#‘because him and death are inextricably bound’ -lost girls

[aengelren]

Eren being born to die is always gonna break my heart

#‘because him and death are inextricably bound’ -lost girls #</3 #i hope you all know I’m not joking when i say i love him more than anything #that’s my baby y’all #nobody is ever gonna replace him #attack on titan #eren jaeger

[aion-rsa]

Why Wonder Woman’s Real Origin Story Lies in First Wave Feminism

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This holiday season, one of the few bright spots for families unable to go to theaters—and even those who did—was Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman 1984. An ambitious and vibrantly colored celebration of heroism in all its forms, including those that don’t end in fistfights, it’s a superhero movie that’s won as many fans as detractors. But while basking in the new spectacle is well and good, it’s also worth considering how it came to be. For even in this HBO Max tentpole, one can still see how the feminist movement of the early 20th century is grafted into the very DNA of the Wonder Woman character, her origin, and even her most contentious iconography… something that rarely gets acknowledged in the broader comic fan community.

The character of Wonder Woman was created by Dr. William Moulton Marston in 1941. A psychologist with an eclectic career, Marston went from inventing the lie detector test while still an undergraduate at Harvard in 1914 to being essentially blacklisted from academia by the age of 33. But of course his most enduring legacy came afterward; it came when he engineered a superheroine intentionally designed to be a great role model for girls and boys.

As Marston famously said, “Frankly, Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who, I believe, should rule the world.” However, the actual political and sociological influences on Marston and the women who helped him create Diana are often overlooked, even as the character has come to dominate pop culture.

Marston, rather infamously nowadays, lived a polyamorous lifestyle with his wife Elizabeth Holloway Marston, and a second partner named Olive Byrne. Byrne is often credited in the 21st century as the inspiration for Wonder Woman (instead of a wedding ring, Marston gave her two bracelets that are identical to those worn by Diana Prince). Yet it is very likely that Holloway Marston had just as much influence. After all, she was a lover of Greek antiquity and until her death kept a book of Sappho’s poetry from the island of Lesbos within reach.

Still, it is Byrne’s influence that historian and esteemed Harvard professor, Jill Lepore, most untangles in her riveting portrait of the Marston family, The Secret History of Wonder Woman. Lepore, who holds the title of David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of History at Cambridge, zeroed in on Byrne’s relation to the early feminist movement at the turn of the century and its impact on Marston, recasting Wonder Woman as a bridge between the suffragist movement and the generation who grew up reading Wonder Woman comics before fighting for the “women’s liberation movement.”

Olive Byrne was born in 1904, the daughter of Ethel Byrne and the niece of Margaret Sanger, the latter of whom founded what became known as Planned Parenthood (Margaret also coined the term “birth control”). In 1916, Ethel and Margaret opened in Brooklyn the first United States birth control clinic, and received jail time at a workhouse for their trouble. There Ethel nearly starved to death while going on a hunger strike. During this time, a 12-year-old Olive Byrne was being raised in a Catholic orphanage because her father and grandparents had died, and Ethel Byrne was not interested in raising her daughter.

Despite their absence, Olive held her mother and aunt’s politics in high regard. And those ideals would reverberate in Wonder Woman comics too. They were thoughts informed by the circle of New York intellectuals and early 20th century socialists Margaret and Ethel interacted with in Greenwich Village. Among their contemporaries were Upton Sinclair, Emma Goldman, and a very notable Lou Rogers.

Lou was actually named Annie Lucasta Rogers, but because she was told she couldn’t get work as a woman cartoonist, she initially submitted her work as “Lou” via the mail. Her historic drawings of women being able to finally break off the shackles of patriarchy by using the right to vote are echoed throughout Marston’s Wonder Woman comics, just as much as the author’s own fascination with male and female domination and submission.

In the 1910s, feminists and suffragist literature was rife with Amazonian imagery that would live again in the pages of DC. For example, Max Eastman published in 1913 a book of verse called Child of the Amazons and Other Poems. In it, an Amazonian girl must confess to her queen that she has fallen in love with a man. Yet Amazonian law forbids any warrior to marry or bear children until she has produced significant change in the world. Thus the young Amazon abandons her romance, stating she won’t seek love again until “the far age when men shall cease / their tyranny.” This is echoed in Wonder Woman comics as Diana repeatedly, and flatly, refuses to marry Steve Trevor.

In one classic Marston story, a dopey Steve whines, “Angel, when are we going to be married?” Diana coolly fires back, “When evil and injustice vanish from the Earth!”

More appropriate still is Inez Haynes Gillmore’s Angel Island. Published in 1914, after Gillmore co-founded the National College Equal Suffrage League, Angel Island envisions five American sailors who are shipwrecked on an island that’s crawling with “super-humanly beautiful” women with wings. Driven mad by lust, the men capture the women and cut off their wings, leaving them helpless as none has ever walked with their feet. But eventually one of the angels leads a violent revolution “with the splendid, swinging gait of the Amazon.”

This too echoes early Wonder Woman stories of the heroine being chained or rendered powerless by men who would wish to dominate her in every sense of the word. It is, after all, the fate her mother Hippolyta had to free the Amazons from in bloody battle.

Men trying to chain Diana or rob her of her powers by either bounding her bracelets together or removing them was also a common occurrence in ‘40s Wonder Woman comics, particularly those authored by  Marston. In one memorable Marston story, a man unaware that Diana Prince is Wonder Woman even chains her to a stove so she cannot leave the kitchen. Diana retorts with a smirk, “How thrilling! I see you’re chaining me to the cookstove. What a perfect caveman idea!”

The year of 1915, meanwhile, saw the publication of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, another feminist tale of an uncharted utopia of only women. For thousands of years, this lost paradise’s women have reproduced asexually, not unlike how Diana is born to Hippolyta in the comics after the Amazonian Queen sculpts her out of clay. These women of “herland” know nothing of fear, war, or even basic concepts of property. Unfortunately, three male American students find them and fall in love, each marrying one woman. But then each is thunderstruck that they cannot consummate their relationship whenever they want. In this thinly veiled allegory about the need for birth control, two of the men are banished when one tries to rape his wife, and another expresses confusion as to how rape can be a crime in marriage.

“The women [of Herland] are Amazons because, in the nineteen-teens, reporters routinely used the name to describe suffragists,” Lepore said in a recent article in The New Yorker. “So did suffragists themselves in both the U.K. and the U.S., including Elizabeth Holloway.”

The writers of these stories were also contemporaries and even sometimes neighbors of Olive’s mother, Ethel. And just as Olive helped introduce a worshipful admiration for her aunt Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood to the Marstons, with whom she built an unorthodox home, so too did she seemingly inform (along with Holloway Marston’s love for antiquity) what became the Wonder Woman origin story, which was recently given new life by Jenkins and Gal Gadot in 2017’s Wonder Woman.

There is of course the question of whether the new movies fully embrace these legacies. Lepore, for one, is skeptical, writing in 2020 that “Patty Jenkins seems to be interested in history… But she’s apparently not at all interested in the history of women: it’s got no place in either of her two ‘Wonder Woman’ films, even though they both take place during major inflection points in that history.”

However, the hard-won victories of that history, and how Marston seeded the ideals of its first wave into his comics, is still inextricably linked to Gadot’s Wonder Woman. We see it when she stands with a near divinity over Chris Pine on a beach in the 2017 movie, unaware and undisturbed by the preconceived limits a patriarchal society would place on her; and we see it when Wonder Woman can defeat villainy and greed in Wonder Woman 1984 without having to throw a single punch.

So for whatever bondage iconography that also clearly seeped its way into Marston’s creation, there is a definite through-line of a century’s worth of feminist ideals that connect the fantasies of the suffrage movement to the icon of female empowerment that the women’s liberation movement claimed Wonder Woman to be when she was placed on the cover of Gloria Steinem’s Ms. magazine in 1972. And a hundred years later, it lives on like Amazons and angels on the big screen.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The post Why Wonder Woman’s Real Origin Story Lies in First Wave Feminism appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3npUrcO

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

[artigas]

a few fave books

I was tagged by the fantastic and admirable and lovely @tinypinetrees!! I was so happy to discover her choices and the quotes from each title were so interesting. Here ae just a handful of mine in no particular order.

1. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

“I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you—especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame.  And if two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I’ve a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly.  As for you,—you’d forget me.” 

2. Love Medicine - Louise Eldrich

“Your life feels different on you, once you greet death and understand your heart’s position. You wear your life like a garment from the mission bundle sale ever after – lightly because you realize you never paid nothing for it, cherishing because you know you won’t ever come by such a bargain again.”

3. The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller 

“I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.” 

4. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley 

“Have I not suffered enough, that you seek to increase my misery? Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.Oh, Frankenstein, be not equitable to every other, and trample upon me alone, to whom thy justice, and even thy clemency and affection, is most due. Remember, that I am thy creature: I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed.”

5. The Woman Warrior - Mary Hong Kingston

“When we Chinese girls listened to the adults talk-story, we learned that we failed if we grew up to be but wives or slaves. We could be heroines, swordswomen. Even if she had to rage across all China, a swordswoman got even with anybody who hurt her family. Perhaps women were once so dangerous that they had to have their feet bound.”

6. The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt

“And I add my own love to the history of people who have loved beautiful things, and looked out for them, and pulled them from the fire, and sought them when they were lost, and tried to preserve them and save them while passing them along literally from hand to hand, singing out brilliantly from the wreck of time to the next generation of lovers, and the next." 

7. The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri

“They were things for which it was impossible to prepare but which one spent a lifetime looking back at, trying to accept, interpret, comprehend. Things that should never have happened, that seemed out of place and wrong, these were what prevailed, what endured, in the end.”

