#like it’s literally based on the most famous affair in history | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

richmond-rex · 1 year

Note

Hi! I saw a previous ask regarding Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, and it mentioned Jane Shore who I love deeply and have some meandering thoughts on.

Jane’s historiography has always been very interesting to me, because she was one of the most popula historical dramatic figures of the 16th century, particularly the Elizabethan Era. The issue, I suppose, is that this automatically obfuscates the historical veracity regarding her actual life, because 16th century depictions of her are very obviously *meant* to be sensational and romantic. Even her name is a historical construction: Jane, when she was actually called Elizabeth. However, her contemporary relationship with Edward IV is, frankly, completely and bafflingly unknown. As the previous anon pointed out, the first one to actually write about it was Thomas More; Rosemary Horrox also points out that More is the first one to actually link Jane romantically to Edward in her odnb piece. More, however, was only a 4 or 5-year-old child at the time of Edward IV’s death, and wrote his piece *30 years later*, making his work distinctly non-contemporary. To put it very bluntly, with that much distance, there is no way More would have known the intimate details of Edward IV’s sex life which, as I’ll elaborate later, weren’t even mentioned by his contemporaries. This is compounded by his assertion that it was Elizabeth Lucy who Edward secretly married (which More ultimately denounces, so it can’t have been for political reasons) rather than Eleanor Butler.

To be honest, Jane’s utter lack of mention in contemporary records is startling. It is improbable to the point of impossible that a supposedly beloved and influential royal mistress of *seven years*, who was not only a commoner and a resident of London but had infamously divorced her husband and allegedly spent time at court, would have remained utterly unrecorded in contemporary times until a non-contemporary wrote a fairly idealized account of her thirty years later. There are quite a few surviving letters from ambassadors/courtiers, there are court records, and regarding Jane herself, we have records of her divorce proceedings and her father’s will that indicated she had a child with her second husband. What remains completely absent in contemporary records is her presence at the court and her supposedly famous 7-year long love affair with Edward IV. This is in stark contrast to Alice Perrers and Rosamond Clifford, to shorter flings like Nest ferch Rhys and Damette, to literally any other mistress in medieval or ancient history who gained their fame during their royal lover’s actual tenure of power. Moreover, as anon mentioned, More’s writing is directly contradicted by the Croyland Chronicle. I know you mentioned that his more general comment may be due to personal tastes, but 1) frankly, a personality-based argument could be made for More himself, who was a humanist writer and believed that embellishments were necessary to make history more interesting and valuable (and, again, replaced Eleanor Butler with Elizabeth Lucy), 2) that doesn’t change the fact that the picture painted by an actual contemporary record (a king who conducts short-term sexual flings) is absurdly different from the one painted by More (where he had mistresses but only famously loved Jane) and between the two, I think the contemporary record should definitely be given more weight; and 3) the Croyland Chronicle’s short account is corroborated almost precisely by Mancini’s. Mancini isn’t 100% reliable himself, but as a visitor to England who arrived at the end of Edward's reign, he would have surely observed and spoken to people, and he mentions the exact same thing as Croyland regarding Edward’s womanizing: namely, that he pursued many women, with absolutely no mention of a 7-year long beloved and influential mistress. Rather than being the “exception” to Edward’s rule, assuming she was his mistress as More claims, she fit entirely into the regular pattern of mistresses: no specific mention and no specifically mentioned influence, certainly not at court. This is replicated in More’s own contemporaries: Virgil doesn’t mention Jane, either, despite his access to a wide range of sources, including John Morton, and despite his negative portrayal of Elizabeth Woodville. I say this to point out that Jane’s absence in literally all contemporary records for *7 years*, as well as her absence in contemporary commentors, is very, very glaring, and doesn’t really give More’s account of her a lot of weight when it comes to historical accuracy. I think anon's right when they wonder if the Croyland Chronicle (and Mancini) should be considered more Ccueats.

You mentioned her “political power” but I think that’s a wrong term to use because she certainly didn’t have that. She had no land or titles; she had no formal court position and she wasn’t part of the queen’s household like Alice Perrers was. What she would have had (presuming More’s account of her is 100% accurate, which is doubtful and met with a near-absence of contemporary proof), is personal influence with the king which would have vanished after his death. However, regarding her arrest and punishment, it’s worth noting that it was primarily connected to her relations (romantic or otherwise) with *Hastings and/or Dorset* (Fabyan’s Great Chronicle, for instance, connects her to Hastings with no mention of Edward at all), the latter of whom was clearly hated and disparaged by Richard III; it’s possible his humiliation of her was tied to that. It’s also worth noting that Richard himself never accused her of being Edward IV’s mistress (as Alice Perrers, for instance, was accused of being Edward III's mistress rather than his best friend and stepson's) even though this would have been the logical and obvious thing to do; after all, it would humiliate her AND reinforce the sexual licentiousness of his brother who Richard was actively slandering. But Edward is not mentioned in relation to Jane at all until More.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that Jane’s popularity across history has only been matched with Elizabeth Woodville’s unpopularity. Tbh, I don’t know much about Elizabeth, so feel free to correct me, but whether it was conscious or unconscious, this contrast is evident from their supposed personalities – merry & generous vs haughty & avaricious, positive influence vs negative influence, etc. There are some particular anecdotes I find interesting where Jane is credited with things that should be credited to Elizabeth: More’s claim that she helped local merchants is completely unsubstantiated (whether this was in a formal or informal way, I think that at least *one* contemporary source would have mentioned a royal mistress helping the people of the city for 7 years). However, during that exact tenure (1476-1483), we know that Elizabeth Woodville famously helped reducing the sum a merchant’s league owed to the King. I’ve also seen bizarre claims from the 16th and 17th century crediting Jane with saving Eton and King’s College from Edward’s indifference, which are entirely false: it is a historic fact that Elizabeth’s influence and patronage helped save them, and they praised her accordingly. I can’t help but wonder if the literary “idea” of Jane – beautiful, popular, influential, generous to the less fortunate, helping to soothe the king’s wrath – ascribes her with an almost queenly role (in an idealized sense) that is non-existent in contemporary records and that Elizabeth has been largely deprived of till the 21st century.

So … yeah. Ultimately, when it comes to true facts, we know absolutely nothing about the nature, length or truth of Jane’s relationship with Edward IV beyond what More asserts three decades later. My personal conclusion is that More’s writing on Jane, whether or not it’s based on truth, almost certainly contains a fair degree of embellishment and romanticization. I don’t say this to disparage Jane – far from it. Her divorce from her husband, her arrest, and her very long life make her a very interesting figure, and her historiography is delightful. I hope this ask didn’t come across as too accusatory towards her or anything like that, because I love her very much; ultimately, I simply think that More’s assertions being regarded as default facts about her life are deeply grating, because they are written 30 years later and are not verified by any known contemporary records. We have no alternate sources, so I understand why they’re used, but I think that our lack of knowledge regarding their contemporary veracity, which as anon pointed out is very revealing in itself, should be explicitly acknowledged when talking about Jane.

I hope this makes sense! This was prompted by the recent ask on Edward IV and Elizabeth which mentioned Jane, but it went off on a bit of a tangent. Feel free to ignore or delete it if it’s too long and/or not particularly relevant to your blog.

[in relation to this ask]

Hi! Sorry to take some time to reply (and I say the same to all the asks sitting in my inbox at the moment), I haven't had much time to be here but I wanted to address your commentary. You make a very compelling case about Jane/Elizabeth Shore and I tend to agree. Simply put, I always want to be careful about Shore because it's very easy to dismiss the power wielded by historical women in her position due to classism etc so because I haven't read much academic work on Shore, I tend not to take such a clear stance. But you make a good point that she didn't need to be directly linked to Edward IV to be someone his brother wanted to destroy. It brought to my mind how Eleanor Cobham (duchess of Gloucester), another woman who was forced to make a public penance walk, was brought low: most likely they wanted to destroy her husband's political career, not Eleanor herself necessarily. Maybe the same logic was applied to Shore as Hasting's mistress — Hasting's execution still had to be justified and she could also be used to bismirch Thomas Grey's reputation if they could link him to some infamous woman. As to the rest, I've talked a bit about Shore's romanticisation in this other ask, though I'm unsure it survives to the same degree nowadays.

Again, sorry for the wait! 🌹x

#replies #jane shore #edward iv #thomas more #long post

17 notes · View notes

teddysgrahms · 1 year

Text

Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida

Part One: Introduction to T&C

Welcome to my unhinged recount of William Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, written in 1599 (or so some scholars have come to settle upon) and published in 1609. If you’ve never heard of this play before, I don’t blame you; it’s definitely not Shakespeare’s magnum opus. I’ll sum it up for you in short: the Trojan War, but it’s a sitcom.

