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mariannesketchnotes · 3 years

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Fanfic Rec List (mostly Timeless)

Since starting this blog, I created 24 fanfic sketchnotes & I can now create a mosaic that covers nearly a square meter. So, in celebration of all these amazing stories I got to recommend, join me in this (massive) compilation post with links to all the stories & the sketchnotes (for more detail on my recommendations). I categorized the stories and I wish to celebrate all you amazing writers & artists today! Thank you for sharing your stories & art.

I hope you forgive the massive amount of namedropping I am about to do. (Also: I love reading the responses when people see my sketchnotes - so feel free to respond, sent me a note or engage in conversations :-) ). I’m also always on the lookout for more stories to read: I particularly like found family, recovery, mission fic, general or rare pair stories & maturity in characters & conversations. I like adults leaving teen drama behind and dealing with things like the adults they are. Angst is a favorite too, and I enjoy the multiverse of AUs. (Honestly: I’m a pretty eclectic reader).

Timeless

The show that pulled me back into fandom & fanfic & to all you wonderful people. The full list is under a read-more, cause this post got LONG.

Historical / Mission

The Only Way Out by @sallyexactly

Author’s summary: Chinatown leaves the team shattered and grieving, but their only option is to stumble forward. To save the world, they'll need strength of character they didn't know they had, to defeat depths of evil like they've never seen. Meanwhile, they need to find a way to decide their own future, not give up hope... and save the fighting for the actual bad guys. It's honestly a toss-up which of those will be hardest.

This story is my headcanon of how the series ended. It is long (300000+ words) but well-worth it. It's got history, slow and mature development and an intelligent resolution. I reread it frequently and although I have wanted to capture my response in a (series of) sketchnote, I never managed it to my satisfaction. The story is beautiful and feels cathartic (and well-worth rereading over and over).

The Road Ode by @sallyexactly - my sketchnote

Post-canon. Roadtrip with our favourite historian & lots of historical markers on the way. 107937 words.

The Gutter and the Stars by @letmetellyouaboutmyfeels - my sketchnote

Oscar Wilde. Short (1397 words) & funny.

No End, No Beginning by MandyCandy - my sketchnote

Ambitious plan & canon divergent. Tecumseh. With a full bibliography. 65068 words.

Parallel Lines by @x-voyevoda - my sketchnote

Multiverse. Post-canon. Rated mature. Work-in-Progress. 71911 words.

Zajednički by @insane-sociopath - my sketchnote

Retelling of season 2. PTSD. More missions included. Incomplete. 129474 words.

Evocative / Poetic / Philosophical / Makes Me Think

Burn the Witch by barefootwithneonhands - my sketchnote

Evocative. Poetic & fascinating to no end. 19534 words.

Two Roads by @oldshrewsburyian - my sketchnote

How do you live your life while waiting for a future you once so tantalisingly glimpsed but barely dared hope for? Denise Christopher pondering her choices. 835 words.

The Nuclear Option by RedGold (@timelesshonesttrailer) - my sketchnote

“Sometimes… sometimes change happens because a thousand voices cry out and make themselves heard, many moving parts of some Rube-Goldberg Machine. But… from time to time… it just takes one person, making one decision, and that changes the fate of the world.” Jessica-centric. 6036 words

A Shot of Remembrance by @doctorliamsr - my sketchnote

Garcia & Karl. Season 1. 1093 words.

Scorched Earth by @sallyexactly - my sketchnote

Garcia & Lucy. Evocative language. 2695 words.

Ballet-Feerie by @oldshrewsburyian & @qqueenofhades - my sketchnote

Ballet AU. Dance as language. Authors’ summary: “Garcia Flynn teaches ballet to a class including Amy Preston. Lucy Preston has been her younger sister's guardian since they were orphaned. Hesitant conversations and fraught silences ensue. Also, there's Tchaikovsky.” 16799 words.

Alternate Universe

Finding Light in Darkness - by Ultra - my sketchnote

19-century Governess AU. 40199 words. Found Family. Wholesome story.

Incandescent & Adolescent (Wonders Never Cease) by @letmetellyouaboutmyfeels - my sketchnote

She Loves Me AU. 1930s setting. Lots of letter writing. 18438 words.

Ballet-Feerie by @oldshrewsburyian & @qqueenofhades - my sketchnote

Ballet AU. See above. 16799 words

Blood Sins - A #FlynnFriday Imagines Series (E-rated) by @doctorliamsr, @timelesshonesttrailer & @ununpredictableme - my sketchnote

Vampire AU. Ongoing story that fascinates me to no end. Reading any snippit I can get my hands on. Garcia/Lorena/Lucy & Jiya/Rufus relationships. The E-rated parts are clearly marked and can be skipped if it’s not your cup of tea. Currently at 47403 words.

The Assassin’s Holiday by @secretnerdprincess - my sketchnote

Murdervision. Assassin AU. Got me giggling all the way through. 12224 words. Rated mature.

Amehrana by Redgold (@timelesshonesttrailer) - my sketchnote

Food Truck AU. Found family. Wholesome. Mature people. Lorena is awesome. 32589 words.

Lorena Lives

Rise Like a Reckoning by @amandamonroe - my sketchnote

Author’s summary: ‘"Lorena Flynn Has a Chance" Ex-CIA agent Lorena Flynn is back. She's got her daughter, her husband, and the woman who saved their lives years ago. She's taking command of the bunker and taking Rittenhouse down.’ Lorena/Garcia/Lucy hinted at towards the end. 6483 words.

Blood Sins - A #FlynnFriday Imagines Series (E-rated) by @doctorliamsr, @timelesshonesttrailer & @ununpredictableme - my sketchnote

See above. Also: Iris lives!

Amehrana by Redgold (@timelesshonesttrailer) - my sketchnote

See above. Yes, I’m recommending this twice. :-)

Due to the nature of the show, there are not many stories in which Lorena lives. I particularly like the Lorena focused stories that RedGold, @sallyexactly, @omnicat & @amandamonroe write. Lorena & Iris deserved better and these stories bring depth, humanity and grace to Lorena & her choices. I reread them frequently and recommend you do the same. These authors are amazing.

Recovery & Healing

To Find a Home by @misscrazyfangirl321 - my sketchnote

Rufus & Jiya & Garcia friendship. Extending grace. 4529 words.

A Butterfly Garden by @vita-s-west - my sketchnote

Post-Rittenhouse defeat. Slow recovery. Especially wholesome to read in these pandemic times. There’s now a sequel too! 3323 words.

Nisam Sam by @thealocksly - my sketchnote

Lucy’s processing her time in Rittenhouse & Garcia holds space for her. Soft & dark & visceral. 1225 words.

Q&A by @somekindofflowergirl - my sketchnote

Author’s summary: “Lucy and Flynn develop a routine during their nighttime chats. She's allowed one loaded question and he's allowed one loaded apology.” 22176 words

The Road Ode by @sallyexactly - my sketchnote

See above. This roadtrip fic inspired my own roadtrip where we found ourselves in Friedrichshafen, Germany and the Zeppelin museum there were there was a whole exposition on the Hindenburg. Felt very serendipidous.

Honorable mentions (especially in these pandemic times):

Disease Protocols for Time Travellers by hjea (594 words)

Also, I’d like to give a shoutout to @battleshipgarcy for their fan archive sites & meta posts with screenshots of the journal & all the meta content. I love seeing all those small details highlighted! (Plus: their Maria Thompkins in their story The Road Less Traveled intrigues me to no end!)

Other Fandoms

Hunger Games - A Standing Engagement (E-rated) by @bettsfic - my sketchnote.

Annie & Finnick AU within Hunger Games world. 56760 words. The Food Wars are so very appropriate in the Hunger Games world. It’s fascinating how well betts incorporates exisiting Hunger Games context into this story: this feels like it could have happened.

Temeraire - The Diplomat’s Dragon by indecisive_lotus - my sketchnote

Ongoing story. Post-canon. I love Churki & Hammond together & how Hammond especially gets out-manouvered. 20730 words.

White Collar - In Your Wildest Dreams by sahiya - my sketchnote

Post-canon. Sara Ellis focused. Author’s summary ”This was what grief did to you, Sara knew. It played tricks on your mind. But if it wasn’t Neal, then who could it be? Who else would send her an anonymous packet detailing all the ways someone could knock over the Louvre?” 14289 words.

White Collar - I’ve been bingereading the stories by Sholio. Especially the stories focused on Diana Barrigan. They are a delight. Breakout is especially bad-ass Diana (in heels nonetheless!)

I started this blog to show my appreciation of those wonderful fanfic stories that have entertained me endlessly and engage with these amazing artists (and other people in fandom who share my enthusiasm!) This recommendation list is obviously incomplete and I welcome additions & conversations!

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jonismitchell · 4 years

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Love dies in the city; or the romanticism v. modernism conflict on folklore

In my humble opinion, Taylor Swift’s 2020 album folklore is about the conflict between romanticism and modernism. It sets up the natural as a place of freedom and unrestrained love, contrasting this with the city (presumably New York) as a place of hiding and secrecy that ultimately dooms the integral relationship. In the end, Swift expresses her deepest desires to return to the natural world, to restart the timeline that began with her move to New York, something I will elaborate on when discussing “hoax” and “the lakes.” This storyline is the crux of the album, and the motif I’ve used to classify its songs into six distinct sections, which follow a vague plot that is not represented in the track list order.

the natural (seven, invisible string, betty) I would argue that “seven” represents the heart of folklore, containing what seems to be the album’s mission statement (“passed down like folk songs / our love lasts so long”) and describing the earliest point in Swift’s timeline. This song is the one most directly linked to nature, describing a childhood friendship that takes place in the woods. One lyric, “before I learned civility / I used to scream ferociously / any time I wanted,” implies that Swift found freedom in nature, when her secrets were mere promises to friends instead of the pain she had since hinged her life on. In addition, this song is pure romanticism. The interest in childhood is implied, we can reasonably assume both main characters to be seven years old. To support this, the song states “although I can’t recall your face, I still got love for you,” implying that much time has passed since the events. There is awe of nature (the “beautiful things” are the creek and the trees), emphasis on the importance of imagination (your dad is mad because the house is haunted), and a celebration of the individual (“just like a folk song, our love will be passed on,” where the love is the individual she speaks of). This is the dream that Swift wants to return to, and yet her characters already face conflict (the keeping of secrets, hiding in the closet, an angry father). She romanticizes her past into something she can escape into, creating a sort of mythos around an upset childhood.

Our next nature-intensive song is “invisible string.” She again makes a callback to childhood, citing a park where she used to read in Nashville. It would not be incorrect to categorize this as a love song, perhaps the most lighthearted one on the album. Swift emphasizes time and fate, both recurring themes in her discography. Like “seven,” “invisible string” draws attention to nature as a freeing and healing space, which sets the stage for her romance. Lines such as “gold were the leaves when I showed you around Centennial Park” draw attention to the ‘invisible’ connection the song depicts. In the bridge, she notes that there was “a string that pulled me / out of all the wrong arms, right into that dive bar,” implying a protection from the dangers of interpersonal conflict. Throughout the verses, mentions of any city stay tangential (“your first trip to LA… an American singer”) while the focus lies on her freedom. It is a dreamlike song, which implies that the city can be glimpsed but not detrimental, and showcases an utter belief in things working out.

It is, then, rather ironic that the final song with unique ties to the environment highlights an unanswered apology after the foundations of romance have been shocked. “betty” is ostensibly narrated by a teenager, James, who plans to make up for her mistake in a garden. This perspective ties into the album’s greater focus on time, in this instance equating innocence (“I don’t know anything”) with a natural setting (the garden, which is explicitly removed from society). At first, James wonders if Betty will allow an apology, but wants it to happen without anyone watching (“if I showed up at your party… would you lead me to the garden”). She then casts this hope aside, dreaming about being able to broadcast her love to the world without fear of judgement (“will you kiss me on the porch in front of all your stupid friends”). It is also, then, relevant that the relationship is ruined when scrutinized (“rumours from Inez”). When considering how themes of secrecy and hiding come into the picture once the narrative travels to the city, it is interesting to look at how the hope of an public relationship prevails here. But in the end, James still dreams of going back to any relationship with Betty, no matter how private (“kissing in my car again”). Of course, Taylor Swift herself is James, and James is Swift, so we know that the secrecy dooms the relationship in the end.

the romance (august, illicit affairs) “august” describes a doomed relationship, perhaps meant to be the affair James has that prompts her apology to Betty. However, the story of a love that was never built to last has been referenced multiple times in Swift’s discography (“Wildest Dreams” and “Getaway Car”) and even expressly linked to summer on 2019’s “Cruel Summer.” These songs show distinct lyrical similarities to “august.” Hence, I feel comfortable describing this song in the context of those, rather than within the storyline of Swift’s fictitious love triangle. (Which is flimsy as it stands, but that’s for another analysis.) While there is no set location, this song describes one kind of coming-of-age (“whispers of are you sure”) and delves into the hope associated with a short-lived romance. Here, there is no secrecy to speak of, but a fear of what will come when a return to society comes (“will you call when you’re back at school”). My contrast for this song is saying it is “Cruel Summer” without the ‘happy’ ending. There is a privacy here (“meet me behind the mall”) but it is the instability of the romance that dooms it (“you weren’t mine to lose”). “august” is a time capsule, a reflection on the love that always would’ve ended regardless of the locale.

The next song, “illicit affairs,” is another one that ‘visits’ the city (for lack of a better term) but places the primary conflict in a largely undetermined setting. In fact, there seems to be a rejection of the urban (“take the road less traveled by”). In the sorting of tracks as they relate to different sub-themes, “illicit affairs” is the first song that says, without preamble, that secrecy is the death of love. While the word ‘illicit’ simply means forbidden, the verses describe sneaking around in a way that has been attributed to cheating since album release. There is virtually no acknowledgement of another character outside of the two lovers, save for the ‘him’ referenced in the perfume line. But it is not this person that the narrator seeks to hide from, it seems to be almost everyone. It could be construed as a song about adultery, but taken in the context of the rest of the album it reads as a lament for having to hide a relationship (most likely a romantic one between two women, but this is extrapolation).

the city (the last great american dynasty, mirrorball, mad woman) Now we approach the slew of songs that deal with the actual location of the city. The first song is “the last great american dynasty,” which seems the most removed from Taylor’s viewpoint and yet involves her directly (“and then it was bought by me”). We get an actual move to the ‘city’ (“Rebekah rode up on the afternoon train”) which is reminiscent of Swift’s own move to New York in 2014. Rebekah is immediately disliked by the people around her, blamed for her husband’s death to the extent where she flies in “bitch pack friends.” (1) Keeping with the theme of folklore’s similarity to a time capsule, one could see this song as Swift retelling her own purchase of Holiday House (and by extension much of the events from 2014/2015) through the lens of someone else’s life. Indeed, part of this theory is directly corroborated by the song through the lines “then it was bought by me” and “I had a marvellous time ruining everything.” In relation to the conflict between secrecy and survival of love, “the last great american dynasty” does not offer much insight. However, it effectively sets the scene for songs to come.

(1): I don’t know anything about Rebekah Harkness’ life, this is just how I interpreted the song.

After the initial move, “mirrorball” establishes the new dynamic between the lovers. In turn, it introduces the performative nature of romance in the city (which is referred to and combatted with the line “all these people think love’s for show / but I would die for you in secret” from “peace”). Swift expresses interest in a lover who is “not like the regulars,” who wants more than to watch her turmoil. Still, this song finds her drawn into the nature of performing, consistently showcasing her tragedy to let others see themselves to the extent where she cannot even let her guard down when “no one is around.” Even after the circus has been called off, she seems to have entirely integrated with the role of the mirrorball. This provides some introspection on her viewpoint: digging into insecurities under the viewpoint of desperately trying to save a sinking ship. Almost as a counterpart to “seven,” the lyrics to “mirrorball” show some characteristics of modernism. Individualism is represented through the focus on the person who is the mirrorball, while unrelated characters do not warrant much elaboration. In terms of formalism and experimentation, the format and structure of the song deviate from Swift’s usual manner. The concept of a person being a mirrorball (shown in the music video as a disco ball) is both a symbol and verges into the absurd. All the imagery in this track is based in large crowds; featuring a disco, a circus, and masquerade revelers. It both establishes the setting where love dies and assures that the relationship will end (“the end is near”).

“mad woman” is the final song which establishes setting more than storyline. It proves the city as a angry and dangerous place, one that is not sympathetic to “people like” Swift. We find her contemplating revenge on someone who has done her a great wrong, which is less attached to the general storyline but serves to depict the setting as actively hostile and worthy of contempt. When compared with other tracks, certain lyrics imply that the narrator is hell-bent on getting the last word (“they say move on but you know I won’t” / “you know I left a part of me back in New York”). There isn’t much else notable about this song in terms of what we are talking about, but it does frame several absurdist tendencies in the context of a destructive setting.

the death (cardigan, exile, my tears ricochet, epiphany) In “cardigan,” Swift reminisces on a long-past relationship, which has been interpreted to be James and Betty’s teenage melodrama. This is the first of many breakup songs, which idolize what has passed and mourn the loss. We observe many signs of the city (“chasing shadows in the grocery line”) and individualism (“I knew everything when I was young”). As referenced in “betty,” the cardigan becomes a symbol for the relationship at large. Moreso, the idea that the relationship was cursed to end as it begun is elaborated on here (“I knew you tried to change the ending”) even if it is not ascribed to secrecy yet. In reflecting on Swift’s past work, we see many signs of her being accustomed to this thought (“I can see the end as it begins” from Wildest Dreams and “I knew (...) we were cursed” from Getaway Car), but “cardigan” comes across with deeper pain regarding the whole affair. In tying different lyrics together (“back when I was living for the hope of it all” from “august” and “I hope I never lose you” from Cornelia Street), we begin to paint a picture of the true narrative behind the love triangle. Swift knew her greatest love would end—desperately hoped it wouldn’t, prayed they could ‘get away with it’—and finally channels her anger and sorrow into this retrospective. She almost accepts it: love dies in the city.