I’m tagging: @old-long-john, @vowel-in-thug, @tommyplum, @crucifythenburn, @hallowknees, @dykerory, @candlewinds @tenderheliotrope @bakedapplesauce and @twobrokenwyngs

#estefania rambles #i love each of these for such distinct and intimate reasons but i cant go on and on about it right now #or this post will be endddddless

[bongaboi]

Liverpool: 2019-20 Premier League Champions

30 years of hope: my life as an ardent Liverpool fan

After three decades of near misses, slips and tears, the Merseyside team’s wait for another league title is nearly over. So what does it mean to a scouser and lifelong fan?

by Hannah Jane Parkinson

I am three years old in the photograph, hugging a plastic, flyaway football. I am seven, arriving tentatively for my first training session at a local girls’ club. I am bounding back to my mother’s car, blowing hot breath on cold hands, beaming, the salt from the artificial turf embedded in the soles of my trainers.

I am eight and glued to the television, watching teen wunderkind and my Liverpool hero, Michael Owen, score the perfect goal against Argentina in World Cup 98.

I am nine. I give up one of the few days I have to visit my father to attend my first ever match at Anfield, Liverpool FC’s famous stadium. A week later, my father dies. These two events are inextricably linked in my mind, and the guilt continues to whichever day you are reading this.

I am 10 and make my first appearance in print in a feature for the local paper, the Liverpool Echo, about girls getting into football. I am quoted as saying that all my sister cares about is boys and fashion.

Twelve years old and the fuzzy letters of “Parkinson” on the back of my shirt arch down my shoulder blades.

I am 13. Our team, known as Liverpool Feds, are approached by Liverpool FC to become their official girls’ outfit. We visit Melwood, the first team’s training ground. The full-size goals loom like scaffolding.

I am 14. My hero, Owen, makes the same move to Real Madrid that Steve McManaman made five years before him. This breaks my heart. Suddenly, all I care about is boys and fashion. Without really making a decision, I give up football. Cold winter nights are spent inside on the sofa watching Sex and the City. I discover live music and MySpace.

I am 15. I own the entire range of Clearasil products. A group of my schoolfriends and I take a night off GCSE revision to watch the 2005 European Champions League final in Istanbul; the first the club has reached since the mid-80s, and so it is forbidden not to watch. Liverpool are losing by three goals at half time. A lost cause. Minds wander to the second biology paper… But wait. Liverpool pull back to 3-3. And win on penalties. Pandemonium. We join the throng in the streets; the blaring car horns; the beer jumping, like salmon, from pint glasses; the embrace of strangers; the straining vocal cords.

I am 18 and living in Russia, watching games on my first-generation smartphone via a 2G internet connection. Each time a player goes through on goal the signal drops to endless buffering. Liverpool finish second in the league, four points behind bitter rivals Manchester United.

I am 26, we are bearing down on the title. Steven Gerrard in an impromptu on-pitch team talk, after a crucial win against the newly flush Manchester City, shouts hoarsely at his players: “This does not fucking slip now!” The next home game, Gerrard – one of the best players the club has ever seen, captain, scouser, Liverpool FC lifer – literally slips on the turf against Chelsea to concede a goal. We lose. Manchester City finish top of the league by two points.

I am 29. I am in Cuba, where the internet is heavily censored. But I manage to watch the last game of the season, which will be decisive. Liverpool finish the league with 97 points; the highest points tally ever for a team that doesn’t win the title. City win again. With 98 points. Liverpool do, however, win the Champions League – for the sixth time – after scoring four goals in a sublime semi-final comeback against Barcelona. The injured Mohamed Salah, watching on the bench, wears a T-shirt bearing the slogan “Never Give Up”. The T-shirt sells out.

I am 30. I have never witnessed my beloved Liverpool FC lift the title. Two months from now, this is going to change. As I write Liverpool have a 22-point lead at the top of the table. Of 84 points available this season, they have taken 79. Next Monday is the derby against Everton.

I want to untangle what this will mean to me – the fan who met Steven Gerrard a couple of years ago, grinning like a child; the fan who, two weeks ago, was unbelievably touched when current star Trent Alexander-Arnold recorded a video message to cheer her up during a bad time. What it means to other fans: those who witnessed the dominance of the 1980s, and the younger ones who have known only disappointment. And what it means, too, for the future of the area of Anfield itself.

It’s late February in the Flat Iron pub, one of the many dotted around Anfield. Steve Dodd, who is 49, is with his friends Dan Wynn, 26, and Gerrard Noble, 47. All from Somerset, they are having a pre-match drink before the home game against West Ham. Steve talks of the current Jürgen Klopp-assembled side as the best Liverpool side he thinks he’s ever seen.

The friends have been scouring the internet for places to stay in the city for the last home fixture of the season, but to no avail. “Rooms are going for £400 a night,” Gerrard says, his eyes widening. He and Steve are allowing themselves to get excited, but Dan, who like me has yet to experience a league title win, looks anxious and rubs his thighs. “No,” he says, “I don’t want to jinx it. Though I’ve been kicked out of various WhatsApp groups for being smug about all the results.” Steve tells me they weren’t prepared for it, this three-decade-long wait: “I just thought we’d go on winning.”

We talk about how important it is that Klopp’s politics match the club: Liverpool is a leftwing city; Liverpool is a leftwing club. At the last election, Labour retained all of its 14 MPs on Merseyside. The city has never forgiven the Tories for former chancellor Geoffrey Howe’s strategy of “managed decline”. Thatcher is a hated figure. But so is Derek Hatton, the former city council deputy leader and member of the Marxist group Militant. Last month, Italy’s rightwing politician Matteo Salvini was forced to deny that he had pulled out of a visit to Liverpool after the metropolitan region’s mayor called him a “fascist”. During several games last year, chants rang out for Jeremy Corbyn. The current prime minister conspicuously avoids visiting. As Gareth Robertson, who is a part of the immensely popular The Anfield Wrap podcast, with more than 200,000 weekly downloads in 200 countries, puts it to me: “Not only do we want a good football coach, we expect almost a political leader, someone who gets us, and our city, its values.” Humorously, there have been petitions for Liverpool to become a self-determined scouse state, and “Scouse not English” is a frequent terrace chant.

The club has a mantra: “This means more.” It pisses off other teams and is, understandably, dismissed as marketing speak. But isn’t it true? Isn’t the 127-year-old club what people think of when anyone, anywhere in the world, mentions “Liverpool”? The famous football team that plays in red – allowing for the Beatles, of course.

The city has another team, the blue of Everton. I have nothing against Everton. I consider Everton fellow scousers and too little a threat to focus animosity towards. In a way, the clubs are unruly siblings; we love and scrap in equal measure. Totally different personalities, but born of the same streets.

Four years ago, a man named Jürgen Klopp arrived on these streets. Or more accurately, he arrived in the suburb of Formby, renting the house from his managerial predecessor, Brendan Rodgers. Klopp is the football manager that even non-football fans like. He’s Ludovico Einaudi, seducing those previously uninterested in classical music. He is a man of principle; a baseball cap permanently affixed to his head, as though at any point he might be required to step up to the plate on a blindingly sunny day. Perhaps for the Boston Red Sox, owned by Liverpool FC’s American proprietor, John W Henry.

Klopp is erudite. He is proudly anti-Brexit in a city that voted 58% Remain. “For me, Brexit makes no sense at all,” he has said. He is a socialist: “I am on the left … I believe in the welfare state. I’m not privately insured. I would never vote for a party because they promised to lower the top tax rate. If there’s something I will never do in my life it is vote for the right.” He grew up in a humble village in Germany’s Black Forest, and it shows. There’s a saying in the region: “the hair in the soup”. It means focusing on even the tiniest things that can be improved.

He has the good looks of one of my favourite 1960s Russian film stars, Aleksandr Demyanenko. He hugs his players as though they were the loves of his life and he might never see them again. Journalists like him for his press-conference banter as well as his eloquence. He visits children in hospitals. He is funny. When Mario Götze, one of his star players at former club Borussia Dortmund, left for Pep Guardiola’s Bayern Munich, his explanation was: “He’s leaving because he’s Guardiola’s favourite. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. I can’t make myself shorter and learn Spanish.”

Liverpool have had many famous managers, of course. Bill Shankly (there’s a statue of him outside the ground); Bob Paisley (ditto); Kenny Dalglish. But Klopp is already being talked of as one of the best ever.

Liverpool the city has evolved from its shamefully prominent role in the slave trade – in common with other major British ports – to a place with a diverse population and a well-won reputation for being friendly and welcoming. But the tragedy and scandal of Hillsborough, in which 96 fans were crushed to death in 1989 at Sheffield Wednesday’s ground, is etched into the nation’s sporting history, and its social justice record. After a 27-year-long battle to clear the names of the Liverpool fans whose reputations were smeared, after inquests that lasted two years – the longest case heard by a jury in British legal history – a verdict of unlawful killing was returned. But, as Margaret Aspinall of the indefatigable Hillsborough Family Support Group pointed out, after David Duckenfield, police commander at the ground, was cleared of manslaughter last year, no one has yet been found accountable for those killings.

The Sun, which categorically did not report “The Truth”, as the infamous headline went, but was found to have published untruths that blamed Liverpool fans for the disaster, is a red-top pariah here. The paper is the bestselling national in print, but shifts a measly 12,000 or so copies on Merseyside. A branch of Sainsbury’s was once found to be selling copies under the counter, as though they were counterfeit cigarettes. It’s a boycott that has lasted longer than many marriages.

