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morallyinept · 3 months

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A full transcribe of OBERYN MARTELL'S dialogue/lines from the TV show GAME OF THRONES.

Includes full dialogue, and dialogue from any deleted/additional scenes available.

I've created this as a point of reference when writing for Pedro's characters, and I hope you find it useful. Even if you just want to read the dialogue. 🖤

FULL MASTERLIST OF PEDRO CHARACTERS DIALOGUE

☝🏻Dialogue has been fully transcribed by myself using reference to original scripts (if available), audio subtitles and using my own two ears. Therefore, mistakes can be made, however I have tried to be as fully accurate as I can. If you spot an obvious mistake, please kindly let me know. Where audio is not clear, I have marked with *inaudible* Scenes are separated for ease of reference.

FULL SCRIPT DIALOGUE: (ALL EPISODES - OBERYN WAS IN 7 EPISODES IN SEASON 4)

EP 1 S4 TWO SWORDS

Look at this one. How lovely is she?

They like them pale in the capital. Shows they don’t work the fields.

Do I frighten you?

You like?

You’re a bit of mischief, aren’t you? I think she likes you.

You’re not timid, are you?

Do you like women?

The two girls can leave. You stay.

Everyone who works for Littlefinger is on offer. Take off your clothes. We’ll be here a while.

I’m a prince, boy. Have you ever been with a prince?

Take off your clothes.

My way.

__________________

Forgive me for staring, I… I don’t see many Lannisters where I’m from.

We don’t like the smell.

Hm! You know why all the world hates a Lannister? You think your gold and your lions and your gold lions make you better than everyone. Can I tell you a secret? You’re not a golden lion. You’re just a pink little man who’s far too slow on the draw.

Long sword is a bad option in close quarters. When I pull my blade your friend starts bleeding quite a lot, I’m afraid. So many veins in the wrist. He’ll live if you get him help straight away. So… decisions.

Apologies, my love.

Ellaria Sand, my paramour. The King’s own Uncle Imp. Tyrion, son of Tywin Lannister.

And what are you? His hired killer?

How did that come to pass?

We’ll need a few more girls, yes?

You don’t partake?

__________________

Seems I visited the Lannister brothel by mistake.

Even Dornishmen.

Let us speak truth here. Joffrey is insulted. I am only the second son after all.

I was invited to the royal wedding.

The last time I was in the capital was many years ago. Another wedding. My sister, Elia and Rhaegar Targaryen, the last dragon. My sister loved him. She bore his children. Spoiled them, rocked them, fed them at her own breast. Elia wouldn’t let the wet nurse touch them. And beautiful, noble Rhaegar Targaryen… left her for another woman. That started a war and the war ended right here… when your father’s army took the city.

They butchered those children. My nephew and niece. Carved them up and wrapped them in Lannister cloaks. And my sister. You know what they did to her? I’m asking you a question.

Hm! So have I. The one I keep hearing is that Gregor Clegane, The Mountain, raped Elia and split her in half with his great sword.

If The Mountain killed my sister, your father gave the order. Tell your father I’m here. And tell him the Lannisters aren’t the only ones who pay their debts.

__________________

EP 2 S4 THE LION AND THE ROSE

Hello.

Not you.

__________________

Your Grace, Lord Tywin.

I don’t believe you have met Ellaria. This is the Lord Hand, Tywin Lannister and Cersei Lannister, the Queen Regent. I suppose it is former Queen Regent now. Lord Hand and Lady Cersei, Ellaria Sand.

Bastards are born of passion, aren’t they? We don’t despise them in Dorne.

I expect it is a relief, Lady Cersei, giving up your regal responsibilities. Wearing the crown for so many years must have left your neck a bit crooked.

They call it the rich man’s disease. A wonder you don’t have it.

People everywhere have their differences. In some places the highborn frown upon those of low birth. In other places, the rape and murder of women and children is considered distasteful. What a fortunate thing for you, former Queen Regent, that your daughter Myrcella has been sent to live in the latter sort of place.

__________________

EP 3 S4 BREAKER OF CHAINS

You’re greedy.

You’re calling my beauty an acquired taste?

Your loss.

Does that surprise you?

Then everyone is missing half the world’s pleasure. The Gods made that and it delights me. The Gods made this and it delights me. When it comes to war, I fight for Dorne. When it comes to love, I don’t choose sides.

What are you, 25?

Someday, if you’re lucky, you will wake up and realise you are old. That pretty ass of yours will sag. Your belly will grow soft and your back will ache in the night and grey hairs will sprout from your ears. No-one will want you anymore. Make sure you’ve fucked your fill before that day.

They will all have to line up behind you.

Lord Tywin.

Would you like to sit?

Some wine?

I’m sorry about your grandson.

I don’t believe that a child is responsible for the sins of his father. Or his grandfather. An awful way to die.

Are you interrogating me, Lord Tywin?

Some believe the sky is blue because we live inside the eye of a blue-eyed giant. The king was poisoned.

I did. This is why I know.

Rather suspicious. Why haven’t you thrown me in a dungeon?

You think we conspired together?

The death of my sister.

She was raped and murdered by The Mountain. The Mountain follows your orders. Of course I blame you.

You are unarmed and unguarded because you know me better than that. I am a man of reason. If I cut your throat today, I will be drawn and quartered tomorrow.

So you deny involvement in Elia’s murder?

I would like to speak with The Mountain.

He might not enjoy it as much as he thinks he would.

But you want something in return.

Why?

Well, you made the Tyrell girl a queen. Asking me to judge at your son’s trial isn’t quite as tempting.

I never realised you had such respect for Drone, Lord Tywin.

You’re saying you need us? That must be hard for you to admit.

__________________

EP 5 S4 FIRST OF HIS NAME

Your Grace.

A poem, actually.

I couldn’t very well refuse a royal escort.

Not a very good one.

For one of my daughters.

Eight.

The fifth is difficult. I named her after my sister, Elia.

Yes. But I can’t say it without turning sad. And after I turn sad, I grow angry.

Which joke is that?

We can avenge them.

You really believe Tyrion murdered your son?

We will have a trial and we will learn the truth.

The last time I saw her she was swimming with two of my girls in the Water Gardens. Laughing in the sun.

You have my word. We don’t hurt little girls in Dorne.

Anything at all.

I will have it sailed down to Sunspear for her.

__________________

EP 6 S4 THE LAWS AND GODS OF MEN

These meetings aren’t always going to be this early, are they? I was up late last night. So, does this mean I am a master of something now? Coins, ships?

Lord Varys is right. I have been to Essos and seen the Unsullied first-hand. They are very impressive on the battlefield. Less so in the bedroom.

__________________

Lord Varys.

And yet everyone does.

Five years.

‘Tis a big and beautiful world. Most of us live and die in the same corner where we were born and never get to see any of it. I don’t want to be most of us.

You are from Essos. Where? Lys? I have an ear for accents.

I have an ear for that as well.

How did you get here?

One you don’t like telling people.

My paramour Ellaria, she would find you very interesting. You should come to the brothel and meet her. We brought our own wine, not the swill they serve here. We have some lovely boys on retainer, but… You did like boys before?

Really. Girls? Hmm. I hope you won’t be offended when I say I never would have guessed.

What then?

Everybody is interested in something.

Such as?

__________________

I think you have made your point, Grand Maester. You have a lot of poison in your store.

Tyrion said “and you know the debt is paid.” What debt?

__________________

How could you possibly know all this? Why would he reveal such plans to his wife’s maid?

And did you?

Fuck him like it was his last night in this world?

__________________

EP 7 S4 MOCKINGBIRD

I did spend some time with an absolutely stunning blonde the other day.

Your sister.

Cersei approached me. We spoke a great deal about her daughter. How worried your sister is about her. She was trying very hard to pretend she had not come to sway me against you. I think she may have even believed it herself.

It was difficult for her to hide her true intentions. It is rare to meet a Lannister who shares my enthusiasm for dead Lannisters. She desperately wants to see you killed.

Yes, I know. We met, you and I. Many years ago.

Unlikely. You had just been born. Our father brought me and my sister Elia with him on a visit to Casterly Rock. My first time away from Dorne. I didn’t like anything about the Rock. Not the food, not the weather, not your accents. Nothing. But the biggest disappointment… you.

The whole way from Dorne, all anyone talked about was the monster that had been born to Tywin Lannister. A head twice the size of his body, a tail between his legs, claws, one red eye, the privates of both a girl and a boy.

When we met your sister, she promised she would show you to us. Every day we would ask. Every day she would say “soon.” Then, she and your brother took us to your nursery and… she unveiled the freak. Your head was a bit large. Your arms and legs were a bit small, but no claw. No red eye. No tail between your legs. Just a tiny, pink cock. We didn't try to hide our disappointment. “That’s not a monster,” I told Cersei. “That’s just a baby.” And she said, “he killed my mother.” And she pinched your little cock so hard, I thought she might pull it off, until your brother made her stop. “It doesn’t matter,” she told us. “Everyone says he will die soon. I hope they are right. He should not have lived this long.”

And what about what I want? Justice, for my sister and her children.

I disagree. I’ve come to the perfect place. I want to bring those who have wronged me to justice. And all those who have wronged me are right here. I will begin with Ser Gregor Clegane, who killed my sister’s children and then raped her with their blood still on his hands before killing her, too.

I will be your champion.

__________________

EP 8 S4 THE MOUNTAIN AND THE VIPER

I like to move around.

You learn this during your years in the fighting pits? I always drink before a fight.

Today is not the day I die.

I’m going to kill that.

Size does not matter when you’re flat on your back.

Never.

__________________

Have they told you who I am?

I am the brother of Elia Martell. Do you know why I have come all the way to this stinking shit-pile of a city? For you.

I am going to hear you confess before you die. You raped my sister. You murdered her. You killed her children. Say it now and we can make this quick.

Say it. You raped her. You murdered her!

You killed her children.

You raped her! You murdered her! You killed her children!

You raped her! You murdered her!

You killed her children!

Wait. Are you dying? No, no, no... You can't die yet. You haven’t confessed.

Say it. Say her name. Elia Martell. You raped her. You killed her children. Elia Martell. Who gave you the order? Who gave you the order?!

Say her name! You raped her! You murdered her! You killed her children! Say it! Say her name! Say it!

__________________

FULL MASTERLIST OF PEDRO CHARACTERS DIALOGUE

#pedro pascal #oberyn martell #pedro pascal characters #oberyn martell game of thrones #PPCU #game of thrones #oberyn martell dialogue

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elbiotipo · 9 months

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They were talking about the new Nick Fury "Secret Invasion" series on TV and one said it's kind of a return to the "classic" alien invaders plot...

and I was thinking how the prototypical alien invasion genre started with War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. Which on itself it was actually based (inspired on? a parody of?) of an already existing genre: invasion literature, which was about, and I am not making this up, a whole genre of books were England gets invaded by another country (usually Germany) and how they resist and (usually) eventually fight their way to victory. Wells just added martians to what was already a established genre

And it also got popular in the US, because, think about it, much like England at the time, the US is almost inmune to a large-scale invasion, but it still was an anxiety writers capitalized on. And of course, instead of being conventional warfare this time, it was Communists. Evil, shape-shifter commies aliens hiding Among Us, ready to control our society from the shadows. "Secret Invasion" indeed...

Hollywood did make a few movies with that undertone, but audiences quickly got bored and they went for the more flashy invasion warfare that eventually got crystallized in 1994's Independence Day, and I can't overstate how much that movie cemented the "aliens will kill us" idea in the US and the rest of the world, like when we think about "alien invasion" and even "aliens" in general, so many people think "Independence Day". And yet, while far removed from the "Germany invades England" original novels, it yet retaining the exact same tropes and beats... all of them

But not only that, this barrage of "aliens are evil" books and movies turned discussion of extraterrestrial intelligence into a constant and fucking unbearable nonsensical debate of "WILL THEY INVADE US OR NOT... ARE THEY PEACEFUL... OR EVIL..." which... anyways, I have to spend my yerba mate energy in something more useful

so yeah, the classic "alien invasion" genre, huh.

#cosas mias

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formulinos · 1 year

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HYPERFIXATION CORNER | NOW, THAT'S WHAT I CALL LATE STAGE FORMULA 1!

theydies and gentlemen of f1blr, i regret to inform you guys that the rumours are true: we live in a society. liberty media's tenure with FOM has opened a can of worms that ushered in what i've been calling lately "late stage formula 1". But the thing is, what the fuck would that be, exactly? so, as a good scholar, i took it to myself to study more about late stage capitalism in order to truly understand the term and see if my application made any sense. in today's hyperfixation corner, we'll get deeper than necessary on the microcosm of capitalism that f1 has become. and then we will get depressed. but maybe, just maybe, we can figure this out.

note: this has 7k words AND at times gets quite dense in terms of sociological theory, but i truly did my best to make it palatable. still, this is not going to be everyone's cup of tea and might get boring. if you still believe this is your thing, i just ask you to please hang on tight and see it through to the end as i truly feel everything ties up together rather logically.