Another reflection on a past relationship is folklore’s only duet; “exile.” This song discusses an inability to communicate, the concept of determined endings (“I think I’ve seen this film before, and I didn’t like the ending”), and plenty of ‘hiding in the city’ imagery. This sees one narrator (Swift) faking a relationship (“just your understudy”) to hide her true lover (in this context, Iver). Both agree on various facets that caused fallout (“didn't even hear me out... never learned to read your mind… couldn’t turn things around”) until the final disagreement (“you never gave a warning sign / I gave so many signs”). So while the song is fundamentally about a miscommunication, it is evident that much of the misunderstanding comes from ways of signalling the secret relationship. Presence of the city is acknowledged through lyrics such as “I’m leaving out the side door,” “out here in the hall,” implying that the narrators share an apartment. Nature also gets a brief mention here (“breaking branches”), but this usage explains that the freedom of the narrators is fading, just like their connection to the natural.

Most do not connect “my tears ricochet” to romantic fallout, but there is no denying that the song hinges around prominent death metaphors. Many metaphors used imply that the narrator has broken up with their lover, but still haunts the hope of what could’ve been. In the line “we gather stones, some to throw, some to make a diamond ring,” a connection to marriage is implied, divorcing the meaning from the loss of Swift’s masters. A crowd of people is repeatedly referenced (the ones in a sunlit room, for instance) and the lover must “save face” in front of them. This external pressure contributes to the greater theme of death of love in the city, which Swift equates to her own death. She describes herself as a recalcitrant ghost (“you know I didn’t want to have to haunt you”) but one her lover must have around (“when you can’t sleep at night, you hear my stolen lullabies”). This song is another one that recognizes Taylor Swift the writer within the lyrics; within this interpretation the “stolen lullabies” are the songs that the ex-lover inspired, work she can no longer look proudly on. While no explicit connections to the city are formed, it is obvious that some external pressure resulted in a damning betrayal, which was painful enough to describe as death.

The final song in this death theme is “epiphany,” which does not discuss the romantic timeline at all. Instead, “epiphany” is the culmination of two sub-motifs on folklore: water and war. In nature, water gains a passing mention in “seven,” but does not truly become relevant in this organization until “the last great american dynasty.” In “epiphany,” the water reference is “crawling up the beaches now,” which serves to distance it from the overall storyline. The song also deals with the war motif (evident in most of the songs, but “ease your rifle” is very literal) and contrasts soldiers at war to doctors during the pandemic. All of this builds on this section’s burgeoning theme of death. It fits in with the album theme, but does not display obvious modernist or romanticist hallmarks.

the chance (the 1, this is me trying, peace) Opening the album is “the 1,” a frequently disliked song but a very telling one. It is similar to “cardigan” in that it reminisces on a past relationship, but the narrator feigns contentment with her current situation. If all of folklore can be considered a time capsule, “the 1” perhaps describes the headspace of the narrator before they begin reminiscing: convinced they are alright, but not holding up very well. This song involves much city imagery (“I hit the Sunday matinee,” “I thought I saw you at the bus stop”) and deals with the aftermath of many events in the album. It is interesting that this song was one of the last written, as one can imagine the narrator went directly from “it would’ve been fun” to “don’t want no other shade of blue but you” (as described in hoax). The love has died here; but there’s a desperate hope to return (“if one thing had been different, would everything be different”).

Much like “betty,” “this is me trying” is another last-ditch attempt to save a failed relationship. Both songs find Swift in a doorway, ready to apologize, but “this is me trying” bears the weight of experience and less expectation that they will have a second chance. The increased maturity finds acknowledgement of faults without excuse (“my words shoot to kill when I’m mad / I have a lot of regrets about that”) and an attempt to come to terms with the death of the relationship despite pain. This, of course, breaks apart in the bridge (“all I want is you”) but, as Swift consoles herself, at least she’s trying. Setting-wise, this seems to be in a smaller locale (“the one screen in my town”) which calls to mind the “the only thing we share is this small town” from “Death By A Thousand Cuts.” There is also what appears to be a bar (“pouring my heart out to a stranger / but I didn’t pour the whiskey”) and an influx of people (“it’s hard to be at a party when I feel like an open wound”). It is not necessarily the city, but rather a recovery period that does not go well.

If the painful instruction of “illicit affairs” acts as a foil to 2014’s “How You Get The Girl,” then the anxiety of “peace” complements 2017’s “Delicate.” While “Delicate” expresses the sufferance of an early, undefined relationship (“is it cool that I said all that”), “peace” begs the lover to reconsider the end one last time. As “hoax” makes undoubtedly clear, it wasn’t enough. We see the dangers of outside influence (“I’d sit with you in the trenches”) and the strength of the romance (“the silence that only comes when two people understand each other”). It is a final plea for someone to stay, a list of the success and a fatal acknowledgement of the worst. There is a declaration that sums up much of the album: “all these people think love’s for show / but I would die for you in secret.” As we’ve seen from other songs, it is the secrecy and the hiding that has doomed them. Swift sees this, she briefly suggests a return to the free and safe woods (“give you my wild”) but is ultimately stuck on the question of peace, which she wishes she could give her partner.

the return (hoax, the lakes) The original album closer, “hoax,” finds Swift leaving a part of herself in the destructive city that has become home. She makes an attempt to return to her home, only to find that it is not the way she’s left it (“my barren land”). With her lover, she has gone through a journey that changed her too much to return to innocence (“I can go anywhere I want, just not home” from “my tears ricochet” contrasted with “you’re not my homeland anymore” from “exile,” where the lover becomes the homeland). She turns to a bleak setting, using sparse lyricism and simple constructs to describe her pain and betrayal. While Lover highlights themes of likening one’s love to a religion, the Swift we see on “hoax” has given up on any sort of healing coming from her romance. All she acknowledges is that the circumstances of her love have “broken her down” and “frozen the ground” (from which she hopes a “red rose” will emerge in “the lakes”).

In “the lakes,” Swift tries to move forward but still sets her sights on the natural world, citing a deep desire to escape the scrutiny that destroyed her romance completely. This is a call to action for her former lover, a final request for shared freedom that reminds the listener of the lyric “would you run away with me?” from 2017’s “Call It What You Want.” Swift continues to call on aspects of romanticism she’s referenced on reputation and Lover to make her point. It then tracks that she has been inspired by this muse all along, and is finally asking for a return; both to the early romanticism her albums are built on and to her lover’s “homeland.” Her desire for a new home is evident, her conviction that her former lover should join her too great to be overcome.

The response of the muse to this, of course, is unclear.

#arden speaks #my analysis #taylor swift analysis #this is more than three thousand words #arden's essays

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internacionalista · 4 years

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W I L L I N G L Y D A M N E D

Part II of my Gerri/Roman playlist (but all the songs are from Roman's very confused POV)

Gotye - Smoke and Mirrors You're a fraud and you know it But it's too good to throw it all away Anyone would do the same You've got 'em going And you're careful not to show it Sometimes you even fool yourself a bit

Ben Folds - Best Imitation of Myself I feel like a quote out of context Withholding the rest So I can be for you what you want to see I got the gesture and sound Got the timing down It's uncanny, yeah, you think it was me

Aimee Mann - Save Me But can you save me? Come on and save me! If you could save me... From the ranks of the freaks Who suspect they could never love anyone

Kings of Leon - On Call She said call me now baby And I'd come a running She said call me now baby And I'd come a running

The Civil Wars - Poison & Wine I wish you'd hold me when I turn my back The less I give the more I get back Oh your hands can heal, your hands can bruise I don't have a choice but I'd still choose you

Damien Rice - Older Chests Older chests reveal themselves Like a crack in a wall Starting small, and grow in time And we always seem to need the help Of someone else To mend that shelf Too many books Read me your favorite line

Hozier - From Eden Babe, there's something lonesome about you Something so wholesome about you Get closer to me No tight side, no rolling eyes, no irony No 'who cares', no vacant stares, no time for me Honey you're familiar like my mirror years ago Idealism sits prison, chivalry fell on it's sword Innocence died screaming, honey ask me I should know I slithered here from Eden just to sit outside your door

The Weeknd - Earned It You know our love would be tragic So you don't pay it, don't pay it no mind We live with no lies Hey, hey, you're my favourite kind of night So I love when you call unexpected 'Cause I hate when the moment's expected So I'ma care for you, you, you

Arctic Monkeys - R U Mine? When she’s not there beside me I go crazy 'cause here isn't where I wanna be And satisfaction feels like a distant memory And I can't help myself All I wanna hear her say is "Are you mine?" Well, are you mine? Are you mine? Are you mine? I guess what I'm tryna say is I need the deep end Keep imagining meeting, wished away entire lifetimes Unfair we're not somewhere misbehaving for days

The Strokes - Under Cover of Darkness Get dressed, jump out of bed and do it best (Are you okay?) I've been out around this town Everybody's singing the same song for ten years I'll wait for you Will you wait for me, too?

Lykke Li - sex money feelings die I don't wanna think about, think about you Drink up, drink up I'm so fucked up All I want is you

Halsey - Gasoline Are you insane like me? Been in pain like me? Bought a hundred dollar bottle of champagne like me? Just to pour that motherfucker down the drain like me? Would you use your water bill to dry the stain like me? Are you high enough without the Mary Jane like me? Do you tear yourself apart to entertain like me? Do the people whisper 'bout you on the train like me? Saying that you shouldn't waste your pretty face like me?

Raleigh Ritchie - Bloodsport '15 Although you love me, sometimes we're mean Things can get ugly, but we're still a team We are an army, that breaks from within, but That's why we're stronger, and that's how we'll win If I fall short, if I break rank It's a bloodsport, but I understand I am all yours, I am unmanned I'm on all fours, willingly damned

Dua Lipa - Physical Adrenaline keeps on rushing in Love the simulation we're dreaming in Don't you agree? Don't you agree? I don't wanna live another life 'Cause this one's pretty nice Living it up Who needs to go to sleep, when I got you next to me?

Ryan Adams - Wildest Dreams I said, "No one has to know what we do" Her hands are in my hair, her clothes are in my room Her voice is a familiar sound, nothing lasts forever But this is getting good now

Interpol - Evil Leave some shards under the belly Lay some grease inside my hand It's a sentimental jury And the makings of a good plan You've come to love me lightly Yeah you've come to hold me tight Is this motion ever lasting Or do shudders pass in the night?

Vance Joy - Mess is Mine Do you like walking in the rain? When you think of love, do you think of pain? You can tell me what you see I will choose what I believe

Phoenix - Lisztomania So go slowly discourage We'll burn the pictures instead When it's all over we can barely discuss For one minute only Not where the fortunate only But I better be something else These days it comes, it comes, it comes, it comes, it comes and goes

#i'm so ready for a roman roy season #roman roy #gerri kellman #gerri x roman #roman x gerri (kieran culkin if you're listening)#roman x gerri #succession

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falconedreams · 3 years

Text

Dungeons & Dragons, AU! BBC Merlin, & A Magical Unnamed Cat

For once, I’m actually writing up the dream on the actual day after!

Last night I dreamt that we had commenced the lab D&D campaign that me and a bunch of my colleagues have been plotting. I was on cleanup duty because I live closest to the lab and therefore have the most leeway for the last train/bus. While I was clearing stuff away, I noticed someone had left their player’s handbook on the table, flipped open, and the pictures were moving. Apparently there was some Jumanji-style curse on the book because the moment I leaned over it to get a closer look, the illustrated genasi leapt out of the book and yelled “SINCE YOU ENJOY IMMERSING YOURSELF IN FANTASY SO MUCH, I SHALL MAKE YOU LIVE IT IN TRUTH!” and then woosh, I was falling through a portal of swirling mist, and landed in the middle of a medieval looking market street.

This dream is kinda long so I’ll fast forward to the more interesting parts. I started picking up random small hunting contracts to earn money to live, and as I moved on to bigger and more difficult prey (and also got into a bunch of fights with humans in the process) and carved out a reputation as a formidable warrior, the context of the world became clearer to me. It transpired that I was in some kind of BBC Merlin AU, which worked on MapleStory logic - that is, the mobs I killed would drop gold and equipment. Also, Arthur was actually fine with Merlin doing magic, and he intended to legalise it as soon as he was crowned, but the coronation was being blocked by a conglomerate of nobles, who contended that the coronation could not be legally carried out because the Centerpiece of the Crown Jewels was missing (it was a giant egg-shaped star sapphire. Apparently during a coronation the monarch-to-be has to put on ALLLL of the Crown Jewels). Honestly Merlin and I both thought it was a flimsy excuse meant to keep the Regent in power and feed their own interests, and we told Arthur as much, but Arthur was all, “Justice must be seen to be done; if I flub the Royal Protocol, the commons might think I put myself above the rules just to seize power, and what kind of trust would they have in my rule?” So I had to go and find the jewel.

Merlin’s scrying magic had revealed that the jewel had been taken by this giant snake, but when I reached its nest, I found out something much more disturbing that his magic hadn’t revealed - the snake had amassed an ENTIRE COLLECTION of IDENTICAL GIANT EGG-SHAPED STAR SAPPHIRE LOOKING OBJECTS. And when I started fighting the snake I very very quickly realised I had gotten way in over my head; it was way quicker, stronger, deadlier, and slipperier than any foe I’d faced up til then. I was badly wounded within the first 5 minutes of the battle and it was all I could do to grab one of the egg-jewel things at random and escape with my life.

AND IT WASN’T EVEN THE CORRECT ONE!! While I was fleeing for my life the damn thing cracked and hatched out a cat. It was a calico and looked like my friend A’s kitten. I was mortified and exhausted and hurt and decided to collapse in the first abandoned barn I saw because if I went to recuperate in an inn people would see me and gossip and word would spread back to the palace that their chosen champion had returned with a CAT instead of the jewel they sent me out for, and all hell would break loose. (The political situation back at the palace was already quite delicate and Merlin was doing the best he could to keep things together. He would do the politicking and I would do the fighty questing, that was the arrangement.)

I woke up to my friend A pouring water over my face. The barn was not abandoned. The barn belonged to her, as did the surrounding farmlands for about a 2 mile radius. I became her farmhand in exchange for letting me hide out on her lands while I made my preparations to go fight the snake again (and get the correct jewel this time!), and also for her special homemade cat food to feed my cat with. The cat became very soft and silky and developed a strange proclivity for magical artefacts. Whereas regular cats would present their owners with leaves, socks, or dead rodents, this one would come back from her forays with mildly magical items, such as a locket that would animate the picture of whoever you put in (if you took it out again it would revert to a still picture), a quill which never ran out of ink and could change ink colour as requested, etc etc.

One day the cat came back with a unicorn horn. It was hollowed out to function like a musical horn, and had a leather strap and gold trim on both ends. When A saw this she looked very grave, nodded, and said “It is time. You must return.” I was like, what, to the palace? They’ll kill me! I haven’t got the jewel! Then she was like, “No, you fucking idiot, to your own world! The world of invisible waves (wifi???) and reshapen animal oils (plastic??), that terrifying dimension where magic exists not, yet you people have managed to wrest the forces of nature into submission to produce wonders and horrors the like of which exceeds the wildest imaginations!” I was extremely surprised, because I’d already long since changed into context-appropriate gear before arriving at her place, and I never spoke to her about how I ended up there; and I expressed as much, but she just said, “I know many things. But more importantly, you have to go now. For you to stay means certain death.” This last bit was actually not a surprise to me, but I had been in denial and hadn’t wanted to confront it. I wasn’t recovering from my injuries. The snake had gotten some venom in during our showdown and I was getting weaker by the day. A handed me the horn and took the cat and told me, “Don’t worry, I’ll look after your cat. Now blow on the horn.” So I did, and everything faded to black.

And that’s why I only woke up at 1pm today. Also, I never named that cat. :(

#falcone dreams #dungeons & dragons #d&d #dnd #bbc merlin #tw: snake #cat

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keeroo92 · 5 years

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Can we get a cute fic with a smaller, timid male finally confessing his feelings to Dante and Dante just being completely smitten? I need the fluffiest fluff for my fragile heart

Eek, how sweet! Thank you for this, I had a ton of fun writing this! There’s a lil bit of angst, my bad... Hope you enjoy!

Word count - 1,608

________

For years, you harbored your feelings in silence. Any time you came close to spilling the beans, you reminded yourself of the myriad of reasons Dante could never be yours.

Chief among them was that you were pretty damn sure he wasn’t gay.

The rest were circumstantial, debatable and easy enough to talk yourself out of caring about, but that one cruel fact remained. You simply weren’t his type, through no fault of your own.

It still hurt, though.

Little things made it worse, like when he called someone ‘babe’ or teased about the noises Nero and Kyrie made over the weekend in the spare room. Anytime he patted you on the back, making a crack about whatever was going on around you. The worst was how amazing his mouth looked when he ate pizza, slurping away at the warm cheese and moaning at the flavor…

You wondered if anyone else got jealous of food.

Regardless. Everything changed six months ago when he brought a guy home. Some tall asshole with ear gauges and black jeans, basically the opposite of your small self. You were heartbroken, knowing the context of the new face and realizing how wrong you were about Dante’s preferences.

At least the guy hadn’t stuck around long. Small mercies.

Once he was gone, things settled down for a while. Dante made his usual jokes, munching away on pizza and driving you nuts with every bite. He patted your back and made fun of Vergil when he misplaced a book. Nero stormed off in a huff whenever the man in red quipped something about selling tickets.

The knowledge that Dante was, at the very least, open to being with a man made it more and more difficult to talk yourself out of confessing. You struggled every day to hold back, biting your lips and muttering excuses so you could retreat until the urge faded. The others gave you some funny looks, but Dante didn’t seem to notice your strange behavior. Another reason to keep it hidden – he didn’t care enough to pay attention to your quirks.

Little did you know how wrong you were.

Dante knew something was up. At first, he assumed you’d deal with it on your own and he didn’t need to worry, but as the weeks dragged on his concern grew. You could barely look him in the eyes sometimes. You flinched when he touched you. You even stopped coming to his weekly movie night.

It hurt. You were his friend and he wanted you to be happy. If something was up, he wanted to help you fix it. Seeing you in pain, day after day was more agonizing than the time Vergil stabbed him as a teenager.

Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore and he pulled you aside, muscles already tensed to fight off the source. You looked confused and maybe a little scared as he dragged you to the kitchen and sat you down at the cracked plastic countertop. To help ease the tension, he poured two shots of whiskey and forced one into your hand, clinking his own glass against it and downing it in one gulp.