The socially progressive values of the club extend to it supporting an end to period poverty – free sanitary products are available in every women’s loo at Anfield. Last month, the Reds Going Green initiative saw the installation of organic machines to break down food waste into water. The club even has its own allotment, which grows food to serve to fans in the main stand. It was the first Premier League club to be officially involved with an LGBT Pride event in 2012, at the invitation of Paul Amann. Amann tells me how he set up the LGBT supporters group, Kop Outs, because: “It’s essential that our voices are heard, our presence is welcomed and respected.” The group works alongside the Spirit of Shankly supporters’ group and the Fans Supporting Foodbanks initiative and has regular meet-ups. These things mean something to me: a football fan as a girl, and now as a woman. A woman who dates other women. A woman who doesn’t want to hear homophobic chants on the terraces. Or, it goes without saying, racist ones. Jamie Carragher, ex-player and pundit, has apologised on behalf of the club for its backing of striker Luis Suárez, who was banned from playing for eight matches in 2011 for making racist comments. “We made a massive mistake,” Carragher said. “What message do you send to the world? Supporting someone being banned because he used some racist words.”

Back on the pitch, some of this season’s performances have been, quite simply, balletic. Others as powerful and muscular as a weightlifting competition. Formations as beautiful as constellations. Forward surges as though our fullbacks were plugged into the mains. Possibly the best fullbacks playing today: 21-year-old local lad Trent Alexander-Arnold (known just as Trent) and the fiery Scot Andy Robertson (Robbo) are spoken about by pundits as innovators. Gary Lineker and I text, rapturously, about the two of them.

For a football team to be consistent, for a team to win the league, it must be capable of winning in many different ways. The aesthetically pleasing playing out from the back. Lightning counter-attacks. Scraping 1-0 wins in the final minutes (and, particularly at the start of this season, we have done a lot of that. It’s something Manchester United used to do in their 90s pomp, and naturally, I hated them for it). Mindful of the trauma of The Slip, the agreed club line is “one game at a time”, said again and again, as another scouse son, Pete Burns, once sang: “like a record baby, right round, round, round… ” And my God, how many of those we’ve smashed. The current side is the first in England to hold an international treble (the Champions League; Uefa Super Cup; Fifa Club World Cup). We have not lost a home game for almost two calendar years. Shortly, we’ll no doubt break the record for the earliest title win during a season; the most points across Europe’s top five leagues.

It is, even to the neutral, extraordinary stuff. It is, even to the haters, albeit grudgingly, extraordinary stuff. In 2016, one of the greatest stories of modern football was the previously mediocre Leicester City winning a surprise title. Liverpool’s dominance this season surpasses that for drama. It is watching history in the present.

Being at a game at Anfield is like being high while ingesting nothing. The stands seem to have lungs. Though You’ll Never Walk Alone has become supremely emotional, an anthem for strength and perseverance post-Hillsborough (“walk on through the wind / walk on through the rain”) it’s a song originally from the musical Carousel. It was a standout 1963 cover version by Liverpudlian band Gerry and the Pacemakers that kicked off its adoption at Anfield. “It’s got a lot of lovely major-to-minor changes at often unexpected moments that have the effect of emotionally blindsiding you,” music journalist Pete Paphides says (although he’s a United fan, so feel free to discount everything he tells me). “But it’s also obviously very hymnal, with a chorus which invites that religious ambiguity. It was Aretha Franklin’s version that John Peel played after Hillsborough and rendered himself incapable of carrying on by virtue of doing so.”

Anfield has always been something special; players from countless teams often talk of it being the greatest ground they have ever played at. Or the most intimidating. Or the most electric. But of late, there’s an extra buoyancy. The crowd salivates.

Watching the game against West Ham, we take the lead within 10 minutes, but they quickly equalise, before going ahead. We score twice more. It is our 21st consecutive home win, setting a Premier League-era record. At the end of the game, Klopp and his players applaud the Kop end, fans’ eyes glistening with both emotion and wind chill (“walk on, through the wind… ”)

Adjacent to the stadium at the redbrick Albert pub, Clara, Tom, John – all in their 20s, students, and local – and John’s dad, David, who is 53, are cheering the last-ditch win. I repeat what I asked Steve and his friends: just how excited should we all be?

“Very fucking excited,” says John. “Very fucking excited,” Tom concurs. (Scousers use swear words as ellipses. And the speed of Liverpudlian patter matches the rat-a-tat-tat of freestyle rappers.) The Albert is floor-to-ceiling in flags; unassuming from the outside, iconic inside. Across the road at the Park – the “Established 1888” sign above its door – it is Where’s Wally? levels of rammed, entirely usual for a match day. But the mood is as disbelieving as triumphant. It hasn’t happened yet, but it already feels as though people are waiting to be shaken awake from a dream. Around the corner, posters at another fan favourite, the Sandon, advertise a huge end-of-season victory party. I grab a burger at the Kop of the Range, a kebab joint not far from a scarf stall that has seen its business rocket over the past three years.

My Uber driver, Mohamed, 35, moved to the city from Sri Lanka. A massive Salah fan, he tells me his own revenue booms when the club win a game – happier fans means higher fares. “People don’t want to spend money on a loss,” he says. “If we win, the whole mood lifts. You can feel it in the car. Though when you start driving with Uber, they tell you not to mention what football team you support. Because football means a lot to people. There are many feelings involved with football.”

It’s unsurprising to me that even back in Sri Lanka, Mohamed was a fan. Liverpool is a global behemoth. The richest club in the UK outside Manchester.

A £1.7bn valuation; £533m turnover; pre-tax profits of £42m. Matchday ticket revenues increased (thanks to a regenerated £110m main stand). Visiting the club shop, there is LFC-branded gin; babygros; even a Hello Kitty tie-in range. As Richard Haigh at consultants Brand Finance tells me, next season’s kit deal with Nike is “expected to represent the largest in history. Brands will be willing to pay to have some magic dust of LFC.” There are official stores as far afield as Dubai and Bangkok.

John W Henry has won the support of the fans for his positive handling of the club. And yet, despite this huge wealth, Anfield is the 10th most deprived neighbourhood in the country. Boarded-up houses surround the stadium. The club has not covered itself in glory in the past, accused of buying up properties in unscrupulous ways. But it is hoped that local enterprises, such as the community-run Homebaked cake shop and new housing association properties, will make the neighbourhood better.

Last week, we were knocked out of the FA Cup in a match against Chelsea. Or, as I call that fixture, Kensington versus Kensington. (In Liverpool’s “Kenny”, 98% of residents are among the most deprived 5% nationally. In London’s, residents earn three times the national average.)

In the league, there has been a blip. Last weekend we finally lost. And we lost 3-0 to, with the greatest respect, Watford; not a bad side, but a side ensconced in a relegation battle. Arsenal, who once went a whole season unbeaten (“the Invincibles”), and are keen to keep that record, tweeted from the official club account: “Phew!”

But I am not panicking. It’s possible Dan from the Flat Iron is panicking. But Klopp isn’t panicking. In typical fashion, he said the fact we played an absolutely awful game of football was “rather positive… ”

“A couple of years ago,” our hero reminds us, “I said we wanted to write our own stories and create our own history, and obviously the boys took what I said really seriously. It is so special. The numbers are incredible.” In a nod to Sir Alex Ferguson’s famous line that his greatest challenge was “knocking Liverpool right off their fucking perch”, Liverpool chief executive Peter Moore says now: “We are back on our perch.” As The Anfield Wrap’s Gareth says: “In a dream scenario, a period of dominance follows. Not so long ago that dream was just that. Now, it’s a reality that is much easier to imagine.”

Four more games. Eyes on the prize. For me, at last, 30 years in the making, eyes on the prize.

#2020 #premier league #ynwa #liverpool fc #you'll never walk alone

[margridarnauds]

obscure ask meme: 14, 26, and 3

3. what movie/game/etc. helps you calm down?

The Mummy, 1789, and Chronicles of Narnia for me. Also: Star Trek: TNG and Murder, She Wrote. They’re basically like time portals. Also, given that I nearly cried while playing Wii: Endless Ocean recently, I THINK it’s safe to say that that one counts. Even listening to the opening number is just…memories. Happiness. Calm. 

14. do you like makeup?

I like seeing what other PEOPLE can do with it and I’m always impressed and slightly envious of the transformation factor (the possibility of having cheekbones is very enticing, tbh), but I can’t be bothered to learn how to do it myself. It seems like an encumbrance as far as every day life. I DEFINITELY think it’s ridiculous that women are expected to double down on it in order to appear “professional” while their counterparts don’t. 

26. what do you think about genderbent Solène or Olympe? 

Hm…..I’m ALWAYS down for 1789 genderbends, because I think that you could get a really interesting story out of that, probably more interesting than the canon story. I would probably ship Fem!Laz/Fem!Ronan like fucking UPS.

More under the readmore because I ended up thinking way too much about this and very little of it ended up coherent:  

 I THINK Solène would be hard, if we’re assuming that she’s genderbent into a cis dude from a cis woman, given that Canon!Solène puts so much of an emphasis on childbirth=womanhood, which is personally……EH to me, especially when I know her character was written by a bunch of dudes, but….Hm, it’s hard because on one hand, I feel like a genderbent Solène (Solal?) wouldn’t have to deal with nearly the same issues that Solène has to deal with in canon. Obviously, Ronan fucking off to Paris after their father died would STILL be devastating on an emotional level, but it wouldn’t be quite the SAME level of devastation as a woman who’s lost her family home, the only source of economic stability they HAD in the form of the farm, and both of the major male figures in her life, with no inheritance or dowry to give her a cushion. The employment opportunities for a guy in France at this time were significantly larger, even though he COULD still be a sex worker, because it’s not like male sex workers didn’t exist at this time either, though there was always that added sense of danger due to the illegality of it. (Not that that…..REALLY stopped anyone. I mean, the Tuileries and Palais Royal were NOTORIOUS gay hangouts, though most of that, from what I REMEMBER was more casual sex rather than necessarily sex work.) And, tbh, you could even keep the Zuka/Toho thing with him getting a keeper, since it’s not like that would be UNUSUAL, though I could see him taking a more personal job like, say, a valet or a footman, since that would give off some plausible deniability. (Remember when I mentioned in Forgiveness that Ronan tended to act as Laz’s valet? YEEEEEEEEEP.) 