This play is categorized officially as a “Shakespearean problem play,” but I like to think of it as a comedy. It has also been considered something in between a “history” and a “tragedy,” though that’s awfully generous considering how everything plays out.

If you’re not familiar with the Trojan War, essentially it’s entirely based on hurt pride, both that of the gods and mortals. The Spartan King Menelaus’ wife Helen leaves him and Greece to be with the young prince of Troy, Paris. Reasons for this vary from source to source, from Aphrodite’s intervention to actual human feelings. Menelaus and his brother Agamemnon, King of Mycenae, call all the men of Greece to arms to take siege of Troy and win Helen back. This goes on for like 10 years, but on the bright side, we get the iconic Trojan horse.

I will talk about the Trojan war another time because I would love to get into the mythology around it and The Iliad, but for now we’re focusing on Troilus and Cressida and Shakespeare’s take on the war. Before getting into the plot and analysis, we’ll spend this first post looking at the cast of characters and a bit of context surrounding Shakespeare’s characterizations. The next few posts will be plot summary with witty commentary, and then a whole bunch of analysis and even more commentary.

Finally, let’s establish that a lot of what I’m saying here is gonna be biased. I do not apologize for that. There are some things that are just the way they are, but most of it is all through my interpretation. If you’d like to experience the play firsthand, I recommend reading a pdf (there’s plenty, all of them free) or watching a shitty production on YouTube. Now, let’s move onto the characters!

Photo source: Troilus and Cressida pdf from Internet Archive

Priam

The elderly king of Troy, aka the Trojan Whore. He is famous for having fifty sons and fifty daughters. He loves his wife Hecuba, and Hector is his favorite son (real).

Hector

Trojan Prince, regarded as one of, if not the best Trojan soldier. He is logical and loyal to his father, people, and wife, Andromache.

Troilus

A young Trojan Prince, one of the titular characters, who is madly in love with Cressida.

Paris

The cucker prince of Troy who stole Helen away from Greece and started this whole damn thing. Honestly, he’s kind of a baby, and not in an endearing way.

Deiphobus

I don’t think he’s actually important like at all. Lol. Another Trojan Prince who also fights in the war.

Helenus

A Trojan Prince who is also a priest. He does not fight in the war, but his input and presence at his father’s table are important nonetheless.

Margarelon

A bastard son of Priam, meaning he is illegitimate and irrelevant. He literally appears in one scene I don’t know what to tell you.

Aeneas

A Trojan commander and friend of Troilus. He often acts as a messenger between the Greek and Trojan forces.

Antenor

Another Trojan commander whose main purpose in this play is to be a bartering chip.

Calchas

A Trojan priest having an affair with the Greek forces. He is Cressida’s father and considered a no-good traitor by the Trojans.

Pandarus

Calchas’ brother and Cressida’s uncle. He prides himself on facilitating Cressida and Troilus’ relationship. He is also one of the silliest old men ever.

Agamemnon

The Grecian general and King of Mycenae. He is stern and prideful, though not as prideful as his cuckold brother Menelaus.

Menelaus

Brother to Agamemnon and cuckold of the century. He lost his wife (who was probably less than half his age) to some skinny boy with smooth cheeks. His ego must be that big to compensate for something…perhaps that’s why Helen left.

Achilles

Aristos Achaean himself. Young prince of Phthia and arguably the strongest of the Grecian commanders. His current whereabouts are in his tent with his lover, Patroclus.

Ajax

A mighty Greek warrior. He is often ridiculed for his rather low intelligence.

Ulysses

Better known as Odysseus, the prince of Ithaca and a Greek commander. He is conniving and clever, and also my worst enemy.

Diomedes

King of Argos and cunning warrior. Good friend to Ulysses and the second biggest asshole among the Greek forces.

Nestor

King of Pylos and feisty old man. He acts as both a commander and advisor within the Grecian army.

Patroclus

Exiled prince of Opus and lover of Achilles. Well-liked by many and probably the best person morality-wise in this entire play.

Thersites

The funniest Grecian ever. All he does is spit insults and bars; he’s my hero.

Alexander

Servant to Cressida. Not sure why he’s named since he’s in literally one scene.

Helen

Wife of Menelaus currently sleeping with Paris. Regarded as the fairest woman in all of Greece, she is the face that launched a thousand ships.

Andromache

Wife of Hector. Loyal and caring Trojan lady.

Cassandra

Daughter of Priam and a prophetess. People really ought to listen to what she’s saying.

Cressida

The other titular character who is listed at the end of the cast for some reason. She is the daughter of Calchas and niece of Pandarus. Her key traits include girlboss and comedian.

Now that we’ve got a general idea of who’s who, let’s briefly discuss how Shakespeare went about characterizing these Ancient Greek figures and depicting the Trojan War.

The first big thing to note is that, since this play is a comedy, a lot of what happens is ridiculous. Every important character is a terrible person (except Patroclus he did nothing wrong), which contrasts the original portrayals of Ancient Greek figures as honorable and good. They are less figures than they are actual people in this play; many have flaws that lead to poor decisions and unfortunate turns of events. It should also be mentioned that many of these characterizations are inaccurate and exaggerated for comedic and plot purposes.

In terms of plot, Shakespeare sets the play in the eighth year of the Trojan War in a time of truce between the Greek and Trojan forces. A lot of events that happen in this play don’t actually occur during the Trojan War as it is accepted to have happened, whether in general Greek mythology or The Iliad. Shakespeare takes great creative liberty with the Trojan War and rather than focus on the war as a key plot element has it serve mostly as a setting and backdrop for what occurs.

Though the play is titled Troilus and Cressida, the plot focuses on both the “romance” of the two Trojans and the Greeks plans to knock Achilles’ ego down a peg. Overall, it’s great fun to read and watch, and I look forward to summarizing the events in a future post (or several posts.) Thank you for reading!

#shakespeare #troilus and cressida #teddy’s shakespeare #greek mythology

3 notes · View notes

hageny · 3 years

Text

Succession Thoughts: Gerri x Roman

AN: Points two and three in this post were requested by @thinkingfixatingobsessing, who wanted me to dissect those moments. Thanks goes to her for the ideas.

1. Brother Against Brother.

Roman’s introduction in Succession sees him coming back from California to congratulate Kendall on what his siblings--at this point--believe is his new position as next CEO of Waystar. We find out in this scene that Roman was once working alongside Kendall--in a position Roman only refers to as “not as high” as Kendall’s--before he was shipped off to CA for being, in his own words, “a bad fit”. The further we get into the series however, the more hindsight helps in analyzing this first scene, and we realize two important things. Firstly, when Roman claims he was not right for the company, we can almost hear Logan’s voice in the shadow of Roman’s words, saying that he was a bad fit: too incompetent, too unreliable, not enough of a shark. The more we see of their dynamic, the more we realize Logan is the one who doesn’t believe in Roman and Roman more or less parrots to others what he has been told his whole life. We can also safely assume that Roman would have remained this way--directionless, unmotivated--had he not been taken by Gerri under her wing. I’ve mentioned in other posts how her belief in him is vital to his change in direction, so I needn’t go into great detail here, but Roman--depicted as un-invested in Waystar from the get-go--is invested enough to push Gerri as CEO only one episode later, which is interesting to say the least. Secondly, we see in this scene a foundation for what will later become Roman’s motivation to betray his own family and oust them and secure power for himself. We know from later episodes that Kendall is repeatedly given passes for bad behavior and privileges his siblings don’t get, Roman in particular. This however, is a pattern that precedes the show, as we see Kendall only three years after his cocaine spiral set to take over the company in spite of a history of poor decisions while Roman is depicted as simply ‘too stupid’ to run Waystar when he doesn’t engage in the same risk-taking that his peers do, drugs included. The bitterness Roman needs to accomplish his goals has a core located in his upbringing, and grows larger as he gets batted around in lower-level jobs in the company while watching his brother sail past him to take the reigns.

