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mega-ringsandthings-world · 3 years

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I’m rewatching all my fave? english-centered period dramas in preparation for new one coming out, twq, twp, tsp, the tudors, and I know we all love the tudor family here, but good lord was twp such a mess that I ended up actively hating every Tudor character in it. (which was kinda the point, imao) The twp show was based off phillipa gregory's books (that are even worse than the show) and they both shredded the characterizations of everyone in them to the point that they might as well be OCs based on historical figures. Literally the only reason I was able to make it through was because of the actors. jodie and jcls acting carried it at the best of times, and JCL is hot, so... and I’m so glad they got michelle fairley and essie davis as EW and MB, or else it would of been unwatchable. I couldn’t really root for either lizzie or henry, because their characterizations and personalities were so inconstant and varied wildly from ep to ep, its like I was watching different people in each ep. nd that’s a big part of why I favored the York plotlines/characters more, at least most of them (except lizzie) stayed constant in their characterizations/motives (even if all they were consistent with was revenge against the tudors) And rooting for the tudors in general was hard too, since the show was bending backwards to make them all assholes. (JT gets a pass tho, he was just trying to raise his kid right) No one was really likable, you get a good moment with someone and then the next moment they’re doing something batshit, e.i, henry’s good for a while and then starts being a dick, (wtf was up with imply he slept with cathy gordon and him being such a bitch to lizzie out of the blue?) or you’re starting to sympathize with Margret Beaufort and then she kills another kid, which like, the decision to have her kill the two princes was a choice, and I won’t hesitate to say I enjoyed the drama it brought. Along those lines, the show is marginally enjoyable if you divorce it from the history its trying to retell and treat it as a game-of-thrones-bodice-ripper-drama, which was the intent of the author in the frst place, but whatever. That some of the best acting on the show came plots/situation that weren’t even real irl is wild, and that says a lot. henry’s talk with lizzie about her loving him, but not like she did w/rIII, and his depression-breakdown (never happened), over his mother being a murderer and the whole thing with Richard Jr./percy warbeck was just juicy, later moments with lizzie and the bit when she talks to richard jr./pw in the tower and his laugh reminds her so much of her father? and then the execution scene? good shit. A fave bit was henry sitting all despondent in his room remembering the killing of richardIII, and yes they did actually have richardIII buried alive in this show, jfc. It goes again to the bad characterization that ep 1 lizzie would have strangled him outright if she’d found that out, but lizzie in this ep would have been meh. Speaking of which, the short-lived friendship between richard jr./pw and teddy was extremely sweet, which made their executions all that more horrific. within the narrative of the show, R jr./pw seemed like he would have actually made an excellent king, he never seemed anything but kind and honorable, although adamant about his claim, and lizzie’s fear he would kill her children, which was not unfounded of course, was also made mostly her entire basis for having him killed in the show, even though he was never presented as someone who would do that? make it make sense, or at least hint he would want to harm the kids after taking the throne, instead of showing him as incredibly nice. And in this show, with richard jr./pw being the actual richard, and mb having tried to kill him as a boy and framing richardIII for it, he’s more than justified in wanting the throne and justice. except that never happened irl, and the show has me rooting for a pretender instead of the certified monarchs, which are SUPPOSED TO BE THE “HEROES” OF THIS SHOW. and like, claimants to the throne are usually entitled fucks by nature, I don’t know why everyone hates richardjr./pw for being entitled, when every person who ever laid claim to a throne ever does so on the belief of entitlement to that throne? And tell me how there was more chemistry between lizzie and faceless richard III in a four-second flashback than she and henry had in most scenes? I’m not saying that lizzie and henry didn’t have chemistry in the show, because they did, (at least the actors did) but once again, their inconsistent characterization marred a lot of scenes that would otherwise be amazing. Then the whole thing where henry r*ped her nd it was shown to be directly caused by her mentioning her relationship with richardIII? Messy, messy messy. after that, it was hard to “feel” lot of her and henry’s scenes even in better contexts. I ship lizzie/richardIII out of spite for that nasty-ass scene alone, because I can’t sit there and watch lizzie falling for her rapist. and then lizzie is vilified for her relationship with richardIII, yet the show implies that Margaret B is in love with her own brother, has lizze taunt her over it, and then present JT marrying/ MB her arranging his marriage as a tragedy for MB? Sir? Ma’am? Jasper Tudor straight up implying that his sister should get a fucking annulment so they can be together, and MB actually considering it gets a pass? more like margaret lannister. Then they bring up richarchIII as a gotcha to lizzie every other ep? someone inform henry that his beloved mother wants to fuck her brother, his beloved uncle and see if he keeps throwing rIII in lizzie’s face every five minutes. EYE. god, this show is bad, bad. Don’t get me started on the burgundy plot. if you’re going to have the duchess start a war on a whim, at least imply she was possessed to do so by EW’s magic, or have the balls to make her stepdughter’s death actually the fault of the tudors. And poor fucking maggie. it was hard for her irl, but it’s intolerable for her within the show. Sorry, this got long, I’m ranting at this point because holy hell ITS BAD. If you take it as a show that’s supposed to be about real life historical figures it’s a trash fire, but you really should just watch it as a story like bridgerton. makes it more tolerable. You know you’ve lost it when a show that’s supposed to be about the unification of two great houses and the love story (not that it was reallly that great of a love story irl either, but that’s for another day) between the scions of those houses gives me hives and makes me wish the burgundy plot succeeded.

#the white princess #twp #the white queen #twq #the spanish princess #tsp #elizabeth of york #eoy #henry vii #henry tudor #margaret beaufort #jasper tudor #the war of the roses #the yorks #the tudors #tudor history

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thetomorrowshow · 3 years

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Slower Than Words Ch. 23

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Hey..... a member of my household just tested positive for Covid-19, and I am displaying symptoms sooooooo hopefully that won’t affect posting but it has made this chapter a little shorter than I had wanted. Basically if the next chapter isn’t out on time that’s why.

cw: b a d parenting, references to trauma

Remus chewed on the end of his pen. Riley, Alberts, Robertson, Robinson, Richards, Allison, Reese, Arlowe . . . something that started with an 'A' or an 'R'. But what? Why couldn't he remember his own last name?

Logan was always saying something about brainwashing and trauma, but Logan knew his own last name! Stupid Logan Sanders and his calm explanations for everything in Remus's life. He didn't want someone telling him how he felt or why, he wanted to move on. He wanted to figure himself out for himself. He wanted out.

The trip to the library a couple weeks ago had been even worse than expected. Logan hadn't even let go of Patton, despite how uncomfy the kid looked. It had to suck to be twenty-something and have your dad drag you around by the shoulders everywhere you go.

Patton had only wanted one book, for some reason. There were so many books in that building, and Logan had pulled like a hundred from the shelves just to show him. He'd signed so quickly about the book that Remus couldn't keep up, but Logan had frowned and talked to the librarian for a few minutes, before eventually presenting Patton with a book—which was probably the one he'd been asking for. His face looked weird after receiving it, happy, but also seriously depressed. It looked pretty old, Remus had no idea why he'd wanted that book.

Rivers, Albright, Abbott, Ramsey, Russell, Reed, Rowell, Austen. . . . Nothing. Not even a smidge of anything. Well, if he couldn't remember his last name, what about the name of where he used to live?

The city came to him almost instantly.

Sharon.

Remus snorted. That was a stupid name for a city. Actually, he could remember joking about it with his brother, about how their mom shared it.

Energy flooded to his limbs with a suddenness, and when the bell rang from the door opening beside him he literally fell out of his seat.

“W-welcome to Chevron,” he said, straightening up. The customer nodded barely at him, making a beeline for the refrigerators in the back. Remus quickly wrote on the scrap of paper he'd been doodling circles onto so far: 'sharon – town and ma'.

Now he just had to figure out which state sounded the most familiar, and if Sharon was a city there. He'd spent days just driving around town with friends, he probably still knew his way around.

The customer paid for a few jugs of Gatorade, then left, dust puffing up behind his truck as he pulled out of the parking lot. Remus sat back down, scratching his mustache with his pen. He could google the city when he got home, then. . . .

Then he'd figure out how to tell Patton and Logan he was leaving.

Patton sighed, flipping through the first half of the book again. Summer, it was called. This copy looked almost identical to the other one. He closed his eyes and ran his fingers along the slightly indented title, like Virgil would. He'd had it for almost two months now, asking Father to renew the book instead of allowing it to be returned. He really wanted to finish it, after all.

Not that he could ever get himself to read past around the middle.

Patton's notebook was almost full now, but he couldn't ask Remus for another. Not after how much Remus was already doing for him. The pages were filled with studying mouth movements, bad jokes, and journal entries that mostly were about Virgil and what they'd do when they were together again. In tiny, cramped handwriting was a detailed recollection of everything Patton could remember that Virgil told him about where he lived—which wasn't much. It was hard to hold on to any memories from there. His therapist said it had to do with trauma memories being stored incorrectly, and said he might have flashbacks about it. So far, none had happened, but sometimes he wished one would—just so he could see Virgil again.

He wasn't good at drawing, but here and there in his notebook were vague sketches of Virgil. Some days, Patton woke up not sure what he looked like. He couldn't forget him. Patton would never forgive himself if he forgot the lovely mistiness of Virgil's eyes, the way his hair fell into his mouth and made him sputter, the stark paleness of his face against his black hoodie. . . .

Patton wrapped the hoodie around himself. He needed to think about something else, or else he'd start crying again. Crying made his head and ears hurt, which his doctor said would probably always be the case. So he mostly did his best to not cry, ever.

Patton cast his mind around for something new to think about, and landed on the trip to the library several weeks ago. The trip wasn't . . . optimal?

No. The trip sucked.

Father wouldn't let go of him, which just made him feel like a toddler having to be guided around. It was bright, and had a lot of people, and was a little startling, but Patton was sure he could have handled it. Why didn't Father trust him?

It wasn't just that. Father made him go to bed at a specific time every night, wouldn't let him have any say in what he ate, wouldn't even let him pick what to watch on the TV. It was . . . it was stupid! It was awful, it was embarrassing, it was demeaning! It made Patton feel worthless, like he wasn't even a proper member of society! He wasn't a boy anymore, he had even had a job back at the Haven, he wasn't helpless!

Maybe soon, with all that he'd been learning, he could prove to Father that he was capable. And if Father wouldn't believe him, well . . . Patton would have to make him.

Again, that anger was right at the surface, ready to spill out into the air. At least he had the book.

Somehow, Logan had let Remus convince him that he didn't need to go to every therapy appointment with Patton, so Logan was at home alone. For the first time in months. He was exhausted, but he did not have time to sleep.

Patton was hiding something. Logan was undeniably certain of it. And when Patton hid something, he hid it under his bed.

Logan didn't get up immediately. This was a matter of privacy, after all. He understood that he was likely being a little too restricting with his son, but who could blame him? He'd almost lost him. So if Patton was hiding something, it was likely best to know what it was. Patton didn't seem to realize the amount of danger he was in. It wasn't his fault, he was just a child. Children weren't supposed to worry about this sort of thing, it was their parents' jobs to care for them. So, naturally, he had to make sure that whatever Patton was hiding wasn't going to bring harm in some way. If it was, he could gently confront him about it, and explain why it was not acceptable.

With that plan in mind, Logan stood from his desk and made his way to Patton's room. His door was always open, even when he was inside—it made sense, all things considered.

The room still had almost precisely the same setup as Logan had put together, down to the making of the bed. He'd told Patton that he was allowed to customize his room and ask for personal items, but so far he had done neither of those things. The only difference was that the small closet now had a few more pieces of clothing in it.

Logan bent to his hands and knees beside the bed and peered beneath. Sure enough, there were items underneath the boy's bed: a battered blue notebook, the singular book that he had wanted from the library last month, the jacket that had belonged to the other other prisoner. Logan reached for the notebook, grunting when his back popped.

He pulled himself onto Patton's bed to open it. It was confusing, at first, some jokes in his son's handwriting, rather poor sketches of an unfamiliar face. Then. . . .

Oh.

That—that was bad.

Logan took a few deep breaths, then flipped another page, then another. More of the same. This wasn't good. This was not good at all.

These diagrams and instructions, clearly for lip-reading? These would get Patton taken away from him. These would hurt him. These would make Patton want to leave the safety of home.

These were dangerous.

Taglist: @enragedbees @gotta-love-alejandra @bunny222 @basiic-emo @patt0n-sanders @rosiepupper @fangirlgeekandfreak @dn-fan21 @that2000skid @remy-the-lemon-berry @itsadastraperaspera @xionbean @sanderssides-angst @hell-yea-we-gay-tonight @maybedefinitely404 @broken-pencils @thewhimsicallibrarytech @doomllily @hereissananxiousmess @judyismydog @arodynamic-enby @at-that-one-nerd @therapysides @awkwardandanxiousfander @thekitchenpan @im-an-anxious-wreck @larkiaquail

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reversecreek · 3 years

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pops hip n winks at the dash. haaaaiiii. me again. i’ve honestly missed playing lana fr a while she’s one of. my most treasured muses bc she’s jst a silly n vivacious ball of sunshine or alternatively? a train wreck depending on which way u turn her in the light..... i actually hv two playlists made fr her n one is rly old bt it’s more like. songs that Remind me of her which u can find here n then here is more like. stuff u’ll most often catch her blasting on her record player as she dances around in her underwear w the curtains open. OH and here is her pinterest 🍓⚡

* kristine froseth, cis female + she/her | you know lana jameson, right? they’re twenty-three, and they’ve lived in irving for, like, a few hours? well, their spotify wrapped says they listened to play that funky music by wild cherry like, a million times this year, which makes sense ‘cause they’ve got that whole cherry red gym socks worn with nothing else, doodling penises in the condensation of a stranger’s car window, a bumper sticker on the back of a convertible cadillac that says ‘scrappy doo is a filthy slut’ thing going on. i just checked and their birthday is june 2nd, so they’re a gemini, which is unsurprising, all things considered. ( nai, 24, gmt, she/her )

HISTORY:

lana grew up in a big house in albany, NY. i picture it w dark oak floors n lots of light furniture. albums framed on walls. mayb some rolling stone covers too frm way bk when of the bands her dad’s label signed. kind of like… a rock star palace w no evidence of children at all. i think i described it best in one of lana’s self paras once when i said the garden ws “as big as it was unloved”

lana’s mum victoria (vic) ws a music journalist w a pretty fruitful career ahead of her when she met lana’s dad richard (rich). his record label ws jst starting out, founded on the coattails of his wealthy best friend’s (jensen peters) investment w his other best friend (who he jst calls knoxville). it rocketed to success when they signed poppy injects, a rock band w an electric stage presence, n vic ws drawn to the glitz n glamour of a man tht ws at the helm of his aspiring industry. their love ws very impulsive, all or nothing right frm the start, n it ws almost like she ws mre in love w his accomplishments n what he represented than him.

(DRUGS TW) anyway so jameson records repped a few rock bands bk in the eighties, altho poppy injects r who they’re mostly known fr, namely bc of hw brightly they crashed n burned. they were a big chart success bt the lead singer hd quite an intense struggle w heroin (wsnt rly subtle abt it either while he ws in the public eye as u cn probably imagine frm such an on-the-nose band name) n he ws always in n out of the papers. it eventually brought down his career n it ws a big publicity nightmare

lana pretty much… grew up around figures like this throughout childhood. real characters who wld kind of… b extremely volatile n destructive abt their troubles. the jameson house was an open one as welcoming clients went n a lot of parties took place there. a lot of the time musicians wld b snorting lines in the kitchen when she wnted to grab a bowl of cereal fr breakfast n it was just. a very strange environment fr a child to grow up in. more zoo than home. more shaken snow globe than resting place. (END OF TW)

(ABORTION REFERENCE) her parents always kind of jst… didn’t like her much. her older brother caleb ws unplanned bt they sort of welcomed the surprise more bt… quickly realised they weren’t cut out fr parenthood n then when lana came as another surprise 3 yrs later they didn’t even try to hide their resentment abt the situation. her mum ws actually booked in to have an abortion bt cldnt go through with it at the last minute. once when lana ws a kid she asked her why she’s so cold towards her she jst turned her head frm her dresser, looked at her, told her abt this n said “idk why i didn’t go”. lana didn’t kno wht to say to tht so she jst left her room n closed the door (END OF REFERENCE)

(DISSOCIATION TW) bc of the intensity of her parents ignoring her growing up lana adopted this sense of like…. she didn’t rly kno what it ws bt it ws a delusion of sorts where she thought she ws a ghost bc she gt this strange outside feeling. she’d jst sort of… drift around the halls w no-one acknowledging her n sometimes she ws jst convinced she wsnt actually there or they cldnt see her n she ws jst haunting the house frm a previous family. (END OF TW) her imagination festered an explanation out of smthn she didn’t understand essentially. lana used her imagination to do this a lot growing up. it ws kind of like the band aid she slapped over everything. after all she wasn’t alone if she was sword fighting imaginary pirates dwn the hallway with a poker from the fireplace.

the one saving grace tho tht sort of?? gt her thru this n made her feel Seen ws caleb. lana quite genuinely hs always thought the sun shines out of her older brothers ass like she jst thinks. he’s the best person in the entire world. wld b rly bewildered if anyone questioned tht. he wld always look out for her n cut the crusts off her sandwiches (he’d cook fr them most of the time bc their parents were too busy/didn’t care to) n sometimes wld even sleep at the bottom of her bed curled up like a guard dog. it ws always lana n caleb n his best friend tommy against the world in tht house (tommy lived next door bt was always over bc he had very strict parents tht he found suffocating)

(ARMY MENTION) SO when tommy announced tht he’d signed up to the army (bc of pressures from tommy’s military dad to fulfil some kind of stupid “legacy” tommy didn’t even care abt) n caleb said he was going with him lana ws understandably…….. completely blindsided. she ws rly upset tht they were leaving n was kind of like “wtf why are u doing this like what do u even think this is gna solve” etc n begged caleb not to leave her there on her own n jst to not sign up in general bc tommy had to bt he didn’t listen.