I think that Ronan would STILL be horrified, because it would still be a little sibling of his and Ronan’s deep enough in the closet at this point that he can see Narnia from his house and I think that, for all his posturing, Ronan is still something of a country boy, but it wouldn’t be the same as his LITTLE SISTER, since a lot of Ronan’s issues with Solène and sex work stem from….him being an 18th century man. Solène “gave up her dignity,” and now Ronan’s perfect little image of a societally acceptable life post-Revolution, where he comes back and everything is nice and happy and they can live on the farm together and Solène can get married off to a nice man and have ten kids while Ronan gets married to a nice girl…that’s all gone. I don’t…let Ronan off EASY for seeing his sister as being “ruined,” even though I do think that I ultimately go a lot easier on him than a lot of people do, but I do think that’s very much where his line of thought’s going. One of Ronan’s biggest flaws is probably that, for all that he talks of Revolution and changing the world….he doesn’t really….know HOW to move beyond his own prejudices. He can be surprisingly conservative like that. Which is far from UNUSUAL for a revolutionary at the time; he’s not UNIQUE there. I do think that if Ronan saw his little brother as an aristocrat’s kept boy, he would still FREAK. And then become Lazare’s kept boy because DO AS I SAY AND NOT AS I DO. 

Another thing that would be possible would be Solal becoming a soldier. That would be a job with steady shitty pay, food of questionable quality, a roof over his head of questionable quality. Soldiers occupied a very…ODD place in society at this point, if I’m remembering correctly from the research I did nearly a year ago, because on one hand, they COULD be seen as heroic everymen, but there was also a distinct stigma caused by their itinerant lifestyle (esp. re: women) and tendency of causing trouble in the towns where they were boarded. Because you have a bunch of guys in one town for a certain amount of time, some of them getting drunk and rowdy, particularly on holidays and festivals, and….It’s not the SAME level of stigma that sex workers had, obviously, but Ronan would probably NOT be happy with it, especially since it puts them on essentially opposite sides. I can also see Ronan FREAKING OUT over it because of the circumstances of their father’s death, which could cause a pretty similar argument to their canon argument. The “Je Veux le Monde” EQUIVALENT would then be him snapping against his superior officer and deserting to join the Revolution, where he and Ronan reconcile. Though, tbh, I’m not sold on EITHER of the Mazurier sibs being able to take orders. Like….Solène is pragmatic enough that Solal probably COULD, but I think he would be seething after a while, especially if he had a dick for an officer. 

Tl;dr: I think that a genderbent Solène would still be POSSIBLE, but I also think that so much of Solène’s arc is really inextricably bound to her being a woman in 18th century France.

Olympe would also be difficult, because the entire reason that she meets up with Ronan is that she’s the Queen’s undergoverness/confidant, and I think that it would be very…difficult for a man to be in that same level of confidence. Or, at least, to be in that level of confidence and NOT be accused of having an affair with her himself. Maybe he’s a young, softspoken courtier who somehow gets entangled in the whole situation? Maybe even a friend of Fersen’s, as opposed to Antoinette’s, with his Enlightenment ideals contrasting to Fersen’s conservatism? His father wanted him for military service initially so that he could carry on the family tradition, but instead he somehow became wrapped up in court life instead, learning to keep his mouth closed and smile. (Though in contrast to, say, Laz’s family, his father was very supportive of him taking an alternative path, even if he was disappointed.) But who still has a conscience and so rushes to the Bastille to try to save Ronan’s life anyway when things go south.

I actually think that Genderbent!Olympe would have a lot in common with Laz, since they would both have that military background and both are doggedly loyal to the Royal Family. With the key difference being that M!Olympe isn’t as DEEP into things as Laz is. Laz is just…covered in blood at this point, whereas M!Olympe ISN’T. 

Also, IF we go with the “Solal is a soldier” option, then that gives the two of them more of an opportunity to meet if Solal is anywhere near the Bastille at the time. 

It would also explain a LOT about his fear about getting involved with either of the Mazurier sibs, because THAT could ruin his life at court, and it would give Artois some leverage to try to use. Not that I haven’t written a carbon copy of that plotline with Laz before.

Again, it’s hard, because so MUCH of Olympe’s role is tied into being a woman in 18th century France. Again, not IMPOSSIBLE, but DIFFERENT. I think that you would end up with a completely different plot/character. 

#olympe du puget #solène mazurier #fallenidol-453

[dat-town]

renaître de ses cendres

Characters: Jinhwan & You

Genre: angst

Setting: immortal au

Summary: Jinhwan has lived long but you make him want to live more.

Warning: character death

Words: 2.2k

for @lily-blue have the happiest bday my dear ♥

[original pic credit goes to bylove_951221]

Jinhwan has loved fiercely.

He has loved until death.

He has loved without meaning to, without doubts, without thinking.

Jinhwan has lived many loves. All of which he was fated to lose.

But only when he saw the light fade in your ever bright eyes did he think that the price of immortality was too high.

Jinhwan didn't like to talk about the time he was born into. He didn't like to talk about any of his previous lives. He had been around for a longer time than the Colosseum or the Great Wall of China and he had learned that he would be stuck in the past if he kept looking back. So he didn't. He always adapted to the current time he lived in and tried to make the most out of it, enjoying the small wonders of life. But sometimes he got desperate and lonely too and then he had enough of it but he couldn't die, literally couldn't. Yes, he tried, multiple times. He always came back.

It was one of those times. The ones in despair when he wanted nothing, just leave this Earth and this empty shell of him behind. He was all alone, not a soul would have cared if he just disappeared. He wished he could evaporate in the wind or dissolve in water, if he could just turn bodiless. After thousands of years he got bored of the face that looked back at him in the mirror. He started hating the very same sad eyes of his reflection staring vacantly ahead.

“Are you thinking of jumping?”

A young, curious voice startled him and his steps died on his tracks, feet stilling on the metal barrier of the bridge he was walking on. He spared one glance at the deep, dark waters of the rushing Han River under him, illuminated by the pearl white moonlight. Then he turned around gracefully, his balance not even shaking, airily like a tightrope dancer would have. Then his gaze settled on you, the pale girl standing by the fence in nothing more than a pretty flower-patterned dress, slippers thrown on the ground. You rested your elbows on the cold railing staring ahead with an inextricable look on your face. He couldn't really tell what you were thinking and what made you ask that ground-breaking question so calmly.

“Are you?” Jinhwan shot back the very same question without answering as he elegantly hopped down from the fence, casually leaning back to it after his feet hit the ground, merely a meter away from you.

You didn't seem bothered, not by the new proximity, nor the lack of answer but you hummed thoughtfully before answering.

“No but the fact that I could makes it so much easier to bear life. Because you know it gives the knowledge that I have chosen it. It almost makes me feel powerful,” you chuckled after the long and serious monologue.

You were talking so casually as if the mere thought of your mortality, the inevitability of your own death didn't scare you at all while most people would have been scared shitless. You were standing there in the middle of one of the highest bridges of your town staring down at the rampant water stirring up because of a coming storm. Jinhwan wasn't new to sudden summer downpours, he could feel it come in the air. You seem to pay no mind to it though. Eyes closed you enjoyed the weather and everything in the moment. Taking big breaths and letting out satisfied exhales like you had all the time in the world.

Jinhwan watched you in awe; it's been a while he had met such an unbothered soul.

Neither of you said anything, not until the first raindrops stirred up the silence coming fast like tears and their splash on the ground created a piano melody like nothing else. You smiled not caring about your hair and dress getting wet, not even when the water droplets slid across your body leaving goosebumps in their wake behind them. You inhaled from the humid air one last time before pushing yourself away from the fence and turning to leave.

But Jinhwan who had been staring and marvelling at you in wonder couldn't let you go just like that.

“Won't you catch cold?” he asked glancing down at your bare feet on the harsh, cold concrete. You looked down as if you were surprised by his question. Then realizing what he might have meant, you chuckled and shushed his question away with a flick of your wrist, tiny raindrops following the movement.

“It doesn't matter either way,” you shrugged with a secret smile pulling on the corners of your pretty mouth. Then grabbing your pair of slippers and with them dangling in your hand you danced away with cute little spins, humming a sad song in a way much happier tone than you were supposed to be.

You laughter was a melody in the wind that carried the lovely sound and the way wind played with your short locks and the moonlight reflected on your skin Jinhwan swore nature adored you just as his heart whispered him to.

Already when he first met you he was damn convinced you were like poetry, a moving art in pretty form, riddles behind rhymes and secrets between the lines. He couldn't wait to unravel the mystery that was you.

You met him on that bridge again.

And again and again.

You found yourself waiting for those meetings even if they made your heart soar. It felt like playing with the thought of having something that couldn't really be yours. But it didn't dishearten you, not when he made it so easy to fall.

