#i have given up on linking every individual post so new format

[m0r1bund]

"Lore, where have you been?"

In hell, probably. I remade M0R1BUND.com.

“For the love of god, why?”

Short answer: to save time and money.

Long answer: Sharing art was getting burdensome. Neocities hosts static websites built with html, css, and javascript—which is awesome for its mission, to encourage people to create future-proof websites. But this also means that every page is created and maintained by hand. I handle every little link and file and bit of code, and if I want to do site-wide changes, I have to push those by hand, too. This takes time, and so does writing image descriptions and cross-posting art to other websites. It became normal for sharing art to eat up an entire day.

I later created Basedt.net in WordPress, so that I didn’t have to worry about managing link hierarchies, which was a big timewaster on my old webcomic. I liked working in WordPress well enough, and I knew I would benefit from being able to use PHP to manage the sheer amount of stuff that’s on M0R1BUND.com. I was also paying double for webhosting through two different services, when I really didn’t need to…. So… I knew it was inevitable that I would consolidate the two at some point. It was time.

I do really love Neocities and I’m sorry to let it go. I encourage anyone who wants to learn web design and create their own website to start there.

Anyway, that’s how I ended up in hell for 6 months.

“What’s changed?”

Most things. I’m most excited about the quality-of-life stuff, like being able to sort art by character/location/world, or being able to move between individual pieces instead of having to return to the gallery landing page. There are lots of things I want to add, but my soft deadline for this was the new year, so I focused on recreating M0R1BUND.com as it existed before… well… this.

I’ve also edited most of my writing. This site is old, and the art is even older, it felt good to give it some TLC.

There are still a few things missing from the new site:

The Woods and RANSOM. They aren’t really representative of Basedt or Mercasor anymore, and I was not a competent writer in 2018. If I re-share them, it will be in the distant future.  

Some of my Those Who Went Missing stuff. I haven’t been playing TWWM publicly, so this is lower priority right now. It will happen when it happens.  

Some twines. They haven’t adjusted to the new filepath format yet. Killswitch is here, though :)

If you need them urgently for some reason, I can share them with you? but that seems doubtful haha.

Links to pages on the old M0R1BUND.com are broken and will remain broken until I set up redirections to the new M0R1BUND.com. I have no idea how long that will take! … Hopefully not long, given the new semester is here.

And of course... If you see anything weird, tell me! I test as much as I can, but I only have access to so many devices. Break this website within an inch of its miserable life so that I can fix it.

“How’s Basedt going?”

It’s going. Recreating my website took precedence for the above reasons, but I’ve been working concurrently on it in my spare time. We move like a glacier into the new year. ETA: ???

#look upon my works ye mighty and despair

[xisco-lozdob]

What do we know of Dark Gallifrey?

So, yesterday Big finish finally announced a new range titled Dark Gallifrey. The initial reveal left me underwhelmed because it didn't look as Gallifrey-oriented as I'd at first thought, but some of the comments the creators have posted afterwards are making me warm up to the idea.

So, first of all, it's going to be "a brand-new series showcasing the most chaotic, mischievous and evil Time Lords the planet has ever produced" and it consists of 8 different trilogies, each focusing on one these dark children of Gallifrey. The fact that three of those were given to three different incarnations of the Master who all already have their own ranges gave me pause, but it could be alright if the themes and focus is distinct enough.

However, the Monk and the Nun and, more importantly, Morbius (the incarnation played by Samuel West from the 8DAs 16 years ago) also have their own trilogies. Morbius' one is actually the opening act of the series, though we don't know exactly when it's set. But Morbius is always a great character to delve into Gallifreyan lore.

First thing I want to point out is that they chose to use the same Gallifrey logo as the Gallifrey series, so at the very least they think it should be branded the same way. So we don't only have a link through the title choice but also the same visual identity.

Now, even if John Dorney, writer and script editor for the Morbius trilogy, said this:

It’s completely disconnected from regular Gallifrey.

It doesn't have to mean it's disconnected from Gallifrey the planet, and its history, which, for me, is the most important part, just that it's disconnected from the main cast of the series: Romana, Leela, Narvin and Braxiatel.

So let's see what the other creatives are saying. Rob Valentine, who serves as producer for the series, had this to say:

Dark Gallifrey is a sprawling, multi-story event in which all the most dastardly Time Lords are being let out of the box in various unexpected ways. [...] ...and, behind it all, something massive is brewing.

That means there's some overarching theme or threat in the shadows, probably to be resolved in the last trilogy. What I think is that, more likely than not, it's not going to be a big crossover kind of deal. Maybe some characters and even a couple of the trilogy protagonists are going to be there, but, from what is know, I surmise that we'll be looking at a... Rassilon? trilogy which ties together things that have been set up during the others, but we won't know they have been until we have all the pieces. Let me explain.

Firstly, and something which I really like the sound of, from the Big Finish Talk Back panel at Gally1, they want to do more experimental stories and Dark Gallifrey is part of that.

Dorney, again, said that these are:

Writer led concept albums full of bold creativity. [...] these are not your standard stories.

Whereas Scott Handcock, director and script editor for the War Master trilogy, teased that there are "baffling surprises" and that he doesn't know how his trilogy pieces together with the other ones.

I do like that this range seems to be based on allowing the creators freedom to tell the story they want to tell, so they can experiment with the storylelling and the format. Valentine also says there are all sorts of stories, from darker ones to some that are more comic. But, while Handcock seems to confirm he wasn't privy to all the plans for the range, I read that as implying he did know there was something that linked the trilogies together, but that due to his involvement being with just this trilogy in particular, he didn't need to know every detail.

Still, one last piece of information from Dorney, tells me it's particularly not necessary for the individual creators to know how it all pieces together (if the producers did a good job in keeping tabs):

Just to repeat what I said on the panel this series is influenced by things like Alan Ayckbourn’s Norman Conquests, the old Transformers comic strip Aspects of Evil and Chris Ware’s magnificent Building Stories. [...] it inspired the entire series.

All of these have one particularity in common: they're stories that build a bigger tapestry if put together, with multiple layers of storytelling. But they still work as your basic anthology.

But why do I think it'll all come together with a Rassilon story? Well, for that let's go to writer Tim Foley's blogpost with some visual clues. All the pictures are really interesting, but two in particular piqued my interest. (Btw, Foley seems to have worked at least on the Morbius trilogy with Dorney.)

The first illustration comes from the DWM story The Tides of Time. This story features Rassilon (actually his first appearance in any medium) and the Matrix, as well as the Higher Evolutionaries, a group of ancient and powerful time-aware beings. Basically, they're to Gallifrey's Temporal Powers what Division sorta is to the CIA.

The other image is a rendition by Daryl Joyce of Ancient Gallifrey, from the Lungbarrow ebook. You all know what kinds of implications this has. I really hope we take a long overdue trip to other episodes in Gallifrey's History. This is what I'm expecting (hoping) from this series and, in a way, the Fugitive Doctor's one.

Will we have references and nods to other stories that built on the mythology and history of Gallifrey (and not just those two, Morbius being a main character has the potential to link with some more obscure things)? I don't know but I hope so.

I think that's all the information we have. I don't even really know what I want to say with this post, just wanted to collect all this somewhere, and I guess speculate a bit there at the end.

I really hope this series ends up being as special as it promises.

#doctor who #big finish #big finish gallifrey #dark gallifrey #rassilon #lungbarrow #ancient gallifrey #the master #the monk #morbius #long post

[littleeyesofpallas]

So I kinda of want to try something different with my #manga covers tag. I dunno why I'm posting to preface the fact, I don't think anyone who follows me follows me for that tag specifically. But this is my particular little corner of the digital void and I can scream whatever impotency i want into it. Normally I just drift through the amazoncojp recommendeds from a clean private/ingonito window and just see where it leads me. My priorities on what I actually end up posting tend to be toward

individual cover art i like, or covers that I think look particularly interesting in sequence

franchises that I distinctly don't recognize from the western licensed market

specific trends across multiple titles in a genre, or within a certain mangaka's bibliography

titles with kanji or grammatical construction that I don't recognize and want to look up/practice translating

But every once in a while I get sucked into a little riptide of publisher recommendations, and the common thread is what magazines things were serialized in, and it got me thinking I'd like to try and lean into it.

In the past I've opted to collect magazine covers rather than single series tankobon ([Harta/Fellows] [Kenchiku Chishiki] [Galette Meets] [Marginal] [Tsuri Comic]), but even though that gives a very broad snapshot of a magazine's outward aesthetic from month to month, it doesn't really communicate the content of what's really being published along side what, and how those juxtapose and highlight their target audience. And in thinking about what some magazines' appearances really have to say, about who reads and who they want reading them, I realize that for as big as the manga boom got in the west these past few decades, a lot of fans don't actually have any direct interaction with the magazine format, beyond just barely recognizing the JUMP brand. (we had that brief experiment with Shounen JUMP, Shoujo BEAT, and RAIJIN in the 2000s but it was kind of an abysmal failure.)

Ive always really loved the anthology magazine format that serial manga in japan follows, and it's kind of their secret weapon for actually producing and moving the sheer staggering amount of print content that they do. And at levels that western print media just can't really compare with, not as a matter of competition, but just because the two industries operate on such vastly different models.

(I nearly forgot but I did go on kind of an adjacent rant to this once before, that no one really saw :P It was a little more focused on the old fanscanlation scene but some of its tangents are the same tangents I'm about to go on here, so I might as well link it here.)

For example, depending on the size, a monthly magazine might run between one to two dozen individual titles. And these days that would cost you about 5.10USD to grab off the rack on your way to school, or work, or on your lunch break. And that could include any number of long running series, new up and coming works, and pilot chapters or stand alone one shots from either new or established authors. By comparison a single issue of a monthly or bi monthly comic book in the US could cost between 3.99-5.99USD for what amounts to about 19 pages of content.

So, if that's issue #1 of a brand new title? or issue 100 of an ongoing series you don't keep up with? Would you be willing to pay that $4.00 to try something new? Would you be willing to pay that in addition to the $4.00 to keep up with a title you're already following? How many series would you really be comfortable following and still trying something new? Or how many new comics would you really consider picking up given the number of comics you already keep up with?

With anthology magazine format that entire game of chess between a marketing department and your wallet just straight up doesn't exist. You pay that $5.00 for a monthly issue no matter how much of it you're keeping up with, and every issue there's that free chance that you'll flip through those pages and find something cool that you decide you'll start following. And so long as they keep readers constantly engaged, even while selling magazines at a loss, it means the overall cashflow of magazine purchases, ad revenue, and eventual book sales never stops. And it all funnels back upwards to the month company that redistributes those funds to the departments it needs to to make up the slack and keep the whole machine running.

Anyway point being that manga magazines have a really neat sort of internal ecosystem they curate where the mix of content any one magazine publishes, even under the general umbrella of a target demographic like shounen or josei, is really interesting. Because really, when you follow a manga, you're following the magazine, and that means you consume everything in it, even if only tangentially. And we miss that experience by not having a magazine format for manga distribution in English. So, I'm going to post some magazine covers, and following each will be the tanokbon covers of everything currently running in them; that way, short of being able to just flip through a copy of the magazine, you still get a kind of glimpse of what that magazine's content looks like at a glance.

anyway like I said, I dunno why I thought that needed to be prefaced. There's a list of magazines I'd like to try and get to but I'd rather queue up a full roster at a time so rather than my usual random bursts of whatever I can dredge out of my drafts on a slow day at work, there will probably be some downtime between each magazine.

[benito-flakes]

A Review of Simply Plural (By Bennett Levine, M&M)

Hi guys, Ben here, and here is my review of the app ‘Simply Plural’! We’ve seen this app floating around in a lot of plural communities and figured that we’d give it a try after seeing some screenshots of it from others online. This review will be as complex as I can make it, brushing up on all the topics I wish to bring up, so if you’d like to jump to specific parts of this review, page headers will be used for easier access. 

Disclaimer: This is just my system and I’s opinion; Just because we see the app a certain way doesn’t mean we expect everyone to. Every plural has a different experience, and the purpose of this review is to help highlight the features of the app as well as to provide commentary on it. This is also in no way meant to criticize the developer of the app, Amaryllis, and is entirely lighthearted. This review was not sponsored in any way. This review is our honest opinion on the app and all links have been added by us for ease-of-access.

(Edit one: edited a part of the post, as I had managed to troubleshoot an issue that I had with the app.)

Features And Functionality:

The primary reason my system was initially drawn to Simply Plural was its ability to log and help track switches! From the colorful icons to the slick, minimalist design, we were hooked from the get-go: 

(Here’s an example from one of our first days using this feature. As you can see, it was also a day full of rapid switching!)

Another core feature of Simply Plural is its ability to log members and member information, as well as being able to assign members to groups. This is similar to the Discord bot, Pluralkit, but features a little extra spice in my opinion. Members and groups can also be made private, and if I understand correctly, be unviewable to any friended accounts using the app. You can also change privacy settings to be different for specific friends: 

The complexity of individual member profiles is something that we really appreciate, as a system who enjoys meticulously logging each and every detail we can get our hands on. Descriptions for each of the circled tabs are below:

Fields: These are pre-set (or custom-added) sections for members to log their likes, dislikes, roles, birthday, and more! The sky’s the limit with these bad boys.

Member-specific fronting log: This is really self-explanatory, in my opinion; it’s just a lot of every time a specific alter has been logged as fronting on the app. 

Notepad: This functions as a space for writing miscellaneous notes. Again, this is mostly self-explanatory. 

Options: Privacy settings, member ID’s, and the option to delete the member will be here. 

Polls are also a great feature of this application, and allow for a whole system to weigh in with their opinions on topics of interest: 

Other notable features include the ability to add friends (both system and singlet) for the purpose of viewing who is fronting at any given time, the ability to generate tokens for use on third-party sites, and reminders and alarms with a number of different settings.

 There is also a page within the app for plural resources, including help for new alters, and the famous MoreThanOne website. We haven’t had the need to use these, and so I am not fully sure how helpful these would be, but at the very least they are a pleasant touch.

 Lastly, systems may be imported from Pluralkit, which is a plus if you are already a frequent user of this handy Discord bot. Formatting may look a bit weird for member descriptions if you’ve used bold, italic, strikethrough, etc. on Discord, but this is a minor setback in my eyes. You will need a token from Pluralkit in order to import your system to Simply Plural. 

What I Liked...And What I Didn’t Like:

After using this app for a little over a month, here are the things I liked, along with the things I didn’t like all that much.

What I (Really) Like: 

To start things off on a more positive note, here are some things that I had a particularly positive experience with and/or helped me to better use the app:

Detailed member logging: This is something I’ve already mentioned above, but I cannot stress this enough! If your system is like mine and enjoys logging headmate information, then you’re most likely going to love this just as much as I do. There is a lot of customization you can do with this feature, which allows member logs to be as complex or as simplistic as you like.

Streamlined design: I love the way this app looks. Point-blank, period. It’s modern, it’s minimalist, and it’s easy to navigate. Accent colors can also be customized, which adds a personalized touch to the application’s appearance. 

Accessibility Settings: Simply Plural includes basic accessibility settings that may make the user experience easier for some individuals. 

Ability to import Pluralkit systems: While my system does not utilize this feature, we still understand that it can be beneficial for systems who already use Pluralkit.

All-Inclusive developer: Amaryllis - creator of Simply Plural - appears to support all systems regardless of origin; the rules of the official SP Discord server states the following:

This server supports all origins, and we don't tolerate any discrimination regarding systems and their origins. Don't discuss origins or comment about systems and their origins.

This makes it a lot easier for me to support this app, as well as facilitating an app that may be used by all systems regardless of their origins. 

What I Didn’t Really Like: 

Now onto my more negative criticisms of the app: things that made my experience worse, or that I would like to see changed: 

Constant updates:  The app is updated constantly, which is both good and a bit bothersome: on one hand, it shows that the developer(s) of the app are active and care a lot about their userbase, but on the other hand it can be cumbersome to update the app once a week. (Most of the updates have been extremely quick to install, however.) 

Cannot re-arrange alters on the member list: This may be nitpicky, but I think it would be a helpful feature to allow you to re-arrange the order of members on the member list. Currently, I have not found a way to do this, and it appears that alters are sorted based on alphabetical order. Changing an alter’s name to have A or Z at the start of their name would place them at the top and the bottom of the list respectively, however this looks unattractive to me. Allowing alters to be moved manually to any place in the list regardless of alphabetical order would likely be a good new addition. 

Personal Experiences With The App:

Like I’ve mentioned previously, my system downloaded Simply Plural out of curiosity, as well as the desire to track our alter’s fronting times. Learning to use the app took a bit of work, and is something we still often slip up on. It took some fiddling with the privacy settings in order to get things worked out with our singlet friend, who had downloaded the app to see which one of us was fronting during our classes, but we eventually got it worked out after some fiddling with the permissions on both his phone and ours. I also frequently find us forgetting to log switches on the app, or being too lazy to do so. This is a personal issue we have, but if you have low energy, or struggle to remember to do things like this, then it may be harder to benefit from this side of the app. Like mentioned above, the app does have an alarm feature to remind you to log switches, but I tend to keep my phone on Do Not Disturb mode, rendering the alarms unable to go off properly.

All-in-all, we will likely keep using Simply Plural for the foreseeable future, so that we can have a space to privately store member information in detail in an easier-to-access format than Pluralkit. Logging members’ switches and fronts may be iffy from time to time, but we still will when we have the desire/energy/time to. The app may be helpful to some plurals, especially those who are in need of a private space to log information about their headmates or log switches due to amnesia issues, at the request of a mental health professional, or for any other reason. (Information about switches can be exported to a web-format if needed.) The app may also be beneficial for systems who want to show their active fronters to their friends and family.

Links: 

Simply Plural Discord

Apparyllis Website

Download link for Apple

Download link for Android

Web Version

#all systems are systems #simply plural #simply plural app #Multiplicity #plurality #multiple #plural #plural system #system #system support #system stuff #system struggles #traumagenic system #traumagenic #trauma #endo #endogenic #endo positivity #endogenic system #endogenic safe #Tulpa #tulpas #plural stuff #tulpamancy #mental heath support #tulpa support #endogenic support #tulpa supporters #all systems are valid #all systems are real

[kadoodles-on-ao3]

Update: My Constellations Hiatus Unfortunately Continues, but I'm Not Idle

Long post ahead because I enjoy run-on sentences.

I have (have had, I should say) quite a tall order to fill for the next chapter of my collab fic with Minh and to be perfectly honest: I had originally assumed he'd be the one taking on that part of the story and when I discovered I was meant to write it I kind of hit a wall aha. And that was a few months ago. (jeez)

I am unfortunately still trying to climb that wall, while having to deal with other unforseen obstacles in the way, too. But I know how I want to go about the general outline for it at least! And since I had assumed back then that Minh would be writing this intermediary part, I also back then went ahead and started working on writing Melia and Shulk's kindergarten experiences. Which means whenever I can manage to write that first hurdle of a chapter, the next chapter or two after that are already pretty much ready to go. It's still a while yet to get there but once I do it'll be back to normal (I hope... I hope!)

Fanfic writing aside, I can't not be working on at least two tasks at any given time because my brain compels me, so while I'm still figuring out the art stuff I have taken up a methodical, data-entry, excel-sheet project that I've always wanted to do since no one else had yet, but never fully committed to starting. It's an organized table containing all the voice clips of the Xenoblade 1 main cast with explanations as to when and where and why they are played, complete with transcriptions and direct links to the corresponding audio files and trivia! In order to make it work the way I wanted (since Google Sheets does not allow audio files to be directly embedded for whatever reason) I had to upload the ripped audio to a Drive folder, turn on sharing, and create links to each individual file. But I wanted to share my other project I completed some time ago (and am revising as I do this one because see note above about my brain) where I renamed each audio file from its jumble of letters and numbers to a transcript of what is said on the wav file, so I can just upload all those to the same Drive and share both, and having a backup of the original rips can't hurt!

So far I have only one "section" done (that being all the pre-battle voice lines) but that includes making new terms and definitions to more easily describe when they're used in-game, and I finally enjoy how the formatting looks on it after messing around all day with it so now it functions as a great template for the rest of it, too!

At this rate, I think it will probably be finished within the next few weeks (depending on how much free time I happen to have, of course) and I'm super excited to share it! One of my favorite things from this game is all the care and detail put into the gigantic variety of voice lines the party members can say, both in the careful writing and the wonderful vocal performances working together to convey the characters so potently. Delving into all the audio again is not only reminding me of the feelings I got on my first playthrough, but also making me appreciate even more all the clear effort and care the devs put into thinking up and programming all these little things most people probably don't even notice (Did you know each party member is coded to acknowledge the different "types" of enemies, such as aquatic or insectoid, and they each have ones they particularly want to fight or are squeamish to battle, and they have a chance to say a unique voice line if the corresponding "type" of enemy is about to be fought??? I'm not sure if the game categorizes its enemies beyond the given species shown in-game [ie all Bunnits are not just Bunnits, they are all mammals] or if each character has a list of enemies that trigger these voice lines and some third party saw it and made generalized conclusions about what they like and dislike similar to the affinity gifts [ie Reyn is coded to potentially say "I hate these things!" when fighting <insert list of every nebula enemy> so that means he hates etherial enemies] or perhaps it's coded some other way but regardless, what a decent chunk of extra work to make this feature possible??? And all of it just for only two additional lines per character that only play under certain circumstances and even then only have a chance to play after the conditions are met??? Did anyone besides like 2 people and the game's devs know all that??? Because I sure didn't!!!) it's just :) I am happy I am excited to share it once it is done.

Oh yes, and I also haven't forgotten about cataloging everything Shulkelia on this blog (see again how my brain works) either!! I have a huge backlog to sort through which is all on my phone, so the least-painful process I can finagle is to upload each image on tumblr and save each as a draft, then later log into my computer later to do the sourcing and formatting and such. It's a whole process, but it is one I'll gladly do!

Eventually.

I have a lot of things going on haha. I really do apologize, but I am working, I promise. Thank you for your patience.

#aside

[troquantary]

Cutting Hair as Punishment in the Twilight Saga

Okay, I’ve been trying to organize my thoughts around this into a sort-of-essay format for a while, because I find it disturbingly mean-spirited: Meyer has a pattern of using hair-cutting as a form of punishment for characters, especially female characters, who fail to embrace Bella and the Cullens with open arms. I’m talking particularly about Leah and Lauren, both of whom, while not outright antagonists like Victoria or James, are situated along with Rosalie as “against” Bella throughout the series. The Quileute pack, meanwhile, is situated largely “against” the Cullens, meaning Jacob and the rest of the pack get the Haircut of Shame, too.

(Also, I’ve been creeping through @panlight ‘s blog because I thought she had a recent post relating to this -- I was probably thinking of this submission and her addendum, which does discuss Meyer’s “punishment” of certain characters, but that post was about characters suffering for not waiting for True Love, or daring to do the Devil’s Tango before marriage. Still, it’s on-theme and very much worth reading, like all her stuff!)

So here’s the general outline: first I’m gonna talk about the shapeshifters and how their overall lack of choice frames cutting their hair as something forced on them and therefore punitive. Then I’m going to discuss Meyer’s FAQ response where she reveals that Lauren was tricked into cutting off most of her hair over the summer before New Moon, and how this adds an extra fun misogynistic element to the hair-cutting theme with respect to Lauren and Leah. I also use way too many words to do it, sorry.

Punishment | The Shapeshifters Are Given No Other Option

I don’t have the background or knowledge to discuss the significance of long hair to indigenous culture and identity in detail, and my understanding is that different tribes ascribe different meanings to it. What I’ve read it about it suggests that, generally, long hair represents strength of one’s individual spirit and of the community. It’s a source of pride, and is only cut off voluntarily in extraordinary circumstances, often as an expression of grief, or to mark a significant life change.

This sort of works in the context of the shapeshifters all cutting their hair -- phasing into a giant wolf, discovering the existence of the supernatural, and assuming the role of protectors is a major life event for these characters. But the negative associations make it a troubling choice on Meyer’s part, and that’s without even getting into the problem of her imposing her own worldbuilding onto the legends and culture of a real tribe. Because of the lack of choice involved in becoming a shapeshifter, the whole situation feels like a scenario in which the Quileute characters have their hair forcibly cut -- a degrading and traumatic act that (depending on their particular tribal belief) might symbolically sever them from their sense of cultural identity and connection with the rest of their tribe.

It all kind of begs the question: why does Meyer even have shapeshifting work this way? What narrative utility is there in having the length of their hair in human form determine the length of their fur as wolves, thereby compelling the shapeshifters to cut it so it isn’t a physical impediment? It’s another sign of the changes in Jacob, sure, but he’s already being uncharacteristically cold and distant, plus suddenly has the physique of a fit twenty-five-year-old; Bella already knows something’s very wrong. His short hair is just another jarring thing for Bella to notice and mourn, like the loss of Jacob’s “baby face” and general sunniness.

It does work as a symbolic thing, representing another sacrifice Jacob has to make and the change in how he now has to perceive himself -- but he’s already got a literal giant wolf form to represent that change in identity/self-perception. Forcing him to cut his hair too just feels like piling on. My argument here, which I hope will be supported when I discuss Lauren and Leah further in, is that it’s not just piling on, but actively punitive -- because much like Leah and Lauren are “against” Bella, the pack at large is “against” the Cullens pretty much through the end of the series.

The Quileute pack is definitely not a Cullen fanclub. The entire purpose of their existence is to destroy vampires, and the truce they have with the Cullens isn’t friendly. They still don’t particularly like or trust the Cullens even after allying with them in Eclipse, and in Breaking Dawn Sam is fully prepared to go to war against them to enforce the treaty. Bella expresses frustration with Jacob and the pack for not appreciating the Cullens more, yet is curiously less willing to scold Alice, Edward, or Rosalie when they call the Quileutes dogs and complain about their smell. (I think she might reprimand Edward for it at some point, but I don’t remember the exact passage.) Bella even starts throwing around “dog” and “mutt” as an insult herself -- I think we know whose side ol’ “Switzerland” is on, here, and whose side Meyer is on as well. The Quileutes aren’t exactly enemies, and in fact are crucial to the Cullens’ survival in both the newborn and Volutri conflicts, but they’re punished nonetheless because they aren’t wholeheartedly Team Cullen from the get-go.

So to explain why I’m so convinced that there’s a link between hair-cutting and punishment in particular, let’s talk about Lauren. There’s a definite gendered element to it this time, too -- by being tricked into cutting her hair, Lauren isn’t just diminished/shamed, but rendered (*thunderclap*) unfeminine.

Lauren Was Rude To Bella Like Twice, Let’s Humiliate Her

I think Meyer’s answer to the question “What happened to Lauren’s hair?” on her FAQ page speaks for itself:

Ha ha. I had fun imagining this one—I only wished that it had fit into the book somewhere. Lauren fell victim to the “model discovered in the mall” scam. An alleged modeling agent approached Lauren in a mall in Victoria, B.C., and told her she was a natural model. Lauren ate it up. The agent told her that if she did something edgy with her hair, and took some high quality head shots, her future was assured. Lauren followed the instructions—dropping fifteen grand on the pictures taken by the agent’s partner—and waited for her career to begin. She’s still waiting. Snort.

It’s pretty obvious that this was done spitefully. Here’s the list of Lauren’s crimes against humanity Bella at this point in the series: 1) she was jealous of the attention Bella was getting as the new girl; 2) she talked behind Bella’s back once, saying Bella might as well just sit with the Cullens now (and she isn’t wrong); 3) she eyed Bella “scornfully” the day of the La Push beach trip; and perhaps most damningly, 4) she’s blonde.

