#i mean Hannibal had way more casualties

[queermediaanalysis]

Why did no one warned me that Hannibal s2 and GO s2 END IN THE SAME FUCKING WAY??

I forgive you

Hellooo?

#i mean Hannibal had way more casualties #good omens #good omens s2 #hannibal #nbc hannibal #hannibal s2

[young-dumb-and-vaccinated]

Cult Girl: Doctorate (Hannibal x Pregnant!Female!Reader) pt. 14

Hannibal reads too much into Max's attempt to reconcile and cult girl revisits her past.

@wisesandwichshark @pearlstiare

Trigger warnings: discussions of death, abandonment, military casualties, emotional abuse

You soon returned to the opera knowing you had nothing to hide. Hannibal selected for you an off-white maternity gown so form-fitting it was practically painted on. He wanted everyone to see that you, his queen, empress and goddess, were carrying his child.

It only took that evening for the whole dynamic to change. Suddenly, you were an expectant new mother. Imogen had been a massive hit, you were planning to go again.

You were affixing your heavy cubic zirconia earrings when you heard a knock at the door. You hesitated, but hurried down the stairs when you saw who it was.

"Max?" You said, upon opening the door. He stood there awkwardly, holding a bouquet of flowers. "Hi?"

"Hey, [F/N]." Max greeted, eyes darting nervously around the porch. "I just came around to apologize in person. I'm sorry I was such a chauvinist prick."

You leaned against the door. "Oh?"

"You were right." He continued. "I don't know what it's like to carry a baby, and, unless something goes very wrong, I never will."

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that." You smiled.

"Anyway, these are for you." He said, handing the bouquet over. "They're chrysanthemums."

"Thank you, Max." You said, accepting the flowers.

"Archie and I-" He scratched the back of his head. "We thought that, maybe, if you'd still have us, that we'd name the baby Chrysanthemum. With your permission, of course."

"Like the picture book?" Your face lit up. "With the little mouse girl?"

Max nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah, exactly."

You hugged the bouquet into your chest and considered it again. You looked back at Hannibal, who hadn't looked up from his expectant fathers' website for a second all day. He surrounded himself with books about child psychology, attachment theory, developmental behavior patterns and somehow found himself on a tangent about institutionalized misogyny in medicine.

"I'm sorry, Max." You said, sincerely. "I really do appreciate you coming down here and apologizing, but-"

Max put his hands up and gave you a disarming smile. "I understand. Plans change."

"I just really want to stress that it's not you." You assured him. "I've kind of... really grown to like the idea of being a parent. And I think that was Hannibal's plan all along, too."

"I believe a congratulations is in order, then." His voice turned up in delight. "I'm very happy for you. Both of you."

You clutched the bouquet to your chest. "Thank you."

"Well, I'd better get going." He stepped backwards down the stairs. "I've got three pints of Ben and Jerry's in the backseat and Archie'll have my head if I come home and they've melted."

"Max, wait." You stopped him before he could get down the driveway.

"Hm?"

You leaned against the threshold and smiled warmly. "Don't be a stranger, okay?"

Max returned the smile. "Of course not."

You waved goodbye and shut the door. You hurried to the kitchen to put the flowers in water before you had to go.

"Who was that, love?" Hannibal asked, half-heartedly. He was still very fixated on his research.

"Max Thomas-Park." You answered, unwrapping the flowers from the decorative plastic.

Hannibal looked up from his computer, but left the room silent for you to fill.

"He wanted to make amends." You explained. You walked across the room to the china cabinet and selected a vase big enough to hold the ornate bouquet. "Brought flowers and everything."

"Chrysanthemums?" He asked, sniffing the air.

"I see your sense of smell is coming back." You commented.

"Interesting selection." He narrowed his eyes on the bouquet.

"Well, he said that was what he wanted to name the kid." You offered. "It was a cute pitch, not gonna lie."

Hannibal shut his laptop and examined the bouquet up close. "If he wanted to express regret, he would have done better to bring you blue or purple hyacinths."

"Well, like I said." You made a point to project a little more. "He said he wanted to name his daughter chrysanthemum."

"Mums are given to show sympathy for those in mourning." Hannibal continued, clearly having his own conversation.

"Hannibal-"

"I think your cousin got her hooks in him and he's planning to--" He cut himself off, lest he speak the unthinkable into reality. "That's why he brought mourning flowers."

"Max Thomas-Park is conspiring with Anna to kill our unborn baby?" You said, flatly, to emphasize how insane he sounded.

Hannibal held a bloom between his fingers and looked closely at it. "It's the kind of hint I would leave. For courtesy's sake."

"I think looking at parenting blogs all day has made you a little paranoid." You observed, knowing full well that an overprotective husband and soon-to-be father of your child was not a bad problem to have. Nevertheless, you shut the laptop and touched his cheek. "Come on. We're going to be late for the opera."

You heaved yourself into the passenger's seat of the car, feeling the seat give beneath your heavy frame. Every time you got into the car, you remembered that you needed to shop for a car seat. The thought just as soon left your mind every time. 

“We need to look for a car seat.” You said as Hannibal shut the door, hoping that he’d remember. 

“I mean,” Hannibal blurted out, still lost in his own conversation. “Max is a cultured and well-educated man. He has to know the implications of his flowers.” 

You huffed, dreading to think that paranoid delusion was symptomatic of his parenting style. “Right. The twenty-seven year old data analyst who graduated with a finance MBA from UChicago is also proficient in the outdated and frivolous language of flowers.” 

“In Italy, mums are only given as comfort for loss.” Hannibal said with undeserved conviction. “Exclusively, [F/N].” 

You rolled your eyes and typed something up on your phone. You raised your eyebrows, feeling a bit proud of yourself for what you found. 

“In Korea, y’know, the country that Max’s family is from,” You corrected. “The chrysanthemum is a symbol of friendship.” 

Hannibal tensed up for a moment, tightening his grip on the steering wheel. It was as if he were trying to break himself out of a trance. “...I’m sorry, darling.” 

“I know you’re scared.” You stared at his profile, trying to make out an expression. “I’m also... pretty scared. But you can’t take it out on a guy who has nothing to do with it.” 

“I am scared.” He affirmed, but the way in which he did was a telltale sign that he wasn’t giving you the full story. 

“Of?” You raised your eyebrow. “Finish the sentence, Hannibal.” 

"I need to keep our baby safe." He answered. "And I cannot in good conscience let her come into the world knowing that someone wants to hurt her. To hurt you."

You sighed. "Hannibal, are you seriously still worried about Anna?"

"Don't underestimate the role privilege and entitlement plays in the decision to commit acts of violence." He enunciated carefully. "You of all people should know that."

"Anna has cultivated such a perfect victim image to project outwardly that even a hint of proactive violence would shatter it." You explained. "She's the poor girl who has things done to her. Her evil cousin ruined her marriage. Her evil cousin destroyed her career. And she's the innocent victim in all of it."

"Logically, I know that you can speak on her behavior with more authority than I." Hannibal admitted.

"No shit." You scoffed. "I had to live with her."

"Can we at least entertain the idea that she has something planned?" He pleaded.

"I'm surprised at you." You said. "You never really struck me as the overly-cautious type."

Hannibal shook his head. "With my own life, I'm willing to gamble. But not when it's you. And not when it's Imogen."

You tensed up. His admitted willingness to put himself in danger unlocked a core memory you had buried deep down. The only thing you knew about your own father was that he was willing to put himself in danger. To go overseas and die for fuck-all instead of live for the child he selfishly created then abandoned. He chose to give his life for oil. You didn't choose to grow up without a father and your mother didn't choose to raise a child without a partner. He made that choice for you.

"Now what are you not telling me?" Hannibal broke you out of your trance. "I know that look, [F/N]."

"Nothing." You shook your head. "You should really not plan on dying anytime soon."

"I promise you, I am not going anywhere." His voice softened. "Least of all, to Iraq."

"Okay, you're a pretty good therapist but you never told me you could read minds." You threw your hands up in defeat. "Are you a psychiatrist or are you Loki?"

"As fun as being the god of mischief would be," Hannibal smiled to himself. "I just happen to have a steel-trap memory and an admittedly quite obsessive fixation on the mental health of the mother of my child."

"I swear to god I never told you about him." You denied. "Not even in passing."

"You didn't have to." He assured you. "Beatrice did."

You were surprised for a fraction of a second until the information sat in your head long enough to realize it wasn’t surprising in the slightest. Beatrice took every opportunity she got to brag about her son's sacrifices. She never once mentioned the sacrifices he forced upon you. Only that her son was a hero.

"Did you get the 'don't believe anything [F/N] has to say about my son' speech?" Your voice flattened in complete non-surprise.

"It was a prepared speech?" Hannibal chuckled. "Pity. I thought I was special."

"She gave it to my first boyfriend." You rolled your eyes. "We were, like, fifteen."

"The root of your psychological issues becomes clearer every time we talk about Beatrice." He commented under his breath.

"I know." You conceded.

He pulled into the parking lot, turned the car off and placed his hand over yours.

"Your father was a coward." He said, bluntly. It was nice to hear what had been echoing in the back of your head out loud for once. "I know no country to serve. No god to glorify. I promise, you have the whole of me. My mind, body and soul belongs to you and our child."

You squeezed his hand. "I couldn't ask for anything else."