“So. What’s been bugging ya?” he asked, slamming the shot glass on the counter.

You froze. Who told him? Why now? Did it even matter?

Probably not. You licked your lips and replied, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Dante snorted and gestured at the still-full shot glass in your hand. “Drink up. I’m not taking any more bullshit.”

Shit.

The man was legendary for sniffing out half-truths and lies. It was a goddamned miracle he hadn’t figured you out yet. You raised the glass and cringed as the amber fluid slid down your throat, coughing as you set the glass down again. A firm hand smacked your spine in a rough approximation of helping.

“Better out than in, right?”

You glared at him and he chuckled, reaching for the bottle to pour another round. He downed half a shot and raised an eyebrow at you, blatantly ignoring your shaking head as he poured a matching amount in your glass.

“Come on, Y/N. How bad could it be? Let me help you sort it out.”

He’s not going to let this go. I’m a goner.

You held your breath and emptied your glass. This time you managed to maintain a shred of composure, only clearing your throat to ease the alcohol’s passage.

“You can’t help me with this,” you said.

“Why the fuck not?”

You bit your lip, eyes darting around in search of a safe escape. After this long, even to think of telling him had you in a cold sweat.

“Hey, look at me.” His hand grasped your chin and forced you to meet his stern gaze. “Why. The fuck. Not?”

The calloused fingers on your chin were too much. Even that small contact felt so damned good, and you closed your eyes as your lips parted.

“Because you’re the issue!”

He chuckled and lowered his hand. Your soul cried out at the loss.

“Me? What did I do? Tell me and I’ll make it right.”

He poured another round of shots and grinned. You didn’t bother protesting and followed his lead to slam the drink with a shudder.

“The problem isn’t something you did, its something you’ll never do,” you whispered. The tile floor was suddenly fascinating; you couldn’t tear your eyes off the grimy grey surface.

“Well, I definitely won’t do it if you can’t even tell me what it is,” he replied sardonically.

He has a point. Damnit.

You really couldn’t expect anything to change if you refused to tell him and holding onto the pain was too painful to bear. It begged to be spoken, the confession waiting on your tongue. Every nerve screamed at you to do it, to just open your mouth and say the damned words, but something still held you back. He didn’t want you; it was lunacy to pretend otherwise.

A warm weight rested on your shoulder and your eyes lifted to find his staring at you. A gloved hand gripped you and you reached for another drink. Haze clouded your thoughts, but one urgent need shone through the fog.

Don’t say it.

Don’t you fucking say it, Y/N.

“I want you, Dante. I have for a long time,” your traitorous lips said.

God damnit. This is why I don’t drink. Fucking stupid.

A soft hum rumbled in his chest as his eyes lit up. Was that humor? If he started laughing you might have to run, hide somewhere and sleep off the buzz. Go home and never come back.

“Uh, I… I don’t really know what to say.”

You dropped your eyes back to the floor. “It’s okay. I know I’m not your type.”

He sighed and another warm weight dropped onto your knee. “That’s not what I meant. I’m pretty crap at this stuff, you know. Just… give me a sec, yeah?”

You focused on a crack in the tile. It surprised you that you weren’t crying. Maybe after so long, you just didn’t have it in you? Or maybe the drinks were messing with you. Whatever, it didn’t matter.

His thumb rubbed a tiny circle on your knee. An intimate gesture, one you’d never seen the mighty devil hunter perform before. It felt really, really good and you bit your lip to restrain the pleased hum rising in your body.

“Okay… so I gotta set you straight here. I don’t… I don’t have a type. If it feels right, who gives a shit what people look like?”

That made sense, in a Dante sort of way.

“And… look, I suck at this. But, you know what? You’ve always felt right to me.”

The hand on your shoulder drifted inward to cup your cheek, his thumb stroking your lower lip as it twisted into a smile. His touch was like acid, burning through all the layers of doubt and fear to reveal the truth you’d kept hidden for so long. You had to be dreaming, nothing else made any sense.

And if this is a dream, I can do whatever the fuck I want.

Part of you wanted nothing more than to tackle him and fulfill your wildest fantasies, but a more rational voice overpowered the urge. There were too many other things that needed to be said first.

“So, wait… why didn’t you say anything?” you asked, squinting.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I was scared?”

Dante?! Scared?! You gotta be shitting me.

Laughter bubbled out of your mouth, gaining strength the longer his sheepish expression stared at you. It was unbelievable, the man who charged into demon infested hellscapes on a regular basis, cracking jokes as he demolished the hordes, scared?

“Quit laughing, I know it’s dumb.”

You gathered your wits, choking back the last few peals of mirth as you reached out to feel his coarse stubble. It wasn’t as rough as you imagined. What would it feel like to have it pressed against your face, his lips locked on yours?

You longed to find out. “I would… very much like to kiss you now.”

Dante leaned closer, pulling your head to rest on his chest with a goofy smile. “How ‘bout we wait till morning? I’d hate to not remember our first kiss.”

He’s got a good point.

“One condition – I’m sleeping next to you. No more waiting,” you replied. “I want that kiss first thing in the morning, got it?”

He chuckled and helped you to your feet, already pulling you in the direction of his bedroom. “You got it, babe.”

#fanfic #ask response #dante x reader #reader insert #devil may cry #fluff #my writing

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readertalia · 5 years

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(101) May i request a college au france/reader, where he and france are casually seeing each other, but the reader is in love with him? Reader wants to confess by secretly studying french, but when teasing him and the language one day he accidentally blurts a huge "i love you" type thing? Tyvm if you do this !!

I did my best!! I hope it’s not the dumbest thing you’ve ever read. It’s sort of a companion to a previous fic (I’m Not?) but instead it’s like…the reader of that fic is this reader’s friend if that makes any sense. I also don’t know how to shut the fuck up and make a decent length fic!!

Je Suis Tombé Amoureux De Vous - France x Reader (1570 words)

(Reader is Gender-Neutral and sort of a tsundere, I hope that’s okay??)

A familiar chime rang out from your phone, catching your friend’s attention. She lowered an eyebrow in interest, probably listening for the next phrase that was to be said. She knew French. You knew she was going to say something. Inwardly sighing, you tapped the green button to continue.

“Tu dois te dépêcher, tu vas être en retard.”

After typing in your answer, you chanced a glance at her, and as expected a smug smirk was plastered all over her face. You didn’t respond, because you didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of acknowledgement, but you knew she knew. Your cheeks were burning. She probably couldn’t actually see it, but the feeling alone was enough for you. You tried to lower your volume and continue your lesson, but she hit you with a very gratified:

“Tu apprends le français?”

Really? Was that actually necessary? You looked up from your phone without moving, sending her an annoyed glance.

“Shut up.”

She continued smiling that shit-eating smirk, propping her chin up on her hands as though waiting for juicy gossip. She had her head cocked to the side in anticipation, though you simply waited for her response. Both of you knew you weren’t going to initiate the conversation.

“So, [Name], I’m curious. What made you want to learn French?”

“I just thought it would be cool. I already knew a little bit.”

She cocked her head to the other side, smirk unfettered.

“It couldn’t be that you’re dating a certain French man, could it?”

Now she wanted you to admit to it? Not one to admit to mushy feelings—especially when an obnoxiously confident, exorbitantly amorous fool was the cause of them—you simply glared at her and refused to respond. She left you alone when you did this, although you could tell that she was satisfied enough because she was fully aware of what was going on. Obligingly, she changed the subject to her own boyfriend, who she apparently had only just realized she was actually dating, and how she had started making more of an attempt to learn Norwegian for him.

“Interestingly, it’s one of those languages that doesn’t really seem to have lots of mushy phrases or pet names or anything. For example, from what I hear, there’s a few words you can technically use but they’re so cheesy that if you say them, no one will take you seriously. It’s a lot different from Romance languages that way.”

You knew that she was only reflecting on her knowledge of multiple language patterns, but you felt like she was calling you out. She was staring beside you into space again—probably at the greenery behind you—which made you feel a lot less self-conscious about how panicked you felt like you looked. Deciding to distance yourself from the romance of both the French language and your lover, you decided to do what you knew best: roast them. You snickered haughtily.

“Yeah, and like, they have the cheesiest phrases, dude. Like, in what context ever would you need to say something as corny as fuckin’… ‘je suis tombé amoureux de vous’? Like that’s just so extra…”

She narrowed her eyes.

“Okay, but like, why do you know that phrase?”

At that moment, you did what your instincts told you to. You reached into your back pocket and pulled out your phone, briefly glancing at its blank screen and holding it up to your ear.

“Hello? Hi. Yeah, okay. See you in a second. Okay, bye.”

Tapping your still-blank phone and returning it to its place, you stood from your seat and gathered your things: your keys, your water, et cetera. Pointedly looking away from your friend, who you were just hoping wasn’t grilling you suspiciously with her eyes (and let’s be honest, she probably wasn’t; you were acting totally normal), you pushed your chair in. In order to keep up the façade, you hazarded a short glance at her, long enough to say, “Well, I gotta go, so…”

“Whatever, dude. And just so you know, it’s ‘toi’, not ‘vous’. Or, at least I’m pretty sure it is. Unless you want to be formal, I guess.” She sent you a cheeky grin and a wink as she shooed you away, as though giving you permission to leave.

You refrained from defending yourself. Although she was technically right to point out the reasons that you’d learned the phrase, she seemed to understand just how embarrassed you were about it. At least she had backed off, somewhat? As casually as possible, you departed, only hoping your next encounter with her might not be so embarrassing.

* * *

Skin glistening with a mist of sweat, chest rising and falling raggedly as you tried to catch your breath, you stared straight at the ceiling. You really did that, huh? Again.

The man beside you sighed in content, and you absolutely refused to look at him. Nope. You were only strong enough to have ‘morals’ and ‘taste’ when you weren’t looking at him, it seemed. It was easy enough to tell yourself you’d never be interested in a man like this when you weren’t looking at him, but when you were…

…Well, you’d inevitably end up here again.

Of course, you knew the only reason you pushed him away like this was because you were afraid of being vulnerable. Sometimes, you’d think that it might be okay to let him in, to say “fuck the haters” and let yourself love him. He’d be good at it, you think, making you feel loved and cherished. He would take you to beautiful gardens and shower you with lavish gifts and spontaneously treat you to romantic outings. You imagined him taking you out on a day trip to the French Riviera, basking in the refreshing sea breeze as you shopped and ate to your heart’s content, eventually settling in to watch the sun set over the rich blue sea. The sky would fade to a warm rosy pink, with the sun’s bright golden hue cradled safely in the center, and you’d think about how it looked the way your chest felt as you tucked your head in the crook of his neck. You’d hate the obnoxious pet names he uses but secretly love it every time he used them on you. The things he would say to you, the things he would do just to show you that he was thinking about you and make absolutely sure that you and everyone else knew it—you think it’d be a dream to make this thing, whatever the two of you had, official.

Or you could just keep fucking him and acting like you didn’t have feelings. That sounded easier.

You were reminded how quickly these thoughts could pass through your mind when a soft, warm hand was draped over your bare waist. He massaged gentle circles on your skin as he spoke, and although you wanted to be calmed by it, of course you were at war with your own feelings.

“Mon chéri.”

There it was. You grunted in response, still refusing to look at him. He couldn’t break you.

“What will it be tonight? Have you made up your mind?”

Wait. What was he talking about? “Made up your mind” about what? You hadn’t discussed anything with him.

You turned on your side to look at him, inadvertently—or maybe subconsciously—shifting closer to him. That was a mistake, because your gaze instantly centered on the way his soft hair fell lightly over his collarbone and fanned out slightly over his shoulder. He was resting on one arm—the other draped over your waist—and though you avoided looking at him straight on, choosing instead to treat his face as though it were the sun, you could tell he was smirking.

“What are you talking about? Have I made up my mind about what?”

“Oh, don’t pretend I don’t know what’s going on, my love; I am no fool. You cannot truly believe that our feelings for one another are simply physical. So, I am asking: what will it be? Will you stay this time, or are we to continue the charade?”

When you hesitated and gave him a look of uncertainty, he continued.

“It’s entirely up to you, of course. The anticipation only grows sweeter with time,” he added with a wink.

Your heart was pounding in your ears; what were you supposed to do? On one hand, you could continue trying to ignore your feelings for him, but on the other, here he was, offering himself to you, and making the possibility of all of your wildest, cheesiest dreams real. The conflict between your reluctance to be genuine and your absolute desire for him swirled in your head until finally, you did it. You said something stupid.

“J-Je suis tombé…am-our-eux de vous…”

And then you didn’t even say it right.

His eyes grew wide and before he could even respond, you attempted to distract him from the meaning of what you had said by correcting yourself.

“Toi. De toi…”

And before you could react, he was on you again, hands fervently grasping and caressing your body, sucking at any skin he could reach and leaving marks in his wake. You were going to be really mad about it tomorrow, but for now…

Yeah, this was where you ended up, every time you looked at him.

#hetalia #aph france #reader insert #selfship #france x reader #thx for the ask bro...#keep it up #also sorry for the lack of updates!! its just sort of an archive lol #im thinking of posting the companion to this #the norway x reader i mean #Anonymous

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lunawings · 5 years

Text

King of Prism SSS Episode 12 commentary (FINAL!)

Crunchyroll was awesome this time!

No significant complaints on the subs!

You guys were awesome this time!

So many people stuck around for the late viewing in the stream and even after just to chat!

Now on to the actual episode.

Once again sorry this is so long. But with this being the last one, can you really blame me.....?

.....As much I love this episode, this scene was just so painful. Worse than Shine’s show. Worse than that whole last episode combined.

A lot of my predictions about Part 4 were wrong (will discuss later) but I was absolutely sure of one thing. I knew no matter what happened in Part 4 just one thing was FOR CERTAIN. And that was... I was going to have to see Shin cry. This precious boy who deserves nothing but love is going to suffer. And I tried to prepare myself. I tried.

But somehow. Even though I knew. EVEN THOUGH I KNEW... It was way worse than I could have ever imagined.

I always assumed he would cry because he found out about something terrible about the past. But instead HE NEVER KNOWS THE TRUTH and we get him sobbing over something entirely NOT HIS FAULT... in front of everyone.... HOW.... HOW COULD THEY.... DO THIS... TO.... HI...M................

This scene upsets me so much I don’t know if I have ever even seen the whole thing. I always end up turning away at some point, or just curling up into a ball.....

Did anyone else feel like they were watching a totally different anime for a few seconds here? I’m having trouble telling if the style actually changed or if I.... just am not used to seeing Shin make expressions like this............. ba.....by..............

Leo always cries when anyone else is crying.

Even though everyone claps for him at the theater at cheering shows, it doesn’t make me feel better. AT ALL. Because Shin never knows the truth. NONE OF THEM DO. Okay we’ll talk about this more later but just..... gah it hurts........................................ So much that it actually hindered my enjoyment of what amazing thing comes next......

Back in the first movie era, the idea of a full CGI show of the Edel Rose boys with Shin as center was something that I could not imagine coming true even in my wildest dreams. And I love this show. I just wish it wasn’t proceeded by so much suffering.

Shin being their center was something they decided at the Christmas live (before performing Dramatic Love for the first time) BTW. While it seems obvious to us that Shin would be center, it wouldn’t necessarily be as such in-universe. They had to decide at some point! And I’m glad it was a part of that story.

I LOVE THESE OUTFITS.

THEYRE PERFECT. The rainbows, the stars, the colors. Everyone looks AMAZING. And I know the rainbows are probably an homage to Over the Rainbow... BUT..

its just so gay

Prism stone beam???

This is orange I guess? It looks more yellow to me. A lot of the hand colors are kinda vague and I’m just like... WHO DID YOU TOUCH

For anyone who read my I THINK I MARRIED ALL THE EDEL ROSE BOYS. OR THEY MARRIED EACH OTHER. ANYWAY EVERYONE IS MARRIED NOW shitty out of context spoiler I wrote in a comment obviously it was this ahahaha

I really do love this show, and like with the new Shuffle’s show last week I’m so glad I can finally watch it without the.... suffering.

The first time I saw this in theaters, this exact frame right here was when I first started feeling any semblance of better after all that had happened. He looks so confident and gallant and his eyes are shining and he just.... Shin............... I love you so much....................................................................

Also this is a good spot to talk about their feathers I guess. So these are different from the other (male?) wings Shine had. Why? What does that mean?

*throws hands in the air*

So, some folks may not be aware of this but the feathers from Rainbow Live were a feature of the arcade game.

You could unlock them by raising the PairTomos, and even the night dream feathers look like they were available at one time during an event it seems?? I am not entirely sure how it all worked since I never played the game back in the heyday. (You can no longer obtain all the feathers now even if you bring a memory card to a currently running Pretty Rhythm machine since some just aren’t available anymore.)

But anyway, the actual point I was trying to make is that the feathers had a set structure within Rainbow Live since it was grounded by the arcade game. But in King of Prism...... that just kinda do what they want.... s....o.............

The first time I went to cheering for this it was the premiere date, and it was also the first time I ever did cheering the same day. In between the morning/midnight showing a whole bunch of people had the idea to go to the 100 yen shop and get glowstick rings just for this scene. I was like daaaamn.

But then...

Our first official non-Crunchyroll translation of prism no kirameki?

Even the Juuouin group worships “the prism”.

And I can’t help laugh at the irony that Crunchyroll abandoned using “the prism” but also just ignored the translation ALREADY ON SCREEN

I can’t take his scream here. It’s just like.... HE WAS ALREADY DYING, WHY DID THEY HAVE TO SPEED UP THE PROCESS.

LOUIS.

LOUIS NOOOOOOOOO.

Even as late as it is, I am really, really grateful how they took a few seconds to establish for the new audience exactly how much of their shows are powered by prism sparkle.

Note that they did not change out of their costumes though. But my headcanon on this is that Leo just prefers to make the real thing because he can.

Singing at cheering shows is also everything I have ever wanted.

I feel bad though since I pretty much always get tongue tied here every time. It’s hard to just sing acapella to a song you’re not that familiar with. Especially with the sparkely lyrics appearing and disappearing like this. I actually don’t hear that many other people singing in the theater, perhaps for that reason? But I always try my best.