ERM i won’t go into it but it didn’t turn out well as u can probably imagine bc the army is a terrible industry n caleb had to return home without tommy. he wasn’t the same after that. (END OF MENTION)

what’d been a rly close relationship before where he ws basically like a surrogate father figure to lana was Not there any more. he ws rly withdrawn n always pushing her away n snapping at her for the sake of getting her to leave him alone. on top of this lana had a lot of shit go down while he was away n rly just shouldn’t have been a kid alone in tht house. regardless lana thought if she kept grinning as wide as she cld she’d convince caleb to join in too. maybe if she seemed fine n happy he’d take the lead. maybe she’d believe it too n start to feel it n everything could go bk to how it was before her world became so different. lana liked the way the sky flipped when she tipped her head back on the swings bt this was different. everything was upside down bt this didn’t make her belly feel like she’d swallowed a butterfly and it wasn’t funny bt still, she kept laughing. always desperate to find something to laugh at n if she couldn’t find it she invented it. as long as ur laughing the world can’t b that bad.

she ws always well liked in school bc she jst tended to treat everyone like they were bffs no matter who like u cld have literally bumped shoulders w her once in the corridor n she’d be like OMG HAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII let’s kiss<3 n like she ws a huge notorious flirt w any n all as well as incredibly impulsive n jst. wild honestly to put it simply too bt things like. changed a bit frm 16 onwards. (HYPERSEXUALITY & IMPLIED TRAUMA TW) she jst became far more reckless honestly n like....... jst didn’t rly seem to care after a certain point abt herself too much.... got herself in a bunch of bad situations.......... kind of jst flung herself to the wolves numerous times without any caution abt the way they’d bite. formed a lot of self destructive habits one of which ws cruising craigslist personals fr random hook-ups n like. she literally cld have wound up in a ditch somewhere honestly it’s a shock she hasn’t. despite various dips n inclines in her journey navigating this side of her it’s very much still present in her life to this day n she struggles to kno hw to control herself at points. sometimes she feels like a melting candle tht needs moulding by thumbs until it can form a person again. sometimes she’s only sure she’s real when she’s being touched. (END OF TW)

ANYWAY. laughs nervously. went to college to study dance bc she’s always loved dance in general bt specifically ballet (despite definitely not hving the discipline for it) n honestly this was both good n bad fr her. had a whole string of terrible heartbreaking relationships bc she tends to fall into those hard n fast n they were w a lot of bad people fr like 98% of the time. she kind of learned more abt what love is during her time there tho which is a gd thing bt she still isn’t very good at knowing hw to believe she deserves it so it’s a process. she hd fun tho. threw 498572598475 outrageous n elaborately themed parties. ws friends w pretty much everyone on campus.

despite a strained relationship w her brother n having to go home to visit n check on him whenever he got rly bad it ws the first time it actually felt like she’d found a home in a lot of rly loving n genuine friendships n lana will never forget hw much that experience meant to her even if she definitely struggled there too. college felt like a place she belonged n then suddenly she couldn’t belong there any more n there was a big sense of floundering in that. like where do u go now when u’ve never known home elsewhere? how do u happily go out into the world if it means leaving ur world behind?

she applied to a dance company in LA n fell in w a pretentious art scene there full of wannabe andy warhols n the like. became a makeshift edie sedgwick to some guy w dyed white hair n the idea his every concept was revolutionary when rly he jst shot her dancing barely clothed splashing around in a random fountain in his friend’s mansion on an ancient film camera. she’d spend her days floating around on lilo’s and prancing in feather boas and racing with glitter leftover frm last night in her leotard w smudges of faint red lipstick to barely make her job on time. always a sexy train wreck bt this time? make it hollywood.

(IMPLIED ALCOHOLISM TW) i won’t lie to u lana hs always partied way too hard bt then partying way too hard turned into slurping merlot thru a crazy straw shaped like a flamingo at 4 in the afternoon wearing penis novelty sunglasses n it wasn’t quite so much of a party when u were doing it on ur own. this rly snowballed into place in college bt carried on n wound up getting her fired from the dance company bc she turned up to rehearsals drunk one too many times n they didn’t allow fr sloppiness like tht. it was a “professional operation” that didn’t “accept that kind of behaviour” bt lana was jst like ummmmmmmmm that’s totally dramatic btw way to spank me in the town square like i’m gale w a raw ass n back in the hunger games bt ok sure i’m out ig. BOOP! (literally booped the director on the nose before leaving) (END OF TW)

honestly hd no idea what to do w herself after her job fell thru in LA n was pretty embarrassed actually upon sobering up the nxt day. cldn’t bring herself to tell her friends for a hot minute bc she felt like a failure or smthn n she was meant to be living this glamorous life out there being the classic wild n silly n fun Lana Jameson. cldn’t figure out how to repackage it into a funny story tht wouldn’t worry ppl. eventually wound up jst caving n telling her closest besties (shoutout freya n rosa) bc she ws hving a weird time dating losers n randomly living in LA even tho she didn’t kno why she was there any more after losing the job n they were jst like. fk it then. jst come here. we’re in irving. and so? mizz jameson packed her bags....

PERSONALITY:

always smells vaguely of wild cherries or strawberry starburst or jst the candy aisle in general. if she ws a vinyl record she’d b this one n she’d only play good vibrations by the beach boys, dancing on my own by robyn, play that funky music by wild cherry, femme fatale by the velvet underground n (i can’t get no) satisfaction by the rolling stones

the jameson family r pretty well off n bc of her relation to such a big music industry figure she’s hung out w a fair few relatively high rep ppl thru her teens. mostly kids of celebrities n stuff like tht. she amassed a bit of an instagram following #nepotism bt also fr her style (v penny lane-esque in some aspects. lots of fur cuff trimmed jackets bt then also jst…. a wild combination of everything honestly. pastel faux fur coats, seventies style platforms, bright red cowboy boots, pink fishnet tights, holographic stickers of planets on her cheek n glitter used like highlight, 90% of the time a red lip) n bc she’s not gna make ur eyes bleed to look at or anything let’s b real

growing up lana was always a huge social butterfly. knew everyone n everyone knew her. she ws one of those girls tht ws kind of impossible to ignore or forget. very animated, always made u feel like u were the centre of the universe whenever she spoke to u, always made it feel like u were best friends even if ud only spoken to her once.

deliberately puts on tht kind of Magnetic Alluring Act tht femme fatales wear in movies w most ppl. kind of…. is always playing A Role of the person tht she wants to b seen as. hates being sad n always wnts to be happy / making ppl happy. chameleons to situations. feels like she’s performed as the vivacious n fun loving Lana Jameson fr so long tht she doesn’t rly kno who she is beneath tht bt she isn’t too keen to find out. sometimes gets glimpses n feels the urge to close her eyes.

she’s always been rly spontaneous n adventurous. always doing something weird n wild every weekend. she has ten thousand ridiculously absurd n chaotic stories. she’s like oh ya this one time this guy made me ride him with a daddy saddle like i was woody and he was bullseye. he literally made me call him bullseye. or she’s like. oh ya once i had to run barefoot thru a cabbage patch bc this one farmer wanted to have a threeway w me n my friend tht we met off craigslist n every framed photo in his house was a pig dressed up in cosplay bt honestly they were kind of cute n he was sexy aside frm the murderous vibes n the fact he kept calling me babe which i’m pretty sure means he wanted to dress me up next bt like whatever honestly.... she tells jst the most batshit stuff n the person she’s telling it to is left blinking like. wtf.

uncontrollably flirty. insanely confident. cld make a joke out a paper bag n will try. she tends to laugh when she feels like crying n has a smile brighter than a ray of texas sunshine.

likes to roller skate n hs a red pair she’ll glide around in at night lit up by amber street lamps breath sticky w the taste of wine n lollipops probably heading to a random hookups. who needs ubers?

always dapples her fingers thru the breeze when she’s driving in a car w the window down. honestly likes dangling her whole body halfway out too. she almost always has some sort of sweet on her, whether it’s sour haribo cherries or strawberry lollipops.

luvs bowie (ONLY aesthetically) n prince (wholeheartedly) n madonna (completely) n anyone tht’s a vintage style icon w little care fr what ppl think.

daisies n poppies r her fav flowers bc daisies r wild n overlooked n poppies r the first thing u look at in a green field. she’s had like 8472493874 ‘relationships’ n none of them hav lasted beyond a month / hav been terrible / hav seen her being treated badly / she’s cheated on them. honestly it’s like a burning train wreck but u can’t quite tear ur eyes away. often the heart of many sordid gossip scandals.

PLOTS:

TBA bc she’s only jst arrived in town i won’t lie to u all but i’m gna whip things up on here anyway n link in chat w updates at some point........ that said? lana is insatiable n it isn’t rly unlikely tht she cld’ve bumped into ur muse in a grocery store aisle n somehow a wild spontaneous adventure spawned frm that alone.......... if u have any immediate ideas we can discuss 😋

#irvingintro #drugs tw #dissociation tw #hypersexuality tw #trauma tw #alcoholism tw #army mention tw #abortion mention tw #i won't lie to u all i like cleaned up this intro bt it's mostly old writing so forgive n overlook any rusty parts.......#it was a bit sickening hving to reread it bt. it does the job.

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nyxshadowhawk · 3 years

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An Analysis of The Ninth Gate

I finally got around to watching The Ninth Gate after it was recommended on Occultism with a Side of Salt. Seriously, why did it take me so long to watch this film? This is pretty much everything I like! It’s a film from 1999 (incidentally, the same year as Eyes Wide Shut) starring Johnny Depp as an expert on rare books called Dean Corso. It’s based loosely on a novel by Arturo Pérez-Reverte called The Club Dumas, and was directed by Roman Polanski (who’s the man behind Tanz der Vampire, but who is extremely problematic and we do not stan). Corso is employed by a rich book collector named Boris Balkan to authenticate his copy of a grimoire called The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows, which may be the coolest title for a grimoire ever. The book is supposedly designed to summon the Devil himself, and was copied from another mysterious book that the Devil was said to have written. Corso compares the grimoire with the two other existing copies to find out which one is the real one, but there are mysterious deaths and other unsettling events around the book, and he has a mysterious girl helping him.

The film is very spooky and has a wonderful Dark Academia aesthetic. What’s most interesting to me about it is, although it isn’t authentically occult, it feels very authentic. The grimoire is clearly modeled after real ones. The engravings in the book also could easily be mistaken for real ones if I didn’t know better. I think that the pentagram on the cover is a little too on-the-nose, especially since pentagrams weren’t associated with Satanism until relatively recently — I think the Sigil of Lucifer would be a better fit, since it’s reasonably well-known (for example, the Mother Superior of the Satanic Nuns in Good Omens wears one instead of a cross) and it comes from a real grimoire. That’s me being very nitpicky, though. Although this film follows some tropes of Hollywood Satanism, its portrayal of that is still more realistic than normal. Real-life occult ritual groups are more like book clubs or potlucks, but the actual ritual part can in fact look something like the one in the film. (Sure, it wouldn’t be in a mansion with cool-ass gargoyles, but this is certainly more realistic than Eyes Wide Shut.)

This film feels authentically occult becuase a lot of real occultism is pouring over old books and analyzing symbolic images. I do a lot of that! Right now, I’m reading a dictionary of alchemical symbolism. I hope to eventually be able to look at all the weird images in alchemical manuscripts and make some sense of them. This film is basically about doing exactly that. I noticed the tarot symbolism in the engravings immediately, and I felt a little like I was trying to decipher them right alongside Corso. It reminded me of solving Nox Arcana puzzles, and that just makes me incredibly happy. The approach this film takes is also realistic — (slight spoilers) it could have gone the classic Hollywood route of summoning Satan to destroy the world and all that, but it doesn’t. Instead, the end goal is more abstract and spiritual, much more in-line with occultists’ actual goals in real life. Just as in alchemy, the goal is not to make gold or live forever, but to experience spiritual transcendence, and this is encoded in alchemists’ notes and artwork.

So, I want to try my hand at deciphering the engravings’ secrets, and test my own knowledge of occult symbolism in the process. Everything that follows involves major spoilers, so I will dispense with the exposition and assume that you have already seen the film.

I’ve seen it argued on YouTube that the engravings represent actual events in the film, and some of them seem to. Bernie is murdered and hung upside down, the collapsing scaffolding is the “danger from above” arrow, Corso is hit in the back of the head in one of the film’s most chilling scenes, and the Girl (who is implied to be Lucifer) ends up… well… “riding” him in front of the burning castle. But come on, that is way too easy. For one thing, the related events don’t seem to occur in any specific sequence, either the engravings’ numbered sequence or Balkan’s rearranged sequence. It would make sense if Corso would have to experience every engraving and “pass through each gate” — that happens a lot in films like this one, where an eerily coincidental series of events plays out just as in the book/prophecy/whatnot. But that doesn’t really happen, or if it does, it’s not obvious enough for the only interpretation of the engravings to be literal. What impresses me the most about The Ninth Gate is that it goes for that more figurative, spiritual dimension. That is really what makes it feel realistically occult.

The real solution to the engravings seems to be spiritual growth or enlightenment, which is the goal of most occultists. Balkan sort of understands this, which is why he disdains Telfer and her coven being edgy and playing dress up instead of really making an effort to understand Lucifer’s secrets. And yet, Balkan also fails, because he is after power, not enlightenment. It seems as though both of them misunderstand Lucifer, believing him to be the kind of Lucifer that you usually see in these movies. (That would fit in well with his name and his role in the Eden story, if you interpret it that way.) If we assume that the Girl is Lucifer, then she is more benevolent an influence than anything else. Hell, Corso doesn’t even suffer any “temptation” consequences from having sex with her. Corso wins in the end because he actually puts in the effort, and the Girl helps guide him toward enlightenment. Maybe Lucifer is a good force in this film’s world. Lucifer’s own versions of the engravings seem to emphasize that s/he is genuinely invested in helping his/her followers towards enlightenment.

When Balkan assembles the engravings in the proper order, this is his interpretation of the riddle:

To travel in silence, by a long and circuitous route, to brave the arrows of misfortune, and fear neither noose nor fire, to play the greatest of all games and win, foregoing no expense, is to mock the vicissitudes of fate and gain at last the key that will unlock the Ninth Gate.

First, I want to say that this riddle reminds me a lot of the Emerald Tablet. It’s similarly cryptic, and I only sort of have it figured out. I love that something like that is real and authentically ancient. Anyway, moving on. I’ll go through the engravings in the order that Balkan puts them in (as opposed to their numbered order), and see if I can make sense of them.

The first engraving shows a knight traveling towards a castle. In the AT version of the engraving, the castle has four towers, while in LCF’s version, it has three. Balkan’s interpretation is “To travel in silence,” while the caption is “Silence is golden.” That immediately reminds me of the common occult maxim, “To Know, to Will, to Dare, to Keep Silent.” I’ve never been much of a fan of keeping silent, which is why I post things like this on the internet, but in general occultists tend to be secretive folk. According to this article, another translation of the caption is “Only one who has battled according to the rules will prevail.” I’m not sure whose rules are being referred to here. Lucifer’s, maybe?

This is one of the only engravings in which there is no obvious tarot symbolism. There are four Knights in tarot, one for each suit — wands, swords, cups, and pentacles — but this knight doesn’t have a symbol of any of the suits or anything that could suggest that. The difference is in the castle towers — three in LCF’s, four in AT’s. In traditional numerology, three is a number symbolizing perfection and creation, as in the Holy Trinity, while four is the number of the solid and material and unlucky. (Source: Richard Cavendish, The Black Arts). Sets of three are especially common in fairy tales and mythology — three siblings, three tasks, three encounters, three magical objects, three questions, three trials or tests, repeating an action three times with the third time being different or conclusive, etc. Lucifer’s castle at the end also has three sets of towers. The most obvious interpretation of this is that your destination will be either material gain (AT) or spiritual advancement (LCF).

In the tarot, the threes represent the completion of the first stage of a venture — the Three of Wands represents a successful enterprise, the Three of Cups represents celebration and fulfillment, and the Three of Pentacles represents recognition for your achievements. All of them have something to do with attainment except for the Three of Swords, which represents loss, heartbreak, betrayal, etc. The fours aren’t bad, representing stability and structure — the Four of Wands is joyful and peaceful, the Four of Swords takes time to rest and recoup, the Four of Cups is bored and listless, and the Four of Pentacles receives material abundance. All of them are a bit more grounded and material, so I think it makes the most sense to interpret the difference in this engraving as being the spiritual three vs. the material four, and leave it at that.

The fourth engraving, which is second in Balkan’s sequence, is of a jester standing at the entrance to a labyrinth. In LCF’s version the labyrinth’s exit is open, while in AT’s it is bricked up. Balkan interprets this as meaning “by long and circuitous route,” while the caption reads “Fate is not the same for all.” that seems fairly straightforward — Balkan and Corso have different fates. Corso is able to find his way out of the Labyrinth, but Balkan’s exit is bricked up. This is because he never properly experienced the journey the way Corso did, he just wanted the payoff and tried to take shortcuts.

The Labyrinth is a very old symbol, and it carries the dual symbolism of a death trap in which there is a Minotaur, and a path to spiritual enlightenment. It can represent the Underworld or the darkness of the subconscious mind, with the Minotaur being your Shadow. Either you are trapped in the Labyrinth and eaten by the monster, or you find your way back out into the light having gained some self-awareness. The jester is probably meant to represent 0 The Fool, who, in the Tarot, is the naive adventurer who sets out on a spiritual journey over the threshold and into the realm of the subconscious and symbolic — i.e. the Labyrinth. As for the dice in the foreground, this seems to reinforce the caption’s point about fate. But dice, like tarot cards, can be used as both a game and a divination tool — it is the assumption of the diviner that random chance is always meaningful. And indeed, the visible faces on each die add up to 6 — 666.

The third engraving depicts a traveler walking towards a bridge. In the clouds above him, there’s a Cupid-like figure with an arrow pointing down at him. Balkan’s interpretation is “to brave the arrows of misfortune,” and the caption is “The lost word keeps the secret.” AT’s version is pictured here; in LCF’s version, there are two arrows, the other one pointing upwards in the quiver.

This traveller looks much more like the traditional Tarot depiction of 0 The Fool than the jester. The Fool is happy-go-lucky and doesn’t notice the danger he might be walking into. TV Tropes describes The Fool trope as referring to a person who, despite having no idea what they’re doing, doesn’t come to any harm because of their luck and innocence. So, the traveler will probably not be hit by the arrow, the same way Corso avoids the collapsing scaffolding. The two arrows in the LCF version seem to reinforce the idea of there being two possible outcomes. The arrow pointing up and the other one pointing down could also reference the famous occult maxim, “As above, so below,” adding another spiritual dimension to it. Balkan’s interpretation of the engraving reminded me a lot of a certain famous soliloquy: “To be or not to be, that is the question: / Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer / The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, / Or to take arms against a sea of troubles / And by opposing end them.” In this scene, Hamlet is considering whether or not to take his own life. But when applied to this engraving, these lines seem to once again suggest the two possible outcomes — you can suffer and die, or move on towards your goal.

And then there’s the caption. “The lost word keeps the secret.” Well, it’s pretty obvious what that refers to — the ninth engraving, replaced with a forgery that changes the meaning of the entire thing. The missing engraving contains the secret. But that caption seems completely irrelevant to this engraving, except that the face of the archer doesn’t look remotely like a baby’s, as putti usually do — it looks like an old man’s, specifically, the Ceniza brothers’, who removed and replaced the missing engraving.