Post-haircut, she has the gall not to be thrilled that Bella’s deigning to speak to the lowly non-Cullens again, then sides with Jessica after Bella uses Jessica to make a point to her dad, is shitty company, and then risks getting them both raped and murdered in Port Angeles so she could get off on her hallucination of Edward’s voice.

I think it’s pretty common knowledge that long hair is tied to patriarchal notions of femininity and attractiveness. Women with short hair are still derided for being ugly, or assumed to be lesbians in a derogatory sense, or simply considered less feminine and therefore less desirable/worthy (because a woman’s worth depends on her desirability, after all). For many women and girls, losing their long hair -- whether because of illness, or gum getting stuck in it, or whatever -- is very upsetting and a hard blow to their self-esteem. Just look at Alice as an example of Traumatic Short Hair; her hair was shorn like that because she received electroshock “treatments” in an asylum. (Although in Alice’s case, I don’t think her having short hair is punishment, but a facet of the traumatic backstory all female characters in Twilight have to have for some reason. Plus, she started the series with short hair, which distinguishes her from the pack and Lauren, who were tricked or compelled into cutting their long hair during the series.)

But Lauren’s so bitchy, so she deserves it, right? Ha ha, she was mean to Bella and cared about her appearance too much, so now she’s ~ugly!

Leah Has It the Worst and It Makes Me Want To Burn Everything

The misogynistic aspect of hair-cutting as punishment is taken up to like, twelve with Leah. Not only does she suffer for being “against” the Cullens along with the rest of the pack (and Bella, too, so extra sinning), but she suffers uniquely for being the only female shapeshifter. A bunch of teenage boys regularly see her naked body against her will. Her previously devoted boyfriend imprints on her cousin/best friend, Sam dumps her and can’t even explain why, and the whole pack -- including her own brother -- resents her for being upset about it, even though she can’t help the lack of mental privacy. Because of that same lack of mental privacy, she has to hear every gripe the boys have about her, plus every enthralled thought Sam has about Emily while she’s still deeply wounded by their breakup.

She blames herself for her dad’s death, because she phased at the wrong time. We don’t get any indication that her fellow shapeshifters or the elders are trying to reassure her otherwise.

And of course, because she’s a shapeshifter, she has to cut her hair. In addition, because Leah’s a woman, this has the same misogynistic connotations as it did with Lauren. In Leah’s case, though, the de-feminization is compounded by her sudden infertility. It’s clear that Leah attaches her sense of womanhood to her fertility, rightly or wrongly -- she bitterly calls herself a “genetic dead end” in Breaking Dawn and thinks of herself as a freak. She feels like there must be something wrong with her, some un-womanly flaw, that made her one of the shapeshifters at all.

Then, just when Jacob starts to see her as a human being worthy of compassion, he imprints on Renesmee and doesn’t give a shit about anyone or anything else anymore. No more bonding with Leah, no blooming friendship to help her heal and come to terms with the new realities of her life. (This is one of those dropped threads that aggravate me to no end -- what was the point of having Leah opening up to Jacob, or starting Jacob on the path of realizing he was being a dick to her this whole time and that she’s a person with  value, if he was just going to spend the rest of the book as Renesmee’s love-zombie and never think about it again? Disgusting.)

Leah was a lot more forgiving of Jacob than he deserved at that point in the story, for all the good it did her -- I think she’s mentioned maybe once in Book 3 of Breaking Dawn. At least she got her god-tier moment of yelling at a deranged, pregnant Bella Swan.

Speaking of Bella...

I’m just going to note, for no particular reason, that in Breaking Dawn we get to hear explicitly that Bella’s got hair that falls “almost to her waist” and that she looks like “a freaking supermodel” because she’s so “beautiful and pale.” It just strikes me as a telling contrast at this point.

#twilight renaissance #i stared too long and the twilight abyss gazed back #leah clearwater #lauren mallory #jacob black #the wolf pack #long post #i felt myself getting petty about bella okay -- i'm aware it's happening but i have no self control #i also know i sidestepped the racial element to this and it's because i don't feel qualified to speak on it #so any additions from more knowledgeable people on that score are much appreciated

[kiingocreative]

The Structure of Story is now available! Check it out on Amazon, via the link in our bio, or at https://kiingo.co/book

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There are some buzz words everywhere and, in the writing world, and it feels to me like ‘journaling’ is one of them. It’s something everyone seems to be doing.

It took me a while to build a journaling habit, and I wouldn’t say I’m quite there yet with my Journaling discipline, but whatever experience I’ve had with it has been incredibly beneficial.

What’s Journaling?

Back to the old trusted dictionary! Journaling is defined as:

To write in a journal or diary.

Simple, right?

For those of you with a penchant for etymology and random fun facts, the word ‘journal’ comes from the Latin ‘diurnalis’, or ‘diurnus’, meaning ‘daily’. In late Middle English, a journal originally referred to a book containing the appointed times of daily prayers. (If you use this as an ice-breaker at your next dinner party, please let me know!)

Nowadays, journaling is a lot more about keeping track of one’s praying schedule, and much more about recording one’s thoughts in an informal, free-flowing, stream-of-consciousness manner.

It’ll take different forms for different people, and the great thing about it is that (in my view) there isn’t a right or wrong way to journal. The only right way to do it is the way that feels right to you. As with any form of writing, craft or art in general, it’s all about individual preference, and highly subjective. And because Journaling is generally something that remains personal and private, you can do whatever the heck you want with it.

Pretty great, isn’t it?

Why Journaling is Good For You.

Based on my own experience, I’ve found a few benefits to journaling:

Pressure-free writing.

I’ve found that Journaling, because it follows no set rule and isn’t meant to be shared, is a great chance to write without any pressure. To write just because you want to write, with no other agenda than indulging in your love of putting words together on a page.

To me, writing without an outcome in mind is always liberating. It’s a chance to reconnect with your craft in way you might not if there was a clear purpose to it, like writing a book due to be published or a blog article meant to be posted online.

Experiment with your writing.

Journaling is also the perfect format to experiment with your writing, and try your hand at something new. Maybe you normally write fiction, and Journaling is a chance to give poetry a go. Maybe you generally blog, and your journal can start hosting plots and ideas for a novel, regardless of what you make of it later. Maybe you’ll want to try writing exercises—like jotting down ideas from a prompt or in a specific style. Or you could start recording dreams and memories you can remember.

Discomfort is where we grow, so putting yourself in those situations regularly is a great opportunity to expand your writing abilities and hone your skills. Who knows, there may be writing gold in there somewhere!

Never forget an idea.

I don’t know about you, but I often get ideas for my writing and beyond at the most inconvenient moments—in the shower, whilst cooking, doing the dishes, or picking up dog poop (I know, oh the glamour of a writer’s life!). I always think that I’ll remember these, but the truth is, most of them get forgotten, never to be retrieved again from the confines of my mind.

Journaling is a great way never to lose sight of an idea. My Journaling involves a lot of notes about random ideas I have for a plot, a story, a post, or life activities in general. They serve as inspiration for the future. Writing them down helps me rest assured that I can go back to that list and explore it later, whenever convenient.

Free your mind &notice trends.

One of the most important things I’ve notice happen when I journal, is that it helps me empty my mind fro ma lot of the never-ending thinking loops I tend to fall victim to. By putting thoughts down on paper, I’m able to see them more clearly, and my brain finally feels like it no longer needs to hold onto them. Jotting things down is a great way to break your pattern of thinking (or, if you’re like me, obsessing) and to allow yourself time to take a step back and look at the big picture.

Whether it’s something you’re stuck on in your writing, or in your life in general, journaling on it is powerful, especially if you do it regularly. Not only will you create more space in your mind for better and brighter things—say, your next brilliant writing idea!—but it’ll also give you a chance to notice trends and recurring themes. And that’s a great way to build awareness about your own patterns of behaviour, and start eradicating your most negative or toxic thinking habits.

Keep a record.

Performance coach Tony Robbins (yes, him again! What can I say, I’m a huge fan) says that ‘if your life is worth living it’s worth recording’. I couldn’t agree more. Journaling gives you a chance to be your own life historian. To keep track of where you’ve been and how far you’ve gone. To look back on those day-to-day accomplishments that may look minute at the time but all add up to something big and wonderful in the end.

Looking at your own existence and experience as something that’s worth keeping a record of also sends your subconscious mind a clear message: that’s you’re worthy. You’re enough. Every moment of your life has an impact, the good and the bad, and helps mould who you become.

I’d say there are few more powerful truths to embrace in your lifetime!

Getting Started with Journaling.

That’s all well and good, you might say, but where do I start?

Fear not, my friend, here are some suggestions to get you started.

1. Set a schedule — If you don’t make time for it, chances are it won’t happen, because life has a habit of getting in the way. Identify a time that works best for you—whether that’s morning, midday, evening etc.—and schedule it in your calendar, setting a reminder so you don’t forget about it. If finding time daily feels daunting or unrealistic, why not start with once a week, or a couple of times a week?

2. Make it a habit — Stick to it! Whether it comes naturally or not, be disciplined about it. Embrace whatever comes, both the joys and the discomfort of it. Set yourself a goal—every day for a week, every other day for a month etc.—and sit with it for the entire duration you committed to.

3. Set a timer — Journaling doesn’t have to take a lot of time. I tend to journal for about ten minutes at a time on average, sometimes less and sometimes more. If you’re unsure what duration to start with, set a timer for ten minutes and see what comes up.

4. Let it flow — As I mentioned above, Journaling may or may not feel natural at first. It may feel great or it may feel uncomfortable. Whatever comes up for you, let it flow. Why not journal about the sensations and feelings the experience of journaling brings up? It may end up being one thing one day and something altogether different the next. Whatever it is for you at any given time is what’s right. Be open-minded, remember this is unique and personal, and no one—not even you—should ever judge it.

The Power of Rituals.

If you’re still unsure about the value of journaling, or about getting started with it, let me say this one final thing: the most important piece of the puzzle, as with anything else you do, is defining your ‘why’—i.e. the reasons behind your decision to start (or continue) journaling. Ask yourself:

Why do you want to start journaling?

Why is it important to you?

How do you think it’ll make you feel? How do you want it to make you feel?

What difference do you think it’ll make to you, to your life, to your writing?

Clearly defining your ‘why’ and your intentions will help you maintain the habit. More importantly, understanding the value this holds to you will take journaling from a mere habit—which can feel like a chore—to a ritual of self-care. That’s the difference between doing it because you think it’s cool, or because everyone is doing it, or because you think you should do it, and doing it because you know for a fact, in your core, that this will make you and your writing better and stronger.

This will go a long way in making it more enjoyable. It’ll help you build rituals around it that are nurturing and caring. Get yourself to acknowledge why it’s good for you and why it’s pleasurable, and then set up the environment to make your journaling time feel like an absolute treat. Maybe that’s setting the scene in the room where you journal with a candle or some background music. Maybe that’s selecting a nice notebook if you’re doing this by hand, or picking your favourite writing spot, at home or beyond.

Eventually, these will all act as triggers to get you into the right journaling mindset whenever you’re sitting down for it.

And if you’re not quite sure what that all looks like for you… Well. Isn’t that a great topic to start journaling about?

#writingtips #screenwriting #creative writing #writers on tumblr #writers #writing #writerblr #writing advice #writing community #writing resources

[unpopularwiththepopulace]

Chicago at Long Beach, LA, 1992: A Story of Bebe Neuwirth, Choreography, Riots, Revivals, and Relevance

Recently and rather excitingly, more footage made its way to YouTube of the 1992 version of Chicago staged at Long Beach in LA, featuring Bebe Neuwirth as Velma and Juliet Prowse as Roxie.

Given its increased accessibility and visibility, this foregrounds the chance to talk about the show, explore some of its details, and look at the part it might have played as a contribution to the main ‘revival’ of Chicago in 1996 – which has given the show one of the most resonant and highly enduring legacies seen within the theatre ever.

This Civic Light Opera production at Long Beach was staged in 1992, four years before the ‘main’ revival made its appearance at Encores! or had its subsequent Broadway transfer, and it marked the first time a major revival of Chicago had been seen since the original 1975 show disappeared nearly 15 years previously.

This event is of particular significance given its position as the first step in the chain of events that make up part of this ‘new Chicago’ narrative and the resultant entire multiple-decade spanning impact of the show hereafter.

But for all of its pivotal status, it’s seldom discussed or remembered anywhere near as much as it should be.

This may be in part because of how little video or photographic record has remained in easily accessible form to date, and also because it only played for around two weeks in the first place. As such, it is a real treat on these occasions to get to see such incredible and unique material that would otherwise have been lost forever after such a brief existence some 30 years ago.

This earlier revival of the show still feels like what we have come to identify “Chicago” as in modern comprehension of the musical, most principally because the choreography was also done by Ann Reinking. As with the 1996 production, this meant dance was done “very much in the master’s style” – or Mr Bob Fosse.

The link below is time-stamped to Bebe and Juliet performing ‘Hot Honey Rag’. As one of the most infamous numbers in Broadway history, it’s undoubtedly a dance that has been watched many times over. But never before have I seen it done quite like this.

https://youtu.be/4HKkwtRE-II?t=2647

‘Hot Honey Rag’ was in fact formerly called ‘Keep It Hot’, and was devised by Fosse as “a compendium of all the steps he learned as a young man working in vaudeville and burlesque—the Shim Sham, the Black Bottom, the Joe Frisco, ‘snake hips,’ and cooch dancing”, making it into the “ultimate vaudeville dance act” for the ultimate finale number.

Ann would say about her choreographical style in relation to Fosse, “The parts where I really deviate is in adding this fugue quality to the numbers. For better or worse, my style is more complicated.” The ‘complexity’ and distinctness she speaks of is certainly evident in some of the sections of this particular dance. There are seemingly about double the periodicity of taps in Bebe and Juliet’s Susie Q sequence alone. One simply has to watch in marvel not just at the impressive synchronicity and in-tandem forward motion, but now also at the impossibly fast feet. Other portions that notably differ from more familiar versions of the dance and thus catch the eye are the big-to-small motion contrast after the rising ‘snake hips’ section, and all of the successive goofy but impeccably precise snapshot sequence of arm movements and poses.

More focus is required on the differences and similarities of this 1992 production compared against the original or subsequent revival, given its status and importance as a bridging link between the two.

The costumes in 1975 were designed by Patricia Zipprodt (as referenced in my previous post on costume design), notably earning her a Tony Award nomination. In this 1992 production, some costumes were “duplications” of Zipprodt’s originals, and some new designs by Garland Riddle – who added a “saucy/sassy array” in the “typical Fosse dance lingerie” style. It is here we begin to see some of the more dark, slinkiness that has become so synonymous with “Chicago” as a concept in public perception.

The sets from the original were designed by Tony Walton – again, nominated for a Tony – and were reused with completeness here. This is important as it shows some of the original dance concepts in their original contexts, given that portions of the initial choreography were “inextricably linked to the original set designs.” This sentiment is evident in the final portion of ‘Cell Block Tango’, pictured and linked at the following time-stamp below, which employs the use of mobile frame-like, ladder structures as a scaffold for surrounding movements, and also a metaphor for the presence of jail cell bars.

https://youtu.be/4HKkwtRE-II?t=741

Defining exactly how much of the initial choreography was carried across is an ephemeral line. Numbers were deemed “virtually intact” in the main review published during the show’s run from the LA Times – or even further, “clones” of the originals. It is thought that the majority of numbers here exhibit greater similarity to the 1975 production than the 1996 revival, except for ‘Hot Honey Rag’ which is regarded as reasonably re-choreographed. But even so, comparing against remaining visible footage of Gwen Verdon and Chita Rivera from the original, or indeed alternatively against Bebe and Annie later in the revival, does not present an exact match to either.

This speaks to the adaptability and amorphousness of Fosse-dance within its broader lexicon. Fosse steps are part of a language that can be spoken with subtle variations in dialect. Even the same steps can appear slightly different when being used in differing contexts, by differing performers, in differing time periods.

It also speaks to some of the main conventions of musical theatre itself. Two main principles of the genre include its capacity for fluidity and its ability for the ‘same material’ to change and evolve over time; as well as the fact comparisons and comprehensions of shows across more permanent time spans are restricted by the availability of digital recordings of matter that is primarily intended to be singular and live.

Which versions of the same song do you want to look at when seeking comparisons?

Are you considering ‘Hot Honey Rag’ at a performance on the large stage at Radio City Music Hall at the Tony Awards in 1997? Or on a small stage for TV shows, like the Howard Cosell or Mike Douglas shows in 1975? Or on press reel footage from 1996 on the ‘normal’ stage context in a format that should be as close to a replica as possible of what was performed in person every night?

Bebe often remarks on and marvels at Ann’s capacity to travel across a stage. “If you want to know how to travel, follow Annie,” she says. This exhibits how one feature of a performance can be so salient and notable on its own, and yet so precariously dependent on the external features its constrained to – like scale.

Thus context can have a significant impact on how numbers are ultimately performed for these taped recordings and their subsequent impact on memory. Choreography must adjust accordingly – while still remaining within the same framework of the intention for the primary live performances.

This links to Ann’s own choreographical aptitude, in the amount of times it is referenced how she subtly adapted each new version of Chicago to tailor to individual performers’ specific merits and strengths as dancers.

Ann’s impact in shaping the indefinable definability of how Chicago is viewed, loved and remembered now is not to be understated.

An extensive 1998 profile – entitled “Chicago: Ann Reinking’s musical” – explores in part some of Ann’s approaches to creating and interacting with the material across a long time span more comprehensively. Speaking specifically to how she choreographed this 1992 production in isolation, Ann would say, “I knew that Bob’s point of view had to permeate the show, you couldn’t do it without honoring his style.” In an age without digital history at one’s fingertips, “I couldn’t remember the whole show. So I choreographed off the cuff and did my own thing. So you could say it was my take on his thoughts.” Using the same Fosse vocabulary, then – “it’s different. But it���s not different.”

One further facet that was directly carried across from the initial production were original cast members, like Barney Martin as returning as Amos, and Michael O'Haughey reprising his performance as Mary Sunshine. Kaye Ballard as Mama Morton and Gary Sandy as Billy Flynn joined Bebe and Juliet to make up the six principals in this new iteration of the show.

Bebe, Gary and Juliet can be seen below in a staged photo for the production at the theatre.

The venue responsible for staging this Civic Light Opera production was the Terrace Theatre in Long Beach in Los Angeles. Now defunct, this theatre and group in its 47 years of operation was credited as providing some of “the area’s most high profile classics”. Indeed, in roughly its final 10 years alone, it staged shows such as Hello Dolly!, Carousel, Wonderful Town (with Donna McKechnie), Gypsy, Sunday in the Park with George, La Cage aux Folles, Follies, 1776, Funny Girl, Bye Bye Birdie, Pal Joey, and Company. The production of Pal Joey saw a return appearance from Elaine Stritch, reprising her earlier performance as Melba Snyder with the memorable song ‘Zip’. This she had done notably some 40 years earlier in the original 1952 Broadway revival, while infamously and simultaneously signed as Ethel Merman’s understudy in Call Me Madam as she documented in Elaine Stritch at Liberty.

Juliet Prowse appeared as Phyllis in Follies in 1990, and Ann Reinking acted alongside Tommy Tune in Bye Bye Birdie in 1991, in successive preceding seasons before this Chicago was staged.

But for all of its commendable history, the theatre went out of business in 1996 just 4 years after this, citing bankruptcy. Competition provided in the local area by Andrew Lloyd Webber and his influx of staging’s of his British musicals was referenced as a contributing factor to the theatre group’s demise. This feat I suspect Bebe would have lamented or expressed remorse for, given some of her comments in previous years on Sir Lloyd Webber and the infiltration of shows from across the pond: “I had lost faith in Broadway because of what I call the scourge of the British musicals. They've dehumanized the stage [and] distanced the audience from the performers. I think 'Cats' is like Patient Zero of this dehumanization.”

That I recently learned that Cats itself can be rationalised in part as simply A Chorus Line with ears and tails I fear would not improve this assessment. In the late ‘70s when Mr Webber noticed an increase of dance ability across the general standard of British theatre performers, after elevated training and competition in response to A Chorus Line transferring to the West End, he wanted to find a way he could use this to an advantage in a format that was reliable to work. Thus another similarly individual, sequential and concept-not-plot driven dance musical was born. Albeit with slightly more drastic lycra leotards and makeup.

But back in America, the Terrace theatre could not be saved by even the higher incidence of stars and bigger Broadway names it was seeing in its final years, with these aforementioned examples such as Bebe, Annie, Tommy, Juliet, Donna, or Elaine. The possibility of these appearances in the first place were in part attributable to the man newly in charge as the company’s producer and artistic director – Barry Brown, Tony award-winning Broadway producer. 

Barry is linked to Bebe’s own involvement with this production of Chicago, through his relationship – in her words – as “a friend of mine”.

At the time, Bebe was in LA filming Cheers, when she called Barry from her dressing room. Having been working in TV for a number of years, she would cite her keenness to find a return to the theatre, “[wanting] to be on a stage so badly” again. The theatre is the place she has long felt the most sense of ease in and belonging for, frequently referring to herself jokingly as a “theatre-rat” or remarking that it is by far the stage that is the “medium in which I am most comfortable, most at home, and I think I'm the best at.”

Wanting to be back in that world so intensely, she initially proposed the notion of just coming along to the production to learn the parts and be an understudy. Her desire to simply learn the choreography alone was so strong she would say, “You don’t have to pay me or anything!”

She’d had the impetus to make the call to Barry in the first place only after visiting Chita Rivera at her show in LA with a friend, David Gibson. At the time, the two did not know each other that well. Bebe had by this point not even had the direct interaction of taking over in succession for Chita in Kiss of the Spider Woman in London. This she would do the following year, with Chita guiding her generously through the intricacies of the Shaftesbury Theatre and the small, but invaluable, details known only to Chita that would be essential help in meeting stage cues and playing Aurora.

Bebe had already, however, stepped into Chita’s shoes multiple times, as Anita in West Side Story as part of a European tour in the late ‘70s, or again in a Cleveland Opera Production in 1988; and additionally as Nickie in the 1986 Broadway revival of Sweet Charity – both of which were roles Chita had originated on stage or screen. In total, Velma would bring the tally of roles that Bebe and Chita have shared through the years to four, amongst many years also of shared performance memories and friendship.

They may not have had a long history of personal rather than situational connections yet when Bebe visited her backstage at the end of 1991, but Chita still managed to play a notable part in the start of the first of Bebe’s many engagements with Chicago.

After Bebe hesitantly relayed her idea, Chita told her, “You should call! Just call!”

So call Bebe did. One should listen to Chita Rivera, after all.

Barry Brown rang her back 10 minutes later after suggesting the idea to Ann Reinking, who was otherwise intended to be playing Velma. The response was affirmative. “Oh let her play the part!”, Annie had exclaimed. And so begun Bebe’s, rather long and very important, journey with Chicago.

In 1992, this first step along the road to the ‘new Chicago’ was well received.

Ann Reinking with her choreography was making her first return to the Fosse universe since her turn in the 1986 Sweet Charity revival. Diametrically, Rob Marshall was staring his first association with Fosse material in providing the show’s direction – many years before he would go on to direct the subsequent film adaptation also. Together, they created a “lively, snappy, smarmy” show that garnered more attention than had been seen since the original closed.

“Bob Fosse would love [this production],” it was commended at the time, “Especially the song-and-dance performance of Bebe Neuwirth who knocks everyone’s socks off.” High praise.

Bebe was also singled out for her “unending energy”, but Juliet too received praise in being “sultry and funny”. Together, the pair were called “separate but equal knockouts” and an “excellent combination”.

Juliet was 56 at the time, and sadly died just four years later. Just one year after the production though, Juliet was recorded as saying, “In fact, we’re thinking of doing it next year and taking it out on the road.”

Evidently that plan never materialised. But it is interesting to note the varied and many comments that were made as to the possibility of the show having a further life.

Bebe at the time had no recollection that the show might be taken further, saying “I didn’t know anything about that.” Ann Reinking years later would remark “no one seemed to think that the time was necessarily ripe for a full-blown Broadway revival.” While the aforementioned LA Times review stated in 1992 there were “unfortunately, no current plans” for movement, it also expressed desire and a call to action for such an event. “Someone out there with taste, money and shrewdness should grab it.”

The expression that a show SHOULD move to Broadway is by no means an indication that a show WILL move. But this review clearly was of enough significance for it to be remembered and referenced by name by someone who was there when it came out at the time, Caitlin Carter, nearly 30 years later. Caitlin was one of the six Merry Murderesses, principally playing Mona (or Lipschitz), at each of this run, Encores!, and on Broadway. She recalled, “Within two days, we got this rave review from the LA Times, saying ‘You need to take the show to Broadway now!’” The press and surrounding discussions clearly created an environment in which “there was a lot of good buzz”, enough for her to reason, “I feel like it planted seeds… People started to think ‘Oh we need to revive this show!’”

The seeds might have taken a few years to germinate, but they did indeed produce some very successful and beautiful flowers when they ultimately did.

In contrast with one of the main talking points of the ‘new Chicago’ being its long performance span, one of the first things I mentioned about this 1992 iteration was the rather short length of its run. It is stated that previews started on April 30th, for an opening on May 2nd, with the show disappearing in its final performance on May 17th. Less than a fleeting 3 weeks in total.

Caitlin Carter discussed the 1992 opening on Stars in the House recently. It’s a topic of note given that their opening night was pushed back from the intended date by two days, meaning Ann Reinking and Rob Marshall had already left and never even saw the production. “The night we were supposed to open in Long Beach was the Rodney King riots.”

Local newspapers at the time when covering the show referenced this large and significant event, by noting the additional two performances added in compensation “because of recent interruptions in area social life.”

It sounds rather quaint put like that. In comparison, the horror and violence of what was actually going on can be statistically summated as ultimately leaving 63 people dead, over 2300 injured, and more than 12,000 having been arrested, in light of the aftermath of the treatment faced by Rodney King. Or more explicitly, the use of excessive violence against a black man at police hands with videotaped footage.

A slightly later published review wrote of how this staging was thus “timely” – in reference to an observed state of “the nation’s moral collapse”.

‘Timeliness’ is a matter often referenced when discussing why the 1996 revival too was of such success. The connection is frequently made as to how this time, the revival resonated with public sentiment so strongly – far more than in 1975 when the original appeared – in part because of the “exploding headlines surrounding the OJ Simpson murder case”. The resulting legal and public furore around this trial directly correlates with the backbone and heart of the musical itself.

I'm writing this piece now at the time of the ongoing trial to determine the verdict of George Floyd’s murder, another black man suffering excessive and ultimately fatal violence at police hands with videotaped footage.

I think the point is that this is never untimely. And that the nation is seldom not in some form of ‘moral collapse’, or facing events that have ramifications to do with the legal system and are emotionally incendiary on a highly public level.

Which perhaps is why Chicago worked so well not just in 1996, but also right up to the present day.

Undoubtedly, we live in a climate where the impact of events is determined not just by the events themselves, but also the manner in which they are reported in the media. Events involving some turmoil and public outrage at the state and outcome of the legal system are not getting any fewer or further between. But the emphasis on the media in an increasingly and unceasingly digital age is certainty only growing.