PART I: THE DAWN OF LATE STAGE FORMULA 1

the basics of late stage capitalism

the application in late stage formula 1

PART II: YOU CAN'T RUN AWAY - FORMULA 1 AND CAPITALIST REALISM

mark fisher's capitalist realism

the indycar situation

was there ever class consciousness in f1?

the illusion of abu dhabi

THE DAWN OF LATE STAGE FORMULA 1

1. The Basics of Late Stage Capitalism

For a term we see being used daily on several outlets, you'd be surprised to find out that there isn't a rigid definition. In fact, depending on who you talk to, you'll get widely different explanations, since there's basically "academia" late capitalism and "normie" late capitalism. I'll brush up those two for you guys real quick because, at this point, might as well.

The term was coined by a German scholar Werner Sombart. At the time, just at the start of the XX century, he was a HUGE Marx/Engels stan. He had all of their photocards, but beyond that, he also took to himself to write his lifetime's defining work, which is basically an expanded universe fanfic to what Marx and Engels wrote, tbh. In 1902, Sombart started to publish "Der moderne Kapitalismus" (Modern Capitalism), comprised of three volumes in which he discussed four stages of capitalism: proto-capitalism, related to the appearance of capitalist-like tendencies in feudal society until it became proper capitalism + early capitalism, which was basically seen pre-industrial revolution; high capitalism, which came in with the industrial revolution and ended with WWI; and at last, late capitalism, which was what they were living at the time of the third book release (1927), that is, post world wars world. That's all very chill, but given that later on Sombart drank the kool aid and became a Nazi, he can fuck off.

Thank God, two other dudes came in to take the expression from Sombart. Ernest Mandel and Fredric Jameson are two scholars who, although published their works in different times, were responsible for widespreading the term. Mandel published Late Capitalism in 1975, marking it as the era of economic expansion post WWII that, in his view, would reach its peak in the 70s since the economy was starting to have frequent crises. Jameson, however, dropped his book, Postmodernism or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, 16 years later, talking about the then-current world marked by globalisation and the expansion of capitalism to culture (arts, lifestyle, etc.).

All of this is to say that, today, if you ask an economist or a political scientist, they will most likely talk to you either about this time progression or straight out use Fredric Jameson's definition. Which, tbh, works, since in a way Jameson touches on the expansion of capitalism to daily life, something that goes in common with the contemporary POV on late capitalism.

We legit live in hell rn, no big deal

If you go on Reddit or watch corecore edits on tiktok, then there is a sense of dread and irony that's unique to the internet's definition of late capitalism. Since it's a relatively recent thing, there isn't a concrete way to define it, so I'll just use the one given by Ian Neves (Brazilian Historian) in his video about Capitalist Realism because I think it's the one that manages to summarise it the best: Late Stage Capitalism is the stage of capitalism in which the contradictions of capitalism are so evident that they become explicit to the population. That is, it is so in your face that it stops being campy. It's just tacky.

In the video, Neves further explains that one of the big deals about capitalism is that it sells itself as a contradiction-free system, but in our current time we aren't quite fooled anymore. A few examples of this would be multinationals like Amazon opening factories in underdeveloped places like Tijuana, under the guise of wanting to "help develop the country" but placing themselves close to a slum, clearly showing their intentions of exploitation; You can also think of the "art" market of NFTs, which are nothing more than numbers stored in a computer - capitalism touts itself as being a creator of value capable of meeting society's needs, yet there is no need met with NFTs besides value generation for the sake of value generation and pure speculation. Anyway, there are several examples and whatever you think is probably Late Stage Capitalism.

2. The Application in Late Stage Formula 1

Having done this deep dive, imagine my face when I realised that it turns out I didn't just pull "Late Stage F1" out of my ass. I was gooped! Gooped, I tell you. See, if late stage capitalism is now defined as the era in which capitalism's contradictions are explicit, then Late Stage F1 can be easily perceived as the stage of the sport in which its contradictions are no longer capable of being ignored by the fans either. In that sense, it does feel that this is the perfect way to synthesise the bitterness that a large part of the fandom tastes in their mouths.

note: I'm not stating that pre-Liberty Media Formula 1 was perfect. God forbid I become one of the purist fans talking about the good ole days. Bernie Ecclestone wasn't shit and in a way, some of our issues nowadays are inherited from his tenure as the head of FOM. But, at the same time, the sport managed to sell itself as a luxury hobby while still being satisfying and accessible, in a way or another, to the non-wealthy fans. You couldn't see as many contradictions as now because the image of the sport was more or less aligned with what you actually saw, good and bad.

The same, unfortunately, can't be said nowadays. To illustrate my point, let's take a look at FOM's Corporate Strategic plan, released in 2020. The idea, in their words, is "to deliver a more popular, more exciting, and sustainable sport, which pushes the boundaries whilst protecting our heritage.", supported by six axes:

Race – Increase competitiveness and unpredictability on track

Engage – Produce an amazing spectacle for fans on and off track

Perform – Generate value to our shareholders

Sustain – Deliver sustainable and efficient operations

Collaborate – Create win-win relationships with our partners

Empower – Build an engaged and high-performing workforce

Besides Perform and Collaborate, arguably the two most capitalistic inclined pillars, it's incredibly easy to find counter-arguments to illustrate how this is just corporate talk and doesn't actually reflect on the sport. [cracks fingers] So, let's get it:

✷ Increase competitiveness and unpredictability on track: Ok, sure, they try with this one as it is the core of the sport - after all, this is what the regulations' tweaks are for. But you just need a quick overview of the Andretti situation to see that competitiveness only serves the structure to a certain point. After all, although Andretti managed to get the backing of a manufacturer (General Motors, in the form of Cadillac) which, in theory is enough to make it a more legitimate entry less likely to Caterham levels of bankruptcy, the vibes are still somehow off from camp F1.

Michael and Mario Andretti on a pit wall during something that WASN'T a Formula 1 race

This all boils down to the revenue split at the end of the season between the teams and FOM: once you remove the bonuses that are thrown around, roughly 50% of what's left goes to FOM, and the other 50% are the championship prize money (don't quote me on these percentages actually, I'm not sure if it's exactly 50/50) . If Andretti gets in, then either the teams' share gets diluted as a consequence of an extra mouth to be fed, either FOM needs to adjust its own reward to increase the total prize money and make sure that all teams still get the same liquid value for positions 1-10.

Now, Andretti are willing to pay the 200 million dollars "anti-dillution" fee that's to be distributed to the already existing teams as a regulated "sorry we're gonna have to split the prize money in 11 from now on". Yet, instead of welcoming the bid, teams have lobbied for an increase to that fee to 600 millions, a cheap tactic to either get more money or to keep Andretti out. On one hand, Christian Horner has made it clear, from the teams' perspective it is about the money. On the other hand, Stefano Domenecali and FOM are hot and cold, stating that he's happy Andretti are interested but mad that they're calling out the bureaucracy of the process.

The key aspect here is that F1 no longer needs an American team to reinforce their position in the United States market as they did back in 2014 when Haas formalised their entrance. In fact, they don't even need Haas to assert themselves as American anymore as they have three GPs lined up regardless of the team's national fanbase. This way, in FOM's optics, they have nothing to gain from Andretti. In a way, the teams are basically doing what's expected of them, but bottomline is the fact that FOM is fucking mental in adopting the same perspective instead of planning how an extra entry of such magnitude as Andretti-Cadillac could pay itself with time.

✷ Produce an amazing spectacle for fans on and off track: See, I guess you can call me a bit of an old school fan, because when it comes to Formula 1, I WANT TO SEE THE FUCKING CARS RUN ON THE FUCKING TRACK. I suppose many of you are aligned with me on that one.

Using the 2021 numbers as reference since we didn't get the 2022 report yet, the average global audience is around 70.3 million. Given that the biggest venues can only hold 400k attendants tops, the rest of those 70m fans are watching the GPs from home. They are also most likely having to pay for it, since F1TV's dominion keeps increasing. While, all credit is due, F1TV offers a much better pay-per-view experience than many other sports have, with a very rich archive and incredible coverage of each race weekend, some of these prices per country are a legit effort for a fan to make.

From the Reddit post, an example of the price disparity between countries. F1TV is priced accordingly to the purchasing power that each country has.

Could be worse as many other fans are held hostage by Sky Sports, which is only available with a much more expensive £34.99 subscription to UK and Ireland fans, who don't even have F1TV as an alternative option. Given that Sky also has the airing rights in Germany and Italy, the fact is that F1's free to air presence has been lowering over the years (a problem that has been discussed in 2016 and represented a decrease in viewership at the time, mitigated by the Liberty Media efforts). But F1 really can't be arsed in considering a full return to free-to-air TV given the current times and so, the idea is to basically adapt to the pay TV market as much as possible and to retain free-to-air positions in specific markets. And if you, individually, don't have the money to pay for it and there is no free-to-air alternative for you, tough titties.

When it comes to actually attending a Grand Prix though, it's becoming equally harder to do it. The F1destinations 2023 rank shows that there has been an average 56% increase on the average 3-day ticket price in relation to 2019, costing roughly 508 dollars. In terms of affordability, these tickets can represent from under 10% to over 50% of the average monthly net wage for the countries hosting the GP. If it was just the tickets that would be easy peasy, but the fact is most of the times attendance includes the need for housing, transportation, food, etc. What this means is that it's fucking expensive, ok?

The GPs are getting more and more packed, but for how long?

Again, the sport has always been elitist, but there was for a good while a relative balance between your average fan who managed to save up and get a GA ticket with the rich wealthy fans at the paddock drinking their champagne. Nowadays, even people who were regular attendees of their home gps have tapped out due to being priced out. Plus, even the new GPs added to the calendar already come with a big disclaimer "FOR MONEY ONLY" as, for instance, the cheapest tickets for Las Vegas cost 500 bucks but the real average price for the three days is $1,667.

So, if they are in fact producing a great spectacle for fans, it's becoming more and more hard for said fans to actually be able to see it. Whatever.

✷ Deliver sustainable and efficient operations: F1 made a pledge in 2020 to improve their relationship to Mother Nature by 2030, which includes: Net Zero carbon, sustainably-fuelled, hybrid power units, efficient and low/zero carbon logistics & travel, 100% renewably powered facilities and credible carbon sequestration. The whole pdf has a bunch of lovely lines about their grandiose plans, but these are somewhat easily dragged to filth by anyone who understands just a tiny bit of eco-sustainability. One of these people is David Bott, chief innovation officer for the Society of Chemical Industry*.

Bott explains well the situation with the fuel. F1 cars currently use E10, which is a mix of gasoline (+ the likely additives that gasoline already has) with 10% ethanol, a sustainable fuel. The thing is, gasoline is more popular than ethanol for cars for a reason: if you take 1L of gasoline and 1L of ethanol, when you burn them, gasoline will give you way more energy. According to Bott, this means that the new E10 fuel is not as potent as gasoline would be, so you end up needing to use more of it anyway and in the grand scheme of emissions, that means fuck all.

F1's carbon footprint per sector. Does something feel funny to you?

Still, as F1 itself showed in their sustainability report back in 2020, the power unit emissions are less than 1% of the total emissions during a season. As you'd imagine, the thick of it really lies in logistics (45%, transportation of all equipment) and business travel (27,7%, transportation+hotels of f1 staff). Drivers and TPs carpooling with their private jets might help a little bit, but it's evident that F1 doesn't give a single shit about improving those numbers given that the calendar has expanded to 23 races, three of them in the same country but in completely different times of the year, which means that the back and forth of airplanes between continents will correspond to a 15% increase to emissions in relation to last year. According to Paolo Feser, If they were to at least organise the calendar in a sensible manner, they could cut these emissions by half, but such a calendar would go against their contracts with Bahrain and Abu Dhabi for the season's opener (till 2036) and finale (till 2030), respectively. When you consider the pledge's deadline of 2030, it's pretty evident that they'll say they made it because of the drop-in fuel in development, but logistics are far removed from the rest of it.

✷ Build an engaged, high-performing workforce: TALKING OF THE 23 RACE CALENDAR, the biggest impact is obviously on the workforce. Race weekends are gruelling enough for the drivers, who have stated through the GPDA their concerns of burnout. But then, you also have to consider the garage side, who are used to a minimum of 12-hour shifts during a race weekend, having to adapt to more frequent double and triple headers. As an anonymous mechanic said:

"Then, when you are coming home on a Monday morning or Monday evening, and you haven't slept properly in days, that then affects how you feel in your personal time. It means your relationships can suffer – either because you are agitated with your partners or you've got other things on your mind. And that's not fair on you nor them. You are not just mentally fatigued, you are physically drained as well. As the season wears on, there are a hell of a lot of injuries happening. The teams do have doctors and physios to help look after you, but the easiest solution is to pump you with painkillers to just keep you going. There is no way in a million years that a regular doctor would give you what we are given to keep us going."