#hannibal lecter #hannibal x you #hannibal x reader #hannibal nbc #cult girl #more cult girl #cult girl doctorate #cult girl 2 #tw death #tw family #pregnant reader #hannibal x pregnant reader

[wedreamedlove]

I'd love to know what you headcanon Xu Mo's mbti as! I've seen a lot of INTJ and INFJ but I feel like you've done so much research into his character (which I am a HUGE fan of by the way, your character studies are top notch honestly) that you'd have a good grasp on what his is the closest to 😊

first, thank you for enjoying my character studies! i feel like i spammed the tag by throwing in everything all at once, haha, oops.

second, before i get into this, i should disclaimer that i actually don’t know much about mbti apart from being intimately familiar with my own. which leads into the next part.

third, i’d definitely label xu mo as an intj which just so happens to be what i am. (funny enough, he’s also a sun scorpio when i’m a moon scorpio which, overly simplified, means we feel and approach things similarly but he does it publicly while i do it privately).

the reason i don’t think he’s an infj is from these sources: 16personalties and type in mind. i’ve put links for those who want to do their own reading but i’ll sum it up below.

basically, infjs are compassionate in their idealism and their second and third dominant function in approaching the world is external feeling and internal thinking. infjs are talented with connecting to people and want to do it warmly. they think the world is filled with inequity when it doesn’t have to be and will work to fix that.

this is the opposite of intj who have external thinking (objective decisions; efficiency in all things) and internal feeling (mull over details; slower to process emotions) as their second and third dominant function, respectively. sounds more like xu mo just from these words, right?

in the glimpses we get of xu mo’s childhood, there’s an impression that he was an isolated child who didn’t care for connecting with others, and he had a single-minded focus:

[Lucien Nightmare SR Rumors and Secrets: Lion Slumbering in the Dorm] shows that he was a quiet kid who minded his own business and was studying advanced topics because he was focused on a goal.

[Blossom Date] supports this too when xu mo says: “Yes, I skipped grades […] Silly, you want to hear about everything, don’t you. It’s the same as how you were before you took your entrance exams, there were things I needed to do.”

[CN Character Profile] there’s a testimony from someone who knew xu mo as a child: “Xu Mo? We’ve only seen one side, but he looks a lot like the small boy I knew when I was young, but Xu Mo’s attitude is much more modest. If that boy is still alive, I hope he’s living like someone as likable as Xu Mo.” — Fan Zihang

xu mo’s idealism is based on cold logical utilitarianism. you see this in the news conference [Chapter 16] when he talks about necessary sacrifices for the advancement of humanity, including himself. [Firefly Date] also has him asserting his belief in mistaken darwinism: survival of the fittest.

the world is full of inequity and he’s not going to change that. the bigger picture is for humanity to ascend with the least amount of casualties, meaning sacrifices have to be made willingly or not.

his ideals, and his methods (creating the virus and then changing his mind in Chapter 16), are pretty much the epitome of: “you were so busy wondering if you could that you never questioned if you should”.

this sort of detached chessboard outlook, not leaving things to chance, massive ambition, the ability to cut off and drop their emotions if it gets in the way, and the intelligence and logical paths to reach that goal is pure intj.

however! i think some people get mistaken in believing intjs to be cold robots and that’s why there may be opinions about xu mo being something else (because he’s socially savvy, right?).

imo it’s a misconception that intjs are robots when it’s just because intjs start off life with underdeveloped emotions. this just means that, in order to fully mature as a person, intjs have to put more effort into developing their emotional side. so ideally adult intjs should be more in touch with their emotions and interacting socially than adolescent intjs.

this is where the type in mind comes in handy again. there are some key quotes in there like:

When NiTe’s are younger, they don’t have enough past experience in various areas of life to pull from in order to know which reactions would be appropriate in social and relational settings. Their safest bet is often to try a small tweak to see if it makes a difference, rather than trying an entirely new approach.

remember fan zihang’s testimony? the present xu mo is more modest and humble than the child version, and he’s clearly more personable than how he was during his high school years (girls love him at the research university). he’s clearly worked on his social skills.

not to mention, it’s not a coincidence that a lot of fictional villains are modeled off of the burning drive and cold logic of intj but still having massive amounts of charm (ex. moriarty and hannibal). intjs, being all about efficiency, can easily put their scary intelligence to use in studying social interactions and mastering that.

but, anyway, to move on a lighter note there’s other smaller traits xu mo exhibits that point him strongly towards being an intj, like having encylopedic knowledge on a ton of things (an esoteric knowledge too, not just science-related).

his extreme curiosity towards things that would push him to do unusual things like watching cartoons to understand human nature [CN Character Profile].

his natural confidence and lack of a need to demonstrate it unless you ask him directly about something (i strongly believe li zeyan is an entj so he and xu mo share a lot of similar qualities too, like this one). they know they’re smarter than a majority of people and they’re so used to this that it’s not a point of pride or anything. just a fact.

xu mo also has an open mind which shows when he listens to whatever MC says without judgment. he takes things in like a sponge and then vigorously tests it in his mind with the tried and true “does this make sense?” “will it work?” and then he’ll gently guide the MC to a better and more efficient path, if he believes there is one.

#mlqc #mlqc lucien #mr love queen's choice #mlqc xu mo #love and producer #love and produc(ing) meta #answered asks

[whatsyourcolor]

Psycho-Pass 3 - Episode 5 [SPOILERS]

I liked this episode much better than the last one, though it still seems to me like they’re waiting to make all the reveals of this season in the last two episodes or so, and I doubt they’ll answer all the questions we may have. The masochist in me is still trying to understand where this is going.

1. The ex-inspector is not the ex-inspector we thought and there may be two factions. 

So the Inspector who was institutionalized and whose partner died is some rando we’ve never seen before. It looks like there’s foxes everywhere and Sibyl is infested with people trying to bring it down. The Bifrost seem to be an elite recruiting and manipulating others to do their bidding, from the slums, to politicians, to business. What’s their grand plan? 

I suppose is to eat away at Sibyl’s power little by little and begin establishing more traditional forms of control, such as religion, politics and manipulation of media. The Bifrost members decide what events are convenient to their goals and bet or invest on them to push them to the forefront or to get a convenient outcome. In the case of this episode, it was a delimited zone for all of those who want to practice their religion called “The Special Zone.” It seems like the thesis for Psycho-Pass 3 is not to test the characters per se, but to show the actual complications in bringing the system down and all the other greedy, corrupt powers that would fill its vacuum. 

2. These religious leaders couldn’t be any more suspicious. 

Isn’t this one being a little too honest?

Is PP nodding to current issues such as religious extremism? I’m not sure. All I know is that all these leaders love to have dominators pointed at them just to prove how pure their hearts and minds are, and yet, they say some disturbing stuff that should send these Inspectors’ heads going off like an alarm. After the terrorist attack at the Ma-Karina concert in the special zone, all the opponents to said zone survive it. They all carry this watch: 

The quote on the watch says Inveniam via out faciam which means “I shall either find a way or make one.”[1]. In this episode the terrorist screamed Audi Nos (Listen to us) right before he blew himself up, so I suppose this is the cry of some type of radicalized religious faction of Heaven’s Leap, since both terrorists were members of that church. The aim of the terrorist was to kill Karina but, unbeknownst to him, it was actually Ma-Karina who was performing. We know that the Bifrost wanted Karina to win and used (and disposed of) Enomiya to get to that end. However, inside the church we see the picture of Athletics promoter Yakushiji-san (Karina’s opponent). Torri Aschenbach (the Makishima wannabe) laments the terrorist attack, saying it could’ve been prevented if only Yakushiji-san had won. Doesn’t it sound like blackmail? Shit, it sounds a little bit like an admission. Given that Karina is openly anti-immigrant, this makes me wondering if the radicalized faction originated among immigrants willing to self-immolate to threaten not only Sibyl’s power but, unwittingly, the Foxes and the Bifrost’s as well. 

Not very coherent, are we? Or maybe they know exactly what they’re doing...

Are these leaders presenting an image of serenity, peace, and wisdom while implanting bombs on people to send them off on terror attacks? Are they marketing an image where they seem useful to the system in helping immigrants manage their hue and preventing them from ending up in the slums? I don’t know. The MWPSB knows the terrorists came from Heaven’s Leap. Wouldn’t this mar the image of the church in the eyes of the general Sibyl public that already rejects religion and immigrants? Or are they willing to risk status, reputation and image in a wager for power since their hues remain clear and so, in the eyes of Sibyl, they're innocent? Is religion another way to usurp Sibyl’s power and control the immigrant population?  

Are they hoping to replace the system or to integrate themselves into the system in a way that they become indispensable? 

Sure, Jen. 

Given that the Bifrost is in favor of the Special Zone and the religious members who survived the attack are against it, there may be two different groups that don’t even know about the existence of the other. One is formed by the elite of Japan and the other one in the towns of immigrants with religious leaders who are immigrants themselves or worked closely with immigrants. The only evident link between both factions is Arata’s dad who, rumor has it, was really well connected. 

3. I see dead people. 

Kei is about to pull an Eyes Wide Shut moment that may have some important ramifications and I’m really hoping it’ll be the reveal that gives this season the dignity with which it started. I think next episode we’ll see the first main casualties of Psycho-Pass.

Candidate 1  Mai is going into eye surgery as Kei is going in a mission where he can’t watch her. Arata said he’ll protect her (don’t quote me.)

Candidate 2 Mao receives flowers from a Fox who, judging by the gaudy, cliche and tacky quality of the present, is probably none other than Koichi Azusawa. Not only that, but Irie has a crush on her, so...yep. Arata said he’ll protect her (don’t quote me.)

Candidate 3 Yayoi is still involved in the case and I’m assuming will be involved in this mission despite Shion’s objections. Arata said he’ll protect her (don’t quote me.)