And now that this is finally out, I can finally practice at home and nail this down with confidence just in time for...... SSS to leave theaters..... um............ ye....ah........

I also mess this up like every single time ahaha. It’s just slightly too fast for me to read.

Someday I will succeed in properly marrying all of the Edel Rose boys. Someday.

(Also I don’t think this was rainbow-colored in the theatrical version.)

So Edel Rose and all their fans just up and created a prism goddess so we don’t need the prism gods anymore. Can they do that? Can we do that? I guess we can!

WE DID IT GUYS

It’s oddly fitting that Hijiri is kind of an ugly crier. I mean, he’s just so beautiful the rest of the time. It’s only right.

So let’s unpack this for a sec. Unbeknownst to them, because the Edel Rose boys all married each other they put a new seal on Shine. But this seal is entirely dependent on their marriage their bond with each other.

How literal is that I wonder?

Because like.... Edel Rose won’t last forever. Kakeru, Minato, and Yukinojo are gonna be going to college in a year and a half.... ahah ha.....

I just imagine like. A couple of them meeting on the street in the distant future being like “Oh man I haven’t seen you in forever!” “Yeah! We really lost touch! Hey, have you heard from Shin lately?” “No, you?” And behind them is like a TV report of Shin become Shine destroying a city or something.

.....................Reminder again that this commentary is coming from the place where I am after having a couple months to let this all sink in and get to the point where I am comfortable joking about it.... ahah ha........

This is one of my coping mechanisms for dealing with the idea that my favorite character basically has the devil living inside of him trying to take over at any moment.....

Another one is thinking back to older King of Prism media and wondering what Shine was doing at that time. Like, I imagine him floating there inside Shin all bored and pissed off making sarcastic comments at whatever the Edel Rose boys are doing. And I find this hilarious for some reason. I’d make a webcomic about it if I could draw.

ANYWAY

So my understanding of this scene (which may or may not be totally correct) is: The Edel Rose boys’ rings put a seal on Shine which drags him down back into the depths of where Rinne first plunged him. But before he goes, he installs(?) his powers into Shin so that Shin is free to use Shine’s powers on his own now. (Up until now he was just like borrowing them?)

If you also briefly wondered how they could have gotten a perfect score after failing a jump, my guess is the Prism System just wasn’t recording at that time due to the lack of prism sparkle ahah ha.

They absolutely mopped the floor with the new Shuffle, and it did not matter.

What makes this so nuts to me is that even before I saw Part 4, like way back after I first saw episode 5 I was already comparing Joji to a twisted Hiro. (Elaborated on this in my episode 5 post.) And then this aha.

So in the theatrical version I swear the crowd here has light blue lights. And I wondered if it was on purpose to be like inverted Hiro (who goes from light blue -> yellow in the Prism King Cup, so Joji went yellow -> light blue?) but nope, I guess somebody just forgot Joji’s theme color is yellow ahaha. In the TV version they just made it multi-colored.

So to add more context to some things, you may remember I mentioned before that Part 4 premiered in Japanese theaters in the gap between when Taiga and Kakeru’s episodes aired on TV. So by the time Joji’s episode aired on TV... I already knew this was gonna happen. I already knew we were watching the number one prism show. THE CHAMP. The only 2D prism show.... SO MUCH IRONY.

But you know what. Despite his show being what it was..... After all the time to let it sink in.. After all the dust has settled.... the one solo song which is my clear favorite..... The only one which has gotten stuck in my head WAY MORE than ANY other.... is Joji’s.

(Well, Ace’s. But still.)

So.

Congrats Prism Champ.

Never thought I’d say this but poor Jin. Even when he ACTUALLY TRIES to do something fair for once...... still......

(Goddammit Shine.)

Poor Joji? Or not. It’s hard to feel bad for him when he’s THE PRISM CHAMP ahaha. Like. He made it. He has everything he ever strived to obtain. On the surface anyway.

How Nori-kun feels about this though, who knows. Will we ever?

DOES IT REALLY NOT? Haha I really don’t understand this at all. Like. Was it really political pressure? Did Jin fold since he didn’t win in the way that he wanted to? Did Kakeru pull some strings behind the scenes again?

*throws hands in the air*

AND THIS

It’s framed to be this super significant scene but

WHAT DOES IT MEANNNNNNNN

I have already touched on this in separate posts, and this post is so long already that I’m going to kind of leave it hanging here but I consider Kakeru’s plot in SSS to be a loose end. He was the only boy who did not have a plot with some kind of resolution about himself. Instead Kakeru’s plot was only about other people.....

FINALLY, the ultimate conclusion to the infamous curry plot of Pride the Hero.

AND FINALLY

YOU

GUYS

I WAS SO MAD

The official King of Prism Twitter and such were actually pretty good at hiding Dorachi before Alexander’s episode aired. But Torachi was just EVERYWHERE and I was like COME... ON. REALLY.

So you may have noticed this but he was added to the opening too. For us seeing SSS in the theaters, we only get one OP per showing. So this means Japan actually got this spoiled before episode 10.

But I didn’t. I didn’t even notice because I just wasn’t thinking to look for it. (Also I guess sitting in a terrible seat to the far right twisting my neck at an angle may have had something to do with it but.) When I first saw the reveal of Torachi in episode 12 it was TOTAL SURPRISE for me......

But as much as I love Taiga though, Dorachi is my clear favorite. My Dorachi merch collection will start as soon as I can get my hands on ANYTHING

Also I wonder at what point Alexander figured out that DJ COO was Rei, because he sure knows now ahah.

But anyway, speaking of spoilers....

I know I said at one point Nikkanen and the twins didn’t have any significant appearances in SSS, but that was before Part 4 and I just decided not to correct that and let you guys be surprised AHAHAH you’ll just have to hate me *BLASTS OFF INTO THE SUNSET*

(I’m so glad they seem to have cleaned up Nikkanen’s face a little. He looked so weird in the theater. Or like.... weirder at least.)

(If you don’t know these boys they are already established characters introduced on the Prism Rush mobile game.)

And what do THESE feathers mean.....

LOUIS ISN’T DYING ANYMORE DONT CARE *NYOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM*

By the way I can’t believe the prism sparkle disappearing and Louis becoming the protector of the world WAS FORESHADOWED IN ROAD TO SSS 9. That’s why I reblogged this post the other day.

It’s so funny how much of Road to SSS didn’t matter. Then you get to event 9 and LITERALLY EVERYTHING MATTERS.

And again.... speaking of spoilers............

The week before Yu’s episode aired I AGONIZED about whether to put in some kind of vague hint that the Edel Rose boys new unit name was revealed in that episode (as part of Yu’s prism jump). Ultimately I decided not to. Because even though I didn’t figure it out at the time, I think with even a vague hint I probably would have. Because even when I saw it back then I was like.... “...... huh........”

So you’re just gonna hafta haaaaaaaaate ahahaahah ha sorry

But anyway! Now I can finally stop referring to our seven stars as the “Edel Rose boys” and from now on call them SeptEntrion! Since calling them just the “Edel Rose boys” isn’t really accurate anymore since it would also include the twins and Nikkanen, etc. I’m happy that the main seven finally have a good name to distinguish them.

(Now I need to learn to remember how to spell SeptEntrion....)

Also

You guys in the livestream ruined this for me so I’m ruining it for everyone too.

Look at the red letters.

Then flip over your desk and storm out of the room like I almost did when I noticed.

WHY

THERE IS NO WAY THAT IS NOT ON PURPOSE

WHY

So, a few weeks ago I was in Tokyo and I decided to stop by the Yotsuya station area.

I found the site of the supposed Yotsuya Credit union (which is actually a lottery ticket stand) and the KPO KFC almost immediately.

I also found out there is a Catholic university in the area, and although it doesn’t look anything like Edel Rose that seems like not a coincidence.

So I started to walk around that area, but try as I might I could not find any little shopping streets like the one in the anime. The area didn’t look like it would have that sort of place at all. Also it was POURING RAIN, I was just at Aqours 5th live the previous day, I had at least 6 hours to get home, and I was anxious to make it there with plenty of time for the stream of Alexander’s episode which we were doing that night. I decided to give up and head to the KFC to console myself over chicken, coleslaw, and biscuits before beginning the journey home when LOW AND BEHOLD

RIGHT ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE KFC

WAS THIS

IT DOES EXIST

And there is not nearly enough room for SeptEntrion to perform here ahaha.

I can’t help but notice that while they used Prism One performance snapshots for all the other boys, Shin is in his old Over the Sunshine outfit. Well I mean. OF COURSE HE IS. But.....

But I really can’t help but wonder what the boys are thinking nowadays in retrospect about what happened.

I mean, not that they shouldn’t love and trust Shin. Of course they should.

But if my friend turned to pure evil for a solid 15 minutes I would be.... CONCERNED for him? ?? To say the least.

The fact that THEY DONT KNOW AND MAY NEVER KNOW really just eats at me

I suppose Louis or June could tell them. But I don’t think Louis ever will since he just wants to protect Shin, and June..... where would she even start.

Not to mention what does Yamada-san think about how Shin just BECAME Wataru Hibiki like I.... I just have several questions but......

The cheering audience for the half second we can see Torachi here: “..............................................................AHHHHH!..................................................”

I wondered for weeks what the TV ED would be for this episode, and as soon as Boy Meets Girl started playing I was like...... OF. COURSE.

Hahah I’m glad though. So far the only SeptEntrion version Boy Meets Girl we’ve had was live (at MRS) and I often thought of ripping the audio from the DVD just to have it, but now I won’t have to. The TV audience never got to hear the theatrical ending 366 Love Diary though, which is kind of a shame. That song is such a big part of SSS to me.

So when we do the livestreams, I often have the live episode playing on my actual TV with the sound off. The stream is delayed by a few minutes so it’s been great for cues to help prepare stuff to type into the chat about things coming up.

While you guys were still in the meat of this episode, I casually glanced over my shoulder and saw THIS on my TV

Shin in the outfit Leo originally made him for the Prism One.

And just started having a seizure that lasted until the credits ended BECAUSE THEN THIS. THIS RIGHT HERE.

Playing to the left is the theatrical weekly video we got in the third week of Part 4.

(It has actual dialogue in the theaters, but here they just muted it and laid it over the credits. I went to the theater yesterday JUST to take notes on this for you guys ahaha. Glad I didn’t need to though.)

But like. When I first saw this in the theaters...

I was so SO sure this was a joke. I mean Prism 2!?! Seriously!?

But now I don’t know WHAT to think.

ESPECIALLY ABOUT THIS

But um. Someone tell me the anime references I’m missing here:

And which of these are newly revealed YMT29 boys ahah:

And..... that’s it....

This is Louis’ coded way of telling Shin he’ll love him forever I guess.

Aw man

you guys

we made it

ROUND OF APPLAUSE

Ahhhhhhhhhh

ITS BEEN A JOURNEY

So Part 4 turned out way differently than I predicted. When the episodes were first announced and episode 12 was “Unknown”, my immediate thought was “it’s gonna be Shine.” Especially since the quote for Shin’s episode was something like “what have I done,” I assumed he would gain some memories of the past in episode 11 and was talking about something he/Shine did in the past. Then I thought Shine would perform in episode 12 and cause a bad end. Even though we knew Edel Rose was scheduled for a unit performance, I was skeptical if it would actually happen or not as I doubted Shin would be in any condition to perform in episode 12. (I also wondered if maybe we already HAD already seen their unit show in the OP and thus wouldn’t be getting a new song.)

But when the CDs were announced and I saw the last one said “unit song” I was like.... ohhh.... I guess they will perform as a unit after all? That’s good?

Turns out I was right at least in predicting that Shine would get a show, but not that he would STEAL SHIN’S SHOW, and that Shin’s “what have I done” quote was about THE PRESENT DAY and something that Shin DID NOT DO. AHHH THE PAIN.

Although it really cuts me deep that Shin never learns the truth, I am grateful we got that unit show and a happy ending.

But....

OR IS IT?

says a voice in my head.

Shine’s coming back someday. And we can’t kill him without blanking Shin. Hghkhgkdhlkdh.

If I didn’t know any better I’d say the grand endgame climax of King of Prism would be SeptEntrion teaching Shine to love. But we already know from director spoilers that supposedly the grand climax is about saving Jin. I have a sinking suspicion Shine and Jin may be connected in some way though.

Who fucking knows where we’re going from now.

Other than WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON with Jin, another one of my big questions is does the Prism King Cup even matter anymore? Since the Prism One was supposed to replace it, but that didn’t go so well. HAHAH are we REALLY doing the Prism Two come on now..........

But anyway. I suppose there is no point in drawing this out it any further

for now

this is THE END

Thank you all SO MUCH for coming on this journey with me

It’s been such a joy sharing all this with you

And I hope to see you around

SHINY SEVEN STARS FOREVER

EDEL ROSE SPARKING

#king of prism #king of prism sss #shiny seven stars #king of prism shiny seven stars #kinpri

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spacetimewithstuartgary · 5 years

Video

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BUILT TO LAST 90 DAYS, MARS ROVER OPPORTUNITY ENDS MISSION AFTER 15 YEARS The Mars rover Opportunity, NASA’s robotic geologist fitted with an array of tools to search for evidence of water, ended its mission Feb. 13 -- three weeks after its 15th anniversary and long past its 90-day warranty. Over the course of its scientific mission, led by an Earth-bound Cornell professor, Opportunity returned hundreds of thousands of images and reshaped our understanding of Mars’ surface for nearly 14 and 1/2 years. Opportunity’s twin, Spirit, which was challenged by a rocky and rough terrain, officially ended its mission in 2011. “It’s hard to put the scientific payoff yet into context, since the mission has just come to a close,” said Steve Squyres, Cornell’s James A. Weeks Professor of Physical Sciences and the principal scientific investigator for the Mars Exploration Rovers mission. “Both rovers together revealed that ancient Mars was a very, very different place from modern-day Mars; it was more habitable, more Earthlike than Mars is today.” Opportunity launched just before midnight July 7, 2003, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Base, Florida. It flew 283 million miles to Mars over six months and 19 days. As the craft landed Jan. 25, 2004, cradled in its cocoon of air bags, it bounced 26 times, traveling 220 yards on the surface, before settling in Eagle Crater on Meridiani Planum -- a plains area on the red planet. Squyres called the landing a “hole in one,” as he and his team moved quickly to conduct science. Designed to travel 1,100 yards and run for 90 Martian sols (days that are 39 minutes longer than Earth days), before the dust storm hit, the golf-cart size rover had roamed more than 28 miles and logged more than 5,000 sols. ‘Blueberries’ Hours after landing in Eagle Crater, Opportunity relayed panoramic images back to Earth. When Squyres and his Cornell team noted a bedrock outcrop, the rover’s first mission was to examine it. “The thing about an outcrop is its geologic truth … it is the story of what happened in that place,” said Squyres. “There was a story waiting for us.” There, the scientific team found “blueberries.” “When we drove off the lander, we saw something very strange -- there was a lot of sand and gravel. Lots of gravel … grains of gravel that looked awfully round,” he said. Using the rover’s microscope, the scientists found the area “littered with an uncountable number of round things … they were scattered everywhere,” he said. “We had no clue what they were … initially.” Squyres and the team had known that Meridiani Planum likely contained the mineral hematite. They eventually realized that the hard, gravel-like spherules were “concretions” made of hematite and formed in the sedimentary rock when water was present. “It turns out that those blueberries are a strong indicator that this place once contained water,” he said. Tools and Teaching Cornell graduate and undergraduate students rolled up their sleeves to work on the mission. Along with Squyres, Jim Bell, at the time a Cornell assistant professor of astronomy now at Arizona State University, led the panoramic camera group and a platoon of Cornell students to guide the on-board tools and turn the rover into a mobile geologist. While NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, contractors and international partners built the rover’s instruments -- such as the Panoramic Camera, or Pancam; the rock abrasion tool, known as the RAT; a microscopic imager; Mössbauer spectrometer; and a Miniature Thermal Emission Spectrometer -- Cornellians had helped to define, test and perfect them. For example, Jascha Sohl-Dickstein ‘01 and Jonathan Joseph ‘88 created software to give Mars images clarity. Joseph’s software patched together images into a mosaic, while Sohl-Dickstein’s application allowed scientists to conduct spectral analysis in order to understand Mars geology and composition. Justin Wick ‘02 wrote software that superimposed data from two or more different rover instruments, and he developed an application that scheduled the rovers’ daily itineraries. Heather Arneson ‘02, now a NASA aerospace engineer, created instructions and drive/motion sequences for the rovers. As undergraduates, Arneson and Miles Johnson ‘02 spent eight months at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory running Pancam under Mars-like conditions to calibrate the Pancam’s 16 filters. Two of the undergraduates who worked on the mission are now members of the Cornell faculty: Alex Hayes ‘03, M.Eng. ‘03, associate professor of astronomy, built a mock-up of Pancam that aided in color calibration and calculation of the camera’s focal length. Dmitry Savransky ‘04, M.Eng. ‘05, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, took teamwork to heart. “Working on the Mars Exploration Rovers as an undergraduate demonstrated to me the incredible things that can be accomplished when a group of intensely passionate and dedicated people band together and combine their talents toward a shared goal,” Savransky said. “It convinced me that I needed to go to grad school.” Hayes said the experience helped set the direction of his career. “When I was a high school student, I emailed Steve Squyres asking about working on a mission to Mars if I were to come to Cornell as an undergraduate,” recalled Hayes, who was invited to join Squyres’ research group after admission. “The experience I had working on [this project] cemented my decision to work on robotic solar system exploration as a career.” Hayes added: “The Mars Exploration Rovers mission is better explained as a family rather than a team of colleagues. The connections I made as an undergraduate persist to this day.” Squyres brought the mission into his classroom and shared fresh science with students -- even before he had analyzed it. “This mission was a great teaching tool. It’s easy to think of science as a static body of knowledge that you learn from a textbook. It is not,” he said. “We know more about Mars today than we knew two days ago. For years I’ve started each lecture with, ‘Here’s something that just came down from Mars.’” Science Operations Meetings For most of the mission, Squyres and the Cornell members of the science operations team met in the Space Sciences Building every weekday to help decide the paths and the science of the rovers. “Decisions had to made on a nearly daily basis,” he said. “A rover mission is true exploration.” You can only plan one day at a time, he explained. “For 14 and 1/2 years we got to be part of the group of people on this planet who decided what to do on that planet. It was an enormous privilege to be part of making decisions on how to use this priceless asset on another world.” ‘An Honorable End’ Late last spring, as Opportunity hunkered down in Perseverance Valley on the western rim of Endeavour Crater, a gigantic Martian dust storm began to envelop a large portion of the planet. NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter first detected the storm May 30. On June 10, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory received a transmission from Opportunity, indicating that the craft had enough battery charge then to enable communication. But nothing has been heard since. By June 20, the dust storm blotted out the Sun and entirely blanketed Mars. The storm abated in late July, and engineers tried in vain to reach Opportunity through early February 2019. It never responded. “When I saw that the storm had gone global, I thought this could be it,” said Squyres, explaining that Opportunity was a solar-powered vehicle and needed the Sun for energy. “To have Opportunity -- designed for 90 days -- taken out after fourteen and a half years by one of the most ferocious dust storms to hit the planet in decades, you have got to feel pretty good about it.” He said: “It was an honorable end, and it came a whole lot later than any of us expected.” Both rovers gathered a lot of science. “It’s mind boggling to me. If you had told me around the time that we landed that Spirit and Opportunity were going to each accomplish one-quarter or even one-tenth of what they ultimately did, I would have been thrilled,” said Squyres, who praised the engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for building such durable vehicles. “It’s because of the longevity of the vehicles … that Mars just kept giving us more stuff. The payoff has been immensely greater than anything ever imagined in our wildest dreams.”