The psychological strain adds to the anxiety of creating the perfect car and work culture has become increasingly tense. To add to the tension, the cost cap negatively reflected on the workforce as many teams, including RBR and Mercedes, had to fire people to adapt to it. Those who stay have to be reminded that they are "so lucky" to still have a job and if "they don't like it, they can go" (as Tost said in 2021) but the situation is overall so demotivating that yeah, people are quitting motorsports overall or changing categories. To sum up, the engagement and performance of the workforce isn't out of love for the sport, but fear and pressure.

To wrap this with a golden bow, I could never forget the #WeRaceAsOne initiative, still touted by F1 as a campaign that really wants to bring awareness and impact important problems in our society. When it was created in 2020, the main focuses were COVID-19 and social inequalities, but given that they banned T-shirts in podiums in 2020 after Lewis Hamilton protested the death of Breonna Taylor by the hands of US pigs, they clearly weren't comfortable in really tackling the inequality issue. Therefore, they changed the goals of the campaign for a very corporate "Sustainability, Diversity and Inclusion & Community" axis, whatever the hell they mean with that. It's good that they can focus on it all they want, as the FIA has banned drivers from political statements during race weekend procedures. Moreover, while the boycott of the Russian Grand Prix is completely justifiable, it still feels empty once you consider they raced in Saudi Arabia while a factory mere miles away from the track was bombed, also as an act of war.

To sum up, the fact is that late stage Formula 1 is here to stay and we have to deal with all of the sport's contradictions. The same way that late capitalism does not mean that the end of capitalism is near, late stage f1 means nothing as its popularity has been rising more and more, and at the current rate, the abandonment of the older fans means jackshit as more people show up on social media and are willing to pay what's necessary to either watch it or attend races. The question that might linger, in fact, is if F1 has reached the point of inevitability at last?

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YOU CAN'T RUN AWAY - FORMULA 1 AND CAPITALIST REALISM

1. Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism

Even when we're faced with the existence of a late stage Formula 1, whether when it's concretely laid down or just a feeling deep down, many of us still continue to engage with it. As much as we complain about it, the current panorama does show an expansion of the sport, which can only happen as well because a good chunk of the old school fans remain. The question is, why do we insist on watching a sport when we know shit is that bad? Is it solely because of affectionate ties to a team, a driver or even f1 itself? Sure, these factors contribute to it, but what if I told you that it is also because current F1 has finally managed to sink into our collective consciousnesses as inevitable?

To understand what I'm trying to say here, we need to look first at the big picture. That is, if we have been treating F1 as a microcosm of capitalism up to this point, it's now necessary to step back and face Capital itself. In order to do this, I want to introduce to you guys the concept of capitalist realism.

Say hello to Mark Fisher (1968-2017), an incredible mind gone too soon

While, just like late stage capitalism, "capitalist realism" was an umbrella term used for a myriad of different meanings, we don't have to contextualise its timeline. Rather than that, we can jump straight to Mark Fisher's defining work, "Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?", published in 2009. In it, Fisher defines it as "the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it". Putting it in simpler terms, it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

With capital realism, Fisher no longer talks just about the influence of capitalism at a socio-economic level, but also how it bled into the cultural and psychological spheres (scary!!!!!!!). All of this culminates in apolitical attitude towards capitalism: since we can't escape the system because things are like this, all we can do, realistically, is to adapt to it and try to minimise its effects instead of actually fighting them.

Having that in mind, I ask you guys: can you imagine the demise of F1? We often hear about it separating from the FIA, but similarly to capitalist realism, Formula 1 losing its world championship status (as close to its end of the world as it gets) feels more likely that a massive restructuring of the category or it shutting down for good. Similarly, fans have adopted an "it is what it is" point of view towards the sport as we all know what FOM and the FIA are like and we don't have, supposedly, the power to change anything, we just have to suck on whatever they propose to us.

Stefano Domenicali (FOM CEO) and Mohammed bin Sulayem (president of the FIA), joined in unholy matrimony

Now, capitalist realism didn't show up out of the blue. According to Fisher, neoliberalism was the mother of capitalist realism. This is because its campaign in the 80s and 90s with regan and maggie thatcher (names in lowercase because I don't respect them) was successful in gaslighting people into thinking that it wasn't necessarily perfect, but it was the only approach of government rooted in reality. Once it was implemented, the next step was to consolidate it, which happened thanks to two factors: the end of the soviet union and the transition to post-fordism. I know this seems crackheaded and with no relation to F1, but give me a chance pls!

Trigger warning: the many faces of neoliberalism

During the Cold War, there was a concrete antagonist to capitalism in the shape of the USSR*. With its demise, this role of a real opposition to it was completely obliterated, allowing for capitalism to expand however it pleased without anything to contest it. Similarly, maybe F1's biggest triumph in these last two decades - and this is why I said at the top that Bernie wasn't shit and the problem about late stage F1 had its roots further back - is that it successfully managed to free itself from the sole category that threatened its popularity: Indy Car.

*note: by stating this, there is absolutely no value judgement. the statement is not about the ussr being a problematic fave or a communist hell that needed to be abolished. it was just a physical entity that asserted itself as a possible alternative to capitalism. by its physical existence, it allowed for public consciousness to understand that, if the ussr was a possible alternative to capitalism, then there might as well be plenty of others. kindly remember that the ussr was quite oppressive and countless people and countries suffered on their hands, while also understanding that for this particular purpose, it did its job.

2. The IndyCar Situation

The IndyCar World Series as we know it was established in 1979, with CART (Championship Auto Racing Teams) as the governing body behind it. The similarities between F1 and IndyCar went beyond the cars (although the Indys were a tad less sophisticated than F1s): the creation of CART itself was based on Bernie's FOCA model (television rights, sponsorships, etc).

IndyCar's Indianapolis 500, 1992. Not bad in terms of attendance!

From the 80s, its popularity grew in America, with them even inheriting venues that originally held grand prix, like Long Beach. Still, no one was really intimidated by them as F1's presence in the US, albeit messy with several different events attempted, was constant during that period. However, shit went down in the next decade, when Formula 1 was shut down by the organisers of the US Grand Prix at Phoenix right in 1991. From that point, it would take 9 years for F1 to get back, at the heart of American racing, Indianapolis. Hold this information.

Once F1 disappeared from 'Murica, IndyCar thrived, at least for a while. CART had managed to join ACCUS (Automobile Competition Committee for the United States), who are affiliated to the FIA, which made it possible for drivers to race in Indy without losing their super licenses. Soon, there was a migration from foreign drivers to IndyCar, and that included people from F1, such as Emerson Fittipaldi. Once that happened, the sky became the limit for Indy and they started to race outside of the US. By 1993, Nigel Mansell had dropped F1 after a rift with Williams and decided to go drive for Newman/Haas at IndyCar instead.

Nigel Mansell and teammate Mario Andretti. Oh how I want Nigel, ngl.

note: the motherfucker demolished his competition, won IndyCar and is still the only person to be, technically, F1 and IndyCar champion at the same time.

At this point, some people will say Bernie Ecclestone wasn't bothered, but he hadn't even gotten over losing the Long Beach GP to CART back in 84. You know Bernie, I know Bernie, we all know Bernie. HE WAS MAD!!!! At the same time, NASCAR was rising in popularity like never before, causing a certain rivalry between the categories over who would take over the hearts of all the petrol head americans.

Enter Tony George, then head of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and chairman at CART. Tony believed that CART was getting lost in the game and ignoring Motorsport Traditions by racing in venues that weren't ovals. Since Georgy was annoying as fuck, CART booted him from the board of directors, which was one of the most stupid decisions given that he owned the track that literally gave the name to their championship. IndyCar's whole thing was the Indianapolis 500, right? "So fuck you too," Tony George cried while being thrown away from the CART offices by security "You don't want me? Then you don't get to race the Indy 500 anymore!".

Well, it didn't happen exactly like that. Instead, Tony George created a separate category called Indy Racing League that would be dedicated exclusively to ovals and get to be the owner of the Indy 500 from 96 onwards. The original IndyCar series changed its name to CART and Indy racing in America became fractured. Just to be clear, IRL did allow an 8 CART car limit to compete at Indy 500, but CART decided to boycott the event instead. This worked for some time, and CART still managed to make do with their reserves (they even offered to buy F1 in 1998) but soon these started to dry out as sponsors dropped the series and teams started breaking the boycott to race in Indy 500, eventually by the 2000s completely defecting to IRL. In 2004, CART filed for bankruptcy and got bought out, living as a zombie series until 2008 when IRL bought it and reunified them. At this point, the damage was done as NASCAR had taken over in popularity and F1 was back since 2000, racing the IMS.

Tony and Bernie, BFFs 5eva

Oh yeah, haven't you heard? 1998 also marked the year where it was announced by Bernie that F1 would come back to the United States, racing at the holy land of Indianapolis herself. Sounds sketchy? You're not the one to think that, as both Jacques Villeneuve (1995 IndyCar champion 1995) and Gordon Kirby (journalist, US correspondent for Autosport 1973-2004) have stated that Bernald, alongside NASCAR boss Bill France, basically whispered sweet nothings in Tony George's ear to get him to act a fool. Although it took several more years for F1 to finally sink its teeth into the United States in an effective manner, the main competition was out before they could even expand further.

It was up to Formula 1 then to expand without anything to stop it, as we can see in the many calendar changes we've had over the years. Even further, since there is no antagonist, this has also allowed F1 to turn its sights to the feeder system, creating its own "preferred" path that, with the super license points system basically make it harder for drivers who are outside of the F1 feeder series bubble to make it to F1 (as we've even seen recently with Colton Herta). Same thing is happening to the W Series, which for lack of funds wasn't able to finish their 2022 season even though they were promoted to an F1 support championship, racing. While Formula 1 did not offer to help them or tried to integrate them properly in the feeder series ladder, they have just recently announced F1 Academy, their own initiative for female drivers, placed officially just under Formula 3 with a direct link. That's great for the female drivers, but incredibly fucked up at the same time.

3. Was There Ever Class Consciousness in F1?

Yeah, so the whole lack of opposition didn't help on an external basis, but there is also an internal factor that cannot be ignored and it's linked to post-Fordist work structure. In Capitalist Realism, Mark Fisher cites a study by Richard Sennett called "The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism". In it, Sennett states:

"Where formerly workers could acquire a single set of skills and expect to progress upwards through a rigid organizational hierarchy, now they are required to periodically re-skill as they move from institution to institution, from role to role. As the organization of work is decentralized, with lateral networks replacing pyramidal hierarchies, a premium is put on ‘flexibility’.[...] This flexibility was defined by a deregulation of Capital and labor, with the workforce being casualized (with an increasing number of workers employed on a temporary basis), and outsourced."

Translating this, instead of becoming a specialist on something, you become a jack of all trades without any job stability. In the F1 world, this is seen not only in drivers changing teams and getting sacked of the category altogether, but also in the poaching of talent between teams and the frequent internal restructurations. Ian Neves says that post-Fordism was key in the establishment of capital realism because its natural consequence is the individualisation of work, which leads to the weakening of trade unions and ultimately, the mining of class consciousness.

As one would expect, there isn't a trade union that looks after all F1 workers. Instead, most of the engineers, mechanics and other staff are subject to the unions of the countries the factories are located at (for instance, Alpine is protected by the "collective convention of metallurgical engineers and workers").Therefore, as much as the personnel is against work conditions and calendar expansion, it's much more difficult for them to unite and rally against it as they have been segmented.

Ferrari team photo, 2022. Together, but divided nevertheless

This is particularly fucky when you consider the existence of the GPDA. The Grand Prix Drivers' Association is a trade union that, historically, has made itself heard in delicate situations where drivers needed to claim their rights and fight for their safety. Unfortunately, this comes with a side effect that reinforces a difference between drivers from the rest of the F1 crew. While they are absolutely right and the GPDA should exist as a trade union regardless of the existence of a larger one encompassing all workers, the fact is that the illusion that drivers are in the status quo of the sport, and not subject to it, remains.

Look, as much as they are in a privileged spot and reap all its benefits, the fact is they do not own the cars they run - well, at least not most of the time [stares at the Strolls]. They still rely on the teams that own the structure and the backing of sponsors, that is, the means of production, to work. Most of the time, when they retire from F1, they still tend to race in other categories or find side quests. While I have no doubt that drivers are super passionate for racing and you can't completely quit it, how much are we sure that this is also not partially motivated by the desire to make sure they are still able to afford the lifestyle they had as Formula 1 drivers? Marx was clear, baby, the drivers are as much the proletariat as anyone else. By separating them from the rest of the structure and maintaining the post-fordist work structure for the rest of the teams, class consciousness inside the paddock is close to none and it helps to consolidate F1's status as an almighty being.

4. The Illusion of Abu Dhabi

Here's the thing: if "realism" is used as an argument for maintenance of the current state of affairs, by conforming to what's in theory "realistic", then the best way to threaten it, according to Fisher, is if you manage to expose the cracks of said "realism". This should be able to work because, get this, there is a difference between what's Real and what's reality.