I hope I’m wrong because not only we had the two main female characters of Psycho-Pass, Akane and Mika, sent to secondary roles, but now we also have three female characters with very clear death flags. I’ll be pissed if they fridge these women. 

[1] The phrase is attributed to Hannibal when generals advised him it was impossible to cross the Alps with battle elephants.

#psycho-pass 3 #kei mikhail ignatov #arata shindo #akane tsunemori #pp3 review #review #rant

[iloveitxwhenaplanxcomestogether]

Fasten Your Seat-belts. We’re in for a Bumpy Ride:

@avictimofthejazz​ continued from X

The plane banks to the left with extreme prejudice, giving off a chortle and sputtering series of chokes. His gauge reads nearly sixty degrees, forty too extreme. It is a cry for mercy that Murdock instantaneously recognizes and attempts to fix. If he is unsuccessful in his attempts, the plane could start to roll or worse- plummet downwards till it crashed. “Come on, baby.” He internally pleads with the same devout desperation as he uttered his daily prayers.

With a delicate and patient adjustment of hands, the Captain attempts to regain some modem of control which, isn’t easy given the aircraft was showing off a spunky stubborn streak. One that caused even the experienced Captain Murdock to suck in his breath and hold it till his lungs seemed to scorch around the edges.

Another swat of the dials brings the weakened thrum of the engine to begrudgingly resume its more natural hum. Thank God above for still having some upward thrust left as the rigid outlines of the mountain tops slowly emerge from the plush pillows of the clouds and reveal themselves with astonishing clarity in the front windshield. Otherwise, the plane would have done a perfect Olympic-style swan dive right into the large rocks. Especially, with some of the harsh dips, they were taking.

That breath he was holding is slowly relinquished through the partition of his cracked lips. A visible but brief wave of relief bleeds over the pilot’s features as he is joined by his brother in the cockpit. Mahogany orbs drift over just to acknowledge Face’s presence before returning to his tasks of keeping the craft airborne and all of the passengers alive.

The corners of Murdock’s lips curl upwards into a hesitant smile, at the inquiry. It was really a humorous dribble of a story. One he’d normally relish telling, hell, he’d even heavily embellish the comedic parts if he thought it would entertain Face. But he doesn’t. He can’t devote his fullest attention to that right now. This is far too precarious a position and time to fall full force into an anxiety inspired split of personalities.

Furthermore, there is no use in terrifying the already white-knuckling lieutenant more than he has already. So he would allow a casual joke or two to snake through his tightly clamped teeth. “You know, it was slim pickin’s on the repair line so, I headed for the garbage heap this time. They don’t miss planes just before they’re about to be terminated.” No one ever did. While he spoke in jest, there is a gravity to what he is saying, not because it’s the truth about where he got the plane but rather, because lots of useful crafts met ugly ends. Exoskeletons of the once-proud crafts are left exposed to the elements, twisted, naked, and crumbling in graveyards until they no longer resembled anything of use. The same way that some people ‘considered less than normal’ are discarded at VA hospitals and then left to rot until the good Lord’s return. Murdock shivers at the unintentionally dark internalized comparison. He’s always felt for inanimate objects. He respected them and sometimes even related to them. In the case of planes and choppers, he oft felt a holy mix of both at the same time. He snaps back into the jest after zoning down the dismal path for a few minutes too many.

A twinkle of mirth shines in the shallows of Murdock’s mahogany eyes at the recollection of the scam where he heisted, okay borrowed, a plane right off the repair line before the repairs were even started. Everything had turned out alright in the end, hadn’t it? They had managed to land. Sure, it was a crash landing but there hadn’t been any casualties except for the plane.

Like a Kaleidoscope turned on end, the colored pieces of sanity gradually being to pixilate again, threatening to morph him into yet another one of his hidden personas. He grapples, wrestling mentally, with the violently tattered threads of Pasadena Murdock, Crazy Willie, and Captain Cab that were weaving together, evolving into something strangely unfamiliar but not unwelcoming. It beckons from deep in the tangled webs of his mind. He must resist!!!!! But how? Distraction was the best choice.

This distraction comes with Face’s prompt and the opportunity to convey the story behind the plane’s acquisition. Yes. He was well aware that Face had set something up with a rental agency. “Well, sure, we went to the rental agency.” Murdock’s words escape edged with pride. He might be insane but he wasn’t a complete dunce! “We started too anyways...” he confides between tightly gritted teeth. Murdock can feel the inch of sweat bubbling up under the rim of his brim of his ball-cap as the plane began to gurgle out disgruntled complaints and it’s heavy weight sagged deeper in the sky. “But,” his eyes shift around the cockpit, “your reservations fell through, muchacho. And I mean, flatter than a door panel. So when I was talking to...” He pauses, his eyes squinting for the recollection of the name. He’d read it with his own two eyes but now failed in the information's retrieval. So he makes up a name and hopes that Face won’t call him out on it. “I spoke to May and she said there was only one plane left on the tarmac. One for a man named ‘Fat Tony’ Carismo and his wife. The names seemed innocent and harmless enough. Right?

“Sooooooo...” the word is long in its departing of his tongue. Murdock’s voice warps till it resembles something gravely with the faintest touch of a Chicagoan accent, “I had Amy put on that pretty little red number of her’s. The one you can’t keep your eyes off of... and I borrowed one of your suits. Next thing I know, Crazy Willie and his friends are taking off in Fat Tony’s plane.” By Crazy Willie and his friends, Murdock most definitely meant his unit, the A-team. Provoking another wayward dial into order with his hand, Murdock continued, “Amy was spectacular. It was beautiful!!!!! She weaved a web that Fat Tony’s wife entrusted us, his dearest of friends, with refurbishing his plane for his birthday. He wants solid gold inlays and everything.” Shifting in his seat, he resumes his normal accent. Murdock knows where Amy learned that little interior design con and the source is seated right next to him. “Well, we promised that we’d return it some time next week.” But with that remark, the Captain goes awfully quiet. He considers that Fat Tony wasn’t going to like it but there probably wasn’t going to be a return flight for this baby. At least, not the way it was behaving now.

The entire frame of the plane shudders, riveting to life with a force far greater than your typical turbulence.

Amy appears over their shoulders, “guys?” A thread of fear trails in the undercurrent of her tone. She’d noticed the all too rapid and uneven descent. “I know this isn’t the best time to ask this, but are we in trouble?” She’d seen the far off look in Hannibal’s eyes. It appeared only in the form of the faintest of lightning-quick flashes before vanishing again. Of course, from a journalistic view, this was going to make a great story but that was hinging on the ability to survive, should the plane continue with its present trajectory towards the earth.

#avictimofthejazz #Face and Murdock: Brother let me be your shelter - never leave you all alone- I can be the one you call- when you're low #fasten your seat-belts we're in for a bumpy ride #a thread in which the A-team absconds with a mob boss's plane

[mdwatchestv]

Westworld 2x05: Ain’t Nothing To Fuck With

How did all these disparate threads come together to create this nightmare? HOW INDEED FARES FARES, HOW INDEED.

Anyway welcome back to Westworld! I was pleasantly surprised by the cohesion and thematic relevance of last week's episode, and while they weren't able to deliver as tight a narrative this week, the hour did manage to deliver something often sorely missed on this show - fun! Sure, there was still some gloom and doom, but there was also like adventure! Comic relief! Action! Wu-Tang! And from what well did this welcome variance in tone spring? Why from Shogun World of course! My preferred setting for the rest of the series, please and thank you.

Shogun World was teased in season one, as well as a couple episodes ago when Maeve and her crew accidentally stumbled into it, but now we finally get to explored it in full. Shogun World is set during the Edo period (1603 - 1868) in Japan, which was marked by the rule of well...shoguns! Shogun World boasts incredible scenic beauty, as well as awesome samurai-based violence. Simon Quartermain describes it as the World for people who think Westworld is too tame. Lol okay. Of course I also have to point out that Shogun World also has its own MOUNT FUJI. This iconic Japanese geographical feature, and giant ass volcano, only furthers my theory that the location of these parks is a twist/important. I mean, they have a whole mountain!!!! But while no expensive has been spared in the environment, there was clearly some budget saving in the narrative department....

Maeve and her unlikely band are captured by a group of samurai, Maeve's robot voodoo doesn't work on them, nor does their automatic translation feature. Her group is taken into a...vaguely familiar town square, and by the time Paint it Black kicks in, we know what's happening. In a shot for shot sequence we see Sweetwater's vault robbery event (led in that world by Rodrigo Santoro and Armistice) enacted by a new, but not TOO new, cast of characters. Simon admits he may have lifted the character's and story from world to world to save time, as a writer I do not blame him. But besides other-world doubles of Rodrigo and Armistice (Hannibal's Tao Okamoto featuring a dragon tattoo instead of a snake), there is of course also an alternate universe Maeve and Clementine. At the end of the robbery Maeve comes face to face with Akane (Pacific Rim's Rinko Kikuch). Like Maeve, Akane is quick, cunning and fiercely loyal to Sakura, her surrogate daughter. Seeing Maeve, and a bevy of other characters, come face to face with themselves was the kind of boost this show desperately needed. Finally we get to see the  show poking a bit of fun at its own expense, and it could not be more welcome. After hours of unrelenting Very Serious Mystery Time, it was nice to have a scene about Rodrigo having an inherent mistrust of his Other (every TV show ever's Hiroyuki Sanada). This is what we want from you Westworld!