You were in love, you knew it from the moment he took you to that observatory just to stare at the stars and talk about the meaning of life, being a sparkle of dust in the galaxy. But you knew that you were more in love with the idea of him, of someone who cares than actually with him. Because he didn't like to talk about things like his family, job or past. You had no idea who Kim Jinhwan was but you knew a man with gentle heart and the wisdom of generations. He was the most interesting phenomena you ever encountered and even when he was close he felt so far as the stars you both loved so much.

It had been weeks, months of casual meetings and you had become paler, lost weight and hair. He hadn't said anything apart from asking you to take better care of yourself but he must have known you couldn’t really help it.

“I am dying,” you blurted out after you finished slurping from your fruit smoothie and it might have been too casual to take it seriously because Jinhwan let out one of his typical, philosophical questions:

“Aren't we all?” he looked up at you with unsaid words hiding in his dark orbs: at least humans, the ones without ridiculous curses, he thought. You liked seeing secrets in his eyes even if you could never unravel them. At least you felt a little less bad for keeping yours. Like how your heart went crazy near him.

“No, I mean I know for a fact that I will die within a few months. I even have this cool hospital card because you know I'm a permanent guest there,” you chattered showing off the card to your room. You had years accepting the idea of dying, you were really ready for it. Or you thought you were until he came along.

Now that made Jinhwan dumbfounded. “What?”

You quieted down, smile fading at his sad voice and the blank look on his face.

“I'm sick, Jinhwan and no, it can't be cured. They have already tried everything.”

Suddenly it all made sense: why you were so accepting of the inevitable end. You’ve had your time to deal with it and had decided not to waste any moment, to enjoy the smallest miracles of being alive and to bring as much joy to the people around you as it was possible. But how was it fair? That life cursed him with eternal life but gave you – you of all people! - only so little? Jinhwan hated it.

“Hey,” you nudged his hand and he blinked, surprised, shaking his head to get rid of such thoughts. Your eyes were like unwritten fairytales, magical and infinite, pulling him in. You smiled almost too gently for someone who was meant to die so young, so beautiful. “I'm still the girl who danced around barefoot in the rain. Don't look at me differently. I just thought you deserved to know that you are hanging out with a dying girl before it gets worse.”

It did get worse pretty soon just as you predicted and warned him.

First you weren’t able to walk that much without sitting down for a while. Then you had hard time breathing sometimes. And once you got a seizure in the middle of laughing on something ridiculous like vines. After that they kept you in the hospital, no more free days out in the open, you were bound to machines because your organs started giving up one by one. You were saddened seeing your father's devastated face or your mother's tears, only Jinhwan treated you like nothing changed. He didn't even blink at the sight of infusion and the nasal cannula when he visited you in the hospital. He asked you if you dreamed anything nice lately and talked about the old neighbour lady's story that he heard that night. You were too tired of talking after a while, so you asked Jinhwan to speak in lieu of the two of you.

“What does it mean?” you softly asked tracing the tattoo on his forearm with your index finger a bit weakly. But he gently took your hand in his before it could fall from his arm.

“Reborn from the ashes,” he translated the French text without sparing a glance at it.

You smiled faintly hearing the words and averted your gaze from him to the darkened scenery on the other side of the window.

“That sounds nice. Starting over. I wish I could be a phoenix to do that,” you whispered, voice barely there, a little lifeless and his heart churned, breaking from the pressure, from the weight of all the confessions he didn't… couldn't tell you. Not now. It was all too late from you to hear them anyway.

“Do you want to hear a story?” he asked ever so lovingly and as it became hard to speak, you just squeezed his hand back as a sign of saying yes. So he took a deep breath and started talking.

“Once upon a time there was a young and foolish prince so arrogant that he wanted to become a god, so he searched for the key to immortality. It seemed to be a fruitless journey after years and years-long of pursuit but he still had nothing. He had bathed in virgins’ blood, read rituals and made a deal with all kind of devils, all of them turned out to be imposters… except for one. She was nothing but an old lady, he thought and he laughed when she offered him the eternal youth. She asked for nothing but a lock of the prince's hair. He was curious though, he had nothing to lose, so he cut a piece of his hair and gave it to her. The woman burnt it right in front of him while murmuring something satanic and then threw a knife at him. She was executed immediately for treason with the last words: you will live in regret burning on her tongue and only later, when his anger died down did the prince realize that the wound where the knife scratch him disappeared as if there was no wound at all.”

“What happened to him?” you breathed barely audible but listening very closely with your eyes closed.

“He has lived long and at first he found joy in his victorious life,” Jinhwan continued with the story, his steady voice slowly becoming hollow. “But soon he realized being unable to die was indeed a curse. Centuries has come and gone and he had become more and more distant. Sure he wasn't dead but he didn't feel alive either. Until one day he met a girl, a girl who showed him everything in life that was worthy of appreciation, that there's more to it than just living. She was a girl who was in love with life itself and the prince who was nowhere near a prince anymore wished he could give her more of that.”

The last of it was barely a whisper because the heart rate machine by the bed went still. Even the Moon dressed in silver mourned and the stars all around pitied him. His tears helped nobody.

Jinhwan has loved gently.

He has loved until death and even after.

He has loved truly, madly, deeply and he had lived to tell the tale because you would have wanted him to do that. To live.

To reborn from the ashes.

#ikonicshelves #ikon scenarios #ikon imagines #ikon oneshot #jinhwan scenarios #jinhwan imagines #jinhwan oneshot #immortal au #jinhwan x reader #stories

[starcunning]

This Beast That Rends Me: 28 Apr

Gentlemen of the jury, I’m curious, bear with me Are you aware that we’re making hist’ry? This is the first murder trial of our brand-new nation The liberty behind deliberation

Previously: Week One, Week Two, Week Three Previously: 22 Apr, 23 Apr, 24 Apr, 25 Apr, 26 Apr, 27 Apr

Chapter Fourteen

Soon, too soon, the elders and leaders of Gyr Abania were assembled, and a council was called. They had a few days’ warning—Lyse had given Shasi that much—but the question of what to do with the Imperial Viceroy could no longer be avoided.

Shasi stayed with him then; it seemed foolish to do otherwise, and so she was with him when the Resistance guards came to fetch him. He frightened them, and so it was Shasi they asked to restrain him.

The chain was sized for a Hellsguard, perhaps, and was still a snug fit about his waist. She had to roll back the cuffs of his shirt to fix the manacles to his wrists—crossed at the waist, they corrected her. The chains were a strong visual counterpoint to his polished appearance; his dark waistcoat and camel blazer were much too hot for the weather, but he looked presentable. He had looked more so before she bound his hands. It was the only restraint he was wearing, these days; she’d lost her appetite for the rest.

Shasi hadn’t been sure what to wear, herself. She had considered her Flames uniform, but that tied her inextricably to Ul’dah, and she was present as a nonpartisan. In the end she wore the dove grey duelists’ garb that her mentor had gifted her months ago: she was, and always had been, a Crimson Duelist. This, too, was much too hot for the summer sun, but she would bear harder things before the day was out.

“Are you ready?” she asked. “I suppose I must be. Are you?” Zenos replied. “No,” she admitted, but put her hand to his elbow anyway.

She was even less ready than she had imagined, horseshoe arches giving way to high-vaulted ceilings, terraces of stone on both sides. Perhaps everyone in Ala Mhigo sat upon those steps, ringing the central hall; they were full enough. And full enough of hostility, to see the Warrior of Light bring forth their foe. There were no rocks, and no old fruit, but the crowd hurled insults instead, in every tongue they knew, and Shasi had no choice but to understand them all. Zenos must, too, if his Resonance were equal to her Echo, but if it bruised his pale dignity, he never let it show upon his face.

There was a platform at the far end of the hall, surrounded by a gallery of windows. The throne upon it was not half so grand as the one in the throne room proper, but it was just as empty; the leadership council of Gyr Abania sat in a row before and below its imposing bulk, beneath their banner of violet and gold.

Shasi fixed her eyes to the star blazoned there, Rhalgr’s Beacon, and wished she had a more benevolent god for patron.

But it was his trial and his alone, and so she left him at the foot of the platform, at its center. The banner dangled like a sword overhead. There were murmurs of surprise as she turned away, and came to stand with those who would speak in Zenos’ defense. There were precious few of them, compared to their opposite number, and Shasi was sure they could have found plenty more voices to speak against Zenos in this very hall, had they wanted to.

Shasi looked up at the row of faces arrayed before the throne, overlooking the hall. The different peoples of Gyr Abania were all represented there, even the Qiqirn. Perhaps Lyse might manage to compose a coalition government after all, Shasi thought. As though summoned by the notion, Lyse herself sidled up to Shasi and brushed her arm against the other woman’s.

“It’s going to be a long day,” Lyse said.

The testimony was presented before the council and quite literally to them: given facing the platform and thrown back as echoes to fill the rest of the hall. It meant the speaker never had to look at Zenos—nor, indeed, at Shasi herself. She wondered how many of them could have borne it: most of them she knew, and most of them had entreated her aid at one point or another. But she owed them her ear no less now than then.