2. Blank slate.

In Prague, we see Roman and Tom at Tom’s bachelor party scoping out the women and seeing if there are any that catch their eyes--particularly Tom, who is interested in exploring the opening given him by Shiv to ‘engage himself’ with other women for the evening. This marks Tabitha’s first appearance in the show, as she catches Tom’s eye, who quickly points her out to Roman, waffling whether or not to approach her. Roman attempts to make a sexual/salacious remark to describe what he might do to her, but is unable to properly express anything, saying, “Fuck yeah, I’d be all over that. I’d like...I’d fucking...arggh, fuck!”. We see here a moment that ties into Roman’s sexual hang-ups, first touched on by his first girlfriend earlier in the season, and explored in greater detail in his relationship with Tabitha. What’s key in his inability to express himself here is that Tabitha, from the beginning, before the start of her relationship with Roman, is unable to strike enough of a nerve with him for him to even be able to express how he might engage with her sexually, which is interesting given his ability to make sexually charged remarks in other settings. It also stands in stark contrast to his ability to come on to Gerri during their first moments on camera. Where he fails to find words to even say what he might do to Tabitha, even something as simple as “I’d fuck her hard”, he tells Gerri expressly that he likes to “lube up and fuck”, and while he does not necessarily mean it literally, he can still look her in the eye and flirt with her without hesitation, and proceeds to do so throughout that scene. He is later able to have phone sex with her--another scene where the show purposefully parallels his relationship with Tabitha, who he hangs up on--and tells her at that moment he wants for her to hear him masturbate to the sound of her voice--again expressly telling her sexually what he wants to do and then following through. In Hunting, he waits for her to come close to him and begin buttoning his shirt before telling her, “You know, if I were capable of any sudden movement I would totally pounce on you right now.” All of these moments spiral out of this first moment with Tabitha, where the show begins, even then, to showcase Romans’ inability to sexually engage with her while being able to do so with Gerri from the beginning. The reasons Roman is wired this way can be tied to his trauma as a child--his need for humiliation to get off with Gerri--but it can also be seen as possibly hinting that Roman and Gerri’s relationship goes back farther than we know, spelled out in his ability to flirt easily with her and engage with her in ways he cannot with younger women, and in Gerri’s ability to understand him deeply enough that she is able to please him without even sleeping with him.

3. Roman’s Wife.

The scene where Roman proposes to Gerri can probably be dissected a million ways--as can really any of the show, to be fair--but I will touch on one interesting facet of this scene. There is--as there are many times over the show--a parallelism at play here between Tabitha and Gerri. In Pre-Nuptial, Roman proposes to Tabitha by asking her, “What if I was prepared to marry you?”. When Tabitha balks at the suggestion, he elaborates that because his siblings are married, or have been, that he should be too, insinuating the decision is made more-so to follow suit. It’s not that he doesn’t like Tabitha--he precedes his proposal with a list of her best qualities, after all. It’s more-so that this scene makes it obvious that his desire to marry her doesn’t come from a desire for her as a person, merely his desire to be on-par with his siblings with regard to lifestyle choices. That proposal culminates with Tabitha asking Roman, “Do you think this is the way to get someone to stay?” to which Roman doesn’t respond, but the audience already knows the answer. Roman’s desire not to be alone precedes his actual interest in her, and Tabitha is smart enough to suss out that she is not the one for him, merely the one he is with right now. When Roman proposes to Gerri, he takes a much different approach. Roman’s proposal is something of a surprise, but yet it also is another step in a relationship wherein the players are already entrenched in a sexual affair with one another. Roman throws out the question as casually as he can and then when Gerri reacts with surprise, Roman quickly subverts the seriousness of the moment by jokingly telling her that if not marriage than simply abducting her will suffice. He also adds on that their eating one another--again, not literally, although he makes reference to Germany’s famous Armin Meiwes--suits his fancy, implying that being ‘one’ with her even in oneness’ most brutal, animalistic way is enough for him. Where he loses his patience with Tabitha when she rejects him, finally snapping, “Do you want to get married or not?”, when Gerri reacts with shock he merely plays it cool and offers her alternatives, finally slipping out of the room and leaving the ball in her court. Roman would most certainly like Gerri to stay, but he doesn’t use marrying her as a ploy to get her to do so merely so he isn’t alone--a narcissistic reason for marrying someone that satisfies only his own ends. He is comfortable enough in his relationship with Gerri to allow her to roam independently and decide for herself what she wants. He doesn’t force any aspect of their togetherness, merely presents her with different opportunities to see how she will react and if she can keep up with him. Gerri proves time and again that she is capable and Roman ups the ante in response to her prowess. His desire to marry her is based in what we know from the “Rockstar and the Molewoman” scene as his ability to see them as a team. To him, Gerri is an equal, not a belonging or a means to evade unpleasant emotions. She fulfills him in a way Tabitha and others cannot, and so when he asks her to marry him, he is also showcasing to the audience his view of her as an equal, and a prime candidate for the role of wife.

#gerri/roman #gerri x roman #gerri kellman #roman roy #succession #succession hbo #hbo succession #succession thoughts

44 notes · View notes

potteresque-ire · 3 years

Note

Hi :) Are you following the zheng shuang scandal? Would you say that her career is pretty much over now? The rate the news has been unfolding is so crazy to me. It’s only been 3-4 days. Was wondering if the gov would handle her matters personally.

Hello Anon! Yes, I’ve followed the news about the actress, primarily because it offers insight on how the current administration deals with stars exhibiting what it deems as “immoral” behaviour. As of today (2021/01/26), it’s difficult to imagine her career will survive at all. While she isn’t the first to be categorised as a “bad-history entertainer” (劣迹藝人), she’s the first to be explicitly banned by the National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA; 國家廣播電視總局), the department that controls—and censors—content of all radio, television, satellite, and Internet broadcasts in the country. Before, the NRTA didn’t publicise the names of the entertainers the government no longer wishes to see, which allows a possibility for reversal in a few year’s time if the “bad-history” wasn’t too damaging, and production companies are willing to take a risk and produce shows with the entertainers that may be difficult to pass the censorship board. But with such a high profile announcement, the government’s stance is unlikely to turn around in a foreseeable future.

Hmm. Let’s backpedal a little to get everyone on track. Before, I’ve shared some info re: the censoring of books, of audiovisual media. What if the government decides to “cancel” an entertainer instead? How does it do it? What are the standards?

The actress’s downfall is a (sad) example.

I shall skip names, the gossipy elements. Whether she made mistakes or not, no one deserves having their private matters exposed and sensationalised like this; no one should have to undergo such a humiliating, public trial. Essentially, the heart of the story goes as follows: the actress, a romantic-lead type who has been popular for several years, secretly got married. On 2021/01/18, her estranged husband claimed on Weibo that the couple had two children using US-based surrogate mothers, and the actress had abandoned the children in the US under his care. Meanwhile, his friend provided an audio from approximately the 7th month of the surrogate pregnancies, at which time the marriage was already falling apart. In the audio, the actress expressed dismay that abortion was no longer possible; her family talked about abandoning the newborns at the hospital or giving them up for adoption.

The next day (2021/01/19), the actress responded. She didn’t deny the existence of her surrogate children and claimed that she had been extorted. More importantly, she said the following:

“身為藝人我深知我國疫情的防控與重視。** 在中國國土之上我沒有違背國家的指示，在境外我也更是尊重一切的法律法規。”

“Being an artist, I deeply understand the attention my country (China) has placed on controlling the epidemic. On China’s soil, I didn’t do anything that violates the directives by the government. Outside the country, I’ve been even more respectful of all laws and regulations.”

This apparently hit a nerve of the administration. On the same day (2021/01/19), the Communist Party’s Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission (CPLAC; 中央政法委) — one of the most powerful commissions that oversees the entire legal enforcement system of the government — published an opinion piece , in which it said:

但[女星姓名]的回应，却通篇强调自己没有违法，丝毫没有任何悔过、道歉的意思。…

But the response of (name of the actress) insists that she didn’t violate any laws, doesn’t show a hint of remorse, regret…

要知道，在我国代孕行为是被明确禁止的。… 作为中国公民，因为代孕在中国被禁止，就钻法律空子就跑去美国，这绝不是遵纪守法。…

It should be known, that in our country, surrogacy is explicitly prohibited … as a PRC (People’s Republic of China) citizen, to use a legislative loophole and go to the US due to the ban of surrogacy in China is absolutely not obeying the law…

要知道，没有营养的炒作带不来长久流量。公众人物的魅力，来自其高尚的职业操守、良好的社会形象、文质兼美的优秀作品，而不是疯疯癫癫、任性胡闹、缺爱卖惨的“人设”。作为公众人物，几度疯狂游走在法律边缘，把这样错乱的世界观、价值观、人生观，置于众目睽睽之下，贻害世风，这绝不是无辜！

It should be known, that hype devoid of significance will not bring in traffic (click rates). The charisma of public figures comes from their noble professionalism, good social image, high quality works in character and content, and not from “personalities” rooting in craziness, petulance, mischief, the selling of one’s lack-of-love and misfortunes. As a public figure, to wildly roam at the edge of the law, to place such wrong and chaotic world views, values and life perspectives in the public eye, to cause harm to the morals of society — that is definitely not innocence!

Things to note here:

1) The CPLAC reacting within a day of the actress’s statement ~ unlikely enough time for teasing out / verifying the facts or truth of the matter.

2) The implication that Chinese citizens must follow Chinese laws, even when they’re overseas. (What about, for example, same-sex marriages?)

3) These words that, IMO, bordered on insult: “craziness, petulance, mischief, the selling of one’s lack-of-love and misfortunes”.