The plot thickens as the local Shogun's messenger comes to buy Sakura from Akane, who bloodily refuses by going off-script and stabbing him in the eye. Our combined super-group makes a plan to return to Sakura's homeland Snow Lake (ps there is a whole-ass lake in this world too, where ARE we) but their plan is foiled by NINJA. ACTUAL NINJA. Imagine I am using the handclap emoji when I say this-is-what-I-am-talking-about. In a fantastic fight sequence that pits our brawlers and gunslingers against NINJA, Maeve's control powers get a major upgrade. Not only is she able to verbally instruct other hosts, apparently she can now even control them with her mind. Perhaps she is able to cognitively access the host network, issuing commands via cyberspace. Or you know, maybe she's a witch. But beside Maeve’s newfound ability to plug directly in the matrix, Sakura is captured anyway.  No sooner have the ninja been defeated by the power of Maeve's brainwaves than who should role up but the Shogun's guard. In an amazing development, that the best samurai movies would be jealous of, it is revealed that ronin Hiroyuki Sanada is the ex-captain of the guard, and at the behest of Akane he rides out to confront the new, shittier, captain. Truly, I could live in this storyline forever. 

[Note: I started writing this at work where I apparently left all my notes. So from here on out I’m flying blind people!]

The Hectors’ and Armisti allow themselves to be taken prisoner by the Shogun’s army allowing Maeve, Akane, and Simon to escape. Maeve is bent on helping Akane rescue Sakura, another mother trying to reunite with her daughter. Once they arrive at the Shogun’s camp however things don’t go quite so smoothly. The Shogun has gone a bit mad and had all of his men’s ears chopped off so Maeve can’t influence them with her witchy words. This seems sort of impractical for a number of reasons, but it’s whats happening. The Shogun says he will release Sakura if Akane also agrees to dance for him, and she reluctantly agrees. In the dressing room Maeve attempts to level-up Akane and free her mind, but Akane rejects the “freedom” Maeve offers her.  She chooses to stay in the reality of her personal Matrix, with Sakura,  rather than waking up and realizing she is really in ugly sweater land (it’s been a long time since I’ve seen the Matrix okay). 

Sakura and Akane prepare to dance for the Shogun, but the Shogun murders Sakura in front of Akane and then demands she proceed with the performance, and proceed she does. In one of the season’s best sequences, Akane lays down a beautiful geisha dance, that turns into a brutal decapitation of the Shogun, all set to cover of Wu-Tang’s C.R.E.A.M. This was one of the rare scenes on Westworld that really exceeded the sum of its parts. The unexpected cover song, the grand aesthetic of the setting and Akane herself, and the emotional stakes of the scene, all came together to create a truly effective and memorable sequence. Westworld often boasts individual cool or compelling elements, but rarely do they all come together to create such an effective and engrossing narrative moment. These past couple episodes have been some of the best of the series in terms of episode construction and payoff, even displaying emotional connection, which the series has struggled with. However despite the sheer badassery displayed by Akane, she and Maeve are captured and set to be beheaded by the Shogun’s soldiers (they yell orders to each other which is weird because I thought they had no ears?). As they are about to be executed, Maeve tells Akane she is a true mother, and Akane thanks her. Akane has put Sakura before all else, her happiness, her freedom, even her life. However before the blades can fall, Maeve uses her new psychic power to turn the soldiers against one another (and she had to use mind power because all their ears were cut off...but then why were they JUST talking- never mind). Bloodshed and violence ensues, and armed with her new power, Maeve turns her eyes to the horizon, the future, and her daughter.

And that’s it! What a great and enjoyable hour (plus) of television. An engaging story with great new characters powered by a stand-out guest cast, new locales and exciting action. I can’t believe this episode was able to avoid the usual drudgery and angst of most of Westworld, what a welcome reprieve, what a tight- oh wait.

That’s right these guys. For all the delightful surprises to be had in Shogun World, Teddy and Dolores’ storyline came to an all-too predictable head. Back in Sweetwater Dolores’ gives Teddy one final “test”, metaphorically asking him how he would protect an infected herd of cattle. His answer is of course reflective of Teddy himself, gentle and caring: protect the sick, hope for the best. The answer Dolores is of course looking for is: burn it down, burn it all down, and if there are casualties so be it. Teddy and Dolores’ finally knock boots, but it’s more of a goodbye before Dolores sets him up for a full reboot (get it, boots, reboot. I work hard on these things). This “twist”, if we can even call it that, has been projected from the beginning as Teddy has consistently failed to adapt to Dolores’ new world order. However we know that Teddy is still going to end up floating in face down in a lake, so maybe this reboot won’t be as effective as Dolores’ hopes. Dolores tells Teddy that ‘to grow, we all need to suffer’, and she clearly sees sacrifice as the way to do that. She has cut away all the ties that made Dolores, well Dolores, and is living largely as the Wyatt personality. In Maeve’s storyline though, she grew by seeing a reflection of herself, and another path she could take. Akane was fully devoted to Sakura, and even though Maeve is dedicated to finding her own daughter, it’s unlikely she would have sacrificed the knowledge and power she currently has to do so (unlike Akane). 

The introduction of the new worlds in Westworld is the best thing the show could have done. The time spent in Shogun World, as both a new setting, and a foil to the world we are familiar with, was a refreshing change. The return to the scenes in Sweetwater felt like a big clunk in an episode that otherwise soared. Like Maeve and Dolores, I as the viewer am also ready to venture out into a larger world, the new world. 

Can you believe we are only halfway through the season?

XO MD

#westworld #westworld hbo #martha writes #westworld gifs #westworld spoilers #westworld recap #westworld reviews #rinko kikuchi #shogun world #wu-tang clan #thandie newton #maeve #tv recaps #tv reviews #tv gifs

[maidenofiron157]

@artistic-ape YOU ASKED FOR THIS

the BASIC PREMISE is that Steve is Raleigh and Sam is Mako. or the other way around. either way. that’s what started it:

Steve n Bucky were a pilot pair vis a vis Raleigh n Yancy for their jaeger Avenger Maverick, and Bucky was killed (or lost his arm, but ‘killed’ fits the movie more and also makes it sadder, lol) in a kaiju attack and Steve had to kill the kaiju and pilot it back to shore alone, where he then left the program because of trauma, which, y’know. understandable. he comes back after Fury goes to recruit him bc jaegers are dropping like flies and the kaiju just keep coming, where he meets ~*~Sam Wilson~*~, the love of his life, who has also been recruited by Fury after having been out of the game for a while after losing his own partner, Riley, and their jaeger, Falcon Dynamite

when they get there its the last open shatterdome in the world bc every other world politician has decided to back General Thaddeus “Shitstain” Ross and his frankly fucking idiotic pacific wall program. there are still only four jeagers available - Aurora Immediate, piloted by Wanda and Pietro Maximoff (think the Kaidonovskys); Strike Team Delta, piloted by Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton (think the Wei triplets; more about them later); and Guardian Renegade, piloted by Thor and Loki Odinson. (think the Hansens; also more about them later)

Panther Maelstrom, piloted by King T’Challa and Princess Shuri of Wakanda, had to leave the program when their father died to take over ruling in his place, but are still helping on the sidelines by providing new technology and calculations and such when and where they can. Defender Olympia, piloted by Matt Murdock and Foggy Nelson, was taken out alongside Terra Infinite, piloted by Peter and Gamora Quill, several years earlier after fighting the first Cat 3 on record, though all four pilots did manage to survive thanks to the escape pod tech they had available. (can you tell how much I don’t like people dying lol.) they have not reentered the program bc the program no longer has the money to afford to make new jaegers, and theirs were unsalvageable

Iron Roadhog, piloted by Tony Stark and James Rhodes, had just recently been knocked down for the count au-timeline-wise - Tony came away pretty banged up but otherwise alright, but both of Rhodey’s legs were broken, so even if their jaeger wasn’t completely unsalvageable anyway, they wouldn’t be piloting it any time soon, so both of them have been working with Bruce Banner, Betty Ross, and Jane Foster on breach calculations and how to stop the kaiju in the mean time. their jaeger was the only one that could fly for any length of time on its own aside from Falcon Dynamite (Roadhog utilized thrust from blasters, while Falcon utilized built in jetpack-and-wings combo to get some lift; both worked fine). Tony and Rhodey designed that thing from fucking scratch, and it was one of the best and oldest. the two of them actually worked a little (or a lot) on all of the jaegers, and they feel the hit every time one of them goes down. it primarily used missile, laser, and blaster/repulsor tech as its main weapons; it was also the only one to use an arc reactor to power it, as Tony didn’t trust anyone else with the technology, since practically anyone could get their hands on a jaeger when it goes down, especially in the sea, what with the currents. (cleaning Roadhog up to make sure no arc reactor debris made it into the wrong hands was an Event)

more on Wanda & Pietro: they’re still mutants, but not, like, “artificially made” I guess, they were born that way. the drift makes things really weird for mutants, its been found out, because apparently their powers can transfer in the ghost drift afterward. they don’t keep them, but its wildly disconcerting. their jaeger has a hard time keeping up with them (a giant metal robot can only move so fast no matter how fast you run), but it can handle Wanda’s whole... energy... thing... fabulously. they can make all kinds of weapons with it, its very versatile, which makes Aurora very, very effective

more on Nat & Clint: originally I was gonna go full-on Wei triplets and give them a three-manned jaeger w Coulson as the other piece, but I’m still not 100% on if I want him to be a jaeger pilot or want him to be like Tendo coaching from the sidelines. either way, Clint 100% calls their jaeger ‘STD’ for short bc he’s a little shit and Natasha always hits him for it. their martial arts training doesn’t translate well in a giant body often weighed down not just by itself but by water, but they make it work, and they have built in crossbows on both arms, to utilize Clint’s special skill-set, as well as what can only be described as giant wrist tasers (Widow’s Bites) to pack a punch