The sixth engraving, fourth in Balkan’s sequence, depicts a man hanging upside-down by his ankle, and an arm with a flaming sword reaching out of a castle tower. Balkan’s interpretation of this is “and fear neither noose nor fire,” which proves he knows fuck all about tarot. No wonder he got the riddle wrong. This one is so blindingly obvious. The man isn’t hanging by his neck, he’s hanging by his foot. He’s the Hanged Man.

XII The Hanged Man is a strange and disturbing card at first glance, but it has become one of my favorites. The Hanged Man is almost never depicted hanging by his neck; he hangs by his foot, and has a serene expression, indicating that he wants to be there. He represents going through a period of tribulation, suffering, surrender, or introspection in order to obtain wisdom, enlightenment, self-awareness, and insight. He goes through a metamorphosis, just like the caterpillar that hangs upside-down in its chrysalis to become a butterfly. He’s a Christlike figure, evidenced by the halo around his head in the Rider-Waite deck, and the fact that he willingly suffers for a higher purpose. He even wears the same colors as Jesus in Da Vinci’s The Last Supper in the Rider-Waite deck, although I’m not sure if that’s on purpose or not.

The caption to the engraving is “I am enriched by death,” which is a million times more meaningful than Balkan’s interpretation. If you’re an occultist, that line is probably self-explanatory. Pretty much everything mystical involves that theme of (symbolically) dying and being resurrected. The alchemical process has three stages — nigredo, which is death, albedo, which is the ascension of the soul, and rubedo, which is returning to life in a “purified” body as a more spiritual being. The Hero’s Journey follows this same pattern — the hero entering the Underworld or the Labyrinth and facing trials that allow them to spiritually ascend and achieve apotheosis (or something close to it). It’s everywhere in books, movies, and video games. It is the initiation ritual. Most occultists figuratively go through it in one way or another. And in tarot, XII The Hanged Man is at the rough midpoint of the Fool’s journey through the Major Arcana, and immediately followed by XIII Death. “I am enriched by death.” You cannot be reborn as a new and better version of yourself without first having died.

The difference between AT’s and LCF’s engravings is that AT’s has the Hanged Man hanging by his right foot, while LCF’s has him hanging by his left foot. I don’t think this changes the meaning of the engraving too much. In Rider-Waite, the Hanged Man hangs by his right foot, but in the Tarot de Marseille, which is older, he hangs by the left foot. The only significance to this that I can see is that the Latin word for “left” is sinistram, and the word “sinister” has its current meaning because left was considered Satanic. Left-handed people were discriminated against for this reason, until as late as the mid-20th century. In occultism, the “Left-Hand Path” is an approach to magic that involves rejecting tradition and dogma and generally being edgy. I think that the right-hand and left-hand paths are a false dichotomy (you use both your hands, don’t you?), but anything Satanic is considered part of the Left-Hand Path. Jung associated left with the unconscious, so we’re back to the Labyrinth.

I don’t have much to say about the flaming sword. It could be foreshadowing Balkan’s death (more on that later), or it could represent the flaming sword of the angel of Eden (i.e. guarding spiritual knowledge).

The seventh engraving, fifth in Balkan’s sequence, is of a king and a peasant playing a chess game. Two dogs are fighting in the background, and the moon can be seen through the window. In AT’s version, the board is black, and in LCF’s, the board is white. Balkan interprets it as “to play the greatest of all games,” and the caption is “The disciple surpasses the master.”

The tarot symbolism that I see here is that of XVIII The Moon, which has dogs baying at it in the Rider-Waite deck. The Moon represents the subconscious, imagination, and dreams, but also nightmares, madness, and illusion. The illusion here is probably still the missing engraving being replaced by the forgery. The themes of the subconscious get reinforced. Underneath the Moon, a black dog and a white dog fight each other, almost seeming to create a yin/yang shape. This brings the dark and the light into balance, the same way the Moon spends equal times dark and bright as it goes through its phases. The game is chess, which is played with black and white pieces, and the board is either black or white. The game seems to be a draw, making the peasant and the king equals, just as the dogs are unable to defeat each other. So, this engraving is all about reconciling dualities.

There’s another layer to this. God is the “King of Kings,” so this could demonstrate a human becoming God’s equal. This is basically the goal of occultism — to become like God, in some form. Left-Hand Path’ers in particular seem to like the idea of becoming gods themselves, or even “surpassing” God. Since the book was created by Lucifer, this could tie in to Lucifer’s desire to become God’s equal that got him cast out of Heaven (but I’m not the biggest fan of that story, so I won’t go any further with that). To the occultist, man is God, just as God can become a man — as above, so below. That’s also a form of reconciling the duality of human and divine.

The caption, “The disciple surpasses the master,” probably refers to this, but it could also refer to Corso surpassing Balkan and succeeding where Balkan failed. Any good teacher wants their students to have learned so well that they surpass them. God (or Lucifer) intends for his disciples to surpass him, but Balkan tries (and fails) to prevent Corso from surpassing him.

The fifth engraving, which is sixth in Balkan’s sequence, depicts a man counting coins while Death stands behind him with a pitchfork and hourglass. Balkan’s interpretation is “and win, foregoing no expense,” while the caption reads “In vain.” Balkan is an idiot. Exactly like the man in the engraving, he is focused entirely on the money and completely misses the literal shadow of Death standing behind him. How does one overlook the significance of that? There’s a big difference between “I won the game so now I get money” and “in vain”! Of course, this means that Balkan is too focused on material pursuits and misses that he is about to die. In AT’s version, the sand is at the top of the hourglass, while in LCF’s version, it is at the bottom — the man has run out of time. The expression “you can’t take it with you” comes to mind. Money and material goods don’t ultimately matter compared to spiritual growth. “In vain.”

In tarot, XIII Death almost never represents physical death. Instead, it represents change, usually a change for the better. Death is about letting go of old things so that new things can come, stepping through a threshold into another life or state of being. This can be difficult or emotionally painful, but it is necessary and ultimately beneficial. If The Hanged Man is the chrysalis, then Death is the emerging butterfly (the Greek word psyche means both “soul” and “butterfly,” because butterflies represent the souls of the dead). Once again, Death is a required step towards spiritual advancement. And if you refuse to acknowledge this, it isn’t going to go well for you.

The checkerboard floor probably continues to reinforce the theme of duality. As for the pitchfork, maybe the reason Death has a peasant’s pitchfork instead of a scythe is because pitchforks are associated with Satan, or it could be a representation of peasants taking revenge on rich people. Or it could be a reference to American Gothic. I think it’s the first one.

The eighth engraving, which is seventh in Balkan’s sequence, depicts a praying man about to be bludgeoned by a knight with a mace, with the Wheel of Fortune in the background. Balkan’s interpretation is “to mock the vicissitudes of fate” and the caption says “Virtue is defeated.”

The Wheel of Fortune is a medieval motif that shows how fortune is apparently random. Some get to be kings, others are serfs, and your fortunes can turn at any moment. Just when you think everything is great, someone hits you on the back of the head. In tarot, X The Wheel of Fortune means exactly what you would expect it to — a twist of fate, a change of fortune. Whether it’s for better or for worse depends on the context and the cards around it. Life is full of ups and downs, so enjoy what you’ve got while you have it, etc. Sometimes when it shows up, it can mean that you should trust in fate.

But that’s the background. What to make of the foreground? Honestly, this is the most disturbing engraving to me, especially with the accompanying scene where Corso gets hit in the head. By whom? It’s probably Telfer’s lackey, because the knight in the engraving kind of looks like him. And if the caption is “Virtue is defeated,” the praying man hasn’t been defeated yet. The knight is about to hit him, not already standing over his body. It could be an example of “bad things happen to good people” — being virtuous won’t stop you from suffering. Since Corso is the one who gets hit in the back of the head, maybe that indicates that he’s the most virtuous character (which is saying a lot, since he’s not exactly an upstanding person). In LCF’s version of the engraving, the knight has a halo — does that mean that defeating Virtue is a good thing? I guess that would make sense if the artist is Satan? Or does it mean the knight is protecting the praying man? I don’t know. I genuinely am not sure how to interpret this one. What I do know is that Balkan is still an idiot. Nothing about this suggests mocking fate. If anything, this is an example of succumbing to it.

The second engraving, eighth in Balkan’s sequence, shows an old man with a dog, holding two keys in his hand. In AT’s version, the keys are in his right hand, and in LCF’s, they are in his left hand. Balkan’s interpretation is “gain at last the key,” and the caption is “Open that which is closed.”

This is another obvious tarot image. This is clearly The Hermit with his lantern. IX The Hermit represents withdrawing into solitude for contemplation and meditation, to gain spiritual wisdom and awareness. Like the Hanged Man, he indicates a need to be passive in the service of introspection. He’s the archetypical guru on a mountain, and he holds the keys to enlightenment. Keys represent access to information, and the ability to pass between worlds. “Open that which is closed” is pretty obvious — unlock the gates, receive spiritual insight. LCF’s version having the keys be in the left hand just reinforces everything I said about left earlier.

Also, that Hebrew symbol next to him is the one for the number nine. That suggests that the Hermit is right in front of the Ninth Gate. In numerology, nine is a magical number, being three times three. It represents completeness, spiritual achievement, and initiation. So, that’s self-explanatory. In tarot, tens are the ultimate state of completion, so the nines are the penultimate step — the Nine of Wands gives you the strength and willpower to overcome obstacles, the Nine of Cups represents success and contentment, and the Nine of Pentacles represents celebrating an accomplishment. (Once again, the Swords are the outlier, representing fear and despair.) Nines in general are good, the perfection of three multiplied by itself. (The Hermit is also the ninth card of the Major Arcana, if you noticed.)

And finally, we come to the ninth and final engraving (that Roman numeral should read “IX”). This depicts a woman who looks suspiciously like the Girl reading a book, ostensibly The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows, and riding a dragon with seven goatlike heads. There is a castle in the background, and the castle is a real place. There are three versions of the engraving — this one, which is signed by AT and has the castle as-is, a forged LCF engraving that shows the castle in flames, and the real one. Balkan’s interpretation is “that will unlock the Ninth Gate,” and the caption is “Now I know that from Darkness comes Light.”

The woman is apparently an image of the “Whore of Babylon” from Revelations, who rides a seven-headed dragon. I’m not really sure what she’s supposed to represent, beyond being generally Satanic. Of course, Crowley recasted her as a sex goddess. The seven heads of her dragon are significant — seven is the number of secrets, mysteries, magic, introspection, and searching for inner truth, which have been running themes this whole time. It also signifies creation, completeness, and rest, since God created the world in seven days. In tarot, the sevens present a new challenge after the perfection of the sixes — the Seven of Wands brings new obstacles that require determination to overcome; the Seven of Cups represents imagination, dreams, and illusions, so back to The Moon again (and the illusion of the forgery); the Seven of Swords also represents deception or a con artist (like the Ceniza twins, or maybe Balkan); and the Seven of Pentacles represents a threshold or a new opportunity, and reflecting on one’s achievements. That all aligns scarily well with the situation here.

The critical illusion is that the “LCF” engraving with the burning castle is a forgery. So, Balkan sets himself on fire for no reason other than egomania. This image is similar to XVI The Tower in Tarot. The Tower is one of the scariest cards to get. If Death is a difficult but beneficial change, The Tower is a dramatic turn for the worse, complete destruction and devastation. It is struck by lightning and destroyed, going up in flames. I drew this card shortly before the pandemic hit. That was The Tower — destruction, upheaval, devastation, but with the promise of rebuilding. I also had to deal with a lot of emotional turmoil because of an unrelated thing that happened around the same time, and it shook me to my core. So, obviously the forged engraving leads to Balkan’s destruction.

The true ninth LCF engraving shows the sun shining from behind one of the castle’s towers:

Replacing The Tower with The Sun is a drastic difference. If The Tower is one of the worst cards to get, XIX The Sun is one of the best. The Sun is a good omen in every capacity. It represents everything that these engravings have been working towards — spiritual growth, fulfillment, success, enlightenment, revelation of secrets, good fortune, etc. It fits right in with Lucifer’s status as the Light Bringer, and it is the solution. (The true engraving is also very reminiscent of The Star, which directly follows The Tower, and represents hope and the light at the end of the tunnel. I drew it recently, signifying the end of my emotional turmoil.) The jagged rocks at the bottom of the castle in the other two versions are missing here, and the castle is more accessible, with a visible path. The woman gestures directly to it.

The rest of the scene is much more shadowed in the true version, which fits right in with the caption: “Now I know that from Darkness comes Light.” I, in my obsession with Shadow work, interpret this as confronting the dark parts of oneself and bringing them out into the light to become a whole person, and to grow spiritually. This goes back to the Labyrinth, needing to enter the dark Underworld or the realm of the subconscious in order to gain spiritual wisdom and finally achieve enlightenment. Everything in the engravings seems to point back to that — needing a period of introspection, reconciling of duality, obtaining safe passage through the various trials until you see The Sun, which is followed by Judgement (resurrection) and The World (fulfillment). The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows are like the seven gates of the Underworld that Inanna must pass through (and that eight-pointed star is a symbol of Inanna). Corso passes through the Ninth Gate, out of the Kingdom of Shadows and into the light.

Balkan’s interpretation is clearly off. So, let’s rearrange the engravings back into their intended order:

Silence is golden. Open that which is closed. The lost word keeps the secret. Fate is not the same for all. In vain. I am enriched by death. The disciple surpasses the master. Virtue lies defeated. Now I know that from darkness comes Light.

If you, who seek after secrets, wish to unlock the gates to wisdom and enlightenment, be wary of potential dangers and missing pieces. You can either suffer and die, or move towards your goal. You will either find a way out of the Labyrinth or find that your path is blocked. Do not pursue material gains, and miss the shadow of Death hanging over you. Face Death, and you will be enriched by it, gaining spiritual insight that will allow you to surpass your superiors and become God’s equal. After a final challenge, test of virtue or twist of fortune, you will emerge from the darkness and into the light.

Am I reading way too deep into a spooky movie? Maybe, but come on! How could I resist? Do any of you have interpretations of your own?

Sources:

https://slapphappe.wordpress.com/2009/03/22/symbolism-in-the-ninth-gate/#%3A~%3Atext%3DThe%20fire%20at%20the%20Ninth%2Cof%20the%20Kingdom%20of%20Shadows.

https://davidjrodger.wordpress.com/2011/08/24/the-ninth-gate-occult-and-tarot-like-symbolism-in-the-engravings-by-aristide-torchia-and-lucifer-plus-wider-meanings-of-the-movie/

#the ninth gate #the ninth gate film #johnny depp #johnny depp movies #occult #occultism #occult symbolism #tarot #tarot symbolism #occult symbols #movie analysis #spooky #dark academia #dark acadamia aesthetic #occult films #lucifer

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hellzyeahwebwielingessays · 4 years

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The Problem with Spidey as ‘Iron Man Junior’

Proponents of the MCU version of Peter Parker have often defended his characterization as logical and necessary in context. But is this really the case?

Tl:dr version: No it is not.

Forgive some laziness on my part because I’m going to be presuming everyone’s familiarity with the comic book iteration of Spider-Man and his MCU adaptation for the most part. To say there is a divide between many fans of former vs. the latter would be an understatement.

Detractors (which I count myself among) typically sum this up as the character being reduced to ‘Iron Man Junior’. In general this refers to MCU Peter Parker’s hero-worshipping of Tony Stark/Iron Man, their father/son relationship and the similar emphasis upon high technology in their hero identities. A connected point of contention is Peter’s aspiration to become an Avenger.

This was outright confirmed by Tom Holland himself in an interview for the then upcoming ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’.

"I think the difference now is that Peter Parker finally has an all-time goal, and his goal is to become an Avenger…Everything he does, even though he's doing it for the right reasons, is done so that one day he can become an Avenger and prove himself to Tony Stark. And I think we've never really seen Spider-Man with that kind of motivation before."

Defenders of this take upon Spidey have argued that this portrayal makes sense in context.

After all, Peter Parker is a teenager who’s grown up in a world where the Avengers are beloved, especially Iron Man. Plus in the comics (under J. Michael Straczynski’s pen) there was a time when Peter and Tony shared a father/son relationship. Tony even equipped Peter with a high tech costume as he did in the MCU. Spider-Man early in his career attempted to join the Fantastic Four in ASM #1 and later the Avengers in ASM Annual #3.

The problem is these defences just don’t hold up to scrutiny.

Let me first be upfront about my philosophy towards adaptations.

I in no way shape or form demand nor expect adaptations to be 1:1 panel to screen translations of the source material. I fully respect that changes are a necessity.

One of many 22-page comic book stories put out every month in the 1960s inevitably needs to be altered when jumping to a 90+ minute live action film in the 2010s.

Even the characterizations need to be altered where necessary if the source material is found wanting. *side eyes Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacy*

However, my attitude is that adaptations should at minimum respect the spirit of the source material no matter what. To do otherwise defeats the object of adapting the work in the first place. If a film is just borrowing superficial traits (names, costumes, powers, etc.) and but not representing the spirit of the character, then creatively speaking it might as well be an original character.

This is the case with the MCU version of Spider-Man. A fundamental component of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s original vision for Spider-Man was that he was in essence the anti-Robin.

At a time when teenaged characters were sidekicks (Dick Grayson), supporting characters (Rick Jones) or the ‘kids’ in teams (Johnny Storm) Peter Parker was unique as a totally independent teen hero. Of course that independence only applied to his life as Spider-Man, but that was part of the point. Spider-Man was his escape and release from the pressures and hang ups of his regular life, which included his doting yet coddling aunt.

A critical part of this was that he was a self-made man. No elder mentor guided him in the use of his powers, helped him create his equipment or provided any sort of advice/accountability for Peter. He did it all himself. He was a loner.

On a meta level this is partially why Stan Lee (and for the longest time consequent writers) showcased Spidey not jiving with super teams. It was done to emphasis Peter’s independence and thereby his uniqueness within the genre. Even if that’s not so unique anymore (even in film), it’s still a baked in component of teen Spidey’s story. An essential aspect of who he is as a character.

As is his working class status.*

In fact these things go hand-in-hand. Just as Peter had to shoulder an ‘adult hero’s’ burden as Spider-Man (noticeably Lee didn’t dub him Spider-Boy or Lad as would’ve been common back then he also had to struggle for every penny. With the death of his uncle and his aunt’s poor health the burden of household provider fell on his shoulders.

When you take all this into account, having him fanboy over the Avengers and have a superhero mentor (let alone a billionaire one) is an aggressive misreading of the character.

The best way I can illustrate this is with an analogy from the opposite end of the spectrum. Imagine if you will a movie depicting Dick Grayson’s transformation into Robin. Except Batman was wholly absent. Not even an off-screen presence.

That is how poorly MCU has missed the point of Spider-Man.

And it was never necessary.

