat packing plants in the U.S. will be closing down.

27.   U.S. unemployment will be at the highest rate since the Great Depression as new weekly filing claims will be counted not in the hundreds of thousands, but in the millions.

28.   The nation’s, and most of the world’s movie theaters, will be closed.

29.   People without facemasks will be shunned and avoided by “mask-wearers.”

30.   Neighbors will be sitting in their driveways and on FRONT porches again.

31.   College students will be home with their families, taking part in online classwork since all university campuses will be closed prior to semesters’ end.

32.   In lieu of our celebrating athletes and Hollywood types, doctors, nurses and healthcare workers will be the new heroes.

33.   People in some industries will be earning more to stay at home than while working full time.

34.   The Fed will be paying the unemployed an additional $600/week over and above the state provisions.

35.   All elective surgeries will be halted while hospital ORs remain unused.

36.   Online church “attendance” will skyrocket, leading to thousands and thousands of new believers.

37.   American celebrity musicians will be holding online “Global Citizen” concerts to raise millions of dollars to give to the World Health Organization which is being held liable for its part in enabling the death of hundreds of thousands in nearly 200 countries world-wide.

Would any of these things been plausible just a few months ago?

Obviously, this is only a partial list, and one to which most of us could quickly add another dozen. And NOTE they’re not all bad! Isn’t it just like God to orchestrate blessing in the face of difficulty? 

But in my mind, these “90-days-ago incomprehensible occurrences” are not unlike the similarly baffling predictions that Elisha, in 2 Kings Chapter 7, was revealing to the king and his officer.

Here’s the short version:  

Elisha replied, “Hear the word of the Lord. This is what the Lord says: About this time tomorrow, a seah [probably about 7 lbs] of the finest flour will sell for a shekel and two seahs of barley for a shekel at the gate of Samaria.” 

The officer on whose arm the king was leaning said to the man of God, “Look, even if the Lord should open the floodgates of the heavens, could this happen?”

“You will see it with your own eyes,” answered Elisha, “but you will not eat any of it!”

The officer was utterly confounded. “Really? How could this be?” And to be sure, there is no way, given their circumstance at the time, they could have concocted such an unlikely series of events.

(Read verses 3-13 to learn how this mystifying prophecy actually took place.)

But then, the verdict is recorded in the later verses...

“So they selected two chariots with their horses, and the king sent them after the Aramean army. He commanded the drivers, “Go and find out what has happened.” They followed them as far as the Jordan, and they found the whole road strewn with the clothing and equipment the Arameans had thrown away in their headlong flight. So the messengers returned and reported to the king. Then the people went out and plundered the camp of the Arameans. So a seah of the finest flour sold for a shekel, and two seahs of barley sold for a shekel, as the Lord had said.”

Now the king had put the officer on whose arm he leaned in charge of the gate, and the people trampled him in the gateway, and he died, just as the man of God had foretold when the king came down to his house. It happened as the man of God had said to the king: “About this time tomorrow, a seah of the finest flour will sell for a shekel and two seahs of barley for a shekel at the gate of Samaria.” ...but your officer will not eat any of it.

What’s my point?

God often does things in ways no man would ever script. What we deem impossible is a drop in the bucket of God’s immeasurable and endless power and insight. After all, He knows the future!  

But here’s what WE do.

If told of how the above-mentioned improbables would come true by late-March, we would have responded, “Oh I see. What a tragic series of events. But I understand now how that will happen. It all makes sense.”

And because it “makes sense” in hindsight, we disregard the overriding variable of the supernatural God into the equation and chalk up the now-plausible circumstance as nothing more than the “natural” occurrence of things.  

No matter how crazy things get, when viewing world events on merely the natural plane, most won’t need a God to “see it.” It will all make logical, cause-and-effect sense.

In the same way, I believe much of what will lead up to Revelation 12 and is told us in Daniel 11:31 and following, will likewise “make good sense” to the mind of mankind at the time. Going so far as to think of the Anti-Christ to come, we have to assume he will not come into power forcefully, but peaceably, with the full support of a global community…one that is now forming rapidly. Yes, it will all “make perfect sense,” for the answers and charismatic leadership of the one we know is to come will help to solve what will have become the world’s most pressing and previously unsolvable complexities. And the world community will give him his prominent role. 

Still, for those in Christ, let me be clear that these can be days of amazing intrigue and anticipation, not fear and worry. 

But, you see, my point is that this is how God usually chooses to bring about his plans, through a course of events that will be laced in the common sense of man … so much so that even the elect would be deceived were it possible (Matthew 24:24).

BUT, He gives light to the eyes of his children. Our great and unshakeable God has let us in on his plans. We are his friends if we do what He commands (John 15:14). And as friends of the Son of God, the Son has made known us to his agenda (John 15:15).