#space #science #Astronomy #physics #NASA #opportunity #Mars

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tomasorban · 5 years

Text

THE ZODIAC: LEO THE LION

Date of Rulership: 24th July-23rd August; Polarity: Positive, male; Quality: Fixed; Ruling planet: Sun; Element: Fire; Body part: Heart and back; Colour: Gold; Gemstone: Ruby; Metal: Gold.

We have thus far discerned that the dissimilar archetypes stretching from Aries to Cancer contribute vital components to the anatomy of one’s Self. These lay the foundations for a an ego successfully purged of carnal qualities like evil and envy and now confident enough in its spiritual and psychic grounding to begin a lifelong ascent along the socio-political tiers of culture. Unlike the cardinal sign of Aries, in which the mediating element of fire was unrestrained and potentially self-destructive, the steadier and constant fixed flames associated with Leo facilitate temperatures that enable the inner being to commune freely with its external environment and to attain recognition without ever suffering comprehensive changes to its inner hardware.

As an astrological sign, Leo is unique in that it is the only one ruled by the vivifying stellar body of entire solar system, the sun. When we think of the sun we think of heat, light, and flame, the protagonists of the evolution of life on earth, but we also think of intangible characteristics qualitatively connected to it–brilliance, radiance, endurance, self-assurance, self-adulation, nobility, youthful vivacity, and cheerfulness. Individuals who incarnate under the stellar arrangement of this sign are often unified by these as well as an uninhibited sense of freedom, the feeling that the world is their personal fiefdom and that all other beings in it are merely co-conspirators in an inevitable cosmic situation where Leo the Lion reigns supreme. The psyche of Leo resembles that of its totemic animal in many respects. Lions are communal creatures that live in groups called prides and adhere strictly to a hierarchical system where the leader and “king” is almost always the strongest male. Similarly, all Leos encompass an innate inclination towards socialization, community, and relating to others in the context of an imposed pecking order. Unlike buffaloes, gazelles, and the more placid and peace-loving herbivores of the vast savannah, lions are authoritative carnivores that are acutely aware of their own herculean strength and acumen when it comes to hunting. This is why lions are ambitious aggressors, actively chasing down and tackling prey substantially larger than they. The Leo functions in more or less the same manner; it will often tackle complex problems and issues that are seemingly beyond human comprehension and gamble on dreams and aspirations that exceed all its wildest expectations. If it meets with success, the Lion’s already established sense of inner pride and dignity are strengthened tenfold; alternatively, an unfavourable result usually dampens its self-confidence and may spur a personal crisis involving retrograde steps like introversion and burnout.

For time immemorial, we have perceived courage, impetuosity, and strong-will to be indigenous to their mode of being; these qualities also define the archetype of Leo. In the polar realm of cat and mouse, the lion’s strong sense of anticipation determines the rate of its success. The soul of Leo works on much the same premises; it has already formulated a detailed plan on how it will ascend the pecking order long before the optimistic fires of ambition have begun to warm and feed its own heart. As the top dog of the animal kingdom, Lions are rarely, if ever harassed by other creatures, and bide much their time outwardly expressing the many benefits of their privileged rank. One might catch sight of a pride of lions either wallowing in the dirt, tussling about with other members playfully, or undertaking hedonistic deeds like sun basking, daydreaming and oversleeping. Leos mimic their totemic counterparts and usually reflect these in their own behavioural patterns and habits. Despite their grace of movement and overall nobility, lions do exhibit some unflattering traits; they often quarrel with one another for the most scrumptious part of a kill, food scraps and breeding rights. Male lions who have just taken over a pride will put to practice their narcissistic sense of self-adoration by actively hunting out and killing cubs fathered by other males. Many afflicted Leos will often express the exact same sentiment via more socially conventional and acceptable means by unconsciously grovelling in pools of arrogance or using their privileged rank to belittle or demote others. In such instances, the larger-than-life persona that Leo usually emanates inverts and becomes a stereotypical self-loving and egotistical one in which its own little world is far more profound and significant than the majesty that is the greater cosmos and the Godhead itself. When mountains of first-rate arrogance and fanaticism like these prop up, the other archetypes of the zodiac battle fiercely to raze them to the ground and knock some humility back into the Lion.

“Ready or not, here I come,” roars the laughter-loving lion from the den. “The best way to live your life folks is by retaining your childhood vitality and following your heart, and what more could any heart want than raw adventure, pleasure, love, and an occasional stroke of the ego! We’re all born into a world that teaches us about fatalism and free will. I’m a firm believer in the notion of free will. A smart man or woman won’t wait for serendipity to come knocking on the door, but will walk right through it into the greater world and clear a paved road amongst the overwhelming chaotic vibrations and the cosmic noise. I’m a firm advocate of that book by Rhonda Byrne, The Secret. Optimistic and enthusiastic thoughts and actions result in fortuitous conditions that will serve as stepping stones to the mount of the heavens, to the highest strata of society, and even to a winning ticket for next week’s Tatts Lotto draw. It’s all about self-empowerment, self-respect, and fashioning a genuine personality with which to confront the world guys and girls. I’m definitely an idealist, and a bit of a control-freak too. Know who you are, what you are, and what you want; be sure of yourself, your own footing, and don’t let anyone or anything deter or dissuade you from pursuing your long-term goals and ambitions.

Remember to laugh and crack a few jokes along the way as well. We need to able to laugh at ourselves, at our misfortunes, at our problems and miseries, otherwise we become too entrenched in the lamentable fate of the human condition. Some say that I’m full of myself and that the only thing that concerns me is self-love and personal satisfaction. While it is true that I like to stand out and do at times appropriate others for my own visibility and self-promotion, nobody should ever dare to call me heartless or selfish; I do, contrary to what others believe about me, let others bask in their moment of glory and give my all for those who steal my heart. Reputation is of upmost importance; for me, there is no value in a privileged rank if it is attained through dishonest or questionable means and plagued by infamy. Know for a fact that I’m fiercely competitive and ambitious, and will use all the resources that become available to me, my intuition, and my talents to attain exactly what I want.”

People born under this sign are usually animated, extroverted types that enjoy writing and composing a show, along with being the star of that show. All of us carry an inherent need for validation in a world which is moving at a million miles per minute and eternally threatening to leave us behind, but this need appears to be a lot more prevalent and obvious in the composition of Leo. Leos want to be looked at, admired, worshipped, loved, liked, and accepted by others, and will do everything in their power to ensure this comes to pass. Leos are exactly like their mediating celestial constituent when it comes to making a statement; the higher up along the ladder of success they go, the more translucent they become. Leo types are also highly inventive and imaginative and must seek out appropriate outlets for their creative urges. The occupations that best enable unrestricted expression of its principal traits belong to the sphere of the performing arts–film, theatre, dance, circus acts, and so forth. Hence Leo is best at home on the stage and silver screen, eliciting waves of emotion and veneration from audiences that are attentive and receptive to their projects. Its sense of individuality is unshakable and indestructible; those born beneath the aegis of Leo remain true to views and values integral to its integrity, self-worth, pride and deference, and will never compromise them for the sake of fitting into society.

There are two symbols associated with Leo the Lion. The first is the animal totem, the lion, which has been used to represent the zodiacal constellation from the earliest of times. In Babylonian tradition, the lion was called “Urgula” and perceived to be feminine. One of its many epithets was “Great Light”, an allusion to its subordination to the ethereal powers of that great light in our heavens, the sun. In ancient Egypt, the constellation was called “Horakthiis”. In the northern hemisphere, the stars of Leo rise heliacally over the horizon during the pinnacle of summer. This is why the frontispiece of innumerable fountains in Egypt and in southern Europe were carved to look like lions. People made an unconscious connection between the wheel of heaven and the deluge of waters connected with great rivers like the Nile which seemed to reach a crescendo when the former turned to reveal the stars of Leo along the horizon. As symbols of strength, leadership, and power, the iconography was soon adopted by emperors, kings, and other people in privileged positions of authority as symbolic inferences of the aforementioned qualities. The Tarot also assimilated this zodiacal sign into its hidden knowledge system under the tutelage of the Strength card, borrowing the image of a woman taming a lion directly from the Denderah Zodiac. Perhaps the most famous depiction of Leo in the Western world was championed by the Venetians, who used the image as part of a winged insignia (the Lion of St. Mark) that graces countless castles, fortresses, and statues commissioned during the High Middle Ages.

The second symbol, an astrological shorthand for the zodiacal sign, encompasses only the curved tail of the totemic animal. This may symbolise the lion’s mane, a physical characteristic that evokes regal qualities like strength, heroism, and governance. On the other hand it may be a stand in for the heart, a body part over which the sign rules. Most of us will be familiar with the notion that the human heart is a synonym for courage, truth, and unconditional love. From this esoteric perspective, the abbreviated glyph might also be interpreted as a pictogram expressing only these specific aspects of the archetype.

#astrology #astrotheology #zodiac #astropsychology #psychology #consciousness

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paleorecipecookbook · 6 years

Text

RHR: The Ocular Microbiome, with Dr. Harvey Fishman

In this episode we discuss:

What is the ocular microbiome?

How the microbiome affects eye diseases

T cell activation in the eye

HLA-B27 and genes that play an important role in immune function

A nutrient-dense and anti-inflammatory diet for eye health

Antibiotics prior to surgery

Show notes:

Dr. Harvey Fishman's website: fishmanvision.com

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[smart_track_player url="https://ift.tt/2L2k8B9" title="RHR: The Ocular Microbiome, with Dr. Harvey Fishman" artist="Chris Kresser" ]

Chris Kresser: Dr. Fishman, welcome to Revolution Health Radio. I'm so happy you could join us. I've really been looking forward to this.

Dr Harvey Fishman: Thank you so much for having me, Chris. This is wonderful.

What is the ocular microbiome?

Chris Kresser: So, my audience has been well aware of the gut microbiome for many years. We've also talked about the skin microbiome. We talked about the vaginal microbiome, the lung microbiome, more recently the nasal microbiology, and so it's not surprising to learn that there is also an ocular microbiome. I'm really looking forward to talking to you more about this and how it contributes to eye disease. Because in the conventional world, the options for preventing eye disease in the first place and then addressing them, I think, have come a long way but maybe still leaves something to be desired. I'd first love to start out with just hearing a little bit more about your background, how you became interested in the ocular microbiome in your work as an ophthalmologist, and what led you down this path.

Dr. Fishman: That's great. So, I have a pretty interesting background, where I started off in the world as a physical chemist, studied neuroscience. I was in an analytical chemistry microfluidic laser lab at Stanford and really got interested in how to measure molecules almost at the single molecule level. We were looking at vesicular and synaptic release, neurotransmitters, and what the chemical basis of learning and memory was.

You’ve heard of the gut microbiome—and maybe even the skin, nasal, and vaginal microbiome. But did you know that the eyes also have a microbiome and that it plays a key role in ocular health?

That was sort of my background, and then I sort of did some interesting work in neurobiology, looking at retinal cells and how they grow and their regeneration, so I've had a lot of sort of technical background and analytical chemistry background. And then the last couple of years, I started getting very interested in the microbiome of the intestine and the gut, which led me into this whole world of what is actually happening in the eyes. Is there an ocular microbiome and is there a biome that controls disease in the eye that similar to that in the gut?

What's interesting is that I didn't necessarily sort of think about it in those ways. I actually got into my research that I'm working on right now is we're actually looking at how to measure cancer on the eye. We're using some of the analytical techniques that I developed or had been working on for my whole sort of academic career, which is how do you measure very small amounts of materials in microenvironments, and so I naturally led to this concept of how do you measure cancers on the eye. We started using similar techniques and sort of the illumina high throughput sequencing technology using 16S rDNA and rRNA to look at different things on the cancer. Chris has led me right into how they are looking at the microbiome and that’s sort of what got my interest sparked. The other thing that's sort of interesting is I've been working with a company called Microbiome to do some studies where I'm actually looking at intestinal microbiomes and how that compares to disease in the eye. That's sort of a whirlwind tour of how I got interested.

Chris Kresser: Right. It's a fascinating background, and as is often the case, it seems like in some way you could have never designed this career path or predicted it would happen, but when you look at it in retrospect, it seems like each step kind of perfectly informed the next step.

Dr. Fishman: That’s right. It’s actually really interesting; I never in my wildest dreams would have thought that I'd be doing genomics, and in fact one of my previous advisers always laughs because I'm doing genomics and I was a physical chemist and a microanalytical guy.

Chris Kresser: Right, right.

Dr. Fishman: Whippersnapper.

Chris Kresser: Right. So let’s talk a little bit about the ocular microbiome and what we know about it so far and what we don't know about it. Do we have any sense of the number of species, microorganisms, what the functions of the ocular microbiome are? I imagine it's significantly less developed as a field of study than the gut microbiome, but what do we know so far?

Dr. Fishman: It's really the beginning of this field. What's interesting about the microbiome of the eye is that we've been interested in, as ophthalmologists, not me personally, but at the ophthalmology community, we've been very interested in the bacteria that lived on the eye. The reason is that most of our intraocular surgeries like cataract surgery, vitreoretinal surgery, corneal surgery, when you make incisions into the eye, most of the serious infections that occur, occur because the exogeneous either bacteria that live on the lashes, the eyelid margin, or in the cornea. And so we've been very interested in this for years, and they've done a lot of interesting work, but the concept of the ocular microbiome, whether there's like some low-level core bacteria and microbiological species that lives on, in, and around the eye, that's really kind of a new concept.

One of the papers that has come out just recently was actually by Mark Wilcox. I don’t know if you're familiar with it; it was a major paper in 2017, and they looked at basically the temporal stability and composition of the ocular surface microbiome. It was probably one of the best papers, if not the sentinel paper in the field. What they found is … well, there's a couple of things they found, that first of all the ocular biome is very different, if at all, than the microbiome of the intestine. One of the things that they found is that in addition to other work that's been done, is that it's actually a pretty low number of species. I mean, there’s a diverse number of species, but it’s a low number. It’s just a regular number. And then there was some work that was done by Russell Van Gelder who's also shown similar work, but basically they started to talk about a bacteria microbiome that’s just very small in number.

Chris Kresser: It's interesting; there is some parallel too with the gut. For most of the 20th century, we were very well aware of the existence of pathogenic bacteria, parasites and other organisms that could cause dysfunction in the gut, and most of the focus there was on identifying those pathogens and then treating the disease, eradicating them if possible with antibiotics or treating the diseases that were caused by them, whereas now at least, the awareness has shifted, and to some extent toward how do we support and nourish the protective microbiome and look at it more in the context of an ecosystem where we understand that if the health of the ecosystem is the primary focus, then that may actually be the most effective way of protecting against pathogenic activity.

Do you think that something similar is going to happen with the ocular microbiome or that it's just too— because it's not as significant in terms of the volume of the number of organisms and we may not have as much ability to influence it with things like diet and lifestyle, we’re not going to go down a similar path there?

How the microbiome affects eye diseases

Dr. Fishman: It’s a great question, and that's really what a lot of … myself and many other people are working on—whether you can influence it. I have some anecdotal discussions on that, papers as well, that actually would suggest that you may be able to do the exact same thing for the ocular health as you do for the gut health. Let me give you a couple examples. There are some really significant diseases of the eye, like, for example, dry eye disease, which is actually an area that I'm super interested in and really focusing a lot of my academic and clinical research. Dry eye disease is … they think there's a very big component of how the ocular microbiome interacts with the cornea and the lid and so forth, but there are also a bunch of other diseases like episcleritis, chronic follicular conjunctivitis, pterygium, or surfer’s eye, scleritis, even things that are as interesting as macular degeneration and glaucoma, a lot of people are starting to have … some of these diseases are actually idiopathic, not macular degeneration necessarily, but like episcleritis and dry eye disease. There are these so-called idiopathic diseases. What we think is that it's really controlled by dysbiosis of microbiome.

Chris Kresser: Wow, that's interesting. For listeners, idiopathic means “we don't really know.” It's a fancy way of saying, “We don’t know where this comes from or how it starts.” It's fascinating and by now not surprising, given what we talked about at the beginning of the show, we know now about the microbiome is not just in the gut. There's microbiology and virtually in any surface that interacts with the exterior world, whether it's the gut, the inside of the gut, technically is outside the body. We've talked about that on the show, which is always kind of fascinating, especially if you haven't thought about that, and then the lungs, which of course interface with the exterior environment, and the skin, the vagina, there's a penis microbiome, and clearly these organisms are playing some important role and clearly there's something about the modern lifestyle that is antithetical to the health of microbiomes. I imagine with the ocular microbiome, is it influenced by the same factors? Does systemic antibiotic use contribute to a degradation of the quality of the ocular microbiome? Are any kind of eye products that people use like drops, can they interfere? What do we know about that?