Contrary to defenders of the MCU, making Peter an Avengers/Iron Man fanboy was not the only logical direction to go with the character.**

Yes, in Peter’s world most kids would revere the Avengers and Iron Man. But in the real world not every kid or teen likes the Avengers characters or movies. Just as not every major pop culture phenomenon has ever been universally embraced by contemporary kids/teens. In the 1980s not every kid loved the Transformers or the Ninja Turtles. In the 1990s not ever kid loved the Power Rangers or Pokémon.

Of course, most kids did, just as most kids like the Avengers characters today. Similarly most kids in the MCU by extension would look up to the Avengers. However, if anything this could actually help generate a more spiritually faithful rendition of the character. Consider that on literally the first page of Amazing Fantasy #15 Peter Parker was mocked by his classmates for being an outsider. A bookworm who didn’t know the difference between a cha-cha and a waltz.

In the context of the MCU wouldn’t Peter’s lack of familiarity or interest in the Avengers make for an appropriate updating of that characterization?

Let’s also consider that in the context of the regular 616 universe Spidey held little reverence for any of the heroes who had preceded him. This included Captain America and other WWII heroes as well as the Fantastic Four and their leader, the world famous scientist Reed Richards. Peter would’ve surely known who Reed and Cap were but as originally depicted by Stan lee himself, he wasn’t falling over himself during any of their early encounters.

So there was already a precedent in the comics for Spidey to not be dazzled by famous A-list heroes, meaning it’d be totally believable in the context of the MCU. Indeed this was likely part of the point of the character. Just as being Spider-Man didn’t improve his outsider status within the high school hierarchy so too was he an outsider among his super hero peers. The nerd to the Avengers jocks if you will.

But what of those comic book sources that say otherwise? Surely ASM #1, ASM Annual #3 and JMS’ run on Amazing Spider-Man corroborate the MCU’s take upon the character.

Yes and no, let’s tackle them one by one.

In ASM #1 it was made explicit that Peter wanted to join the F4 for purely practical reasons. His family needed money so he hoped the F4 could provide and income. When he learned otherwise he departed as quickly as he’d arrived.

In ASM Annual #3 Peter was far from eager to join the Avengers and was equally unimpressed with them as a group.

He actively sabotaged his own chances to join at the issue’s conclusion.

As for Straczynski’s run…sigh…strap in.

At face value this run does indeed seem to support the MCU’s rendition of Spidey. However, the support it offers falls apart due to two factors.

The first is that, well…Peter and Tony’s relationship was pretty nonsensical.

I’m no Iron Man expert so I do not know how old the character would be roughly. From my impressions of the character though circa 2006 he wasn’t even in his 40s yet. Peter by contrast was 30 years old when you do the math. Unlike Tony he’d had several very serious romantic relationships and was back then happily married (barring a brief trial separation). He and his wife had lost a child and even believed one another dead at one point or another. Peter at the time was also working as a teacher to teenagers where he was clearly framed as their elder authority figure.

What I’m saying is that Peter was if anything more emotionally mature than Tony at this time. Or at least he was mature to the point where he was not going to view Tony as his father figure given the minor age discrepancy.

The relationship was clearly engineered with the pre-determined endgame in mind. That endgame being the ‘Civil War’ storyline wherein Peter would unmask upon Tony’s request and subsequently become a fugitive in defiance of Tony’s unethical practices. The latter would entail Tony threatening Peter and the pair coming to blows.

This brings me to the second factor. The totality of Peter/Tony’s relationship was designed to be a testament to how it was ultimately a bad thing.

Tony wasn’t the man Peter believed him to be.

Tony didn’t have Peter’s best interests at heart.

Tony was willing to spy, threaten and even attack Peter.

And along the way Peter and his family lost their home and the safety of Peter’s anonymity. The end result was Peter’s life becoming a shell of it’s former self, with his loved ones in serious danger. In fact you could view his fugitive status as a way to recreate the ‘good old days’ when Spider-Man was feared and hated by the public and authorities.

Had Peter retained his independence rather than surrendering any part of it to his ‘father figure’ Tony Stark, much of this could’ve been avoided. If nothing else Peter might’ve been able to unmask privately rather than publicly.

Whilst the MCU addresses the first factor via de-aging Peter, it has no answer for the second. It borrowed from the JMS run superficially and ditched the greater subtext regarding how Peter shouldn’t have formed a relationship with Tony.

I’d like to conclude by addressing the most obvious counterpoint to everything I’ve said.

If Spider-Man were more comic faithful wouldn’t it undermine the entire point of him being in the MCU? The appeal of the concept was seeing Spider-Man interact with the wider MCU. From the audience’s POV seeing yet another Spidey flick confined to using Spider-Man exclusive elements might as well have been produced solely by Sony.

The problem with this argument though is that it doesn’t consider the myriad of possibilities available. Spidey could interact with the wider MCU and still be in character.

I’m no writer but off the top of my head:

Spidey could have defied the Sokovia Accords and thus been wanted by the authorities (a neat updating of his traditional ‘outlaw’ status), consequently coming into conflict with Iron Man

Spidey might have still dueled the Vulture and interacted with Tony as he did in ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’. However, instead of gradually realizing he should be a ‘friendly neighborhood’ hero, he could call Tony out for ignoring small scale crime which indirectly ‘created’ the Vulture in the first place

Following ‘Avengers: Endgame’ the dissolution of the Avengers combined with the huge uptick in the population and displacement of citizens might’ve caused far more street crime that Peter would have to deal with. The remnants of H.Y.D.R.A. might’ve exploited this to gain a foothold upon which to rebuild.*** That might’ve warrant an appearance from more grounded heroes like Hawkeye or Ant-Man

An environment like this could’ve been exploited by Quentin Beck to frame Spider-Man, exploiting his already shaky public reputation and make himself look more appealing by contrast

Or Hell just do ‘Nothing Can Stop the Juggernaut’ but with the Hulk as Roger Stern planned to do in the first place

I’m sure many of you could suggest infinitely better ideas.

In conclusion, no matter how you slice it, there were better options than rendering Peter Parker Iron Man Junior instead of Spider-Man.

*Peter, as depicted in ‘Captain America: Civil War’ was clearly not well off financially, yet consequent depictions of Peter in the MCU have de-emphasized this to the point where you could argue they are very probably not working class anymore.

This makes sense internally as a billionaire Tony Stark has no reason to take Peter under his wing but allow him to still dumpster dive for equipment. Giving the boy at least some modest financial stability would be a logical step in building a relationship with him and giving him more time and energy to put into his scientific and heroic pursuits.

Whilst I don’t exactly agree with everything said here, this post dives into the subject more deeply.

**And even if it was, if the context demands Peter be rendered so unrecognizable then maybe it was just creatively reductive to integrate him into the MCU the first place.

***They have after all had connections to organized crime in the comics.

#MCU #marvel cinematic universe #Tony Stark #Anthony Stark #Iron Man #Steve Rogers #captain america: civil war #Spider-Man: Far From Home #spider-man: homecoming #Captain America #pokemon #Power Rangers #Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #Transformers #Tom Holland #Avengers #The Avengers

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mushrooms-and-millipedes · 3 years

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Ecology Book Review: Farming the Dust Bowl: A First-Hand Account from Kansas, by Lawrence Svobida

Hello! This is the first of (hopefully) many book reviews. These posts will contain reviews of books dealing with nature, the environment, and ecology.

For the first entry in this series I've chosen Farming the Dust Bowl: A First-Hand Account from Kansas, a sort of autobiography by Lawrence Svobida. While the book focuses greatly on his life as a farmer, Svobida aims to give the reader a total view of the Dust Bowl, it's environs, native populations, and weather.

Overview

Published 1941, 256 pages

Explains how poor farming practices in the mid-1910's and 1920's led to the Dust Bowl phenomenon

Key ecological concepts: soil erosion/conservation, population decline, desertification

Plot

Svobida, a Kansan farmer during the height of the Dust Bowl, presents a plain-spoken story of one man fighting against all of nature to produce a crop. During and Post-WWI, the USA began to produce massive amounts of wheat. The market and government incentives heavily encouraged farmers to produce maximum crop-yields, which in turn lead to the Dust Bowl. Poor farming practices contributed, such as a lack of crop rotation, leading to a wheat monoculture. By the early '30's, the region known as the Dust Bowl was plagued by Dust storms, and increasingly arid. It is here that our author begins his personal account. Svobida came from a family of means, which would allow him to do anything he wanted, but he himself states "from the time I was in knee pants, my one and only ambition had been to be a farmer" (Svobida 43).¹ He makes it known early on that he is a very diligent worker (operating a farm out of Meade County, Kansas), boasting that where others would give up and move on, he would persist; he regularly attests to his own ability to put in more hours working than his neighbors. In 1931 he produces a large wheat crop, but it is entirely destroyed by hail. He is virtually unable to produce a profitable crop for the next 7 years.

Ecological Concepts

Svobida does not only document his farming endeavors, however. He also goes into great detail on the changing ecology in the Dust Bowl.

Soil erosion/conservation: One of the greatest challenges Svobida faces is the blowing dust. He works tirelessly to prevent his land from blowing, using multiple methods, including listing, water conservation, and summer-fallowing.² While this allows some limited success, his efforts are constantly thwarted by indifferent neighbors who do not make any effort to prevent their land from blowing. The resulting dust accumulating on his land often suffocates his crops and causes his land to blow too. He consistently fights a losing battle against the wind, the dust, and his neighbors. Further leading to the erosion of the land is a lack of rain, and the notorious heat wave of 1936.

Population decline: Svobida also provides great detail on the effects of poor farming practices (and the resulting dust) on populations native to the great plains. The greatest change resulting in the Dust Bowl was the decline of the native, soil-anchoring buffalo grass (Bouteloua dactyloides); the incentive to profit off of huge amounts of crops lead to a majority of the great plains being converted to farmland. In this sense, B. dactyloides possibly be viewed as a keystone species, not in the food-web sense, but in an environmental sense, for once it was removed, the resulting dust negatively impacted nearly every other species on the plains.

Jackrabbits, once seen as a common pest, begin to dissappear. Rattlesnakes dissappear. Several bird species are choked and killed by the dust. Non-native species are unable to survive too - trees introduced to anchor the soil and prevent strong winds are soon drowned by the dust, and dry out from the lack of moisture.

Not every population is decreases, however. Locust populations seemingly explode, and without a lack of predators keeping the populations in check, multiple crops are destroyed by the locusts.

Desertification: perhaps the most alarming ecological change documented by Svobida is that of the desertification of the great plains region. While Svobida's prediction of the entire Midwestern US becoming a desert equivalent to the Saharan turned out to be inaccurate, the immediate Dust Bowl area to this day remains negatively affected by the poor farming practices of a century ago.³ Svobida warned that the growing aridity, diminishing vegetation, and increasingly powerful winds were all contributing to what he called "The Great American Desert."

Conclusion

Svobida was a simple yet intelligent person, environmentally conscious, and interested in doing what was best for the land and his fellow farmers. He was distraught by the perceived indifference of farmers across the country, and despite his best efforts to succeed as a Dust Bowl farmer, the end of his book sees him financially ruined and his will broken. Farming the Dust Bowl provides a cautionary tale for us, as the unsustainable farming (literally unsustainable, as the land eventually could no longer meet the needs of the farmers) of the early 20th century led to devastating and lasting effects for the Dust Bowl region. Svobida warns us of the temptation to disregard the natural order found in a diverse ecosystem for financial gain.

I very much enjoyed this book; a former Kansan myself, I found it fascinating to learn about the history of the state and great plains region, especially in a way so intricately tied to its ecology. I'm amazed by Svobida's continued persistence and integrity throughout his time as a farmer, despite his circumstances.

Throughout his book, Svobida points to environmental concerns that eerily echo those of today. Surprisingly, I doubt I would be able to distinguish between many of his own warnings and those of a contemporary author. I will end this review with a quote from his own work:

"Although history reveals that events of major importance are likely to repeat, human beings cling to a naïve faith in the possibility of a special intervention of Providence on their personal behalf ... Government experts, however, are well aware that huge areas of the United States have been laid waste by the kind of exploration that takes no thought of the morrow. There are numerous Government publications on the subject of erosion, soil conservation, reclamation, and the like. The figures covering land waste are staggering. Yet, it seems to be, the great mass of the public remains indifferent, unable to grasp the immensity of the catastrophe that not only threatens but already is upon us, as a nation" (Svobida 245-246).

¹ Svobida, Lawrence. Farming the Dust Bowl: a First-Hand Account from Kansas. University State Press of Kansas/Eurospan, 1987.

² Strip listing is a method Svobida describes as "running deep parallel furrows twenty or thirty feet apart, in an east and west direction, across the path of the prevailing winds"

Summer following is the practice of allowing land to rest during a growing season (in this case, summer) in order to save moisture and nutrients

³Hornbeck, Richard. 2012. “The Enduring Impact of the American Dust Bowl: Short- and Long-Run Adjustments to Environmental Catastrophe.” American Economic Review 102 (4) (June): 1477-1507. doi:10.1257/aer.102.4.1477. http://dx.doi.org/10.1257/aer.102.4.1477

#dust bowl #farming #agriculture #ecology #conservation #desertification #environmentalism

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lady-plantagenet · 4 years

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Unsolicited Book Reviews (n3): The Sunne in Splendour

Rating:

⭐️⭐️⭐️(+1/2?)

Even before I had an account, I tended to go to tumblr to see people’s opinions before buying a histfic. Certain books are either severely underrepresented, where I feel like there needs to be something on them, whereas others, though talked about enough, something more can still be said about them. So for my quarantine fun, I have decided to start a series where I review every medieval historical fiction novel I read. Hopefully, it will either start interesting discussions or at least be some help for those browsing its tag when considering purchasing it.

TL;DR: Keep in mind that I’m harsh with my ratings. I don’t expect my historical fiction to offer some sort of insight about the human condition or be some perfectly manicured prose, but this book’s biggest detriment was its lack of depth. Some scenes packed a serious emotional punch, but then again I am attached to this era and given the length, it would be insane not to. I learned a lot - no lie, but while my background knowledge on the wars of the roses has become enriched, I feel no closer to Richard.

Plot: We follow Richard III from a young boy at eight right before the catastrophe that was Ludlow to his death and a few years after. This story seems to be told through omniscient third person point of view, which creates issues when it comes to voice - a lot of the characters sound the same (John ‘Jack’ Howard, Francis Lovell, Richard Catesby to name a few). This is only a natural consequence of the sheer amount of people Penman chose to portray. I’m honestly still grateful for this as I was not a fan of Richard III’s POV, but really enjoyed Richard Neville Earl of Warwick’s, Margaret of Anjou and Cecily Neville’s. Everytime these three were the center of the chapter, it was truly enjoyable and multi-faceted which comes to show that Penman is capable of writing complexity when she wants to. I would also like to add that the author’s knowledge of medieval life (e.g. the food, the dogs, the nature of battles) was a high point of this novel and did something to counter-balance the rampant late 20th century flavour in this novel. She tries way too hard to adapt a medieval man such as Richard to our modern values to propagate her Richardian Agenda, which ultimately underscored this.

It must be said though that the author clearly did her research as most of what she said regarding minutae such as: what day of the week it was, where the characters were at one time, details of documents, who did what in which battle, what laws were passed etc... I had just come back to this time period after some years and I thought I knew all there was to know, yet, here comes this book which springboarded me into a wealth of new research - I suppose I am grateful for that. However, do not let that delude you into thinking it is comprehensive. There were historical innacuracies which I can only guess were intentionally made for the sake of the author’s Richardian goal e.g. Anne Neville being forced into her marital duties when historicalMargaret of Anjou made it clear that there would be no consummation until Warwick would prevail at Barnet, Isabel Neville being ‘abandoned’ by her husband in France when really it was only about 4 months they were apart and it would have made no sense for Isabel to sail with an invasionary force, Richard III abolishing benevolence tax because he thought it unfair as opposed to the reality which was that he had failed in his initial attempt to raise them because the population opposed, Richard III allowing the marriage between Jane Shore and Thomas Lynsom when in reality he had initially opposed it... Historical fiction is entitled to innacuracies but given that the author made it clear in her afterword that the only time she strayed was setting a scene in Windsor as opposed to Westminster, it is dishonest to conceal the aforementioned blips, especially when they are so unobvious that it would take a seasoned enthusiast to spot them. As you can tell they either do have a negative bearing on Richard’s image as a saint or show detractors in a positive light, clearly neither that which she was in a mood to explain away.

Characterisation: I can not stress enough how well Cecily Neville was portrayed, every scene she was in, I felt. She tends to be a very difficult character to get because of the whole illegitimacy rumour which casts shades of doubt. She was proud but also pious, subservient but also commanding... just an incredible woman of gravity. I enjoyed Warwick in all his flamboyancy as well and Edward IV was masterfully portrayed as the intelligent but forgiving man that he was. You could clearly see how despite his indulgent character, he knew when it was time to be serious, it was a joy to read the scenes where he strikes people into subserviancy. Anne Beauchamp was also quite a treat for the little time we had with her.

There were also some portrayals of mixed quality: George Duke of Clarence for one, his warped sense of humour and charm were well presented, his unpredictability adequately captured. The issue I have though is that no man is unpredictable to themselves and while it may make sense for other characters to see his temperaments as those like a weather vane it would make no sense for it to be this way in the chapters where he is the POV. Penman’s basically wrote him off as crazy (I mean literally mad) for the majority of the story which is utter tripe given that the whole madness angle is a modern invention. I won’t write more on this now as it deserves its own post (btw if anyone wants me to elaborate on anything I said so far send me an ask). Last thing I will say though: the last scene we have with him is utterly tragic and still sticks with me today, honestly the best writing in this novel was during the ‘Anne’ Book and ‘Protector of the North’ in the years surrounding George’s death. Speaking of, where do I begin with Isabel Neville and Elizabeth Woodville? Their marriages with Richard’s brothers are portrayed negatively for no other reason than to set up Richard and Anne Neville as a perfect love story. This story-telling technique is cheap as hell and I did not expect to find it in a novel so highly acclaimed for its ‘quality’. Let me make this clear: The marriage which was hailed as a love match at that time was that of Elizabeth Woodville and Edward IV. Anne and Richard could have been just as much a marriage of politics as George and Isabel’s, or the latter’s just as much a love match. George fought for Isabel just as much, if not more than Richard did for Anne, George stayed loyal for a surety whereas Richard’s bastard John’s conception may have coincided with his marriage according to Hicks, Marrying Anne was highly advantageous for Richard as marrying Isabel for George... I could go on. Therefore, why is Isabel constantly described as wretched, miserable and at one point abused(!) by her husband whereas Richard was nothing but gentle to the happy Anne. The Mary of Burgundy proposal story is often cited as proof that George only cared about power... but what about Richard’s proposal to Joanna of Portugal one month after Anne died? This may sound minor but it’s a perfect example of the author trying hard to make Richard a modern romantic figure which he wasn’t. I think he may have loved Anne Neville, but that doesn’t change the fact that he was a medieval king and made marriage provisions after her death to secure the succession. For a 800+ page novel about Richard III some seminal pieces of information were left out such as his seizure of the aged Dowager Countess of Oxford’s Howard fortune, the mysterious circumstances in which George Neville Duke of Bedford died young and unmarried after becoming his ward. All in all, do not let the wonderful historical detail fool you into thinking this is a complete account of Richard III’s day to day life.