Now, my intention is not to insinuate we are absolutely on the cusp of the rapture of the Church, or teetering at the edge of the Tribulation–though I’m also not saying that we couldn’t be, for the Father alone only knows the day of Jesus’ return for his children (Matthew 24:30-42).

What I am saying is that if we can learn anything from history, and from an acquaintance with the scriptures, we can assume that the initial events predicted in the Bible will likely “make sense” in the moment to the mind of unregenerate man.

So, one last question. 

Given our current sermon series at my home church, Northview Church, I am wondering if you are listening, watching and fellowshipping with the Holy Spirit living inside you? It’s something about which I wrote in great length as well in SET FREE. 

Do you know the mind of Christ? Do you have the mind of Christ? 

If not, it’s time to change that. If not, you may be missing that God himself is showing up right now on planet Earth.

Place your trust in Jesus Christ. He is ready to open your eyes.

Maybe it’s time you learn more about the God who is doing something incredible right now in the midst of this unprecedented time. Maybe it’s time you gain in you the Resource that dispells anxiety and replaces it with a calm assurance the world will never understand. 

You can learn more about having a relationship with Jesus here. Or, reach out to a pastor at Northview Church by texting “NEXT” to 85379 and selecting Option 2.

God is showing up right now. Don’t miss him in the details.

Keep watching.

[thinkingaboutsanfrancisco]

At least they shouldn't be. 

We're all supposed to be individuals in this life. We're not born alone and we may not die alone, but it's up to us to solely carry the burden of everything in between. It's the prophecy of Newton's third law: the vitality of our peregrination is dependent on our varying movements working to interact with whatever and whomever we deem to be worthy to endure the path with us. The universe might place people on the trail, but it's up to us to act if we want them beside us and we have to make a good decision instantaneously because the intertwinement will inevitably mutate the rest of your life, luring you into surrendering total control and permitting foreign access to the bloodiest of your lacerated wounds that are throbbing to be mended by the careful and tender hand of another. You're under the guise of so many promises, some of which you've told wholeheartedly to ensure precious diligence... 

Diligence that's never guaranteed. 

Whether developed by nurture or influenced by nature, most people are reckless. They've come to possess an appetite for destruction that proves insatiable, intentions be damned. They can promise whatever the hell they want, regardless if they intend on fulfilling it, and the fucked up thing is it becomes genuine the moment you believe it. Even I was fooled by it this morning. Hindsight is always 20/20 and I didn't know any better because I didn't know them, but there's something about their chaotic decade long pattern of promises of change and inevitable subsequent failure that strike as familiar to me as the back of the hand holding the rapidly disintegrating flame my eyes fixate on. It's all I heard for fifteen fucking years. It's amazing how many times the same shit can be recycled into something new. Perhaps if people put as much work into doing something useful instead of bullshitting the people they love, some actual, physical, change could happen. Shit, maybe global warming could be stopped, maybe it already could've stopped. I sure know that, if not for the product of my polluted environment, I wouldn't have taken up this filthy little habit. I don't know what's more unfathomable: the amount of money I could've saved by not being a disgusting smoker who gets side-eyed by every conscious passerby or the number of cigarette butts I've trashed Oakland and San Francisco's streets with in the last three years for them to trample over... just like my dad trampled all of his promises of sobriety and extinguished the bright light of the progress he had; the six years that kept validity in my mom's unshakeable faith that this time was it. The thorn that had been wedged in our lives was removed and the cut it'd sliced within me could start to heal so that it no longer hurt to see the way that they'd absolutely bloom around each other, so that I too could open myself up to the fresh air of their prosperous spring where the threats of crack and Corcoran were history, my dad was here to stay and we were all going be a family again...

But I've always been fooled. 

Because, at the time, it wasn't bullshit. It was pure, unbridled, optimism crafted from a wait that only love could endure, the culmination of understanding why she stayed after so many years of watching her painstakingly build from the wreckage he'd left us in when she could've listened to me and left it so we could've started anew on our own. Despite all material odds that I thought proved me right, their persistence finally broke through my stubborn teenage skull to show that all I've wanted was to be proven wrong...and I was. I've always been, in countless contradictory ways. I was right to think he'd tarnish it, yet I was wrong to count on it. I was right to think she should've separated from him, but I was dead wrong for wishing it...

I was wrong to leave that night and right to come back. 