more on Thor & Loki: they are still asgardian in this au. just bc I want them to be bc how fucking awesome would an asgardian jaeger be. especially with those two, lightning and vicious storms in the middle of the ocean fucking up the kaiju, meanwhile, Loki has fucking magic, he could make illusions to confuse them, or conjure fire, or ice, or giant blades - its endless. (the only problem for him would be power, but maybe the drift w Thor would amplify it too? who knows!) to be fair though, their first drift was... Not Great. as a matter of fact, some would say it was a downright disaster. Thor fried all the circuitry in the room and destroyed another in a rage, while Loki, ah, vomited, and accidentally dropped the aesir glamor he had, showcasing all his blue glory while simultaneously freezing the entire room. they are very drift compatible (98% in fact, right after Steve n Bucky and T’Challa n Shuri, with Wanda n Pietro taking to top slot of 99%, and Tasha n Clint and Tony n Rhodey bringing up the rear behind them at a slightly lower 98% lol). their first drift was so disastrous because 1) sharing memories from hundred if not thousands of years, instead of just decades, and 2) the whole “you’re the golden child, Odin loves you more, he hates me, you hate me, everyone hates me, I hate me” thing w Loki kind of made Thor realize how fucking shitty his brother’s life was and what kind of impact he had on it and how pissed it made him at himself, and Loki realizing that Thor actually did love him, and just... ugh. brotherly bonding, afterwards. lovely. (I love Ragnarok can you tell)

ANYWAY, the rest of the movie proceeds as such: Steve and Sam, like Mako and Raleigh, test to see that they’re drift compatible (which or course they are), and their first official drift in the newly revamped “Falcon Maverick” goes as poorly as Mako and Raleigh’s because this time they both have shitty my-partner-got-ripped-out-of-the-cockpit-too memories. Sam’s is the one who chases the rabbit first, so to speak (like Mako). meanwhile, Tony, Rhodey, Bruce, Betty, and Jane are all working on the breach, and Tony and Bruce (mostly Tony) come up w the idea to drift with the brain segment they have (like Newt), which the other three resoundly dismiss because its practically suicide (like Hermann), but they DO IT ANYWAY because WHAT THE FUCK DO THEY HAVE TO LOSE. Rhodey and Betty wind up being forced to stay at the shatterdome for calculation work while Tony and Bruce go out to find another kaiju brain from whoever Hannibal is in this au, I have no idea, my first idea was Loki but I wanted him to be a pilot too badly to follow through with it SO, Tony and Bruce go out into the Hong Kong Bone Slums with, surprisingly, Jane in tow, as their babysitter to keep them from doing anything more stupid to compromise the mission, and those three together do the joint drift w the kaiju brain like Newt and Hermann and rush back to give the shatterdome the bad news

during this, Aurora Immediate, Strike Team Delta, and Guardian Renegade (like Cherno Alpha, Crimson Typhoon, and Striker Eureka) are battling it out in the Hong Kong harbor and actually, y’know, doing better, bc they have asgardians and mutants on their side, but its still pretty tight, so Falcon Maverick is sent out to wrap it up. they come out with no casualties, unlike in the movie, but Aurora Immediate and Strike Team Delta are still too damaged to follow through with Operation Pitfall, especially since they definitely don’t have the resources or the time to prepare them for it, so even though Wanda, Pietro, Natasha, and Clint are still alive they still can’t be of much use at that point (and they’re pretty injured, so), so Guardian Renegade and Falcon Maverick face it alone

like in the movie, two Cat 4′s and one Cat 5 leave the breach, but Guardian, having asgardian pilots, does better at fending them off, but they’re still losing. blah blah blah, they blow the bomb and make it out safe thanks to Loki’s magic and also their alien physiologies, and Steve and Sam go in to finish the job. it ends a lot like the movie after that, but with no dead bodies! ayy! good times

#avengers #avengers au #pacific rim #pacific rim au #samsteve #(arguably) #tonyrhodey #(also arguably) #Text Post #this thing is planned the fuck OUT I have WHOLE NAMES for these motherfuckin jaegers #I GOT this #artistic-ape #;)

[alexsmitposts]

Lebanon: The Israeli Parking Lot We Helped Make It was the morning of 9 January 1984. The command “Battle Stations” came over the 1MC of the USS New Jersey. As we took our stations I remembered the conversations aboard ship in the preceding days. I remember wondering about these “enemies” our officers and comrades seemed so anxious to eradicate. And then New Jersey’s main battery of 16-inch guns opened up, for the first time since Vietnam. A Rumor of a War Like all the other sailors, my heart had been struck by the news that 220 Marines, 18 sailors, and 3 soldiers had perished in a terrorist attack on the barracks of the 1st Battalion of the 8th United States Marines at Beirut airport. We were all angry over the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States Marine Corps since the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II. For us, the situation was surreal. In my rack on either the USS Iowa BB-61 or her sister ship USS New Jersey BB-62, I’d listen to 80s tunes from Bon Jovi or Prince, then take the duty in ship’s living hell of an engineering space, buried inside 60,000 tons of reinforced steel. Then there we were, in striking range of the evil the world has battled since forever. Or, so we were told. “We’ll turn Lebanon into a parking lot,” I remember one Senior Chief from WEPS saying. “Yeah, by the time we’re done there won’t be nothing left but a crater,” a shipmate who was a boatswain’s mate chided. In the galley of the great ship, on deck, in our racks, on duty in the boiler rooms, the bravado and the fear of unknown battle echoed each day. Then our ship shuddered as the recoil of our 16-inch guns fired 1900 pound projectiles at Syrian anti-aircraft positions miles onshore. That “enemy” was unknown, unseen, and as mysterious to us young sailors as any mythic combatants. For all we knew, great Hector, or the general Hannibal may have been on the other end of our guns. It was a strange time. We were proud to serve, and I was arguably the proudest of all. But something nagged at me, even without knowing the political situation. All the Wrong Places As it turned out, the combatants underneath those mighty guns were, in fact, shooting at our comrades. We really were supporting our comrades. Only we should never have been there in the first place. The catastrophe that is Lebanon has seen so much death and destruction. The U.S. Marines, French Legionnaires, Israeli IDF forces, Palestinians, Syrians, Iranians, Hezbollah, and hundreds if not thousands of civilians died in the months before and after the bombing of the Marine barracks. So, although I am ashamed of what our leaders forced us, soldiers and sailors, to do, I am proud to have done my duty to protect my shipmates in harm’s way. I would do it again, even though I now know the truth of matters in American foreign policy. What none of us knew back then was that the whole mess in Lebanon came to a head when the IDF invaded the country on June 6, 1982, in something called Operation “Peace for Galilee.” This was supposed to create a 40 km buffer zone between the PLO and Syrian forces in Lebanon and Israel. In reality, it ruined any chance there will ever be peace in the region, and it will have cause the deaths of millions of people before it’s all over. The PLO had been attacking Israel from inside Lebanon, so the Israeli leadership figured they’d turn what was a paradise into a living hell where chaos would rule. Lebanon, it’s a kind of “no man’s land” now. And if you think Israel is not just as evil as any regime in the Middle East, read all about something called the Sabra and Shatila massacre. An Unpopular Truth For those who recall, this was the United Nations called Israel’s role a kind of “genocide.” It was a moment where Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had more or less encircled Israel’s perceived enemies so that terrorists of the Phalange Christian Lebanese right-wing party could rape, torture, and kill people inside the encirclement. I am sorry, there is no soft way to put what happened to 3,500 civilians, mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shiites, in Israel’s war on her neighboring countries. As I type this, a harsh thought comes to my mind. Some will take this wrong, but here does. Am I the only one who notices that Palestinians, Syrians, Libyans, Iraqis, and other Arab people are the only ones listed in these genocides? 3,500 in Sabra and Shatila in 1982, 1,417 Palestinians in the Gaza Massacre of 2008-2009, 2,205 Palestinians in the 2014 Gaza War, 400,000 dead because of the Syria Civil War, 655,000 are dead in Iraq, 122,000 in Libya to get rid of Gadaffi, and God knows how many in Yemen and other places where we intervene either for oil or to prop up Israel. If I am hurting feelings here, rest assured it will pass. Unfortunately, the children of all those dead will remember. And there lies the real Armageddon laying in wait. “Another One Bites the Dust,” by Queen. This is the last tune I remember a shipmate playing as he bragged about how much “good we’d done off the shores of Lebanon.” We’d relieved some of the crew of the USS New Jersey, and were headed back to the Gulf Coast and our ship, USS Iowa, being outfitted with the deadliest hardware possible in Pascagoula, Mississipi. As I served my country, my captain, and my comrades in the years that followed I wondered every day about America’s role in the world. And lately, I’ve often wondered who survives crises unscathed in the way Israel has. I have many friends there, and each has his or her own perspective. But the leadership, the premise, and the one-sided casualty list haunt me every day. The fact we cannot even talk about it – this sticks in my brain like a thorn. What does it all mean? Wars of the Reprehensibles Back then I did not know who the heck the now notorious Donald Rumsfeld was, but after the barracks was bombed, then U.S. Middle East envoy Rumsfeld arrived in the Syrian capital within hours of the attack and met immediately with Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam. It is interesting, ironic, and a bit sad that there is still no official statement on who was actually responsible for blowing up the equivalent of 21,000 pounds of TNT underneath the Marine Barracks at Beirut Airport. “Rumors,” say the Iranians and Syrians were behind it. Rumsfeld, the Bush presidents, and others who are now termed “warmongers” have their suspicions, but even President Reagan’s Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger never came forward and named those responsible. As for Lebanon, I cannot leave off here without framing the importance and culture of this amazing spot of land on the eastern Mediterranean. Lebanon has witnessed civilization for more than seven thousand years, predating recorded history. This was the land of the Canaanites and the Phoenicians, who flourished for over a thousand years (1550–539 BC). Once an Ottoman satellite, the region was run by the colonial French for a time. Lebanon was referred to as the “Switzerland of the East” during the 1960s, but the Civil War of 1975 ripped the country to pieces. Many experts attribute this civil war to the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees who fled to Lebanon when the state of Israel was established. According to some historians, shifting the demographic balance in favor of the Muslim population set the country upon itself. My opinion is that Lebanon was a functioning republic that became just another victim of the Cold War. Soviet interests, versus the western hegemony, and the special case of Israel, these were the ingredients of paradise lost. The situation in Lebanon today is really an echo from before the time of the Israelites, and facets like the rebellious nature of the Mardaites of old. Leveraging ancient sects and ideologies, it’s still the way of the Great Game. But where does this leave us? We cannot change who we were. Nor can we change who we are. We can, however, change the future, and who we will become. I said it earlier. I am ashamed of what they made soldiers and sailors do, but proud to have done my duty. And herein lies a great opportunity. Since we know the end of war. Since we know our leaders and the elites manipulate all of us, we can reshuffle our world and our future. If I want to believe the Twin Towers caved in upon themselves on 9/11, I can forget what I learned playing with my building set as a kid. If cheap gas because of the Iraq war makes me forget about invisible weapons, I can choose to forget. If millions of refugees do not swarm into Atlanta from Syria, what business is it of mine if there is war? Or, I can decide the world is my business. I can decide I am responsible. We can be responsible. We can change the world. We can have that lasting peace. But we can’t do it by following “them.”