The actress’s career was hanging by a thread with this opinion piece. State-controlled agencies chimed in, many of which echoing CPLAC’s stance that surrogacy is explicitly prohibited in China. By night time of 2021/01/19, rumours abounded that multiple media companies had already listed the actress as a “bad-history entertainer” and would be shelving all her works and cancelling all her scheduled appearances. Prada terminated her endorsement.

The final drop of the hammer happened a day later, in the evening of 2021/01/20. The NRTA issued a statement that explicitly named the actress and contained the following lines:

代孕不是私事，与法不合，有违社会主义公德。…

Surrogacy isn’t a private matter. It doesn’t agree with the law, violates the civility of socialism…

从事广播电视��网络视听的演艺人员尤其是知名艺人，作为公众人物，有很大的社会影响力和示范作用，应当自觉践行行业自律准则，严格律己修身，严私德，讲大德，守公德。

Artists who work in TV and web audiovisual productions, especially famous entertainers, have significant social influence and demonstrative roles as public figures. They should be conscious about the self-discipline required for their industry, be strict in their behaviour and personal virtues, speak of great kindness and defend civility.

行业主管部门的相关政策要求是明确的，严格的。广大人民群众不愿意、不接受、也不允许丑闻劣迹者污染我们的社会公德和公序良俗。

Policies regarding the management of the industry is clear and strict. The public does not want, does not accept, does not allow those with scandals and poor history pollute the civility, the good order and customs of our society.

我们不会为丑闻劣迹者提供发声露脸的机会和平台，一如既往，坚决为广大人民群众提供健康向上荧屏声频。

We will not supply opportunities and platforms for those with scandals and poor history to sound their opinions, to show their faces. Just as before, we are determined to provide audiovisual content that is healthy above all.

And just like this, less than 72 hours after the estranged husband posted on his Weibo, the actress’s career is over. The NRTA, which has The Say on who and what get exposure time on screen, has spoken. The actress had no way of self-defence. Her 11 million followers on Weibo didn’t get to decide whether she’d stay or she’d go.

This is a brutal punishment but for what, exactly? Some netizens have whispered while the others shout their condemnations ~ but I thought…. surrogacy isn’t illegal?

And they’re correct: surrogacy isn’t explicitly outlawed in China, despite what CPLAC and other state agencies has claimed. In 2001, the Ministry of Health banned medical institutions and health care workers from "practicing any form of surrogate technology". However, no laws have ever passed that prohibit individuals from commissioning or providing surrogacy services—especially when the services are overseas.

The actress, therefore, wasn’t lying when she said she didn’t do anything that violates the directives by the government on China’s soil. Her “crime” of using surrogate mothers was, at worst, a legally grey area. For years, China has had a booming, semi-underground surrogacy market, their client base including older parents who wish to have another child after the country relaxed its birth limit (the so-called “one-child policy”) in 2015, infertile couples, and to a lesser extent, the LGBT+ community. Blued, China’s most popular gay social networking/dating app, has offered overseas surrogate services for several years that connect their clients with US-based surrogates. It pulled the services after the actress’s incident.

But all that doesn’t matter. People in China understands this: the law book is there, but those in power at the moment always have the final word ~ and that word doesn’t have to match the legal codes, or the previous final words of their predecessors. As for the moral outcry re: the actress having wished to abort / give up her unborn children, it’s worth mentioning abortion has long been used to to enforce the country’s decades-long birth limit policies, and forced, violent late-term abortions were not unheard of. Many people in China are also aware of that.

But again, it doesn’t matter.

I’ve described the government’s reactions in detail because they put in words the expectations it has of its entertainers. Entertainers in China are expected to not only obey the laws, but also have proper world views, (moral) values and life perspectives (collectively called 三觀, literally, “three views”) as defined by the government. The state has also made clear that such expectations grow with the fame of the entertainers.

Entertainers at the top of the c-ent industry, especially the idol types with many young fans, are therefore expected to get things right. These opinion pieces are reminders that the administration keeps a close eye on them, can “cancel” them with a few words if they fail.

The term for “canceling” an entertainer is 封殺 (literally, “seal and kill”).

The actress isn’t the first to be “cancelled” by the government. The first time the NRTA issued a directive regarding “poor-history entertainers” (劣迹藝人) was in 2014, which essentially called for shutting out any entertainer with a history of bad behaviours. It demanded all production companies, TV stations, online media companies and theatres to stop producing / broadcasting audiovisual content with these people, citing that TV and film media should be used for “spreading the progressive culture of socialism and promoting socialist core values” (”传播社会主义先进文化、弘扬社会主义核心价值观”). As these entertainers will no longer be exposed to an audience, these directives effectively kill the career of most who are affected.

What makes up the “poor-history” of “poor-history entertainers” then?

- The 2014 edition named drug use and prostitution (including hiring a prostitute) specifically.

- The 2018 edition, an announcement made by a top NRTA official, stated that audiovisual programmes should adhere to the “Four Never-Use” guidelines when inviting guests for their shows. Those guidelines were vague but for the last line: “In addition, the NRTA explicitly requests that programmes should not use entertainers with tattoos; (those associated with) hip-hop culture, sub-cultures (non-mainstream cultures), decadent cultures.” (”另外，总局明确要求节目中纹身艺人、嘻哈文化、亚文化（非主流文化）、丧文化（颓废文化）不用。”)

Some may be asking: wait … hip-hop?

Yes.

It was believed that hip-hop artists were targeted due to a scandal at the time, in which (another) well-known actress had an extra-marital affair with a rapper. Analysis of the rapper’s lyrics found sexism and suggestions of drug use (the rapper later apologised and claimed his “core values” had been distorted due to influence from “black music”.)

As this guideline hasn’t been retracted under any formal capacity, it can still be used to axe any show, shut out any entertainer.

If you’re wondering about SDOC, for example, this again illustrates the need for some … mind-reading skills to navigate life in China. A good way to achieve that without superpowers is to have the right connections to higher-ups, who can offer hints on what can get away at the moment and what cannot (this is true not only for c-ent, but for most business practices in the country; building 關係 guanxi— literally, “relationship”— is a must for those who wants a piece of the Chinese market).

- In 2020, NRTA expanded the “no exposure” rule to live-stream shows on the internet as well as on- and offline charity events, where previously “cancelled” artists had started to find jobs in to make a living. While that notice didn’t further elaborate on what makes “bad history”, the accompanying article in People’s Daily (The State-controlled Newspaper) went into more details. In addition to drug use and prostitution specified in 2014, the article named tax evasion; lying about education levels; *suspected* (涉嫌) extramarital affairs, domestic violence and inappropriate speech.

It’s worth emphasising that many of these activities are not illegal. “Suspected” also means these activities do not have to have happened ~ it’s the impression that they’ve happened that counts. Hence, back to the actress who had surrogate children, not only did it not matter whether surrogacy is actually illegal, it didn’t matter whether the leaked audio was real or taken out of context, or that the babies didn’t end up being aborted / adopted. The article once again stresses that private matters are no longer private for entertainers who are in the public eye as social influencers, and these directives on “poor-history entertainers” — colloquially called “封殺令”, with 封殺 meaning the “seal-and-kill” and 令 meaning command (as in Chen Qing Ling 陳情令) — are there to set the standards, the bottom-line for c-ent. It did call for more specifics in future directives: more guidance on what makes “bad history”, the ways these entertainers can redeem themselves. As of today, however, such specifics have not been provided. As a result, to avoid crossing the NRTA, the media has ended up “overachieving” in certain cases, wiping out the screen time of entertainers who only have a remote chance of being viewed as having “bad history” to play it safe. Last October, for example, a young singer was briefly edited out of all his recorded shows because his parents (not him) was revealed to be deadbeats owing millions in debt.

And so, without a known way out yet, “bad-history” entertainers such as the actress will likely remain “sealed and killed” for a long time. Entertainers recently caught with extramarital affairs ~ a relatively minor “offence” ~ have been missing on screen for 2-3 years, and the heavy-handed treatment by the government this time is likely to put a pause on any companies considering using these people again. Even if they’re finally allowed some degree of comeback, their career prime will be over and and their NRTA “sentence” will likely follow them everywhere they go, which makes their getting face time in any high-profile (high-investment) projects unlikely. Those who must work to make their ends meet will probably end up like so many entertainers who never made it big, or are at the very tail end of their career ~ drifting from city to city singing in local clubs, getting paid poorly and harassed by rude customers...

===

** A side note: In case anyone wonders why she brought up COVID, it’s a similar idea as Gg apologising for “佔用了一些社會公共資源” “occupying social resources” in his first team post after 227 (2020/03/01). For an authoritarian regime that has placed the most attention on maintaining social stability (ie. quelling dissent), disrupting the government’s narrative re: current events and potentially reversing the overall tone the administration is trying to reach in public discourse can be a greater offence than any actual “wrongdoing”. 227, as an incident, was guilty of that.