Don’t even get me started on the Woodvilles... They were all treacherous villains and social climbers who belonged in hell. EVEN ANTHONY WOODVILLE - what has he ever done to Penman or anyone? All scenes with Elizabeth Woodville at the beggining were bedding scenes pretty much, which shows that the author saw her as nothing more than a heartless seductress. There was even a point where Edward in his rage said: ‘you would lie with a leper if it meant you becoming Queen’ and I was just shocked at that. I was further shocked when her daughter Elizabeth of York was musing that if her mother had been a good wife her father wouldn’t have needed to stray and I was just like... ‘I thought we were trying to be sensible in this book 0_0’ - How is it appropriate to have a woman blamed for her husband’s infidelity? How can we have such blatant classism and sexism on the one hand and late 20th century wokeness on the other? It’s what I said earlier, the author can’t prop up Richard and Anne without putting down all other couples in this book. By the end of the book I was honestly finding myself cheering for Elizabeth Woodville as she was becoming the woman with sense and cunning as we all know her, the saving grace of this entire characterisation was that Elizabeth became the only person with a brain by the end (I doubt this was the author’s intention). Down here in this category of bad characterisation I will add Richard and Anne themselves. Anne Neville though often absolutely adorable to me lacked any personality trait apart from being in love with Richard and past sexual abuse by Edward (which didn’t historically happen). Anne’s father and only sister die and she barely thinks about them, which severely undermines her portrayal as a loving and empathetic person. Her death scene and wane was tragic and affected me as a reader but holy Christ before that the author was very heavy handed throughout the book with her martyrisation of Anne, even when she was a young girl and everything was going well she cried in nearly every goddamn scene. Yes, this is Warwick’s daughter we are talking about. Richard (unlike the real great man that once lived on this earth) was similarly flawless and any small flaw he had was something like: ‘too trusting’, ‘acts then thinks’ - essentially ‘too good for this world’ flaws. No one is like this, least of all the real Richard who would not recognise this weird contrived romanticisation of a man. The saving grace of all this is that he admitted around the end to himself and Anne that he did want to be king a little bit, which YES, at least we get that because no one goes through all the procedures he did and endangers the survival of their house, unless they wanted to become king, at least a little bit. All in all, if Penman’s Richard III is the real man, all I have to say is: thank god his reign was cut short because this character would have made a terrible and weak monarch.

Prose: And here is where another of the stars was deducted. The prose is largely very pedestrian. It was full of modern phrases such as ‘hear me out’, ‘He thinks I am in the wrong’ ‘he can’t get away with this’ and other such likes. Also, I know it’s difficult to write a book where everyone’s names are Elizabeth, Edward, Richard and Anne, but apart from ‘Nan’ which was a nickname of that time, the modernity of ‘Bess’, ‘Bella’ or ‘Lisbet’ and the use of them in-text and not just dialogue, did much to draw me out of the medieval era. This is not just a criticism towards Penman but a grand majority of historical fiction novelists of this period. Having said that, her choice to cut conjunctions and use the word ‘be’ intead of ‘is’ or ‘are’ did not bother me at all and I found it effective in dating the language a bit. I appreciate that writing in poetic prose for 800+ pages is extremely difficult, but other’s have done it. And even in other novel where that’s not the case, the writing is still profound and impactful and conveys a deeper meaning, whereas here it’s more of a fictionalised history book. The author appears to have some imagination as the few scenes she made up e.g. Catherine Woodville’s visit to Richard or Edward summoning Edmund’s previous carer John to talk about Edmund as he was trying to deal with the grief of losing George, any scene with Cecily Neville in it, Anne Neville and Veronique (OC lady-in-waiting to her) when they were in hiding, Rosamund and Richard at the end, Margaret of Anjou when she was lodged at that abbey, When Stillington visited George before his death to give him a rosary and last rites and he refused to get them from him, Anne and Richard going to Middleham and Isabel’s lying in state were just some of them. However, even if you took all those well-written scenes and stuck them together they would not be more than maybe 150 pages which is not good in such a massive novel. I really don’t know how I would rank the prose, I feel weird saying it’s at the low bestseller level because at least it’s not overwritten and annoying, however, it lacked a lot of soul most of the time, which is dissapointing given what Penman had to work with. I can see that the author has some strengths, for example she’s good at writing about the weather and the natural landscape, she’s also good at describing facial expressions. But her massive flaw is dialogue and flow - especially the latter. The flow is hindered by her abject inability to weave historical events and their happenings into the prose, so she often settles for an exposition dump, especially when it comes to some male chatacter’s POV such as John Howard, Francis Lovell or Buckingham. A lot of the characters exposited at each other too, which wasted the opportunity for some serious character profiles. Basically too much telling and not enough showing. In conclusion, It didn’t always feel clunky, expository or laboured, but it way too often did for the good to be redeemed by the bad prose-wise.

In Conclusion, I cheated on this book a couple of times when it dragged, but got right back into it whenever the good sections came along. It is one of these books which people cannot stop raving about and I can’t stress how much I wanted to love it when I got it. It’s nice being a fan of something a lot of people are too for once, but it was just not to be. But at least now I can say I have read the cult classic of this histfic niche which apparently everyone has read and cried over. Even though it took me 7 months where others got through it in a week through sleepless nights. Despite all the negativity in this review, I would still reccomend it as it is a solid book and written by someone who clearly gets the conflict and time period. You will learn lots with this book (I intend to keep it as a sort of timeline) regarding things that you might otherwise find too dry to research in depth e.g. battle strategies and sieges. But what you will not learn about is the characters’ psychologies and personalities though Penman tries very hard and heavy-handedly to exposit their feelings to us.

#lady-plantagenet’s book reviews #the sunne in splendour #sharon kay penman #Richard III #if anyone disagrees or agrees i’d love to know your opinion #just send me an ask #historical fiction #Anne Neville #George of Clarence #Edward IV #Elizabeth Woodville #House of York

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centipedall · 3 years

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Crown of the White Death, or The Asbestos Prom

Senior year was my year. Student council president? Check. Choice college? Check. Prom queen? Check. Stayed with my boyfriend? No. Found out he was a cheating douche? Check. Not have a date to prom? Check. Prom king be a total loser who leaves early? Check.

Meh. Whatever. I don’t need losers in my life, anyways. Which was part of the reason I organized things the way I did. As student council president, I’m the one in charge of planning parties and organizing them. Well, the way I did it this time was just fan-freaking-tastic. Complex, yeah, but name one good thing that’s simple.

Now, my school is kinda set up in a circle. There are seven class areas that connect to two others, one for each subject. And, coincidentally, for each club I’m president of. And each color of the rainbow. Math, science, social studies, language arts, world languages, technology, and art. Chess, Science Honor Society, Philosophy, Creative Writing, Spanish Honor Society, Cyber Security, and Pottery. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, black. I would have used the massive central courtyard and gymnasium for the final one, made it into a whiteout zone to contrast with the final black area, but there was a horrible asbestos outbreak there a week ago so it was shut down. Oh well. No plan survives first contact with the enemy, right?

So, if you weren’t in one of those clubs, I tried to make sure you didn’t come. Giving discounts to club members, targeted harassment, not telling people that the gym was full of asbestos, all that stuff. You know, to save space. No sense in wasting that on losers. Especially not losers who now have asbestosis. You don’t need all that nastiness here.

So, club members were in their respective areas, there were very few non-club members here, and everything was set up. There wasn’t really a theme, but everyone had kinda taken to wearing their own things. My student council team wore small, masquerade-style masks.

I stalked through the halls of the school, basking in the glory that I had made this happen. My entourage of student council members followed me. We didn’t really talk- for some reason, they didn’t like to talk to me. No one did, actually. But hey, that’s fine. I don’t need anyone.

I started my second round down the halls, starting at the red chess area. The chess club members wore simple, black-and-white formal clothing, contrasting against the various red tones of the math department. A few of them had chess pieces emblazoned on their dresses or suit jackets. They visibly paled as I walked in, making way for me and my group.

Then, I walked into the orange room, with a single massive paper-mache microscope in the center. The club members here wore stylized lab aprons, gloves, and goggles, designed more for fanciness than protection. There was a refreshment table full of smoking drinks in plastic flasks, which were evidently highly enjoyable. The vice-president of the club dropped her drink as I walked in, and it stained the carpet.

“Uh, h-hey, Prez.” She stammered out.

“What’s your problem?” Harsh, sure, but I had things to do. Well, not right now, I guess, but normally I do.

“Richard, uh, he saw, he saw, uh-”

“Christ, just spit it out already!”

“Norman! He’s here! In the next room!”

“Oh what the fuck.” I seethed.

That bastard. I told him that I never wanted to see him again. And now he showed up? Here? Oh, I’m going to tear him a new one. Quite literally.

I walked speedily into the next room. My face was a placid mask, and I walked with grace, but my hands were clenched. I felt skin split along my knuckles.

In the yellow room, there was only the paled philosophy club, goofily dressed up like different figures from history. I know they had fought tooth and nail- literally- over who got to be Aristotle. She averted her eyes- sorry, eye, now- to the ground. Plato glowered at her. That one didn’t need a bald cap anymore.

“Next room. Sorry.”

“Goddamnit.”

Creative writing. They had transcribed their favorite books into tattoos on their skin. Weird stuff. Kids were like a cult almost, which was why they were my least favorite. They still looked away from me as I stalked into the Spanish Honor Society’s room.

Huh. There was no one in here. Just an over-saturated blue. It hurt my eyes. Makes sense why no one was here.

It was similar in the purple room. The cybersecurity kids were in here, though. They scampered around on the floor, completely nude but for the blindfolds they wore. I was about to walk into the final room, but I hesitated. My ex was a big guy. Maybe I should have my entourage join in?

I turned, and they weren’t there. They must have stuck behind in one of the other rooms, too scared of him to go in. No matter. I’ll deal with this myself. Like a real queen should.

The black room was, of course, pitch black. But for a glow that emanated from a figure in the center. My ex. He was, of course, in the most infuriating costume I’ve ever seen.

He was thin, scrawny. Which should have seemed impossible, given how he was two-hundred pounds of muscle last week, but whatever. He wore a long coat and a pair of pants, both pure white. His face was alabaster white, just like my mask. Actually, I think it was a mask. As I walked closer to him, I heard wheezing, like his breath was short. His mouth and chest were scarred with bumps. Every breath he took almost inverted his chest, actually. His skin and eyes were irritated, but not red. Just white.

He coughed, a wet, hacking noise, and something came out. A small, wet piece of flesh flew from his mouth. It hit the ground just in front of me. It was just like his chest. Scarred, bumpy, and pure white.

Oh God. He was flaking. Clouds of little white flakes left his mouth with every exhale. Little bits left other parts of his body with every movement. Mostly his fingers and shoulders. The greatest amount of dust, however, came from the chunk that had left his mouth.

The worst part of all this, the real kicker, was the crown. It covered the top half of his eyes, like a blindfold almost. It was white and gold at the same time. I- I’m not sure how, it just was. It was bigger than my own crown, too. Like he was the prom king. A prom king afflicted with asbestosis.

Oh, that asshole. I pulled my hand black, and slapped him across the face.

But I didn’t. There was nothing there. Just a mask and clothes, crumpled on the floor.

I wheezed. Coughed. Something came out of my throat. Something wet, bumped, and scarred. And then I blacked out.

‘

Senior year was my year. Student council president? Check. Choice college? Check. Prom queen? Check. Just an awesome year.

As student council president, I’m the one in charge of planning parties and organizing them. Well, the way I did it this time was just fan-freaking-tastic. Complex, yeah, but name one good thing that’s simple.

Now, my school is kinda set up in a circle. There are seven class areas that connect to two others, one for each subject. And, coincidentally, for each club I’m president of. And each color of the rainbow. Math, science, social studies, language arts, world languages, technology, and art. Chess, Science Honor Society, Philosophy, Creative Writing, Spanish Honor Society, Cyber Security, and Pottery. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, black. I used the massive central courtyard and gymnasium for the final one, made it into a whiteout zone to contrast with the final black area.

It was all pretty sick. Just the greatest party ever. There was only one problem: I had shown up late. And my prom king and boyfriend had probably taken his throne without me. But that’s okay. My entrance is going to be fantastic.

First stop, red. The chess room. My royal entourage behind me, we quickly strode through the room. It was a pretty fun design. The checkerboard people flickered in and out of existence. Black to white to black again. Good people. Fun to be around. Very, very smart, and very good at games. I was a big fan of the way they dressed up for the occasion. Old-fashioned in a new way, I guess?

Orange, now. The scientific. Loose strands of DNA littered the area. They looked like flasks, this time around. Filled with steaming liquids. They drank from plastic skulls full of juice. Nonalcoholic, of course.

Anyways, next room. yellow. Weird guys. I heard that this year, like always, they had fought over who got to be who. The leader was always Aristotle, but the others got to war over Descartes and Plato. Me, I prefer being the same person all the time, but different strokes for different folks, right?

Into green. The written. The folks in here had yellow skin, like an old book. The actual brains were written on them, though, like inked tattoos. It really must suck, being mental when all your friends are physical. Then you have to buy bodies, and actually get yourself in them. They’d bought cheap, but they made it look nice. Careful not to touch any bodies and smudge someone off, I went into the next room.

Blue, now. Just one member, in here. Spain looked at me with their thousand burning eyes. An army of skulls chanting in the darkness as their fingers danced. The mountains and rivers become nails and blood vessels. Twirling shapes in the darkness. A single piercing shriek echoing through the void.

Classy fellow. I’m glad they showed up. And in their best dress, too.

Okay. Purple. I walked through the blind, deaf, mute things. Cylinders of flesh that faintly throbbed as they sat in their chairs. Blindfolds covered alternating parts of them, like stripes. They rocked a little, swaying from side to side. It wasn’t due to any outside influence. Just their minds. I tried it once. The whole sensory deprivation thing. I got too antsy in there. Too many irons in the fire, you know.

Final room. Black. I was the only one in here. It was pitch-black, of course. Wet too. It thumped, and I could feel it beat around me. Thump. Thump. Thump.

I emerged from the pot, and entered into the white room. The throne room. My court. They were all there. Everyone from before. My kingdom bowed as I entered. And he was there. On the throne, with mine next to him. Two equal chairs, to represent two equal forces. The king and his queen. The light and the dark.

Pieces drifted from him, up into the sky. He breathed and his chest inverted. His crown was large, white. Beautiful. I couldn’t see my own, but I knew it was just as beautiful. I took my place next to him, sitting. And the kingdom was whole again. White and black united to become perfection. One that would reign for the rest of forever.

This is such a kickass prom.

#body horror

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skywillsometimeswrite · 4 years

Text

No Gift Exchange Needed

Read it on AO3

The Reds and Blues have been invited to a holiday party on Chorus, and Simmons is nervous but for the conventional reasons.

The holidays never struck particularly good feelings into Richard Simmons. It usually meant hours of forced social interaction with family members he had done last minute research on the night before and constant pressuring from said relatives about parts of his life he hadn’t even thought about yet. (Needless to say, not much praise was met when he mentioned he was going to go into the military. “If you’re serious about that, it probably wouldn’t hurt for you to eat an extra serving of turkey. You’ll need some meat on those bones.” ) He quickly realized the first Christmas after he joined the military that the holidays would probably never be the same. Just the idea that he may have had the last winter with his parents was enough to send a spike of anxiety through his brain and reaching for the nearest communication device to wish his mom happy holidays. Even though his fears had been confirmed many years later, by the time they were they were less fears and more small interesting observations he had come to realize and accept with very little sadness. He figured it had to do with the fact that his notion of family had drastically changed over time.

But now, of course, the familiar feeling of dread began to pile up in his stomach again as he stared out the window of the transport ship that was beginning its descent to one of the various airports made around Chorus. They were landing in the capital where a large holiday celebration was being held and all the reds and blues had been formally invited to. It had seemed like a good idea at first, a good chance to catch up with the residents of Chorus, maybe get some paperwork done for Kimball. A great vacation from retirement. Now, he was very much regretting the entire thing.

“Dude, chill out. You look like you’re having war flashbacks.”

“Returning to the scene of a gruesome battle will do that to poor youth. Hang in there, Simmons, it gets worse on the ground.”

“Sarge, you are not helping.”

Simmons regretted traveling with the entirety of red team even more. Even if the usual Grif-Sarge arguing was almost comforting. “I’m not having war flashbacks or anything. I’m perfectly fine.”

“Then do you mind not crushing my hand? I swear you’re cutting off the circulation or some shit. You’ve been doing this since we entered Chorus’ star system and I can not feel it anymore.” Grif lifted their interlocked hands into view of the cyborg, causing his non-artificial cheek to flush as he quickly let go of the other’s hand and letting him shake it as he tried to get blood flowing back normally through the limb. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Y-Yeah! Definitely. It just kind of feels like when I used to go to those big obligatory family gatherings, you know? Everyone gets kind of nervous right before those, right?”

“Aw! Well, we did get pretty intimate with the people of Chorus when we grouped up to firmly pound those space pirates’ behinds. It only makes sense you would consider them family. They hold us to a pretty high standard.”

Simmons let out the faintest of groans as he sunk in his seat, imploring to stare out the window again as they were cleared for landing and the ground seemed to get suffocatingly closer.

“Alrighty, Donut, Sarge, stay here because at this rate you will send him into a panic attack.”

“No sería la primera vez. (Wouldn’t be the first time.) ”

“Can it, tin can.” Grif glared at the, for once, intact robot in the corner as he helped Simmons stand up and guided him outside of the room into the bathroom at the back of the ship where he shut and locked the door. He crossed his arms, standing firmly but his eyes betrayed any hint of anger or annoyance for concern. “You said you were going to be able to handle this.”

“I can! It’s just the initial panic setting in. Once we’re here for a few hours I’ll be calm again in no time.” He was pretty sure some alcohol would help, too. “It’s a good type of anxiety this time, I promise. Nothing like last year with my father.” He caught Grif’s glance drift towards the mirror hanging on the wall, noting how the heavier-set man shifted his weight to block any path to it from Simmons. A pang of guilt washed over Simmons as he wrung his wrists. “I promise.”

With a heavy sigh, Grif’s shoulders fell from their apparently tense position. “Alright. But at the first sign of panic I’ll have us on the first ship out of here.”

There was no use arguing with Grif on these types of matters. All of red team had figured that out pretty quickly when they had settled back on Earth for retirement. Now that we, in his words, could control our own lives for once, he was dead set on making sure we lived them safe and adventure-free. For the most part, anyway. There were no rules against midnight joy rides.