No matter what our egos are deluded by, we're all sinners and saints simultaneously. Our consciousness of change is the grey wedged between the permanent black and white of immortality and virtue. People aren't starkly either and rarely can they be. We're all victims of circumstance and criminals for continuing it, yet that can only be realized in retrospect. The present is a lawless arena where proven patterns and common sense are off the table to gamble the chance that this time will be different because this time is different. Last night being heaven doesn't void tonight being hell and vice versa. As shitty as Lyd's method of communication came off, texting provided them with a luxury and a curse. They had time to think. Unfortunately, S is now thinking backward, trying to return to the safety of last night where the truth was bright and everything seemed so right and he knows he can't be back there. I've seen this desire to be put out of nostalgic misery taint the vibrance of so many eyes; green, grey, and now S' too. It's one that'll always break my heart to look at because I understand it. 

When I look in a mirror long enough, I catch it swimming in my own blues.

So despite his plea, the only benignant remedy I can give him is, “Yes. Quit second-guessing yourself. You know what you need to do and the sooner you do it, the sooner the pain can at least start to cease. Everything has come to an end eventually, no matter how wonderful or terrible it might’ve been, and it’s clear that this relationship is begging for it’s merciful out. All you have to do is let it happen.” 

The words coming out of my mouth feel almost as good as the cigarette that I manage another drag from. It's been a long time since I've been able to verbally combat the nastiness of nostalgia and rally for a situation that can be changed positively. It's been a long time since I've felt this satisfied. I didn't count on cracking a smile now but it's been a weird fucking day. The things that normally don't line up did, the things that should've lined up didn't and, as frustrating as the pendulum swing has been, I've come to respect the equilibrium. His embrace of my suggestion of drastic change isn't happening as immediately as I'd hoped, but his stillness is okay. The longer my words sit, the more I realize that "letting it happen" isn't as easy as it was to say it, but at least it's being taken into consideration. 

While he continues to ponder, my focus eventually drifts away from the momentary standstill of his dilemma and...back to the buzzings of my own. The worries that I'd blown off earlier rage back to the docket, like checking the time so I can check the MUNI route or the Owl Cars if by the scary chance it's after midnight, and trying to figure out if there's time for me to swing by a 7/11...

And check if Ray texted me back...

But I can't. I can't leave him here without knowing what the fuck he's going to do which, the longer my antsy ass waits, the more I realize is not going to be as concrete as I thought. The definite "You're right J, thank you so much for making me realize something that's been right in front of my face for ten years!" is not what I'm going to hear. Maybe eventually, but not when there's ten fucking years to give up, not when there's a friendship that could still be there. He's spent so long building up this idea of her, surely it can't be knocked down like that...even though that selfish prick part of me wishes he would. I don't want to sit here all fucking night, man. I can't. I have to get home, I have to get to school tomorrow, I have to see if she texted me back...

I have to know if I've lost her. 

The optimistic rational part of my head tries to relieve me; I wasn't that explicit. It's not like she can read minds--- Except for she. fucking. can. Or rather, she'd adept at reading me and all of my stupid fucking mistakes. Again, she's that smart and I'm that dumb... 

So what the hell does she even want to do with me anyway? 

On most of every level, we're total opposites and if she took two seconds to catch our reflection, she'd know how fucking weird we look next to each other. I swear, she's so polished it's almost stereotypical. There's never a stray blonde strand on her black shirts, even though she's always letting her gorgeous hair cascade down her shoulders and back. Seriously, her hair defies the vortex that can be San Francisco's wind and always falls into the right place, but even when she doesn't deem it suit it's gone with a graceful flick of her fingers, whereas I have to obnoxiously throw a hand through mine and then waste a vain amount of time staring at myself trying to fix it until I give up and walk around looking worse than I did before. I'd love to know the science behind the way every article of clothing she wears looks so meticulously thought out. Each piece mixes together so cohesively regardless of differing patterns, colors, or fabrics and they all look tailored to fit her specifically. I'm just talking about casual clothes too, she's also the only student I've seen so far who looks more put together and professional than some of the teachers with her ironed collared blouses and a gold watch delicately adorning her wrist. Meanwhile, I come in looking like a total curmudgeon in whatever shirt is clean, the same jeans I wore yesterday, and any weathered jacket that was in reach. The things we do have in common are school and not eating at school, but even then I'm nowhere near par. Her manners are impeccable. It's her thinking swiftly enough to open the door for me, because, chivalrous tradition be damned, gentlemen are always first. She waits for me to get my food before she touches hers and even coaxes me into having the first taste of her "chips" while I wait, as well as after I've already scarfed down my lunch since she doesn't act like a starving child and takes her time to eat properly. Her most exemplary moment comes during the times where I'm so spent that all I can do is slouch against the booth and zone out while looking out the window and when I finally snap out of it I never see her checking her phone. Whether it be rain or shine her eyes follow mine, watching the cars breezing through Bayshore until she realizes that my lazy gaze has broken. She never tries to snap me out of it, she only gives me a warm smile that somehow tells me that she understands and, no matter how far gone I am, I always find myself returning one to her. It's never forced either, it just falls into place... 