(And I’m bringing this up because I find this relevant to the safety asks I have in my inbox. Arguments among fans do not themselves render Gg and Dd unsafe, but can become a significant issue if they “occupy social resources”, disrupt the government’s narratives and/or its political machinery in some ways. IMO, 227 took a dangerous turn not because the fans were arguing over a piece of fanfic, but because a group of fans took over the reporting machinery intended to rat out dissidents. It was a mistake that I hope no fans ~ regardless of who they support ~ will repeat again.)

#pie metas #pie answers #yizhan #bjyx

142 notes · View notes

all-seeing-ifer · 4 years

Text

Greek mythology references in Ulysses Dies at Dawn masterpost

I saw a post a while back by @spacetrashpile analysing all the arthurian references in High Noon Over Camelot, and since I know quite a bit about Greek mythology I figured “hey! I should do something like that for Ulysses Dies at Dawn!” I’m just going to go through each of the songs in order and analyse/explain the references in them - hopefully other people will find it interesting!

“The City”

Starting with the title - Ulysses is the Latin name of Odysseus, legendary king of Ithaca and hero of the epic poem The Odyssey. Interestingly, Ulysses is the only character in UDAD who is given a Latin name instead of a Greek one. There’s a couple of potential reasons for this but the most convincing to me is it’s meant to reflect Ulysses’ opposition to the Olympians, who are all based on the Greek gods.

Jonny calls the story a “labyrinthine task of a twisted tale”, referencing the Greek myth of the Minotaur, which was kept in a labyrinth to hide it from the world. This reference becomes even clearer when we later learn the City’s original name.

This one’s less a reference to Greek mythology and more to like, actual history, but the description of the City expanding to cover the whole planet is reminiscent of Greek expansion in ancient times. Ancient Greece was made up of many city-states, or poleis, which established colonies or “daughter-cities”, mostly in western Asia, or “Asia Minor” as the Greeks and Romans called it.

The story opens at a “run-down gin join” called Calypso’s - Calypso is a sea nymph who plays a fairly major role in The Odyssey, keeping Odysseus/Ulysses trapped on her island for seven years.

Fittingly enough, Calypso’s apparently pays money to Dionysus, whose mythological namesake is the Greek god of wine.

Broken Horses

Ilium is the Ancient Greek name for Troy, the city that Greece went to war against, according to myth,. Part of this war is described in the epic poem The Iliad, in which Odysseus is one of the soldiers laying siege to Troy.

Much like the Trojan War of Greek myth, the siege of Ilium is said to have lasted a decade.

Ulysses’ gambit with the horse statue sending out a signal driving the people of Ilium mad is pretty obviously a reference to the Trojan Horse - the wooden horse the Greeks built as a “peace offering” to the Trojans that they used to sneak their soldiers into the City and that brought them victory in the war. Like in the UDAD version, Odysseus/Ulysses was apparently responsible for coming up with this plan.

“Olympians”

Ulysses’ wife is named Penelope, same as Odysseus’ wife in the myths

The Acheron is the name of one of the five rivers of Hades, along with Styx, Cocytus, Lethe, and Phlegethon

As a sidenote, in Greek mythology Hades is the name of the underworld as well as the name of the God of the dead - fittingly enough reimagined in UDAD as the controller of a vast network of half-dead minds (and also Ashes)

The most powerful families in the City are called the Olympians - the name given to the twelve most important deities in the Greek pantheon

Poseidon Industries is named for Poseidon, Greek god of the sea and one of the twelve Olympians. Jonny calls them “one of the architects of the Ilium War”, which seems like an odd reference since iirc Poseidon doesn’t have a whole lot to do with the Trojan War. I guess that’s just there to give Ulysses a reason to want to rob Poseidon Industries.

In the Odyssey, Poseidon hates Odysseus/Ulysses for attacking his son, a cyclops called Polyphemus. In UDAD this is changed to Ulysses stealing the diamond from Poseidon Industries’ laser, which is also called The Cyclops.

My Name is No One

The song’s title and chorus is a reference to Odysseus’ famous trick for escaping the Polyphemus’ cave. He tells the Polyphemus his name is “no one/nobody” (depending on the translation) so that when he attacks Polyphemus and the cyclops tries to call for help, he calls out “No one is attacking me” which obviously none of the other cyclopes take seriously. (There’s also a great pun in the original Greek based on the Greek words for “no one” and “cunning” being very similar, but it loses a lot in translation)

However, just like in UDAD, Odysseus messes up this plan badly by calling out his real name when he’s still too close to the island of the cyclops. (although in the Odyssey it’s motivated by him wanting Polyphemus to know his name so he can get glory, rather than just being drunk)

Odysseus bests the cyclops by taking out his eye (there’s debate around it but cyclopes are generally depicted as having only one eye). Obviously in UDAD the cyclops is a machine not a monster, so this is replaced with the diamond at the heart of the laser being called its “eye”.

Also, I’m not sure if this is an intentional reference, but there is a fun irony to the fact that in the Odyssey, Odysseus tricks Polyphemus by getting him drunk so he can then blind him, while in UDAD Ulysses steals the eye of the Cyclops while drunk themself.

“Trial By Wits”

As well as My Name is No One, the whole concept of no one knowing anything about Ulysses’ appearance, gender etc. could also be seen as a reference to the “My name is nobody” trick, or possibly just a spin on Odysseus being a kind of “archetypal hero” - they could be anyone!

Heracles is better known by his Latin name, Hercules (son of Zeus, demigod, inhumanly strong and all that jazz)!

Ariadne is the name of the Cretan princess who helped Theseus slay the minotaur

Orpheus is another of the most well-known Greek mythological figures - the main myth surrounding him says he went into the underworld to rescue his dead wife Eurydice

Oedipus is most famous as the main character of a famous tragedy. His parents are given a prophecy that he would kill his father and have sex with his mother, and so decided to abandon him. As is so often the case with Greek oracles, he ended up doing both things anyway, seeing as how he, y’know, didn’t know who his parents were. The mechs apparently chose to reference this in the most mature of ways by having Jonny call Oedipus a motherfucker. Kind of a lot.

Aside from committing both patricide and incest, Oedipus’ other achievements in myth included winning a battle of wits against the Sphinx, a monster that was killing anyone who couldn’t solve its riddle. This monster is reimagined in UDAD as a disease that Oedipus finds a cure for.

Riddle of the Sphinx

The chorus of the song is taken almost word-for-word from the riddle asked of Oedipus by the Sphinx: “What goes on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?” The answer to the riddle is “man” - crawls on all fours as a baby, walks on two legs as an adult, and walks with a cane (third leg) in old age. The Mechs being the Mechs, this is made completely literal in the world of UDAD.

“Ulysses’ Will”

Like the Oedipus of myth, UDAD Oedipus also ends up killing his father and marrying his mother without knowing. Since he’s replaced his eyes with data sockets by the time he helps kidnap Ulysses, it’s pretty strongly implied that he blinded himself like mythological Oedipus as well.

The “twenty years of sirens” could be a reference to the twenty years Odysseus spends away from Ithaca in the Iliad and Odyssey

Sirens

The sirens were half-bird half-human creatures that Odysseus encountered as part of the Odyssey and that tried to lure him to his death with promises of knowledge.

As well as referencing this story, the line “let the lotus set you free” references another episode of the Odyssey, where Odysseus and his crew arrive on the island of the Lotus-Eaters. Anyone who eats the Lotus fruits falls into a state of apathy and will never want to leave the island, so it’s a fitting episode to reference in a song about Ulysses drugging themself to escape their memories of war.

“Trial By Strength”

Heracles’ backstory is essentially the same in UDAD as in the original myths: one of the many children of Zeus’ many affairs, except in UDAD Zeus has affairs with women from “the lower levels”, instead of just mortal women.

Favoured Son

The tasks Heracles performs for Zeus are a reference to the most famous myth about Heracles - the twelve labours he performs to atone for killing his family.

The song references “the ferryman” who takes people into the Underworld. In Greek mythology the dead travel to the Underworld in a boat rowed by the ferryman Charon.

In both the myth and in UDAD there are...what you might you might call “extenuating circumstances” for Heracles killing his family - in the myth he’s driven mad by Zeus’ wife Hera (bc she’s very angy about Zeus having all those bastard children with mortal women) but since Hera doesn’t play a role in UDAD this is changed to him being framed by Zeus himself.

In addition to being king of the gods, Zeus is also the god of thunder - which is where Heracles’ nickname “The Thunderbolt of Zeus” comes from

“Loose Threads”

Heracles and Orpheus “Backing up Jason on the fleece job” is a reference to the myth of Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece along with his crew (the Argonauts), which included Heracles and Orpheus.