Again, sorry but I'm gonna get theoretical here. However, when you consider that so much of what we're talking about here directly relates to a psychological sphere, you can't not add some psychiatric theory into this. When you look at it from the point of view of Jacques Lacan (French psychiatrist who spit some bars), reality is constituted not of what's actually Real, but of social conventions and symbolism. The Real itself is unrepresentable and even traumatic at times, and you can only perceive it when you look at the inconsistencies of reality, that aims to suppress it! What the fuck!!!!

It's super easy, you just have to show that the whole framework is inconsistent!

Except it never works that way.

Going back AGAIN to capitalist realism, take a look at the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. I don't understand much about the mechanisms of the economy (and I am right not to, as this is all made up by weird people), but even I know that the Lehman Brothers collapse resulted in a worldwide clusterfuck that saw many lose their lifetime of savings. After that point, the ripple effect was so severe that companies were falling like flies and it was up to State interventions to halt things. Maybe the greatest example of late stage capitalism, this was the key point to explicit the greatest contradiction of neoliberalism: they sell themselves as a system above the State, however they needed the State to save it, which means they don't really want to abolish State, just to occupy it to their own desires.

The absurd numbers of the financial crisis in the US.

So, you have your reality cracked, you can look at the Real and see the inconsistencies of capitalism laid bare in front of all of us. This should have been enough for neoliberalism/capitalism to go out of style completely right? As you can see if you look out the window, however, we're still living in a capitalist society. Then what happened? The crises ended up reinforcing the status of capitalism precisely through the bank bail-outs as the States doubled down on the whole "realistic" thing because they had no alternative and saw these companies as "too big to fail". What we see today, then, is an economical model that clearly fallible, yet remains because it's perceived as a default. Mark's words, not mine.

But this is in the field of Capital. It's not like, in the F1 bubble, anything of the genre has ever happened.

Yup.

I guess you could say there have been moments in Formula 1 that came close to exposing these inconsistencies but didn't, like crashgate, spygate or the whole 1989 championship debacle. Still, these didn't expose anything because:

1) F1 didn't sell itself at the time of those events the same way it does now

2) All of these could be easily pinned to individuals instead of the whole structure of F1 itself - even Senna put 1989 on the back of Balestre only, instead of the entire FIA.

Abu Dhabi, however, wasn't looked at the same way given that it's still such a controversial topic and was the point of rupture to many fans with the category.This is because the series of events that led to Abu Dhabi, touted as the biggest showdown since 1974 and followed it afterwards managed to create the circumstances to break the veil between the reality (F1 as the greatest, most spontaneous motorsport modality in the world) and showed the Real (the newfound need to push narratives, consequence of the transition from sport to entertainment encouraged by Liberty Media ran-FOM, enabled by the FIA and accelerated by Drive to Survive).

The animosity between TeamLH and the Orange Army lingers to this day. However, regardless of its peak at the time, the controversy of the actions taken at the Grand Prix did not provoke just an outcry amongst Hamilton fans, but to a good chunk of neutral parties as well. We're still here though, so how did Formula 1 manage to escape from it? Simple, they also reinforced their position by the immediate actions of the FIA, as Jean Todt demanded a review of what happened. In its swiftness to respond, the World Motor Sport Council, that is, the one institution that could bail-out F1, states they would take action to understand what happened and avoid any problems in the next season.

The bail-out, in this sense, isn't monetary, but institutional as they place their focus on the "relevant parties" instead of the major structure itself. From their side, FOM avoided taking responsibility for their role, as Domenecali said right after that "We have already spoken with the president [Mohammed bin Sulayem, who had just assumed his role] . We talked about the priorities he will have to face, and there are many.". This landed as well, as the common reaction was to demand the FIA changes and penalties, blaming Michael Masi for "trying to balance the need for spectacle with the rulebook" instead of addressing the root causes of the need for spectacle itself.

Masi had it coming, but he sure made it easy from the FIA and FOM

In that sense, the reinforcement also comes in the sense of self-criticism, since it leads to something called "interpassivity", a concept developed by Robert Pfaller: when the actors in Formula 1 take it to themselves to discuss and criticise the sport themselves, they are performing our opposite stance for the fans, who then are able to continue to consume it as they please. This is possible as well because we take a "cynical distance" from the sport and thus become passive spectators. This way, as long as we say to ourselves "oh, F1 is rotten nowadays", that's all we need as a cop-out to keep watching it. This is not just us being hypocrites, per se, but legit one of capitalist ideology as Zizek puts it that we overvalue our internal beliefs in detriment of our external actions - literally the "there is no ethical consumption in capitalism" of it all. It's inevitable we replicate this behaviour when it comes to watching Formula 1.

So, once we get all of the way, the question remains: is there anything that can be done to truly change Formula 1? It's not just a matter of direct action, as what we're talking about here is a result of a concealed mulit-layered internal organisation that acts on an abstract level. As much as we can bitch and moan, fan protests and team appeals are direct action and thus, easily countered by the FOM/FIA complex. Hell, these two fight all the time and yet any crisis is easily fixed, as just the mere possibility of F1 separating from the FIA was enough to get bin Sulayem to step away from day to day administration. On one hand, FOM doesn't want to truly separate from the FIA, they just want to occupy the FIA themselves. On the other hand, the FIA needs F1 to stay so that they can continue to assert themselves as the big dawgs in motorsports. This is how they manage to walk hand in hand and compromise over their own interests instead of the interests of the sport itself.

Maybe, this triumph of FOM is directly related to the biggest weapon of capital realism: the individualisation of the being, placing their responsibility and expectations solely on the self instead of the greater structure. This can be seen in situations such as the climate change approach, focused way more on our need to recycle than the large corporations' impact on the environment. Another example is the approach of mental health, that most of the times places on your brain alone the responsibility for your disorders instead of considering as well the influence of social conditions.

In the context of F1, the individualisation is exacerbated by the nature of the competition. Everyone is fighting for their own interests, and in a way, that has always been the goal. Still, the excessive encouragement of rivalries and toxicity - not only in the fandom, but in the paddock itself - serves the role of segmentation very well and helps FOM to continue pushing through F1 as they please. It all boils down to the lack of class consciousness between ALL the personnel, who could adopt strategic approaches that directly affect FOM's directives, turning what was abstract into a concrete issue and thus making it possible to take direct action. (tbh many of these issues can be addressed if capitalism itself is fought but then again, the impact of that on the vroom vrooms can be quite extreme and maybe that's asking too much of a sport dominated by car manufacturers and such).

In the role of fans, we both reflect the inner machinations of Formula 1 and feed it. Thus, the same way that all the staff should unite, so should we. While when it comes to track action many of us are rivals, and some of the drivers legit make it hard to stand with them, fact is the real enemy at the current date is FOM - even if Liberty Media sells it, the next administration will most likely double down on their approach. Our best hope isn't to boycott F1, but to encourage the union of its staff and show that while we welcome the technical evolutions, the main goal must be preserved. Food for thought, really. In the meantime, thank you for surviving till the end! As always, screw you guys, I'm going home!

In the role of fans, we both reflect the inner machinations of Formula 1 and feed it. Thus, the same way that all the staff should unite, so should we. While when it comes to track action many of us are rivals, and some of the drivers legit make it hard to stand with them, fact is the real enemy at the current date is FOM - even if Liberty Media sells it, the next administration will most likely double down on their approach. They were the ones that created the conditions for Abu Dhabi to happen, they are the ones that benefit the most from the rifts. Our best hope isn't to boycott F1, but to encourage the union of its staff and show that while we welcome the technical evolutions, the main goal must be preserved. Food for thought, really. In the meantime, thank you for surviving till the end! As always, screw you guys, I'm going home!

#hyperfixation corner #late stage capitalism #capitalist realism #cheers you guys good luck to those who read it #most normal ana formulinos write-up moment

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buffyspeak · 11 months

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i know it’s been said, but what’s so tragic about prim is that she really was always completely doomed by the narrative. because whether katniss survived the games or not, her taking prim’s place still only protected her for one year. she was twelve. everyone’s eligible for the games until the age of eighteen. prim’s name was drawn, but she wasn’t a victor, which i assume means she would be fair game to make a tribute down the line. imagine a world where katniss died during the 74th games and prim had to take out tesserae to help feed herself and her mother. her chances of being reaped again become increasingly likely then. not to mention, while i’m a full advocate that prim’s name being drawn during the first games was not planned by anyone and just a really unfortunate and unlikely but fully possible stroke of bad luck - i do believe it’s implied numerous times that there have been instances of the reapings being rigged. the third quarter quell is bascially proof of that. and it’s not hard to imagine that after the publicity of katniss volunteering for her, the capital would consider it really good storytelling for prim to be reaped. as johanna said, the capital citizens adored prim, so maybe they would have waited a few years until prim was older and seemed to have somewhat more of a chance, but i still fully believe they would do it. the capital has favorites, but they also get bored. their adoration is not unconditional or permanent. hell, in a world where katniss lived but the revolution didn’t happen, they’d probably wait for katniss to age out of the games before reaping prim. they might even wait a few years after that - until prim was sixteen, the same age katniss was during her games. because of the symbolism of it all. there would be a whole special montage on the Caesar Flickerman Show. then vs now. katniss volunteering for her sister and prim screaming out for her. katniss on her victory tour, prim’s interviews during the 74th games. prim’s name getting drawn, capital fans oohing and ahing as they watch the little girl they remember “ “ “ all grown up “ “ “ and being prepared for the slaughter. katniss being too old to save her this time and crying out for her in a tragic parallel to the 74th reaping. a sister she could save until she couldn’t. the capital let her save her sister once, but the whole point of the games is to exert power over the districts. you want rebellion? you want the way things were before? we’ll show you what violence and war look like, wrapped up in a neat little package. we can take your children to do it. we’re going to take your children to do it. you can’t stop us. and what better way to show that message and exert that control than to once again reap the poor little girl the whole of panem thought katniss saved?

the story was never going to end any other way. revolution or not.

#the hunger games #thg meta #kinda #is this a fic? it might be a fic #primrose everdeen #katniss everdeen #thg headcanons #i'm feeling an emotion btw #long post //

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escapism-from-the-real-world · 4 months

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The society within the hunger games has been analyzed and compared to our society many times

Let’s do another one

I think something that’s at the forefront of my mind, especially with the genocide going on in Palestine/Gaza/Congo/Sudan/heaven knows so many more places is how we so easily let murder and genocide slide

And I don’t mean we’re making bets and shouting for bloodshed like the capital did in the books (though, from what I’ve seen, the IDF, Israeli government, and many more are). We protest, we sign petitions, donate to the cause, call and email are representatives, but short of causing an actual uprising and stopping the whole genocide by baring teeth and dripping blood, I doubt we’ll stop them from proceeding with it.

Because the vote has been made, the lines have been drawn and the US government has made it clear that this is something they are willing to do.

Over

And over

And over again

In their own sick form of the hunger games

But instead of letting it be watched from our tv, where we can document and criticize their actions in 4K, where we can openly point in disgust, revolt in a publicly agreed opinion that this is wrong, instead if a slaughter where we can see just how human those people are, how many humans we really are killing

They hide behind walls and lies and manipulative words that guide your attention elsewhere. They murder and bomb and kill and destroy without a single bit of it entering your life in any way. Well, most of it anyway.

(Look up the massacres and genocides the US has been a part of, has funded. It’s there, they just don’t want you to find it.)

In the Hunger Games, everything is so obviously meticulously planned out and purposefully done so we, the audience, can see it, call out the injustice, gasp in horror as children are killed, as they kill each other, and we wonder how can they bot do something about this? Don’t they know it’s wrong? Inhumane? So past what you thought a human was capable of.

Little do we know it happens in real life too, it’s just a little more hidden, a little more tricky to line out, a little more innocent looking, but the intent is the same.

We live in a subtle, almost boring very of a dystopian society. The rich are richer than ever, the poor work long and hard for not even a fraction of the same riches. We notice, we grovel about it, we complain, but ultimately, what do you do? Vote in another bastard to replace the last? Protest against a law that has already been passed in the hearts of our government? Overthrow the government for another?

No, you have kids to feed, siblings to take care of, people and things to be selfish about.

People are slaughtered senselessly everyday and we don’t even know it or don’t even blink at it or maybe so stunned with the reality of the world you don’t know what to do or so filled with rage all you want to do is rebel

Kill a tyrant

What violent thoughts for a seventeen year old to have

But will you? Revolt and kick and scream? Set ablaze to the country you may call home? To deny all the falsehoods of strength and patriotism and freedom that hold our beliefs in this country and actually make a change?

We don’t have a Katniss to start our revolution. We don’t have a game to look down on for killing our kids. We don’t have an obvious target to kill for all our troubles.

We only have each other, sharing stories and advice and truth in our little corners of the internet. We only have wars and genocides that kill more than twenty four and have so many following the deaths of miners, poor families, and victims of circumstance alike. Buried. Starved. Shot without a second thought. We have tyrants upon tyrants, greater evil upon greater evil, fighting for the chance to be game maker this year while still following the same old tune.

That’s what they’re counting on, at least. For us ti be at each other’s throats, for us to wallow in despair, for us to be selfish and heartbroken but still apathetic enough not to care, not to do something about it.