She's given me everything wonderful, yet I can offer her nothing but trouble.

While I'm sure she's roamed here during the daytime, she'd never set foot in this dark and desolate park at this hour. She'd never be caught dead smoking this cigarette, not without spitting out her Doublemint or ridding herself of the stench by spritzing a healthy dose of perfume that's probably so expensive I'd have to sell an eight ball or two to be able to afford it. I'm surprised she hasn't prodded me to quit yet and I almost wish she would. It's such a disgusting and selfish habit to carry around in the world. There's nothing beneficial about walking around and penetrating the fresh air with this stick of toxicity. Who the fuck am I to think I'm worthy? I'm certainly not. So begs the question again...what the fuck does she want with me? What is it in me that saw so fit to acquaint herself with on that February morning and keeps her coming around after two months? She says we're friends, but why doesn't it feel like it? Friendship is supposed to be seamless and, don't get me wrong, I enjoy being around her and I enjoy that she considers us that but...it doesn't make sense. 

Maybe she wants something more... 

Ha. As if. Jesus fuck...where do I get this silly shit? Is the sleep deprivation finally breaking me? It is. The fact that she's already fallen victim to my mind's twisting of our delightful connection into this desire for something more is beyond fucked up as it is but to consider that she could reciprocate is straight-up delusional. S' theory on Shakespeare not writing any of his works made more sense, at least he had a substance to blame for his insanity. A world where Ray has feelings for me doesn't exist. If us being mere friends into our twenties is laughable, a shooting star would definitely steer clear of that wish. 

But it's not that easy. I mean I know it's certain but I can't speak for her either. I evidently don't possess her telepathy and can't confirm every thought running through her head. Who the hell am I to say we won't be friends in our twenties? I wasn't planning on us being friends for two days, much less two months, and two years isn't that unfathomable of a concept. I should be comforted by that, but I'm not. 

Because S didn't plan on being here tonight either. He didn't plan on coming to this park tonight and breaking the news that he did to me because he didn't plan on receiving it, he didn't plan on having to continue the pattern because he never planned for there to be a pattern to begin with... 

 He never planned on her breaking his heart.

I can't blame him. Carrying the load alone gets tiring and lonely, another hand offering to tend to you is like the gates of heaven opening up. Why deny it? We all need someone to love, right? It's so fucking pure and innocuous. Ray's so pure and innocuous, just like how Lyd was when S first met her because they were teenagers and didn't know any fucking better until it was too late. Shit, he even admitted that meeting so young stunted his abilities and I absolutely fucking believe him since he's still harboring over his eighth-grade crush at twenty-four. If by a miracle I can even make it to twenty, there's absolutely nothing about how I am or how my life is right now that I want to be lingering around like that rotten stench. Even though it might be a briefly pretty one like a dandelion, anything to sprout in my dour spring is a weed that needs to be ripped out by the root so that it doesn't spread into that uncontrollable mutation of a littered garden blooming with dangerous thorns. It'd only be a matter of time before I contaminate and sicken her... 

And I'm not going to let it happen. 

With my left hand reaching up to my lips, I take what's left of the Parliament and tuck it into my palm as tightly as I can, crushing and sizzling out the tiny but ferocious flame of those thoughts...those beautiful, terrifying, wistful, delusional, and bittersweet wishes, hopes, and dreams before they can burn me any further. The wince it provokes is only a physical twitch because this doesn't even hurt, it's nothing like what I'm sparing myself from. I could do it again and again and again if I wanted to and I'd be okay because I'm playing with a fire I can burn out whenever I want and, right now, the power's all mine. The small circle searing into my skin activates that familiar rush through the rest of my hand and throws me into my fucking senses. Ray doesn't feel that way about me, but if by some fucked up chance that she does, then it's too bad because the best fucking thing I'll ever be able to do for her is to deny her and spare her from this shit. She doesn't want it, I don't want it, and we're better off without it. We always will be. 

After a second, the initial sting relaxes into more of that nice steady and soothing throb and I allow myself a moment to revel in the sensation. It's so intense that a shiver drives down my spine as I inhale the cold, clean, air of the element I should've never left. Tucking my arm underneath the rail, a crooked smile slithers when my fingers unravel and that useless nub of ash rolls away from me and onto the wet grass below.

The burden of love can't destroy me if I destroy it first. 

The same can't be said for the man in front of me, the vision of whom shakes me into a sudden embarrassing awareness of my surroundings. Fuck, I hope S didn't see me do that... I don't think he did. He's still tip-toeing the around the obvious and, at this point, I have to shake my head. 

C'mon man...you've got it easier than some. Her intentions are clear and she's not dead in the fucking desert. You've been through this before and you know that this is for the best, you know that the future's brighter beyond this, you know I'm right...