Hylas was Heracles’ servant and another member of the Argonauts. While on the quest he was kidnapped by nymphs, and depending on which version of the myth you’re looking at, either fell in love with them and stayed there forever, or was murdered by them (Hylas is also the only character referenced I had to google to even know who they were lol)

Heracles telling Ariadne that “Your dad helped me out once” is presumably a reference to the seventh labour of Heracles: capturing the Cretan bull. Now the story of the Cretan bull is actually really long and ties into a bunch of other myths but essentially it was sent to Ariadne’s father, King Minos, as proof that he was the rightful ruler of Crete. However, Minos ended up helping Heracles by letting him take the bull with him to prove that he’d successfully caught it (which seeing as the bull was destroying Crete at that point doesn’t seem like a huge favour on Minos’ part, but ok)

Trial By Song

UDAD Orpheus shares the mythical Orpheus’ main defining trait: his skill at singing that he used to help him on his journey to the underworld.

Trial By Song is a lot more metaphorical than all the others so there’s not that many direct references to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in the lyrics - probably the most direct one is “But all the landmarks moved as I walked past/Now I can’t look back”, which references Orpheus’ deal with Hades that he can take Eurydice back to the world of the living as long as he doesn’t look back at her.

“The viper town that bled me dry” could also be a reference to Eurydice’s death from a snake bite.

“Hades”

UDAD Orpheus’ motivation is the same as mythical Orpheus - wanting to bring back their dead lover from Hades.

Ulysses, Heracles, and Orpheus all visiting the “underworld” is taken directly from mythology (although unlike in UDAD, Ulysses/Odysseus never actually speaks to Hades).

Underworld Blues

In Heracles’ confrontation with Hades, he says that “I was sent here your dog to seize/Of my tasks, of my tasks/This was to be the last”. There’s a couple of points here - the mythology reference is to the last of the twelve labours of Hercules: capturing Hades’ guard dog Cerberus. However, I do wonder whether this is meant to be literal (in which case guys, why are we not talking about the fact that Ashes obtained a pet dog while in The City?), or if this is a similar case to all the mentions of ‘horses’ in High Noon Over Camelot actually being about motorbikes.

Orpheus singing to Hades and trying to convince them to release Eurydice is also taken directly from Greek myth, except instead of being moved by Orpheus’ song and agreeing to release his love like in the myth, Ashes just tells him he’s poor for a bit and then says he should go commit some crimes.

“Trial By Love”:

The general concept of Ariadne’s backstory - her helping Theseus fight the minotaur only for him to abandon her - is the same basic idea as the myth of Ariadne and Theseus. Although UDAD Ariadne is at least a bit more fortunate in the sense that she wasn’t truly in love with her Theseus, and he also doesn’t straight up leave her on a deserted island.

Ariadne’s family creating the minotaur is also part of her character in the myth. The difference is that in UDAD the minotaur was created intentionally, while the mythological minotaur was the result of Poseidon making Ariadne’s mother fall in love with the Cretan Bull as punishment for King Minos not sacrificing it to him (I said the Cretan Bull story tied into a bunch of other myths!)

The presence of the minotaur in the City is yet another thing that makes even more sense when we learn about the City originally being called Labyrinth!

Ties That Bind

Ariadne’s family name is Minos, same as the name of her mythical father King Minos.

Ariadne describes her family’s actions as casting a “dark horned shadow” over her, which references the typical depiction of the minotaur as a man with a bull’s head and horns.

In the myth of the Minotaur, Ariadne helps Theseus by giving him a ball of string that he then unwinds as he walks through the Labyrinth, letting him find his way out again. In UDAD this is changed to “strings of code”, that shut down the minotaurs programming. (And if you think that pun’s bad, just wait until we get to Torn Suits!)

The song’s title also brings to mind string or thread, so it can be seen as a subtler reference to Ariadne’s gift to Theseus. Same for Ariadne’s line about “heartstrings long since cut”.

“The Daidala”

Daedalus, the leader of the Suits, shares a name with the mythical craftsman and father of Icarus

He is rumoured to “trade as an Olympian under the name Hephaestus” - a fitting alias as Hephaestus was the god of craftsmen and artisans like Daedalus

The rumour that he killed his son for “getting too ambitious” references the myth of Icarus, who famously died after literally flying too close to the sun using wings held together with wax. The heat of the sun caused the wax to melt and Icarus to fall into the sea. The story is often interpreted as a warning about the dangers of ambition.

Interestingly, it could also reference another myth surrounding Daedalus - one in which Daedalus kills his nephew Talos because he was jealous of his achievements.

Daedalus is also apparently the architect of The City, which was originally known as Labyrinth. This once again references the labyrinth which held the minotaur, and which Minos forced Daedalus to design. Considering the labyrinth’s purpose in myth, it seems like an appropriate name for a city that keeps all its inhabitants trapped with no way out.

Presumably the Daidala in the title refers to the City: Daedalus’ finest creation. In Homeric Greek, daidala is a word that refers to finely crafted objects such as armour.

This track also has another reference to the Orpheus and Eurydice myth when Orpehus offers to sacrifice himself to open the vault - “But he can’t see it through can he? Flinches, looks back. And it doesn’t work.”

Torn Suits

This song is notable for having quite possibly the worst pun in Mechanisms history - “Ulysses pulls out their snub-nosed laser and fires the last shot, splitting the beam across twelve axes”. This references one of the climactic scenes of the Odyssey, where Ulysses/Odysseus wins an archery competition against his wife’s suitors by shooting an arrow through twelve axe heads. (get it, axes as in the weapons becomes axes as in the plural of axis do you get it?????)

Another, marginally less bad pun is Heracles getting “the lion’s share” of the beams, referencing the popular image of Heracles wearing the skin of a lion he killed as one of his labours.

“Sunrise”

The code to Ulysses’ vault: Elysium, is another word for the Elysian Fields. In certain Greek religions, this was an afterlife separate from Hades’ world where heroes and those chosen by the gods would go after they died.

Ulysses’ vault is revealed to contain the “sole surviving oak tree”, under which Penelope is buried. While it’s not as direct a reference as some of the others, this is pretty clearly inspired by the way Odysseus proves his true identity to Penelope at the end of the Odyssey - by telling her that he carved their bed from a tree still rooted to the ground, something only the two of them know.

The track ends with an homage to Homer’s use of similes in the Odyssey: “And as the weary hound, once more at its master’s feet after so long, lays down with the sunlight warming its fur, breathing its last – even so did the eyes of Ulysses close forever.” Not only is this stylistically identical to Homer’s similes, it also doubles as a reference to Odysseus’ dog Argos, who waited for him for twenty years and finally died when he saw Odysseus again.

Elysian Fields

This is possibly a bit of a stretch but the image of Ulysses lying beneath the last tree, next to where Penelope is buried, especially with how they say they’re “with my beloved” and “beside my wife” really brings to mind the scene in the Odyssey where Odysseus and Penelope lie in their tree-bed together for the first time since Odysseus’ return. Which, incidentally, is theorised by some to be the “real” final scene of the Odyssey and everything after that was added on later, but that’s another story.

That’s everything I’ve picked up on but it’s possible there’s more I’ve missed so let me know if there’s any more! I’d like to thank the Mechs for giving me an opportunity to put my useless and extremely niche knowledge to good use!

#the mechanisms #ulysses dies at dawn #udad #ifer rambles

159 notes · View notes

365days365movies · 3 years

Text

April 3, 2021: Duck Soup (Review)

I think I’m a Marx Brothers fan now?

I really liked this movie. I really did, and it’s genuinely one of my favorite comedies so far this month...even if I don’t think it’s as good as the other two. A paradox, I’m aware. But, to treat this like the others, let’s see what happened to the Marx Brothers after this film.

Unlike Chaplin and Keaton, I won’t be going as in detail about these guys individually. They were successful throughout the 1940s, partnered with UA (unsurprisingly), and each eventually split off on their separate ways. Zeppo was first in 1933, right after Duck Soup, as he really wasn’t as featured as the rest of them. He and Gummo Marx went into business together, making a gigantic talent agency. Both were also engineers later in life, with Gummo making raincoats, and Zeppo making plane parts!

The remaining three persisted, then also eventually went their separate ways. Chico got WAY into gambling, racking up a fuckton of debt in the process, but he also starting a big band act. Harpo continued to perform on screen and stage for the rest of his life. And Groucho...well, Groucho never really stopped. Television appearances and film appearances persisted well into the ‘50s and ‘60s, until Groucho stepped away...for a bit, anyway.

And then, well...Chico dies on October 11, 1961, of severe arteriosclerosis, and at the age of 74. This broke all of the brothers (and their sister), especially Groucho. Three years later, shortly after an appearance on stage in September 1964, Harpo died of heart failure. Again, this broke Groucho, and the remaining three brothers. The only one of the brothers left to perform now was Groucho, so let’s look at him a little more, shall we?