Dr. Fishman: Right. Those are great. Certainly areas that people are looking at. In the eye, there are so many aspects of the eye in terms of the ocular microbiome of the eye that makes it complex because the thing about the microbiome of the eye is that it’s not only that we think a core microbiome exist in a very low level, there's a lot of other bacteria and other species of organisms that sort of “contaminate” those measurements and also the surface.

One of the interesting things, there's a lot of sort of noise, in the sense that there's the noise from contaminants at any one time on the eye can overwhelm the signal of the actual microbiome. But what does seem to occur is that it's very possible that when people have sort of acute issues is because they do get some sort of dysregulation of their normal biome by this sort of contaminant. The sort of things that can really change the ocular surface biome is exactly the source that you're mentioning. If you use makeup, if you use products—Latisse, for instance, the Latisse, which people use to make their eyelashes grow longer contain a lot of— basically cause of the eyelashes that have more inflammation, more debris on them and that those are basically culture plates for bacteria on the eyelashes. That really does change it.

A lot of what you're mentioning really is sort of the dry eye disease realm, which is that all these different products that people use, including unnecessary eye drops or things like viral bacterial conjunctivitis, which you wouldn't use an antibiotic but that changes the microbiome. The other thing that is very fascinating is parasites. It turns out Demodex, I'm sure you—maybe we had many shows on Demodex, but Demodex is a big, big deal, and there is an interesting sort of life cycle of Demodex in the lashes and how that relates not only to the skin microbiome, but actually of people who have dysbiosis of their intestine. It’s just incredibly fascinating and it plays into the whole ocular rosacea story as well.

Chris Kresser: Not too long ago we had a periodontist, Al Danenberg, who's been through my clinician training program and is a really knowledgeable guy. He has looked at the connection between the gut microbiome and the oral microbiome and has found from his perspective and from what the research is showing that when there's a disruption in the oral microbiome, it's usually or often driven by dysfunction of the gut microbiome rather than the other way around, although certainly we know that infections in the mouth can influence the gut and other parts of the body, but because stomach acid protects against, hopefully if it's sufficient, a lot of what we would swallow and the saliva from the mouth that the relationship is probably more strongly influenced in the other direction. Has there been much work done on the influence of the gut microbiome on the ocular microbiome?

Dr. Fishman: That's a huge area that people … there's a lot of really interesting work, but just to kind of go back to what you said, there was a really interesting paper that came out that talked about the oral microbiome linked to neurodegeneration and glaucoma.

Chris Kresser: Ah …

Dr. Fishman: We actually know that there are people with worse oral disease and dental disease. Actually, you have higher rates of primary glaucoma than other people, and that was a very well done study that was recently published. Essentially one of the things that we've known forever, and as a medical student, we learned very early in the game, the connection between ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease, and uveitis. You may have touched upon before, but that is one of the most clear-cut associations that we have enough knowledge. In fact, ophthalmologists often sometimes will look … brilliant clinicians … when the person comes in and we see uveitis and then we do a little bit of the history and it turns out that they have Crohn’s and then we send them to the GI specialist and the GI guy thinks we're brilliant. We've discovered Crohn’s disease by looking in their eye and yet there are a few associations.

What's interesting is that there are multisystem disorders, autoimmune diseases that are associated with uveitis that are absolutely related to the gut and in other areas. That's an area that NIH is doing a very—there is a big push to look at the association. In particular, some of the work they're doing with T cell activation, both protective T cells and non-protective T cells, and how it influences uveitis, and they've been looking at some really interesting experimental autoimmune uveitis models, the EUA, so to speak, and they looked at how the regulatory T cells in the gut and other tissues really affect the uveitis and so forth.

Chris Kresser: I think there are probably a fair number of listeners who are not that familiar with disease. Uveitis being an inflammation of the middle layer of the eye, right?

Dr. Fishman: That's right.

Chris Kresser: With the connection between the gut and depression for example, the speculation is that in terms of the mechanism is that inflammatory cytokines are produced in the gut and they enter the bloodstream, perhaps because the barrier is permeable and they travel through the blood and they cross the blood–brain barrier and they suppress the activity of the frontal cortex, and that's one way gut pathology can lead to anxiety and depression.

In the case of the connection between the gut and eye disease, let's take ulcerative colitis and Crohn's, which are both autoimmune GI pathologies. Is the speculation that the systemic inflammation caused by the autoimmune disease is what's causing the inflammation in the eye, or is it that something related to a disruption of the microbiome leading to maybe the production of certain chemicals or inflammatory cytokines or something that's more specific to the microbial ecology of the gut is the contributing factor, or do we just not really know?

T cell activation in the eye

Dr. Fishman: One of the thoughts, and there was a paper that … and these are all interesting, really recent papers like 2015 to 2016, but there’s that commensal microbiota and bacteria in the gut that activate T cells. These T cells then circulate and then actually pass into and through the retina, in other parts of the eye, to then activate directly. It’s definitely via the immune system, but there are very specific immune cells that actually can penetrate into the eye. There's always been that thought that the eye is immunologically pristine, and that really is obviously not the case, but there are very selective T cells that can in fact get into the eye or pass into the eye, and so that's what we think that is going on, is that there's a dysregulation in the microbiome of the gut.

As you pointed out, you get T cell activation, and then it actually activates the local immune system in the eye. Actually, a really interesting situation that we see with respect to that, we actually can see diseases like sympathetic ophthalmia, which is a disease where if you injure one eye, activation of the T cells from one eye actually can go to the other eye, and you can actually lose the other eye, so you could actually have a question where are you …

Chris Kresser: Oh, wow.

Dr. Fishman: Yes, it's awful. That's why people have to get their eyes enucleated or taken out when they have a trauma. They have to do that within about 10 to 15 days or sooner because they can get this autoimmune activation that can actually blind them in the other eye. It’s just fascinating how that works, but that is sort of the same idea in the gut that you get with activation, and it causes inflammation. One of the things that we know, Chris, and this is my own personal experience in my practice, and I've seen this over and over and over again, is that my uveitis patients, they always come in with an active disease, almost always some kind of a gut-related situation that sets off their uveitis or inflammation. They'll come in and I’ll say, “What did you do last week?” “I was in Las Vegas and then we ate a lot of carbohydrates,” and these are patients who are very strict about being on a gluten-free diet, and they just say they cheated, so to speak, they had a bad weekend, fun weekend, but now they're paying the price and then they come back and they get uveitis. I can't tell you the number of times I've seen that. It's just clear cut. That's actually withm in particular, HLA-B27 uveitis. I don’t know if you have covered that, but that’s a big area.

HLA-B27 and genes that play an important role in immune function

Chris Kresser: I love to hear a little bit. I’m familiar with HLA-B27 and AS, ankylosing spondylitis, and the connection there. In fact, in our clinic, we will often test patients for HLA-B27 if they have joint pain, and if they test positive for Klebsiella bacteria on the stool test, I forget the name of a physician in London who discovered that connection, but then we’ll often put them on a low-starch diet and will treat the Klebsiella, and their joint pain will go away, or at least that will significantly improve. Tell me more about HLA-B27 and the eye.

Dr. Fishman: That’s our biggest immune screening. We screen for that in every single uveitis patient and screen for HLA-B27. In fact, 50 percent of every non-necrotising anterior uveitis, which is just a fancy word for basically idiopathic, meaning we don't know what the cause is, it's almost always related to an HLA-B27-positive uveitis, and so we see that all the time. Those patients are particularly sensitive to changes in their diet, and a lot of those patients, I will really push for strong control, at least in my practice. We always start off with a gluten-type restriction because that seems to be one of the big areas that sets off uveitis. HLA-B27 is such a prominent factor in most of our inflammation. You can also get sclerites with HLA-B27, you can get uveitis, you can get episcleritis, any of the autoimmune diseases around the eye seemed to be linked to that marker.

Chris Kresser: Just for the listeners, if your eyes are glazing over here, we're geeking out a little bit, but I want to back up. HLA-B27 is a gene, and it's one that plays a really important role in immune function. Its prevalence varies around the world in different ethnic groups and populations. I think it's about 8 percent in Caucasians, maybe this 2 to 9 percent in Chinese, 4 percent North Africans. As I was mentioning before, the association that I was most familiar with, I'm really fascinated to learn about the connection with uveitis is with ankylosing spondylitis. Back in the ’80s, there was a physician in London, whose name I'm unfortunately forgetting at the moment, and he was treating patients with AS, and by accident some of them he put on a low-carb diet for weight loss, and their AS improved dramatically. He did some more research and he found that there is a greater abundance of Klebsiella in stool samples of patients with AS, and then he found that Klebsiella bacteria that have preference for starch, and the patients that he put on a low-carb diet were of course eating a lot less starch. The low starch intake starved the Klebsiella and reduced the Klebsiella, which then reduced the autoimmune attack against the HLA-B27-expressed enzymes that were in the joints, and that's reduced the symptoms of AS, or ankylosing spondylitis, but there was later research that showed that sometimes can be connected to Crohn's disease. You just told me that Crohn's is connected to uveitis. Things like this, there’s a very interesting connection going on here, and that it may possibly a low-carb, low-starch diet, if it works for AS and HLA-B27, might be effective for uveitis.

Dr. Fishman: Absolutely. I basically, in a very non-scientific way, have my patients try these diets and often they don't want to go on to these heavy-duty immunosuppressants like methotrexate or Imuran. They want a natural … not natural, but they want a way to control the inflammation not to do these other sources. They will grab it, and a lot of the way I practice is I've learned so much from the multitude of patients who tell me, maybe the patients who have seen you as well, I learn from them what works, and I can then pass it on to other people. But in terms of the gut association with HLA-B27, it’s fascinating when you were mentioning Klebsiella, it turns out that Klebsiella as well as other bacteria … and in particular, there's a big connection with blepharitis and dry eye disease. In fact they did a study where they looked at patients—Bacillus was the other one—they looked at a setting where they looked at patients who had dry eye disease, and it turned out that Bacillus and Klebsiella were the huge association with blepharitis and dry eye disease. Just as an aside, another very interesting thing, because I'm very interested in dry eye disease and a lot of people with ocular rosacea, there is that story that the microbiome of your gut are being eaten, so bacteria that actually get eaten by the parasites, which hurt the Demodex on your eyelashes and your hair follicles, they eat the bacteria, then the parasites puke up the bacteria, and then the products and the exogenous components from the bacteria then irritates the eyelashes and the meibomian glands, which are glands in your eyelid, cause severe dry eyes. That's this interesting lifecycle between bacteria, Demodex. The other thing that I've looked at, and I know that you guys have talked about SIBO, and there seems to be this association with SIBO, bacteria, blepharitis, Demodex and ocular rosacea and dry eye disease.

Nutrient-dense and anti-inflammatory diet for eye health

Chris Kresser: Fascinating. I mean, there's so many directions, but it all really comes back to, I mean, I think one of the things I like to emphasize, these discussions are fascinating and they're important, and these lines of research are really crucial to figuring out what's going on, and at the same time it comes back to the same basic steps that we need to take. Eat a nutrient-dense, anti-inflammatory diet, make sure you're taking care of your gut microbiome, avoid unnecessary antibiotics.Make sure to eat plenty of fermented foods and fermentable fibers. It can be easy to get overwhelmed by the complexity of all of these connections, but the good news is that usually it's just the same simple steps that we need to take in order to protect our health.

Dr. Fishman: Absolutely. One of the things that we found, and you'll just be amazed, ophthalmologists, we have been running the largest nutritional study in the history of mankind, and it was for macular degeneration. That statement is not a trivial one. I don't know if you’ve talked about this, and essentially the use of lutein as the advancement in your diet. There are a lot of interesting connections between the intestine and macular degeneration, and there's a big suggestion that the intestinal dysbiosis as seen in AMD patients … and when you're doing these supplementations, you're really supplementing the intestinal microbiome to reduce inflammation in the retina, which is actually the cause of macular degeneration, so it's just incredibly fascinating. Every time I leave my patient, I feel that there are two things I want you guys to leave this office with because I don't have the bandwidth, obviously, that your practice has in terms of … I have this focus on different things, but I tell them spinach pills, which is just spinach and omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3 fatty acid is a very interesting controller of eyelid health and dry eye disease despite the fact that there was a recent paper that came out that disputed that, and I would really argue that that was not a very well-done … it was a study that was well done, but they had a lot of problems with it. My two big go-to things at least in my practice are spinach and fish.

Chris Kresser: That certainly fits into the context of the nutrient-dense, anti-inflammatory diet. It's really fascinating to me how the change, I think, that's happening in medicine, not just in functional integrative medicine but even in conventional medicine, that we started out allopathic medicine grew out of this Cartesian dualistic framework, where the body is basically just a bunch of disconnected parts that are kind of loosely connected, but not really influencing each other, and now we're really starting to understand that under traditional systems of medicine, they certainly didn't get everything right, but the one thing that they did get right was this idea of holism, that every part of the body is connected to and influences the body as a whole.

Now we're seeing this, I think, really play out. Look, it's Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis increase your risk of eye inflammation. We now have the inflammatory cytokine model of depression that shows that inflammation in the gut can cause inflammation in the brain and symptoms that mimic depression. We've got connections between dysfunction in the HPA axis and stress and all kinds of skin conditions like eczema and psoriasis. I mean, the list goes on and on, and now we're adding to this the connection between the oral microbiome and the gut microbiome and inflammation in the eye, which even just, I think, 20 or 30 years ago would have been completely dismissed as a woo-woo kind of out-there stuff. It's just encouraging to me that we're really starting to move, no matter what kind of perspective on medicine, we're talking about into a more holistic view of the body.

Dr. Fishman: There was an interesting paper where one researcher looked at treating, it wasn't a corneal ulcer, but they were treating sort of a conjunctivitis using a probiotic eye drop.

Chris Kresser: I was going to ask you about that.

Dr. Fishman: There’s a disease called vernal keratoconjunctivitis, and that’s a pretty tough one to treat. Vernal means spring, and basically it’s allergic conjunctivitis. A lot of kids get it, and the way we typically treat that is with steroids and so forth, which you obviously don't want to do for children. There was a paper back in 2008 where they looked at using a probiotic eye drop, and they found it was equivalent to some of the other drops that they were using, which to me makes complete sense. I had a very interesting case recently of a patient who had actually an open globe. She actually had some sort of a tube that was put in for glaucoma, and it eroded through the conjunctiva. Bottom line, you see an open globe and she had opened up for essentially six months and nothing happened. She didn't get an infection, nothing. For whatever reason, she had a very well-controlled ocular biome.

One of the interesting questions that we're now looking at is how do the intestinal, oral, or skin biomes relate to the ocular microbiome? I think it's a pretty clear situation, and we know and I've had private conversations with some pretty famous microbiologists, anything that comes out of your intestine is going to be in your eyes, so basically just think of it that way. I mean, it doesn't sound great, and I joke with my patients, “You're basically getting poop in your eyes, and it happens all the time, every single day.” That’s what happens, not to be completely crap, but that is the connection.

Chris Kresser: Yes, yes. That's interesting. The probiotic eye drop reminds me of, I talked about this before, the nasal microbiome and the connection between the nasal microbiome and sinusitis. Dr. Susan Lynch at UCSF has done some really interesting work in this area. She did a fascinating study that was both animal and human, and they had an animal model of sinusitis, and they found that the main difference between animals with sinusitis and the controls was not—and this was true in humans too—was not the presence of certain pathogens. It wasn't that the people with sinusitis had much higher levels of fungus or certain species of pathogenic bacteria. The biggest difference between the two groups was microbial diversity.

Dr. Fishman: Right.

Chris Kresser: The people who were the controls, the people who didn't have sinusitis, had a much richer diversity of healthy protective bacteria, whereas the people who had sinusitis had a lower diversity, even when the presence of pathogenic species was basically the same. There was no difference between the two groups. The difference was that the healthy people had much higher levels of protective bacteria, and then she went a step further, and in the animals, they treated them with antibiotics until they were basically depleted of the microbiome in both the healthy controls and the animals with sinusitis. And in one group of animals, they didn't do anything. They just let the bacteria grow back as they would, and then the other group, they inoculated them with a protective species, Lactobacillus sakei, which they had observed in higher numbers in the healthy controls. And those animals that were inoculated with that nasal probiotic didn't develop sinusitis or anything the other animals that were not inoculated with that. That really actually speaks to probiotics in both maintaining and then restoring a healthy microbiome as being a more effective strategy than using antibiotics or antimicrobials to try to get rid of pathogens.

Dr. Fishman: Right. When you mention those two things, there were two interesting things that come to mind. The first one, just to let you know that there was a paper that came out in Nature in 2016 which said exactly the same thing. They were looking at Sjӧgren's disease—for your listeners, it’s one of the most severe forms of dry eye disease and other dry parts of your body. They found the exact same finding, that people with the severity of Sjӧgren's disease was inversely correlated with microbial diversity in your gut.

Chris Kresser: Wow.

Dr. Fishman: And with just as clear as day. It was just super clear that this was the case. We know, and I know from my own clinical experiences, that people who have, do have, a much higher control level, people who do a better job in terms of their diet, people who are more precise about the food that they eat and so forth, do much better with dry eyes. Dry eye disease, for the longest time, we've been treating dry eye disease with omega-3s or any type of fatty acid, but any sort of derived can lead to that. What I always mention is that, is it actually the omega-3 acting directly in your eye, or is it basically an activation, a biological cascade, that then causes the improved function in the eye? I clearly believe that it is a cascade effect because there is no way that just a simple little fish oil capsule could have that much of an improvement in people with dry eye disease.

Chris Kresser: Right, right.

[Crosstalk]

Chris Kresser: Go ahead, please.

Antibiotics prior to surgery

Dr. Fishman: Yes. I just have one other really interesting comment, which was one of the things that is interesting is that you talked about treating infections with basically displacing the bad bacteria with “good bacteria” and so forth, and that whole concept, which makes a lot of sense. One of the things that we've seen is that in eye disease, especially in ocular surgery, we routinely treat our patients basically from medicolegal reasons with antibiotics prior to surgery.