“Grif, I’m not a child. I don’t need you holding my hand through every social interaction.”

“Says the guy that was literally about to make my hand fall off. I expected this entire trip to be almost entirely touch-free considering the company but you completely threw that out the window within the first few hours.” Grif shrugged, watching with a knowing smile as his boyfriend’s face grew a bright red.

“W-Well, we have been dating for quite some time now. I don’t see why you think I would be so shy with affection anymore.” Grif seemed unconvinced by Simmons’ meek attempts at an argument but before he could continue a voice crackled on over the ship’s intercom.

“We have been cleared to deplane all passengers into the capital. Have a nice stay, sirs. Happy holidays.”

“Come on, we don’t want Donut to start any rumors about us being locked in a bathroom for the entirety of the trip.” Grif placed a small kiss on Simmons’ flesh cheek before unlocking the door and leading the other man out to where they weren’t paid much mind as they all focused on getting off the ship and entering the bustling city just waiting for them.

---

Simmons would admit that, unlike his family gatherings when he was younger, this holiday party was arguably the most fun he’s had while as stressed as he was. Although, he could feel the alcohol slowly tearing away that wall of stress as the night went on and his glass got refilled and replacing it with a relaxing calm. Even so, he did not plan on getting drunk tonight and even set Donut on the mission to make sure Grif didn’t either. He knew how much he could get carried away with alcohol when left unsupervised. Especially around Tucker. He had heard many stories of late drunk nights amidst the chaos of the Chorus Civil War when the two of them had been the closest they had probably ever gotten. And those stories explained quite a few grumpier-than-usual-Grif mornings he had experienced during those months.

Holding his first drink of water all night, Simmons stepped out onto one of the many balconies the capital building had, taking a deep breath as the overwhelming noise became muffled behind him when the door clicked shut. The crisp night air felt nice on his remaining skin, refreshing almost.

“I probably should have figured you would be ducking out on the festivities.”

The voice made him jump, water sloshing out of his cup and landing on the concrete below him as his head whipped over to look at the source. His panic subsided when he saw the red hair, practically glowing green eyes, and sparkling teal dress.

“Carolina! What are… What are you doing out here?”

She shrugged, walking over to him and leaning against the railing next to him. “Just had to step away for a bit. I thought I had gotten used to the Tucker and Caboose’s nonsense but I forgot it amplified by ten when you guys were in the picture.”

Simmons chuckled a bit, sinking into the collar of his shirt. One of the first things Sarge had done when he spotted the two blues was that they had arrived early only to plot against them. Tucker argued for a few minutes trying to explain to him that both of their shuttles arrived at the exact same time but we had just taken way too long while Sarge interrogated the pilot. He had a point, but it added more fuel to the fire. Kimball had offered to send a larger transport ship to pick them all up but Simmons was grateful they opted to go separately. Tucker would have undoubtedly teased Grif and him the entire way there.

While the two teams weren’t completely split up they lived in two separate towns a few miles apart in the broken states of what remained of America on Earth. While the blues shared a house, Grif and Simmons had moved in together in a small two bedroom house with Sarge, Donut, and Lopez as their surrounding neighbors. They still all got together on a biweekly basis to catch up and have their movie nights, but they had more or less moved on with their lives.

“Yeah, brings back memories though, doesn’t it?” He attempted to lean against the railing like she was, his composure far less cool than hers.

“Yeah,” she sighed, her face briefly betraying her more somber emotions before it settled back into its soft stoic state once again. “So, how have you been? Everything good on the dating front with Grif?”

He suddenly felt a lot less relaxed, his mind slamming him back into the present and he lost her gaze to stare into the remaining water in the cup. Leave it to Carolina to make him unintentionally nervous. “Uh, yeah. It’s been about two years now. I think it’s been going well?” He really fucking hoped it was.

Dexter Grif had changed a lot over the time that Simmons first met him in basics. He was a lot more compassionate and caring, although if he thought hard enough he could say he had always been like that. He was more active and less dismissing of issues, and he was more proactive than Simmons could ever remember him being. He even cleaned up around the house sometimes! Grif was an open book by now with his emotions and thoughts -- even if he didn’t mean to be half the time -- so Simmons shouldn’t really question how their relationship was going. But Simmons’ hadn’t changed as much as Grif had, it seemed. Sure he was a hell of a lot more confident than he used to be, but you couldn’t take his anxiety away and still call him Richard “Dick” Simmons.

“That’s good.” There was a lull before she spoke again, “Hey, are you okay? You seem… paler than usual.”

Whatever color his skin had been presenting was overwhelmed with a pink color at the comment. “Of course! I’m fine! Psh, why wouldn’t I be? I’m not nervous or anything.”

“So you’re nervous?”

“I just said I wasn’t nervous!” He looked at her unconvinced face and quickly sunk down into his shirt once again. “Maybe a little.”

“What could you possibly be nervous about? I don’t think there was any gift exchange planned.”

He managed a little chuckle from that. He had brought a gift. He just didn’t know how it was going to be received. A wire seemed to connect in his metal head and he stood up, gripping his cup tightly as he spoke. “Do you think you could help me with something?”

-----

Grif was not as drunk as he wanted to be right now.

Grif wanted to regret tomorrow morning and just snuggle with Simmons while he told him this would happen and read his books or did paperwork or whatever he did when Grif got massive hangovers.

Grif was very annoyed that he wasn’t as drunk as he should have been three hours into a party with free drinks at the bar for war heroes and Tucker edging him on.

He was even more annoyed with the reason why he wasn’t as drunk as he should’ve been.

Or whom.

Donut was draped across Grif’s shoulders, absolutely wasted (as Grif should be), after his fifth fruity drink of the night. And every time Grif tried to order any sort of beverage -- alcoholic or not -- Donut told the bartender to forget it or he chugged the drink himself. Needless to say, he was absolutely parched right now. It didn’t help that both his sister and Tucker were groping each other, drunk off their asses right next to him. Where the hell was Simmons when he needed him?

“Dexter Grif!”

The shout made everyone at the bar jump as they looked back to see a seemingly furious Carolina marching towards them. This can’t be good. Grif thought as Donut was shoved off his back into some poor stranger’s lap and the back of Grif’s suit jacket was tugged violently. He was dragged off the stool and sent backpedaling as he was pulled away. At least it gets me away from Donut.

“Carolina, what the fuck are you doing?” He asked, mildly annoyed, as he struggled not to be choked by his own shirt. What could he have possibly done to render this kind of manhandling at a holiday party?

“Whoa, hey, I said to get him over here not kill him in the process!” Grif recognized Simmons’ voice as Carolina swung him to be face to face with his boyfriend. He looked back to see her smug face as she gave them a thumbs up and a wink.

“What the fuck is going on?” He asked as he turned back to face Simmons who went from concern to sheepish. “Simmons? What happened? Are you okay?” Suddenly his own plights were forgotten as a million different scenarios popped into his head, minuscule to earth-shattering, that might have happened in the hours he was away from his side.

“N-nothing's happened. Not yet at least.”

“Simmons-” As soon as Grif opened his mouth Simmons looked up, making eye contact for the first time and causing him to lose his words. The look on his face transported Grif to all those times years ago when there was no promise they would make it back, and they always did.

The look that inexplicably said: You’re here with me.

“Grif, I-I wanted to ask you something. I know you aren’t one for tradition or sap or anything but-” He fumbled with something in his hands before he cracked the smallest of smiles. Grif felt he was watching in slow motion as his boyfriend knelt down in front of him.

“Simmons, what are you doing?” He whispered more to himself as he couldn’t help but glance around him, noticing the crowd that had formed.

“Dexter Grif, uh, I know this is sudden and I probably should have thought this through more but, uh,” he revealed what was in his hands, a maroon velvet box now perched in his palm as he opened it, revealing the ring pop inside. “Will you explore the greatest of life’s mysteries with me?”

Grif stood there for a long moment, his face unreadable, while the entire surrounding area was dead silent. Then his face cracked into a grin, a snort escaping that grew into full-on laughter. He bent down to take Simmons’ face in his hands, his own wearing a warm smile. “You are the cheesiest fucking dork.”

“So?”

“Of course I will, you nerd. But we both know that ring isn’t going to last very long.”

Cheering was met when they kissed, along with Sarge’s disapproving grumbles and Tucker’s distant “Get a room!”. Maybe it was good Grif wasn’t drunk, who knows what he would have said. Besides, who needs alcohol when love can do the same thing?

#sky writes #works: no gift exchange needed #red vs blue #grimmons #fluff #richard simmons #rvb #simmons #dexter grif #grif

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antoine-roquentin · 4 years

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First, take a look at the very equivocal position of the Democratic leadership. One little noted detail is important. An amendment inserted in the lame-duck legislation that enshrined the “Swaps Pushout” weakening of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill in January 2015, made it easier for big donors to funnel much larger sums of money to the national party committees. This has, I think, made it even easier for blocs of big donors to control those committees, even as small contributions sometimes surge. Not only in 2018, but in the 2020 primaries, I think this mattered.

As a result, the Democratic National Committee has not been subordinated to the Biden campaign, at least not yet. The surge in the southern Democratic primaries that destroyed the Sanders boom involved many big Democratic donors along with many black congressmen and women, together with the political and financial networks of former president Barack Obama and the Clintons. It was a coming together of the entire Democratic establishment to stop Sanders. Congressional black leaders were thus heavily identified with the “Stop Sanders” movement, too.

But with the combined economic collapse and the pandemic revealing the bankruptcy of the traditional establishment, the whole top of the party has had to scramble. How they have responded is very interesting. Thanks to the dissemination of so many videos, the realization about the racism that black Americans face — and not just by so many police — is very widespread. The revulsion is deep and real.

In response, the Democratic establishment is taking a leaf from the past — not the late ’60s, when groups highly critical of the Democrats became prominent, but the early ’60s. Joel Rogers and I described the process in our book Right Turn. When the civil rights movement emerged, major foundations, prominent business leaders of major multinationals, and foundations allied to them heavily supported that groundswell. John F. Kennedy famously called Martin Luther King in jail, while prominent Wall Street lawyers flew down south or otherwise helped represent civil rights campaigners who were under legal attack. That’s what’s happening right now, with groups closely allied with the Democratic Party helping to raise money. There will be tensions now, as there were then, between the party and the movement, but that’s the basic direction things are taking.

So how does this play into the election?

I think the basic script each party is following is evident. Democrats are hoping for a repeat of 2008. In that election, policy was hopelessly bungled by the Republican leadership. After Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, nobody in opposition had to say very much. Democrats could just sit and watch John McCain flail helplessly.

Donald Trump, by contrast, is clearly copying the Nixon playbook, though because he’s in power, 1972 is closer to the mark than 1968. His administration’s heavy-handed appeals to “law and order” are obvious, and so are the ways he tries to bait protesters. The “law and order” mantra is looking a bit thin, though, partly because the videos and protests so clearly touch a chord with many members of the public. But it is also apparent that the US military wants no part in quelling domestic protests, so that the best Trump is likely to be able to do is to try to irritate protesters and hope for strong public reactions. Attorney general William Barr is also pitching in, in spectacular fashion.

The other thing the White House is bent on doing is finding a way to levitate the economy. In 1972, Richard Nixon famously relied on Arthur Burns at the Fed to engineer a legendary political business cycle. Today’s Fed certainly reacts to pressures from Trump, but the drastically different world situation severely limits its room for maneuver. It can hardly do more than it has even if it wanted to.

This is why the president and the vice president are trying so desperately to downplay the pandemic. They want to drive people back to work and push up the GDP. Vice president Mike Pence is plainly encouraging state leaders to talk up their successes and downplay bad news, including spiking COVID-19 cases in the South and West. The White House thinks they have to get the economy moving again or Trump will be toast in November.

How different is this from what the administration was doing earlier?

It represents a doubling down on policies that Trump and his camp wanted to promote earlier and did for a while. As the pandemic hit, all over the developed world, prominent business figures and conservative economists warned about the dangers of a long lockdown. Some, including an occasional central banker, even talked sotto voce about how such policies would reduce state pension obligations. In the United States, the UK, and other European countries, advocates talked up the idea of “herd immunity.” Trump’s “kitchen cabinet” of business figures, including prominent private equity managers, were repeatedly cited as pushing the president to take a “go slow” attitude on lockdowns.

After the publication of the Imperial College estimates of the death rates such policies would entail, though, enthusiasm waned. The UK changed policy. The switch definitely affected the Trump administration’s attitudes. It helped, along with the ghastly reality of what was happening on the ground, especially on the East and West coasts of the United States, to force the administration to accept lockdowns and sheltering in place. Both in the United States and in the UK, though, pressures from business groups for rapid reopening remained very strong. Conservative groups have even urged reopening without establishing a viable testing regime, which is exactly what the administration has now done.

Clear camps are forming within business, and those look to be seeping into politics. Many small companies whose business models rest on low wages, along with financiers — meaning private equity first and foremost — whose strategies depend on buying and breaking up firms, continue to plump for rapid reopening.

By contrast, many firms in the rest of finance, and especially in high-tech and capital-intensive industries whose strategies do not rest on low wages, are less heedless of the dangers of quick opening. Many tech firms enthusiastically promote their products as solutions to the problems the pandemic creates — as is obvious with many internet and software companies. Robert Rubin called for joint panels of medical professionals and economists to decide when reopening was feasible and for contact tracing; even robotic assistance has been touted.

Where the rubber meets the road, though, is the critical question of worker safety. Trump gutted the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Not only is the number of inspectors way down, but key appointees are plainly uninterested in regulating on the issue at all.

It seems to me that this is a potentially fateful intersection between the movement growing out of Minneapolis and the Democrats. Calls to reopen quickly are basically demands by affluent white-collar managers who can work at home. They want to send blue-collar workers back to work under conditions the senior executives would not accept for themselves. Many of the blue-collar workers are, it is important to add, black or Latino. Though you would never know from reading any major newspaper, wildcat and other strikes have soared since Minneapolis. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of them, as Mike Elk’s Payday Report website is documenting. It seems clear that the protests have inspired many black and Latino workers to demand safe working conditions.

I don’t have much to say for the classic financial bailouts the United States has pursued — they protect the wealth of those that have it, while the government does something, but not much, to protect the livelihood of average citizens. But it would make a great deal of sense to move onto the national balance sheet the costs of redesigning work to make it safe. That would be a really good use of public resources.

So how does this play out in the election?

Right now, COVID-19 cases are soaring in many Southern and Western states, whose Republican governors had followed the White House lead and pretended the pandemic was over or would somehow never reach them. As a result, you can feel a seismic tremor in Trump’s support: the fabled 40 percent or so base level for him that people thought could never be breached is being broken.

But I remember 1988 very well, when Michael Dukakis was almost 20 points ahead of George H. W. Bush in late summer. A lot can happen to change what looks like an all but insurmountable advantage. One needs to remember that Biden looks good mostly next to Trump; the Democratic candidate doesn’t generate much enthusiasm from voters on his own. How the Biden campaign can tap the energy that fueled Sanders, and, to some extent, Warren, is not clear yet. The terms of trade between the camps are still being worked out, and the effort could fail. If Democratic elites are dumb enough to believe the claims so many have made that 2016 had nothing to do with economics, they could repeat that disaster.

I have a hard time believing that people who are out of work and watching how the government is allowing insurers to slip out of covering the costs of COVID tests will be inspired to vote for Biden without something far stronger than a “public option” for health care instead of Medicare for All, for example.

Plenty else can go wrong, too. Let’s just bracket the possibility of some foreign crisis, especially in the South China Sea, since it’s also clear Trump right now is still hoping that a big trade deal with China might come through. Otherwise, there are the old reliables for the GOP: efforts to hold down voter turnout and giant flows of big money.

This year, though, there’s a wrinkle to the first one. Trump’s campaign against the Post Office may have started out as a fight with Amazon, but right now, it’s clearly turned into something else. Empirical evidence from the Wisconsin primary is clear that voting in person led to several waves of new COVID infections.

As a result, interest in mail balloting is way up. Of course, Republicans are mostly opposed to that, though empirical evidence up to now does not suggest that mail ballots have strong partisan advantages one way or the other. But, of course, a broke Post Office won’t be delivering much of anything. My guess is that you’ll see Trump dig in ever more obdurately on this issue as election day approaches.

Which brings us to the money question. Here, I don’t have much to add to what my colleagues Paul Jorgensen, Jie Chen, and I wrote earlier in the year. In 2016, we found that Trump floated to victory on a big wave of late money from large private equity firms, among others. We also conjectured that the perfect correlation for the first time in American history between Republican success in Senate elections and the outcome of the presidential vote in states was not an accident. That turned out to be true. Trump did a bit better in states with Senate races. We’ve now shown how late money turned around those Senate races, when prospects just weeks before the election looked hopeless. That example is instructive. Democratic candidates who lost elections in those final days have told me how they watched the inflow of money turn around what had seemed a favorable situation. Problems with even counting ballots are, I think, likely to make 2020 very tense, no matter what polls say now or even the day before. Whether we live in a pre- or a post-apocalyptic era might be tested.

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thesharondefenseleague · 3 years

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ok not technically about sharon but like does it seem like the team cap vs team Ironman stuff is worse now? Like I remember before it came out and even sometime after the team stuff was just which set of characters you liked more. Not so much the actual issues. And after it came out it seemed like most agreed that the situation was contrived a bit to make these guys fight. Which ...you know makes sense considering the comics its based on had the same problem ( though the comics are worse) 1/2

But now I see alot more salt ( especially at Cap) for the events of Civil War. Like not in like a this was ooc and I hate the direction they went , it was more no this makes sense for Cap and Tony actually, also Tony is right and Caps being a dick. I haven't noticed as much for cap stans @ Tony they don't really talk about CW much. Like was I just unaware of that drama right after CW? Or did people actually get saltier? 2/2

It’s (for lack of a better word) upsetting that this movie gets this much level of discourse over sides. This movie isn’t worth the debate of who was right/wrong.

Straight-up, I was always leaning Team Tony in the comics, and the movie made it stronger, because of how the story treated Wanda, Clint, and Scott. I hate the “I drop my life because Steve told me to” crap every movie writes, when two of those characters have families that they sacrificed for this?? No they wouldn’t the last movies they appeared in established that they wouldn’t?????

Listen, because I’m gonna rant and put it under the read more, but TL;DR: Civil War was already a bad story, and the movie was much worse, because it missed the most important part of the battle: the middle ground.

Civil War needs a strong knowledge of Marvel to go into comic-wise. Everyone is and isn’t a player, and you need to read it all to know where every single person stands, both hero and villain. It’s icon status would not exist if it didn’t have 1) the official public unmasking of Peter, and 2) the immediate death of Steve after. But there are so many other important people tied in that you can try to read the comic, but you won’t know seventy-five percent of the characters without doing research first. It doesn’t help that this is a story with seven official issues and a hundred tie-ins.