I say it’s time we start our fucking rebellion and get someone to shoot all those fuckers with an arrow.

Because whether we like it or not, our Hunger Games have begun and everyone is on the chopping block.

It can’t just be some of us either, we see how it works out in the Hunger Games. It has to be all of us, together, standing up against these insane shows of disregard for human life. If we can get everyone on board, they couldn’t stop us if they tried.

I mean, that’s why they separated the districts in the first place, right? We have too much power together.

And together they will fall.

Free Palestine. Free Congo. Free Sudan. Free every single place they’ve turned into a district.

#free palestine #palestine #free gaza #free sudan #free congo #the hunger games #book analysis #reall life comparisons #i needed to get this out of my system #fuck israel #fuck america #fuck the dystopian society we live in

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sokkastyles · 8 months

Note

Hi,

Hope you are doing well. Thank you for the previous response on TSR.

I was thinking about the early part of book 3, when Zuko returned to the Fire Nation. He was acting like a prince, but was he feeling confused on the inside that while he should be happy, he feels like a stranger to home, in addition to understanding that he made the wrong decision in the season 2 finale? Because, he has seen how the other nations view the Fire Nation, and after all that time away, along with the truths he has been exposed to, it could probably lead to alienation from his nation to some extent.

I would like your thoughts on this.

Oh, absolutely. He feels like a stranger not just because he realizes how empty of the love he wants his family actually is, but because he's changed so much through experiencing what life is like in the other nations and coming to the realization that fire nation greatness is a lie.

That's shown in the premiere of book three when he looks uncomfortable while being presented as the crown prince while a crowd cheers for him. Of course, part of the reason he looks uncomfortable is because he feels like he doesn't deserve praise for killing Aang since it's a lie, and part of it is also betraying Iroh, but there's also that shot of the FN armies while Zuko looks on forlornly on the balcony which is meant to tell us how Zuko is realizing what the FN really is.

This? Is nazi imagery. It's not subtle, it's a direct reference to the nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will. You see this shot a lot in science fiction shows because it's a way to instantly convey that the evil empire is Evil with a capital E.

It's also a direct contrast to the end of book three with Zuko being crowned, and looking on triumphant to a crowd of people from all the nations with Aang at his side to show unity and the end of fascism.

We also see Zuko feeling alienated by being offered the perks of being prince, because he's no longer used to being pampered and has also experienced how the other nations have suffered during the war. We see him refusing being offered things by servants or palanquin rides. Specifically the palanquin ride he doesn't understand the need for because it's only a short walk. Contrast this to Zuko in book two getting frustrated because he didn't know how to find food for himself in the wilderness.

Another scene that jumps out at me that shows Zuko's alienation from the FN is the war meeting he attends. He's stiff and silent in part because of being triggered by having to sit in another war meeting, but he also is aware of how he cannot relate at all to the discussion these people are having about how best to subjugate the Earth Kingdom people. He makes a comment in praise of the EK people which is completely misunderstood, and this also highlights how his experiences have changed him, to the point where these men who are so removed from the suffering of the other nations don't even understand what he means and Ozai takes his comment about the strength of the Earth Kingdom people as another opportunity to commit atrocities against them.

Another scene that comes to mind is in "The Beach," the way he gets frustrated at the party because he can't relate to being around these rich FN kids, and this is also one reason he blows up at Mai. I keep saying this but the fact that he tells her she has no passion in response to her chastising him for being angry is a direct consequence of the fact that Zuko is feeling all these feelings and nobody else seems to care. Nobody else sees how wrong everything is, while Zuko's stuck at this party full of FN kids who think they're so important because of who their parents are, who look the way he might have looked if he didn't have a scar, getting food for his bored girlfriend, when he's experienced true starvation directly as a result of what his people did to the rest of the world.

Of course he's angry, of course he feels alienated from it. All of these things lead up to his eventual decision to leave it behind and join team Avatar.

#zuko #atla meta

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calisources · 6 months

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GAME OF THRONES: HISTORIES AND LORE - ROBERT'S REBELLION. all sentences are taken from a mini-web series of hbo's game of thrones with different characters narrating different aspects of the world. this specific sentence memes is made from various videos of perspectives of robert's rebellion. change pronouns, names and locations as seen fit. this is a long post.

By Robert Baratheon.

The crimes of House Targaryen were too heinous to go unanswered.

The noble houses of Baratheon, Stark and Arryn united to oppose and overthrow the line of the cursed Dragon Kings.

We tried to take Ashford Castle in the Reach but the Tyrell’s beat us back.

The Targaryen searched from house to house for Robert Baratheon.

The combined forces of Ned Stark and the Tully's swept into the city guards. What a day that was. It's now known as the Battle of the Bells.

It was his heir, Rhaegar who started the whole damn thing

Finally emerged from hiding in the south and assembled his own army to face us.

The battle that would decide the fate of the Seven Kingdoms occurred at the crossing of the Green Fork of the Trident River.

Rhaegar commanded the royal host which was some 40,000 strong.

Their forces were outnumbered by nearly 5000 men but that didn't matter, they were fresh that we were battle-hardened and had justice on our side.

The Stag and The Dragon right there in the fort of the river.

Ned Stark goes to the capital to face the Mad King and make him pay for his crimes.

By Viserys Targaryen.

The Targaryens, Blood of the Dragon and the last of old Valyria were loved by their subjects and admired far and wide as the greatest dynasty in the history of the Western world.

Three centuries of Targaryen rule was shattered by the usurper Robert Baratheon and his band of traitors.

House Baratheon owed its very existence to the Targaryen.

Was it not Aegon the dragon himself who elevated the bastard Orys Baratheon in the war of conquest?

There are some who dare to claim Robert and his allies had reason to rebel.

They say the crown prince stole the usurper's lady love. They say my father King Aerys murdered Rickard Stark and his son without just cause.

Whether these charges are true or not? It doesn’t matter if the dragon answers to no one.

Aerys' good name has been besmirched in the years since the Rebellion. He’s been called a dangerous madman, a monster, a tyrant that brought his tragic end upon himself.

My father was a victim of weaklings in his Council, lackwits who failed him in his hour of need and let the rebellion spin out of control.

At the Battle of the Trident, it was there the valiant Rhaegar met Robert in single combat but the gods betrayed him, and he perished by the usurper’s hand.

The Battle of the Trident seemed to herald the end of the Dragon kings.

I was the surviving heir to the throne.

He sent me to the island fortress of Dragonstone along with my mother Queen Rhaella who was great with child.

King Aerys Targaryen prepared to defend his throne to the bitter end.

By Oberyn Martell.

House Martell could have waged war until the end of days.

His royal parents had not produced a sister for him to wait, so he had to look elsewhere for a princess and there was only one in Westeros. Elia of house Martell.

She was not the most beautiful woman in the world or even in Dorne but rare for a woman from our land.

Her flower came with no thorns. She was kind and clever with a gentle heart.

I loved her, I feared for her for years I fended off lesser men from her but when Rhaegar came even I failed.

He was beautiful and the crown prince of the Seven Kingdoms and our mother had worked so hard to secure the match.

They were wed and he took her from her home from those who loved her and would die for her and locked her in his red keep.

She bore him a daughter and a son though, each almost cost her her life.

Elia loved Rhaegar, she obeyed him and he chose to steal away Lyanna Stark.

A pale northern girl whose veins ran with ice like all her people.

instead of disciplining his faithless son, King Aerys executed the Starks when they came seeking justice.

Even in his madness he knew that no true Dornishmen would ever take up arms against our beloved princess and that we would fight to the death.

Prince Rhaegar, who was too slow or too arrogant for Robert's Warhammer.

Lord Tywin's Army sacked his friend's city while Lord Tywin's son murdered the king he'd sworn to protect.

War is terrible and men must become terrible to wage it.

Lord Tywin's dog Ser Gregor Clegane the mountain, made Elia watch as he murdered her daughter and dashed her infant son's head against a wall.

With her baby's blood still on his hands he raped my sister and murdered her.

By Catelyn Tully/Stark.

Brandon Stark of Winterfell sought and won my hand.

Brandon was heir to the north and a suitable match for a daughter of house Tully.

Brandon was wild and terrifying, never far from laughter or trouble.

I loved him with all the fire of her first passion.

Prince Rhaegar Targaryen abducted Brandon's sister Lyanna. Hot-blooded as always, Brandon immediately rode for King's Landing to demand justice.

Brandon's younger brother, a man whom I had never met though of whom none spoke ill or spoke anything at all.

I spent the war by the windows waiting for a raven to hear if my son would grow up fatherless or at all. We knew the price of defeat.

When he came home to me he could not meet my eyes. I saw the reason by his side.

Many men have bastards, I know, and under the strain of war any man no matter how honorable may forsake his vows for a night of warmth that he may never know again.

Ned Stark was not built like other men. His northern honor would not let him sequester his shame in some distant holdfast.

These bitter memories are sweet now they are all I have left of my Ned.

The Starks are of the North and like the snows of winter when they come south they melt away.

By Ser Jaime Lannister.

Kingslayer. A word every man and woman in Westeros spits at me, though many can't even name the king I slayed.

I understand to them, I'm a symbol of everything they'll never have and a warning that'll

never apply.

When a dog goes mad we put it down. Why not a King?

I was never supposed to be on the Kingsguard.

Oh as a boy I dreamed of the white cloak like all boys.

If Tywin Lannister forbade the tides, the waves would cease.

She could arrange for the king to raise me to the Kingsguard so I could stay in the city with her.

Is it a rock you want or me? Come morning she had my consent.

I would join the Kingsguard for her. I would force my lands and title for her. I would forsake our family for her.

Everything started to fall apart at Harrenhal.

King Aerys made a great show of my investiture.

I admit despite my father's anger I was happy and foolish.

He commanded me to return to the Red Keep to guard the Queen and little Prince Viserys.

The Mad King had chosen me to spite my father and steal his heir. I wanted to rip off the white cloak but it was too late.

I kept the King's secrets when his Pyromancer said caches of wildfire beneath King's Landing.

It fell to me to hold the red keep.

Royal Command, bring me your father's head if you were no traitor.

Burn them, burn them all he kept muttering.

As I approached the throne, sanity flashed behind the King's eyes for a moment just long enough to read the look in mine.

He turned and ran, a single thrust was all it took to end the greatest dynasty the world had ever seen.

The last dragon king squealed like a pig and shat himself so easily. I thought a king should die harder than this.

I knew at once when I saw the way they looked at me I would be blamed.

I commanded them to announce that the Mad King was dead and to spare all those who yielded

They asked me if they should proclaim a new king as well. I knew what they meant. Would it be my father or Robert Baratheon? or maybe the charred verse

Proclaim who you bloody well like

I climbed the steps of the Iron Throne and sat on it with my sword.

#rp meme #sentences memes #meme call #roleplay memes #sentence meme #( cali meme. )#rp memes #rp prompt #rp musings #roleplay prompt #roleplay meme #got meme #game of thrones memes #i tried to get the more distinct perspectives of the war #so targaryens baratheons tully/stark martells #and jaime #i know this is so long damn

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probablyasocialecologist · 8 months

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Anti-degrowthers reject and misrepresent, often deliberately, the views of degrowth thinkers to preserve, in ideology if not reality, human domination of nature; to preserve in other words, the current way of life, red in tooth and claw, forged by the notion nature, somehow separate from humanity, must be contained as if the natural world in which we are embedded is a Cold War adversary. When the term, sustainability, is used by this group, it is only to present the concept, as John Gray stated, of a sustainable more. In the name of Marx, the Prometheans discard the old man’s most potent tool, dialectical materialism, which should inspire one to look out the window to see our actually existing condition, to sell us a vision of life as usual, only more so. They claim to look boldly into the future but are caught in a forever 1950 when American capitalism gazed upon the world and saw only resources. As a point of comparison with Phillips’ Silicon Valley-esque call to “transcend limits”, consider J.B. Foster’s definition of degrowth, presented in an essay titled “Planned Degrowth: Ecosocialism and Sustainable Human Development” the introduction to a series published in Monthly Review (Volume 75, Number 3 (July-August 2023): “The word degrowth stands for a family of political-economic approaches that, in the face of today’s accelerating planetary ecological crisis, reject unlimited, exponential economic growth as the definition of human progress. To abandon economic growth in wealthy societies means to shift to zero net capital formation. With continual technological development and the enhancement of human capabilities, mere replacement investment is able to promote steady qualitative advancements in production in mature industrial societies, while eliminating exploitative labor conditions and reducing working hours.” To paraphrase John Duncan, and contrary to the tireless, and tiresome, efforts of the Prometheans to apply GDP and corporate growth projection thinking to Marxist methods, degrowth is not austerity (which is, after all, a capitalist technique, imposed to preserve profit). It is, simply, an acknowledgement of our material conditions; an effort to imagine, and hopefully shape, a world beyond ‘growth’ as defined by capitalism.