#chicago #chicago the musical #chicago musical #bebe neuwirth #juliet prowse #ann reinking #bob fosse #fosse #dance #broadway #musicals #theatre #theatre history #choreography #gwen verdon #chita rivera #long reads #writing #george floyd #rodney king #oj simpson #dancing #dancer #andrew lloyd webber #cats the musical #musical theatre

[lilydalexf]

Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with bugs

bugs has 40 stories at Gossamer. They mostly focus on Mulder and Scully, but there are also some goodies featuring Reyes and Doggett. I’ve recced some of my favorites of her fics here before, including The Link. She also co-ran WhyIncision, a fun, smart X-Files mailing list that dissected fics like a book club. Big thanks to bugs for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

Not really. While I was still in high school, I started watching the then 20 year old OG Star Trek and became a Trekkie of a sort. Starlog magazine, James Blish novels and the other novelizations, and while I was working as a library page, I found fanfiction one day among the periodicals.  Who knows how fanfiction ended up as part of a library's materials, but there it was, this tattered mimeographed collection. The fic that had the most impact on me was one where Nurse Chapel wrestled a giant alien snake to save Spock's life.

So when I got into XF, one of the first things I did was look for fanfic, knowing somewhere out there, Scully was wrestling a big snake for Mulder.

That experience showed me the power of fandom, that even without the internet, how the second generation of Trekkies joined the original group to advocate for the franchise to be revived. I remember sitting in the theater for that first awful Star Trek movie, choked up with what we'd done.

Tragic backstory way to say, no I'm not surprised that a well-produced show like XF would beget future generations of fans, and that they'd be chewing their way through the fanfic archives still being maintained.

What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it?

I'm so grateful to the fandom. Literally formed the life I have today through the confidence it gave me. Many of my friends to this day are 'pocket friends' from the various fandoms I've been in, and the longest friendships were formed in XF. I learned how to write, both technically and finding my voice. I learned how to think analytically, more than any college courses.

The two most important things I took away were, write for yourself first and always, and shit ain't that damn important. In the end, it's a TV show.

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

YIKES.  I came in at the Fight the Future summer hiatus, so the waning days of ATXC, then we moved to mailing lists, right?  Yahoo Groups was in there somewhere. Finally message boards. Live Journal rose up at the end of the run which began to fragment the fandom even before the show ended, along with the migration off our individual websites to Archive of Our Own, fanfiction.net and such. We went from group discussion platforms to 'come look at my blog for my thoughts'. It was different and I didn't particularly like it, but in the end, when I came back to fandom for a new show....I had to get a Live Journal. That's the most interesting part of fandom, that a platform doesn't mold a fandom; we use the platform and when it's no longer useful to us, we abandon it en mass.

What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?

I've touched on that a bit, but to elaborate, I'm glad I started in the XF fandom. It had such high standards and I hope that I maintain those standards for myself to this day. These days, I don't usually have a beta reader, but that took a couple hundred posted fics to get to that point.

Having seen the same exact flamewars and divides and squabbles over and over, seen how the taste of 'fame' can drive someone to be rather unpleasant, has given me a much more 'whatever' attitude. It's sort of comforting when joining a new fandom to know what's going to happen next in its natural progression.

What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show?

There's a meme "I have a type," and XF definitely had that type, but it just took me a while to get there. I was away at college then working on the road when the show started, and wasn't home on Friday nights most of the year. My mother has always been a big sci-fi fan, so she actually was watching before me. I don't like scary things, and would leave the room if it was on when I'd visit her. I was home for Christmas when Christmas Carol/Emily aired and I remember standing tentatively just inside the room so I could flee if necessary, and watched Scully go through the wringer, and ranting, "What the hell is this? Why are they putting that poor woman through this!?" I also saw how the show was doing the big ship tease, and I was like, uh, I don't have time for this. Even by my 20's, I'd been done wrong by so many shows that I'd become bitter. But the first film trailers suggested they were actually going from UST to RST, so I figured I could give 2 hours of my time for that.  And yeah...but I was hooked, and WENT TO BLOCKBUSTER AND RENTED THE VHS TAPES TO CATCH UP....this interview is making me feel very old.

What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

I've always been a shipper and have no shame in that, as I think forming and maintaining a relationship is the most conflict-ridden enterprise humans can attempt, and thus is the most challenging thing to write about. Like many fanfic writers, I'd 'told stories in my head' ever since I can remember about the characters from books, shows and movies. It was just a matter of then writing it down for the first time.

After I was sucked into the show and it was still the summer hiatus, I got on my first computer, dialed up that screeching modem, and went on Netscape to search for that fanfic I knew had to be out there from my Trek experience a decade ago. Like many people, after inhaling much of the delicious fics out there, I decided I can do that. I'm someone who's very methodical on my approach to something new, so I studied what worked/what didn't, the expected formatting, got a sense of the culture I was entering, acquired a critical beta reader, so when I actually submitted the first chapter to AXTC, I was calm and confident.

What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom?

I watch from the sidelines, with a vague little smile on my lips.

Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

Yes, I have. Battlestar Galactica had a lot of Philes, but it was still a big step away from the very organized fandom in X-Files. Plus, with so many characters, there could be lots of little groups focused on their favorites. Same in the Downton Abbey fandom. Just a different dynamic.

On the other end of the spectrum, one of my most popular fics is in the Silence of the Lambs fandom which I've never been involved with any other fans or their fandom, if it exists. It just sits out there on fanfiction.net and chugs along with the reads. My current fandom is The Doctor Blake Mysteries which is tiny but mighty--the saying is, we're six people and a shoelace. It's shown me that it's not the size, not the 'fame' possible, but the passion that makes a fandom.

Sadly, at least at this time, I don't think there will ever be an experience like The X-Files heyday. It was such a golden moment of the rise of internet and home computer use by the general public, a large generation of educated women having the time to participate in fandom, and there wasn't the amount of 'noise' that is distracting us all now. I'm so glad that you're doing this exercise to record our thoughts. We've already lost so many of the OG folks. My first beta, Janet Caires-Lesgold; Trixie, way too young; Shari, also too young; Brandon D Ray, leaving his family too soon; and many more.

(Posted by Lilydale on March 9, 2021)

#old school x #xfiles fanfic #xf fanfic #xf fanfic author interviews #bugs

[whetstonefires]

Your post about romance was so spot on and this is from someone who really likes reading romances some of the time. I just wish there were more books where friendships (which after all make up the majority of people's relationships!!) were given the same weight and importance as romance gets unthinkingly. Like, I want books or fic which show the development of two (or more) new friends *as the plot and main part of the book*, and the same thing for the progression of pre-established friendship.

Human relationships are varied and complex and interesting and limiting writing to mainly concerning romantic or dating ones is infuriating! I enjoy reading character driven stuff, which is why I like some romances but I really want to see similarly detailed deep studies of friendship. Friendships are so important, and romantic relationships do not supersede them.  Obviously there is gendered bias against romance as a genre but that is not the only reason to be uninterested in romance damnit!

Sorry for ranting in your inbox about romance and thanks for the post

Hah thank and welcome. Very true!

Yeah, the problem is not just how ubiquitous romance is but the inevitability of it. So many people are so much in the habit of hanging their emotional investment on ‘couples getting together’ that not putting one in is a risk, as a creator, and the faint suggestion of a possibility that a romance might eventuate between two characters constitutes a promise that the audience will be outraged to see not followed through.

So making a story focus at all on a relationship between two people who are considered valid potential romantic partners means having to go through incredible backflips and contortions as a writer to get away with not pairing them up, or there will be outrage. There will be outrage anyway, but hopefully on a contained scale that doesn’t have people throwing your book away.

(The easiest way, of course, is to give one or both of them an alternate partner, but then you either have to build up that relationship as the central focus instead, because you aren’t allowed to love anyone that much and not be romantically involved or be romantically involved For Real with anyone but whoever you love most, or accept that you’ve plastered on a beard of some kind in a way that at this point makes your main duo look even more romantic to people who are looking for that in the first place, even if it lets you write a plot that doesn’t acknowledge this.)

This has contributed enormously to the cultural truism ‘men and women can’t be friends.’ They aren’t allowed to be. And this weird intense romantic pressure is now increasingly extending to same-sex friendships, and it’s like...it’s good that gay visibility and acceptance are growing! That’s great!

But it means that all relationships are increasingly exposed to this honestly fucked up set of expectations. That every single love of any intensity is romantic and probably sexual. That that’s the only love that’s real, or that really matters. With occasional exemptions carved out for parents.

And that’s cultural, I want to say. The inclusion of and an interest in the romantic lives of characters in fiction is definitely natural and practically inevitable, but the outsize role it occupies in our current media culture is abnormal and totally non-compulsory. The central role of romance in so much of narrative is just...a pattern, a narrative schema that currently holds sway, born of an assortment of historical accidents and trends, and I don’t think it’s a good one.

I think it would be better for us as a culture and all our individual relationships for that particular social construct to be broken down.

Because this cultural obsession with The Romance in media mirrors and continually recreates the obsession with The Romance in real life. You know how many people are making themselves miserable by either being in a relationship predicated on the need to have one, any one, rather than actual mutual affection, or about not having a love interest currently at any given moment?

Like, quite separately from the actual frustrated romantic feelings themselves, people feeling like they are less or failures or just...unfinished somehow, because they don’t have a romantic partner. It’s so harmful and absurd! We all know this!

And there are of course a lot of sociological factors that have led to that point as well, but it’s linked particularly closely I think to the atomization of modern society.

You’re not likely to retain any particular community for long--we move around so much over the course of our lives, anything you have is designed to be taken apart. School friends are only rarely retained after school, work friends are only until you get a new job, family is quite often something to be avoided or something you have to leave behind, and not usually an extended network anymore anyway.

We are always moving into new contexts, or knowing we might be moved, and holding onto relationships from one context into another is generally regarded as an unusual feat betokening particular, though not lionized, devotion, and leaning on these relationships ‘too much’ or pursuing them with ‘too much’ energy is regarded with deep suspicion.

This, too, is not particularly normal in the human experience. We are not psychologically designed for this level of impermanence. And we have developed very few structures as a culture thus far to make up for it, which is why the modern adult is so famously, dangerously lonely.

But we have all these social protocols for acquiring a person and holding onto them. A person who’s just yours, all yours, who it is promised will fulfill all those gaping needs all by themselves, and if they don’t it’s because you or they are wrong, and need either a different partner or fixing.

The fact that this is insane and not how romance works over 90% of the time is irrelevant to the dream of it, and the dream overwhelms and controls the reality. I agree that codependency is really fucking romantic, and having a kind and supportive mutual one is a lovely fantasy! It’s just...

A lot of harm eventuates from pursuing this fantasy in reality with a media-based conviction that it is 1) a reasonable thing to expect and 2) a necessary precondition for wellbeing and worthiness.

But we have poured so much cultural freight and need into this one single relationship format. At this point having need in any other direction is regarded as disordered and suspect and probably a misdirected application of sexual desire.

The law, too, has put a lot of energy into supporting the focus on seeking the romance as life goal, because the nuclear family is built on the codependent marriage, and capitalism likes the nuclear family very much. The nuclear family is extremely vulnerable to market pressures and bad at collective action, and tends to produce new tiny humans whose main social outlet has been within the school system, which is specifically structured to condition you to accept abusive workplace conditions as a normal precondition of existence, and not to attempt too much intimacy.

Ahem. Spiraled there. But! It’s all connected! Many of the privileges piled onto the institution of marriage were put there specifically because the nuclear family was considered desirable for the expansion of the economy. That’s clearly documented historical fact.

So yeah, the modern cultural obsession with the romance is a symptom of collective emotional disorder, and it chugs along at the expense of the more complex emotional support infrastructures most of us need and deserve.

It’s not just about me wanting representation, wanting an image in the narratives of my culture where I can see myself with the potential for happiness. Everyone needs this. We learn so much about how to be, how to relate to others, from media at this point, since the school system and other weird age-hierarchy stuff keeps us largely segregated from human society for a majority of our growing years and limits our exposure to live examples.

So the paucity of in-depth explorations of friendship, of mutual support, of widespread narrative acceptance that you can have a good life without a romance as its central support pillar, is harmful to people in general.

-

It’s funny, I get frustrated about this periodically, when a piece of media lets me down, or even when I’m following along a funny piece of meta and then the punchline is ‘and the ace character is obviously in denial about how they’re already dating their favorite person’ or whatever.

(The meta is annoying on a surface level and distressing on a deeper level because it’s a threat; so many times a good platonic relationship will buckle under public pressure and it doesn’t matter how asexual, how uninterested in romance, how emphatically platonic the affection has been established as being, The Romance arrives in the next installment of the story because it’s what people expect. Which reinforces the general perception that any other love is illegitimate, lesser, and as soon as it’s meant to be taken seriously it has to be crammed into that one valid shape, and invalidates future insistences in the same mode.

Seriously people stop doing this, we long since reached the point where a character saying in words ‘I have no romantic interest in [person]’ is perceived as a glaring neon sign that they’re destined to get together and that does not do good things for fostering a culture of consent. Obviously people are in denial sometimes but it should not be understood to be the rule.)

But I don’t get upset about it until someone starts in with reasons I’m bad and wrong for not liking these norms.

Like, whatever, media does not cater to my needs, I’ll cope, but when people start trying to get in my head and make me not only responsible for my own discomfort that I’m managing thanks but dishonest and malevolent I...get upset. There’s history there, okay.

‘You don’t care about this ship because you’re homophobic’ ‘you don’t want a love interest in the sequel because you’re racist’ ‘you don’t like romance in stories because you’re a misogynist’ fucking stop.

And occasionally it’s like ‘i guess you have the right to feel that way but how dare you talk about it where other people might hear’ which...well, is particularly common and particularly ironic in the context of people hung up on gay representation.

If we as a society had a healthy relationship with romance, there wouldn’t be negative side effects to that crowd’s pursuit of their worthy goal of applying that schema in places it has been Forbidden, but as it is we don’t, and there are.

#aromanticism #romance #society #social constructs #i throw salt #on a related note #i know The Untamed was Ambiguous because of censorship #but i was still enjoying not being able to tell dammit #you can ALWAYS tell normally #and that's so boring #people complain less about getting fake foreshadowing about who the murderer was than about not knowing who's interested in who #and who has a real shot with their target #being forced to be ambiguous was making those actors bring their A game #so i still wish i could have watched it play out without spoilers #because it's SO RARE that you can't immediately tell which way a story intends itself to be read on that front #and it was such a nice change #and i have legitimately cried several times over the loss of the joy i was getting out of that relationship not being so fucking dull #because like it's still fun and well done and stuff but it's not INTERESTING #i didn't even realize how much i was missing that until i briefly had it and it was taken away #so now i get sad a lot when i think about it #and it sucks that the forms for including romance in our media are so formalized #that the only way to get that realistic unclear coalescence of emotional energies #is by writing a romance and being forced to lie about it #a nonny mouse #ask #hoc est meum

[mittensmorgul]

The Tumblr Beta Version: an objective analysis

I was tempted to just type “it sucks.” And while that is an objective analysis, it’s not exactly helpful. I’ve sent several requests to @staff and @support to restore my account to the old tumblr dashboard format, and received the same automated reply twice now. I’ll copy/paste it here so everyone is on the same page:

(lol, I had to go back and edit this, because apparently the beta version doesn’t display block quotes on the dash. So I’ve also put the block quotes in italics... hopefully it’ll display properly... note after editing: nope, it doesn’t display italics either... how the heck am I supposed to differentiate quoted text? I’ll start each quoted bit with an asterisk, I guess...)

*Thanks for reaching out about the beta dashboard.

*We're currently testing it out, and your account seems to have been selected to take part in the test. Thanks for your patience while we work on it! At this time there is not a way to opt out of testing. You may see your Tumblr experience return to normal as we continue testing.

WE CAN ONLY HOPE.

*In the meantime, check out some of the new features available only in the beta dashboard:

OKAY TUMBLR, IF YOU INSIST, though I would MUCH rather have back all the functionality I personally invested into this website through xkit... you know... making the site ACTUALLY FUNCTIONAL. Let’s see what this beta version has given me instead of functionality:

*Change Palettes: Go to the person icon, then click "Change Palette." You'll find the classic Tumblr blue, dark mode, and a few other color palettes for your dash.

So I tried out all the color palettes. In addition to the ones mentioned here, there’s one that’s trying to look like a green screen terminal that gives me flashbacks to the early 80′s. There’s a reason we stopped using green screen terminals... Another one is “canary yellow.” It’s very yellow. The “classic tumblr” isn’t actually classic tumblr... all the post boxes are dark blue with grey type, not white with black type. And all the other colors are the insanely bright fluorescent of the new Dark Blue standard tumblr scheme. Which means links are practically invisible unless I highlight them. It’s migraine inducing. The one theme with a light colored background is called “Concrete” or “Cement” or something like that and even that only works for about half an hour before the migraine aura really kicks in. I just want my Old Blue via xkit back. You know, what tumblr actually used to look like. I don’t want any of these horrible color palettes. None of them work for me.

*The new "meatballs" menu: This is where you can copy the post link, unfollow the Tumblr who made or reblogged the post, or report a violation to our Community Guidelines.

I could do all of this from the user menus with xkit, too. I don’t regularly report violations or have the urge to block people I have chosen to follow. Why on earth would I want to do any of this? And why would I want these features located directly beside the post link copy feature? 

You know what I do miss? I miss the xkit timestamps feature. I didn’t have to hover dangerously close to the KILL IT WITH FIRE meatballs menu in order to see when a post was made, and in this era of disinformation and misinformation spreading around this site faster than Covid-19, being able to see when a post was ORIGINALLY created is a far more useful feature than an easier way to block people. For reference: I currently have three blogs blocked. Two of them are pornbots. One is a nazi. If I don’t want someone’s content on my dash, I don’t follow them. This “feature” is entirely useless to me.

*A quick note: Pagination is not supported in this beta test, but we're collecting feedback to send to our engineers.

THIS IS THE ABSOLUTE WORST. This beta test might actually be tolerable if I wasn’t trapped into endless scrolling. If I could page through my dash, refreshing it every ten posts or so. You know why? Because once I scroll about 30 posts down my dash, tumblr starts overheating my laptop under the load of ALL THOSE POSTS. Things start malfunctioning-- it takes longer and longer to load new posts the farther I scroll. And the keyboard navigation (both page down and hitting J to advance to the next post, and even just using the down arrow to scroll as I read a long post) freeze and stop functioning. One of my laptop fans has actually begun to malfunction.

You know why this wasn’t a problem on the old version? If the data load got to heavy, I could open a post in a new tab, click view on dash with xkit, and voila! Brand new tab! I could close the malfunctioning tab and everything would be refreshed to normal! But without pagination, THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE.

Also, after reblogging a few posts, the beta version of this site breaks, and doesn’t open a post tab to add commentary or even tags. It just... reblogs the untagged post with no warning whatsoever. You know... that’s really really not cool. I tag EVERYTHING. Well, almost everything. The tags are the only way to keep track of the 40k+ posts on my blog. And warn people that I am posting potential spoilers, or other specific content. It’s REALLY inconvenient to have to either immediately go to my blog to edit the post and add tags, or even comments. The alternative is to scroll up to open individual posts I want to reblog in a new tab, and then reblog directly there. Ironically enough, THOSE pages actually open with xkit installed, and everything (surprise!) functions perfectly there.

It’s perfectly reasonable to understand why this specific issue has limited the number of posts I reblog. Reblogging content should not be this much of a hassle. Creators have been complaining for a while that reblogs have drastically slowed down, and I think making it even more annoying and difficult to reblog posts will not help this problem.

Also, with xkit enabled, there’s a function that auto-loads images as you scroll, so the images are always visible BEFORE they appear on screen. I don’t have to look at the colored boxes and wonder if this is a post I’ve already seen or something I should sit and wait for. Don’t even think about watching tumblr videos. Loading priority is given to the ads that you cannot pause or dismiss, so that video loads and plays in choppy two second bursts instead of being given priority. Since that’s the content I am actually here to consume, it kinda makes me want to do the opposite of patronizing anyone who advertises here with graphically intense ads. And then when you scroll away, with xkit, gifs and videos you’ve scrolled past STOP loading and playing, which I think might be contributing to the intensity of the resource hogging that’s literally melting down my laptop.

And for reference, I have a pretty decent little gaming laptop. A blogging platform shouldn’t be driving it to the brink of frying itself. I didn’t realize just how much xkit worked to streamline this and provide basic functionality to this site.

*And lastly, if you're an XKit user, know that the XKit team is working hard to update things on their end to make it compatible with the beta dashboard.

And this doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what I’ve lost without xkit. And this is a really REALLY garbage response to user complaints. “Oh, yeah, sorry we made our site suck even worse, but those nice people who do our jobs for free will surely fix our garbage soon!”

Dear wonderful people at @new-xkit-extension, I love you, and I miss you, and while I wish xkit worked with this beta version I’ve been forced into living with, I truly feel for y’all who are trying to deal with this nonsense on behalf of all of us.

And to the folks at Tumblr... maybe try to just... make your site actually more like xkit. You know, actually functional. None of these special new features are useful or functional to me. I respectfully request for a fourth time to be removed from this inane beta test.

Give us OPTIONS. Let us display ALL THE TAGS without having to click a button. Let me have back my Activity+ that actually allowed me to interact with people from my dash! That showed me real-time inline notifications in a way that I could reply to with a single click! Bring me back to my column of open messaging conversation icons so I have easy access to the people I talk with throughout the day instead of closing them all every time I refresh the page. I already feel socially isolated in freaking quarantine, please stop shutting off all my avenues of communication!

Let us have pagination! I mean, maybe it wasn’t the best idea to force heavy users of this site into a beta version that doesn’t allow us to opt out until your engineers had actually figured out how to make it work in a very basic way.

*Let me know if there's anything else I can help you with!

YES. PLEASE REMOVE ME FROM THIS BETA TEST NOW. I have let you know exactly what I want from this site. I just want it to ACTUALLY WORK. For someone who spends 12+ hours a day on this site, this beta test version is NONFUNCTIONAL. PLEASE ALLOW ME TO OPT OUT. I AM LITERALLY BEGGING YOU. I WILL ACTUALLY PAY YOU CASH MONEY TO ALLOW ME TO OPT OUT OF THIS AND GO BACK TO HAVING A FUNCTIONAL BLOG AGAIN. WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!

PLEASE! 

I AM OFFICIALLY AT THE END OF MY PATIENCE FOR ENDURING THIS NIGHTMARE.

(one final quick note... I’ve only been back on my dash long enough to make the parenthetical edits-- i.e. adding italics that don’t display and then adding the asterisks at the beginning of each section of quoted text, and already my laptop is overheating again. For reference, I originally typed this entire post from within my tumblr inbox page-- which still functions normally with xkit-- and spent over an hour on it. My laptop was fine the entire time. Clearly the issue is this beta version of the website. I will never forgive tumblr if y’all fry my literal only portal to the outside world at this time. PUT ME BACK TO NORMAL NOW. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY INFURIATING AND ENTIRELY UNACCEPTABLE. Thanks)

(oops apparently i lied... when the asterisks and the previous final note failed to display, I thought that seemed suspicious, and realized that I literally needed to refresh my entire dash in order to see edited changes. Funny how xkit enabled me to do that in real time, which is just another bit of functionality I’ve lost with this beta program. Please guys, this is really, really not working for me at all, just put it back.)

#tumblr problems #staff #support #xkit #was this good enough for you? because I am totally done with this if that wasn't completely obvious #please end my suffering

[reallifesultanas]

A mohácsi csata áldozatairól, 1526 egy másik szemszögből / About the victims of the battle of Mohács, 1526 from a different perspective

This post consisted of the translation of several recent Hungarian articles about the excavation of mass graves related to the battle of Mohács. The articles are listed at the sources.

Painting of Than Mór

Prologue

History is something that needs to be examined objectively in all cases, especially when someone is writing educational articles about it. However, there are times when this is difficult. At the end of the portrait of Sultan Suleiman, I have already referred to this in the epilogue. Then I wrote:

"As a Hungarian, the research about Suleiman is a very complex task, because objectivity is the basis of every historical research, but it is difficult to ignore the often cruel acts committed by the Ottomans against the Hungarians. My feelings about Suleiman are always mixed, for we can “thank” him for the fragmentation of our country, but on the other hand he was such a glorious ruler, that only a few like him lived in history. And his death always fills him with shivers. I respect this 71-year-old man, who wants to die as a glorious sultan with his last strength, but in vain he wants, Szigetvár just doesn’t want to fall. I respect his perseverance, but at the same time, I am extremely proud that Miklós Zrínyi and the other defenders defended Szigetvár so strongly and gloriously! Unawares, I ask myself what would have happened if the news of the sultan’s death came to light? If Sokollu can’t keep it a secret? The soldiers might have collapsed, and the defenders with Zrínyi would give new strength and the history of Szigetvár would turn out differently… "

In connection with the battle of Mohács, this feeling is even stronger. This was one of the bloodiest battles between Suleiman and the Hungarians. And it was full of cruelty. I have already referred to this in my youtube video about the life of Bali Bey, as it was Bali Bey who was sent forward to the capital city after the battle of Mohács and Bali Bey was the one who executed unarmed civilians despite they surrendered and asked for mercy. One might think that it was only Bali Bey who was cruel and would try to find excuses for Suleiman, but the events in Mohács make it clear that Suleiman himself had a similar opinion about us Hungarians.

But what happened at Mohács?

Although Suleiman's intention had been known since the beginning of 1525, the weakened Kingdom of Hungary did not have sufficient resources to build a defense system. Contributing to this was the fact that the Hungarian nobility did not hold together, did not take the threat seriously, and was very divided. By the time the threat became apparent, it was too late. In vain did they ask for help from the other Christian empires, they received only promises. The only one who would have actually been willing to help was Henry VIII, but he made the decision too late. By the time he decided, there was no chance to save the Kingdom of Hungary. Henry's soldiers sent for help reached Pozsony in 1527.

The Hungarian army, which thus consisted of only 24,800 men, was equipped with 85 cannons (53 of which were in use), and a few more Croatian corps were available. The forces of the Ottoman army are put on sixty thousand regular sipahis and janissaries, but this, according to historical research today, is too much, the regular stock of the entire Ottoman army was sixty to seventy thousand, and it did not take part in this battle. In fact, the number of elite units could have been 30,000, with the addition of irregular troops, asabs and akincis, and other units. Thus the Turkish army of sixty thousand was formed from this.

Ottoman miniature about the battle of Mohács.

The Hungarians were already lined up at the dawn of the battle-day. The Ottoman army began to appear in the early afternoon. The army was led by the Rumelians, followed by the Sultan with the court mercenary armies, and finally the Anatolian corps. It tells a lot about their difficulties that although they set off from the camp early in the morning and were only had to cover a distance of 10 km, yet, the Rumelians arrived around noon, and Anatolian Corps arrived on the edge of the terrace with an additional delay of 1-2 hours. According to sources, the troops were so tired that the sultan held a council, as a result of which they decided to postpone the battle and gave the order to camp.

Presumably, the Hungarian military leadership also learned that the Rumelians were building the camp and so some nobles recommended that the Hungarian king should return to their own camp. However, the king's chief advisers suggested the opposite, expecting that if the battle was fought that day, they could defeat the sultan's army in parts individually. Indeed, it was the only chance to win. Lajos II therefore ordered the attack.

The court mercenaries led by the sultan may have been on the edge of the terrace resting, the Rumelians had already built their camp when parts of the Hungarian army stormed them in full gallop. In any case, the attack of the cavalry caused confusion in the Rumelian corps, and the Turks began to flee. Backward, however, the side of the terrace blocked the way, so they split in two directions. In the meantime, the Janissaries who arrived at the scene welcomed the Hungarians with gunfire, so they were forced to retreat. With their retreat, the battle was essentially over.