[armidreamer]

Wonderful Guylty has provided a fun challenge over at her place as a  much-needed distraction for these difficult days. She is posing 25 questions about the inestimable Richard Armitage (not that I need much more encouragement to be distRActed over RA but spirits keeping up, yes). Esther has answered the call magnificently on her blog here  and this is my contribution – I found it rather challenging, partly because I am incapable of making choices (and I’ll probably change my mind tomorrow).

1. Which series would you like to have seen a sequel of? Strike Back. The awful execution footage was faked and John Porter returns for more derring-do adventures, looking hunky and lethal and narrow-eyed.

2. Which film/series do you think is underrated? Leaving aside the  missing Urban and the Shed Crew, (teeth-gnash) I would like to have seen Hannibal reach a larger audience. Richard’s skilled performance as the Great – Red – Dragon was extraordinary and showcased what a truly great,  versatile, actor he is.

3. Your current favourite show?  Well I wouldn’t call it my favourite show but for the novelty of its relative newness, I’m still drooling through re-watches of The Stranger – despite my reservations. I am also working my way through Robin Hood on the BBC iPlayer (even though I have the DVDs)  and no doubt will do the same with Spooks (ditto). And I’m also watching Hannibal as a delayed RD5 anniversary.

4. What’s your favourite episode of your favourite show? I can’t possibly pick a favourite show but if I go with my currents, I particularly love the last episode of Hannibal for the homoerotic tussle with Will in the hotel and the lean mean Dolarhyde machine.

5.  Least favourite episode of your favourite show? My least favourite episodes, full stop, are those in Robin Hood and Berlin Station 3 when Richard didn’t appear for these are devoid of colour, filled with greyness, ashen, desolate, barren, a joyless desert.

6.  Which question would you like RA to answer in a Q&A? Apart from why Dolarhyde signed his name as John Crane in the Brooklyn Museum visitor book (and I’m not bloody asking that again) there was one question that I really wanted to ask but can’t remember.  As a placeholder question, I would like to know if he would be prepared to live at the bottom of my garden in an Armitage hermitage. No that’s silly. In lieu of the other question I’ll ask what was the incident from his real life that was used in The Stranger. Did he lock someone in a cellar, decapitate an alpaca, bury someone in the woods? We must be told.

7. What’s the best scene ever?  I think the “He was her brother” scene in N&S takes some beating. Nicholas’s casual mention of Margaret’s brother sets in motion the gloriously happy ending.  We see the slow realisation on John’s face and the cloud lifting. Beautifully played. It breaks the tension of  us knowing something that he didn’t and misunderstood badly.

Credit: north-and-prejudice.tumblr.com

8. Which audiobook would you like RA to read? I’d rather watch than listen to Richard but I still bend an ear to his audiobooks, as I consume anything RA produces. I’d love to hear RA narrate more Dickens’s works. Fingersmith by Sarah Walters would be enticing.

9. Which show did you think you wouldn’t like but you did? Strike Back. Soldiers, guns, patriotism, upholding the Establishment, no thank you. Apart from the achingly beautiful Richard, the series had more heart and depth than I expected, the storylines were gripping and RA’s emoting and comic timing were a revelation.

10. Which show did you think you would like but didn’t? The Stranger. I wasn’t expecting Dostoevsky but I didn’t expect it to insult the intelligence of its audience. Although I wouldn’t say I didn’t like it, wearing my RA goggles I really enjoyed certain ‘aspects’ – Richard was a picture of suave, beardless perfection and he gave an affecting performance.  The drama had thrills and it exposed more people to Richard Armitage,  which is fantastic and hopefully will bring him more quality work.

11. Which episode did you watch more than five times?  I’ve watched most of Richard Armitage’s work more than five times! I don’t tend to watch episodes of the multi -series, like Spooks, Robin Hood, Berlin Station, individually as I prefer to re-watch them as a whole.  Spooks however is returning to the BBCiplayer,  now as a comforting salve of terrorism,  bombs and viruses,  to comfort the nation during the pandemic. I do love Series 7, Ep. 7, when Lucas is in Russia looking glorious. It is absolute perfection of an episode,  a nail-biting, thrilling, shocking mini film.

12. Your favourite kiss? Hmm, which to choose? N&S obviously is one, but perhaps it is too respectful for me (RA’s kisses often seem to be chaste and reverential). I’m rather fond of ‘Pete’ and his  jawline when kissing Ros in Spooks …

but I’m going to plump for the snogs between Esther and Daniel in Berlin Station, which are passionate but often have a delicious undercurrent of ambiguity to them.

13. Favourite season finale? I won’t be alone with this choice,  the North and South station scene. A magical, gut-wrenching, perfect conclusion, with sublime music. It is the Armitage scene that has the most emotional impact on me. Even my mother was crying and she had served during the WWII and never cried. She said afterwards, “Um, what’s the name of that actor, he was rather good!” Yes he was.

14. Most annoying character? I don’t find any of RA’s characters really annoying. I didn’t like Craig’s jumper in Casualty, John Standring’s hat-ted hair in Sparkhouse or The Dreaded Beard in any of RA’s guises. Grumpy Thorin would be annoying if he wasn’t so majestic. Myopic drunken sad-sack Astrov is a near contender but then he is an environmentalist and looks beautiful in a waistcoat.

Perhaps this will count in terms of an annoying character. Something dreadful happened when I was watching episode 3 of The Stranger. When Adam went to visit Vicki, the teacher, he scratched his nose at the door.  I paused the screen to admire the magnificent Armitage downward glance and, the horror!, the freeze-frame had morphed the beautiful one into looking exactly like Mr Bean! It was the raised eyebrows as he looked up. Now I can’t un-see it. Even when I was watching his Astrov there was the occasional expression that suggested MB again. I beg you not to do the same!

That’s it for part one, thanks for reading. I’ll be back with the final 10 questions when I have the answers.

*I apologise if I’ve used any images without permission. I will credit where I can but I have no idea where some originated from. Please let me know if I have used any of your images and I will either remove them or credit.

Meeting the Richard Armitage DistRAction Challenge – part one Wonderful Guylty has provided a fun challenge over at her place as a  much-needed distraction for these difficult days.

#Berlin Station #Daniel Miller #Francis Dolarhyde #Guyltypleasure #Hannibal #John Thornton #North and South #Robin Hood #Spooks #Strike Back #The Book of Esther #The Stranger #Urban and the Shed Crew #Guylty #Richard Armitage

[twainssecretarchive]

What If Drones Had Come First?