#degrowth #ecosocialism

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queer-geordie-nerd · 4 months

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A nuanced and insightful interview with Mira from November 1996, in the middle of filming S4 of Babylon 5 - it touches on her war time experiences in Yugoslavia and the events that drove her from her home, and the similarities between her own life and that of Delenn. Once again, I am bowled over by the incredible integrity and courage she possessed:

STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND

It's the one subject that pains Mira Furlan to discuss. The one subject that invades her privacy. The one subject that so violates her very soul.

And yet, it's the one subject that can't be avoided.

Nearly five years to the day of this interview, Furlan left her homeland of Yugoslavia, which was about to be engulfed in a bloody and horrific civil war. Ethnic passions restrained by decades of Communist rule had been unleashed by its collapse. Fascistic Nationalists arose to take its place, many of them former Communists. In their lust for power, they tore apart a nation of disparate republics and peoples that had once been a dream of poets, intellectuals and writers.

As one of Yugoslavia's most prestigious actors, Furlan risked her life and fortune to perform in cities on both sides, in Croatia and in Serbia. She hoped that she could be a bridge of unity, a symbol of pacifism, a clarion warning what terrible price their country would pay for unleashing the war their leaders were about to start.

Except for her husband, Goran Gajic, no one supported her.

Her colleagues abandoned her. Nationalist demagogues threatened to have her killed. Anonymous death threats were left on her answering machine.

She could not go silently. Before she left Yugoslavia, Furlan picked up her pen and wrote a farewell letter to her country. The letter was published a few days later in Zagreb (the capital of Croatia) and Belgrade (the capital of Serbia), cities on opposite sides of the coming war. It began:

“I hereby wish to thank my co-citizens who have joined so unreservedly in this small, marginal and apparently not particularly significant campaign against me. Although marginal, it will change and mark my whole life. Which is, of course, totally irrelevant in the context of the death, destruction, devastation and bloodchilling crimes within which our life now goes on.

This is happening, however, to the one and only life I have. It seems that I've been chosen for some reason to be the filthy rag everyone uses to wipe the mud off their shoes. I am far too desperate to embark on a series of public polemics in the papers. I do, however, feel that I owe myself and my city at least a few words. Like at the end of some clumsy, painful love story, when you keep wanting, wrongly, to explain something more, even though you know at the bottom of your heart that words are wasted; there is no one left to hear them. It is over.”

In Yugoslavia, Furlan was a leading actress of film, television and stage. She appeared in over 25 films, and won two Golden Arenas for Best Actress, their equivalent of the Oscar. Among her acclaimed theatrical roles were Ophelia in Hamlet, Celimene in The Misanthrope, and the title role in Euripides' Helen.

Under socialist rule, the arts were state-funded. "Your star status didn't mean that you were making money. But there were other advantages. Money was not the main obsession. The absence of money gave you a certain degree of creative freedom. We had all the time in the world. Movies were shot forever. Theatre plays were rehearsed forever. I personally was bored with that; things were not quick enough for me. But you had the luxury of having time to explore, to enjoy the creative process. These were the few advantages of living in socialism."

The notion of "freedom" in the arts in a socialist country may come as a surprise to Americans raised on Cold War propaganda asserting the opposite. "With my generation, the Communists were dying off," Furlan said. "Their grip on the artists' community was not as strong as after the war (World War II), when you could be in prison for just saying the wrong sentence. So we didn't feel it. I grew up totally despising them - the so-called them - and not having anything to do with them. And they left me alone. So there was relative freedom. Theatre was free because no one cared, basically. It was so marginal to the cause of the regime that people were left to do what they wanted. Film was much more dangerous, thus much more controlled."

That started to change when the Nationalists came to power. "The Yugoslav Communists didn't have the force that these new Nationalists now have, because these new leaders feel that the world is starting from them. They're creating new realities, new history, new language, new values. There's always this passion in the beginning; as a citizen, you don't want to be touched by that passion, because it can cost you your life."

Life in the former Yugoslavia was a political lifestyle largely unknown to Americans. "It was a double life. People had their own private thoughts. Publicly, they behaved as was prescribed; the majority were members of the Communist Party. Opportunism ruled. I think all Eastern Europeans have that built in — no confidence in any government, in any politicians. But, a contradiction! When Communism collapsed, Nationalism was born out of the old Communism. Trained in opportunism, people easily converted from Communism to Nationalism. That's the irony of it. Nothing has changed. The same people, the same names. The same faces. They just converted, switched just like that. That's what's so ugly in that whole situation. You just watch it and cannot believe that people don't remember what they were saying just two months ago. They didn't learn anything. They actually jumped into the first trap, completely surrendering to those new Nationalist leaders that brought them only pain lsss and devastation."

“I have no other way of thinking. I cannot accept war as the only solution, I cannot force myself to hate, I cannot believe that weapons, killing, revenge, hatred, that such an accumulation of evil will ever solve anything. Each individual who personally accepts the war is in fact an accessory to the crime; must he not then take a part of the guilt for the war, a part of the responsibility?”

"Historically, there were all kinds of frustrations on all sides, among all the peoples of the former Yugoslavia. There was a general feeling that each of these peoples who lived together in the former Yugoslavia had been somehow abused by the others. And there was a lot of truth in that. Nationalism is always partly grounded in truth. The Nationalists' politics manipulated the existing anger and frustration of the people and put their emphasis on that, and that's how the war started. The new Nationalists, who were for the most part converted Communists, took all the media. Journalists, I think, and media in general, bear an incredible responsibility for what happened."

The Babylon 5 episode being filmed during this interview, "The Illusion of Truth," has some eerie parallels. An ISN news crew films a documentary on B5, only to use the footage in a propaganda film for President Clark's fascist regime. It's an allegory for how America was consumed by Senator Joe McCarthy's witch hunts in the 1950s. "Sometimes I'm so appalled by what Joe (Straczynski) knows. I happened to experience a witch hunt — as an object! — but it's nothing new. Old stuff."

Furlan drew the attention of the Nationalists after she travelled from her home in Zagreb, Croatia to Belgrade, Serbia to perform at the annual BITEF Festival. BITEF was an international theatre event attended by actors from across Europe. She believed that her participation was a statement that her profession should not be drawn into supporting any political or national ideas. She felt it was her responsibility to establish bridges and ties, "for the sake of something that would outlive this war and this hatred which is so foreign to me," she wrote at the time. But the political leaders in Croatia were furious with her — and targeted her as an example of what would happen to others who chose the same path. Fearful for their careers, if not for their lives, and perhaps even sympathetic of the Nationalist cause, none of her colleagues spoke up to defend her.

“I think, I know and I feel that it is my duty, the duty of our profession, to build bridges. To never give up on cooperation and community. Not that national community. The Professional community. The human community. And even when things are at their very worst, as they are now, we must insist to our last breath on building and sustaining a bond between people. This is how we pledge to the future. And one day it will come . . .

I was willing and I would still be willing to undertake all and any efforts, if the hatred hadn't suddenly overwhelmed me with its horrendous ferocity, hatred welling from the city I was born in. I am appalled by the force and magnitude of that hatred, by its perfect unanimity, by the fact that there was absolutely nobody who could see my gesture as my defense of the integrity of the profession, as my attempt to defend at least one excellent theatre performance.”

"People's behavior is mainly built on fear. People think, 'Let them destroy her but just leave us alone.' When the media went crazy in Yugoslavia, I was a good example. I was a perfect target. I was a totally unprotected woman. Woman, that's very important. The war propaganda was constantly in search of 'internal enemies' just to homogenize the people, and to put fear in their heads so they could manipulate them. It's interesting that the majority of the 'internal enemies' were women. It's a very misogynist culture. It's a very misogynist world. I happen to be partly Jewish, and that came into the picture nicely. And I was never very obedient in my life and career. I left projects that I didn't really believe in. I made some unexpected choices in my work and in my life. All of that got wrapped up - Liberal. Feminist. Whore. Jew. Everything. The media combined it into this juicy bundle and served it to the people, who devoured it."

Abandoned by her friends and colleagues, and living with the threat of assassination, Furlan and her husband left Yugoslavia on November 15, 1991 for New York. She left behind the open letter explaining her departure.

“I am sending this letter into a void, into darkness, without an inkling of who will read it and how, or in how many different ways it will be misused or abused. Chances are it will serve as food for the eternally hungry propaganda beast. Perhaps someone with a pure heart will read it after all.

I will be grateful to that someone.”

American life and culture were a difficult adjustment, both in her profession and her personal life. Furlan has found the acting profession, indeed the entire entertainment industry, radically different from what she knew. Unlike in Yugoslavia, she found that diverse acting talents in the United States were rarely appreciated, much less rewarded.

"It's a European tradition among actors. Serious actors build their career in the theatre," Furlan said. "It's a completely different thing in America. The theatre is so marginal. The theatre doesn't matter because it's not mass culture. It's not the money-making machine. So yeah, I've learned that. We had a crash course in capitalism in the toughest spot. Hollywood is probably the toughest spot on Earth that way, the most cruel. It's a struggle, it's a fight. It's all about publicity and agents and names. That's what I really hate about being an actor here. I hated many things about acting in Yugoslavia. I was frustrated, and felt hopeless as an actor in socialism. I hated many things there, but I really miss concentrating on my work, which should be enough ideally, and it's not. Here, it's just a tiny part of everything else. Everything else is much more important, and you have to do so much of it yourself because no one else cares. Doing stuff that takes away your energy and your concentration and your precious time. These telephone conversations with people who have no interest in you, who don't have interest in anything but quick and easy money."

Babylon 5 is Furlan's first major television role in the United States; in fact it was one of her first auditions. It was also her introduction to science fiction. "I'm completely new to this whole thing. I knew the basics of science fiction literature — Bradbury, Clarke, just general culture — but there wasn't anything remotely similar to this. I was shocked when I went to my first convention."

The similarities between Furlan's life and Delenn's travails are striking. But it seems that it's no more than an amazing coincidence. According to Furlan, Straczynski didn't even know about her personal history when she was hired to play Delenn. "He surprises me so many times. And sometimes I feel as if he's written something directly for me. But he didn't know anything about me. Nothing. When the series started, we talked and he found out."

Furlan was an only child, raised among adults in a family of university professors. What was it that led her into acting? "It was a game! I always wanted to study languages. I studied English and French when I finished high school. I did them together, languages and acting. I went to the Academy for Film, Theatre and TV, and the University. But it was the other part of me, the part that wants to play, that finally won over the serious part, the one who sits at home and reads and learns and does research. It started as a game, it started as 'Let's play.'

"When I started at the Academy, they always used me for comedy, for light, playful stuff. Then I did a play in which something clicked in me. It was an English play in a famous little avant garde theatre, with only me and another actor. It was a very heavy play about marriage, marriage in three stages, which ends with this woman committing suicide on stage. I was so much younger than the part I played, but it completely opened this world of reality in acting. It started a journey inward for me. Once you experience that, once you open up in that way - people talk about getting in touch with your emotions, that's what you do in acting. That's your main job. That's your profession.

"That's why I miss theatre. That's the beauty of doing theatre. You are in touch with the greatest writers of world literature. Their thoughts, their characters. That's unbeatable. That's a pleasure in itself, no matter in what way it forwards your so-called career. I miss film. I miss having time to try things to discover subtleties, layers, little things. The comforting thing on Babylon 5 is Joe's writing, which sometimes touches the depth of the classic literature."

If Straczynski were to ask her to write a B5 episode, what story would she tell?" I have an image for some reason of the set for The Wizard of Oz. I'm in the middle, kind of a Dorothy figure. On one side is G'Kar, and on the other side is Londo, and we walk towards some incredible adventure. Having them on each side of me would make me feel strong and protected, and I would dare to go anywhere!" She suggests that her cat could play Toto, and we agree that cats are very Minbari.

Babylon 5 is fiction. But much of that fiction is rooted in reality, the reality of our 20th Century. It's easy to turn off the TV each week at the end of the hour, put away the popcorn bowl and say, "Aw, that couldn't happen here." But it has. It does. And it will.

Delenn is a fictional character, but Mira Furlan is not. It's easy for a fictional character to risk her life for a cause. For a living human being with friends, family, and a successful career, that decision is much more difficult. Fiction often poses for its characters the question, "Will you sacrifice all for what you believe?" In the fictional world of Babylon 5, that question is, "Who are you?" Reality rarely presents any of us with that challenge. Few of us will ever know what our answer would be.

All Mira Furlan ever wanted was to experience the pure joy of acting, the inward exploration of her soul, and to share that exploration with her audience. But history forced her to explore down unseen paths, paths of darkness, the same paths that took countless lives in her homeland. History demanded, "Who are you?"

Mira answered, and suffered for it. She and Goran have started a new life in America, strangers in a strange land. Their experience reminds us that life may one day demand a test of our integrity. If it does, let us hope that we are equal to their courage.