The other Hungarian corps could not reverse the status of the battle either, the part of the cavalry that survived the Janissaries' gunfires had already fled, but the infantry fighting in front of the cannons was surrounded by the Ottomans and most of them were slaughtered. In the battle of just one and a half to two hours, the Hungarian army suffered a devastating defeat. 4,000 cavalry, 10,000 infantry, 7 bishops - including Archbishop Tomori and another main bishop László Szalkai of Esztergom and another 5 bishops - and 16 ensigns and 12 lords fell. Tomori's body was found by Suleiman, and his head was tied to a spike in front of Suleiman's tent. His peculiar cruelty is a good indication that Suleiman was particularly angry, and although they had won thanks to their headcount superiority, the Hungarian army successfully surprised them due to the poor field conditions.

Map for the battle. Source: http://www.e-kompetencia.si/egradiva/zgo_ds/17%20mohacs/index31.html

The causes and significance of the defeat are still the subjects of heated debate to this day. According to some, the reasons for the defeat are the divisive Hungarian nobility and the deliberate delay of János Szapolyai, the later King John I. However, based on our current knowledge, the blame for Szapolyai does not acceptable. Even if he wanted, Szapolyai could not have reached Mohács, because Szapolyai was still waiting in Torda on 15 August, a good 400 km from the battle site, and on 29 August he was only in the area of ​​Szeged. According to others, under those circumstances, no European state formation, including Hungary, would have had a chance to win against the Ottoman Empire, which had the most modern and equipped forces in the world at that time. However, if the other Christian empires had given support to the Hungarians, the outcome of the battle would not have been so clear.

After the end of the battle, the Turks were armed all night, waiting for the Hungarian main forces... That main forces which actually was already slaughtered. Only after some time, the sultan realized that there is no other army, that's was the whole. So after the surprising victory, Suleiman gave a short rest to his army, and then they started to march for the main goal of his campaign to Buda. The raiders marched in front of him and also robbed, destroyed cities, and executed unarmed civilians begging for mercy. Meanwhile, on August 30, news of the loss of the battle arrived in the capital, by which time the entire court had fled to Pozsony that night. The next day, almost the entire population followed them. The sultan arrived in Buda on September 12. He inspected the castle, on the 14th the city was set on fire, the treasures found in the palace were placed on a ship, including the giant cannon that János Hunyadi had captured in 1456 under Nándorfehérvár. The Sultan's army marched back to Istanbul on September 25th. By then, his raiders had destroyed the areas around the capital from Eger to Győr. Only a few walled cities escaped.

After the battle of Mohács, the country's capital, Buda, was defenseless. The king and with him a significant part of the nobility died, and there were difficulties in organizing further defenses. Practically only the Transylvanian army of 15,000 men remained under the command of János Szapolyai, but he could not and would not fight. He had no choice but to make a deal with the Ottoman Sultan. That's how he became the vassal of the Ottomans and the king of what remained from Hungary.

Painting of Bertalan Székely about the funeral of Lajos II.

Discovery of mass graves

In 1902, miller Demeter Pavlovics wanted to build a trade next to the mill on the Csele stream, but his workers found bones during the extraction of the land, which bones were then found in such quantities that the work itself was obstructed. Most of the bones were already strongly calcified, although some skulls and teeth remained almost completely intact. As they found coins of Lajos II near the miller's place it was possible to link the bones he found to the battle [1].

Although mass graves have been examined several times since then, thanks to advances in science these days, now it is possible to extract information from the grave. The 500th anniversary of the Battle of Mohács is approaching, and this round anniversary and the associated subsidies have greatly helped to establish this huge national cooperation in the excavation of the mass graves. Especially since they want to rebury the remnants of the martyrs on the occasion of the anniversary.

Of the five mass graves currently known in Mohács, the number three is now under investigation, it is the smallest though, about 15 square meters. The identification of bone remains is a huge professional challenge for anthropologists, emphasized György Pálfi, Head of Department of Biological Anthropology, University of Szeged [2].

The mass grave number three on the photography of György Pálfi. Source: [3].

Who and how many can be in the mass graves?

It was already successfully discovered in the 1960s that victims of Christian armies were found in the graves. This could be determined on the basis of the highlighted number of German, Czech and Hungarian coins. We know: Lajos II's army was made up of Hungarian, Transylvanian, German, Polish and Czech soldiers, and even a small number of Croats and Serbs were present in the army [3].

Examining the graves revealed a chaotic sight for the researchers. Looking at the mass grave excavated by archaeologists and prepared for anthropological research, the incredible mixing of human bone remains is astounding to the expert as well. The examination of the mass grave number three and the identification of bone remains is a huge professional challenge for anthropologists, as in addition to the confusion of the many human bones, the extraordinary decay conditions due to the special burial and the subsequent damaging factors, also make the work harder [3].

In the 1970s, the number of dead in the case of mass grave number three, was estimated at around 130, but it is now clear that the compaction in the lower strata and especially at the edges of the grave pit is much greater than expected. It is now visible that the skeletons were compressed in an almost irrationally small place. Based on this, it is believed that the previously estimated number of deads in the mass grave can be doubled. Researchers estimate the number of remains in mass grave number three, which is the smallest among the mass graves, to 300 [3].

Due to the entanglement of skeletons, researchers often have to proceed in parallel with the remains of 8-10 individuals. As a result of the tests, the number of registered bone remains varies. It often turns out that the skull and the skeleton of a person do not really belong together at a glance, in which case the numbers increase. But the opposite also happens. For example, skeletal remains, which were considered separate in 1976, were also reexamined and they found it belongs to the same person, resulting in a decrease in numbers. Exploring bones, often chaotically mixed, is quite time-consuming. The skeletons accumulate in several layers in the mass grave number three [3].

Anthropological observations may also clarify the conclusions that can be drawn from archaeological finds. The people in the mass grave in Mohács are Christians. The excavation and anthropological identification of skeletons of one of the five mass graves known so far have begun. Based on the approximately 200 human remains, 90 percent of the people in the Mohács mass graves are young or relatively young adults, 18-40 years old. A smaller number of adolescents because they also identified people who died around the age of 14-16. They have encountered one or two adolescent children aged 12–13 years, some older men, and a skeleton that can be identified almost certainly and two presumably as women [3].

Can the results help to find the exact location of the battle scene?

Identifying the location of the battlefield is still unresolved. Archaeologist Gábor Bertók - who is the leader of the present excavation - and his staff are constantly looking for the site of the battle of August 29, 1526. This is assumed to be on the outskirts of the village of Majs, because large quantities of rifle bullets, weapon fragments, and plenty of horseshoes were found there. Of the approximately 250 projectiles, nearly 170, or more than two-thirds of the finds, are relatively small compared to the size of a typical rifle bullet of the age: 10 to 15 millimeters. Exploration of the mass grave can also contribute to the identification of the battlefield. Namely, when highlighting bone remains, researchers found such a small rifle bullet, next to the spine of a skeleton. It was also found that this man had been executed, based on the ijuries on his skull and neck. Because of the bullet “preserved” in his body and now find, we can conclude that the skeleton belongs to a prisoner of war who was wounded in the Battle of Mohács, but his injury was not fatal but was later executed as wounded and thrown into this mass grave [3].

Since it is indisputable that the size of the bullet in the victim's body is the same as that found in an area 4-5 kilometers from the mass grave, it is also clear that the victim was injured in battle. This projectile could give another boost to research related to the battlefield. In the near future there will be intensive archaeological excavations in the area, as by 2026, the 500th anniversary of the Battle of Mohács, archaeologists want to find the most probable place for the battle so that we can remember the historical turning point 500 years earlier. Thus, since the victim was certainly executed after the Battle of Mohács and the bullet found in his body is the same as the bullets discovered in the nearby area, it can be safely assumed that the battlefield was 4-5 kilometers from the mass graves [3].

Painting of Bertalan Székely about the battle. The area was very swampy as it is visble in the painting as well.

Who can these people be in the grave? Were they died during the battle or executed later?

Some suggest that based on the head injuries, they may have been the victims of the "Hungarian chariot camp" cut down by the Turks. What was this cart camp? After the battle of Mohács, the country's capital, Buda, was defenseless. The king and with him a significant part of the nobility died, and there were difficulties in organizing further defenses. The only serious resistance during the march of the Ottomans toward Buda, was gathered near Pusztamarót for an "army" of 25,000 peasants, setting up a chariot camp, but they were also quickly smashed and slaughtered by the well-armed Ottomans [3]. In fact, this version is not very possible, as Pusztamarót is a long way from the place of the mass graves.

Other researchers had previously considered the place of mass graves to be the site of the battle. There is also a third option, based on written memoirs of the “great public execution after the battle”. It is known from the archives of Suleiman I that the next day of the battle of Mohács the sultan ordered a large solemn gathering, watched the procession of his glorious army from the tent, and then led the prisoners of war in front of him. He did not allow his lieutenants to keep prisoners of war but organized a large public collective execution. So far we have known - actually from Suleiman's archives - that more than two thousand prisoners of war have been executed after the Battle of Mohács. Based on a 1976 surface survey, it was estimated that about a thousand people's skeletons are buried in the five mass graves. However, based on the new investigations of the third mass grave, researchers believe that the number of skeletons found in the mass graves in Mohács may be more than double of the previously suggested 1000. This is relatively in line with the number of people executed by Suleiman. And a thorough examination of the victims also makes this option more and more likely, as the examination of human skeletal remains at the third mass grave shows that it is the mass grave of wounded people. Researchers have identified a number of cases where it is clear from the trace that a kneeling man with a bowed head was killed from behind. A human skeleton has also been found showing that that man was struck from above two or three times 494 years ago. Several cases have been uncovered where the same cervical vertebrae have been cut twice in parallel, which is very difficult to imagine during battle. Based on the contemporary descriptions and the drawing of the execution after the Battle of Nikápoly more than 100 years ago, it can be assumed that the soldiers captured at Mohács were executed in a similar way by the Sultan. Thus, the third mass grave of the Mohács National Historical Monument shows barbaric post-massacre conditions [3].

Sword traces on a skull highlighted from a mass grave. Photo: György Pálfi. Source: [3].

Cut marks on the cervical vertebrae suggesting beheading. Photo: György Pálfi. Source: [3].

What's next?

Anthropological examination of the mass grave may continue in the spring. Removal of the remains can be done in 3-4 months, but laboratory processing of the findings can take years. During this time, anthropological and, if necessary, genetic methods can be used to isolate the remains of individual victims, but they can also reach facial reconstruction through radiological and genetic analyzes. The main goal is to sort the remains of the martyrs buried in a humiliating way for the 500th anniversary of the Battle of Mohács and then bury them in individual graves [2].

Used sources: [1]: http://ujkor.hu/content/mohacsi-tomegsirok-nyomaban-korabbi-es-legujabb-feltarasok [2]: https://mult-kor.hu/a-szegedi-tudomanyegyetem-antropologusai-is-reszt-vesznek-a-mohacsi-tmegsir-feltarasaban-20201209 [3]: https://u-szeged.hu/mohacsi-csata?objectParentFolderId=19396

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Ez a poszt a mohácsi csatához kapcsolódó tömegsírok feltárásáról szóló több friss magyar nyelvú cikk fordításából állt össze. A cikkek a forrásoknál listázva vannak.

Prológus

A történelem egy olyan dolog, melyet minden esetben objekíven kell figyelni, különösen ha valaki ezzel kapcsolatos ismeretterjesztő írásokat készít. Vannak azonban esetek mikor ez nehéz. Szulejmán szultán portréjának végén az epilógusban már utaltam erre. Akkor ezt írtam:

"Magyarként Szulejmán tanulmányozása igen összetett feladat, hiszen mert bár az objektivitás a történelmi kutatások alapja, nehéz eltekinteni a sokszor kegyetlen cselekedetektől, melyet az oszmánok követtek el a magyarok ellen. Szulejmánnal kapcsolatban mindig vegyesek az érzéseim, ugyanis neki “köszönhetjük” az ország feldarabolódását, de a másik oldalról egy olyan dicső uralkodó volt, amihez fogható kevés élt a történelemben. Halála pedig mindig borzongással tölt el. Tisztelem ezt a 71 éves férfit, aki utolsó erejével dicső szultánként akar meghalni, de hiába akarja annyira, Szigetvár csak nem akar elesni. Tisztelem a kitartását, ugyanakkor borzasztóan büszke vagyok, hogy ilyen erősen és dicsőn védték Szigetvárt Zrínyi Miklós és a többi védő! Akaratlanul is eszembe jut, mi történt volna, ha a szultán halálának híre kiderül? Ha Sokollu nem tudja titokban tartani? A katonák talán összeomlottak volna, Zrínyiék pedig új erőre kapnak és Szigetvár története talán máshogyan alakul…"

A mohácsi csatával kapcsolatban ez az érzés még sokkal erősebb. Ez volt ugyanis az egyik legvéresebb csata Szulejmán és a magyarok közt. És tele volt kegyetlenkedéssel. Erre a Bali Bég életéről szóló youtube videómban már tettem utalást, Bali Bég volt az, akit Szulejmán a mohácsi csata után előreküldött a főváros felé és Bali Bég volt az, aki fegyvertelen civileket végeztetett ki annak ellenére, hogy azok megadták magukat és könyörületet kértek. Gondolhatnánk, hogy Bali Bég volt csupán kegyetlen, mentegethenénk Szulejmánt, ám a mohácsi események egyértelművé teszik, hogy Szulejmán maga is hasonló véleményen volt rólunk magyarokról.

Than Mór festménye a mohácsi csatáról.

Na de mi is történt Mohácson?

Bár 1525 eleje óta tudott volt Szulejmán szándéka a meggyengült Magyar Királyságnak nem volt elegendő forrása, hogy védelmi rendszert építsen ki. Ehhez az is hozzájárult, hogy a magyar nemesség nem fogott össze, nem vette komolyan a fenyegetést és nagyon széthúztak. Mire a fenyegetés nyilvánvalóvá vált, már késő volt. Hiába kértek ekkor segítséget a többi keresztény birodalomtól, csupán ígérgetéseket kaptak. Az egyetlen, aki végül ténylegesen hajlandó lett volna segíteni VIII. Henrik volt, ám ő is későn döntött. Mire döntött, már esély sem volt megmenteni a Magyar Királyságot. Henrik segítsége 1527-ben érte el Pozsonyt.

A magyar sereg, amely így mindössze 24 800 emberből állott, 85 ágyúval volt felszerelve (ebből 53 került használatba), s még néhány horvát hadtest állt rendelkezésre. Az oszmán hadsereg erőit hatvanezer reguláris szpáhira és janicsárra teszik, ez azonban a mai történelmi kutatások szerint túl sok, a teljes oszmán haderő reguláris állománya volt hatvan-hetvenezer, s ebben a csatában az nem vett részt. Valójában az elit egységek száma 30 ezer fő lehetett, amelyhez hozzájöttek az irreguláris csapatok, az aszabok és az akindzsik és a többi egység. Így ebből állt össze a hatvanezer fős török sereg.

Török miniatúra a mohácsi csatáról.

A magyarok a csata hajnalán már felsorakoztak. Az oszmán sereg kora délután kezdett kibontakozni. A csapatok hadrendben vonultak fel, már amennyire ezt a terep megengedte. A sereg élén a ruméliaiak haladtak, mögöttük a szultán az udvari zsoldos hadakkal, és végül az anatóliai hadtest következett. Nehézségeikről sokat elárul, hogy bár a táborból kora reggel útnak indultak, és a csatatérig csupán kb. 10 km-es távolságot kellett megtenniük, mégis, a ruméliaiak dél körül, a derékhad és az anatóliai hadtest pedig 1-2 óra további késéssel érkezett meg a terasz peremére. A források szerint a csapatok annyira elfáradtak, hogy a szultán haditanácsot tartott, melynek eredményeként a csata elhalasztása mellett döntöttek, és parancsot adtak a táborverésre.

Feltehető, hogy a magyar hadvezetés is értesült arról, hogy a ruméliaiak tábort vernek, és a királynak a táborba való visszatérést ajánlották. A király főbb tanácsadói azonban az ellenkezőjét javasolta, arra számítva, hogy ha aznap vívják a csatát, külön-külön verheti meg a szultáni sereg egyes részeit. Valóban ez volt az egyetlen esély a győzelemre. II. Lajos ezért parancsot adott a támadásra.

A szultán vezette udvari zsoldosok a terasz szélén lehettek, s talán már meg is kezdték leereszkedésüket a magaslat pereméről, a ruméliaiak pedig már a tábort építették, amikor a magyar jobbszárny teljes vágtában megrohamozta őket. Mindenesetre a jobbszárny lovasságának támadása zavart idézett elő a ruméliai hadtestnél, és a törökök menekülni kezdtek. Hátrafelé azonban a terasz oldala elzárta az utat, ezért két irányba szétváltak. Időközben a helyszínre ért janicsárok sortüzekkel fogadták a magyarokat, így azok kénytelenek voltak visszavonulni. Azzal, hogy az első lovasroham kifulladt, lényegében a csata is eldőlt.

A többi magyar csapat sem tudta megfordítani a csata állását, a lovasságnak a janicsárok sortüzeit túlélő része ekkor már menekült, ám az ágyúk előtt harcoló gyalogságot az oszmánok bekerítették, és nagy részüket lemészárolták. Az alig másfél-két órás csatában a magyar sereg megsemmisítő vereséget szenvedett. Elesett 4000 lovas, 10 000 gyalogos, 7 püspök – köztük a fővezér Tomori és Szalkai László esztergomi érsek és másik 5 püspök – és 16 zászlósúr, valamint 12 főúr. Tomori holttestét Szulejmán megkerestette, fejét pedig a sátra előtt karóra tűzette. Különös kegyetlensége jól jelzi, hogy Szulejmán különösen dühös volt, és bár a túlerőnek hála nyertek, a magyar sereg a rossz terepi körülményeknek köszönhetően sikerrel lepte meg őt.

Térkép a csatához. Forrás: http://www.e-kompetencia.si/egradiva/zgo_ds/17%20mohacs/index31.html

A vereség okai és jelentősége a mai napig éles viták tárgya. Egyesek szerint a vereség okai a széthúzó magyar nemesség és Szapolyai János, a későbbi I. János király szándékos késlekedése. Mai ismereteink alapján azonban Szapolyai hiábztatása nem igen állja meg a helyét. Szapolyai ha akart volna, se érhetett volna Mohácsra, mert Szapolyai augusztus 15-én még Tordán várakozott, jó 400 km-re a csata helyszínétől, augusztus 29-én pedig Szeged térségében volt csupán. Mások szerint azon körülmények között az akkori világ legmodernebb és legfelszereltebb haderejével rendelkező Oszmán Birodalommal szemben esélye sem lett volna a győzelemre egyetlen európai államalakulatnak, így Magyarországnak sem. Azonban ha a többi keresztény birodalom támogatást ad a magyaroknak, a csata kimenetele korántsem lett volna ennyire egyértelmű.

A csata vége után a törökök egész éjjel fegyverben voltak, várták a magyar főerőket, csak miután a szultán számára is világossá vált a némileg meglepő győzelem, rövid pihenőt adott hadának, majd megindult hadjáratának fő célja, Buda felé. A kiküldött portyázók előtte jártak, és raboltak, pusztítottak, kegyelemért könyörgő fegyvertelen civileket is. Eközben augusztus 30-án a csatavesztés híre megérkezett a fővárosba, mire az egész udvartartás még aznap éjjel elmenekült Pozsonyba. Másnap csaknem az egész lakosság követte őket. A szultán szeptember 12-én érkezett Budára. Megszemlélte a várat, 14-én felgyújtották a várost, hajóra rakták a palotában talált kincseket, köztük azt az óriás ágyút, amelyet Hunyadi János zsákmányolt 1456-ban Nándorfehérvár alatt. A szultáni sereg szeptember 25-én indult vissza Isztambul felé. Addigra portyázói a főváros körüli területeket Egertől Győrig elpusztították. Csupán néhány fallal erődített város menekült meg.

A mohácsi csata után az ország fővárosa, Buda, védtelen volt. A király és vele együtt a főnemesség jelentős része meghalt, a további védekezés megszervezése nehézségekbe ütközött. Gyakorlatilag csak az erdélyi, kb. 15 ezer fős had maradt ütőképes Szapolyai János vezetésével, de ő nem vállalta és nem is vállalhatta a harcot. Számára nem maradt más esély az életben maradásra és emberei életen tartására, mint egyezséget kötni a török szultánnal.

Székely Bertalan festménye Il. Lajos temetéséről.

Tömegsírok felfedezése

1902-ben Pavlovics Demeter molnár a Csele patakra épült malma mellett liszt- és vegyeskereskedést akart építtetni, munkásai azonban a vert falhoz szükséges föld kitermelése során csontokra bukkantak, amelyek azután olyan mennyiségben kerültek elő, hogy magát a munkát is meggátolták, így nem lehetett nem tudomást venni róluk. A csontok legnagyobb része már erősen el volt meszesedve, bár egyes koponyák és fogak még csaknem teljesen épen maradtak. Mivel a molnár a közelben éppen II. Lajos király (1516–1526) pénzeire bukkant, adódott a lehetőség, hogy a megtalált – feltételezhetően tömeg- – sírt a csatához kössék [1].

Bár a tömegsírokat azóta is többször vizsgálták, napjainkban sikerült csak igazán érdekes információkat kinyerni a sírból a tudomány fejlődésének köszönhetően. Közeledik a mohácsi csata 500 éves évfordulója, és ez a kerek évforduló és a vele járó támogatások nagymértékben segítették azt, hogy létrejöhessen ez a hatalmas országos együttműködés a tömegsírok feltárásával kapcsolatban. Különös tekintettel arra, hogy az évforduló alkalmából szeretnék újratemetni a mártírok maradványait.

A jelenleg ismert öt mohácsi tömegsír közül a hármas számú, jelenleg kiemelten vizsgál, a legkisebb, mintegy 15 négyzetméteres. A csontmaradványok azonosítása óriási szakmai kihívást jelent az antropológusok számára – hangsúlyozta Pálfi György a Szegedi Tudományegyetem Embertani Tanszékének tanszékvezetője [2].

A mohácsi III. tömegsír. Fotó: Pálfi György. Forrás [3].

Kik és hányan lehetnek a tömegsírokban?

Azt már a hatvanas években is sikerrel derítették ki, hogy a keresztény hadak áldozatai találhatóak a sírokban. A kiemelt német, cseh és magyar pénzérmék, e kis mennyiségű régészeti információ alapján lehetett ezt meghatározni. Tudjuk: II. Lajos seregét magyar – a mai magyarországi, de természetesen felvidéki és erdélyi területekről is –, német, lengyel és cseh katonák alkották, sőt kis részben részt vettek benne horvátok, szerbek is. Úgy mondhatjuk, hogy a mai „visegrádi országok” elődeiből, valamint német és délszláv területekről származó keresztény és zömében közép-európai haderő vette fel a harcot Mohácsnál a török túlerővel [3].

A sírokat vizsgálva kaotikus látvány tárult a kutatók szeme elé. A régészek által feltárt és az antropológiai vizsgálatra előkészített tömegsírra pillantva az emberi csontmaradványok hihetetlen keveredése megdöbbentő a szakember számára is! A sok tízezernyi emberi csont összevisszasága mellett a speciális betemetés miatti rendkívüli bomlási körülmények és a későbbi károsító tényezők miatt a III. tömegsír feltárása és a csontmaradványok azonosítása óriási szakmai kihívást jelent az antropológusok számára [3].

A hetvenes években a hátmas számú tömegsír esetében 130 körülire tippelték a halottak számát, ma már egyértelműen látszódik, hogy a vártnál sokkal nagyobb az összetömörödés az alsóbb rétegekben és különösen a sírgödör szélein. Most vált láthatóvá, hogy szinte irracionálisan kicsi helyen préselődtek össze a csontvázak. Ennek alapján vélhetően minimum megduplázható a tömegsír korábban becsült leletszáma. A kutatók 300 körülire saccolják a hármas számú - egyébként legkisebb - tömegsírban található maradványok számát [3].

A csontvázak összegabalyodása miatt sokszor 8-10 egyén maradványaival párhuzamosan kell haladjanak a kutatók. A vizsgálatok eredményeként a regisztrált csontmaradványok száma változik. Gyakran kiderül ugyanis, hogy a ránézésre egy személyhez tartozó koponya és váz valójában nem tartozik össze, ilyenkor növekednek a számok. De ennek ellenkezője is előfordul. Például az 1976-ban különállónak gondolt csontváz-maradványok esetében is történt utólagos egyesítés, ami a számok csökkenését eredményezte. A sokszor kaotikus módon keveredett csontok feltárása meglehetősen időigényes. A csontvázak ugyanis keresztül-kasul, több rétegben halmozódnak a III. számú tömegsírban [3].

Az antropológiai megfigyelések is pontosíthatják a régészeti leletekből levonható következtetéseket. A mohácsi tömegsírba került emberek keresztények. Az eddig ismert öt tömegsír közül egynek kezdődött el a feltárása és a csontvázak antropológiai azonosítása. Az eddig fölszedett 120 körüli csontváz és a felszínen korábban szemrevételezett legalább 80 emberi maradvány, vagyis körülbelül kétszáz vázról összegyűlt információ alapján kimondható: a mohácsi tömegsírba kerül emberek 90 százaléka ifjú vagy viszonylag fiatal felnőtt, 18-40 éves férfi. Kisebb számban serdülőkorú, mert 14-16 év körül elhunyt személyeket is azonosítottak a kutatók. Egy-két 12-13 éves kamasz gyerekként, néhány idősebb férfiként, továbbá egy szinte biztosan és két feltételezhetően nőként azonosítható csontvázzal szintén találkoztak [3].

Hozzájárulhatnak az eredmények a csata helyének pontos megtalálásához?

Máig megoldatlan a csatatér helyének a beazonosítása. Csatára utaló jelek – golyók vagy fegyvermaradványok – ugyanis nincsenek a Mohácsi Nemzeti Történelmi Emlékhely területén. Bertók Gábor régész – aki a jelen ásatás vezetője – és munkatársai folyamatosan keresik az 1526. augusztus 29-i csata helyét. Ezt az emlékhelytől 4-5 kilométerre lévő Majs község határában feltételezik, mert ott nagy mennyiségű puskagolyó, fegyvertöredék és rengeteg lópatkó került elő fémkereséssel. A körülbelül 250 lövedék közül közel 170, vagyis a leletanyag több mint kétharmada a kor jellegzetes puskagolyó méretéhez képest viszonylag kisméretű: 10-15 milliméteres. A csatatér azonosításához hozzájárulhat a tömegsír feltárása is. Ugyanis a csontmaradványok kiemelésekor a kutatók találtak egy ilyen kisméretű puskagolyót. Az egyik csontváz gerincoszlopa mellett, körülbelül 25 centiméterre a felső rétegtől, a feltárás második rétegében. Megállapították azt is, hogy ezt az embert kivégezték, amire a koponyáján és a nyakán látható sérülések miatt gondolhatunk. A testében „megőrzött” és most felszínre került golyó miatt arra következtethetünk, hogy a csontváz egy olyan hadifogolyé, aki a mohácsi csatában az oldalán megsebesült, de sérülése nem volt halálos, ám később sebesültként kivégezték és bedobták e tömegsírba [3].

Mivel vitathatatlan, hogy az áldozat testében lévő golyóó mérete megegyezik a tömegsírtól 4-5 kilométerre található területen felfedezett golyókéval, az is egyértelmű, hogy az áldozat a csatában sérült meg. Ez a csontvázak közül kiemelt lövedék újabb lökést adhat a csatatérhez kötődő kutatásoknak. Mert a közeljövőben intenzív régészeti feltárás lesz azon a területen, hiszen 2026-ra, a mohácsi csata 500. évfordulójára meg szeretnék találni a régészek az ütközet legvalószínűbb helyét, hogy ott méltóképpen emlékezhessünk az 500 évvel korábbi történelmi fordulópontra. Tehát mivel az áldozat bizonyosan a mohácsi csata után lett kivégezve és a testében lelt golyó megegyezik a közeli területen felfedezett golyókkal, biztonsággal feltételezhető, hogy a tömegsírtól 4-5 kilóméterre volt a csata helyszíne [3].