Epistemic Status: Interesting to think about, but not nearly as aimed at expressing a strong position on this issue as it might sound. I am somewhat happy that no one has torn my calculations apart on the drone warfare article yet. Only somewhat happy because I hoped someone would try and I would get either independent confirmation or competing data to take into account. But several people did respond, and the overall tone was that drone warfare has more problems than just raw death count. It's dehumanizing. It makes warfare "too easy" and hides the real cost. It gives too much power to whoever makes drone-related decisions. It violates the rules of war. These are all good points. But I can't help but think back to the old Less Wrong articleIf Many Worlds Had Come First. It's sort of about quantum mechanics, but it's also about the dangers of applying higher standards to later innovations than to entrenched conventional wisdom. There are sometimes strong arguments for doing this. For example, doctors often prescribe older, apparently-worse drugs over newer, apparently-better drugs (especially in pregnancy) just because they feel like they already know the side effects of the older drugs whereas the newer drugs might have side effects that are yet to reveal themselves. This model certainly has implications for drone warfare: it looks good now, but we don't know the long-term effects. Still, in the spirit of that Less Wrong article, I can't help but wonder what people would think if drone warfare had come first: The scene is the Oval Office. Three of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, GENERAL HAWKE, GENERAL STEELE, and GENERAL RIPPER, are meeting with THE PRESIDENT. The meeting has been a long and exhausting discussion of drone strikes, and they are reaching the end. PRESIDENT: I think we only have one more matter left to discuss. As you know, I have recently been worried about the moral cost of our drone war. So many lives lost. So many civilian casualties. I tasked DARPA with coming up with a new type of warfare, one which will end some of the troubling moral quandaries with which we are forced to wrestle every day. I believe General Ripper has been briefed on the results? HAWKE: Mr. President, once again, I object to this pie-in-the-sky project. Drone warfare was good enough for our ancestors and it is good enough for us. The Romans used surgically precise ballista strikes to assassinate Hannibal without harming the Carthaginian populace. Abraham Lincoln used guided hot-air balloons to knock out top Confederate officials and keep this country united. Literally hundreds of people died in World War I before the British were finally able to kill Kaiser Wilhelm with a carefully-aimed zeppelin. To abandon drone warfare now for some untested new project would be an insult to their memory! PRESIDENT: General Hawke, I appreciate your concerns, and I promise I will not be overly hasty to embrace these new ideas. But I'd like to hear what General Ripper has to say. RIPPER: (interjecting) Guys!...Guys! Guys, listen! This is going to be so awesome. Listen to this! We take hundreds of thousands of people...guys, listen!...we take hundreds of thousands of people, give them really really really powerful automatic weapons...this is going to be so awesome...we take hundreds of thousands of people and give them really powerful automatic weapons and put them on planes and give them parachutes and drop them into our enemies' cities and then they just start shooting everything BLAM BLAM BLAM until our enemies run away and we're like HA HA HA HA HA THIS IS OUR CITY NOW and then we win! STEELE: What the hell, Ripper? RIPPER: No, listen, this will totally work! We take hundreds of thousands of people. We can use young kids and poor people and minorities, because we don't have to pay them as much. And then we give them really really big weapons. Like, not just the kinds of guns hunters use. Not even the kind of guns we give police. Guns that just NEVER STOP SHOOTING BULLETS! You can just swing them in a big arc and it will leave an arc of bullets everywhere and anyone anywhere in that arc will be dead! It will be SO AWESOME! HAWKE: Ripper, are you mad? RIPPER: Guys, think about it! You're Ayatollah Sistani, or Mullah Omar, or one of those motherf@*kers. You're having breakfast in your house one day when WHAM! A hundred thousand American teenagers and minorities RIGHT IN YOUR CITY with guns that never stop shooting bullets! There are bullet holes in your walls and in your gardens and now they're shooting your water supply and your power plant and everything. Do you think you're going to keep having your f@*king breakfast? Or do you think you're going to start waving an American flag and get on board with American policies like, right away? PRESIDENT: General Ripper, frankly your idea seems at best ill-advised! Just to take one of many objections, we'll never be able to gather a hundred thousand Americans in secret. Ayatollah Sistani will hear about our plan long before we can surprise him. RIPPER: And what could that motherf@*ker do about it? STEELE: Well, he could get some Iranian teenagers and minorities, give them these super-guns of yours, and have them lie in wait for our teenagers and minorities outside his house. RIPPER: Oh my god that would be so awesome! Because we have more technology, so we could have better guns than they do! And we're richer than they are, so we could hire more teenagers and minorities! Right? RIGHT? So everyone would be like BLAM BLAM BLAM with their super-guns and there would be this huge fight and in the end we would win and get that sunavab*tch anyway! PRESIDENT: (horrified) You realize what you're suggesting is the deaths of dozens of Americans and Iranians, right? Maybe even hundreds! RIPPER: No, look. It would be okay. Listen to this. We would come up...we would come up with this new philosophy where once a teenager or minority got a super-powerful gun from our enemies, it would be okay if we killed them. Because if we didn't kill them, they might use that gun to shoot us. HAWKE: But they're only doing that because otherwise we would...I can't believe I have to say this...otherwise we would parachute teenagers with giant guns into their city to shoot the ayatollah. RIPPER: I KNOW RIGHT? We're going to parachute teenagers with giant guns into their city to shoot the ayatollah! THEN EVERYTHING'S GOING TO GET BLOWN UP AND IT'S GOING TO BE SO COOL. STEELE Everything...blown up? RIPPER: Oh man I totally forgot this part! If we just have the super guns, people might hide inside buildings, right? And then we couldn't shoot them and then the ayatollah wouldn't have to agree to do everything we say. So...ohmigod you guys are going to love this...we take cars, right? And we cover them in armor and put giant caterpillar tracks on the bottom so they can drive over walls and sh*t. And then we put HUMONGOUS GUNS on top of the cars. Guns so big they can BLOW UP WHOLE BUILDINGS. And then we just KEEP BLOWING UP THE CITY until the Ayatollah agrees to do everything we want. PRESIDENT: (to buzzer under desk, in a whisper) Uh, Secret Service? One of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has started acting really weird. Maybe you could stand outside the door and, uh, monitor the situation? RIPPER: And then! And then we have these planes, right? And we arm them with lots of bombs, and we fly them over enemy cities, and... HAWKE: Oh, thank goodness. You're starting to see sense and admit that the old ways of drone warfare are right after all. RIPPER: No, it would be totally different! Because, get this! There would be people in these planes! We'd train them at special schools and whirl them around in centrifuge until they were able to work at 5 g-forces without passing out. Whirl! Whirl! Whirl! And sometimes they'd bomb our enemies, and sometimes our enemies would shoot them down and they'd get captured and we'd have to send in special teams of super-spies to rescue them before they got tortured and told our enemies everything they know! STEELE That's...horrible! RIPPER: And instead of trying to only target high-profile enemy leaders? We'd have a special rule that they couldn't target high-profile enemy leaders! They would have to hit power plants and dams and weapons factories and... PRESIDENT: Weapons factories? Wouldn't those explode if bombed? RIPPER: OH yeah. HUGE explosion! BOOM! And then when everything had been destroyed from the air, we could send in our hundred thousand teenagers with super guns and they could send in their hundred thousand teenagers with super guns, and we could send in our cars covered in metal with caterpillar treads and they could send in their cars covered in metal in caterpillar treads and then it would be all BLAM BLAM BLAM for WEEKS AND WEEKS and we win would because we would both kill each other and destroy each other's cars but we're bigger so we would have more of them and the Ayatollah would have to agree to do everything we say. STEELE What if he doesn't? RIPPER: We could kick him out, and say okay, city, you're part of America now! You're following American laws! You fly the American flag! And then America would be even bigger! And we could take their stuff too, like if there was any oil in the city, then it would be our oil! PRESIDENT: General Ripper, this is highly unorthodox but I am going to have to relieve you of command effective immediately. This so-called "plan" of DARPA and yourself appears to be no more than the rantings of a deranged and homicidal lunatic. Your request to further develop this new type of warfare is completely denied, and honestly you seem to have so little regard for human life or the rules of warfare that I do not want you anywhere near our nation's drone fleet. STEELE: Wait, I just realized something. Maybe this isn't about having little regard for human life. Maybe it could even help preserve human life? PRESIDENT: (skeptically) What do you mean? STEELE: Think about it. Nowadays, our drone controllers plan strikes from the safety of the Pentagon, never knowing the horrors of warfare, never seeing their victims as real people. But imagine what would happen if we did war Ripper's way? HAWKE: What would happen? STEELE: All our teenagers and minorities would see the looks on the faces of their victims as they got shot. Reporters would go into the cities and televise the devastation that our cars with armor and humongous guns had caused. People would come back traumatized, and we'd see them and understand their trauma and with it the trauma of warfare. PRESIDENT: And? STEELE: And we'd only need to do it once. Think of the hundreds of people who died in World War I, Mr. President. Think about the waste. If we had done things Ripper's way, the Allies would have encountered the Germans. They would have realized they were human beings just like them. The people in the capitals would have had to think twice about sending their young men off to die just because they wanted to play stupid games with the balance of power. And they would have thought twice. They would have said "No, this is horrible". Instead of those hundreds of zeppelin-related casualties, we would have had both sides pull back from the brink of war, and join together in their common humanity. It would have been a War to End Wars. HAWKE: It would never have happened that way. STEELE: No, perhaps not. Perhaps we should go on with our drone strikes as usual. Keep killing hundreds of people. But perhaps one day we will regret not taking hundreds of thousands of teenagers from disadvantaged backgrounds, arming them with guns, parachuting them into our enemies' cities, and having them shoot things until our enemies agree to do whatever we say. Maybe it will end up being the only truly virtuous mode of warfare, the only one that preserves our inherent humanity. PRESIDENT: (to buzzer under desk, in a whisper) Yes, I'm sorry, the Joint Chiefs of Staff seem to have gone insane. Would you mind terribly coming in and escorting them out? The Secret Service comes in and escorts the Joint Chiefs of Staff out. The President sighs and starts taking care of some paperwork. A few minutes later, MS. WELLS, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, comes in. WELLS: Mr. President? I'm sorry to disturb you, but a question has come up. I know you authorized free health care for everyone in the nation, but the doctors are wondering whether it's okay if they buy examination tables made of solid gold. Something about it 'adding a touch of class to the clinic'. PRESIDENT: Sure. Tell them to go ahead. We have more tax money than we know what to do with these days anyway.

((brought from the noosphere by way of Scott Alexander))

#Scott Alexander #Hilarious #Fiction #Drones #War #Moral Fables #Theatre #General Ripper

[powellproject]

Louis L. Long and the Leavenworth Cathedral

An 1867 photograph of the Leavenworth Cathedral in Leavenworth, Kansas, designed by Louis L. Long. This image shows the cathedral during construction and is from Alexander Gardner's series, Across the Continent on the Union Pacific Railway, Eastern Division.