#mira furlan #babylon 5 #delenn #incredible woman #may her memory be a blessing

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agilneanrose · 1 month

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Uldum - World Faire Camp

Ramkahen, capital city of the desert wonder that is Uldum. Once upon a time, the city had been locked away from the rest of the world - a single purpose kept it sheltered and unknown but when the ancient protections broke an entire desert and all of its wonders were gifted to the rest of the world. Over a decade later, the once kingdom begrudgingly welcomes to its city the World faire - an event bringing thousands of people daily into the sandstone markets

“Momma, I was thinking..” Hope skipped through the camp located just outside of the capital’s main buildings. Easily the clump of war tents stood out, stark against the brilliant sky and muted sands. Though positioned near others who could not find lodgings within the desert city, the dark fabrics burdened with house symbols kept the others from creeping too close. By the third day of the faire, the gaggle of Sunshield women had abandoned their kingdom-appropriate attire and donned clothing better suited for the heat and sun. “Papa wouldn’t say no if we brought home a camel or three. Three would be reeeeeeeeally nice.”

“What a novel idea, Hope. But I suspect the poor things would grow bored in the fields of Westfall, do you not think?” Rosemarri perched upon a sandstone hunk, and like the others, her stiff clothing and bulky skirts had been abandoned in favor of a different kind of layers to protect her skin and to keep her from overheating. Trinkets from the faire hung from her wrists and clutched her ankles, tinkling merrily with each movement that she made. Before her, Harmony settled in the sand, legs crossed and bare toes buried as her mother carefully parted heavy curls and attempted to twist them into a braid.

“But.. they could also live outside of the desert. Maybe our plains would be interesting to them and they might like having water.” As Hope sat she leaned forward to collect a small camel figurine from next to the stone her mother had made her seat. What an odd little forgotten thing! As she turned it over in her hand, the old figure crumbled, turning to dust and sand before spilling through her fingers.

“What about four camels?” She spoke again after a moment.

“HOPE!” Harmony laughed. “That is more than three!”

Rosemarri glanced up from her work, surveying the tents and the people within it. Lyric and Varson spoke near the main tent, the mage’s animated hands, and the knight's laugh tattled the conversation a casual one. Onward, her gaze shifted inside the tent to see two dark heads leading toward each other. Just near them, Yelena sat, eating a taco and watching the game intently.

“What are Haven and Tristan doing?” She asked, tilting her body a bit so as to get a better look. Since her hands were in her youngest daughter’s hair, the girl leaned as well just in case she needed to spare her own head.

“Oh! They are playing chess, she is explaining to him the use of knights and rogues on the board. I bet he thinks she is a cheater.” Hope laughed, twisting in place to give the pair they were discussing her attention as well. “He is nice, mommy. He will be a good uncle - kinda stuffy like Varsen was when he first came to us… but we have - what is Burrich doing?” She paused, her attention focused on the huntsman who appeared to be talking to a trio of camels on the far side of camp. “OH! Oh! he is waiting for me.” She scrambled to her feet, sand splattering over the seated pair behind her. “I was just supposed to… COMING BURRICH.” And she was off.

Alone once more the youngest Sunshield twisted about to stare up at her mother. Rosemarri watched Hope rejoin Burrich before darting her attention to Haven and Tristan. A slow exhale was an attempt to relieve some of the pressure that had been building in her chest. The girls were surrounded by strength, titan’s forgive any after their hearts. Her head dipped, her stare darting to the watchful girl and she dropped a loud kiss to her sun-kissed forehead.

“What is behind your eyes, Harmony?” She whispered, leaning back slightly to peer at the girl’s lovely face. It was her father’s eyes that peered back, and a faint frown tugged to life. Was it? No.. his eyes had not been green.

“You have been here before. You traveled all over Uldum without a guard..” She ventured, noting the frown that hinted.

“I have, I came here with your father..” One hand lifted to dust the dirt away from the girl’s temple.

“Alone?”

“That is what married couples do.”

“But with no guards?” She pressed.

Oh. Understanding dawned and Rosemarri left her seat to squish close to her teenager. Once settled in the sand, the stone at her back she curled her delicate arms around the girl. At 13 and the youngest of the trio - her life had not started off the greatest. Dark and horror-filled had been her existence for the first few years, only to be quickly surrounded by a veil-trapped father and the squish of Sunshield guardians. Harmony’s co-dependence on her father’s strength had loosened as she aged but the need was still solid.

“Of course not..” She let one finger dust at the girl’s hairline as she searched the fog of her memories for something, anything. “I loved to travel and your father honored me. I remember the sand in my toes, the feel of the stones, and the freedom the air gives to you - some mix of ocean and desert that I wish I could bottle up. At the temples the stones glitter with titan magic, you can touch it with your fingers and he took me to touch it – there is something you should know about your Grandfather - he trusts very few with his loved ones. But your father? Your father is wise and clever, and your grandfather trusted him with his people and me. There was no monster who could stop him, no darkness that could take him, and no mortal that could best him in fighting OR in cleverness. "

“If I asked, do you think he would bring me to touch titan symbols? J-just me?”

“Yes.” She spoke instantly. “Yes, I think he would and you would be safe.” She knew that, even if she could not recall the color of his eyes, she knew that. Another kiss and she glanced Lyric’s way. Lyric took the girls back and forth between the two houses, perhaps word should be sent that the youngest Sunshield wished to adventure.

“Are you ready to go see the booths?”

“In a moment, I like it right here.”

“Me too.”

@sunsandwolves

@theoldlord @swordandsayage @burrichgreer

Mentions^

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pentacentric · 7 months

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I am so so not gonna rb that john post bc of how it frames John caring so much about Sam & not Dean & such shallow take on John overall in general but i wanted to tell you how immaculate and on points your tags were.

I don't know why it's a war (i know why & you can see which side of fandom is shaping it as if John was attending to Sam 24/7 taking him on freaking themeparks every weekend) it's frustrating & upsetting. Let's not forget that in his last living moments John he was telling Dean he gotta kill Sam. Like this guy would've killed Sam unlike Dean. But hey, Sam had such loving tender father figure who cherished him. Anyway sorry for the ramble. I rarely see someone actually acknowledging that there's NOT supposed to be a competition but minimizing Sam's abuse and suffering is very common here bc they gotta remove Sam from the story in one way or another. I even consider myself a big john lover just bc how flawed but layered and damaged he was but he wasnt a good father for Sam either. He did NOTHING for Sam. Hell it was even Dean who carried Sam out of the fire. It was Dean saving and cherishing Sam, not John. I mean, I don't think there's an argument that he loved them both but that doesn't change how be treated them BOTH

Thank you❤️ 100% in agreement with you. This fandom can be a little exhausting at times as we all know and I generally try to stay out of that kind of discourse, but sometimes stuff like it slips in my feed and I just get so frustrated and I can't help myself. It's always nice to know there's other people that understand that the whole battle thing is just pointless.

And trauma fighting aside, even, it's such a bad take on its own. Like, not only are you completely erasing Sam's whole story and character (which is pretty much a capital crime, really), you are actually doing such a disservice to Dean! It removes so much complexity and nuance from his character, and only adds to the whole boring Dean woobification syndrome where he's the only one that suffered and is alone in the world and no one understands him (except, maybe hmmm I wonder…). Like Dean didn't have Sam suffering right there by his side. Like it wasn't the two of them against the world (which John was a central pillar of). Like all of that isn't such an integral part of why they are so intrinsically intertwined, which is what makes Dean Dean and Sam Sam and drives the whole damn show! You can't say you love Dean and try to remove his actual bond with Sam or reduce it to some kind of fanonized parentified-child/golden-child guilt trap. Because that's not it at all. And if they think that, they don't know Dean it all.

And I agree with you about John. I don't hate him (and JDM made me love him, even, with the way he portrayed him), but I can also be hard on him sometimes because he does have a lot of faults and he is abusive and it's very recognizable. But it's in a very realistic way where he isn't truly a bad person. That's part of his complexity as a character and why he's interesting. Like, someone can be loving and intend to do well and have a lot of great attributes, and also a total fucking mess and abusive and a kind of shitty parent at the same time. John may have tried, but he did utterly fail them in as many ways as he overall kept them safe and cared for them. It's fascinating because in those situations children tend to be pulled between loving that parent and wanting their approval and affectio , and also being resentful and hurt and angry, and both sets of feelings are totally valid. I think the show captures that really well with the way the boys react and develop as characters themselves. Villainizing John is as reductive as erasing Sam's canon history.

#spn meta #sam winchester and dean winchester #we love john here #but we also don't let his shit slide #spn and abuse #fandom critical #a little at least #if canon spn has more nuance than your take you might wanna rethink things

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mocharaycookie · 1 year

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How the Cogs of Toontown Online Are An Anti Capitalist Metaphor

autism be upon ye

foreword: this was written as a "fuck it, we ball, pick whatever topic you so desire" research paper for a creative writing class, with a pre-determined format to follow. as a result, my writing style may seem off here. hope you enjoy.

READ ON MY WEBSITE HERE

What I Knew and What I Want to Know

While I was both too young and didn’t have the money to fully play the game while it was still under a subscription service, Toontown Online has always been one of my more intense interests, mostly due to the charity that is several private servers that keep the game running, sticking to the original, or branching out into a modernized experience, but for now, sticking to the original game. Toontown Online was a kids’ aimed MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) started by Disney in 2003 and shutting down a decade later, with a pretty lively presence in the genre during this time. The plot was basically that you played as, well, a cartoon anthropomorphic animal, and kept the world cheery and fun against the ongoing invasion of “Cogs”, which are these businessmen robots, heavy emphasis on businessmen, with all the boredom and drab that comes with such. You fight against them using stereotyped cartoon gags, because, well, Cogs can’t take a joke. Rinse and repeat this basic basis with variations of the fighting format all throughout the game as you progress, as well as other stuff to do (grinding gets boring, and Toontown Online was notorious for grinding), and you have what remained successful until it was pushed off to the side for Club Penguin.

I’ve always been much more interested in the Cogs than the toons when it came to this game. Their origins, which elaborated on with a simple flash animation within older installers for the game, are mostly unexplained. And, of course, the unified designs of just average, uncanny office workers with little variation except for head design and suit color dependent on department, are a specific, stylized sort of cool. There’s also probably something to say about my own personal experiences with work and neurodivergency and the want to be one, but that’s not the point.

The point now will turn political – despite the game being aimed at kids who could afford ten dollars a month to play, there are some specifics parts that addle to my now an adult brain, that make it think of the further lore implications, and what it means in the greater scheme of things. What do the Cogs represent? What does the war between the Toons and them mean? Of course, it’s also very easy to compare such a thing to the workforce in our own daily lives, and how big corporations play a role, reaching in, making evil decisions, and yet, giving us no choice but to consume their product. And what would I use any of this information for, to look into the implications of Cogs as a symbolism for real-life capitalism and its evils? Probably just rewording this entire paper into an essay to be posted on my website, but also, for my own fan-writings for the game, because, well, making fan content is fun.

My Search Process

The main treasure chest of information when it comes to Toontown Online nowadays is the Toontown Preservation Project, a website hosting game design documents, concept art, and much more, donated from the developers of Toontown Online while it was still active, such as Bruce Woodside. There’s also, of course, the many still-standing videos and posts on old forums about Toontown Online, as well as the gameplay that remains in private servers (mostly relevant to Toontown Rewritten, which is actually the group that runs the Toontown Preservation Project as well). The documentation is vast, encompassing things never implemented into the game, removed early or in beta testing, but for almost all of the conception, there is no use of the word Cogs to describe the Cogs. Instead, they are called Suits, and no discussion into the robotics parts, either.

However, these are not decisions that made it into the final game, and thus, could mean nothing at all in the long run. What was in the game, however, was Unites, a reward for completing a certain boss that replenished either your gags or your Laff (the toon equivilent of health), which were considered the most useful of boss rewards for obvious reasons. When a Unite was used, your Toon also shouts “Toons of the World,” and then a slightly varied prose based on the type of Unite. In addition, if you went a little bit out of your way, you could get a Speedchat (pre-picked) phrase of just “Toons of the world, Unite!”.

While if you had any clue of the book or the man behind it, you probably could’ve seen this coming, but there is something to be said of Toontown Online’s central themes and including a rip from “Workers of the world, unite” (Marx), which is straight from The Communist Manifesto. While it has never been confirmed, nor probably ever will, if the recycling from such a fundamental source of socialist theory was on purpose or merely a coincidence, it sure does work for my point here.

In addition, take into account the setting of the game, and how Toontown’s economy seems to hinge upon a plethora of small businesses, there is the obvious comparison one could make to themes of anti-monopolization. Toontown is defending itself against what the fate of plenty of smaller towns has become, which is depending on one or two companies to carry the entire area in terms of business, and while the Toon’s shops all serve all sorts of purposes (but being boiled down in gameplay to just throwing quests at you), the Cogs only have one overbearing one, so at least there’s one major reason to keep them out of sticking their stick into the ground.

What I Have Learned

What I can gather from all of this is actually pretty interesting into the accidental symbolism the Cogs have become over the years, as, in my own eyes, the unavoidable evils of a society that hinges on capitalism and the selfishness of product become more obvious. They are a stereotype, sure, but also a stripped-down truth to the place of most workers in the eyes of company – in the truest form of the word – just another cog in the machine. The robotism of Cogs can also be taken as a symbol of automation, as more of the bottom-line, repetitive work becomes shelved out by machinery and AI to replace humans, at the cost of jobs for those who do not have a specialization in anything at all, or who’s specialization has become the menial labor needed for these, such as factory work.