Székely Bertalan festménye a mohácsi csatáról. A festményen is jól látszik, hogy a csata területe igen mocsaras volt.

Kik lehetnek ezek az emberek a sírban? Csatában elhunytak vagy kivégzett hadifoglyok?

Az elsőre is látható fejsérülések alapján itt nagy valószínűséggel a törökök által lekaszabolt „magyar szekértábor” áldozatai lehettek. Mi volt ez a szekértábor? A mohácsi csata után az ország fővárosa, Buda, védtelen volt. A király és vele együtt a főnemesség jelentős része meghalt, a további védekezés megszervezése nehézségekbe ütközött. A törökök Budára vonulása során komolyabb ellenállást egyedül a Pusztamarót mellett összegyűlt kb. 25 ezer fős paraszt- és jobbágysereg tanúsított, amely szekértábort hozott létre, de a jól felfegyverzett törökök hamar szétverték és lemészárolták őket is [3]. Tulajdonképpen ez a verzió bizonytalan lábakon áll, hiszen Pusztamarót nagy távolságra van innen.

Más kutatók korábban inkább a csata helyszínének tekintették ezt a helyet. Létezik egy harmadik, eddig háttérbe szorított opció is „a csata utáni nagy nyilvános kivégzésről” szóló írásos emlékek alapján. I. Szulejmán archívumából lehet tudni, hogy a mohácsi csata másnapján a szultán nagy ünnepi összejövetelt rendelt el, a sátra elől szemlélte a dicsőséges seregének a fölvonulását, majd elővezettette a hadifoglyokat. Alvezéreinek nem engedélyezte a hadifoglyok megtartását, hanem nyilvános, nagy kollektív kivégzést rendezett. Eddig annyit tudtunk, hogy több mint kétezer hadifoglyot végeztek ki a mohácsi csata után. Az 1976-os felszíni vizsgálat alapján azt valószínűsítették, hogy az öt tömegsírban körülbelül ezer ember csontváza van. Ám a harmadik tömegsírnál végzett eddigi vizsgálatok alapján valószínű, hogy a mohácsi tömegsírokban fellelhető csontvázak 45 éve feltételezett számnak inkább a duplája lehet valószínű. Ez aránylag jól egyezik a Szulejmán által kivégeztetett személyek számáéval. És az áldozatok alapos vizsgálata is egyre jobban valószínűsíti ezt az opciót, ugyanis a harmadik tömegsírnál az emberi csontvázmaradványok vizsgálata alapján látszódik, hogy ez lenyakazott emberek tömegsírja. Rengeteg olyan esetet azonosítottak a kutatók, amikor egyértelműen látszik a vágásnyomból, hogy a letérdeltetett, a lehajtott fejű embert hátulról végeztek ki – nyakazással. Találtak olyan emberi csontvázat is, amelyen látszik, hogy arra az emberre 494 évvel ezelőtt kétszer-háromszor sújtottak le felülről. Több olyan esetet is feltártak, ahol ugyanazt a nyakcsigolyát kétszer párhuzamosan átvágták, ez pedig csata közben nagyon nehezen elképzelhető. A korabeli leírások, illetve a több mint 100 évvel korábbi nikápolyi csata utáni kivégzésről készült rajz alapján feltételezhető, hogy Mohácsnál a foglyul ejtett katonákat hasonló módon végeztetette ki a szultán. Tehát barbár mészárlás utáni állapotokat mutat a Mohácsi Nemzeti Történelmi Emlékhely harmadik tömegsírja [3].

Kardvágásnyomok egy a tömegsírból kiemelt koponyán. Fotó: Pálfi György. Forrás: [3].

Lefejezésre utaló vágásnyomok egy nyakcsigolyán. Fotó: Pálfi György. Forrás: [3].

Hogyan tovább?

A tömegsír antropológiai vizsgálata tavasszal folytatódhat. A maradványok kiemelésével 3-4 hónap alatt végezhetnek, a leletek laboratóriumi feldolgozása azonban évekig tarthat. Ez idő alatt antropológiai és szükség esetén genetikai módszerekkel megtörténhet az egyes áldozatok maradványainak elkülönítése, de a radiológiai és genetikai elemzéseken át eljuthatnak az arcrekonstrukcióig is. A legfontosabb cél, hogy a megalázó módon eltemetett mártírok maradványait a mohácsi csata 500. évfordulójára szétválogassák, majd egyéni sírokba temethessék [2].

Felhasznált források: [1]: http://ujkor.hu/content/mohacsi-tomegsirok-nyomaban-korabbi-es-legujabb-feltarasok [2]: https://mult-kor.hu/a-szegedi-tudomanyegyetem-antropologusai-is-reszt-vesznek-a-mohacsi-tmegsir-feltarasaban-20201209 [3]: https://u-szeged.hu/mohacsi-csata?objectParentFolderId=19396

#mohács #mohaç #mohacs #ii. lajos #louis ii #hungarian kingdom #ottoman empire #battle #battle of mohacs #Suleiman the Magnificent #Suleiman I #Suleyman I #szapolyai

[valiantarcadecreator]

Helping browsers optimize with properties containing the CSS

The CSS Containment Specification describes a single property, includes, and can help illustrate to the user which parts of the layout are independent and do not need to recalculate if any other part of the layout changes.Although this property occurs for purposes of performance optimisation, it can also influence the page layout. In this post, therefore, I will describe the various types of containment that you can benefit from, but also the things that you need to look out for if the application includes elements on your web. The Interface Recalculation ProblemWhen you are designing simple web pages that don't add or modify elements dynamically after loading them using JavaScript, you don't have to think about the problem that CSS Containment solves. The browser has to measure the layout just once, as the page is loaded.If you want to add elements to your website without the user needing to reload it, where Containment is useful.When modifying the contents of our package, the browser must take into account that some of the elements may have changed. In general, browsers are pretty good at coping with this, because it is a common thing that must happen. That said, as the developer, you're going to know if each of the components is different, and a change to one doesn't affect the others, so it would be good if you could let the user know this through your CSS. It is what you are given by containment, and the CSS containing properties. How does it help Containment?An HTML document is a tree structure that you can see in DevTools when inspecting any product. I define one thing in my example above that I want to alter using JavaScript, and then make some changes to the internals. (This means I'm just changing things for that list item inside the subtree)

Applying the contain property to an element informs the browser that changes are scoped to that element's subtree, so that the browser can make any possible optimizations — safe in the knowledge that nothing else can change outside of that item. What a particular browser might do is precisely down to the engine. The

CSS

property literally gives you the chance to let it know — as the developer and expert on this style.In certain cases, you would be safe to go straight ahead and start using the contain property, but the different values do come with some possible side effects that are worth knowing before adding the property to your site's elements. Using ContainmentThe containing property will set three different containment types:1.  Layout2.  Paint 3.  Size Note: Level 2 Specification includes a design attribute. It has been dropped from Level 1, so it does not appear in the Recommendation, and Firefox does not enforce it. LAYOUTContainment on the model offers the greatest benefits. Using the following snippet to put layout confinement on:

The user knows with allowed layout containment that nothing outside the element can influence the internal layout, and nothing within the element can alter anything about the layout of items outside it. It ensures that for this case it will render all possible optimisations. When the software containment is allowed, a few additional things happen. These are all items that make sure this box and its contents are separate from the rest of the tree.The box provides an individual meaning for the formatting. This ensures the box content remains in the box — especially floats will be preserved, and margins will not collapse through the box. It is the same behavior we turn on when using display: flow-root as explained in my article "Understanding the CSS structure and the context for block formatting." If a float might pop out of your box, allowing the float to move around following text, this would be a situation where the entity modified the layout of things outside, making it a weak containment candidate.The containing box acts as the central block for any descendants of any absolute or fixed position. This means that it will behave as if you used position: relative to the box that you applied contains layout.The box provides a framework for stacking, too. Thus z-index will function on this part, it will stack its children based on this new context. PAINTUsing the following to switch paint containment on

The same side effects as layout containment occur when paint containment is enabled: the containing box becomes an independent formatting context, a containing block for positioned elements, and a stacking context is established. What paint containment does is inform the viewer that elements within the surrounding block will not be visible outside the box's boundaries. Essentially, the contents are clipped to the package. SizeContainment of size is the attribute that most likely causes you an problem if you are not completely conscious of how it works. Use: To add containment of scale

If you use size containment then tell the user you know the size of the box and it does not shift. This means that if you have a box in the block dimension that is auto-sized, it will be treated as though it has no size, so the box collapses as if it has no material. If you assign the boxes a height, when it contains: size is used, the height will be respected. Scale containment alone does not create a new formatting background and hence does not contain floats and margins as it would do with layout and paint containment. It's less likely you'd use it alone; rather, you'd more likely use it along with other covering values to be able to get as much protection as possible. Shorthand ValuesFor certain instances, one of two shorthand values may be used to get the most out of the containment. To turn on the layout and paint containment, use contains: content; and turn on all containment possibilities (bearing in mind that objects that do not have a size will then collapse), use includes: strict.The Specification says: "contain: content is fairly" free "for widespread application; its effects in practice are relatively slight, and most content does not run out of its restrictions. Since it does not apply size containment, however, the item may still react to the size of its contents which can cause layout-invalidation to percolate further up the tree than desired. Usage includes: rigid, where possible, to achieve as much containment as possible.Therefore, if you do not know the size of the products in advance and accept the fact that it will include floats and margins, usage includes: content. In addition to being happy about the other side effects of containment, if you know the size of objects, using contains: tight. The rest is up to the user, you did your bit explaining how the interface works. Will I now use Containment?The specification for CSS Containment is now a W3C Recommendation which is what we often refer to as a web standard. There needed to be two implementations of the feature that we can see in both Firefox and Chrome to get the spec to this stage:

Since this property is clear to the user, linking to every site is entirely safe even if you have loads of visitors in browsers that don't support it. If the browser does not support containment then the user gets the experience they usually get, the performance is improved for those in supporting browsers. I would say that this is a fantastic thing to add to any components you build in a component or template library, if you're working this way, it's possible that each component is built to be an individual item that doesn't impact other components on the web. So if you have a page that adds content to the DOM after loading, I'd recommend you try it

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[harrishanie]

"Fragmentary Annihilation” by “Alexander”

If you’ve ever encountered the PDF versions of Jesus Ignacio Aldapuerta’s The Eyes or Roger Gilbert-Lecomte’s Black Mirror, you’ve probably seen the link to The Usual Cannibalism, the (now former) blog of the transcriptionist. This blog advertises two original works, now seemingly-inaccessible, Meditations on Ero Guro and Fragmentary Annihilation. I have been curious about these works since my first discovery of the aforementioned documents, but it only occurred to me today that I might be able to find them by just plugging the dead links into the Internet Archive. I thought that they were interesting enough and worth preserving, as much as anything else, so I am posting them here--just the first for now, since I am not sure if Meditations fits the current content dogma. I have also not done any formatting whatsoever so I will apologize.

Both pieces are attributed only to “Alexander”--if you are him, my kind regards. To everyone else, my apologies.

Fragmentory Annihilation

An attempt at overcoming Nihilism and Limitation By Alexander http://the-usual-cannibalism.blogspot.com/

Selected Music: OST 2001: A Space Odyssey: Composed by various. The Beyond: Composed by Fabio Frizzi Blue: Cowboy Bebop OST: Composed by Yoko Kanno. Cannibal Holocaust: Composed by Riz Ortolani Dawn of The Dead: Composed and performed by Goblin Fish ~ Silent Cruise: Ghost In The Shell Stand Alone Complex OST: Composed by Yoko Kanno Greed Bird: Cowboy Bebop OST: Composed by Yoko Kanno Holy Mountain: Composed and performed by Don Cherry, Ron Frangipane, and Alejandro Jodorowsky In Heaven: Eraserhead OST: Composed and performed by Peter Lvers Lucifer Rising: Composed and performed by Jimmy Paige Monochrome: Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex OST: Composed by Yoko Kanno Nosferatu: Composed and performed by Popol Vuh Rain (Female Vocal Version): Cowboy Bebop OST: Composed by Yoko Kanno Requiem for A Dream: Composed by Clint Mansell and performed by the Kronos Quartet Suspiria: Composed and performed by Goblin

Original Compositions Adagio for Strings: Composed by Samuel Barber Ase’s Death: Composed by Edvard Grieg Carmina Burana: Composed by Carl Orf The Crucifixion: Composed by Samuel Barber Dreams Less Sweet: Composed and performed by Psychic TV The Downward Spiral: By Nine Inch Nails F# A# (Infinity): Composed and performed By Godspeed You! Black Emperor Holocausto De La Morte: Composed and performed by Necrophagia Horror of the Zombies: Composed and performed by Impetigo House of the Rising Sun: Performed by The Rolling Stones Hurt: Performed by Johnny Cash I Want Your Soul: Composed and performed by Aphex Twin Ode to Joy: Composed by Beethoven Rain Drops Prelude: Composed by Frederic Chopin Prince Igor: Composed by Alexander Borodin The Requiem: Composed by Mozart Strange Fruit: Composed and Sung by Billy Holiday Song for Liberty: Composed by Giuseppe Verdi Sympathy for the Devil: Composed and performed by the Rolling Stones Va Pensiero: Composed by Giuseppe Verdi Yanqui U.X.O: Composed and Performed By Godspeed You! Black Emperor

In Puberty’s ambush, maidens bloom, All unaware of impending doom They listen to the radio, drink tea Unaware they will lose their liberty Bourgeouis recoil not from slaughter Though victim be son and daughter From Salo: The 120 Days of Sodom.

Diagram -an attempt to understandThe World that follows Sadism or Social Darwinism. Invokes the OverMAN, Absolutism, and a kind of Primitism. Leading to the Simple Passions, the Complex Passions, the Criminal Passions, and the Murderous Passions. Power. The World that follows Psychology (Freud, Jung, and Wilhelm Reich): Implies a tree of influence and evolution, cherry picks the good out of each religion. Interconnectedness. The World that follows Unification (Kierkegaard, Krishnamurti, and the Bhaved Gavid): Man is unified with himself and every other, simplicity, taking away from excess resulting in Social Evolution. Instrumentality. The World that follows the Poete Maudit (Lautreamont, Baudelair, Rimbaud, and Artaud): It is with a fury that man achieves a manifest destiny, personification of the Phoenix. Death & Rebirth. The World that follows the Larvae (developmentally halted no further evolution): An introverted and absolute justification for being wrong and spiteful at humanity. The emulation of an idea taken from a great man, modified for the benefit of the shepherd. Defined technically as Scizotypal. The World that follows Escapism: Be satisfied with life and pursue its vices, no more joy to be partaken than that inside a fellow, and housed in a limited splendor with glass walls. There can be no manifest destiny nor growth when one is given it. The Consumer. The World that follows the Dictator: Differing from the others, this is entirely individual yet joins every belief together for the benefit of the one and truly via cherry picking. Implies a Tao of humankind that commits all positive and negative acts, a kind of birthing process where all thinking merges to create a child different from both parents. The Third Mind. Evolution. The World as Reality: the meaninglessness of art and thought as a futile interprise, limited by the finite life span of the earth and the eraser of all hard external memory. Implies that we will not be remembered no matter the effort. Nihilism. The World as Splendor: To believe one and only, by following only Islam or by following strictly Nietzsche. Limiting one self to but one interpretation, thereby denying reality and evolution. Faith.

SACRED Imagine a voice that is low and hollow and that its vocal cords strain to produce sound. This voice that utters a monotone speech begetting remorse and pain, dignity and hatred. Picture this voice on your parent that visits you in the morning and rapes you at night. Object 1 A woman runs up a stairwell, pursued by a deformed man who walks on all fours; his flesh is bruised and clean shaven, the ears are shorn and pointed, with a tongue sewn from two –twice as long as a dog tongue- without thumbs or big toes, those amputated by eugenic miracle, a man is what he sees himself as through the eyes of others by this very transmuted flesh. The woman is cornered on the roof; this dog/man proceeds to rape her. She then slowly changes, shedding her skin, each limb becomes metallic, she transforms into a plane and leaps from the roof and glides into a building, explosions, a gray fog bellows out.

-£¼ªÙÆ When it comes to conversation, I rehearse almost everything. Ad-libbed material gives way to awkward speech like in a random conversation rushed out if only to keep interconnectedness afloat. That is insipid. Better to rehearse and come across as better then a fellow then to wallow in mediocrity and a limited dialogue. People are angry and nice, giving me eyes that would paint me as an evil outsider placed therein to murder them all. The niceness comes from opening doors for them, as they do not do for me. It is unfortunate that I have the habit of implanting pieces of my personality within my characters, what new extremes that I invoke: Three characters that are the me when given over to fury: They escape my brain and proceed downward through my skull where they break through my mouth, which now resembles a deformed cunt. Yet I cannot stop writing, so with my left hand I use a sewing needle and twine and proceed to stitch up the wound. On a mirror just above this paper I carefully study the wound, opening and closing the lips, showing my slightly yellow teeth; realizing it looks like a rat chewed a circular hole asthough my lips were bitten off completely. I continue forward with this surgery, I do not need a mouth to speak.

The character of Defilement Here arises another Eden; one imagined by that better person inside each and every other –that human that acts upon desire-. The setting is the same as the pictures from the bible

with waterfalls and golden gates, populated by one old cow that can just barely stand. Defilement approaches the cow with the glee of a great sadist. “You ask nothing more then to feast and to have your teats pulled and drained of a blockage of fluid. Much like the nymphomaniac left alone with their arms amputated. Allow me to pay tribute to you and all others.” Defilement undresses, smiling as he shows his disfigured prick; for it takes the shape of a double A battery with a stub of flesh protruding through the hole. His testicals are in fact one dozen knives strung like wind chimes. He is not obese, just pounds of loose flesh hang off him, folding over like animal flippers found on a new race of man. His skin ripples like the top of disturbed water as his knives slightly tingle and ring, and drops of ejaculate fall from them. Now a dirty cunt brimming with urea, crowned by dried shit, penetrated. He kisses the animal’s snout in submission. ‘Bestiality is to give up on humanity’ he whispers into the animals’ ear. With that finished, he begins milking the cow. His children drop onto the grass, colored of milk-white with no mouths or any kind of limbs, but born as torsos though they were only bio-engineered fuck-holes. Defilement buries his children under shallow earth; they grow like trees over years and decades thereafter. He bleeds out, feeding his children organic debris. His plasma becomes their water and his shit becomes their food. Once they have matured, he proceeds to their mother and wrenches loose one curved blade. As saintly as conjoined pedophile and martyr when one kills their lover and a surrogate mother. The teats are completely severed in three disorderly gashes, like a crescent with the star being a separated heart. He wears this apparatus atop his skull like a hat. The cow falls to the ground trying to crawl away. Calmly, he sinks the blade through the snout multiple times as if a child making sure his pet is dead. Cutting off its ears now, he has little time left until he dies of blood loss, and cutting off many inches of skin that would bestow one large coat in one last frenzy that relinquishes everything that once made him human. One last gash to the throat, blood pours in gallons; he punches the jaw and breaks it in half. He opens up its stomach and hallows it out and crawls down this hole, curling up like a fetus, preserved for his children, for this is Eden and depravity is only memory for an audience of weeping trees. The character of Defy “Young boy with medium-sized breasts walks pompously, walks right by me. A boy of milk less breasts dares himself to think that he is better then I with his pompous walk, how dare he looks down at me.” A fifteen year-old girl part of a tribe of the destitute with her fat, crippled girlfriend in tow. She curses at me, calling me a faggot for my nice clothes and my walking like an aristocrat. I am dressed in top hat with a Christian cross etched onto the front, an

expensive suite and shoes, and a magnificent cane beside me with the handle of the Cobra (For Defy is the best representation of me as a person, in how I dress and speak) “You walk like you got a corn cob up your ass!” I approach her, being so cautious that she may have several inbred protectors, “You, minute and destitute whore, you were not christened by any kind of virtue nor vice, for both have a kind of attrition and dignity. You, who were born from a moronic fuck between such forgettable inventors, that which claims how great is life and how great is their delirium; those who bore you and let live, what a waste of raw material. I would not rape you in a fury; I feel your vulva has mixed with the mucus of dogs and paint, standards be not your priority –how you will die from pregnancy-. For I am the me that I WILL, such a high and vulgar being of all powers that dwarfs you and your nothing-life. I pity you for having to bathe your crippled pet with your ignorant tears. I wish you nothing. People, such as you, the peon-masses deserve the earthly Hell that you have so graciously built, that is paradigm, that is Darwin, that is you little woman, without power, you and your class, you incredible weakling, you timid and tortured bitch.” She seemed dumbfounded. I see an ugly girl with brown hair with a scalp resembling a bird’s nest filled with parasites. She has an ugly and misshapen face with protruding teeth and glasses that truly add nothing to her appearance. She walks with her pack of an equally disgusting mother and grandmother or some such; they are all obese, just as putrefied and dead as the child. Someone asks them what time it is… they strain with this simple question for about a minute, and they finally give a wrong answer and proceed on their way. I will prove a point to an atheist author, for I am the great Agnostic. I will see the murder of a martyr, that grand attrition, the only tool worth anything by your cult and genius. Back to the crucifixion: I see a crowd devoted to that phantasm of faith; how easy it is to think all is well at a crucifixion post-mortem. Children start to beat the body with sticks as I arrived, pushing down members of the crowd and presenting one simple dialogue as I arrived and spoke“I am the murderer of god, you are but his pets and I have bathed in your creator’s blood. And I have castrated this god of human hands and a blood-less heart.” Raising my hands high, mentally controlling their will with my skeletal fingers by twisting my left hand’s fingers, beginning with the pinkie, turning inward with a folding thumb. “Every man now, is only a fallen god without eyes. You see the world once emerging from the engorged cunt, and there your fellows sealed your eyelids to a close, your voice becomes an echo, and your hands are now tools for someone else. I offer you the heart of your creator. Ingest this organ of not truth or what is known as divine, but a though, like a match to bring the flames.” I pull out a heart and carve it open with my nails then throw the remains to this crowd of the illiterate and begotten. In actuality, it was the heart of a large ape. As the crowd and minor holy men are busy picking the pieces of the heart, I approached christ with his black hair and a tiny height that rivals the myths of Napoleon. His nails are long, his teeth broken and crooked like a

beggar, his anus widened as with cut open balls. “This is what we’ve been waiting for?” I asked loudly and expectantly, my right arm pointing to the body “We’ve waited thousands of years to see the return of an ordinary man not any different then any of us? He is not worth it. He is not the jesus to be forgiven, he is the man we are glad to be rid of; the bourgeois and insipid variety.” I insert my longest fingers into the spear wound and stretch it open, like a portal down not into the thought process but a descent into organic nausea. Through this hole, passing by fantasia no grander then packaged gizzards. I am now at the top of an incredible mountain paved with diamonds, gold, and titanium. Such a spot befitting a man who says ‘I am god’ I see him now, this most real form; here is the inner child sucking on a thumb. Wait, I examine closer and see he is dead when I feel for a pulse and put my ear up to the mouth and there is nothing. The body is slumped to the right side; thumb still in mouth, covered only by a blue blanket that barely hides a violet flesh, his face is cut apart by the shaving of moustache, eyebrows, and hair on the left of his face, this small and castrated child. I curl up right next to it, hiding under the blue blanket and I sleep. The body dissipates like ashes. I smile. The character of Atheism Atheism, dressed in a white short sleeve shirt and black pants with black tie, armored with a Snake Skin jacket while clutching his imposing pocket knife in a side pocket, culminating with a two-foot long cross impaled through his skull; this deformed pariah who failed as a chameleon. The Madman is dead, and we have killed him. Morality is the assassin; we are the conspirators for being so compliant and listless. We have succumbed to not a land without god or logic, but a mindset without idols. The idol is the bringer of influence and what idols remain? But the dead, dying, and meaningless without innovation and strife… A natural selection that favors the weak. Oscar Wilde once said that all influence is immoral, something referenced to by my now dead friend. The reincarnation is not worthy. If that were untrue, then would we not have evolved beyond Nietzsche? All that has been created are the ouroboros of shared ideas. It is the Madman to come from the brink and deliver to us something that had never before been conceived. As it would, that a Madman would arrive with every dying star, it reminds me of a whore who is given a facial and there discovers illumination. I come too late. My time has long passed…

A young Mormon boy, an old Catholic with a black beard, an obese Evangelist mother of three, one follower of Islam, a female atheist, one stereotypical Buddhist, ending with a small Hindu family; all of whom are extremists which should be noted. An illumination, brilliance, and the Madman: They are the conclusion but to what? Countless images happening all at once, struggling to find that vent through this one character in each action of repulsion and glory. I pondered for a moment if I should draw this out for much longer, then again, this should be quick as my author has set me free and I shall thank him with an excess of blank pages. This Mormon is beheaded by an Al Queda operative. The Catholic is placed in the Antarctic half submerged in ice water. The Hindus are treated like untouchables in their culture; the women are raped and beaten, while the men watch and are castrated. The Evangelist is fed to several apes. The Islamist is given a world without enemies; there he finds no one and dies alone. The atheist mocks primitive cultures; she is then subjected to their rituals and is raped and beheaded. The Buddhist is locked in a room without windows; given only a little tree and sand, within days he consumes every leaf on the plant, and then dies of starvation. I am afraid. as I remain one without bible or coda, but a verve that coils and sheds the former ideal like the serpent crawling upwards the tree of knowledge; things that I have written and will re-enact. My fear is that I will not pursue them any longer when pacified by society. It is like a poker game, it ends when you show your hand. … “The girl screamed. The murderer laughs like mad, she begs, he takes out a large knife. She prays, tears rolling from her eyes, a bone-crunching sound is heard. A shot from the policeman’s nine-millimeter pistol, the fatal shot to the head of the murderer. She pleads to her hero ‘I just want to go home’ “ “This novel is my masterpiece,” said an eleven year-old boy struggling to become a horror writer, the author of the above paragraph, if even that, more like an extended sentence. He has had two short stories published in very, very small fanzines and he has posted four more on the Internet. This “masterpiece” is a typical slasher story; so typical it would have been rejected for a Friday The 13th screenplay. He shows the novel to his boyfriends, and they love it. A Naïve boy who is devout to the followers of a passion-less manifesto, and the novel is sold to a large publishing house and it does all right on the market, not at all surprising when the challenge and depth of this book reaches the mighty height of a grain of sand. I write myself in, “Naïve boy, you must challenge people.” he screams that he does not want to, that he only wants to be a jester, to be remembered for his entertainment. I retaliate, “True, that after your death people will remember you, but for only a shot

period of time, fifteen minutes to be exact if we are to follow Warholla and his pretension. For decades after no one will care about your rotten corpse that the worm defecates on, and no one will remember you past that expiration. But, we always remember the pariah’s who wish to change the world and to show us glory whether introverted or extroverted. It depends not on timelessness but on the passion.” A critic descends, casting me as perverted and unworthy, going on in the erotication of rape that I bestow, the difference (same old same old) between pornography and art. I will show misanthropy personified, this is a way to view something as the atrocity that inspires hope, pain, and numbness: In a room of teal, we watch three figures through an iris window, looking out from within my two eyes. A man dressed like an aristocrat except for a black hood that hides his face who stands between a blonde-haired girl no older then seventeen trying to cover herself, and her mother with matching hair; whose limbs are chained to a concrete ceiling that hold her several feet high. Both are of course nude. The daughter cries, and her hands block out her pubic hair. The aristocrat that does not show his face brandishes a very clean and defined sickle with a metallic handle painted yellow. The mother becomes silent. A portrait ten feet by ten feet descends attached to two near-invisible strings, just a foot or two above the mother’s skull. This portrait is in fact an enlarged photograph tainted (artistically) in sepia; the image becomes visible, showing off a victim of Ed Gein’s immortalized by her violation. Gein, one of the first American serial killers: his victim, this aged woman that hangs by her lifeless feet chained by ankles, torn open from anus to chest. It is so awe-inspiring that you would think Dali would masturbate to it. The executioner tilts his skull slightly upward for which beams of light shine on him, thereupon a bent halo tears through his eyes and hangs above the skull; suddenly two large wings rip through his back and these wings are plastered with lined paper and drip ink. From this man’s spine, the epitome of Goodness wrings loose from him, born from the pores of skin and showing its innocent flesh to human eyes. Goodness emerges as a limbless dwarf with empty, plastic bottles planted in its mouth. With a clammy and Asiatic (recalling Shintoism) skin that turns violet from the exposure to oxygen, no longer shelled within polluted man, crawling slowly forwards like a dying slug as it approaches the child and rapes her with its bottles, to give her pleasure, for that is mutually good to the corrupt individual. The sickle approaches the mother, her child still is watching with a penetrated cunt magnified by a see-through bottle: The sickle (moving upward) penetrates the asshole by a few inches, and then a slow lift approaches; working in a seesaw motion, the blade moving quickly; slowly tearing through the outer wall of the cunt, tearing through stomach, and now torn en half. The mother is dead. The boy and critic vomit in unison, I speak, “You see how I’ve made art out of a tragedy? Showing how our world is a constant mirror, I have taken a man who wanted to fuck his mother out of love and hate. He wore the flesh of his victims much as the same as we wear masks; whereas he wore them to become what he wanted to be, we wear a mask to be acceptable. And, by that dismembered woman we witness the birth of new pleasures, and new freedom. The mask becomes our weapon, and the trophy is our freedom.”