Shasi remembered the man who gave the council’s opening argument: Watt had been the one to direct them when they had sought ingress to Ala Mhigo. “We have come before the people today to answer the question of what must be done with Zenos yae Galvus,” he said. “We thought him slain when the Garlean Empire was driven from Gyr Abania months ago, only to learn that he did not perish then, having been kept instead under the auspices of questioning. In that time, we are told, much has changed with our old foe. And so, as we take matters under deliberation, I ask the council to keep in mind the following things. “First, one may ask, how many of the accusations levied today can fall squarely at the feet of Zenos yae Galvus? The Empire has occupied our homes and tried to destroy our culture, but what blame rests with him that did not rest with Gaius van Baelsar, in that? To that I can only say: Zenos yae Galvus is no mere soldier, plucked from the ranks at random to answer for the crimes of others. His may not have been the hand that held the blade in every instance, but his was the tongue that gave the order, more often than not. He was our viceroy, and Legatus of the Fourteenth Legion, and beyond even that he is the Crown Prince of Garlemald. He ruled in Doma, too, as cruelly as here. There is only one man with more power, and they name him their Emperor. If anyone could influence Imperial policy, Zenos yae Galvus must be counted at the very top of that short list. “Second, you will have heard stories of a primal being summoned at the peace summit in this very palace. You may have heard also that Zenos yae Galvus was instrumental in defeating that primal. I have no reason to doubt these accounts, and so the question becomes instead whether this can counter the full weight of the accusations levied against him? I have recently become aware of the Ul’dahn concept of ‘red in one’s ledger.’ Zenos yae Galvus has a great deal of it, and one line in the black cannot answer for all of those crimes. “Gyr Abania comes now out of the shadow of the Empire, but the tyranny we have abided beneath stretches back further than that. Before they hung the ivory standard over our heads, we were in the grip of Theodoric, the Mad King. There are men and women grown standing in this hall today that have never known true freedom, and hope for that freedom cannot abide in the company of such a nightmarish legacy of tyranny. That legacy is personified in Zenos yae Galvus, and must be excised for liberty to take root.”

“Ala Gannha has no youth left in her,” Raganfrig was saying. “Most of them were conscripted, and the strong that refused were put to the sword. Zenos yae Galvus bears the guilt for that, for he gave the order. But it was not just the strong and young he took—after the Garleans had done for us, and Ilberd took the rest, they came back to take still more, and we never knew why. Not ’til the city was liberated and the palace thrown open, and we found our missing dead moldering in some basement. Found ‘em in their dozens, dead to a man of forcible aether extraction. It’s a miserable way to die, that,” Raganfrig said. “As soon torture a man to death as drain him like that. And he did it to scores of people—our people—for his science experiments. One almost envies the ones he simply cut down.”

She remembered the way he had received her—her and Lyse both—when they had first come to Ala Gannha. How terrified he was that they might upset the delicate balance of things in the town, limping to survive. And she thought of the Resonatorium, and could not blame him.

There were a dozen other tales from other places—towns mostly, but some of the larger villages that had people enough to remember where they had stood. She had seen the abandoned trading posts along the road, and wondered no more why they had been left to their desolation.

M’naago shared a glance with Lyse before she mounted the platform to address the council, looking as desperately happy as she was resolute, and Shasi reached out to take the pugilist’s hand. Neither of them looked at one another, only at the Miqo’te as she spoke.

“I was at Rhalgr’s Reach when Zenos yae Galvus came to sack it. He treated it like a game, leaving the dead strewn behind him like so many broken toys. Y’shtola Rhul couldn’t be here today, but she would want you to know that he tried to kill her, too, for the crime of being insufficiently amusing. This pervasive disregard for the value of life extends to his own troops, too, as we found out when he gave the order to fire on Garlean forces offering their surrender at Specula Imperatoris. Conrad Kemp died in that attack, and I will not forget that no matter who asks me to.”

Lyse whispered a name, and Shasi gave her hand a squeeze. It was not the only story they heard, and with each, Lyse leaned more firmly on Shasi’s shoulder. Shasi watched the light from the windows sweep across the floor as the day went on, and she listened to every account the people of Ala Mhigo brought forth to relate.

Last to speak was a younger woman than most that day. Shasi supposed it was true: that much of a generation had been stolen from Ala Mhigo, but for those that had fled. Like herself; like this girl. “My name is Bertliana,” she said. “You don’t know me, because I wasn’t born here. I was born in exile, hearing tales of Ala Mhigo and dreaming of a home others thought I’d never see. I suffered for that hope,” she said, voice trembling. “Others suffered too. One of my friends, a lad called Wilred, thought he would summon Rhalgr to avenge us. The Warrior of Light stopped us, made us see what a mistake that would be. She destroyed the primal that Ilberd summoned, too, but not before Zenos learned to command it. There, in him, stands a terrible foe with the ability to bring still more terrible powers to heel. Hope cannot live in the shadow of those vast wings,” she said.

The murmurs that rippled through the crowd betrayed how little the people had known about Shinryu, and how much they yet feared the primal threat. Shasi wished that they could have spoken first; set the tone, but that was not how such things worked.

She had been surprised when Raubahn had offered to speak, but they had decided he should speak first: there were few in Ala Mhigo who would gainsay the Bull, even after his long absence.

“I questioned the wisdom of this undertaking,” the Flame General said. “In fact, when we took the city, I would have been more than glad to see the Viceroy dead. The months in between have changed my mind on the matter. Zenos yae Galvus has been a model prisoner. I feared the cost in lives, should he escape; he has made no such attempt. He has provided us actionable intelligence in Gyr Abania and further afield, in Dalmasca. We have also made contact with a notable subject of the Empire, Jenomis cen Lexentale, who has undertaken counter-propaganda efforts on our behalf there. There remains an operational advantage to detention rather than execution; Galvus’s insights have proven useful before, and may again.”

It was a cold assessment, perhaps, but preferable to the court-martial he had threatened in early spring. Shasi found herself smiling, just a little. Lyse gave her hand a little squeeze, and they let go of one another as Raubahn returned to the bench.

She had grown more assured in the last year, Shasi realized as Lyse stood and addressed the council. Perhaps it had become easier to be herself and not her sister any longer. It was a welcome change, even if Shasi felt she had missed a great deal of it.

“When last I saw most of you, we were discussing the future of Gyr Abania,” Lyse said. “And so we are today, in a real and concrete way. This example we set will be looked back upon by generations to come, so let’s make it a good one,” Lyse said. “When Lakshmi was summoned during our summit, you saw me run for help, and probably never expected me to return with Zenos yae Galvus. Truthfully … neither did I. It’s no secret that I believe there are agents of the Empire that can find a place in Ala Mhigo; that a place can be made for them. They can be better people, and we can be a better people, too. But … Zenos was never part of that plan. I went to ask the Warrior of Light for her help; I never asked for his. But he offered, and I watched in awe as he tried to protect the people of Gyr Abania. And then ...” Lyse trailed off. “I don’t remember everything after that very clearly. I remember fighting Raubahn, because he was trying to destroy my goddess—Sri Lakshmi. She had tempered me.” The gasps at that interrupted her, and Lyse paused, gathering herself. “I don’t know how to talk about that yet, but I know I can only talk about it at all because Zenos yae Galvus made her relinquish that hold on me before she was destroyed. If he hadn’t, I would have been killed, to stop me from trying to summon her again. “He saved my life. I never thought he would do that. I never knew that he could do that. Maybe … he can be a better person, too. Maybe he can help us save other lives. I want to find out,” Lyse said.

Shasi looked out over the room, trying to read the emotions. Shock, of course. Disbelief. Distrust, perhaps, that Lyse was who she said. There were murmurs—Fordola’s name passed from lips to ear—but none seemed to break above the din of the crowd.

Shasi greeted her with a little smile. “Thank you,” she said. “Now you,” Lyse said.

The Warrior of Light mounted the platform amidst the murmuring. She wasn’t sure what sort of reception to expect: there was not a soul in this room but that had heard of her, but would they really believe she was one of them? The dueling costume may not have been enough to assure that.

“The decision to detain Zenos yae Galvus for questioning was mine,” Shasi said, and that caused a hubbub all its own. “I enlisted support from the Immortal Flames and the Resistance to enforce the perimeter, but I was his gaoler and I his questioner. His rehabilitation was also my purview, and I have met with greater success than I could have hoped, as was evinced by his actions at the peace summit. He has been cooperative with my questions and provided valuable intelligence to Ala Mhigo and her allies. I have further hopes for his reformation, which must not now be curtailed.” She could hear her voice begin to tremble, and took a deep breath. She looked from each member of the council to the next, seeking understanding in their eyes, but knew not what she found. “Zenos yae Galvus has demonstrated his atonement already. It is a long road to forgiveness, but I would see him walk it.”

Had she expected approbation? Cheers? She did not hear them now, only the beating of her own heart. She turned back to regard him a moment, but did not smile. Neither did he; they only looked at one another, and then she stepped down.

In the end, the final word was his. Arms bound before him, coat draped across his broad shoulders, Zenos looked up at the council and he spoke, voice clear and sure. “X’shasi Kilntreader took my life in her hands with the understanding that this would not be a popular decision. She questioned me and counseled me. It may beggar your belief, but she succeeded in making a better man of me. She values compassion, and asks that for me today. I have learned to value it, too, and through the lens of introspection I have viewed my own actions. They were monstrous, however justified I felt at the time. If I am moved to do the right thing now, I will not pervert that instinct by begging for a mercy I do not deserve. I have committed any number of crimes, and the right thing to do now is to face justice for them. I am of no use to you as a bargaining chip, and my shadow has laid too long over the people of Gyr Abania.”

No.

“Ala Mhigo will not breathe free until I am dead.”

No, no, this was all wrong. The roaring in her ears drowned out rational thought, and Shasi could not be sure if it was her mind or the crowd. But she knew then, and was certain, which way the balance of justice would tip.