Maybe I should reiterate that to him again, but I already feel like a broken record. He gets it, he's just trying to avoid it, and there's nothing I can do to cure that. The only thing I can do at this point is to light another cigarette and hope that eventually he'll do something while the ball's still in his court. A buzzer-beater slam dunk might be out of the question, but a simple point would suffice for now. It's after the flame meets the fresh end of the Parliament stuck in my lip where he breaks his cycle and starts coming closer to the bench, my eye narrowing as I notice what I think are tears and...shit... I know I didn't bring him to tears, it's the situation and it's a tough pill to swallow, but it still tugs on my guilt for not giving him the answer he wanted. He's ashamed of it, he doesn't let me see his face for long as he buries it in his hands, and I don't let my stare linger any longer. The action is enough to spell out that there's nothing else he wants me to do, there's nothing else I can do now but leave him to process this in private. He's been stripped of enough tonight, the least I can do is respect the dignity he has left.

“I’m really gonna be alone for the rest of my life, J....” He admits and, while I know that for him it's merely an exaggeration driven from his sorrow, it resonates with me enough to whisper...

“I am too.”

#/loveburnslikeacigarette #the bros #04122015

[justonesongmore]

XX. 1920

On Robot Rhythms, Comforting Tapestries, and Black women Saving Us All

1. Mamie Smith and Her Jazz Hounds: “Crazy Blues”

Everything to this moment has been prologue: minstrelsy, marches, ragtime, dance crazes from South America or the Pacific, all has merely made straight the paths. Today the prophecy is fulfilled in your hearing. The record that shook the foundations of the earth, the record that won the first battle in a war most people didn’t yet know was happening, the record in the shadow of which all that has happened since still dwells. “Ain’t had nothing but bad news,” but the joy and energy and racket that propels her is a grand fuck-you to all false merchants of that news.

2. Al Jolson: “Swanee”

Another record important for different, and lesser, reasons. Where “Crazy Blues” is African-American musicians finally presenting their vernacular music unmediated by white caricature, “Swanee” is white (well, Jewish) Americans claiming a new and modern identity directly through the caricature of blacks. It’s  a multigenerational caricature, as the 22-year-old composer (meet George Gershwin) quotes the original minstrel songwriter, and the performer, at his reckless height, has abandoned any pretense of imitation: his caricature, though performed in blackface, yowling cretinously for Mammy, is more self-parody than any other. The song’s melodic verve creates the future even as its lyrics plunder the past.

3. Baiano & Izaltina: “Cangerê”

As the Jazz Age begins, so too does the golden age of samba, with this slangy underground duet, the only known composition by Chico de Baiana, or the Bahia woman’s boy. “Cangerê,” said to be derived from an African language, is a specific ritual in the Afro-Brazilian Feitiço religion; the man and woman, arguing as usual in pop duets, threaten each other with the supernatural, while the samba rhythm works its own ineluctable magic on the listener. Two instrumental versions of the song were also cut in 1920, and the rhythmic power of the Banda da Casa Edison’s remains galvanizing.

4. Carlos Gardel: “Milonguita”

We have met many classic tango songs already, and will meet many more; but tango too is kicking into a new gear at the start of a new decade. “Milonguita,” by Argentine composer Enrique Delfino and Uruguayan lyricist Samuel Linnig, is one of the crown jewels of the Golden Age of Tango, never more exquisitely rendered than by Gardel’s burnished pipes. Full of the lunfardo slang that characterized the Buenos Aires underworld, it’s a portrait of a young woman driven to perdition by wine, men, and tango; her very name, “little-milonga,” refers to the dancehalls where the tango corrupted souls.

5. Mistinguett: “Mon homme”

Of the four canonical twentieth-century renditions of this song, the original is the least well-known; but Fanny Brice, Billie Holiday, and Édith Piaf sang other songs. The shining star of the Folies-Bergère between 1900 and 1930, Mistinguett sang many others too, but she may as well not have; this song, whether called “Mon homme” or “My Man,” has far superseded her own limited fame, and dragged her along rather cruelly in its wake. But pay attention to her studied lightness and flippancy, far from Brice’s and Piaf’s tragic posturing or Holiday’s bitter resignation: self-pity would be unfitting of her stardom.

6. Maurice Chevalier: “Oh! Maurice”

Mistinguett had been the toast of Paris since the Belle Époque; meanwhile, her nearest male equivalent, thirteen years her junior, was just rising to fame in 1920. (As though to exemplify the Parisian spirit, they had been lovers since 1911.) His first recorded hit, “Oh! Maurice” is an orgy of ribald egotism, a rhapsody on his masculine charms and the flutters into which he sends the female of the species. It’s tongue-in-cheek, of course, as all music-hall songs (of which it is a cousin) are; but it also owes its insouciant verve to the brio drifting from across the Atlantic.