Chris Kresser: Right.

Dr. Fishman: It turns out that the studies are coming out that there's no data whatsoever to support those claims.

Chris Kresser: Yes.

Dr. Fishman: Those are billions of dollars a year in an antibiotics that were sold by pharmaceutical companies to basically do nothing and maybe, who knows, but maybe actually not even improve outcomes, but maybe make outcomes worse by selecting for bacteria that if it does get into eye, it actually would be a much worse situation.

Chris Kresser: Right.

Dr. Fishman: That's really interesting data that we have.

Chris Kresser: That happens, of course, not just in the world of the eye, ocular issues, but of course in the dental surgery, where patients will often come and say, “Oh, I'm about to get this dental surgery. My dentist is just prescribing antibiotics prophylactically.” Of course I've had the thought, “Well, okay, does this become a self-fulfilling prophecy?” Because we know that disruption of the oral microbiome with antibiotics can actually predispose you to an oral infection, and so by prophylactically prescribing an antibiotic is not really prophylaxis, or is that actually more likely to develop an infection? And as you said, not only have you reduced your body's ability to fight the infection, if it does happen, by reducing the number of beneficial protective bacteria, you've also potentially contributed to creating a more resistant strain of pathogenic bacteria by killing the ones that were least … the types of pathogenic bacteria that were least robust and just leaving the ones that were more robust.

Dr. Fishman: Well, there is some evidence that suggests that may actually be the case. I mean, with eye surgery, we use povidone iodine before surgery. That is the gold standard and at least cuts down sort of universally all … it doesn't select, do you know what I mean? You're not selecting for bacteria. You're basically wiping it out. Antibiotics, on the other hand, are probably selecting for it. That’s a good example where that period self-selecting bad bacteria really might be coming true. It’s very interesting where we’re going, especially with the eye, because there are still many “idiopathic” diseases and infections that really relate to the biome, not only of the eye, but also the gut being the cause of it.

Chris Kresser: Who knows? Maybe someday you'll go to the dentist and you'll get a dental probiotic instead of antibiotic for an infection. Maybe you’ll go to your ENT for an ear infection, and instead of putting antibiotic ear drops, they’ll put in probiotic ear drops. You’ll go the ophthalmologist and instead of getting antimicrobial treatment, you'll get probiotic eye drops. Seems that's not far-fetched at this point.

Dr. Fishman: Not at all. In fact, you might argue we’re already doing that through indirectly by using our gut as a way to … [crosstalk]

Chris Kresser: Right. To modulate.

Dr. Fishman: Correct.

Chris Kresser: Well, this has been really fascinating, Dr. Fishman. I've enjoyed talking with you, and I think the listeners are really going to get a lot out of this, and it's hopeful. I feel hopeful to know that there are folks like you who are exploring these new frontiers and really kind of pushing the boundaries and questioning some of the most basic assumptions that we've made and finding a new path forward that could lead to better, safer treatments. Where can folks learn more about your work or if people are in the Bay Area? It sounds like you definitely are still seeing some patients. Tell us where people can learn more.

Dr. Fishman: Sure. Well, they can always find me on my website, which is www.fishmanvision.com, and they can get involved in my practice in multiple ways. I definitely see patients. Half the time I'm seeing patients, half the time I'm doing research.

[Crosstalk]

Chris Kresser: It looks like they can do some video consultation as well. Is that right?

Dr. Fishman: Yes. For people in California, I can do video consultations if they can't make it to the office. Especially for dry eye disease, it’s very helpful.

Chris Kresser: Right, right. Great. Well, keep us posted on your research. We’d love to hear it, stay in touch, and have you back on the show at some point and just keep track of your work. These are really exciting developments.

Dr. Fishman: I really appreciate the opportunity, and I wanted to thank you because we've shared some patients, and their lives have actually changed because of the work that you're doing with them, so thank you.

Chris Kresser: Fantastic. It’s my pleasure. Take care.

Dr. Fishman: Okay, thank you.

The post RHR: The Ocular Microbiome, with Dr. Harvey Fishman appeared first on Chris Kresser.

Source: http://chriskresser.com July 10, 2018 at 02:10AM

#paleo #recipe #food #delicious #healthy #yum #diet

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gdelgiproducer · 6 years

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DOTV AU: An Exercise in Alternate History (Part V)

Parts I, II, III, and IV offer more detailed context. (To briefly sum up why these posts are happening: alt history – as in sci fi, not “alternative facts” – buff, one day got the idea that DOTV could have turned out hella different if Jim Steinman looked for a star lead in other places, decided to reason out how that might work.) This is still getting a good response, so I’m gonna keep the train rolling.

Parts of the AU timeline established so far: instead of stopping at recording two songs from Whistle Down the Wind on a greatest hits compilation, Meat Loaf wound up taking more of an interest in Steinman’s new theater work than he did in our timeline, and through a series of circumstances found himself volunteering to play Krolock in the impending DOTV when Jim poured out his woes to him about needing to find some sort of star to attract investors. At a loss for any better ideas, Jim accepted Meat’s impulsive proposal, but not without resistance from his manager, David Sonenberg, who proposed Michael Crawford as an alternate candidate. Through quick thinking on Meat’s part, and inspiration on Jim’s, Crawford left the room accepting an entirely different role than he walked in hoping to get, leaving Krolock still open for Meat. There was a brief speed bump, when Meat disliked Jim’s English script for the show, but after meeting with the original German author Michael Kunze and convincing Jim to compromise, things were on the road to being back on track... at least until 9/11 occurred. Following a brief hiatus, everyone involved is meeting to re-assess their options.

Continuing the alternate DOTV timeline:

February 2002: After completing the Night of the Proms tour and taking a holiday break, Meat Loaf requests a meeting with co-star Michael Crawford, composer Jim Steinman, co-author Michael Kunze, and the other creatives on DOTV to assess where things are at. Obviously, people have other commitments, so the creative team may not shape up exactly the same as initially planned, but at least they’ll see who’s still coming along for the ride and get a bead on where the show is at. A dinner is planned at Café Carlyle, a cabaret space housed within the hotel of the same name, on the Upper East Side of NYC.

The dinner begins as any dinner involving Jim begins: with Steinman’s ordering disorder on display, and his manager, David Sonenberg, smiting his own forehead so hard it turns purple. Imagine the headwaiter’s surprise when he takes everyone’s order and hears Jim say, “For starters, we’ll have the entire left half, plus two each of the chicken hash, Dover sole, and seafood salad.” “Excuse me, sir... the entire left half of the menu?” “That’s correct. And for the second course, I’ll have another order of the roasted halibut and the filet mignon. What looks good to you guys?” Meat is not at all surprised; with Jim, you get everything and then everything else. “And for dessert, sir?” says the headwaiter, anticipating the massive tip. “Well, why don’t you bring us some New York cheesecake. And, heck, how about an order of the chocolate opera cake? And profiteroles. For everyone to share.” Meat can only laugh at the incredulous expressions of everyone who doesn’t already know Jim. He orders the table a round of fifty dollar Côtes du Rhône. This’ll be a long one.

First order of business: is the new script ready? “Not quite,” says Jim without even missing a bite. Meat rolls his eyes; typical Jim. His method is seduction. Jim has ideas for new stuff; he doesn’t always have the results to back them up. If he can talk you into it, he can do it -- eventually. “Don’t roll your eyes at me, it’s a cut and paste job anyway. I do have a synopsis so everyone can see what the show will be like. Rest assured, everything’s back the way you want it.” Steinman gestures to Sonenberg, who passes pages around the table.

We now pause to read said synopsis:

ACT ONE

Some time in the late 19th century, Professor Abronsius, a rather intensely wacky vampire killer, stands trial before the Governors of the University of Heidelberg. He has made a mockery of the school’s good name with his “ridiculous writings and insane theories,” insisting that he can prove vampires (and other supernatural creatures) actually do exist. For this “crime against science,” he is sent packing by his colleagues. His assistant Alfred, handsome if sweetly dim, with an ardent and Byronic underbelly, resolutely stands by his mentor and guide. Now gifted with -- however unwelcome -- free time, they set off on an excursion, hoping to prove the professor’s theory correct, and become lost in a blinding snowstorm (Overture).

We are now in a dark forest, three nights before Halloween, near a remote Transylvanian village somewhere in the Carpathians. Sarah, the beautiful teenage daughter of the local innkeeper, is out picking mushrooms with her easily frightened friends when they come upon an abandoned graveyard in a clearing. To reassure them all is well, she says a prayer (Angels Arise). Suddenly, a pack of very cool young vampires appears out of the mist, dancing with rapturous abandon (God Has Left the Building). Sarah is entranced as a coffin rises from the ground containing the mesmerizing and extremely cool Count Von Krolock, an immortal suitor whose call she finds strangely irresistible. The Count introduces himself to Sarah in a most charming way, sings to her seductively telling her of another world (Original Sin), and promises to return for her at the total eclipse of the moon. The lure of the night is strong, as is the promised deliverance from the mundane world she knows.

Back in the village, at the inn, we meet Sarah’s father, Chagal, his long suffering wife, Rebecca, and his beautiful voluptuous chambermaid, Magda, whom he spends most of his free time lusting after, much to Rebecca's disdain. Together with the local villagers, they demonstrate that nothing perks up men like wine, women and song -- and Garlic. Into the midst of the hustle and bustle burst two strangers, the first in twenty years: Abronsius and Alfred, who have nearly frozen to death in the nearby woods. Although the villagers deny any knowledge of vampires in the proximity, the professor cannot be fooled and becomes increasingly suspicious.

After exploring the rooms upstairs in which they are staying, Alfred meets Sarah. He is instantly smitten by her and vice versa, but having noticed the attraction between them, Chagal, very protective of his child, literally boards-up the door separating them (Don’t Leave Daddy). Since the budding passion of the young is highly flammable his solution proves to be as effective as spit on a forest fire. Unable to sleep, Alfred and Sarah sing of their newly awakened desire for each other (There’s Never Been a Night Like This), but they are not alone in their yearning: Chagal sneaks away from Rebecca -- who swiftly knocks Abronsius on the noggin in a case of mistaken identity -- to pay an unwelcome visit to Magda, and the Count returns to invite Sarah to a grand ball at his castle, offering her a chance to make her wildest dreams a reality, an opportunity to quench her thirst for more (The Invitation). How can any small-time girl resist?

The next day, the idyll of a winter mid-afternoon (Everything’s Fair) is broken when Abronsius witnesses a small business exchange between Chagal and Koukol, a hideous hunchback who lives somewhere in the woods. He inquires about the odd fellow, but Chagal refuses to discuss the matter. This does not deter the professor (Logic). For every question there is an answer and no truth that defies understanding -- or so he believes.

But no law rules the human heart and desire is quite an immeasurable emotion. Alfred also offers Sarah a way out: he begs her to run off and make a new start with him (Braver Than We Are). Too little, too late. Unbeknownst to Alfred, Krolock has sent a gift for Sarah -- a pair of red boots and a vision. Alfred leaves Sarah alone outside for a moment and she puts on the boots; she has a fantastic reverie about dancing with vampires (Red Boots Ballet) and can no longer control herself, try though she might (Say a Prayer). Torn between Alfred and the Count, Sarah runs off to Krolock’s castle, pursued by Chagal, who is in turn pursued by Rebecca and Magda who are concerned for his safety, who are in turn followed by Alfred and Abronsius, reasoning that they will be shown the way to the Count’s lair.

At the giant castle in the woods, they are greeted by watchful eyes in the darkness (Something to Kill (Our Time)), and by the mysterious Krolock and his flamboyant son, Herbert, who is instantly attracted to Alfred (Bless the Night). In the same breath, Krolock taunts Alfred and invites the two men into his domain (Come With Me) and the two reluctantly accept his invitation.

ACT TWO

In the great hall of the castle, Sarah reconciles what was once just a fantasy with her new reality, seduced by and embracing her inevitable indoctrination to this family (Vampires in Love (Total Eclipse of the Heart)). Sarah is entranced as Krolock makes his way down the staircase toward her. What has long been just a notion inside her is now a man before her. She willingly offers him her throat, although he resists the urge to bite her there and then.

Meanwhile, given a room, Abronsius sleeps soundly while Alfred is tormented by a nightmare (Carpe Noctem) that is a peculiar reflection of reality. In the dream he is a creature of the night. The following morning Alfred bravely swears that above fear and beyond doubt he will stay there in the hope of saving her (For Sarah).

But Abronsius is more concerned with capturing the Count and his son as specimens to prove his theory. Alfred and the professor make their way to the crypt, hoping to locate the two vampires, but instead they encounter the freshly dead Chagal. Before Abronsius can think of something else, Alfred hears what he believes to be Sarah singing and the hapless duo flee the crypt just as Rebecca and Magda arrive. Encountering Chagal's bitten body, Rebecca grieves while Magda gloats (Death Is Such an Odd Thing). In death she finds him to be far more bearable than in life. Chagal wakes-up and bites them both.

Truly, love is in the air. As Chagal cements his eternity with the women he loves in tow, Alfred has a close encounter with Herbert, who has set his sights on him. The smitten Herbert waltzes with an unwilling Alfred singing a song of love and longing (When Love Is Inside You). Herbert’s attempt to draw blood from the young man is thwarted by quick thinking, but to add insult to injury, Alfred then finds Sarah bathing in preparation of that evening’s ball. He begs her to flee with him, but his plea falls on deaf ears -- she is dying to go.

Meanwhile, Abronsius’ search through the castle has taken him to the library, which he enthusiastically discovers is stocked with every book ever written (Books, Books). The Count, who initially pretends admiration for the professor and offers him eternal life, confronts him, taking the opportunity to boast that the the battle for Alfred’s soul is already complete and that he is the victor.

To his horror, Abronsius, joined by Alfred, watches as, in throngs, the vampires crawl from their coffins, cursing the redundancy of their existence and eager to devour (Eternity). At the same moment, stung by Abronsius’ rejection, Count Von Krolock laments the truth of his being (Confession of a Vampire) and makes a bleak prediction: before the turn of the next millennium mankind, overcome by greed, will know only one god -- the god of appetite.

Speaking of appetite, the moment has arrived! The Count and his brethren are eager to proceed (The Ball: Never Be Enough). Sarah is presented while a disguised professor and Alfred wait for an opportunity to rescue her -- a chance that unfortunately comes only after she is willfully and gloriously bitten. In the midst of the climactic vampire dance (The Minuet), they take hold of Sarah and run.

Stopping in the woods to rest, Alfred once more professes his love to Sarah and the two lovers embrace, singing of their born-again freedom (Braver Than We Are (Reprise)). He believes all is well until the second she sinks her teeth into his neck. Once bitten the couple takes off to begin a life that will know no end. Meanwhile, oblivious to what is happening around him, Professor Abronsius revels over the information he has unearthed about the existence of vampires, unaware that their numbers have grown. As the Reign of the Undead begins, everybody somehow manages to find happiness... Transylvania-style (The Dance of the Vampires).

Back to our regularly scheduled program:

Meat is forced to admit Jim’s right. Based solely on this synopsis, it would be a cut-and-paste job, and it does answer all of the objections he had. Moving the Heidelberg scene to the top of the show reorients things just enough so that at least the focus is shared between Alfred and Sarah. On top of that, every song is where it should be, “Is Nothing Sacred” has been cut from Act II (it appeared in both earlier versions as a duet between Alfred and Sarah lamenting the loss of their love, but for once everyone was in agreement that it slowed the show down and there was no way to make it work), and no climactic shape-shifting transformation to be found (Jim has never been one to hide spoilers). As soon as the actual script is put together, this could be a working product.

Crawford is momentarily rattled by the Alfred-and-Abronsius prologue. “Bit like Phantom to start with foreshadowing and then plunge in?” he mutters under his breath. But Meat counters, with a grin: “I think it’s more like the opening of Psycho, wouldn’t ya say, Jim?” Meat, of course, knows what’s coming. Jim has seen Psycho 23 times; he thinks that if you’re learning about film, you don’t have to go beyond Psycho, because you can watch it a thousand times and find something new each time. All he has to do is settle in and let Jim talk Crawford’s ear off: “Psycho begins, if you watch it, with a long shot of Arizona, a satellite view of the whole state of Arizona, or at least the city of Phoenix. Long shot of the whole city. And then, the camera goes into one area. Then one block, and then one building, and then through the window of that building, to Janet Leigh and John Gavin in bed, nude, having sex. You start at an extreme distance, and it keeps getting closer and closer until it ends up where the story begins.”

Crawford is flummoxed. “...but... how is that...” Before he can get another word in edgewise, Jim is off on a stream-of-conscious flight of fancy: “Lost inside a blinding snowstorm, an innocent boy and a man of science... an unspoken certainty -- where something is shattered, something is breaking through... then their suspicions are proven correct... the wilds of Transylvania... the shadow of a dark knight looms large... you set up the hero first, and then right at the beginning, you need the big horror scene, like when the shark attacks the girl in Jaws, and then in the next scene everything is fine and you go on to tell the story.” Twenty minutes of free association from film to film later, his head spinning, Crawford stops Jim: “Jim, I, uh... I think I get it. Sounds grand. Let’s move on, shall we?” Meat, with a grin: “Waiter? More Côtes du Rhône for my English friend here.”

It’s Sonenberg’s turn to speak about the financial picture, and unfortunately, he is pretty much the bearer of bad news: “We’ve got nothing.” “What about your share of the investment?” Jim shoots back. “I raised my share, but that’s all I raised! Andrew Braunsberg threw in his share, too, but ours combined won’t bring you this show! This is gonna cost at least 12 million, it’s not like either of us has a small fortune tucked away! Do you know how much it will cost for that fucking coffin to rocket out the floor? And let’s say we keep the designs from Europe, which -- by the way -- we can’t afford to do even if we get investors, who’s paying for the six-ton graveyard to come down from fifty feet in the air? Shows cost four times as much on Broadway as they do in Europe! And this is before we get into the fact that we had readings and workshops that didn’t come cheap, even though we had other people shouldering the burden with us. When they walked...” “When they walked, I did what you said! You said we needed stars to boost the box office -- we have two of them! You said we needed the show to have more of a balance between horror and comedy -- we’re nearly there! We’ve done readings, we’ve done workshops, there should be a list of interested investors by now! You’re telling me I followed every instruction you gave me and we couldn’t attract producers?!” “Jim, that happens. The odds of failure in any show biz endeavor are astronomical. You know this. I have this conversation with you time and time again.” “So basically you called this meeting to raise our hopes and then tell us it’s a wash, is that it?!”