“You’re sick!” the boy screams. “No, you’ve glorified Gein’s crime for your own profit. Simply creating a series of violent episodes does not make you a writer, it makes you a pornographer” said the critic. I speak again, “I don’t give a damn if I’m right or wrong. I will change people by showing them our world simply as it is; deep down inside they know this is true! It is all a reflection of our corrupt universe that offers no solace but hope while elites continue on in murder and monopoly, it is this idea of hope that has only given us shit and democide.” “What is true? Showing men committing bestiality? Saying there is no God as repeated for over a century? You’re nothing but a hack wishing to gain attention for his crimes!” said the critic. “What crimes? This is everyday violence; you simply ignore it and refer to it as a tragedy. It is no tragedy; this is the way of life, it is Social Darwinism prophesized by the divine Marquis! To do away with it is to do away with the society that created it, a solution through artistic genocide. This is necessity; one cannot overcome reality without having first faced it.” I speak again. “I sincerely doubt that the essence of Good is a crippled dwarf, or champions of capital punishment fuck on a mountain in celebration. This is obscene. Enough of your ‘mirrored’ world, people want the truth” said the critic. In defiance, “I am giving it to them” The critic shakes his head, bemused. I speak once more, “You hate people like me don’t you? It is of course obscene but people need obscenity! Enough of this cushy world where imaginary characters are created to live in a tedious cycle of life, death, triumph, love, and freedom, enough of these anecdotal biographies written exclusively for money, enough of everything that rebuilds people as puppets meant to follow the words of an invented prophet such as your Ayn Rand. We NEED work that will fuckin’ murder our glee and take with it our restraining morals. To gut punch us and implant it’s terrible voice in us” foaming from the mouth “We need violence to show violence! There must be this conclusion, the end of the moral coda and the end of the meaningless life and with it the end of meaning. No more a truth to be found, that absolution may only be a word to satiate the herd while men lie and give of them selves to nothing, and they die for nothing. Only in the extremes may we find what we have ignored, the Gray. Love and hate, horror and the paradise, are the same. No different to fly or fall. I do not propose to know of the truth, nor the proper way of life; but I know what is wrong, and that is the slavery of today encompassing Social, Religious, and Economic varities. Before each and every ritualistic task to find oneself, one must recognize what is around them and the idea of Good & Evil being the supreme Lie given to us by our kind and loving society, though well-intentioned it became the greatest kind of propaganda. Secondly, one must react to it. ”

The critic gives a good review of the boy’s work. They quickly undress and begin to fuck like student and teacher. … I peel away a piece of dead skin from my face, nuisance hangnails amputated with nail clippers, pieces of me fall onto this very paper with a single drop of blood, I wipe off this waste and continue onward. I, not we, you could never understand me no matter what lengths I reach, and I say that out of relenting to a truth and not a defeat nor condensation. I alone must commit transgressions out of invented mysticism; therein I will be created as I see myself and not as I dream in writing. An individual and selfish trait usually referred to as martyrdom by people who do not wish to create themselves but only follow that which has been created. I feel this is a trait that links subversion, atrocity, and glory. To be a martyr is to give your self over to the masses, and then be reinterpreted to be more appealing. When you become the individual, you are the in-understandable entity like the Sphinx or Stonehenge; the ritual and the God cemented in time. There I am in this limbo, muted colors flow from above; you can taste these colors by licking the air. Who am I? I am the one who desires to be the OverMan, to laugh at every weak last man. What am I? A man that remains hindered by what he has. With a hacksaw, I set about decapitating my self, to free mind and body as separate entities. The pain soon subsides, a fetus levitates off in the distance, there is me in the mirror and my desire. The stage has been set for metaphysics, but this body needs freedom from this reality constructed for it. Only there may mind and body become whole and separated into eternal entities of absolution. My brain is above me, awaiting me, my body is like cement in water; eating of the fish and viscera that swim by it while still rooted to this world. I will become as I desire, to confront reality and conquer it and to map out my self and remake it. Take all that you despise, use that as the catalyst for the new body like wood to the fire. When I see myself, I see only so much to still be done. … Of Nine Eleven: From the viewpoint of a misguided martyr not at all different from a child wishing to emulate dead mentors Knife in briefcase, could not believe how easy it is to fool these bastards. The others were very anxious and I was worried that the others in the other planes would back out like in the Conspiracy to murder Lincoln or some other fuck up would occur. The plane takes off. The plane is a little away so I motion to the others that the time is right. Brandishing our weapons and doing our best English, screaming aloud in a tall and arrogant voice.

“We have a bomb on this plane” My fellows were breaking down the door to the cabinet as I secured the rest. I then quickly ran in and bound the flier’s hands with those plastic handcuffs that idiots use to tie up toys and loose wires. One of the pilots pissed himself and I took the reigns of the plane, and then ordered the others to secure the passengers. My fellows went at it with but a few hostages were allowed others to gather in the back and phone whomever they wished, it was the least we could do, it would not matter; we feed the mouse before we feed it to the snake. The tower is within range; I fly into the top-middle trying to get the best possible shot. Collision. We die in flames. People scream. People will film it. And I will be immortal. Praise be to Allah, and let I be remembered. [Ending with a very average man committing what is only a spectacular suicide to prove he is something more then simply human] Even now I have not committed the most despicable of things as accorded by the moral guardians and do you know what that is? To say that 9/11 was a staged event. No room for the politic, they are a thing you cannot preach, for the insipid refuse to even listen and only condemn, this prejudice of knowledge. Êö”ºÆ_ Ö×ØÙÚÛÜ -£¼ªÙÆ @™Çö”ºÆ_@ __ __ __ __ __ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ Only an excuse to cross a bridge, such as a meaningless parlay- like you would bring up the mundane only to get to that crass joke or make a point on the day-. Such a revolt of misguided proportions, he would even speak ‘the artist crucifies them. The artist crucifies all of them.’ … _ þª_ «_ _«_ _«_ _«_ _«_ «_ «_ «_ _«_ _«_ _«_ _«_ _«_ _«_ _«_ -«_ «_ "«_ ì²_ î²_ ð²_ ò²_ ô²_ ö²_ ø²_ ú²_ ü²_ þ²_ ³_ _³_ _³_ _³_ _³_ _³_ _³_ _³_ _³_ _³_ _³_ -³_ ³_ "³_ $³_ &³_ (³_ The other two would be restrained and forced to watch: the longhaired one has her hands handcuffed behind her back, her legs tied and held apart. She is cut along the thighs with a box cutter, the blade invades underneath her toenails, her hair is ripped out and stuffed into her mouth, her eyelids are held open while a match is struck and falls onto an eyeball, the cunt is spread open to greet one intrusive lit match, a breast carved into, the fat is expunged and replaced with cotton. The image of Shiva and Kali are tattooed upon her forehead and pubis. A climax is not a necessity to affect people, like a staged orgasm in pornography. When it is the moment caught in the twilight at the height of an extreme that is the necessity. Think of a boring film/book that is remembered or the weak man who became a killer. …

“I should’ve had the abortion; I should’ve had the abortion” My mother, speaking to me when I was nine years old…Suddenly that sentence just sprang into my mind so suddenly. One boy very much in accordance to what is the outsider finds his vices, and he becomes dominated by them-mimicry- becoming just as the other humans, one who putrefies while living in dreams. He is torn by the complex nature of his deranged mother, and feels intimidated by his father, which yields him to his mother. Slowly becoming aware of his errors, yet still pious to delusion, and still buried in limbo while thinking of cruel ideas. He finds an angel in fuckery; he begins to learn new things. An angel in philosophy visits him; he thinks new things. One day he no longer thinks and sets about to be what he has always dreamed of being. OverMan. The writer may be god but the writer is also a slave to their creation. If the creation fails, the writer must abandon it and forget it or destroy it and rebuild it anew. If it succeeds the writer is forced to outdo it or perish in its ravages; if not the writer is forced to create clones of his creation. One man approaches me, spouting on and on about how I am a threat to humanity and have perverted previously innocent children. He continues to harasses me for the appraisal of all freedoms and of all men in which every thinker is the Iconoclast; as he referred to me as a cancer to his utopia that had never existed. ‘Turns out he hasn’t even read of my work, so I hand him a copy while saying with an arrogant smile “judge not les ye be judged” and I leave him my email address. Weeks later amidst many emails, I received a message from this man. He tells me how my work has changed him and he has given up his ways and became an organ donor then helped bastard children by giving them much-deserved toys, and most surprisingly of all, he has donated to pro-choice agencies to raped mothers. How I wish this was true and this man existed instead of merely writing this paragraph of fiction to create a counter-image. Am I no better then he? Write to me at [email protected] … Idols riding in Cadillac’s with open tops down a poorly planned parade, they look no different from a walking billboard, such as a living deformity attributed to Teflon poisoning. I am part of the crowd and dressed in the skin of Jack Ruby; I take careful aim and fire the fatal shot at one such idol no different from any other. This one hollow point round makes contact with the face, and dead center down the nasal cavity. The idol now resembles victims of nerve gas through a heavily deformed mouth and face, like a horse with its face blasted off and its body dragged throughout the streets, my way of giving them a purpose through a stupendous demise. That is the me who subscribes to violence being an immortal action.

That is, Immortality by Immorality. What an insipid, and at once brilliant and proven thought that violence in it self may grant eternity. A road traveled by the most insane of men; your Albert Fish, your Idi Amin, your lord Heliogabalus, and your artist. It is no better then to carve into a tree. We soon forget that the tree will die. “If God is dead… Must we not become gods ourselves to seem worthy of it? “ NIETZSCHE The Gray (in Tao terminology) that embodies man, for it is gray which grants us the ability to do both positive and negative at once. This Gray would now be truthfully recognized… and not as the purgatory or the void that is filled, but the totality of all creation. As ‘Do what thou wilt’ is not the pass to commit atrocity, but to only be human, and once we see what we are fully capable of there may be created the second paradise. The first paradise was the one created by Cavemen freed of restriction. Though, debatable as to what exactly restriction is. It may be an invented reality (such as what we have now) or reality in itself (an unchangeable thing). This applies to the mass and not in it self to the individual. Such as Jonestown, which was a reality founded by one man, with a herd that latched onto that, thereby placing themselves within another paradigm without pursuing a personal freedom -just another escapism- and perished in that reality. Whereas the individual is free to create as he pleases and walk away from that mass and his debts. His is entirely manifest. See also Perspectivism. … The book posses the author; becoming a surrogate brain of what we desire to be, no better than a log of dreams or a diary filled with paintings about as understandable as a blank piece of paper. The book becomes a map of the thought process or the external memory of ancient humans. I see it as a scarification process much like a live autopsy committed by our brains upon this limited body, no better or worse then the monk who set himself aflame. … A dead oak tree lies in the middle of a dirt field; old condoms hang from the dead branches while icy cum drips down onto mud along the road to an Orgiastic Heaven: Where man and rhino are united by a speared anus. One octopus pleasures eight women while eating pubescent girls feet first-but not before drowning them with a flood of ink. men and women fused to create bee hives joined by the hip as their genitals are the gateways for such bees where bears pluck these hives, bite into them and drink the honey. Women are impaled from anus to throat by giraffe necks, each giraffe adorned with this human necklace. Clean-shaven people are laid as the ground and ceiling to every last species of bats, these people are the toilet and the nest for the bats, for that shit to be eaten, and bodies hollowed out and homes for dozens of bats. Tigresses with immense clitorises rape young boys whose limbs are rooted in cement, the tigresses generally bite

off the ears and claws the backs of each child during the hourly penetration, and how they mimic male orgasm and urinate into the mouth of each boy. Men enjoy the splendor of birds that lift them up onto a bed of spikes; the remains are fed to young children as vomited by the birds. Pigs would bite off the fingers and toes of men and laugh while the men struggled to grab and stand. Horses would trample the old and invalid after a lifetime of suffering; where ducks and chickens would be lifted up to their faces and scratch out their eyes, or plow the fields tied by their breasts or genitals, along with previous and unheard atrocities, as newborn children are fed alive to komodo dragons. Yet, that one angelic woman that stood out was subjected to the very worst; being lifted to the sky and forced to watch it all for a lifetime. In Heaven. … Jerry Fallwell, Pat Robertson, and Billy Graham are the recipients of retribution for every man to be given a smite by a fascist, or for every man to have come so far and believe in personal freedom… only to be reminded of these wretched men and the will to be rid of them. Fallwell is strangled to death by a leather strap. Robertson is gutted and thereon stuffed with the many pamphlets promising one land for the Christian and the triangle-eye of the dollar. Graham is ignored entirely, and he and his offspring disintegrate, there exists no real life to a thing if it does not make a human connection either positive or negative…It is not to ignore a virus, but to isolate it. Religion spreads by the ears and eyes, when a virus is then isolated and cannot grow; it then rots from the inside. That I realize too late, and am now executed for murder. … "Let the most insulting blasphemy, the most atheistic works next be fully and openly authorized, in order to complete the extirpation from the human heart and memory of those appalling pastimes of our childhood; let them be put in circulation the writings most capable of illuminating the Europeans upon a matter so important, and let a considerable prize, to be bestowed by the Nation, be awarded to him who, having said and demonstrated everything upon this score, will leave to his countrymen no more then a scythe to mow the land clean of all those phantoms, and a steady heart to hate them. In six months, the whole will be done; your infamous god will be as naught," Marquis De Sade To murder the epitome of faith and beyond, to defy all others and insult them brutally like the coward, to outdo human capacity: The artist aims at this so revered and holy target. This is my great transgression; for I may never look back again, for it necessary if nothing but for my inner peace, and once there you can never go back to what you were: Jesus approaches with a solemn look and with hands laid low and open, I say ’free me’ and he then walks over with a gesture to kiss his bloodied feet. I stab him with my pen in his ribcage, clutched by my left hand, and now painted with blood and dirt. Using this pen as a lever to lift him before a giant sheathe of sheet metal with a white crucifix

painted before, cementing him there by thousands of pens to crucify this dead hypocrisy. A figure riddled with protrusions, like an Indian fakir fallen upon his bed of spikes, kept alive now by these very words that wish to torture him more with metal pens imbedded into palm and wrist. I cannot let such a thing die by a bourgeois mechanism such as the crucifixion. Therefore, he is lowered into a vat of boiling lead, consumed and now recycled into a tool for every man that thinks, both pen and rifle. I hate to plagiarize; but I have committed another meme formation of your jesus, at best he shall evolve into a phantasm long forgotten, at worst another kind of ideology. Something that Atheist and Iconoclast so worship, the destruction of a man they do not believe in, what wretched people these must be to invent their enemies such as your religious extremists and each and every last herd. What evolution we have come across, to go over the same old same old. I see god: This obese hermaphrodite figure, with crooked teeth emitting ‘round the mouth and down the chin, and ratty hair and one hundred arachnid eyes. With fingernails showing skewed remnants of little men, and a belly and breasts covered with the filth of dancing angels mocking tortured humans in cages. With a body hair like the forest and a prick miniature and syphilitic, an ugly cunt is the gateway to paradise and saint peter being a louse. Dead children fall into god’s mouth and eaten in its slack jaw like a Roman being fed grapes by his chained prostitute. I throw his whores and his meals away from him and into space; it pleads with me without emotion, like a child saying ’I’m sorry’ with a lifeless tone. It offers me immortality with no morality so long as I rejoice in putrid faith. My right fist connecting a one-inch punch to its skull, the noise of a jet breaking the sound barrier erupts while the face falls to atoms. Falling out of a throne made from human bone and crowned by fetal fossils, tearing away the crooked jaw and pulling out each of its one hundred eyes. My nails are now dirty and covered in blood and sinew. The cunt penetrated by my pen clutched in my left palm; with a pistol held by my right hand, I fire six hollow point rounds into the abdomen, legs, prick and balls. The pen blasts poison ink down a tainted uterus, an ink no different then a flesh-eating virus. The king is dead.

Finale The me whom I desire to become witnesses the best & worst of humanity: Abraxas I write of a fine escapism. One that requires all the energy needed to crush a minute insect -so easily in reach to an average man who gives birth to nonsense dreams- but there are cripples that envie such men. Hypothesis: For every action committed (referring to a Tao of Joy and Pain), a kind of energy is emitting that mirrors string theory in the joining of two opposing ideologies. It is a kind of energy to wallow in the wake of Kierkegaard’s ‘Single Individual’, in particular a ‘sea of individuals’ united in totality. Like how radioactivity emanates over time and poisons the inhabitants over an undetermined period; if such energy were genuine, it can then be inferred that both saint and Madman are the result of genetics. Such as the Holocaust influencing a half-Jewish man, with a wife indifferent to Judaism whose son then carries this kind of baggage. This also references Jung’s theories on the Family tree and Eternal Reccurence. In metaphysics: to create an individual (in the ‘enlightened’ sense) is by a continual process in thought and doing in order to overcome limitation while separating oneself from the herd. This creates the genius both tortured and divine, and men that the masses will not remember, because ‘enlightenment’ is a solipsist activity. That is voided when the genius creates something in order to connect him to his herd; often art is that attempt. In reality: one becomes individual by retaining popular ideas as created by the original genius; like manufacturing plants that create cheap imitations. One cannot become an individual in reality. From the artist, dictator, and fucker each and every last one is an imitation of another… proving right Kierkegaard and Jung. For the idea/dream: As we only know 1% of the universe, the dream is all that remains. What if such positive and negative energy gave birth to one man via the great and evil Abraxas beyond only an idea but created here and now. What would this man be? A flow Sacred: Knowing a man and his attempt at conquering limitation. Finale: He gives birth to an individual that cannot exist-abortion-. Return: Purgatory state. Man thinks he is individual and attempts to conquer nihilism. Incomplete/broken Man is born and gives one sermon promoting an artistic genocide. An author counters this, promoting the ideal of the masses being wood to the fire. The ‘Tower’ is referenced,

such an idea of a paradise that retains this idea of society. I recognize the value of society. I recognize the value of eugenics. All this leads to a new society; once this world dies and is reborn. … Multi-colored mammals lay out, stabbed, shot, executed By the millions. Bowels lacerated, mammals vomiting shit and blood. Among this New excreta, ankle deep in a newfound blood tide In waves, in rivers, amassed in a small pool of fat creatures as men stand in the muck prodding dying animals singing sweetly in unnoticed sighs. Yet another and another gashed, torn open, fountains of the divine essence, in a ritual swirling of all things, joining, becoming, all united in pain, pleasure, & pity in a visceral ink, endlessly. An ink without conscience; only hard-externalized memory. A needle and thread arrived from flesh hallows of dying slaves; little mouths violently react to a bio-mechanic deep throat by needle and twine, bridging ones and twos and threes united as one enumerable creature. The needle/thread are now the magic wand of a creator who mends a unity between things never meant to coexist; cats and walruses, mice and birds, two-headed cattle and dead men hung across the skies and replace telephone wires, bringing a new communication through a semblance of maggots where the citizenry writhe in a new and living ink. Otherwise, what is orgiastic and good without mantra are impounded by vanity and good cruelty. Scorpion tails are amputated through genetic regression; the scorpion no longer kills but prefers to die by its one time prey like Quang Duc who did not fight but preferred to die in a martyr-fashion. A sign of the times being a waste of resources. A woman volunteers to have her teeth pulled out; the teeth are removed and are then planted in the desert and give birth to untold acres of snow. Scorpion stingers are fitted as her new dentures, and we see drops of venom falling down her throat. Throngs of people in a brown valley; flowers stick out among atrocity photographs and old soda cans littering patches of tall grass. One photograph displaying dead children killed in the West Bank atrocities fills an empty Coca-Cola can. These people proceed very solemnly through a path; every twenty steps they stop to pick the flowers. After two miles of this, they rest atop a tree stump with arms filled with flowers. They proceed to rub the flowers in their eyes, soaking poison and pollen, awash in the fury of gathering bees and mating insects, thorns scratch the corneas along with inflamed eye sockets. Tears fall from now distorted faces onto a handful of undisturbed flowers clutched in the hands of a little girl pigeon-toed. The flowers bloom in deep shades of red and blue. Nests of bats are poisoned; mid-flight the drug kicks in and they are left dying in grassy fields being visited by merciless sunlight and the thirsty fly. By the way side of these

dying bats are the birth-process: gigantic mud puddles with tumourous bulges, reindeer watch over this in a protective manner as one giant reindeer oversees the operation; its horns are made from human fingers, and for this it declares itself the king of Eden. Out from the mud emerge young children born into a pantheon, animals of the forest partake in tearing off the wings from the previous dying bats and then suture these wings into the backs and temples of the children. The children sing in alien voices –relying entirely on body language, each child signals the depths of their torture- as the sun baptizes the bodies in molten gold. Two men embrace before a burial pit of hermaphrodites and fetal deformities that are speared and now preserved in oddly sexual positions, as though De Sade wrote the Karma Sutra and this fills with illustrations. The men commit to their passions; and sperm falls down the esophagus’ of corpses. One woman seated like a monk with palms folded and introvert. Her hair begins to fall, joyful faces everywhere, over a muddy floor that cradles a comatose people submitted to invisible bolts of electricity which puppeteer an aimless frenzy. These people are fed cowhide, are then placed in one pile to vomit their meal; on top of that are placed the finger and toe nails torn ‘way. As that cancerous woman like the virgin monk, watches like an idol witnessing innumerable sacrifices. Fallen teeth cover this pile then set upon a pyre. The strong man leads herds of animals into tar pits. Animals drown and are encased in tar. The man has the bodies dragged out and are set as stairs leading to the next ambition. No need to describe, which has been foretold too numerous a vision: But here is one before you, this very ink. Look and touch upon this blank, and here is your universe: Swarms of greenish twigs with insect faces, open sores sending loud vibrations, without voice and without the passions-angels before mankind-it becomes a mirror of a homeless people in bondage with closed eyes. While those eyes reveal images of Abu Graihb: Malcolm X: America’s conscience is bankrupt. She lost all conscience a long time ago. Uncle Sam has no conscience. They don’t know what morals are. They don’t try and eliminate an evil because it’s evil, or because it’s illegal, or because it’s immoral; they eliminate it only when it threatens their existence. So you’re wasting your time appealing to the moral conscience of a bankrupt man like Uncle Sam. If he had a conscience, he’d straighten this thing out with no more pressure being put upon him. So it is not necessary to change the white man’s mind. We have to change our own minds. You can’t change his mind about us. We’ve got to change our minds about each other. We have to see each other with new eyes. We have to see each other as brothers and sisters. We have to come together with warmth so we can develop unity and harmony that’s necessary to get this problem solved ourselves. Three Japanese women sit to watch a one man play performed by a hunchback; the man proceeds to play with a small dog. Two old men in overalls haul a crosscut saw over to the women in attendance. The women applause greatly, lovingly, when the two men took

that saw to their necks and behead them. The three heads drop in an orderly manner as the puppy licks the man’s face, Buddhist sutras falls from the bleeding neck stumps, and in those eyes for those last ten seconds of life are the reprieve of a million lives. Foetal bodies are hollowed out, computer parts are built into the cadavers; these computers produce modern children literature. A procession of bodies cut apart and sorted on a conveyor belt by grinning senior workers that dismember an unending multitude of bodies where the remains are fed into a furnace. I do not know if was an energy plant, a meat packing plant, or a mass crematorium. A man named Arundhati obsessed with cunnilingus; his home is enveloping and has a moist air that you could feel upon entering a fog of semen. In his brain played out a collage of every kind of cunt that could be imagined: black, white, yellow and brown, pierced and infected, hairy and prepubescent. He falls into another world Among reddish/pink walls drowning in a kind of urea/saliva, think of a man trapped in his attic with flooding water. This new universe where he is cradled like a planetary fetus, to feel every last sensation down to the molecular level… he becomes a new kind of circuitry for supreme pleasure. The pleasures sweep away every desire and want, all needs evaporate as starvation begins to set. An amusing sight to see a skeleton at orgasm; then he consumes the flesh and begins to taste humanity, absorbing a macrocosm of our narcissism and joy. The universe contracts Each tremor of fruition What is not ritual but New pain and pleasure The TAO fully realized In a man to die by his pleasure To become the next evolution From the cunt emerges this man, Arundhati, born as the Harlequin Fetus. Among a slave nation, a stillborn creature falls. The workers kick at the body, cursing it for being unable to work. The elites stab at the body with their umbrellas, cursing it as a useless thing as if it were a temple of knowledge. The beggars rape this body, infecting it with the sweet venom of pity. The animals gnaw at this body and see it no differently then water in the river. Your wise and bitter god and Nietzsche use the body as a metaphor; it is the mantle of the entirety of earth to be displayed and judged, this hammer of the gods. Blood pulling up from the desert floor; young girls are subjected to circumcision rituals, the immature clit is nailed onto their foreheads.