7. Salvatore Papaccio: “Scettico Blues”

As does this. To be sure, it’s only called a blues because anything with even a slightly downbeat view of life was called a blues in 1920 (the copyright registration books were full to bursting of “blues”), but although structurally it’s what it sounds, a canzone napoletana, it’s also a witty, cynical plaint about the unfairness and falsity of life; and the see-sawing melody, though it doesn’t sound much like the blues strictly defined, owes more to ragtime-inflected American stage music than to traditional Italian bel canto. When pop singer Mina covered it in 1976, nostalgia couldn’t entirely obscure existentialism.

8. Lucille Hegamin & Harris’ Blues and Jazz Seven: “The Jazz Me Blues”

“Crazy Blues” had an immediate, electrifying effect on the recording industry; then as now, the most overwhelming flattery of success was imitation. It would take longer for authentic blues sensations, as measured by live performance in venues whites knew nothing of, to get on record, but refined generalist Black performers like Lucille Hegamin were pressed into immediate service to fill the obvious gap in the market. “Jazz Me Blues” was written by the young Black songwriter Tom Delaney, and its slangy but chaste evocation of the pleasures of the new groove under the sun is spun juicily in her mouth.

9. Bert Williams: “Unlucky Blues”

He was there at the beginning of the century, making outlandish grunts and twisting a love song into travesty; and he remains here at the century’s maturation, in some ways only catching up to where he was then. His voice is weathered with age and experience, the humorous glint in his eye undimmed but his face still poker-straight. Although the blues has now exploded into commercial popularity as feminine tragedy, his throaty plaintiveness looks forward to the masculine rural blues which will overshadow them. The song is Broadway pop, not blues, but his soul has always known the flatted fifth.

10. Nora Bayes: “The Broadway Blues”

It’s not often that I’ll privilege a recording by a white vaudevillian over a more famous one by an epochal Black act, but in this case the Sissle and Blake record is a bit too jaunty and careless, which only makes sense, as they didn’t write it. Bayes, a veteran Jewish coon singer, takes it at a drag, and is no longer burlesquing Blackness with weird hiccoughs, just singing, with the authority of age, a song about the pallor of the limelight. And with hindsight it’s hard to believe the aforementioned Gershwin kid didn’t have an ear on the orchestration.

11. Edith Day: “Alice Blue Gown”

The upheaval among the downmarket forms of musical entertainment, as authentic Black music begins to challenge the galumphing jeers of minstrelsy, did not necessarily have any immediate effect on the upmarket musical theater, which remained prissy, stodgy, and sentimental: but perhaps not quite unrecoverably foreign to us as it may sound today. “Alice Blue Gown” is meant to be wistful: in the show Irene, it is a song by a young woman nostalgic for her childhood dress of the shade named for President Roosevelt’s daughter. Chelsea Clinton would occupy the same cultural space today; and similar nostalgias are at work.

12. Paul Whiteman & His Ambassador Orchestra: “Whispering”

It is perhaps no accident that the “King of Jazz” cut his first record the same year that the real first jazz record was cut, and anyone curious about understanding the currents and cultures at work in the early 1920s would do well to study the sonic, rhythmic, tonal, and (yes) verbal discrepancies between “Crazy Blues” and “Whispering.” The Ambassador Orchestra is crisp, slick, not a hair out of place, not a glimpse of human feeling. Not only easy listening but Kraftwerk is predicted by their well-drilled rhythms; it is perhaps no accident either that Čapek’s robots emerged this year.

13. Ted Lewis Jazz Band: “When My Baby Smiles at Me”

While we’ve met Ted Lewis before, this more conventional dance-band number, with parts portioned out fairly among the band’s instrumentalists and his shabby-genteel crooning avant la lettre, was his first big hit, both on record and (helped by his star appearance at the Greenwich Village Follies of 1920) on sheet music. Compared to “O,” his klezmer-derived clarinet is more integrated into the tune’s jazz gestalt, and the way forward to Benny Goodman is clearly pointed; but there are still elements of ODJB-like novelty, as in the “I cry… I cry” refrain towards the end, squawked in parody by the band.

14. Ben Hokea Players: “Honolulu March”

A star instrumentalist, bandleader, and educator whose first records were also made in 1919, Ben Hokea was a Hawaiʻian-born guitarist who, on coming to the mainland, made his home base in Toronto, and his slack-key technique, more peppy and jazzy than dreamy and wistful, was instrumental in making hula music one of the everyday sounds of the 1920s, not just an exotica fad of the decade prior. The traditional song his band cuts here is taken at such a raggy, stuttering clip that the pedal steel swing of the Nashville-oriented decades to come is conjured by its streamlined, modern drive.