Comic Lesson:

The Sokovia Accords? Fuck that. It was the Superhero Registration Act, and this issue was set solely in the US. Why? A group of D-List heroes on a scuzzy reality show started a fight with a group of D-List villains, and one blew himself up right next to an elementary school. Many people died, majority being young children. At a funeral service that Tony attended (don’t think many others did, if any, that were heroes), a grieving mother spat in his face, hence why he backed the SHRA from the start. When it was presented to everyone, Sam said fuck that, and officially, Falcon is the first to vocally go against it. Then Steve did it on a SHIELD aircraft to Maria Hill’s face (she was relatively new when this began). Because Steve and Tony were the most public figures on each side, they were the faces, but they were not the showrunners. SHIELD and Maria Hill ran Team Iron Man with Reed Richard’s tech. Nick Fury from an undisclosed location used his many secret hideouts and funds to run Team Captain America in secret, with Steve and Sam being the ones running as the face of the fight.

Major players include but are not limited to: Hank, the FF (mostly Reed and Sue), Hulkling, Tigra, Daredevil, Goliath (who dies in battle), clone Thor (who kills Goliath), Punisher, etc.

The one thing that was present throughout the whole story was side-switching. Every issue had someone switching sides. It was a major ordeal every time, and everyone had reasons. Peter because SHIELD was shady. Cassie Lang and YA Vision because they wanted safety and Scott had recently died (not because of CW, but Wanda was killing people). Sharon was threatened into staying with SHIELD by Maria but was a liaison to assisting Steve. Half of the heroes in the movie weren’t even in the actual book event. Wanda was in hiding. Clint was looking for her (and then banging her, because comic book Clint gets around). Scott, as mentioned, was dead. T’Challa just got married and didn’t want to be involved. This Vision was a different version using the body of Iron Lad, and his name was Jonas (adult Vision is named Victor Shade). Bucky was running missions for Fury in other countries. I’m still miffed that they got to be involved but the movie didn’t have room to include Fury and Maria, the two people actually in charge in this game.

I’ve read this comic several times. I took a class where we had to read the book, watch the film, and discuss sides. And here’s the conclusion: no matter whose side you take, you can agree with the other side, and you’re actually in the middle ground of it, but if you had to pick, this one was slightly more persuasive. It’s a very complex issue that the story went into. Tony saw unchecked heroes as a risk and didn’t want to have another incident that would cost hundreds of innocent lives. Steve saw government control as the potential unchecked risk and didn’t want heroes to be controlled by a single power. But they saw the other side as right too: Tony tried to stop SHIELD from apprehending Peter when he defected, and Steve realized that their fighting was proving the point of how dangerous heroes could be when civilians physically had to stop him from killing Tony. Because that was the point: they were both right and wrong. Superheroes could be dangerous, but government registration and control could abuse them and manipulate heroes. Didn’t help that the Negative Zone was the fucking worst thing ever, thanks Reed, Tony, and Maria.

The movie took out the middle ground, and moved this into international territory. It wasn’t one country, but 117. It wasn’t a group of unchecked heroes who caused the major conflict, but one specifically. It wasn’t dozens of heroes, but just a dozen. It wasn’t children dying, it was rulers of countries. And it wasn’t one major storyline that the movie was focused on, but several (the Winter Soldiers, Bucky, Zemo). It liked two things about the comic: two groups of heroes fighting, and Steve beating the shit out of Tony. And this story was adapted by a pair of writers and a pair of directors who don’t care about following the canon of other movies, including their own, so they just did whatever the hell they wanted and bastardized a story that was already a mess and a half to begin with. And it took a story that made you think every character’s decision and motive through and decided nah, fuck that. We’re gonna make major decisions, and you have to pick one to agree with, because the other was designed for you to hate them. Civil War was a debate, not a literal war, Russos, thank you very much.

The movie took a shit approach to the question of whether or not heroes need checks and balances, because it wasn’t interested in answering that question, it liked battle scenes because you like the paintball episodes they directed for TV. If you’re in 2020 and wanna still fight about who was right and who was wrong in the movie, the answer is: the movie is wrong, go read the comic. Cap 3 is the worst Marvel adaptation, and a strong contender for worst movie. I could rip this shit apart all day.

~Mod R

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jazy3 · 4 years

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Thoughts on Grey’s Anatomy: 16X20

I liked this episode for the most part, but I did not like the ending. It made no sense to me as pretty much everything to do with DeLuca and the hot mess that is his character does. It was heartbreaking watching Richard be sick and get worse as the episode went on. My heart broke for Meredith and Maggie. Also where the hell was Hayes this episode? He was at the Conference last week and he helped Maggie get Richard off the stage. At the beginning of the episode we see Maggie and Richard heading back on a private plane, but don’t see Teddy or Cormac anywhere. What did they have them fly commercial?

But then Teddy shows up back at the hospital going about her business so obviously they all made it back okay. Where the heck was he? He saw Richard’s presentation and he’s a close personal friend of Meredith’s so obviously he’d want to help figure out what’s wrong with Richard. He’s the head of Pediatric Surgery for crying out loud and he’s lived in three countries. Wouldn't they want his expertise? He should have been in that War Room!

Also I hate the fact that where Hayes was wasn’t addressed. I know that he’s currently billed as a recurring guest start so I get why he can’t be in every episode, but his absence from this one made no sense. Especially because there have been times when they’ve had him in an episode, but he played a small role. Like in the episode “Give a Little Bit” where Meredith headed up a pro bono surgery day. Hayes was there, but he wasn’t super prominent.

So they’re clearly okay with doing that which makes his absence from this episode all the more baffling. I’m also just genuinely confused as to how that works because I get that there are different rules as to how many episodes an actor is in based on how they are billed I get that. But they brought Teddy back as a reoccurring character and then upped her to a main character again. But following that she’s only been in ¾ of the episodes each season. I looked at the episode count and DeLuca’s been in more episodes in the last two seasons than Teddy has.

That makes no sense. Teddy’s character pre-dates DeLuca’s existence as a character by several years. And he’s not a good character! He’s not nice, he’s not interesting, he’s not a good doctor, or a brilliant surgeon. I get that they like the actor, but what the hell? It also makes me sad that there were likely more episodes planned that had Hayes (and Teddy) in them, but we won’t get to see them this season because it was cut short and instead are forced to endure DeLuca prancing around our screens being an idiot.

I don't see why they seem to like him so much. His character is awful and that’s their own fault. They made him this complete asshole and they keep giving him all this screen time when the majority of fans just don’t care and it takes away from other characters that we actually care about that we could be seeing. Also it’s their own fault. They made him into an asshole. He didn’t have to be. They could have made DeLuca a likeable character that we actually cared about, but they chose not to which makes their choice to give more screen time extra baffling.

Also I hated that they didn’t explain where he was at all. It would have taken one line to explain that. They could have said he decided to stay an extra couple of days in LA so that his boys could spend more time with their Aunt or said he was treating a critical patient and that’s why he was unavailable. But they didn’t address it all! Or if they did it was so quick that I missed it.

I also felt like there was a great set up in this episode for Hayes in that it would have been great to see him supporting Meredith as a friend and confidant as well as supporting the other doctors as he has good working relationships with most of them and can obviously tell that Richard means a great deal to all of them. He should have been there dammnit! He should have been in that War Room. It would have been great to see him bring Meredith a coffee or a tea as he’s done in the past. I would have loved to have seen her confide in him and talk about how she was feeling.

Instead, we had to put up with DeLuca and more of his nonsense. After being suspended and riding off into the abyss on his motorcycle he’s back for some reason. He somehow got past security and into Richard’s hospital room after kidnapping a patient and having to be surrounded and then escorted out. Security is sleeping on the job in this place I tell you. Bailey finds him talking to Richard about squirrels at the park. Literally. Effing squirrels. What the actual heck? I don’t understand why Bailey didn’t call for an immediate psych consult.

DeLuca is clearly still unwell and he needs treatment not the brush off. WTF? He tells her he heard the news about what had happened to Richard and came to visit. Bailey is not happy. He’s violating the terms of his suspension by being there. Can they just fire him already? They definitely have the grounds to do it at this point. He tells Bailey that him and Richard hang out socially and he’s there visiting a friend. Seriously? Since when? The last time they hung out socially was before Richard knew he was dating Maggie. That was ages ago. They’re not friends. They don’t hang out. He’s just inserting himself into a situation because he can.

Bailey tells him to get the hell out and sends him away which should have been the end of it. As the episode ends we see Meredith enter the research library. In her voice over she talks about how there are moments she wishes she could relive and ones that she wishes she could forget or do differently and that no matter what she does they keep coming back to haunt her. I expected her to sit down on the floor and start reading like she did with Cristina in the pilot when they were trying to help Derek treat Katie Bryce. It would have been a great callback and an amazing parallel.

Instead we get more of DeLuca and his nonsense. Meredith enters the library and sits down at one of the tables. The camera pans over and we see DeLuca sitting there with a pile of books. Seriously how did he get in there? They’ve established that the library has a special code lock that only certain people have access to and DeLuca’s been suspended and was personally kicked out by the Chief of Surgery for violating the terms of his suspension. Security should have escorted him off the premises. How in the heck did he get into the library?

Meredith is there to work and try to figure out what’s wrong with Richard. She surmises correctly that DeLuca is also trying to figure it out. She asks him what he’s got so far and in response DeLuca mocks the fact that he’s mentally ill and is refusing to admit it or seek treatment. What the hell? Mental Illness is no laughing matter and I just don’t understand where they are going with this storyline. Are they trying to make Meredith and DeLuca friends now? They still have nothing in common and he still hasn't picked a specialty! Pick a lane!

Meredith and DeLuca broke up over his own insecurities. Meredith was annoyed and then she moved on and then instead of apologizing DeLuca kept trying to gaslight her and say he didn’t actually break up with her. She slept with him once and they briefly got back together, but then he started spiralling out of control and she tried to get him some help. In response DeLuca became violent and aggressive and broke up with her multiple times over the next several episodes and made it clear he wanted nothing to do with her.

Then he drove off into the abyss and Meredith clearly wasn’t that concerned about it. Now he’s back, clearly still unwell, and is making fun of the fact that he’s unwell. What the heck? They keep switching what they are doing with him and I just don’t get it. Having Meredith and him break up and go their separate ways amicably? Fine. Having them have this explosive blow up and she moves on? Also fine. Having him get sick and got out in this blaze of glory? Sure. Having Meredith and DeLuca become friends, end on good terms, and have her move on with Hayes? Fine. But pick one!

They keep flip flopping around like a fish out of water and I don’t get it. Which is one of the reasons I don’t like his character because he’s all over the map. He’s super inconsistent all the time. What DeLuca needs at this point is rest and treatment, but he’s clearly refused to do both those things and Meredith can’t force him so she might as well use what he’s got. I wish Meredith had actually said that instead of just implying it through her words and actions.

It also bothers me that they inserted DeLuca into an episode about Richard being sick. This is a storyline about the characters we know and love rallying around one of their own to help him get better. How dare they insert DeLuca into this when he has no place being there. Him and Meredith are not together and he has no friends and his only close relationship is with his sister. I just don’t get what they are going for here. Him and Meredith are clearly not getting back together.

He’s mentally unstable and violent which means he can’t be alone or anywhere near her kids or her pregnant sister. I honestly don't understand how Meredith was comfortable being alone in the library with him late at night after he punch a wall in frustration and Hayes had to step in to help her. He also isn’t at all concerned about how Richard’s illness is affecting Meredith, Maggie, or Amelia. He heard the news and decided to sneak back into the hospital to try and diagnose him and save the day. He didn’t call or text his ex-girlfriends or his former mentor to see how they were doing at all. Meredith just happened to stumble upon him hiding out in the library.

On top of that there’s no way Meredith and DeLuca can be together long term because he doesn’t want to be a part of her family. He was only ever interested in her. And that’s not my opinion that’s what DeLuca actually said. When Jackson tried to help him out with Zola he straight up told him he doesn’t want to be anyone’s Dad. Meredith has three kids. He has made absolutely no effort with her friends or family who lets not forget openly hate him and he’s fine with that. None of their scenes have been romantic in any way since their hookup. They’ve all been instances of Meredith expressing concern and trying to help DeLuca or them working together on a case.

Last week’s episode was fantastic and I gotta admit this one had me right up until the end. There was such a great set up and I really thought that in the following episodes we were going to see Meredith and Hayes interact more and see them move forward romantically. Instead he was conspicuously absent and we had to put up with this nonsense. That’s the other thing that frustrates me. Prior to this there was a good set up for Hayes to ask Meredith out and for them to start dating. Now there isn’t.

Richard is sick and Hayes knows that which makes it a weird time for him to ask Meredith out. They also didn’t explain where the heck he was this episode and why he was missing from all the action which puts that in a weird place. On the other hand, Meredith could use some joy in her life and I’d love to see their relationship move forward after so much build up. I’m worried that there was more planned on this front and we won’t get to see it until later because of the shutdown.

I felt so bad for Meredith when she kept insisting that it wasn’t Alzheimer’s because she knows the disease so well because she had a front row seat to it with Ellis when it was obvious that it was clearly one of the possibilities. The scene where Meredith finds Richard in the OR and is forced to confront that it is a possibility and had to talk him down from hurting himself was gut wrenching. At first I panicked because I thought he was actually operating on someone and then I was horrified when they showed that he was actually hallucinating and trying to operate on himself.

When he didn’t recognize Meredith and called her Ellis my heart broke for both of them. It also reminded me of the scene years ago when Adele got sick and came to the hospital to see Richard and thought Meredith was Ellis and kept telling her to let him go. And if that’s what Richard’s seeing that also creates problems for Meredith trying to help him or be around him because he and Ellis were having an affair and if he thinks Meredith is Ellis she can’t be around him when he’s in that state of mind.

I hope they can figure out what’s wrong with him and find a way to fix him or improve his quality of life in some way. I hope he doesn’t go out like this. He’s a great character whose come a long way and has worked really hard to get there. Also Meredith cannot lose anyone else she really can’t. I thought it was a bit odd the way they did the scenes with Richard and Maggie and talking about her as his daughter. They are family, but she didn’t grow up with him around and Richard didn’t even know that Maggie existed until a few years ago.

They’re close, but Meredith and Richard are closer. She’s known him the longest. He’s been like a father to her since she was three. He got fired standing by her and lost his marriage over that. They have an incredible bond and I felt like they should have emphasized that more. I thought the storyline with Tom and his ex-wife and her sick child was interesting but also kind of frustrating. Greg Germann did an amazing job portraying Tom in this episode. He captured the feelings that were going through Tom’s mind perfectly.

As soon as Amelia’s started experiencing pain early on in the episode I knew they were going to come back to that, but I had a feeling she wouldn’t give birth just yet because that deserves it’s own episode. Amelia and Link were super cute this episode! They’re going to be great parents! I loved Link’s comment that his life as he knew it is going to be over soon and Jo’s comment that he had a good run. Link going “Yeah I did,” with that smirk! He had a good run and now it’s time for a new adventure! Jo and Levi were hilarious and adorable this episode. I’m glad to see that Jo is getting her groove back and not letting what happened with Alex hold her back.

I’m glad that Tom and Amelia were able to help Guthrie. He seemed like a great kid and I’m glad he’s going to get better. Real talk though his ex-wife Dana is a horrible person for bringing him to Grey Sloan and just springing him on Tom like that when he looks so much like their dead son David. What the heck? Also did anyone else notice how old Dana and her second husband looked? They looked ancient compared to Koracick which means either Tom is a lot older than we thought and has just aged really well or Tom is a lot younger than Dana and her second husband. Also did anyone else find it strange that her second husband didn’t really seem to know who Tom was or the history there?

He spoke to him like a stranger. That’s definitely not the man Dana left Tom for after David died which implies that her previous relationship ended and then she remarried to someone else. Teddy pissed me off so much in this episode! When we were watching the episode I ran out of words to describe my feelings so I spent a good part of the episode flopping my hands in front of me like a discontented seabird in an effort to describe my reaction to my best friend who was watching with. She said it was hilarious. I’m sorry you all missed it.

God this woman. I’m not even that invested in Teddy as a character. I like her and I think she’s interesting to watch, but I’m not a hard core fun. But I could not with her this episode. I can’t even. She needs to pick a lane and stay there. One episode she’s happy and in love with Owen and they’re raising all these kids together and they’re getting married. Next she’s unhappy and having an affair with Tom and lying to Owen about it. Then we find out Allison wasn’t just her best friend, but her lover and she named her baby after her and it’s implied that Owen doesn’t know any of that.

This episode she’s running around supporting Tom through a difficult time like they’re a couple and then she turns around and has sex with Owen in a supply closet and tells him she wants to get married this weekend. Owen still doesn't know about the affair. What the hell Teddy? You can love many people, but you can’t be with all of them at the same time unless everyone knows that and is on board and clearly they are not. Pick a lane woman! Pick a lane!

Catherine was all around awful in this episode as she has been for the last little while. She briefly redeemed herself in my eyes when she played along with Richard about her being at the Conference because I thought that was a really good idea, but then she went off on Jackson and everyone else for not being able to do the impossible. She essentially called them stupid because they couldn’t magically figure out what was wrong with Richard after she bought his hospital out from under him and left him.

Catherine gets mad and asks how they didn’t see that something was wrong, but like Jackson says they did see that something was wrong. They thought he was depressed because of what Catherine did to him which was a perfectly logical conclusion until he started hallucinating publicly. They’re doctors, not psychics. It’s Catherine’s own fault that they didn’t see this. If she hadn’t left him or bought Pac North out from under him she would have been there when he started deteriorating and the symptoms would have been more obvious to those around him.

The patient of the week was funny I’ll admit although they left it a bit too open ended for my liking. Is she just like that now? Does she just keep singing forever? Are they going to follow up on that? We are left with more questions than answers. Due to the shutdown caused by COVID-19 it looks like the next episode will be the last of this season. I’m disappointed but there’s no way anyone could have predicted this. My hope is that they’ll tack the remaining four episodes onto next season.

Until next time!

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wrestlingisfake · 4 years

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Bound for Glory preview

Eric Young vs. Rich Swann - Young is defending the Impact Wrestling world championship. This is only Swann’s second match since suffering a legit knee injury in January. He returned to the ring for a five-way title match at Slammiversary on July 18, where he eliminated Young. Eric “reinjured” Swann’s leg to cost him that match; when Swann was forced to “retire” on August 4, Young assaulted him again. Since then Young has gone on to win the world title, while Swann has been doing a whole “come out of retirement for revenge” storyline.

It’s funny to think about how these guys are headlining this show, considering that most fans would probably remember them best for being lost in the shuffle at WWE. But this is Impact’s level, and it has been for years. Just because these guys would be working a dark match on Smackdown doesn’t mean they can’t have a compelling main event here in a much smaller pond.