Among the massacres of the Indians, one soldier’s scalped brain becomes the map of new sensations: He sees a middle-aged nude woman, arms chained above her via wiring; she is a spider web of tubing, a new kind of human circuitry. Her eyelids taped to a close by electric tape; she dreams of paradise and weeps, tape began to slowly peel, tears fall with ebbing blood. … Chapter 3 How Candide escaped from the Bulgars, and what happened to him afterwards “Those who have never seen two well-trained armies drawn up for battle, can have no idea of the beauty and brilliance of the display. Bugles, fifes, oboes, drums, and salvoes of artillery produced such harmony as Hell itself could not rival. The opening barrage destroyed about six thousand men on each side. Rifle-fire which followed rid the best of worlds of about nine or ten thousand villains who infested its surface. Finally, the bayonet provided ‘sufficient reason’ for the death of several thousand more. The total casualties amounted to about thirty thousand. Candid trembled like a philosopher, and hid himself as best he could during this heroic butchery.” The young philosopher belched as he stepped upon the remnants of little brother and sister. Each thought strained to be produced from such obvious epiphanies that could be drawn out by a boy who has yet to know what is greatness and what is a reality –like it were a bullet wound ebbing with error & vice, collecting among a pool of individuals, and bleeding out to the very final drop of existence though it were mohammed personified in bacterium. That fine thought did come among the sweeping euphoria of epileptic convulsions and tremors of faint orgasms. With a fist planted at each pillar of cadavers, with a scream, and expelled in a putrid verse ‘Let there be a new mankind’ spoken by Candide in a manner both plain and obnoxious. A silver ship descends, fire bellows from its bottom, lighting ricochets off the surface and into Candide’s very eyes. Gigantic creatures with arachnid faces and bird torsos exited the craft and greet him. While survivors stood and watched when these creatures spoke ‘What you know as man is only a conduit, a statue of dead men’ and then leave, Candide proceeded to fuck child corpses; their orgasms shall be his philosophy, and the sunlight his dinner. … ‘Let there be a new mankind that does not wallow in the latrines of dead men’

One hand appears of our as-yet-to-be-born individual. It touches one plastic mask, woodcarved masks ‘round the world burn; each pore on the hand becomes an eye and a gateway, it sees what you are. On the Virginia Tech Massacre: My boy, you are one who does not know of much more agreeable targets. You see ‘immortality by immorality’, which is a flawed structure. Why don’t you partake in a more satisfying execution, such as the extinction of the creators of such insipid creatures? To murder only the insipid is a waste of energy; it is like setting out to destroy every usless insect on the planet, not only pointless but you fail to strike at the very heart of the matter. A lab mouse in its cage set in a sterile environment, in the corner is a homely woman with glasses and yellow dish gloves. The oxygen is plain and disinfected, a hospital all the better without a consumer. The woman proceeds to extract the mouse… Mouse: Please cease what you are about to do; I am not one to be sacrificed for nothing. Woman: Why not? What I’m about to do may save innumerable lives. Therein will be delivered my sainthood and your martyrdom. Wouldn’t you do the same? Mouse: Yes I would; but that would be performed on a more deserving creature. Woman: Such as? Mouse: Those inhuman deformities you knowledgeable types like to call ‘individualists’ if life itself is divine (to ignore Schopenhauer) why pluck from its womb, such cherished and meaningful creatures as I and every other? Is it not your tyrants, your impoverished, the unknown depths of deformities that should be the fuel to the fire? Woman: Eugenics: A series of unsuccessful experiments. Mouse: But doctor, what separates you from those very scientists at Auschwitz and Unit 731? You may say that you’re black and that alone separates you as far as racial duties. But that is only a matter of pigment. If pigmentation and this idea of genetic unity among fellows is your defense, I could so easily deconstruct it: Genetic unity is a lie. When parts may so easily be assembled by the most unskillful of creatures, that we are unified in such an insipid factory. Yet we are created blank; any individualist traits may be so easily explained as simple auteur theory. The whole of humanity can be broken down to mechanic a motivation: that tree that grows to become your paper that is scribbled upon by your children –domino theory and interconnectedness-, your art and culture-but elitism and the remaking of an idea-. Even what I speak is pilfered dialogue. Woman: So if life offers no real individuality, and this is due to a bio-mechanic paradigm. Then I ask again, why should I spare you?

Mouse: But you see at what I’m getting at? Why should I perish when you can use any other? What we think grants us individuality, is only fading memory. It is that which creates any kind of identity. Woman: Incorrect. What is real is real and not perception. Memory may be cheated by physical markings with violence, love, and barcodes. You in fact prolong life with metaphysics. No. It is technology, growth; the third eye rebuilt… enough of your bullshit. The mouse protests while being placed inside a small window box. The woman manipulates robotic fingers and hypodermic extensions via remote control, as a now tortured mouse mutters a sentence struggling to be profound. The stomach is slit open, the intestines criss-crossed with plastic tubing, veins plugged into black electronic boxes, a Star of David is excised from a beating heart housing the remains of lynched blacks and whites. A South Korean boy lays waste to whitey and darkie. Shooting a woman in the gullet, she vomits flowers. By a grin and muffled voice armed with distinctly feminine pistols-such weaponry is no longer phallic when misused, such as a dyke armed with a strap on- at close range, emptying entire clips into the torsos of men and women. What is individual? Not creation in itself, or the will to break away from herd mentality, the individual lies in neither extremes or profound awakening nor even Gray, but only in oblivion. Just as Kierkegaard was no more individual then a radical priest to be triumphed by Nietzsche. No more then Sade was a more talkative Vlad or Genghis Khan. There is your god and master, your new jesus per century, your car crash/crucifixion and your viral phrases. There is your individual: A stillborn fetus. Feel it, know it, it is our delusion and god. It is the cancer I neglect and my last futility and final bridge there may be. Total freedom is a lie. Without structure, this class system-paradigm- what are we then but a people without language, without escapism, without a Gray, in other words Haiti, a country with a people who have not gone much farther then creating the wheel and fire. A nothing. I recant once idealist values; I favor building for something, an attempt at anything for what we will never realize. Be it eugenics or free enterprise.

The individual is born. The Great Individual: A handsome face stabbed and re-worked, a screaming face that spits. A tongue made from human faces, winking as it clicks and smiling as it lies. Here is what I give you, our god and master, your prophet and mentor, your martyr and rapist, your saint and chameleon, this Tao of pain and creation. Here, I am a man that wreaks their brain to create something, only to see another summit to surpass. White hands with short fingernails, palms are painted with tar, every fine hair has been plucked; no imperfection shall dampen a fine cannibalistic meal this moment in time I take from you, how well you feed me with blood and brains. There I am as a man that rapes the earth; I take your little joys and little death and will transform them into far greater things, through art and crucifixion. The torso is my mirror; here the roach may survive without a head till the end of time, the well of vice and greatness. Each body hair upon you is a wire brimming with electricity, to touch me would be enlightenment and to die for a cause. But there I am as someone who struggles, one that creates everything and becomes nothing. The legs are great serpents without need for genitals; they wrap around you and caress, be enlightened and look into my tongue. The feet are defiled with shit, the perfume attracts herds of animals, and each toenail is infinite and is marked with the portraits of saints and madmen. A nasal cavity deep and violent, as ethereal as a rainforest while stealing your oxygen. And now these eyes, red and deformed about to burst then and now from the strain of knowing, knowing I and you, and it is dead. The Individual caresses an emaciated torso atop a Gray planet. Stars bloom, a smile brings on erect legs to swoon such a torso, unity in great things: an idea and a mutilated body.

A Return Would you think I hate people or am alone? I only resent mistakes; hence this thing, this book of mine. Life is my only burden and I completely empathize with Bunuel in that he only wanted to live in dreams. This book remains as a continual mirror, but how could anyone write down the entirety of himself when the ‘Will’ is given shape by ink, blood, and hardware? How could we possibly take this incredible force that is beyond perception, and illustrate it for a third party? How many great men have poured out everything they could into the arts, and in technology, and so on… endless volumes appear for each of these humans, and we still do not understand them. A bit of hair falls out, with each hair soaked with oil and a bit of scalp root giving a cocaine-like appearance, and each hair tells me a bit about myself: One would like to see an accident on the side of the road; the hair would be the catalyst for this event. It would not matter if people died or not, only that it did something in the third person and that it was felt. One day there was a pigeon by the roadside, the hair had attempted to crush it but the bird had flew away. Another would want to keep a pubescent girl as a slave, fuck her occasionally but ultimately enjoy her in all avenues. If she had no pubic hair, it would cut off the mane from a rabid dog and glue that hair upon her pubis. How lovely would it be to see a clitoris encased in fleabites. This one dreams of great blasphemies; it would spit on crucifixes, stab at mormon and muslim and buddhist with great vigor and strength -not the kind befitting an Atheist, nor the drone, not the mere shit-stirrer, and not a single man alone-. This one would be a herd formed into a single warrior. Tearing up bibles then praised and reviled. It will be the murderous hero to destroy every last superstructure, then suicide it self upon a throne of guns and old manifestos. This hair would soak it self with lighter fluid and other chemicals, and then be immolated. Yet again, this one seeks martyrdom. It would want to die on live television by suicide or assassination just as it delivers a particularly scathing remark. A twin to the others, but one of two colors, my dyed and natural hair color that wants to live and enjoy life in excess of nobility, and to be that one great man. It then tells me things I needed to know, that there is several conspirators here: One wants to ruin me then re-create me as a drone. One last would like to see me as a prostitute and nothing more. A humanistic side wants children if only to name them upon my mentors. This leader being the head of this little group tells me I should end it, I am not an author, I am not a creator, I am only a thing no different then the leaf. “Okay” I say to the hair “How do you propose I fight them?” It speaks “You must combat them.” But how then do you fight better judgment? It gives no further response. People don’t want art; they believe they may create a meaning out of fruitless endeavors.

Only art can love art. Those who love art without creating only seek it out of emulation of their desires. How must I fight them? How will I fight them? Praise? Great success, great deeds, great obscenity, great virtue, great spirit, beloved people, the herd, the mere animal, the pet, the toy, escapism, infinity, useless. I realize one thing that I have been suppressing for some time. Writing is for cavemen. Why do I, why should I only create an emulation of what I see? That is all it is when the primitive witnesses a deer disemboweled and eaten; it creates pictures, same as if we invent. The exception would be the thought process, how else do we paint what we think? Unless you only think upon simplistic matters, that kind of thinking isn’t interesting in the end, like examining a rat brain and charting banality; it’s just another type of purgatory. I see myself as the drone locked by his chain; this book becomes a letter to be smuggled out into the hands of free humans and warn other minds to awaken the slaves. It would be a total riot in the prison; great art and rage merge into a living spectacle of a man feeling suicidal revolution; not a one that he would destroy himself for, but one he knows will beget his annihilation. Atrocity. That is the accent, both conclusion and catalyst to a society that does not work. A thing made in a dystopia; in that the atrocity is the catalyst for new order and new tactics along with the deaths to the king and queen and cronies, the end of an era devoured by another. This is Social Darwinism as the worm ouroboros. If you break it down much more, you can see that the atrocity is only unfiltered communication; from within you is carved onto the body and land of another. No art may do justice to this when one is true and pure in great violence. The nature of violence is to escape from reality by unmaking it. … I see a circle; within the circle are untold numbers of people fused to religious artifacts with each overlapping the other: The circle is one universe housing innumerable planets. One planet just beyond our own houses men and women in the midst of fuckery projected before a Star of David giving way to a tide of human fluid, where we see men crucified to these stars, their falling blood is our comets, their screams our thunder, and their orgasms become our lightening. One other planet has a floor piled with amputated hands; above this pile is a weeping black man emitting red sunlight, and each tear resembles falling napalm. One looming planet where bestiality is encouraged, the emerging children from man/animal fusion look like angels with wings splitting from the back. Two tiny planets -which plays all too well in this macrocosm- within grasp of the other. One occupied by men, the other with women; in the center of the two planets there is born one looming hermaphrodite… birth of god from man, this Roman universe consumed in the orgiastic. The last planet inhibits

the ode to joy, a totality of love and hate in sweet chaos and total freedom via one mountainous tower in a city; this planet shall be spoken of much later. … A grotesque human where no sexuality may be defined that is hidden by emerging tumors and dirty flesh lay out in the heart of space. With a putrifying planet-shaped torso, laid out for eons while a long tumor hangs from his lower jaw extending from the chin past his left eye and into the scalp: he is a landscape imagined by Bosch and Joe Coleman. Nothing happens while the tumors age with a host immobile and uncaring, and relents to everything. The body is overwhelmed, slowly becoming one indescribable mass curled in a fetal position. That is your modern man who lives and dies. Out of that emerges a new parasite, one that may speak and hold a consciousness and as enormous as a mite, and just as compelling and fearsome. A parasite requiring all of the attention and spite as we would a deaf mute – this single bacterium pious to one and only fusion, a mantra so sacred to the herd-. From there stood alien creatures with a mutant origin, splintered by tribes, and no more human then fantasia spewed by wretched minds. Until one deformity spoke as pretentious as he could, and emerging with a language just as toxic as his species “Glorious is the man who stands up to die.” This was the beginning of a Roman society, one of divided classes and a divinity in madness when futility and mortality overwhelmed the senses… therein Decadence. What has emerged has been the classic structure of the elites and proletariat recited ad infinity. This once great Dionysian structure perverted by dead men and animals laid out side by side with erect pricks as the conduit for ebbing desire, with carved open bodies resembled looming organic foxholes. Children play crude clay flutes while bloodied spears encircle the lot: Mars, Venus, and the Child. A light rainfall occurs as with rejoicing, blood and water spill out of abdominal cavities. For there is created ritual, thereon philosophy and tortured humanity; no different then society as that is nothing more then ritual. From there a woman’s head is held aloft, from that meaningless thing spills new humans from putrefying eyes. Sixteen men and women (eight per eye) poured out; these children of a new world emerge with a new primitivism. There they create a new society ratified in unified incest with new elites and new leaders, the pariahs are born and there is now nihilism, and from the drone there is now positivism. Out of all of this, the planet is rebuilt with isms and a new language- this they call the paradise- the sixteen children then split, each professing a will to life. Each child creates a new group, which begets the concept of morality, good and evil, monopolies, and the nature of life. Typical divide and conquer strategy to prevent unified freedom, then came the little man personified as shepherd and herd as one. Centuries later atop one misshapen mound drawn by magnetism between pain and viscera, and this one creature pulled itself from the wreckage and stood.

The Last Individual No gender was apparent for this creature at first with a height of 6’1 with barely a face, it could not be called a hermaphrodite or an evolved man, nothing human emanated from it. A third arm protruded from its chest that reaches below its knees, with raptor-like feet rooted on the haunches, and staring out with a crude face painted with yellow fingernail clippings arranged as three circles like eyes. White feathers drooped from the scalp, a mouth decorated with rows of knives and pens matching a long and black tongue, each hand came equipped with eight fingers, the third arm equipped with two thumbs parallel to the palm but with only three fingers, with a multi-colored skin tone; the chameleon made into man. It seemed to gesture with just a flick of all three hands in an upward motion, as though it spoke ‘one last manifesto’ and it bit off its tongue with black ink pouring from the wound. This is what spilled out onto the ground: God is not the invention, no opiate may suffice; the creation of a god is like the big bang, a social ejaculation I had seen a middle aged man rape three teenage girls about the age of fourteen and Asian and this man had raped each child through every available flesh vacuum, at one point forcing one girl to shit herself endlessly while he ejaculated onto her open eyes. There I sat watching them, without any spectacular epiphany or any great deal of empathy had emerged as I watched in quiet reservation. The man finished up, the girls were laid out in a circle in a drained and broken attitude. I had unsheathed my M-1911 Pistol and conducted it at the man while telling him to kneel and be silent. At the same time, my left hand brought out three appropriate blades and letting them land before the three girls in an expectant manner. I spoke in a monotone voice to these children “Do what thou wilt” while directing my pistol at the man. Revulsion had overwhelmed me to such a hysteric disbelief once these children told me the most inhuman thing I had ever heard. Without even glancing at the blades, they had explained to me that they will love this man, how they will remake him into the ideal lover, how splendid of a man he will be, and what a great life that would become. It would be nice to quote what exactly they had spoken, but my mind was too far gone in deep thought upon hearing such atrocious spectacle; this inhuman spirit based on a god who has never been there, this platitude which defies the very will of nature and humanity sans mass stupidity… yet stupidity recognizes itself for being such. I exploded “You! You violate the words of De Sade? You ignore what makes you, every essential component of humanity is a loss; you are inhuman! Your rapist, this most insipid of pederast, he at the very least pursued simple passions. For that he may not be faulted for if only to have the desire to carry out these

passions… he invites himself to have all manner of passions be taken out onto him whether murderous or simple, the ebb and flow of life in Master and Slave principals. Yet I gave you the tools to rise up and take upon him all that you have lost and wish to carve onto another in the infinity of violence and cathartic dreams. How you reject good fortune! Putrid cunts, you believe in fusion! Where the one needs the other to gain out of the lie of pacifism and goodness. There is one and only one! We use the other to gain out of conquest and manipulation; even your idols are guilty of this! The one is virus, the one is parasite, and the one is divine; that which is all that you ignore out of that pathetic will to ingest godly escapism of the drones who do not think! One is wretch, one is depraved, one is powerful, and one is De Sade, one is Darwin, one is Nietzsche, one is Goethe, and one knows when to act! The wise man walks away but only the fool takes it on his knees! Nihilism is the tool of the greatest of individuals, therein exists the mighty Sadist. Lo, you refuse logic and seek delusion, and that is your religion.” The man attempted to flee, so I shot him from behind just below his right kneecap. The pariah has the gift of invention for being handed morality and then refusing. I drag him by the wounded leg back to the girls and before those blades. Again, logic’s defied when the girls –in knowing they could not attack me and live- chose suicide. Two had slit their wrists, and one committed Hari Kari; she looked as though she was attempting to give herself head in such a position. The man said nothing. I had shot him an additional four times in the left kneecap, both elbows, and at the base of his spine with slug rounds. He rolled around pitifully while screaming. A pariah is only a thing that builds and dies. The manifesto ended, thousands have gathered to watch as the face of the creature began to give way; the likeness of Artaud had emerged, with a tongue no longer bleeding and a body emptied of verve. A sweet odor emanated from him like a candle burning skeletal debris as he raised his right arm coerced with remaining iota of strength, and Artaud offered his body to the masses. He is quickly eaten by the people who render free dry limbs without flavor, devoured and crushed on the spot. The manifesto was all that was left, and it could never be removed. Society had become hungry; it began to need absolution while being no longer aroused by the delusion of escape. A renewed passion began, recalling Dionysus and Osiris. Several centuries later: A people still in deep thoughts ringing with the tale left by that final individual; they realized that a zenith had been reached; no resources were left, nothing more to invent, and a kind of primitivism had now awakened. The end had come;

reaching metaphors from the wilting plant to the dog with rabies whose limbs quiver and collapse into itself with a drunken stupor. Mass suicides dictated by Schopenhauer-Idealism, wide-ranging depression, giving up on everything and laying down to rot. Entire armies forfeit, leaving tools and guns by the wayside as they walk back to their homes without a uniform. Prisons collapse with inmates casually jogging back into the cities committing simple passions. Churches remain decimated without a herd; the Vatican Bank has its assets plundered by bishops with businessmen fearing a proletariat uprising of all castes that would shower themselves with international coffers and Nazi gold. The corrupters assassinate each other; no anarchist need apply as one after another murdered each other, they remain as the cannibals holding that severed head –a last vestibule of power- before their fellow in dying ritual. Starvation, murder, total madness same as we know, be it the last time. The man/planet had died long ago, with his tumor feeding off his last bit of life; finally dying from prolonged starvation. Out in the heart of space: A centipede-like creature deflowers a cunt; the hymen is torn open as with tears of blood spilling out and creating a new planet. A new beginning, a valley without mirrors that female ejaculate drips down onto = man blooms once more. A new world without the words of dead men; they are cremated upon a dead planet as befitting a philosopher’s head on a pike, as are annihilated entire ideologies and the whole of morality and good and evil. Man created as they want without hindrance and therein dies once more. … When the herd begins to splinter off into single cells in anger and despair, the right catalyst is needed to set them off. The Hutu-Tutsi Genocide springs to mind in what has come and what may be. Here you had millions of people in conflict with the other. For months the anger and frustration at Hutus grew, until a radical broadcast sounded the alarms and the people were armed and slaughtered a million Tutsis, the details of such atrocity ring of the details encapsulating De Sade. Today we have millions of illiterate, homeless, and unemployed in this country all awaiting to be led and utilized, herein exploitation of resource and man’s true capacity are merged. … I had once believed in this dogma ‘Immortality by Immorality’ which suggests that one can find eternity in atrocity. I had given everything I had, every iota of strength to this doctrine where in the end I had created nothing. Such endeavors are no more glorious then a crush video with just as much callousness to a fellow. This is a Christian dogma: that violence in itself will free mankind that commits transgressions. Each religion dictates this approach to violence that without this body there is delivered your freedom. When it is without the insipid dialogue, without religion, without restraint, without

morality, without conduit, without artifice, without the masses and without shepherds, and with pain and joy, this greatness within Gray with what we discover as humanity. When we paint, as we fuck, as we give birth, there is no resolve for a ceaseless and ongoing ouroboros that only a mechanic oblivion would suffice. … The OverMan: For every man that sought eternal freedom, at his mercy are trillions of universes that each mirrors ours. This is the reward for each man to have become individual divine. Could you imagine a world governed by Nietzsche? In Nietzsche’s paradise both Zoroaster and Jesus are complimented by the Wicker Man, this was his sabotage of society. His people became primitive OverMen governed slowly by technology. Leonardo Da Vinci creates angel wings and gives his people flight as they escape limitation, law, and paradigm. Artaud’s galaxies are composed of mutes who communicate by body language and excreta, a constant motion resembling collective bacteria incarnate as the phoenix. It goes on to Hunter S. Thompson, Bruce Lee, Schopenhauer, GG Allin, Che Guevara, etc and etc. … I give birth. In my child I witness my naiveté. I see my weakness and strength. I see the seed of a shepherd. I see a deaf-mute who will be suicided with a fine pistol. I cradle my offspring and snap its neck, letting the body float into space. Am I the man who believes they are a phoenix that will plunge and with his picture in the paper to be an inspiration to another? I give up my former joys. Here I exist as someone who should have rightly died long ago, for I had nothing to create but for repulsive mirrors. I renounce suicide. I renounce the Tao. I renounce everything I had once put faith in. When one thing is roadblocked, man may use their fists, their voice, and their inherent weaponry to continue onwards to break through that boundary in ‘The Will to Power’. Then they die so suddenly and create nothing else.

Notes: Look towards the history of humankind.

The Extermination of Humanity Under Keynesian Economics "I have become death, destroyer of worlds," Oppenheimer I see comets fall, riding them are a bacteria known as refugee. A boy writes ‘fuk ur god’ on a computer monitor; within that very text, macrocosm, entire worlds feud and die, their blood runs down the computer screen, the boy licks up this blood, and how sweet it tastes. The boy walks off, half-smiling while staring at the breasts of twelve-year-old girls. Later at home he masturbates, a little fetus covered in boils falls out; he kills it and consumes the child. “Hello boy” “Hello Danny” “Hello Son” As spoken by elites. The boy is held down on an operating table. “Please help me.” As spoken by the last man. Down an open mouth, I see the real world. There are children playing atop a glass dome, inside the dome are future weapons and new innovations. A man proceeds to dig his way to China; he breaks into the dome and falls. A bound Asian man shot in the head point blank, rows of murdered civilians, some trampled by tanks, and they got their information by then. In captivity are middle eastern men being tortured by suited whites. Sen. Wellstone is laid to rest. In Haiti, the results of a puppet who rapes children: people living in cardboard houses with flooded latrines, the UN forces leaves a message by executing a man and leaving him rotting in the streets, forgoing the usual media. The Democide of the once saintly individual, there now is your Pinochet, here overcome are the murderous Spics. There is an image of a black man crucified onto a monolith. “He’s coming out of it now; notate the foam falling out of his nose. I know we’re only to record spoken word, but I feel it necessary, this may convey a kind of poisoning” “What a trip.” “Indeed.” Air force pilot Alex Harmen awakens from his Demerol-induced trip, he has been given a code name he will not remember; he has seen such horrible things.

“How do you feel John?” “Fucked.” “That’s good you feel something, better for that then the usual depression, eh? We can set you up there John. Ermm, uh, just, waitaminute, there we go, sorry about that I forgot hit the record button. You feel fucked right? Testing. But the depression, how is the depression?” “Neutralized for lack of a better term, I feel weakened, my testicals ache, and my feet are trembling a little. It’s like feeling drunk in a way.” ‘Good.’ They never suspect, nor will they ever. Our media and Devine Tesla. We shall make these birds sing, we shall let them see what we want, o’ mighty, o’ infallible rouge, that be our religion, what a nice and pretty thing. You kind birds that part my hair; you pursue our interests, you make us strong, O insipid and great mankind! Riding alongside Gary Powers, we do not have our cyanide capsules… he refused and I forgot. The plane is shot down so suddenly by a patriot missile. I see the Tesla coil as the crucifix. There is Tesla palming balls of lightening, at that moment I realize just who is the true prophet. There exist no beautiful cherubs, but only HAARP, Tungeska is the fall of man, every last man being tracked with radio chips – a list for who’s naughty and nice – what a pity for men that will never realize Saint Peter is a computer. Summary of the MK Ultra Project: was put into action when U-2 Pilot Gary Powers refused to take his cyanide capsule when captured. To prevent the leaking of any information, his plane was shot down on return from the Soviet Union. Though it were researched well into the late 40’s/early 50’s, it was after the Powers incident that the program when into effect for all airmen. Reasoning: It costs millions of dollars to train an airmen, versus thousands of dollars to train a grunt, they would sacrifice one hundred grunts to reclaim an airman. Execution: The subject would be placed in a drug-induced coma (once done with LSD now done with Demerol) and given a trigger word, when the subject has been captured, the trigger word is given to the subject in some manner and the subject commits suicide or assassination (see Sirhan Sirhan). Dr. Keynes, god bless you. What amazing spectacle, the brain of Keynes downloaded into an android. I see over a dozen people in lab coats covered in vomit, computers reaching orgasm through a mass of new information, paint-like fluid ebbing out of hard drives… they know now and see the rebirth of their messiah. Here to witness, the fall of every little man; cementing a warped ideal of the OverMan as recited by the great Nietzsche; an ideal that perfectly validates Darwin and De Sade, Natural Selection via Master & Slave.

Dr. Keynes gives his speeches by binary code, it takes 5-10 minutes to translate each senteance uttered. “My people, how far you’ve come. To advance upon an idea to mutate this wretched, deviant species into something without future, without a god, without anything but to give to us. And you have taken it even higher then I hoped, with worthless paper, and great and holy media. How splendid it is to have only the consumer. We need a more controlled population, for that I refer to the great and beloved Rwanda. With what we have asserted, the white protector to save the poor and dying niggers, by the simplest possible manner, upon these very hands (invokes the crowd of sychophants, spooks, and idealists) are befallen diamond and crude, how justly to reep material from a people who do not think. And so our bases were made, our men deployed and (begins speaking even more pretentiously) sheltered they that were provoked, they that were our fuel to the fire, they that ranks among the greatest of parasites that which partakes in a social cannibalism.” How much longer should I see it continue? Cameras which monitor every last gesture, and every conversation recorded with a multitude of triggers. I see people re-wired and dumbed down. A sick and meaningless people (Image of the American flag, the masses, cannibalism) Arise Dr Keynes; you will be the eternal Ugolino Della Gherardesca. You will be remembered as the man who gave us the television. You have won the battle without a Stalingrad, for you are Mengela and General Shiro Ishii. You are the Wiseman who says to us ‘May you live in interesting times.’