15. María Teresa Vera & Manuel Corona: “El yambú guaguancó”

Although we’ve heard from María Teresa Vera before, it was as a generalist singer covering a popular theater song; with this recording, she and her trova mentor, Manuel Corona, finally introduce the rumba proper (as distinct from the sones marketed as rhumbas in the 1930s) to recorded history. Yambú and guaguancó are both varieties of rumba, and the wordless chorus is characteristic of yambú. Vera’s verses are from the ancient storehouse of Cuban verse and symbol which, like blues verses, were mixed and matched to make up a song; but the insinuating rhythm, with its bell-clear clave, is what moves.

16. Zaki Murad: “Zuruni Kulli Sana Marra”

Because my focus has been (and will remain) primarily on Western music, I have paid scant attention to the deep wonders of Egyptian music, on record since before the century turned. Zaki Murad, of Jewish descent like many early Arabic-language recording stars, had been a successful recording artist since 1910, touring the Arabic-speaking world, and it is unjust that only this magnificent taqtuqa, “Visit Me Every Day,” by the legendary secular composer Sayyid Darwish (often considered the father of Egyptian popular music) represents him here. Do remember Murad’s last name, however; his daughter will join us later in the century.

17. Mishka Ziganoff: “Odessa Bulgar”

The Jewish diaspora, filtered through the sieve of immigration and collected in the tenements of New York, was always many peoples instead of one. Mishka Ziganoff was born in Odessa under the Russian Empire and emigrated to the US around the age of ten; his family settled in Brooklyn, and he became a virtuoso accordionist. His heritage was a jumble: he spoke Yiddish, but considered himself a Gypsy and communed as a Christian. In the ancient tradition of the musician as outsider, he managed to combine multiple interpretations of identity and home into a comforting tapestry, calling everyone to dance.

18. Abe Schwartz & Sylvia Schwartz: “National Hora Pt. 1”

Meanwhile, the most popular Jewish bandleader of the period, while cutting many lively freilach tunes that remain deathless today, paused to record something more quiet and perhaps personal: accompanied only by his daughter on piano, he fiddles a longing, keening improvisation in the “tzigane” (Roma) tradition, and wraps it up in what to Western European ears is an Irish jig. Klezmer scholars have declared this side a one-off, not a rendition of any familiar tune (Pt. 2 is better known as “Der Gasn Nigun”), and it’s impossible for me not to hear it as a thrilling expression of American pluralism.

19. Enrico Caruso: “I’ m’arricordo ’e Napule”

In a year, the Voice will be no more. This isn’t his last recording (that’s a selection from a Mass by Rossini), but it’s his last great canzone napoletana, a brand-new song of nostalgia and reverie about his hometown of Naples. More than anyone, he was the greatest star of the first age of recording, and as he dims, a new generation of stars is beginning to glow. Soon their brightness will eclipse his own; but few of them will retain anything like his name recognition over the years. A century later, and Caruso is still synonymous with beautiful singing.

20. Anita Patti Brown: “Villanelle”

The spectrum of authentic Black femininity which became, for the first time in recorded history, a live issue in 1920 ranged widely even then. The furthest away you could get, anyone would have said, from Mamie Smith’s vaudeville faux-lowdown, was the light classical canon; and here we find another Black woman. Her stage name is a double reference to Sissieretta Jones, her racial forebear in classical singing, nicknamed “the Black Patti” after Italian diva Adelina Patti; Anita Brown was called “the Bronze Tetrazzini” after Caruso’s duet partner. “Villanelle” was composed by Belgian miniaturist Eva Dell’Acqua in 1893, femininity in watercolors.

#1910s

[gunscli-blog]

WHICH GREEK GOD / GODDESS DO YOU REFLECT THE MOST ?

HEPHAESTUS –––––

Hephaestus is the Greek god of blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisans, sculptors, metals, metallurgy, fire and volcanoes. As a smithing god, Hephaestus made all the weapons of the gods in Olympus. He served as the blacksmith of the gods, and was worshipped in the manufacturing and industrial centers of Greece, particularly Athens. He was strong, intelligent, and respected by many, but not all.

WHICH FAMOUS KING OR QUEEN ARE YOU ?

QUEEN VICTORIA –––––

Intuitive and progress-driven, you are Queen Victoria (1837-1901)! Yours is a mind fixated on the future and build for expansion. A true visionary, you put your active imagination and tendency to daydream to good use through practical applications. You're quite the rare mix of thoughtful and tech-savvy. Queen from (1837-1901), Victoria was the longest reigning monarch. During her reign, Britain was transformed into a modern industrial nation, and the British Empire spread across the globe.

WHAT SHAKESPEARE CHARACTER ARE YOU ?