#TBTRM #x'shasi #zenos yae galvus #lyse hext #raubahn aldynn #and a panoply of gyr abanian npcs #wol/zenos #original content #starcunning writes #if i weren't making jokes i'd be crying and nobody wants that

[wawerrell]

Nana

I lost my grandmother early in the morning on New Year’s Eve. Nana was loving, funny, and intelligent; she taught me how to read and how to love reading; she took me in her arms when I was upset; she showed me time and time again that I would never defeat her in Scrabble; she forgave me even when I did not deserve it; she stayed up past midnight to say, "Hey, Teach!" and enjoy champagne with me when I got my job. She changed the lives of those whom she met and loved and made me the person I am today.

She was my best friend.

Nana loved being a mother, a grandmother, and—as of just a few months ago—a great-grandmother more than anything else in the world. As we gathered by her bed and held her hand as she began to let go, “To the Lighthouse,” one of her favorite books, seemed to sing from the shelf. Nana’s writing adorns the opening page. She remarks how the book improves upon each reading, and then writes: “Philosophy is what we don’t know, want to know, tried to know—but only God knows.” Flipping through the worn pages, I traced her annotations throughout Virginia Woolf’s masterpiece. It is clear and unsurprising that Nana loved Mrs. Ramsay and Lily, for she connected with so many of the women’s interior monologues about emotional understanding and frustration. More than any other, though, one early passage stands out. Unlike many other passages with marginal explanations, Nana underlined and starred: “She would have liked always to have had a baby. She was happiest carrying one in her arms.” Just a few days before she died peacefully in the early morning, Nana held her first great-grandchild in her arms and laughed: she was happier in that moment than she had been in a long while.

Nana paused over—and could not find words for—a passage in which Mrs. Ramsay reflects on why children grow up so quickly, on why they seem so determined to rush toward the trials and pain that come with age, on how she wishes she could freeze time to protect them from the vicissitudes of fortune. I remember how clearly Nana echoed both the wishes and the frustrations of Mrs. Ramsay when Yaya, my mother’s mother, was diagnosed with stage IV ovarian cancer: “Sugarfoot, I wish I could take all the pain and the sadness for you—I wish that I could shield you from loss. But I can’t. Because that’s life.”

Nana knew that life and love lead inevitably to death and loss. But she also knew what we can learn from “To the Lighthouse”: not just that life and death, like love and loss, are inextricably bound together, but that, more importantly, loss and continuity coexist within our hearts and memories. Love has within it the power to defeat time. In one of my favorite poems, John Donne reflects on sickness and death:

Whilst my physicians by their love are grown Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie Flat on this bed, that by them may be shown That this is my south-west discovery, Per fretum febris, by these straits to die,

I joy, that in these straits I see my west; For, though their currents yield return to none, What shall my west hurt me? As west and east In all flat maps (and I am one) are one, So death doth touch the resurrection.

His doctors surround his bedbound body and map out his ailments like constellations across the cosmos—and all see that his sickness points toward the setting of the sun in the west as surely as the North Star guides sailors at night. Donne reminds us, though, that flattened maps are misleading: for the further west one goes, the sooner one arrives in the east. Just so, he writes, death does not mark the end of love, but the continuation of it.

Like the effervescent Mrs. Ramsay, who dies suddenly and unexpectedly and unexplainedly in the middle of the night, Nana has died. And like Mrs. Ramsay, Nana will never really be gone. For, just as Arthur Hallam speaks once more to Alfred, Lord Tennyson as the poet turns over an old letter from his dear, dead friend, Mrs. Ramsay appears to Lily in a moment of sublime love and memory:

“Her heart leapt at her and seized her and tortured her. ‘Mrs. Ramsay! Mrs. Ramsay!’ she cried… Mrs. Ramsay—it was part of her perfect goodness—sat there quite simply, in the chair, flicked her needles to and fro, knitted her reddish-brown stocking, cast her shadow on the step. There she sat.”

Nana will be a wonderful part of all of us forever. Near the end of her life, Nana told the loving family gathered around her bed: “It’s time for me to go home.”

“Home” probably resembles her enchanted childhood, for the love that she gave us was the love that had surrounded and defined her life: not a day of her young life went by without visits from and to doting uncles, caring aunts, trifling cousins, and those familial taskmasters who never let little hands sit idle. Nana was the second child of Lee Roy and Alberteen, who had three daughters and one baby boy, John Leroy, whom the girls simply adored—and spoiled. From her father, Nana received a twinkle in her eye that never dissipated. Family meant everything to him, a trait that he passed on to his own children and grandchildren. From her mother, a gifted schoolteacher, Nana learned to love literature and poetry. Nana admired her mother’s intellectual curiosity, which had often landed her in hot water as a young girl “working” on a ranch: Teenie loved to read, but simply hated to churn butter. Teenie would spend all morning reading in the light of dawn, but always with open ears: whenever she heard somebody coming, she would hide the book under her apron and start churning away.

Many of Nana’s fondest childhood memories were of her visits with her own grandmother, a great student of the Bible named Zemma Yett. “Oh, here are my girls!” Grandmother Zemma would cry whenever Nana showed up with her sisters, Billie Marguerite and Nora Lanelle. Evenings on the screen porch were filled with the nighttime sounds of Texas and Zemma’s intonations of Scripture. For much of Nana’s childhood, Zemma read by the light of a kerosene lamp—until one day, when Nana watched from her lap as President Roosevelt’s trucks wove electrical wires throughout sleepy Florence, Texas like thread through a loom as part of Rural Electrification.

Nana grew up in a Texas that no longer exists: a verdant and lush place defined by neighborly care and compassion. Texans of all backgrounds came together around the porch of her father’s grocery store, the gathering place for the neighborhood. As the sun went down, neighbors would sit around and tell stories or listen to the radio. Nana recalled with pleasure the excitement of the entire town listening to the bout between Max Schmeling and Max Baer—and remembers how the town would grind to a halt whenever Joe Louis, “the best of all,” stepped into the ring.

But with World War II came rationing, the end of the family grocery, and loss: two of Nana’s cousins joined the Air Force but did not live to see peace. Any romanticizing of war a young girl might come to believe in in the shadow of the Alamo died alongside Edwin and Charles, who loomed in Nana’s memory as the handsome man with shining cowboy boots and jodhpurs—not as the bloated body that washed ashore when his plane went down. Nana, Billie, and Nonie spent afternoons anxiously awaiting the local newspaper’s updates of war casualties and kept tearful track of the losses in their yearbooks. But the dark clouds of violence across either ocean brought Nana closer to literature and poetry.

Literature brought with it both balm and escape, and, at college, Nana fell feverishly in love with Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She studied those Victorian works alongside Professor A. J. Armstrong, the head of the English department at Baylor, and became his academic assistant. Annotations in her neat-yet-illegible cursive sprawl across every single page of her textbooks; when space proved too tight for all she felt about her favorite poem, “Pippa Passes,” she inserted additional leaves.

She was working for the newspaper on a story about Christmas celebrations for soldiers when she interviewed about the handsomest man she had ever laid eyes upon: James MacDonald Werrell, who, forty years later, would be called Papa. Papa had returned to Texas, where his father was stationed at Fort Hood, to recover from a debilitating injury received during the Battle of the Bulge and to finish college. Although they fell for one another quite quickly—he was charming; she was witty—Jim fell out of touch over the Christmas holiday. Lee Roy did his best to comfort Nana, but she was broken-hearted.

And then, at long last, the phone rang. Nana gleefully accepted Papa’s apology—he had been on vacation with his parents, who, being nearly as cheap as he was, would not tolerate a long-distance telephone call no matter how in love he claimed to be—and hung up the phone in the kitchen only to find that her father had disappeared. Her mother stood next to the pantry door with her ear flat against it. As Nana walked toward her, she, too, heard her father’s crying: “Don’t worry, sugarfoot,” Alberteen whispered to her daughter, “Daddy just knows you’re going to be married now. He doesn’t want you to leave.”

They were married on December 20, 1947 and honeymooned in San Antonio in Papa’s yellow Jeep. Papa’s parents were not at the wedding both because they were stationed in Paris and because there was little love lost between in-laws: Angus Werrell was a Colonel in World War I, while Lee Roy had been a private. “It’s no man that blows a whistle,” Lee Roy remarked about commanders who stayed behind in trenches and sent men over the top and to their deaths. When Papa finished his studies at Baylor, he and Nana worked as fire lookouts in Colorado parks before going on a second honeymoon to visit his parents in Europe.

Nana saw many of the most beautiful sights in the world for the first time, while Papa saw them again, but in a vastly different light: with no heavy rifle, no wet socks, no constant vigilance or fear. Nana and Papa, alone in the Sistine Chapel for an hour, lay down on the floor to look up at the ceiling, then illuminated only by candlelight. They held hands through the streets of Paris and enjoyed picnics throughout the Austrian countryside—except when Jeanne, Papa’s sister, packed the food and placed the ham next to the petrol tank in the trunk of the car.

Nana continued her love affair with the world of art when she and Papa moved to New York City upon their return to the United States. In particular, Nana found herself under the spell of Bidu Sayão’s voice. Growing up, she had only ever heard the voice of Amelita Galli-Curci on the wind-up Victrola at her grandmother’s house, and so nothing prepared her for the clarity and beauty of the soprano singing Mimi in “La bohème,” Gilda in “Rigoletto,” or songs of her native Brazil. Papa’s days were filled with classes at the Columbia School of International Affairs, during which time Nana combed the hallways of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and his evenings were dedicated to practicing his German nightly with their landlords, Josef and Emma Ledwig. But Nana, a natural learner, picked up the language faster and more fluently than Papa; more than seventy years later, Nana could still recite Goethe’s “Der Erlkönig” from memory.