In The City Excavated buildings, rainfall of black ash & rivers of saliva. Trees upturned with roots soaking of blood and fused knives. Held under a red and blue sky with no wandering humans, no arranged ode to pain and joy, but only a sacred misery. There’s people lynched from atop rotting buildings with protruding skewers, their agony muted by cut vocal chords & blank faces. A people united under not cruelty, but Instrumentality beyond pain or love, but the flesh married to idealism & completed with the utmost in artistry. A nursery holding mutant children; one child’s fingers are broken backwards; the fingernails grow immense & dig into his torso & now paralyzed in a sitting position with his toes plugged into electrical sockets for eternity. Untold rows of dear minority hang in the sun with amputated noses, tubing runs from each nasal cavity up into a high structure where biological weapons are dumped into, & bodies stay in constant rot & convulsion. There is a stadium rebuilt by one crucified muslim who becomes a new kind of circuitry, his limbs become extension cables to power the one thousand electric chairs for seated cowards & every last & remade fuck machine. Among his attendees, holes are cut into the tongues of one dozen women, funnel-like jowls erupting from the earth, and ants are lead down their gullet & begin to nest. When a queen emerges, she will lay her eggs down into her victims’ open mouth, under the shadow of mohammed, under the shadow of dead jesus: the begotten people who do not realize what they are, walk past such spectacles while speaking to themselves in tongues who stare with the eyes of an insectseeing but a few millimeters ahead of them in this glory of the planet now minimized-. On billboards promising newfound glory, there lay the image of one male pubescent, with each limb amputated including the minute prick, the flesh filleted ‘round the chest, re-wired to become a polygraph device to listen in on each confession by godly men who have had their ears stabbed by crucifixes, stars of david piercing the eyes, and etc. In the streets, two dozen people laid on their backs, their feet pin pricked by intermittent fires, pointing up at the sky & doused by the concurrent rain looking out into nothing, these living anchors. One lesser building is crowned by young girls held and raped by gargoyle automatons, fucked by a constant mechanic motion & emptied with sperm at every hour, and pausing just before any child could ever reach orgasm. Each child has an opened stomach by cesarean where a new child is plucked, the fetal legs ground up and fed to the mothers; the remains are left in gutters that house rare flowers, broken glass & vomit –this is the manure for a rare plant that arises with a human hand clutched in an Anarchist fist-. In the glory of the sun, there beams a gigantic mouth with a jaw like a guillotine & a tongue like a needle, people are kissed by that tongue & bitten into twos & threes, and left to writhe and live by that wretched kiss. Dogs with sewn eyelids live inside each hollowed & sustained bodies. New-Age solar panels with opposing men & women are speared upside down in a criss-cross fashion, they are let live by a series of tubing

leading from the cunt, prick, & ass to each mouth, one couple are impaled by a spike through each head in a kiss, being held together in sun light, giving vital energy to this very paradigm. In school yards I see giant men at least seven feet high, are run around with razor wire like a may poll by wounded children while the wire is wire is rooted in the palms & may easily give if any slack is applied. On the beach a man is crucified upon a dying whale, spray paint marks a cross outline, black natives appear & sing, guided by a road of dead animals opened by bullet holes, such beautiful chants from atop a mound of dirt –an island within the city- the natives kiss this man on the cheeks, the whale explodes from expanding gasses. Laughing; dying refuges lay out on hospital beds, feeding rows of tears to mosquitoes sat upon unblinking eyes; a white nurse looks after them, a white man is born from a shotgun wound (pellet round), pulling himself up & emerging now as a thing beyond little wars & little men, the white man & woman proceed to fuck. There is a thing levitating upward,

The Tower From the extremes of Hedonism, O’ mighty Libertine and significant herd In the middle of the city, one tower pulls up from it immeasurable in scope and all too palpable to the richest of men. It seems to root the city as it touches the sky, like the handle for a dradle, an anchor, a tool, a thing with life. Too difficult to place it into the limited confines of language, you can only see and know what it is from the outset, seeing something so powerful it brings enlightenment. No entry is apparent, this is not a thing made for humanity, but just a painting made manifest. Each floor follows a different variation on total freedom: Populated by nude women, and sustained entirely by diluted urea. These most exquisite of women neither anorexic nor obese, those extremes lay only to consumers. Some with a gap in the teeth, or slightly crooked, others with minor baby fat, others still with shaved cunt and a light stubble, every race is welcomed without a creed, their numbers in the tens of thousands, haven’t I said that the herds have been separated and retained? What of birth? There is no need to create a vice when one achieves totality. Another floor, a mirror of the previous, but only with men; and one other going a step farther with hermaphrodites. On one floor all three converge, it resembles the birth of the universe. A domain of creators; philosophers, scientists, inventors, etc: Many are re-incarnations of previous great men, and some request to be placed back into their original and mighty state once they acknowledge the outside world. Some do nothing and enjoy the view,

saying that everything that can be said has all ready passed, and while others questioned their meaning on a planet where an ideal has been reached and now attained. God is here, a monochrome deformity useless and preserved in a vat of ecstasy. A plaque above him reads ‘Paradise is a shifting element that must always grow and evolve, if satisfaction is ever reached thereon it mutates into purgatory. Here lies your idea of heaven.’ A school environment, nude children are encouraged to watch Madolescenza. Free love and little angst, with those vital years recycled and re-invited, pick your parents; for once you may actually choose a destiny. Dead civilians from each war, united here in a new state. Theirs to grow and nourish, strangely Masochistic in its appearance, pain is too familiar to them. There is a family portrait in bondage. Ocean of cum, nudist camp set on the beach with an orange light that would tan. People frolic and enjoy, but not at all sexual as they remain unaware and naïve of such things. Children swim in the ocean, by the side are women masturbating in a frenzy, emptying their selves to give these children water. A floor of fetishes from necrophilia to crush, with imagery too obvious to recall. The castle of the Four Libertines from De Sade’s The 120 Days of Sodom are granted the gift of modernity. Only here the children are replaced by realistic Japanese androids. The Holocaust: The camps are now bordellos; it resembles an Italian Nazi-sploitation picture where Jews, Poles, Christians, Homosexuals, and Deformities converge and writhe with soldiers. Not offensive at all once you subvert a thing sexually, no one may resist pleasure and the most abundant of escapism. An electronic floor; children are seated in a Chucky Cheese-like environment with wires run to their brains. They play the arcade games; each victory brings a flood of endorphins. The games, you might be wondering, are wired to pedophiles trapped in a hidden room. Each victory brings a prolonged electric shock with a minimal amount of endorphins injected. On the example set previously, with androids being a catharsis: There exist an infinite amount of floors dedicated to each little group and their hatred. From pigs beating to death minorities, Black Panthers executing corrupt white, muslim extremists stoning women to death and committing suicide – though they let live, a secret room houses 72 androids who remain virginal due to blood pumps and an automatically regenerating hymen-. This domain of metaphysicians granted a second set of arms, an extra finger, dual genitals, and a third eye, etc. They speak of their thoughts and given little applause, repeating how they will begin to do something in creating a new and better planet, amounting to only the usual masturbation.

Topping off into the crown this floor of deformities without language, but only a screaming cacophony, and with a wallpaper of mutilated holy figures: There stood mohammed tied to a crescent with a star anchoring the mouth, there sat jesus in an electric chair, the usual mockery as you could imagine for buddha and vishnu accompanied by a dance of these people. One inhabitant without eyes, four arms without fingers, and pointing needle-appendages up at the roof where it meets a giant hand plain and forgiving as they touch and sing. The roof opens, light beams, it looks like Bosch’s painting of insect angels flying into heaven. Populating yet another floor, one without anything, but these deformities who lay and weep, and arises a cloudy-ness of a stillborn people that anchors this planet. It stays like this for eternity.

apocalypse The Chameleon has died and the spider has escaped from its nest Travelers enter a ravaged village smelling of blood. Huts broken open, dogs torn to pieces and impaled with sticks. Screaming faces forever set on beaten bodies. Men and women crucified upright and upside down, torrents of blood falling down the hillside. People half-buried, an old man dragged across the fields by his intestinal tract; hands and feet cut off and hung from tree branches, now limbless people struggle to crawl up the hillside, away from the forest, begging, whimpering, covered in lively essence. There’s a boy crucified through his palms, castrated, and still drawing breath. A forest of hanged and gutted animals. Every woman lay destroyed, crucified upon those trees, pierced and impaled by every phallic limb. Mother s torn open a daughter s cunt impaled and stretched wide, funnel-like. And I was the ruler and the Devil: Spreading from me this biological infierno, flesh-like walls lined with entrails, demons conjoined to screaming children fused to the skull, back, and genitals with weeping faces sprout, these demons stabbing screaming people laid out on all fours with finger nail-shaped blades. People falling, screaming, laid on needle mountains, constant and everlasting screams, and a hot steam arising from a river of blood and ejaculate. I was there, eating these broken bodies . May you come to the attention of those in authority. . Seeing Human heads falling, cut off by massive swords protruding from the palms. Phallic and spear-like blades arising from arms held high above a massive human form clouded by shadow, each arm parallel to the other, and each blade toped by human heads, one head is white and the other is black, the Ying and Yang of mutual decapitation. Mountains of human heads stretching for miles upward, young lovers begin to fuck on these mountains, blood ebbing from torn hymens. It is all here within this coliseum, and there was an obese Caesar presiding over this accursed place, thumbs down. Sparks fall from the sky and there is a loud electronic hum of machinery. Black wires decorate the walls and floors; it is difficult to find your footing. People in the stadium stare down at you; Lightening bolts fall and strike me, my limbs are numb and scalp is set afire, struck again and again by lightening falling from heaven. Other people tortured with electrodes attached to genitals and nipples, and another crowd joined together by holding hands lit up like a live circuit as electricity courses through them. Man attached to flying kite and once he is struck by lightening he plummets; blood, shit, and random viscera covers the wires, a floor drowning in a small pond of blood, low-level electricity slowly killing those who drown, death by heart attacks, charred flesh, aneurisms, ruptured veins and destroyed eyes, ulcers exploding and exiting bowels. I hear a great electronic hum in tune with my heartbeat, a subtle pounding of what may be generators or the trampling of dying slaves, I hear it so often and so familiar, even when I fall asleep it continues, this electronic beat. Children take bullet hits for the Elites who watch onward in the stadium, one of which is dressed as Caesar: the king of Earth. There is an orange/reddish light which permeates throughout this place, an underground cavern, a ground of jagged stones and bits of dirt, naked human feet, a ceiling of stone spikes almost touching the ground. Man with outstretched hands walks over the thriving

bodies as if he is in a drugged trance, and with blank and lifeless eyes. A blond woman presides over this, not a queen but an heir apparent to butchery and grace. Man masturbates a woman laid out on floor; his hands are then cut off, large clumps of hair pulled out of now bloodied scalp by a clawed hand reeking of chlorine. A threesome with a brown-haired woman fucked with two pricks in her asshole, a knife forced into her mouth, with her nipples and pubic hair draped in falling cum and blood, held in the splendor of the stars. Beautiful Italian music with a woman singing elegantly plays on, labia s bitten away by plaque stained teeth, a man tied to the ground on all fours, his asshole fisted, he is decapitated, and he gives birth to a child through his opened neck. The child is the idea, the blond woman holds the child and say’s ‘oh king of god, open your gates’ and the child levitates off into the sun and perishes: Plants grow, buildings fall, no more vices to find once blighted by supreme pleasure that no one may resist, and therein the world is reborn. ... Blue The most morose of colors, there is something about it that conjures the feeling of depression, and much more simplistic, easily grasped things such as the abyss of water, memories and flight. There is hope in Blue; the world may be destroyed as would Pariahdom and there would arise and forever be of permanence Individuality. Limitation is a forgotten memory. The world is opened and we have become the new bird no longer chained. People begin to swim in the air, and they are set free. Ascension, free from paradigm, and there allows new humanity. When I die, no one will remember me. My body will nourish this planet; I will be the nourishment for all people. I will be this great and kind thing once I am gone, no more will there be this void to be filled. My escape shall be Manifest Destiny, and then to let it all go and lay in peace. I witness the limits of violence and pleasure, and I see how limited they are. There is only so much you can take away and rebuild, when you see that a corpse is just a corpse without a freedom or final descent. But a nothing. I am at peace with that.

Final sophistry of a Pseudo-Maudit: Infierno: There is an orange light interwoven with needle mountains, mud pits filled with black pikes, flames, howling, and ongoing groans of pain. On one scaffolding to my right there is an Asiatic adult male laughing while he is whipping a young girl with what looks like intestines, a violent strike to her lower stomach splits her open like a cheap piñata, I am awash with her viscera. I see a man impaled by a Catholic drill and held over a group of slithering pigs, his eyes are furious and drip ink. Large human erupts from the dirtlayered earth sprinting miles upwards with an extended right arm and a clenched right fist; the body explodes with a rain of blood and refuse. Constant sounds of fucking high on the mountains, motherly woman overjoyed by one dozen pricks, her skin melts away as a flood of sperm falls. Girl squatting and masturbating with a white horn filled with termites that eat out her womb and spill out of her body, she presses a button on the horn and it ejects itself out through her body and emerges through her back. Yellow birds fly to the crucified that hang below and pluck out their eyes. Up high between two mountains, there is a man trapped in a webbing of medical gauze, he is pinched and prodded by a scorpion created by fused humans hanging just below him, its phallic tail bores through him, a poisioned torso, with blood and venom overflowing. Ancient woman with amputated limbs laid out on her side, her stomach lined with nipples, infants suckle from her. Preserved fetuses attched to umbilical chords hang off the ground, tortured by lit candles planted below. A sow’s breasts are bitten way by infantile boys. A woman sweats, her cunt pulled open and filled with hot lead. Man is pulled inside out, still alive as ancient men eat him. Too many more that passes by and are too easily forgotten. I see the exit, appropriately a grail doorway and what I thought was the pubic hair were instead pikes which bore through a multitude of screaming people of all genders and all ages, a man crucified to the clitoris. Paradiso: It is much more tropical, jungle-like then a forest. There is a blue sky mixed with clouds and stars and even bits of most cherished night, there is a constant sunset here, a grassy floor rich with green. Every women lay entirely nude and there lies no shame nor morality, and no punishment given to a free body. Many orgies under the trees before not a one who is holier-then-though but your fellow Wretch, and foliage-covered mountains echoing screams of glory. Children even involved with this mass and consensual pleasure, involved with their equals or yet even older, not following the law of Give and Take but only Need. A mad sense of pleasure without fear of being stricken by plague or that of parasite. Elephants howl and bathe women in water from a lake of ejaculate. A baby hippopotamus steals the clothes off the backs of young virgins; they give chase to that infant animal with a great deal of joy. There exists no oppression; there is no opponent that shall rob man of their want and desire; everyone has achieved what is manifest, hence their point of existence made realized through physical interconnectedness.

PaRaDISE I love you please please I don’t want to be alone anymore Someone love me, someone need me, I need you to leave I’m all alone in the world I have died and gone to hell That were my innocent and weak self You have awoken me, I the sleeping demon I would gladly bite off these feathered wings and bend these horns I just don’t want to die alone You will be with me, for without I would gladly die then to be without a goddess I will be with you darling, you are my Lover You will be my awakening from this limited planet I will spare you agony upon agony You will not feel pain, nor birth, nor wraith For I would give to great attrition Moreso then any woman on the planet, as I have no mother My mother the queen of lies and pity All men should destroy their mothers All women should defeat their fathers For we are Apollo & Dionysus This tao of mighty things Thy will that man becomes whole again The void filled with not flesh nor ink But unity among a fellow Let us glide and dance Let there be a new ego One evolved and loving Not to die like a philosopher Not to live like the prisoner But a void filled With all manner of what begets Instrumentality For you, my Love

birth Rioting Asiatic people rampage through villages, they are driven by some religious/political right that brings back an ancient practice of their culture. As they decapitate begging men on their knees that they do not see as their fellow nor as opponent but only as a trophy, three heads placed on a roadblock and the people cheer as the camera records it. It was done mainly to gain attention for the people‘s cause or the media wouldn‘t give a damn and there would be no world coverage. There is a photo of a man in military fatigues seated by his trophy, the putrefying head of a young man. Here we have a prime example, where violence is committed not so much to gain attention for a cause, but to be noticed by a third person. Not so much as a cry for help, but a method to prove one’s identity. We may have an existence through one and the other; two humans become a mirror of the other no matter the relation of blood. By committing this act, they have drawn attention, people know of them, no longer as the powerless specter, they have an existence in the third person, their cause is no longer an esoteric spectacle for their people, it is their identity to all people on the outside; they have murdered in order to establish their existence. ... I tear away my flesh, and there I see my true self. We forget that we are alike underneath this nervous system of physics, the flesh is only a microbiotic society of interactions, and the society that houses the one is not the identity to the self, it is only a delicate ecosystem that may crush the one. Just as spirit/mentality is individual, when the flesh was born it was plugged into to this society, it is joined to a fragile thing and the cure is when that single cell is extracted from the diseased creature and it evolves to a higher being that wipes out that disease. ... To amputate your Index and Ring fingers is to be free of marriage and of making accusations. ... What are fascists but sexual cripples? ... These new creatures, adaptations of humanity One is a black thing, near shapeless with few defined features. With a mouth cavernous and wide like the spread cunt, five fingers often held together as three sharp and scissorlike fingers. The body overall is mutilated and deformed, often walking on its haunches and leaping onto the weak to eviscerate them with an intense speed. With needle-like teeth and it shall vomit napalm and without asshole or genitalia. This is the Ego, and the Ego does not shit.

It brutalizes a single man who is defiant to it, slamming his head against the wall effortlessly, cutting off the face whilst amputating struggling limbs. It culminates when this man is disemboweled at an instant and napalm falls onto the exposed entrails. The Ego feasts on that castrated organ with a subtle joy. The second creature: The ‘supposed’ Goodness, I say ‘supposed’ because a sense of good is not born from within the human, it is an implanted idea. It is a thing that is mimicked so long as it may serve the one; Goodness is only a modified clone of the Ego. A figure clothed in a deep blue gown with awaiting arms in faux-human form, as if to embrace you and bring out a goodness; a goodness that is ultimately an inhuman thing wherein a cancer grows from that tainted heart now blackened and ugly, pumping that diseased blood, topped by disintegrated marrow, and a toothless mouth. It grabs handfuls of pubic hair and shit glued together by saliva and forms wings out of these ugly things attached to its spine, masking the ugly as pure and clean. It attempts to live onward, deluding it self with visions of grandeur. ... That which separates man from lower animal: For the benefit of the insipid, cut off your thumbs. Then we would become equals.

D e p r a v i t y (Justification) D e c i m a t i o n = C r e a t i o n. This is an Anti-Christ Complex; the death of everything could only beget the creation of a new and better thing, a Fascist approach. One may draw parrallells between the Inquisition and the democide by the Khmer Rouge. E x i s t e n c e a n d t h e n a t u r e o f V i o l e n c e. Philosophy clefts at one point, that the animal exists for it self or it exists for the nourishment of the other-just as humans are social animals. That is a flawed argument, man chooses to exist as a social creature (Fusion) and that gives way to Pariah. One cannot exist for the other (society) and maintain wholly, physically and mentally, a new filter is created as an intrinsic piece dissolves to achieve life in a Society, and that being our individuality. The Pariah gives up only the albatross to Society, and grows a further enhancement, and that is to evolve. When I exist for my self, therefore my inner ecosystem implodes and takes away, nothing. Nothing collected, no genetic tree of life, nothing added and nothing gained, a human worth -0. Art and Action are the one loophole to this truth, when one engrains their existence upon another… they in fact violate the nature of the Pariah. When I exist for the other, I have become a molecular creature bound to the other. You may find metaphors in paradigm and evolution, the splendors of life that they may affirm. Both values imply Eugenics –either the one who exists for himself evolves then dies, or we are fused and evolve as the mass- and have then been executed by Democide and the Serial Killer. How often Social Darwinism clashes with Peace & Love. V i o l e n c e a s i n t r i n s i c t o E x i s t e n c e: Those within Society go towards violence to escape this universe. The Pariah retorts to violence as a counter action or overt anti-influence to create a new paradise that suits their comforts. According to Kierkegaard, the Single Individual is the one who has separated from a society of individuals (individuals as if cells that work in conjunction of one being). That is, complete separation, becoming an alien thing to that former society; like birth of a deformity. How does one separate from society? Separation from the masses is an impossibility when taken into accord the unionification of mankind… there is that scientific suggestion that we each interact with each other via mass energy, negative input creating negative output, and etc. It seems that growth is the ideal he went for, but it has been misapplied. Chaso Applied to the Masses: The Negation of state, the Negation of the politic, the Negation of the dictator and all democracies, the Negation of money, the Negation of religion, the Negation of morality. Therein is the man that seeks his fame and destiny, he is that Single Individual and OverMan with another kind of irredeemable growth so easily available to people with a horribly precise logic. Like Consumerism; the simplest possible method to fill the void.

Tao of Joy & Pain (Chaos depicted in terms of the Madman witnessing the fall of society) One, one vast land of a natural yellow-ish pallet overgrowing with unimportant minutia (grand buildings, televisions as large as oceans, scrawling text/propaganda) non-human models, in-human models, dead animals and living cannibals, brief vestiges of former slaves, new generations of fused races, and half-dead Methuselah’s connected to biological mechanized hard external memory. Birth of new man; an unending violence that is both catalyst and result, a thing which creates itself; a man who disembowels himself and gives birth to the embodiment of his ego in a child’s body draped with his innards = rebirth. Therein man invents his destiny and reaches it. Foam streams through the sewers from mouth and wetted cunt, from the armpits the people give birth to new beings no longer blank but entire ideologies created in the flesh, millions with knives, guns, and untold weaponry, and to drown in flooded latrines. No heat or wind, no weather of any kind, constant falling of cum -tears of freed humans- the sewers stuffed to the brim with bodies, and shit arises among the converging masses. Omnipresent laughter and screaming, screams of joy and pain, man in black guns down gyrating fuckers in Tiananmen Square and he begins singing Strange Fruit shooting them thrice out of a luminescent joy. Craniums broken open on concrete sidewalks, people kiss the ground housing their buried lovers, a man takes a screwdriver upon his finger nails, tearing them out one after another and feeding them to a child, and the man then writes a poem in ode to Will Inman’s The Flowers of God . Pricks grow from a man’s shoulders, rows of them as with several rows of teeth, he lacerated his tongue and cannot speak, he keeps biting his pricks, and he then amputates them with his teeth thereupon bleeding to death. Average woman clubs a man until he is in a coma; she amputates his hands and fucks his stumps, and riding those black arms endlessly. Wounded humans run onto the highways and suicide themselves while pilgrims use this collection of bodies as a massive raft to a new world. All races/generations of people fuck one and other not at the final dawn of apocalypse, not to fuck out of futility but only to live freely, all people fuck openly, splendidly, in that are expelled what makes humanity, creation in not a blank, creation of the joy of life. ….

I see the nature of Chaos. Is it a throw back to grand primitism, or an explosion of mind and body? Only bullshitters seem to know the exact answer for that. I no longer see anything in Chaos, there is no great thing to it, only a mass of imagery-our purest language- however great and divine it is, it is only built upon a simple logic, and Nietzsche said that the OverMan should not follow only logic. If Chaos can then be evauluated as an act of an Individiual, then no longer can violence be claimed by an individual if it is available to the masses. Therefore; the individidual would be a wholly unique creature that applies to no real set of standards, but a shifting set of principals that works like Evolution (an inescapable idea blighted by herd mentality and a limited manifest destiny) that suits that same man. With that, we discover that Chaos may not be violent, but only another life form like water, a thing that can become anything. May you find what you are looking for.

The Madman and his lover What I see now remain as fragments But pieces of a landscape Still morphing and being molded By what is the same old same old Even for the approaching hurricane Nothing new to find in this final image So obvious and unexplainable When you try to find your self and escape But predictable paradigm The usual ‘cause’ of all errors on this planet The experiment has failed Start over How comforting it is to a people Never once to find absolution Never to gain what is cherished and so sacred The death of God and all masters Let us become the new masters So we may chisel away the teeth Of little slaves and little men The final solution But turmoil and grace What little depth and pity For the blood of billions Like a newfound virus –cured by the bullet and furyWhat is Manifest and what is insipid Oh worldly genius and dictator Every last who will perish on this planet Now manure for fresh creatures A magnificent age The Dawn of nothing but individuals To battle time it self Without finish nor last glory What we see now Is endless possibility Infinite Divine and Cruel

[candrakylar]

     Every author gets that request hitting up their inbox. An aspiring writer asking for details on the writing process, advice on what to do about a developing manuscript, and hoping your insight will somehow shed light on a mystery. The thing is, there’s no real mystery. Writing is work and it involves exercise like anything good. In the process of explaining this to some of those inquirers time and again, I’ve decided to dedicate a post to writing advice. If this blog was linked to you after sending a similar message, then dig in...this entry is for you!

     You’ll notice a handy image included on this post with quick tips to remember. Go ahead and save it to your hard drive, put it on your phone, whatever makes it easier to view. It’s always good to remember the basics.  In the rest of this post, I’ll handle the advice in greater detail. Just remember that I’m one author in a sea of many dynamic views. My advice isn’t the only advice and you should always seek out more. So, without further ado, let’s start with the writing advice!

     Outline your ideas with detail. That means gathering everything you have together, listing it in chronological order, and separating the ideas into chapters. Easier said than done? Well, that’s the art of writing. Your outline can be edited countless times and you can always detour around it. Nothing is set in stone. The purpose of a good outline is to get you thinking about forming your ideas into the format of a novel. You’ll find breaks where one scene naturally ends and then, voila, you’ll have a chapter! It’s the first step in organizing those ideas into something solid.

     Create character word collages. Whether you use thought bubbles around the name of a character or just piles of words, this will help you shape the identity of your characters. By the end of the activity, you’ll have a more concrete idea about who your characters are. This will help you decide how they’ll interact with other characters, the way they’ll respond in dialogue, and even a character’s individual quirks. It makes a fully dimensional character.

     Join a writer’s group online. I can’t say this enough because it’s the backbone of any writing process. It’s great to reach out to authors you love and tell them about what inspired you in their work, but that probably isn’t the best way to get solid advice. Established authors get these questions constantly and will generally not give you the personalized answers that will help you develop. A writer’s group of those going the process will be much more beneficial. You can share samples of work, learn useful tips, and feel the synergy of aspiring writers supporting one another. it’s a win-win!

     Find reliable and honest beta readers. This one is a given for any finalized work to be polished. Beta readers are your first-run reviewers who can give you helpful advice on how to make a scene more immersive and will find things that disrupt the natural flow to your novel. They reflect your target audience and will be essential to delivering a final product that shines. Some of the best writers I know use beta readers and it reflects brilliantly in their work. Please note that these should be individuals who either belong to a reputable beta readers group or that you know personally. You’re giving them a rough draft of your work, after all, and you don't want it to be randomly shared on the internet.

     Listen and grow from honest reviews. Notice a particular word that’s been used more than once in this advice? Honest. Some reviewers will slant things, go with a mob mentality, and give you nothing constructive to work with. Then there are the reviews from avid readers who truly point out things they would have liked to see or ways that the story could have played out to a more satisfying conclusion. Note that I am not saying these changes should be made, as your final product needs to stand on its own with the choices you’ve made, but that they are a growing experience. Each honest review can teach you something about what your readers love and what they’d like to see more of. Don’t get argumentative or arrogantly offended over them. Reviews are opinions, after all, and readers aren’t obligated to share yours.

    Read as much as you write. This one is a biggie. As I write in the paranormal genre, I tend to read a lot of work from other indie paranormal authors. Due to a lot of the tropes constantly used in best-sellers, I stick to the indie field to see more original plot lines developed in different ways. I enjoy traveling into a new world and seeing what other authors have to say. I’ve even made friends with some of my favorites! Reading keeps you passionate about your own writing and will introduce you to the vast differences in your own chosen genre. Always read, always grow.

     That sums up the entirety of my writing advice. Did you find the answer you were seeking here? Sorry to say but, if you didn’t, then this author doesn’t have any more to give on the process. I’m hardly an expert and there are a ton of aspiring voices out there that will better help you on your way to finding your own career in writing. Keep reading, keep dreaming, and always keep exploring your mind through writing.

#writing #my writing #writing advice #indie author