A few weeks ago, St. Joseph resident Carol Almanza sent me a package with some new information on W. Angelo Powell and Louis L. Long. Both architects practiced in Baltimore before the Civil War. I have chronicled their personal and professional relationships here, here and here.

The papers pertaining to Powell will need their own post. But the papers pertaining to Long describe his commission for the Leavenworth Cathedral. The project is mentioned in an article from The Catholic Advance, the official newspaper of the diocese of Wichita, Kansas, that was published on February 7, 1914. Here is an excerpt:

Leavenworth had then a population of 10,000—about one-tenth of the total population of Kansas territory, exclusive of Indians. It was then calculated that in 30 years Leavenworth would have 150,000 inhabitants. When Bishop Miege resolved to build a cathedral here, Mr. [James A.] McGonigle recommended as architect Louis L. Long who, in 1852, had been the leading architect in Baltimore, Md., and had there built the Church of St. Ignatius for the Jesuits. Long had met with reverses and had come to St. Joseph, Mo., where his brother-in-law, James A. Storm resided, in 1859. Mr. Long had also been the architect of the Cathedral at New Orleans. McGonigle went to St. Joseph, Mo., in 1862, to see Long and bring him to the busy town of Leavenworth. Long drew the plans for the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception and a partnership formed between him and McGonigle, the latter becoming superintendent of construction. It will surprise many to learn that the Leavenworth Cathedral is about one-third the size of St. Peter’s in Rome which is known as at the largest and grandest church in the world. St. Peter’s (according to Mr. McGonigle) is 623 feet long and 225 feet wide; the Leavenworth Cathedral is 198 feet long, and 78 feet wide. For the roof of the Leavenworth Cathedral 125,000 feet of lumber were required. Mr. Long also designed the beautiful renaissance alters of the Cathedral. They are replicas of those in St. Ignatius Church, Baltimore, and in design similar to the altars found in the City of Rome. The finely carved communion rail, in exquisite ecclesiastical designs, is the work of Major White. DeBrossie, (over whose land in Franklin county, there has been much litigation) furnished the old stained-glass windows. Those in the transept cost then about $1,000, the others about $300 each. The excellent fresco work of the ceiling was done by the artist, Leon Pomeade, then living in St. Louis. The excavation for the cathedral was begun in 1864. The corner-stone was laid in September of that year and the noble edifice, then the most splendid Cathedral in the Missouri Valley was dedicated December 8, 1868.

A lithograph showing the altar of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Leavenworth, Kansas by E. E. Henry (source unknown).

According to his biography in A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans, published in 1918, James A. McGonigle was a contractor and builder and one of Leavenworth’s most respected citizens. He was born in Hagerstown, Maryland, on February 8, 1834 and settled in Leavenworth in 1857.

There’s a lot to process here. Let’s start with the Maryland connections:

James A. Storm and his sister Annie “Anna” Elizabeth Storm were from Emmitsburg, Maryland—approximately 40 miles east of Hagerstown. Perhaps McGonigle knew them from childhood? James Storm moved to St. Joseph in 1857 (the same year McGonigle moved to Leavenworth).

Louis L. Long married Anna Storm (date unknown) and practiced with W. Angelo Powell’s younger brother George (Long & Powell) in Baltimore from 1858-1859.

The Longs moved to St. Joseph before the outbreak of the Civil War (either 1859 or 1860). According to the article, Louis “had met with reverses.” Baltimore had several practicing architects before the war and they competed for many of the same commissions (like the Peabody Institute). According to Anna’s obituary published in the St. Joseph Herald on July 27, 1889, she and Louis made the journey from St. Louis to Hannibal by steamboat and then traveled “by way of the Hannibal & St. Joseph railroad, which was at that time the only route here from the east.”

James Storm and Long’s wife, Anna, were first cousins with Regina and Cecelia Gillmeyer, the first and second wives of W. Angelo Powell. (Regina and Cecelia’s father, George Gillmeyer (1797-1872), and James and Anna’s mother, Sarah Gillmeyer (1795-1859), were brother and sister.

W. Angelo Powell moved to St. Joseph after the conclusion of the Civil War. Storm and Powell formed a short-lived partnership in 1866.

Page 11 of Powell’s Prospectus for 1869 states he made “Designs and details of the interior finish of Leavenworth Cathedral, Kansas, &c., &c.”

An article in the St. Joseph Morning Daily Herald published on January 3, 1869, lists “a few of the buildings designed by W. Angelo Powell, Architect, and finished in 1868.” The list includes “Design and drawings for interior of Leavenworth [Kansas] Cathedral, $30,000.”

Next, their Civil War connections:

McGonigle served as a first lieutenant in Company H of the First Kansas Volunteers. He was “an early, brave and loyal soldier in the Union army until incapacitated by wounds in the Civil war.”

Here is some additional background on McGonigle’s military service. According to his biography:

Lieutenant McGonigle was in command of the company...at the battle of Wilson's Creek, in which engagement the company went into battle with seventy-six men and when it was over eighteen had been killed and twenty-two wounded, Lieutenant McGonigle being one of the latter, a fragment of shell wounding him in the left side. On account of this disaster and the ill health which followed, he resigned his commission and returned home.

Like many of St. Joseph’s residents, Louis L. Long’s sympathies aligned with secessionists and the South. According to his Combined Military Service Record (CMSR), Long enlisted with the 1st Missouri Infantry Regiment.

Here is some background on Long’s military service:

The 1st Missouri was organized at Rolla, Missouri, in August, 1861, and was Commanded by Col. John S. Bowen (first Commander), Col. Lucius L. Rich (2nd Commander); Col. Hugh A. Garland (3rd Commander); Lt. Col. Martin Burke; Lt. Col. Amos C. Riley; Maj. Robert J. Duffy; Maj. Bradford Keith; Maj. Charles C. Campbell. By November 1861, the 1st Missouri contained 27 officers and 531 men.

The 1st Missouri saw action on April 6 and 7, 1862, at the Battle of Shiloh. Union casualties were 13,047 (1,754 killed, 8,408 wounded, and 2,885 missing) and Confederate casualties were 10,699 (1,728 killed, 8,012 wounded, and 959 missing or captured). Long survived but had seen enough of the war. According to his CMSR, Long “Deserted May 18, 1862; Transferred from Co. F 2; [Unknown] Regt.”

Long returned to St. Joseph that summer and was conscripted by the 25th Regiment of the Enrolled Missouri Militia (EEM) on July 30, 1862. He was made a sergeant in Company G and was ordered into active service on August 7.

Conceived as a part-time force, the EMM served to augment the Unionist State Militia for defense—freeing them up for offensive operations against Confederate guerillas. Service was compulsory. Loyal men were required to enroll. Disloyal men who had taken up arms against the United States were required to “report to the nearest military post..., surrender their arms, and return to their homes or ordinary places of business.” [1]

More than 52,000 men were enlisted in the EMM. Louis L. Long was relieved from duty on December 2, 1862. [2]

If McGonigle went to St. Joseph in 1862 “to see Long and bring him to...Leavenworth,” McGonigle must have been aware that Long fought with the Confederacy. I would think this an obstacle for the two men—especially with the war still raging. Perhaps Long’s enrollment in the EMM was enough to satisfy McGonigle?

Was Long a Catholic? His wife definitely was. Anna’s obituary stated “She was a Catholic in the full import of the term.” If so, Long’s religious denomination may have also helped him win the commission for the Leavenworth Cathedral. According to his biography on the Baltimore Architecture Foundation’s website, “With his many known works for the Roman Catholic church and its institutions he must have been a Roman Catholic.” 

Perhaps the formation of their "partnership” was solely about money. I found a rendering of the cathedral that is attributed to “Long & McGonigle Architects.” The image is not high-res, but I believe it is dated May 10, 1863.

A drawing of the Leavenworth Cathedral attributed to Long & McGonigle (lower left hand corner). The source of the image is “Missions Among the Indians in Kansas." Transactions of the Kansas State Historical Society, 1905-1906.

The partnership of Long & McGonigle is not listed in any of the St. Joseph city directories. I should probably check the Leavenworth directories, but have found no mention of “Long & McGonigle” in any internet searches.

Louis L. Long was the only architect listed in Charles Collins’s St. Joseph City Directory, and Business Mirror, for 1865-66. It states that he worked “at Storm’s turning shop” located at the corner of Third and Messanie streets. 

Long does not appear in any later St. Joseph city directories, but his death is a mystery. I have found no obituary for the man in any of St. Joseph’s newspapers and Anna is not listed as a “widow” in the city directories until 1869. She moved to Kansas City in 1879 and died ten years later. 

Anna’s 1889 obituary in the St. Joseph Herald states that she passed “Twenty-five years after the death of her husband.” That would mean Louis died in 1864. But if he was listed in the 1865 directory, he likely died sometime during that year.

According to Chris L. Rutt’s 1904 biography, W. Angelo Powell arrived in the “crude overgrown town” of St. Joseph on Saturday, September 28, 1866. Did James Storm recruit Powell to come to St. Joseph and finish the Leavenworth Cathedral? Did he take over the project after Long’s death? And what was his relationship with McGonigle?

There are still so many unknowns.

Unfortunately the Leavenworth Cathedral was destroyed by fire 1961. To date, I have found very few photographs of the project. I will continue to research it.

Many thanks to Carol Almanza for bringing this project to light!

SOURCES

[1] Source: Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War by T. J. Stiles, p. 83.

[2] Information taken from Long’s Muster-In Roll.

#Louis L. Long #Architecture #Leavenworth