Groucho, with his iconic eyebrows and greasepaint mustache, was BY FAR the most famous of the brothers. He was married three times, all of which ended in divorce. With the last one, he was 40 years his wife’s senior. WOW. OK. He had three children, two of whom had children of their own. And by the time of his last divorce, Groucho was 79 years old, and was a Hollywood and television legend (due to his appearances as host of the show You Bet Your Life in the 1940s and ‘50s). Also, fun fact, dude LITERALLY danced on Hitler’s grave! HA! NICE!

He continued making appearances in the ‘70s, which may have been the result of his agent Erin Fleming, who maaaaaaaay have pushed the elderly actor too hard. This is also considering the increasingly senility that Marx was experiencing, being in his 80s at this point. Eventually, she was fired, and Marx began to settle into his old age. He was given an honorary Academy Award in 1974, and given a standing ovation. This is the last time that he would appear publicly in such a major setting. Gummo died in April of 1977, and Groucho followed soon afterwards, passing away on August 19, 1977, at the age of 86.

Zeppo, the youngest of the brothers, would pass away in November of 1979 at the age of 78, of lung cancer, and was the last of the Marx Brothers alive. And so goes one of the greatest families in film history. Hot damn. I really should watch more of their films.

But let’s FINALLY talk about this picture! What exactly did I think, after all that? Check here for the Recap, and read on for the Review!

Review

Cast and Acting: 9/10

MAN, the Marx Bros are great! Like, holy shit! Zeppo, sadly, doesn’t really get a chance to truly shine, which was something that haunted his career with his brothers (and eventually led him to leave the group altogether). Harpo and Chico are both REALLY good here, playing off each other and playing to their strengths individually. Seriously, they’re great...but nobody here is as good as Groucho Marx. Like, dear Lord, Groucho is fantastic in this movie. Sure, a lot of that is in the writing and jokes, but the DELIVERY of those jokes! Hot damn! So, why the 9? Well...everybody else. Sorry, Margaret Dumont and Louis Calhern are just in a different film entirely. In fact...they’re actually not in a film, but in a play. Yeah, Dumont especially is acting for the stage, rather than for a film audience. And...eh. It’s not terrible, but it definitely shows. Still, the Marx Brothers more than make up for any flaws there.

Plot and Writing: 9/10

I thought the Marx Bros. wrote this movie, but no! Instead, it’s Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, Arthur Sheekman, and Nat Perrin. Kalmar and Ruby were a songwriting duo, who had been working with the Marx Bros. on stage for years before they’d been in film. Sheekman was their writer for a few of these stage productions as well, and Nat Perrin was a film screenwriter, who would eventually move on to producing and writing...the original Addams Family TV series? DAMN! All four men were friends to the Marx Bros. throughout their lives, and they injected their flair into this film. So, why the 9? The jokes are absolutely fantastic, for sure...but the ending is a little abrupt for me, and hindered by the random-ass musical number near the end. Nitpicking, in other words. It’s still fantastic.

Directing and Cinematography: 9/10

Hey, Leo McCarey, how’s it been? I think you did a pretty good job with this one, although I’m not going to claim that it’s my favorite. I do think An Affair to Remember was a little better than this, direction-wise. But Henry Sharp, your cinematography is goddamn SOLID in this movie, real talk. Still, good job to you both!

Production and Art Design: 9/10

And yeah, this film does look great. Despite not being based off of a stage production, it certainly feels like I’m watching I professionally produced play. The budget for this one must’ve been high, because the costuming and sets are pretty well-constructed all around. Not The General or The Gold Rush good, but still great.

Music and Editing: 9/10

And finally, the music. Done by the afore-mentioned Bert Kalmary and Harry Ruby, this music is...mostly pretty great. The opening song is a little off for me, and I’m not a massive fan of the random ending number, but the songs are still well-made and performed. Seriously, I don’t have any real complaints about it all, even though I would put in in my playlist or anything. And LeRoy Stone’s editing is also pretty solid, while we’re at it.

For you, Marx Bros., I grant a 90%!

This movie is a hell of a lot of fun, and a great introduction to the Marx Bros. I really need to watch Animals Crackers and A Night at the Opera, now. I love it, seriously.

But now that we’re into talkies, I think it’s time to revisit somebody from the past, attempting to break into this new era. I could go for a Laurel and Hardy film, or the Three Stooges, or even Abbott and Costello (yeah, forgot to mention them in the Recap Intro, sorry), but...no. No, we need to move on into the realm of talkies, and also close out this early era with an old friend...who isn’t doing great right now.

April 4, 2021: The Great Dictator, dir. Charlie Chaplin

12 notes · View notes

theparanormalperiodical · 4 years

Text

The Real Urban Legend Behind The Grudge (2020) Franchise And The 13 Other Japanese Urban Legends That'll TERRIFY You + Plot Summary And Review

We are living in the age of the reboot.

Maybe it’s our search for nostalgia in a time of Trumpian and post-Brexit uncertainty. Maybe it's a desire to reflect on our past pop culture icons as we enter a new decade. Or maybe it's just a cash grab by greedy producers as they squabble over the latest bonus.

Either way, let’s just hope The Grudge (2020) was better than Cats.

(Spoiler alert: EVERYTHING was better than Cats.)

The first horror film to signal our entrance into the new era was a true champion of the genre, from the ungodly aesthetic to the nothing’s-off-limits Japanese take on the genre.

Dragging herself into the new year - fit with deathly white face, locks of dark hair, and a vocal style that would give Billie Eilish a run for her money - the ghost of Kayako and son, Toshio found a new way to terrify viewers.

And they weren’t even in the movie.

(Here’s the trailer:)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oo_c5lu0W0k

But the true terror behind the film doesn’t start with you paying that much for a small popcorn and Dr. Pepper.

It doesn’t even end with the credits.

The Grudge - yes, all 11 movies from 2 separate franchises - is actually based on an urban legend that has haunted Japan to this day.

And if that wasn’t enough, the films capture components of paranormal activity that are awfully accurate to real ghost stories that go beyond the borders of the small island nation.

So, as your favourite blogger of all things spooky, I thought I’d take us on the express train to Suginami, Japan, to the house that started it all. Today’s post is going to recap the films, explain why the franchise is freak-a-liciously for-real, and go through the other Japanese urban legends you really don’t want to know about.

What’s The Plot Of The Franchise?

Like most Japanese horror films that have been subject to the American treatment (ahem, The Ring, ahem) too many films have been shat out via the silver screen.

But that’s not to say The Grudge film series isn’t worth a watch.

Nevertheless, to save you 20 hours worth of the same jumpscares, jealous ghosts, and attempts to sound out Japanese names, I thought I’d give you the tl;dr on ‘lil Toshio’s afterlife.

The Grudge franchise is actually made up of two films series: the Ju-On (the original Japanese series made up of 7 films) and the Grudge (the 4 American reboots).

Although the original series follows a much more twisted tale, the American version cuts ‘n’ pastes a couple of scenes from the original scripts replays them in the English language. But nevermind the ogre-like layers of films - the premise is the same in each film:

A curse - also known as the Ju-On - created in a house destroys everyone that comes in contact with it. The curse is reborn with every person that encounters it and is passed like a virus among family members.

Question is, where does this curse come from?

The story goes that a happy family were livin’ their bestest life when some bloke called Takeo believed his wife Kayako was having an affair with their son’s teacher.

In a fit of rage, he kills Kayako, Toshio (their son), and their pet cat.

According to the canon, when someone is murdered whilst angry or jealous, a curse is born and gathers where they died. The curse (or the haunting) then repeats itself, killing anyone that comes into contact with it.

“Hol’ up - a woman with a chilling pale face, a mop of black hair, a curse that kills everyone that comes near it… Doesn’t this sound a tad familiar?”

Yes, the Grudge series is basically the domestic abuse version of The Ring…

(Which you can read all about here - including the terrifying true stories behind it)

But did you know that it’s supposed to be?

The brains behind the Japanese-American franchise, Takashi Shimizu, was not only inspired and assisted by the brains behind Sadako’s tragic story, but also took inspiration from things that had haunted him throughout his own life:

He cites dancers painting their nude bodies white as the basis of the aesthetic for the film as made evident by the lookbooks of the leading roles, and noted that around the time of watching said dancers there was a notable rise in the number of domestic abuse cases.

Urban legends or domestic abuse - which scares you more?

Regardless of the backstory to the big screen, what actually happens in the films?

Here’s a quick summary of the Ju-On film series:

The series starts with a handful of abstract short films which dip into the hauntings, then evolving into a couple straight-to-dvd movies. Think Bring It On but with more dead people and less Rihanna.

Following on from their success, the cinematic hit Ju-On: The Grudge was sent to the big screen.

This is where the story properly starts.