The basic “Rocky movie” approach to booking this feud would be to have Swann overcome adversity to conquer his most dangerous rival and finally win the big one. But Impact has a long history of trying to outthink that logic, and I have a long memory of them swerving away from big coronation moments. It was only a few months ago, in fact, that they were building up Ace Austin for an inevitable run on top, and then they just...didn’t do that. So Swann might win, or they might tell a story that he has a lot of ring rust to shake off before he beat Young. Nevertheless, my gut still says Swann wins the title here.

Alex Shelley & Chris Sabin vs. Doc Gallows & Karl Anderson vs. Ethan Page & Josh Alexander vs. Ace Austin & Madman Fulton - This is a four-way match for the Impact tag team title, currently held by the Motor City Machine Guns (Shelly and Sabin). Per standard four-way rules, the only way to win is by pinfall or submission, and the first man to score a fall on any opponent wins the match and the title for his team.

The North (Page and Alexander) held the title for just over a full year as various other teams broke up or drifted away from Impact, so they got to be able to say they cleaned out the division. Then Sabin and Shelley came in as the wily veterans to get a big push (which is sort of ironic when you consider their history with this company). Austin and Fulton came together earlier this year as a “rising top heel and his enforcer” act, but they ended up as a tag team when they began feuding with the Good Brothers (Gallows and Anderson). All along, there’s been a sense that the Machine Guns are just keeping the titles warm until they put over the Good Brothers.

I could see any of these teams getting the title, but it’s pretty clear Gallows and Anderson are top attractions in this company, so one way or another the title picture is going to revolve around them. One interesting wrinkle is that the Good Brothers plan to work for both Impact and New Japan, and New Japan has a tag team tournament coming up, leading into their biggest show of the year. If I’m Don Callis, I want to send Gallows and Anderson to Japan for a couple of months to soak up that exposure, and I’d want them do it while wearing Impact title belts. I’m probably getting ahead of myself with that speculation, but since I’ve got no other clear way to pick a winner, I’ll let that be why I’m going with Doc and Karl.

Deonna Purrazzo vs. Kylie Rae - Purrazzo is defending the Impact women’s title. Kylie earned this title shot by winning a battle royale on July 18, the same night Purrazzo won the championship. Since then Kylie has won the Warrior Wrestling women’s title, but that belt isn’t at stake here.

It was just about a year ago that Kylie debuted here, coming off a surprisingly abrupt exit from AEW. It’s always felt like Impact wanted to do a slow build to her as the face of the women’s division. And yet, Impact has also given Purrazzo a strong push since her debut in May. Each of them would be my pick to win against any other woman in the company right now. But against one another, it’s real tough to choose. Feels like almost every match on this card is a pick-’em, which is a good thing.

I’m gonna go with Kylie to win just because she makes me happy.

EC3 vs. Moose - Moose has spent most of the year as the self-proclaimed “TNA world champion,” but EC3 stole his belt and I’m not sure what happened to it and I’m not sure either guy still cares about it at this point. EC3 gained his widest exposure to fans in his NXT/WWE run, but Impact viewers know he really made his name in this promotion, back when it was called TNA. “EC3” literally stands for “Ethan Carter III,” from when his gimmick was that he was the (kayfabe) nephew of longtime TNA owner Dixie Carter.

The story is that after EC3 was laid off from WWE, he decided he had to exorcise his old failures, which I guess are symbolized by Moose carrying around the belt he once held. So EC3 started interfering in Moose matches and stalking him and playing cryptic videos for him and other weird stuff. This has been going on since July but EC3 has yet to wrestle for Impact in all that time. Aside from a couple of indie shows, and some ROH stuff that hasn’t aired yet, this will be his first match in 2020.

Back in July I assumed that EC3 would sign with Impact. Then when I heard he was doing stuff with ROH, I figured it was a side project before he fully committed to Impact. But after three months with no Impact matches, I’m starting to wonder if his Impact deal is a one-and-done. Actually, the fact I’m wondering that helps the match, since if I was sure he was sticking around, it’d be super obvious that he has to beat Moose. As it is, I’m still leaning toward EC3 winning, but that little doubt in my head will keep it interesting.

Eddie Edwards vs. Ken Shamrock - I lost the plot on this one, but as I recall Edwards had a vicious feud with Sami Callihan in 2018, and then Shamrock had a vicious feud with Callihan earlier this year, and now Shamrock and Callihan both hate Edwards for some reason. Incidentally Shamrock is being inducted into Impact’s hall of fame this weekend, so it’s kind of weird that they decided now is the time to turn him heel.

I think the easiest way to sum both of these guys up is that neither of them knows when to quit. They both look grizzled and stopped-giving-a-fuck, which makes them scary in the way that convicts in movies seem scary. Now that I think about it, I’m surprised it took so long for this match to happen.

The x-factor here is Callihan, who will undoubtedly be interfering on behalf of Shamrock. I don’t know who the hell Eddie can get to counteract that; usually when he needs backup it ends up being his wife Alisha, which works better than you might expect but still not all that well. I guess if Davey Richards was going to return, this would be a cool way to set it up. But failing that, I don’t think Eddie can win this match.

Rohit Raju vs. Chris Bey vs. TJP vs. Jordynne Grace vs. Trey Miguel vs. Willie Mack - Raju’s “X division” title is on the line. This is being billed as a “six-way scramble match.” I tend to think that’s just a cute name for a standard six-way match, where whoever scores the first fall on any opponent wins the match and the title. Of course, in WWE a “scramble match” was a specific stipulation where whoever scores the last fall in a specified time period is the winner. But I think if Impact was trying to bring those rules back, they’d have made a bigger deal about it, and I would have heard something about it by now.

The backstory here is that Bey was getting a big push and beat Mack for the title, and Raju started lobbying to be his henchman. This led to Bey vs. Raju vs. TJP, with the idea that Raju would help Bey against TJP, but Raju went into business for himself and won the title. So now everybody is gunning for Raju, including Trey for some reason I forget, and I think Grace just got thrown in there to make it more interesting. Basically, Raju was a prelim guy before any of this happened, and he’d be the underdog against any of these opponents, so you’re supposed to think he’s doomed in a match against all of them.

I’m a tad surprised Grace is involved, because it wasn’t all that long ago that it was Tessa Blanchard as the woman chasing the X title, and then the world title, and that didn’t work out so well. Then again, Tessa’s gender was hardly the reason that run fell apart, so maybe Impact is determined to do it again until they get it right. Thing is, if you want to seriously present a woman winning a men’s championship, you want the champion that puts her over to be stronger than Rohit Raju. So if they’re gonna do it, I’d say they should do it later, with Grace challenging one of the other guys for the title one-on-one.

Anyone could win this match, but it’s a real old trick to have the most hated heel be the biggest underdog, and then he steals a win after his opponents destroy each other. So I’m going with Rohit to retain.

20-person “Call Your Shot” gauntlet match - This is a timed interval gauntlet match, similar to WWE’s Royal Rumble. Two participants start the match, and each additional participant enters at regular intervals. (I don’t think they’ve said how long the intervals are, but I’m guessing 90 seconds or two minutes or something.) For most of the match, a competitor can only be eliminated by leaving the ring over the top rope and placing both feet on the floor; however, once all but two wrestlers are eliminated, the rules change so they can only lose by pinfall or submission. The last person left in the match is the winner and earns the right to a title match against the champion of their choice.

So far Impact has confirmed eleven participants, seven men and four women:

Acey Romero, of the XXXL tag team

Alisha Edwards, whose last singles victory in this company was in 2018 against AEW’s Rebel/Reba

Brian Myers, formerly known as Curt Hawkins in WWE

Havok, aka Jessicka Havok in the indies

Heath, formerly Heath Slater in WWE, with the gimmick that he hasn’t yet secured a contract to work for Impact

Hernandez, once a rising star in TNA, now some sleazy guy backstage with a giant wad of cash

Larry D, Romero’s partner in XXXL

Rhino, the former ECW/WWE star who’s been trying to help Heath get signed

Taya Valkyrie, probably best known from AAA and Lucha Underground

Tenille Dashwood, formerly Emma in NXT and WWE

Tommy Dreamer, the ECW legend, who has been feuding with Myers

The order of entry is supposed to be random, but the results of an October 20 match slotted Hernandez as the last entrant and Rhino as the first. The added stipulation for Rhino and Heath is that their jobs are on the line: If either of them wins, Rhino stays and Heath is signed, but if neither of them win, Rhino is fired and Heath can’t keep coming around asking for work.

It feels like this match has to end with Rhino or Heath winning, to pay off that storyline. In fact, I could easily see it being a deal where one appears to be eliminated, and hides off-camera until the other is thrown out, and then Josh Matthews can play Michael Cole being all shocked that there’s still hope. It feels so obvious that I’ve seen speculation that Heath needs to turn on Rhino right after one of them wins, to keep it interesting. But I think we’re all overlooking the alternative, where they’re both kicked out of the company but nevertheless keep appearing in comedy skits for weeks until they get some other chance to earn contracts. Personally, I’d just keep it simple and have Heath win leading to Heath and Rhino challenging for the tag title.

Dez & Wentz vs. Cody Deaner & Cousin Jake - This is being advertised for the pre-show. Dez (Desmond Xavier) and Wentz (Zachary Wentz) are, along with Trey Miguel, the stoner team of the Rascalz. Cody Deaner has been Impact’s resident redneck good-ol’ boy on and off for years. Jake is better known on the indie scene as Jake Something, the current Black Label Pro champion. Between the two teams, I think Impact is more committed to pushing the Rascalz, but this is another one where it could really go either way. This whole show has been really hard to predict. Let’s hope it still seems unpredictable after it’s over.

#impact wrestling #bound for glory #eric young #rich swann

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capri-ramblings · 4 years

Text

Midnight Beasts, CNCO Imagines +Special Insert

This is a mess,but okay ♥️.

•Richard

He's been your best friend since childhood,and the two of you were inseparable. Wherever little red hood went,her wolf was close to follow.

He was no Big Bad Wolf though. Far from it,really.

He was always afraid of revealing his true self, especially with the person he vowed his loyalty to. In his eyes you were too good for him,too human. Whereas he saw himself as a monster, something to be put down.

"You'll hurt her" This keeps him on edge. Keeps him believing that maybe one day,he will hurt you. And then what? The thought had him baring his teeth and clenching his fists.

You've always wondered why he kept to himself sometimes,how in one minute he's hugging and laughing with you and in another he's built this wall between the two of you. He didn't seem as free as he was when you were both younger. There was a restraint you saw in him but could never manage to figure out. It was like trying to find him in a sea of people but constantly losing him instead. Each passing day,you felt him drift further away from you. You're conflicted; A part of you wants to confront him about it. "What's wrong with you?", "What's happening with us?", "Are you okay?",and then there's the other part, the softer, much less angrier part that's too afraid to force him out of a shell he isn't ready to leave yet.

"I don't want to hurt him" This thought has you staying up late at night,wrapped in a blanket that you wished were his arms instead.

•Erick

You've been in this old town too long to not have known what really ruled over it,or who rules over it. The local Werewolves here didn't even bother to hide it, but you hid the fact that you knew. Mostly because you weren't really interested in getting tangled up in all that drama, and because to be honest,you weren't really interested in them whatsoever. They were all too... Wolfy? If you had to describe it. They seemed to have no control over their Impulses or instincts, always needing to mark what they own and go around howling at night to warn people of their prowess.

They looked like humans but acted more like beasts than ever.

You weren't into the whole vibe of it, of course until the young pack of wolves showed up and butchered literally any prejudices you had for their species in one single clap. Unlike the ones you grew up with, these males knew what being in control was and they did it without being animals about it. There were five of them,all well-built and dominating in their own way, yet they worked perfectly well together. Almost like actual blood brothers. You remember meeting one of them at the grocers once, and how different it was to talk to him. How human and casual it felt.

The other packs hated them with some exceptions of smaller packs joining alliances with them.

If that wasn't enough, you couldn't keep your eyes off the youngest one.

"He's a lil too young for me" You tell your friend at the bar, and yet had your gaze fixated on him like a magnet. He sat at the table right across the room, surrounded by the other wolves. They were laughing and although he was too, he seemed as if he was in an entirely different zone than theirs. Gaze still and hooded, the dark themed club illuminated his forest green eyes like a temple, and when he glanced your way, lingering, you lost your breath and then your heart.

•Christopher

You could train a monkey and it would be more successful than trying to train your overly enthusiastic, optimistic and jokester nextdoor neighbor.

It wasn't that you disliked him, Chris was someone very easy and pleasant to be around. Almost everyone wanted to be his friend and have him cracking jokes at their parties,but you never had parties (never wanted to), you weren't always in the mood for jokes and sometimes having someone who always seemed ready to jump just at the mention of your name was a bit stressful. Still, you didn't hate him.

Unlike all those TV dramas and teen books that portrayed his kind as unstable and constantly on edge, Chris rarely ever lashed out on you or turned to his Werewolf nature. There were days you even doubted that he was one until you almost got mugged once and he lunged in to help you; The happy-go-lucky demeanor he carried gone as he stood in front of you and bared his teeth,eyes bright and gleaming with the intent to kill. You could never get that Image out of your head, but you trusted him, so the fear vanished quickly.

If only the annoyance did as well. *sigh*

He doesn't leave you to your space at all, you don't even think he understands the meaning of personal space. The books and series got one thing right at least; He was protective.

"Jesus Christ,I can walk home perfectly well alone."

"But mi amor, what if someone jumps out from a bush and hurts you?"

"I think someone else is going to get hurt if they don't leave me alone"

•Zabdiel

When you first see him, he has his lips on another woman's. Hands gripping a waist that would break so easily in his grasp as she leans in against him.

His eyes peaking through dark lashes as heavy as the focus dwelling in those deep set of brooding brown gaze.

You watch him and notice how he looks at you as if the woman he held didn't exist.

A voice. A name. Your friend is calling out to you, you turns around,head slightly dizzy as if you've already started drinking.

That night, nothing was as loud as the sound of your pulse beating in your ears each time your mind went back to him.

He's aloof, or seems to be at first, when you meet again it's because your friend was a friend of his and decided to drag you along to hangout. A part of you flinched at the sight of him,this odd sense of intimidation holding your head down, while the other part had you feeling giddy, too excited to say you weren't at least attracted to him. You kept your distance however,never letting your friend leave you alone whether or not he was near. The thought of being around him for too long and without any kind of support seemed all too dangerous.

But,you couldn't keep yourself from stealing glances his way, couldn't help but wonder if he remembers you.

His friends were so friendly, attentively listening and making you feel at ease, all the while he sat on the sofa with his legs parted, and arms stretched across the sofa's headrest. He smiled once in a while, let out a little laugh out of courtesy, but you didn't feel like he was really letting you in. It was more like he placed a mirror in front of it all and leaned against it for the illusion of being friendly.

Now you saw him as an overly powering male with no actual interest in anything other than his ego and image, and you were pissed.

"I think I'm gonna head home first" You tell your friend as you stood up and grabbed your things.

"It's still early tho—"

"I've got somewhere else to go"

You didn't let her say anything else as you bristled pass her, head held high and temper fuming. You weren't entirely sure why but you know he could've at least acted like he was interested just a little bit more, and not as if he was doing it because his friends told him to. As if you didn't exist in his radar at all.

Caught up in your frustration, you barely noticed the male tailing behind you and only realized it a bit too late when you went to open the door but it closed right in front of you instead.

"What?" You swirl around ready to lash out, yet unprepared for the intense gaze that immediately froze you in place.

Zabdiel loomed over you like the sky, expression unreadable.

Your breath hitched, words lost.

He looks you over,eyes deliberately drinking in your form before it shifts to your lips and then straight to your eyes.

He leans in,your eyes shut close.

Then a voice; "There's pizza in the fridge, we're gonna heat it up later. You should stay."

•Joel

"You don't get it" Joel throws his hands in the air, frustration glistening in the brown of his eyes,and you watch as he paces from the sofa to the kitchen counter like an upset child.

"Joelito, you're a werewolf not a three headed donkey,stop stressing"

"How does that make me stop stressing?" He glares at you, eyes narrowed "You're bad at this,I should've went to Ricky instead."

You thought Christopher was a handful but being in charge with a werewolf like Joel was like Hell's kitchen. Anything could be set on fire, and all because he makes it sound like everything was flammable.

Out of all the five, Joel was the one most worried about being what he was. Or at least he acted like the world was constantly ending because of it.

He needed to keep up his image,had to make sure it wasn't obvious he wasn't entirely human. He fussed over every tiny detail. It was overbearing, but you knew he meant well by it. He cared,not only about himself but about the other guys too. He knew how risky it was if people found out,knew what each guy was putting on the line. He couldn't afford to let it slip.

He was grateful you're constantly by his side,he's not going to admit it (even when everyone else already knows) but he's had a crush on you for a long time,and despite it all, he found confiding in you the most comforting thing ever. He could tell you all his secrets and doubts,and not worry about being put down. You understood him, and even when you didn't you always try to understand. You kept him grounded, and he'd risk his life to keep you safe.

•Yashua

He's the one in the gang that doesn't seem to fit like a puzzle piece but brings a whole new charm to it regardless. The loner and at the same time the one who has his Pack's back anytime.

People gather around him, laughing, enjoying themselves, and he always finds a way to loosen up anyone who isn't having fun.

And yet, as you learn to take time and really observe him, you've come to realize how there's this impenetrable wall around him. You notice the little things he does,how he stays quiet and watches any newcomers before really going out there and interact. As if every move he makes has already been calculated.

It took you a whole day to have him actually say something to you, and that was after everything had died down and people were getting ready to head home, he was friendly though. When he told you to take care and stay safe on your way back, you heard the genuineness in his voice and warmth in the way his lips curved into a small smile.

It was funny,but after seeing that you couldn't help but to smile yourself all the way home.

He was charming, and it showed in the way people's eyes lit up when he made jokes and fooled around. He dresses and sometimes acts like he's one of the young pups but you got the feeling it was a cover up. He wasn't as reckless as the younger wolves you knew, and he wasn't dumb either. It showed in the way his gaze would sharpen and dim just a bit whenever a situation happens,as if he's studying it all with a keen eye and an ever keener mind.

The way his body asserts his dominance is loud but the way he keeps to the back of the group during outings and chills around with the older members makes him seem quiet, intense even.

But then again,there's days when he's the loudest of them all, not bothering to hide the fact that he could out alpha anyone present.

He was something hard to decipher, someone not so one layered. Maybe that's why you find yourself falling.

@whymyeyeslikethat @cnco-hq

#cnco #cnco headcanon #cncowners #cnco imagine #cnco richard #cnco erick #cnco joel #cnco zabdiel #cnco christopher #yashua #yashua camacho #Werewolf Au #cnco au #romance

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