There’s little variation compared to the colorful forms of toonery you play as, having to fit into these molds, and perhaps, business stereotypes as the Cog types are most often named after. There is no deviation. You serve a purpose, serve it well, and that’s all there is to it. That’s your life purpose. Have fun doing that until you die.

I’m also not the only one who’s attempted to co-relate their own life to the satire situation of Cogs. During the research part, I was stumbling over some less than reliable sources of social media, and plenty of older Toontown Online players had ended up in office positions themselves, and mentioned how, in a way, they had become what they once fought against. Sometimes, this was more obviously aligned with the office positions shown in-game, with one user stating “When I was having an early 20s life crisis when the song Suit and Jacket by Judah and the Lion came out and I have a vivid memory of standing in the shower hating working at a bank and being pushed to ‘sell’ checking accounts and that’s when I had the sleeper memory of toontown cogs awaken in me” (goddessbotanic). In the system of modern life, where one has to almost kill themselves, emotionally or otherwise, just to be able to keep up with the frivalities of modern life, to keep a roof on their head, the best you can do is try and keep your tooniness alive, though only at the side.

What This Means to Me, and How I’ll Use It

I’ve always cared about little silly niche topics to try and explore like this. Though there is probably no true intention to any of the evidence brought upon the table except for really in-line coincidences, it all seems to add up to a more mature way of seeing a game I’ve cared about since my first years using a computer. I’m all too big on nostalgia – most of my best memories of technology were with the early 2010s net, which encompasses the later years of Toontown Online, as well as the earlier years of some of my other favorite games, as well as an era of content that wasn’t as dopamine-trapping and headache-causing as the modern internet feeds. Something like this is a bright, fresh light, and makes it all too easy to keep caring about Toontown Online.

Fortunately, I am not trying to embrace a grave. The spirit of Toontown Online still lives on in the form of private servers that keep the game running and available to play, and, in both spite of what made Toontown Online shut down in the first place and to avoid copyright troubles, entirely for free. The two most popular are Toontown Rewritten, which keeps to the base game for the most part for nostalgia reasons, and Toontown Corporate Clash, which adds new content and quality of life changes to change Toontown and modernize it into an all-new, exciting experience. I’ve invested a lot more hours than I would like to admit on a few renditions of these servers, but time having fun is not time wasted, despite what the Cogs think.

Works Cited

Marx, Karl, 1818-1883. The Communist Manifesto. London ; Chicago, Ill. :Pluto Press, 1996.

“r/Toontown - Ever Realise We Grew up to Be the Cogs?” Reddit, Dec. 2022, https://www.reddit.com/r/Toontown/comments/zmwjtm/ever_realise_we_grew_up_to_be_the_cogs/.

Luthin, Stefanie. “The Unique Anti-Capitalist Journey of Toontown Online.” VGA Gallery, VGA Gallery, 24 Mar. 2022, https://vgagallery.org/vga-zine/toontown-anti-capitalism.

Woodside, Bruce. “Toontown Preservation Project.” Finalized Suit Turnaround -- Toontown Preservation Project, Toontown Rewritten, 28 Aug. 2022, https://toontown.online/Finalized- Suit-Turnaround-4393ef3db89341638e8a55242b79ee0a

Toontown Preservation Project, Toontown Rewritten, https://toontown.online/

#toontown #toontown online #i have no idea how tumblr will take this but. hope you guys like big ol textposts at 8 in the fucking morning bc i have to go get ready #for class after posting this ^_^#nephro.txt #nephro.pdf

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justforbooks · 1 year

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On 22 September 1973, Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda – whom Gabriel García Márquez dubbed "the greatest poet of the 20th century" – received some visitors at the Santa María hospital in Chile's capital Santiago. Among them were Sweden's ambassador Harald Edelstam and the Mexican ambassador Gonzalo Martínez Corbala, offering a plane to fly Neruda and his wife Matilde into exile.

We know about their conversation thanks to as yet unpublished documents at the National Archive in Sweden. Edelstam asserts he found the poet "very ill" though still willing to travel to Mexico. In a memo sent to his superiors, Edelstam observes: "In his last hours [Neruda] either didn't know or didn't recognise he suffered a terminal illness. He complained that rheumatism made it impossible to move his arms and legs. When we visited him, Neruda was preparing as best he could to travel … to Mexico. There, he would make a public declaration against the military regime."

That made the poet dangerous to some very powerful people, who had shown they would stop at nothing to defend their interests. They had ousted his friend, Salvador Allende, from the presidency less than a fortnight earlier. Allende died in a coup that was as much about silencing dissident voices as bringing about regime change. Another voice, that of popular singer Víctor Jara, was cut off four days later. Neruda remained. He was perhaps the loudest. His face certainly the most recognisable worldwide. He was too dangerous.

Members of the junta are on record expressing the view on the morning of September 22 that if Neruda flew into exile, his plane would fall into the sea. In the afternoon, radio stations under military control announced the poet would probably die in the next few hours, at a time when he was still awake in the hospital. The following day he was dead.

That historical mystery alone explains why his body was exhumed this week. But there are more pressing reasons too, at a time when the destiny of the left hangs in the balance in Latin America. The death of Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, one of many leftist leaders in the region to have fallen ill to cancer, has combined with the 700 documented assassination attempts against Cuba's Fidel Castro to fuel all manner of conspiracy theories.

More important still is the fact that, faced with an economic crisis without foreseeable end and few alternatives, a new generation of world activists needs to reconnect with the vibrant political imagination embodied by Neruda. The question is not merely whether the commitment he exemplified is possible now, but whether technology, and the institutions we use to manage it, can allow the kind of freedom Neruda called for in his poetry.

In this context, Neruda's life, as well as the shadows cast by his death, are Google-bombs waiting to be set off by a new generation of networked freedom fighters at the heart of our austerity-obsessed, repressive, and frankly boring narratives.

Neruda wasn't surprised by the 1973 coup – most people knew that the consequences of restoring "economic order" would be vicious, and many accepted it as necessary – but it wasn't inevitable: under a deal accepted by the government coalition as well as the opposition, President Allende was going to call for a referendum and would have resigned if the result went against him. This made any show of force by the smaller but influential sector within the Chilean armed forces unnecessary. But the conspirators were bent on regime change, so they brought forward the date of the coup, subjecting Chilean society to a trial by fire in order to cure it of a supposedly menacing communist "cancer".

The invocation of "cancer" to provide yesterday's rulers with a pretext to unleash war abroad and repression at home is mirrored by the questions being asked about Neruda's cancer today.

Neruda and the other individuals behind the Chilean revolution of the early 1970s made mistakes and were at least partially responsible for the consequences. But the real story behind their defeat and deaths hasn't been told yet. This is one of the reasons why people are looking to unearth new truths, hoping to shed some light on the origins of our problems today.

Through histories, testimonies, and documents declassified in the US or revealed as recently as last year by Wikileaks, we now know that the fate of Neruda and others like him had been decided long before they had any hand in mismanaging the economy or dividing political opinion. Persecution of the left had begun in Chile as early as 1948, at the behest of a US government awash with anti-communist paranoia.

That year, a controversial measure known as "the Damned Law" ("la ley maldita") outlawed the Chilean Communist Party, sent the communist leadership into exile and imprisoned hundreds of militants at the Pisagua camp under the orders of a young lieutenant named Augusto Pinochet – the concentration camp's director who would become Chile's dictator, and a friend and inspiration to Margaret Thatcher.

Neruda, radicalised like many others by the anti-fascist struggle of the 1930s and 40s, chose to flee the country. Fearing for his life he crossed the Andes on a horse, carrying with him the manuscript of his epic poem Canto General, before resurfacing in Mexico thanks to the help of his friends Pablo Picasso and Diego Rivera.

His second exile would have been in 1973. Edelstam's conversation with Neruda took place a mere two hours before the poet went to sleep, never to wake up again. When the Swedish diplomat went to Neruda's house to offer his condolences, he found it destroyed. Pinochet's men were bent on erasing every trace of his existence. They would do the same with thousands of people during a reign of terror that would last for nearly two decades. That is why so many people this week are holding their breath to find out what clues Neruda's exhumed body might hold.

One of the most enduring mysteries in modern Chilean history may finally have been solved after forensic experts determined that the Nobel prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda died after being poisoned with a powerful toxin, apparently confirming decades of suspicions that he was murdered.

According to the official version, Neruda – who made his name as a young poet with the collection Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of Despair – died from prostate cancer and malnutrition on 23 September 1973, just 12 days after the military coup that overthrew the democratically elected socialist government of his friend, President Salvador Allende.

But some, including Neruda’s nephew, Rodolfo Reyes, have long believed he was murdered because of his opposition to the then incipient dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

Ten years ago, a Chilean judge ordered the exhumation of the poet’s remains after his former chauffeur, Manuel Araya, revealed that an agitated Neruda had called him from the Santiago hospital where he was being treated to say that he had been injected in the stomach while asleep. The poet died hours later.

Samples of Neruda’s remains were dispatched to forensic laboratories in four countries for analysis, and in 2015 the Chilean government said it was “highly probable that a third party” was responsible for his death. Two years later, a team of international scientists said they were “100% convinced” the poet did not die from prostate cancer.

On Monday, Reyes said scientific tests had shown the toxin clostridium botulinum was present in his uncle’s body when he died, suggesting he was indeed “poisoned” in the aftermath of the coup. The results of expert analysis are due to be published in a report on Wednesday.

“We now know that there was no reason for the clostridium botulinum to have been there in his bones,” Reyes told the Spanish news agency Efe. “What does that mean? It means Neruda was murdered through the intervention of state agents in 1973.”

The bacteria, which produce the neurotoxin that causes botulism, were discovered on one of Neruda’s exhumed teeth in 2017. Reyes said analysis by experts at McMaster University in Canada and the University of Copenhagen had established the bacteria did not find their way into Neruda’s body from the coffin or the surrounding area.

“We’ve found the bullet that killed Neruda, and it was in his body,” Reyes told Efe. “Who fired it? We’ll find out soon, but there’s no doubt Neruda was killed through the direct intervention of a third party.”

Pinochet’s US-backed coup, during which Allende killed himself as troops stormed the presidential palace, devastated Neruda and led him to plan an exile in Mexico.

But a day before his planned departure, he was taken by ambulance to the hospital in the Chilean capital where he had been treated for cancer and other conditions. He died there on the evening of 23 September, purportedly from the wasting effects of the prostate cancer that had first been detected four years earlier.

However, the official version of the events surrounding his death has frequently been called into question. Gonzalo Martínez Corbalá, who was Mexico’s ambassador to Chile at the time of the coup, told the Associated Press he had seen Neruda two days before his death, and that the poet had weighed almost 100kg (15st 10lbs) – contradicting claims that he was fatally malnourished because of his cancer.

Last month, Araya told AP that if Neruda “hadn’t been left alone in the clinic, they wouldn’t have killed him”.

The chauffeur said he and Neruda’s wife, Matilde Urrutia, had been at the couple’s mansion to pick up their suitcases for Mexico when the poet rang, asking them to come back to the hospital quickly. Neruda died later the same day.

Following Neruda’s death Urrutia maintained that he had been increasingly agitated as he learned of the early atrocities of the dictatorship and that it was the anguish of the coup d’état which led to his demise.

The lengthy investigation hit a number of obstacles, from non-cooperation on the part of the clinic where the alleged injection was administered to difficulty in funding foreign lab tests.

In the years after Neruda’s death, much of the focus has been on locating a mysterious “Dr Price” who had apparently been on duty at the clinic that night. However, there was no mention of the doctor in the records of Chile’s medical union, and it was eventually deduced that he had been invented to stall investigations.

Though described by his friend Gabriel García Márquez as “the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language”, Neruda’s reputation has been damaged in recent years by details of his personal life. Not only was the writer a self-confessed rapist, he was also a man who abandoned his first wife and their daughter, Malva Marina, who was born with a neurological disorder and died at the age of nine.

In his posthumously published memoirs, Confieso Que He Vivido (I Confess That I Have Lived), Neruda admitted raping a Tamil woman who worked as his servant when he was posted to Ceylon as a young diplomat. After describing the rape, he wrote: “She was right to despise me.”

The rape confession, which resurfaced almost five years ago, led human rights activists to oppose an attempt to rename Santiago airport in honour of the poet.

Speaking at the time, the author and women’s rights campaigner Isabel Allende told the Guardian that Neruda’s criminal and callous behaviour did not devalue his work.

“I am disgusted by some aspects of Neruda’s life and personality,” she said. “However, we cannot dismiss his writing. Very few people – especially powerful or influential men – behave admirably. Unfortunately, Neruda was a flawed person, as we all are in one way or another.”

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

#JUST FOR BOOKS #Pablo Neruda #in memoriam

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