Meat can’t bear to see Jim like this. He never could. Jim is always within steps of achieving his dream and never quite getting there, and it’s usually due to Sonenberg’s interference. “Guys, guys, before things get too heated and we say stuff we might regret... look at who is at this table. We’ve got a major arena rocker, two Grammy-winning songwriters, we’ve got the biggest box office star in musical theater, we have a music manager with a list of clients as big as my ass. We know promoters, theater owners, rich people with cash to burn, we make more contacts shaking hands at industry parties than we know what to do with. Between all of us, we’ve got to be able to rustle up some investment coin!”

Meat turns to Crawford. “Michael, I know you were up for my part for, like, twenty seconds. Were you bringing any investors to the table for that?” “Now that you mention it, yes, there were a handful.” “Call them. Explain the situation. Tell them we’re looking to cut costs and bring this show in tight, so they can look at our numbers, offer suggestions for a way forward.”

He swivels in his seat to the other Michael at the table. “Mr. Kunze, was there any interest from other American producers before the show started on this path?” “We had this husband-and-wife couple who were major producers book tickets to opening night in Vienna, but they canceled last minute.” “Any chance you remember who they are?” Sonenberg cuts in: “Barry and Fran Weissler, but...” “The Weisslers? As in the Weisslers who did Chicago? The license-to-print-money Weisslers? We need a meeting with them ASAP.”

Meat now focuses on Sonenberg. “Look, Jim is pissed at you right now, and understandably so, but we need all hands on deck. David, is there anybody you can think of that might come to the table?” “Well... I am about to have lunch with Jerry Weintraub about a film project. You win an Oscar, they all come knocking.” “I remember Jerry, he started in talent management and concert promotion. Theater is a good way for him to combine those interests. He may not bite, but bring up the project anyway.”

Jim weakly tosses in, his engines beginning to rev again: “I could talk to Leonard Soloway. He’s never been major on Broadway, mainly a house or company manager, but he’s produced before, and he’s been looking to move back into that sector. He was very interested in this at the reading last April. He called it a gem.” “The worst that he can say is no, and we’re already starting a list to go down, so give him a buzz,” Meat says.

“As for me, I’m gonna talk to Michael Cohl.” Sonenberg is skeptical: “The concert promoter?” “He’s handled packages as big as this, you know who he’s worked with, it’s practically an encyclopedia of the business. Maybe he wants to move into producing.” “He also wants to put his hand in the till. He’s a chiseler. A bunch of managers complained about him a few years back; he was working this scheme where he told their clients playing this festival in Toronto that there was a sales tax that was coming out of their pay, and a gate charge reflected in the ticket price. Festival’s exempt from that tax and the organization that runs it has no gate charge. He was putting hundreds of thousands in his pocket.” “So,” interrupts Jim, “you’re saying he has money to spend, and he knows how to cut corners and get more.” “Oh sure, Jim, because we want to line up with a whiff of anything illegal on a high risk investment. I’m just saying, if we bring him on, there have to be stringent safeguards. We’ll need to double- and triple-check every transaction that comes through him.” “Well,” says Meat, momentarily unable to check his inner self-control, “he can’t do any worse than the advice I was getting in 1981.” “Oh sure, dig up that dead horse and start beating it again!” Sonenberg fires back.

Before the conversation can get out of control, Meat somehow manages to rein himself in: “Alright, look, let’s not get off the subject at hand here. We thought things were hopeless only moments ago, but now we have a list of... Michael, how many investors were interested again?” “Three.” “Okay, and that plus Cohl, Jerry, Leonard, and the Weisslers -- not to mention Braunsberg and David -- puts us at 10, if everyone signs on. Even if some of them say no, we should still be farther ahead than we were on the producing front. This project is not dead.”

“It might as well be,” Sonenberg grouses. “John Caird’s off attending to other commitments, Ezralow’s doing a Josh Groban TV special, and we need a new set of designs. You tell me where we’re gonna find a whole new creative team.” “David, I don’t have the highest opinion of you, but I know you’re not stupid. You’re not seriously implying that this production only looked into one person for each position, right? Surely we can look around at a few people and get some opinions.” “Besides,” Jim chimes in, “the director problem is already solved. I was co-directing, now all I have to do is call Barry [Keating, Jim’s right-hand man and a Tony-nominated composer in his own right] in to be my assistant and we’ll whip this into shape.”

A deathly silence descends upon the table. Meat is brave enough to be the first to speak: “Actually, I think we need to interview some directors, too.” “Why go to the trouble? I have it under control.” For once, Sonenberg agrees with Meat and says so: “You think you have it under control. Things have been pretty serious in this conversation so far, let’s be real right now: you’ve never directed a musical this big in your life. You and Barry are fine for a workshop, but this is a spectacular with a lot of moving elements.” “I can’t believe I’m hearing this! Half the show in Vienna I had to talk Polanski into doing. Or did it behind his back. A lot! He had a totally different vision.” “Jim, giving notes and making contributions that people agree with is not the same thing as directing.” “I’ve directed music videos!” “You’ve story-boarded music videos.” “What about that one I directed for Bonnie that was nominated for seven Billboard Video Awards?” “Did it win any?!” Meat once again has to halt the argument brewing: “Look, Jim, we need to be serious about this if you want it to work. It can’t hurt to just talk to a few other people. We’re not committing to them.” Steinman is momentarily silenced, but his sour expression betrays he’s still displeased with the present turn of events.

“Now, as for the choreographer...” Meat says. Jim perks up again: “Barry could...” Sonenberg slams his fist on the table: “You shut up or you lose a toe! Go on, Meat.” “Alright, we’re not opening till October, and that means we’re not starting in earnest until August. That’s after the Tony Awards. Let’s see if any real talent emerges this season, and if worse comes to worst, we’ll just hire whoever won.” “That doesn’t solve our problem with the design team, though. Even if we get them signed by June or July, that’s not nearly enough time to design, approve, and execute a whole show.” “Well, we can start talking to people now, and maybe they’ll even give us some clues about a choreographer or director, if there’s someone they’ve worked with who they really liked.” At a loss for any other way to proceed, Sonenberg nods gravely.

At meeting’s end, everyone is in concurrence on the next course of action: actually finish the script, schmooze with potential investors or producers, and put together a new creative team. Preferably not all at the same time, but with the crunch on, they’ll do whatever needs to be done.

Didn’t expect this to be so short or focus on one event, but our heroes have lots of ground to cover. Catch you next time!

#tanz der vampire #Taniec Wampirow #Vampyyrien tanssi #tanzblr #tanz network #tanz discourse #Dance of the Vampires #le bal des vampires #Vampirok Balja #bal vampirov #vampiiride tants #vampiru no dansu #Jim Steinman #Roman Polanski #Michael Kunze #Michael Crawford #meat loaf #alternate universe

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isthisartis · 3 years

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Artificial intelligence has proven to be an enormous help in the medical sector, especially in diagnosis, it analyses large data sets with ease giving us opportunities, which we have never had before. The idea about robots and algorithms was rather to help humans in tasks that require a lot of counting, brain power and energy, which humans have limited supplies of, whereas machines do the tasks quickly and never get tired. However, one could only imagine in their wildest dreams that the AI will become an artist! This idea scares and fascinates people, the way technologies usually do. AI bots have already created paintings unrecognisable from Picasso, played Mozart's music and composed its own tunes. Although it does better in recreation that in original creative work, it proved itself to be capable of more than we expected. The Washington post has an AI algorithm used to write news and we have no clue whether we are reading a human or a robot thought. These news provoked me to pose myself the old, well known question: what is art? whether we conclude that robots can make art depends on our very definition of art. I once was in the museum on Mark Rothko's exhibition. He is widely famous for his painting, which basically are canvas covered with one or two colours of paint. One painting was all white. I stood there, among the amazed crowd, knowing that the market value of these paintings is so high, that if I had one, I would be settled for life. It seemed bizarre, it shocked and i thought to myself, i could have painted that! But I didn't, right? It is hard to explain why some pieces move something inside us and other pieces don't, but this debate has been a long lasting one. Marcel Duchamp is another artist who provoked discussions about the definition of art itself. Being a well known artist, he exhibited a toilet seat in a famous museum and titled it "The Fountain". Many were outraged by his behaviour, however it fulfilled its purpose and provoked massive discussions on the definition of art and whether everything that is being put in a museum is automatically art? Can a copy be a piece of art? The questions are endless. For me personally, creativity and something I would call soul or idea must be present in a piece in order for it to matter and appeal to me. That is why I am not so sure that a piece created by an IA algorithm could ever move me and spark any reflection inside, the way art does. Is art a domain reserved to humans then? Elephants, chimpanzees and other animals have been seen painting; however, it has always been under some human guidance, or it was performed in captivity. This observation is also an interesting one in the context of AI making art. For me, the situation is similar in a way, that the AI does not have a burst of creativity, a spark of inspiration, which pushes it to create, it does not have an inherent will to express itself through art, it is forced in some way by a human, performing the will of the human. Should art be voluntary? More and more questions appear. Mario Klingeman – a german artist who uses AI to make his work, claims that humans also are not original, we do not make from scratch, but we reinvent what was already made, we get inspiration from culture and years of experiences of other humans, therefore the question of creativity becomes blurry in his eyes. I will end with a quote from Edgar Degas: “Art is not what You see, but what You make others see”.

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tammylovecams · 5 years

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Arrives on Friday. At 6:40 pm we all meet by the pool to give a kiss to my darling and our daughter and head to the spa. We're a little early. While talking with my sister-in-law, in the waiting room I see a very handsome man passing right behind her. He wears a white uniform, he's Tunisian. It lasts a quarter of a second but my gaze falls into his. Her beauty and her face hit me hard. I wouldn't want my sister-in-law to feel anything, so I turn around slightly and, I see the man entering a storage room right behind her. I see only a shadow in my field of vision, but a shadow that looks at me. The spa receptionist tells us that all 5 of us can go up the stairs and we will be guided upstairs. I don't turn around. Once on the floor, another Tunisian in white is waiting for us and takes over. He explains that 4 of us will be with a woman and only one person with a man. Despite my father-in-law's instructions, all the female staff are in attendance. At the same time, staff members dressed in white climb the stairs and line up in front of us. There are four women and the man I met downstairs! Her eyes hit me and plunged into mine. It only lasts a few seconds. It only took me a moment to grab my stepfather tenderly by the arm when he said, "Well, I choose you sir, I sacrifice myself! ». I answered him "But no Alexander, enjoy this moment! We talked about it the other day and, unlike you, whether it's a man or a woman, it doesn't bother me at all, so I insist. "He thanked me, stroked my cheek and was relieved to enter the cabin next to mine with a woman in her fifties. That's when I entered the cabin of all my desires. It's hot and I'm wearing a simple black kimono dress. Underneath, a transparent bra and my swimsuit bottom. When I enter, my handsome masseur closes the door behind me. He tells me to put my things on a chair and come and lie on my stomach. I am quite amazed and before I open my dress and find myself half-naked in front of him, I look everywhere around me. My cabin is quite small, the window blind is half lowered and the light is dimmed. The three walls that make up my cabin do not go up to the ceiling. My father-in-law and mother-in-law are in the two cabins on my right. My brother-in-law and sister-in-law are in the same cabin on my left. The door that separates us from the corridor is thin and made of wood. While continuing to prepare his equipment, my eyes fall into his, and, with a predatory look, he whispers to me in the tone of the "shy?" question. This simple question makes me smile, and without taking my eyes off him, I very gently open my dress, put it on the chair next to me, and walk to the table to lie down. At the last minute, he grabs the staples of my bra and whispers in my ear "you have to take that off". I lie on my stomach, my head in the hole of the massage table, my elbows are bent, I have one hand on each side of my face and my handsome masseur puts a towel on my upper body. That's when my wildest dreams began. To the right and left, listening, I can wait for the voices in the other booths to speak softly. My masseur and I are silent. When he puts his hands full of oil on my left leg, I relax instantly. He then pulls my swimsuit panties up far into my parting and I feel my buttocks exposed. The whole context has already given me a warm feeling. I feel that everything could change, the situation is idyllic but at that moment, I dare not imagine anything and I just let myself be totally done, to be totally ingrained in the present moment. As he massages the whole of my left leg, I feel his hand approaching my sex. After a few minutes, and under the effects of the massage oil I no longer have any doubt, he massages me, looking like nothing, the thin part of skin that separates my sex from my bathing suit. He leans towards my ear and says to me, "You have soft skin". I raised my head slightly from the hole, stared into his and said "Thank you" with a smile. Come around my right leg. My stomach is burning. His hand goes much faster near my sex. He massages me from the top of my buttocks to the tips of my toes, I feel that the bottom of my body can totally belong to him, yet I put all my efforts into not shivering, not yet. My pussy is all wet, can he see it? I only see these feet moving under the table, and I feel his hands closing and making sure I knead. I can't help but have a grin when I imagine what he sees or doesn't see. My pussy is literally soaked but I don't dare to move yet. That's when he decides to drop my panties. I feel his hands on each side of my hips that have grabbed the rubber band. I finally breathe because it allows me to make a movement. To help him lower my panties, I just have to lift my rump towards him while slightly rolling my pelvis. He finds out half of my butt. I lift my chest up and lean on my elbows to turn around and look at it. It is with a look of fire that he makes me read his lips, "it's our secret?" by putting the index finger on his mouth? And it was at that moment that I was able to answer YES silently with an assurance that I rarely knew myself. This time I was sure something was going to happen and, no matter what, I had only one desire, it was to be totally surrendered to him. He started by slipping his thumb along my parting, he stroked my anus and went into my sex. The penetration of her fingers caused me to discharge all over my body and I felt liberated for the first time. He kept fingering me with his thumb while massaging my clitoris. My whole body was excited. I lay down all along absolutely excited to be fingered by this man, a stranger, by this feeling of hot oil and this confident hand that was slowly but so fully massaging me. I realized that the danger of my cabin neighbours was more than delicious and then my handsome masseur slowed the movement down, stopped. Then walked away. My head was still in the hole in the table but my eyes opened instantly. It took me a few seconds to elbow down and look for it. He was with his back to me, facing his table. When he turned around, it was the first time he smiled so frankly at me, saying, "Are you ready to continue? "I wasn't smiling, I made a slack and it was my butt that called him. I jiggled. I think that's when I took over and I'll never regret it. He approached the massage table, placed himself behind my head and removed the towel that blocked my upper body. His body was big and muscular above mine. My head didn't touch his chest when he started massaging both my arms, from my shoulders to the palms of my hands. Then my back, then my arms. He smelled so good...... I felt him more nervous and very excited. He started talking to me as soon as I got there. He started talking to me about the questions in the hollow of my ear. "Your beautiful body...... Meet me tonight "It made me smile. "Meet me tonight at the beach, I'll meet you where you want... "I said no with my index finger near my slightly raised head and it made us both laugh. He ran a hand to my buttocks and grabbed my shoulders. I felt three fingers penetrate me all of a sudden. I was then so wet, so excited and so oiled that it didn't take me much longer to calibrate myself very slightly and confident in my comings and goings. Slow, silent but so intense and so deep! We were perfectly synchronized. When I think about it, I feel that my lips and clitoris were so excited that they were all swollen with excitement! After several prodigious comings and goings, he slightly pulled out his three fingers dipped in me to kiss me tenderly in the neck. His gesture touched me, made me smile, but as I had the delicious impression of being in a waking dream, I was more than decided to play it my way. To enjoy like never before, he would have to follow my rules and it was obvious that he was more than willing.

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I pushed his kiss back into my neck by quickly releasing a hand and pressing on his forehead. Moving his face away from my neck, touching his warm forehead and shaved hair without looking at him triggered a new sensation in my stomach. I don't think he felt it, but my reaction made him laugh at that moment, he cleared himself, walked around my body and placed it next to my right leg. With a firm gesture he spread my legs and I am almost certain that he put his whole hand into my pussy. She was waiting for this!!! His hand, conical, enters like butter. I camber myself slightly more so that his fist penetrates me even more fully. He plows me, faster and faster. My whole body is preparing to come. He talks in my ear but I can't hear anything anymore. Her excitement and perfect knowledge of this other person that I am fascinates me. I feel whole and perfectly present in his hands. When he moves his mouth closer to my neck again to touch me with a kiss, this time I don't push him away but the pressure I put on his forehead by crushing my hand, pushes me to push my pelvis down on his fist at the same time. The discharge I received at that moment was intense. My orgasm live cam free was silent and all the more intense. My whole vagina was taken up with contractions and I felt that they were pressing in a totally uncontrolled way on her fist. He didn't move a millimeter all the time I enjoyed it. My hot and dripping pussy could sink in a gouluous way around her stable and strong fist until very small but intense pulsations. When my orgasm was over, he took his fist out of my pussy and started massaging my pussy's entrance with the flat of his hand in slow, circular movements. What a wonderful and gentle feeling to recover from fisting and a huge orgasm. My handsome masseur keeps asking me questions, he wants to know my name, whispers that he wants me for a whole night, tonight, he begs me..... I turn my head to look at him and with a mischievous smile, I nod my head. It makes me smile webcam, but it's decomposing. "But why?" "I'm married." He seems even more confused. "Is he your husband? Does he whisper to me while popping the booth right next to my stepfather? I'm a little wheezy. "No, it's his father. My husband is not here, but, he is here.... "He looked at me, grabbed my butt and ordered me," turn around! ». I did it by realizing that we had to have at least 30 minutes left to share, that I was finally going to see him face-to-face, touching myself, and that the adventure was not yet over....Live Redhead Porn Thank you for coming here so far for the reading. As I said at the beginning of my writing, all the facts reported really happened to me. 4 Days later I'm still perfectly excited about it. If you want to know the rest and end of my story, leave me a comment. In the meantime, and I promise, I'll come back and read it again. This is a very first draft. It's 4:00 in the morning.

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