Papa joined the State Department following his graduation—work that brought Nana and Papa and their first baby, James MacDonald Werrell, Jr., then just a few months old, to what was then called Siam. While Papa conducted spook-work, Nana walked baby Jamie hurriedly away from prowling Varanus monitors, visited temples, and became the most frequent customer at C. J. Chan & Co., an English bookshop in downtown Bangkok, where she discovered the works of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Upon their return to the United States, two sons—William Gresham Werrell, my father, and Timothy Savage Werrell—shortly followed their older brother into the world. And that was just the beginning of her adventures.

Nana lived to be so old in large part because she stopped driving. Like my high school English teacher Mrs. Chanson and so many other Southerners, Nana did not drive well, but instead casually: she did not always bother to open the garage door before reversing, for instance. While this might seem to suggest that she was just another little old lady from Texas, Nana was a political firecracker. She named her favorite dog, a territorial Jack Russell, after Lady Jane Digby, whose sex life created diplomatic tidal waves across two continents. She hated Viagra commercials with a passion because she believed they promulgated unhealthy and misogynistic views of sex: “They imply that it’s all up to the man: as soon as the man is ‘ready,’ one is supposed to drop everything one is doing to accommodate him. But what if I have a casserole in the oven?”

Indeed, one of the drawbacks of living for close to a century, Nana remarked this past Christmas, was that she had lived long enough to grow ashamed of Texas: her heart broke watching the most violent and vituperative voices attempt to speak for Texas and redefine Texan values. She loved her little brother so much that she could tolerate his support of Nixon—even when her sons and husband could barely stand to be at the dinner table with him. But politics changed, and so did her patience. Because nothing was dearer to Nana than her family, she knew in her heart that children belong in the arms of their loving family—not in cages. She could not abide hatred or vitriol; she could not understand why anyone would knowingly embrace cruelty, ignorance, or bigotry.

Driving to Charleston after leaving her now-empty home, I remembered the weeks she spent living with us and sleeping in my bedroom. We both kept one another awake with chatter and with snoring. During those late nights—Papa was in the hospital at the VA, reliving the Battle of the Bulge over and over again—we looked up at the phosphorescent stars on my ceiling and talked about school, books, friends, Papa, and memories.

I’ll always hear her voice.

[comebeforegod]

Love Arranged by God Is Truly Perfect

By Xiaoyu

Yun, an ordinary country girl, had average looks and lived an inconspicuous life. However, unlike most people, she was a perfectionist since childhood. In study, work, association with others, and demands on herself, she always pursued perfection.

And so did she in her marriage. She imagined owning the love described in Qiongyao’s novels, so she was unwilling to follow parents’ arrangement like her peers, but instead wanted to have a perfect romance. Every time when she thought of her future Prince Charming, her heart would be filled with anticipation.

Since Yun was a perfectionist, she stood out in every work she did, which attracted many suitors. But she didn’t pay them any mind. Until one day, when Ming, her long-lost classmate in middle school, came to work in her company, Yun began to have feelings for him, for she had been impressed with him in junior school. But during that period she was too young to understand love. Now Ming already turned into a real handsome man, which allowed Yun to fall in love with him immediately. Meanwhile, due to Yun’s outstanding performance in the company, Ming began to pursue her. Then they fell in love.

It is often said every person is thoughtless when he is in love. Yun was no exception. She believed in every word Ming said. One time her best friend Juan told her that Ming was dating a girl of a big fortune once and that it was uncertain whether they had broken up. Juan also told Yun to beware of Ming. However, bewitched by Ming’s sweet words, Yun believed he was serious about her and she even put their wage cards together. Ming just came to work in the company and didn’t have many performance figures, and his daily expenses were all supported by Yun. Therefore, he was very obedient to Yun. For the sake of gaining footing in the company quickly, Ming always asked Yun to bring him to see their boss to get a closer relationship with the boss. For their promotion, Yun bustled about tirelessly.

Just when Yun was immersed in love, a sudden change of her company—the discontinuance of the business—overturned her life. And at that moment, Ming’s father, a village secretary, fixed Ming up with a good job in a public institution at their hometown. Before Ming left, Yun bought him a suit and gave him the last 700 yuan she had and a new-bought mobile phone (At that time, mobile phone first became popular), thinking that he need to be decent when facing new colleagues and leaders.

Later, the company went into bankruptcy. Yun also came back and told Ming to pick her up at the station. Yun had thought Ming would be very happy when seeing her; however, he was very calm and expressionless. When Yun asked Ming to go to visit her parents, he put her off hesitatingly. Yun felt something wrong, but she immediately denied her thoughts, thinking she loved him so much that he couldn’t betray her and maybe he just had some difficulties.

Several days had passed since Yun came back, but Ming had no contact with her. Yun felt something must have gone wrong. One day, Yun went to see Juan, a friend they both knew. Seeing Yun so helpless, Juan asked, “What’s your relationship with Ming?” Yun said, “He may be busy with his work these days. We haven’t been in touch.” Juan said, “Yun, don’t be silly! I went to Ming’s with my friends before you came back. His parents told us he was getting married to another girl. We also saw many photos of them at his house. Break up with him! I felt it right from the start that he had designs on you. Since you had good performance in the company, he wanted to use you to achieve his desires. He is not a reliable person and not worthy of your love.”

Yun didn’t know how she went back home that day. She was disintegrating for she never expected her first love would end up in this way. She was not resigned to the result and her love toward Ming turned to hate. She wanted to bring back the things belonging to her, so she went settle things with Ming; however, to her surprise, Ming was completely out of character, saying, “I don’t owe you anything.” Yun was at a loss for words. Later, Yun’s friend told her that Ming, such a mean person, wasn’t worth her tears. And she also advised Yun against having anything to do with him so that he would carry his guilt throughout his life. Thus, Yun broke it off with Ming. For that period of time after they departed, Yun’s life was in the grays and she always sang a song, the lyrics of which were “Love story is so perfect, but devastates me today….”

Later, through a matchmaker, Yun married Shuai, an honest and upright boy from the neighboring village. At that time Yun had lost hope in life and thought whomever she married, she would live muddling along. However, she never knew Shuai was very kind-hearted. Even though Yun was a most insistent person, he tolerated all her failings and never annoyed her for he thought Yun was perfect, which moved Yun so much. Yun began to open herself up to Shuai and they lived a peaceful and happy life. Now they had two daughters and the four of them lived happily together. Yun knew this was the real life.

Afterward, Yun learned from a friend that Ming was trying every possible means to ask for her contact details. But their classmates all told him that Yun was living a happy life now and that fortunately she didn’t marry him at that time. Though her friend said that Ming was constantly feeling he owed her too much, in Yun’s heart, it was water under the bridge and she thanked Ming for giving her such a vivid lesson. Her hatred had vanished long ago, for hatred came from love but she already had no love for him. She thanked God for bestowing Shuai upon her. She felt very satisfied.

Afterward, she saw God’s words saying, “One encounters many people in one’s life, but no one knows who will become one’s partner in marriage. Though everyone has their own ideas and personal stances on the subject of marriage, no one can foresee who will finally become their true other half, and one’s own notions count for little. After meeting a person you like, you can pursue that person; but whether he or she is interested in you, whether he or she is able to become your partner, is not yours to decide. The object of your affections is not necessarily the person with whom you will be able to share your life; and meanwhile someone you never expected quietly enters your life and becomes your partner, becomes the most important element in your fate, your other half, to whom your fate is inextricably bound. And so, though there are millions of marriages in the world, every one is different: How many marriages are unsatisfactory, how many are happy; how many span East and West, how many North and South; how many are perfect matches, how many are of equal rank; how many are happy and harmonious, how many painful and sorrowful; how many are the envy of others, how many are misunderstood and frowned upon; how many are full of joy, how many are awash of tears and cause despair….” (“God Himself, the Unique III”).

“I am well acquainted with the thoughts of man’s mind and the wishes of man’s heart: Who has never looked for a way out for themselves? Who has never thought of their own prospects? Yet even though man is possessed of a rich and prismatic intellect, who was able to predict that, following the ages, the present would turn out as it has? Is this really the fruit of your own subjective efforts? Is this the payment for your tireless industry? Is this the beautiful tableau envisaged by your mind? If I did not guide all mankind, who would be able to separate themselves from My arrangements and find another way out? Is it the thoughts and wishes of man that have brought him to today? Many people go their whole lives without having their wishes fulfilled. Is this really because of a fault in their thinking? Many people’s lives are filled with unexpected happiness and satisfaction. Is this really because they expect too little? Who of the whole of mankind is not cared for in the eyes of the Almighty? Who does not live in the midst of the Almighty’s predestination? Whose birth and death come from their own choices? Does man control his own fate?” (“The Eleventh Utterance” of God’s Utterances to the Entire Universe).

Yun sighed: Man can’t control his own fate. Marriage is not decided by man himself but depends on the predestination of the Creator. Only when one submits to the Creator’s arrangements, can he obtain the true perfection.

Just as God says, “Wherever one is, whatever one’s job is, one’s means of living and the pursuit of one’s goals bring one nothing but endless heartbreak and irrelievable suffering, such that one cannot bear to look back. Only when one accepts the Creator’s sovereignty, submits to His orchestrations and arrangements, and seeks true human life, will one gradually break free from all heartbreak and suffering, shake off all the emptiness of life” (“God Himself, the Unique III”). From God’s words, Yun understood the reason why she experienced so many misfortunes and pains was that she didn’t have the knowledge of the Creator’s sovereignty and predestination. She always wanted to seek a perfect life according to her own imaginations, only to get the reverse result. Now Yun finally understood that only when she submitted to God’s orchestrations and arrangements, would she break free from the suffering.

Yun felt thankful that she had found the source of perfection—the Creator.

#life #God's word