LUCIANA –––––

You are a textbook idealist. When you fall in love, it is head over heels...and usually, it's love at first sight! No matter, since you are all heedless optimism and idealism. As a result, you can be a bit sensitive and your heart (and ego!) has been bruised more than once. Your friends value you for your good nature and positive outlook on life. You can be sneaky and crafty when you go after what you want, and it doesn't always turn out how you expect - but it does always ends up for the best! 

WHAT IS YOUR GODLY PARENTAGE ?

APOLLO, SUN CHARIOTEER, GOD OF MUSIC, ARTS, POETRY, ARCHERY, PROPHECY, TRUTH, MEDICINE, PLAGUES AND ORDER –––––

Wow. That sounded like a diner menu didn't it? Apollo is considered to be the most powerful god on the Olympian council after the Big Three and Hera and Demeter, mainly due to all his spheres of influence. As a child of Apollo, you may exhibit one or more talents associated with the sun god. Children of Apollo are extremely talented and many know it, which can vary from charismatic confidence to narcissistic arrogance. You are open-minded, easygoing, empathetic yet logical. You have a skill in music, art, drama or language and being the child of the god of prophecies, you are sometimes very intuitive about the future. Yet, you focus more on the journey rather than the destination. You're kind, helpful and show extreme protection towards 1-2 people in your life you can't live without. When you're angered, you tend to make reckless but powerful decisions, and can make a complete U-turn in personality. You have no patience for betrayal or bullying, and can become very righteous in exacting revenge, resulting in devastation that was more than you planned for in hindsight. Despite your playful and shallow exterior, you probably spend a lot of time being very observant and perceptive about the world around you, and you show that in your daily activities.Qualities include harmony, order, reason, creativity, restraint, curiosity, arrogance, narcissism, observant. 

HOW WOULD JANE AUSTEN DESCRIBE YOUR LOVE LIFE ?

“She was stronger alone, and her own good sense so well supported her, that her firmness was as unshaken.” –––––

BOY, BYE. As far as you’re concerned, dating is just a distraction from all the things you should be focusing on, like working toward your personal goals and figuring out a way to Apparate into Hogwarts. Plus, personal space is pretty high up on your list of priorities.

WHAT IS YOUR FATAL FLAW ?

YOU’RE MARRIED TO YOUR JOB  –––––

Your priorities are as follows: your job is number one, and in a distant second is literally everything else. Take a break, you workaholic! If you don’t, you’ll tether yourself to this sinking ship and wind up working yourself to the breaking point. You might very well have a crisis of identity. You’ll definitely strain your relationship with your significant other. I bet you’re a police officer, or a surgeon or something. Just… take it easy, okay? Spend time with your family.

HOW WOULD YOU DIE IN A SHAKESPEARE PLAY ?

YOU’RE GOING TO DIE BY POISON –––––

It’s not the most glamorous of deaths, but it’s perfectly respectable, as deaths go.

WHAT SHAKESPEARE ARCHETYPE ARE YOU ?

THE BASTARD PRINCE –––––

You’re of noble blood, but you were born out of wedlock, so now you’re evil. Maybe it’s because society has written you off as an outcast. Maybe it’s because the throne that’s rightfully yours is going to your younger brother. Either way, you’re probably the villain of this story, or at least a recurring annoyance. See: Don John from Much Ado About Nothing, Edmund from King Lear, and a character from King John who’s literally known as The Bastard. (Though he, at least, gets to be a cool and complex character.)

WHAT WOULD YOU DIE OF IN THE MIDDLE AGES ?

CHILDBIRTH –––––

You would’ve died in childbirth, which was basically one of the most common ways to die. In the Middle Ages, women were having babies constantly, and modern medicine hadn’t been invented yet. Therefore if something went wrong, a midwife’s best bet was “Well let’s give her some vinegar and then rub eagle’s dung everywhere, that usually works.” A crucifix may have also been involved. The odds weren’t good is what we’re saying.

ARE YOU THE PROTAGONIST ?

YOU’RE DEFINITELY NOT THE PROTAGONIST –––––

In fact, I'm pretty sure you're the antagonist. I have no idea how you got this, actually. I tried to make it really hard. Anyway, you're the adversarial plot element every good story needs. You oppose the protagonist at every turn, and you generally just make things difficult. You're not necessarily evil, but you are the vehicle for conflict and people mostly hate you, so... there's that. Sorry! 

WOULD YOU SURVIVE A SHAKESPEARE PLAY ?

YOU WOULD NOT SURVIVE –––––

Yikes. In the death realm better known as "every Shakespeare play ever written," you, unfortunately, would not make it out alive. I can't tell you how exactly you'd shuffle off this mortal coil—whether by your own hand, or due to a betrayal on the part of someone you loved, or because of some hilarious accident—but I can tell you that you simply don't have the vigor to survive a five-act structure.

#crowns.task5 #procrastination nation