(Here’s the trailer:)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYyPTyXlT9w

We finally see Kayako’s and Toshio’s story unfold and the curse attach to all those that come to the house. And this starts with social worker, Rika Nishina, who was summoned after the former social worker mysteriously disappeared.

As with all horror films, paranormal activity goes down, and Rika discovers the truths behind the house. But unlike the other films which just explore the hauntings of the families that just so happen to enter the house, this film explores the rebirth of the curse.

The basis of this film is that Rika is set to die the same way Kayako did and fulfil the Ju-on. At the same time the powers of the curse are further unleashed as its time travelling capabilities are uncovered: a victim from a past film sees her father just before he encountered Kayako himself, even though he died years before.

The next film - the final one is the Japanese franchise - sticks to this theme of rebirth, and sticks to it quite literally.

It starts with a pregnant actress who gets in a car accident caused by Toshio and miscarries.

Well, she thinks she has. A doctor does doctor stuff and discovers she is still carrying a healthy child, but this baby ain’t no normal baby. It’s Kayako.

Good luck getting on Maury with that.

It is then uncovered that she worked for a paranormal documentary TV show that visited the house haunted by the curse.

This is confirmed years later, when a young Kayako pushes her mother off an overpass and kills her. The last we see of this franchise is the young girl wandering off into the distance.

Now it’s America’s turn. Here’s a rundown of the Grudge film series:

The first film is a reboot of the Japanese Ju-On: The Grudge, but this time its horror-film-fave Sarah Michelle Gellar who is stepping up to the plate as Karen (aka Rika). But this time Buffy Karen burns the house down at the end of the film.

(Or does she?)

(Oh and here’s the trailer I’m just Oprah for trailers today:)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YC3bzK_i9_s

The sequel then follows a school girl who is pressured to enter the house by her friends a la every urban legend ever. But this time, Kayako hits the road and follows her back to Chicago, cursing her apartment. And the schoolgirl ain’t the only one struggling with spooky stuff.

When Karen falls from a hospital roof and dies, Karen’s younger sister investigates the circumstances of her death and stumbles into the legend. This time she attempts to stop the curse.

4 more films follow this movie, and all stick to the recipe of schoolgirls daring to go into the house or people being through from hospital roofs.

No, I’m being serious.

The final film prior to the latest reboot takes a different turn, however, and takes inspiration from The Ring to a whole new level. Sadako vs. Kayako is a crossover of these iconic female spirits, and climaxes in the spirits merging into the ultimate ghost: Sadakaya.

What Happens In The Grudge (2020)?

The film follows 4 different families as they encounter the curse, creating a domino effect that ties each of the stories together. The thing is, only one family actually encounters Kayako and the original haunting that made this franchise famous.

Nevertheless, in true Grudge style, Kayako possesses the mother of a family who then goes on to kill her family members.

These ghosts then begin to haunt the following inhabitants of the house and affect all those connected to it. For each story, someone either ends up in an asylum, or kills their entire family, or some chaotic cocktail of the two.

When I first heard a new Grudge was set to hit the big screen, I was honestly a bit surprised; I hadn’t heard anyone mention it!

The thing is, I only found this out last week, a whole month after it first premiered.

I was shooketh.

How had I heard f*ck all about it? Unfortunately, there’s good reason for that:

A unanimous decision has labelled this film a sequence of boring, dull, thin plots all tied together with a smile depressing aesthetic. No, the reviewers did not hold back.

"I saw this movie in the middle of the day, having had a great night's sleep, and I had to slap myself awake a few times."

Nevertheless, The Grudge (2020) does buck the trend of former films, introducing a new plot style and welcoming a new brand of paranormal activity we haven’t seen fall under the franchise just yet.

But honestly, the franchise - like all horror films - gets messy, twisting into a mop of black hair and a sound byte of a death rattle on a loop.

All you really need to know is there’s a spooky-ass house with some dead-ass people and you either die or end up in a mental hospital.

And it's not like any horror film has ever done that before, right?

But even if the films aren’t keeping you up tonight, the story it's based on should do the trick - especially considering the films portray it so damn accurately…

What’s The Urban Legend That The Films Based On?

The Grudge franchise might not go down in horror history for a dense plot chock-full of cinematic innovation, but there’s no doubt that Kayako and Toshio will.

The thing is, the characters of this iconic franchise all started as real people with real lives. Well, as real as an urban legend can make them out to be, that is.

The story goes that Kayako grew up neglected by the members of her family, retreating into her shell and becoming shy. And so, she would write diaries to keep herself company.

In one of these entries from when she was younger, she mentioned a crush.

Flash forward to years later, and she’s married with a child. Problem is, her husband, Takeo, stumbles upon one of these diaries, and believes she’s having an affair.

So, like all rational people, he decides to kill her and his son, Toshio.

How he kills her is a little confused, but we know that at some point she tries to crawl down the stairs and escape, at some point Kayako and Toshio are drowned in a bathtub, and at some point Takeo gets strangled by Kayako with her hair.

Either way they are all very dead.

But it's Kayako that returns from the afterlife as the vengeful ghost we all know and love.

And that’s because Kayako fits perfectly within Japanese folklore, and is an onryo - a vengeful ghost.

“Hold up - does that mean Sadako/Samara is one of these onryos?”

Nope - Sadako is a yurei, which you can learn all about here.

An onryo is a spirit from japanese folklore, or, more specifically, a ghost that has often been wronged by brutal men. And Kayako is far from alone in the afterlife:

Oiwa has earned her name as the most famous onryo to haunt Japanese literature, and claimed her title by being murdered by her unfaithful husband whilst she was pregnant. At first he tried poison, but she survived the attempt - it just disfigured her face and made her miscarry.

To complete the attack he pushed her off the cliff. And yes, that did the job.

Or did it?

Oiwa returned as a vengeful ghost who sought to destroy him and everyone around him.

Sound familiar?

So we know that Kayako’s story doesn’t fall too far from the urban legend inspiring the films, nor the reality of domestic abuse in society - is there anything else that is uncomfortably real about the movies?

*Nods head*

They hit the paranormal activity dead on.

(Emphasis on the dead bit.)

How Accurate Is The Paranormal Activity?

I could rattle off the movies minute by minute and explain why that door creaking is, like, totally accurate to supernatural theories. But even as a paranormal blogger, I’m not that sad.

(Yet.)

However, there are 2 key pieces of the paranormal that I wanted to explore to confirm that these films are c-ree-pily real.

1. Possession by a yurei or onryo

Most horror films tend to follow the same ‘ol trajectory:

There is ghost. Ghost does ghosty things. People are scared of ghost. Ghost possesses one of the people.

All the writers have to do is fill in the blanks.

The thing is, this only happens a couple times in this franchise, most notably in the 2020 reboot. But it got me thinking:

The whole point of Sadako and Kayako - although different kinds of spirits - is that they want to spread dread and darkness, and that at some point they simply want to be reborn to ensure their ambitions are met.

But aside from waving a rather mangled feminist flag, they don’t fill in the blanks like most horror films. Possession by onryo is supposedly possible, however, and has even been captured by a rather famous if lacking-in-detail case:

Hirotsugu possessed some bloke called Genbo way-back-when and affected his health. Yeah, that’s about it.

2. Residual hauntings

Another theory the franchise taps into is that of time travel which is known amongst paranormal fanatics like me as a residual haunting.

Also known as Stone Tape theory, this is belief that events with a high energy atmosphere can imprint onto the surroundings like rocks, objects, furniture, and maybe even houses.

Ever heard of Borley Rectory? What about Bethnal Green Underground?

These are just a few cases of residual hauntings from which these events are replayed in a haunting fashion.

The 13 Other Japanese Urban Legends That Should Make You Avoid Visiting Asia In The Near Future In Case You Encounter The Slit-Mouthed Woman

Trips to Tokyo, breakfast under sweeps of cherry blossom trees, walks around the temples of Kyoto.

Japan knows how to showcase its culture.

But your next trip to this island in the Pacific might leave you a little more terrified than tourist. And given the size of the island, I don’t think you can hop on a tram without bumping elbows with some legend conjured up from the darkest recesses of the web.

In that case, grab your fanny pack and chuck your passport in the hotel safe - let’s find us an urban legend!

#1 - Aka Manto // Red Cloak

Our first legend haunts toilets. No, I’m not kidding. He’s not even the only Japanese urban legend that specifically haunts the bogs!

This urban legend reportedly haunts the last stall in bathrooms and is cloaked in a red cape.

The story goes that, whilst your mid-shit, he will offer you red or blue toilet paper. Whichever one you pick decides on how you die. If he offers you yellow, however, he will just shove your head down the shitter.

To avoid either of those fates, don’t pick any toilet paper. Just ignore, and escape.

Drip dry; don’t die.

#2 - Hanasako-san // Hanako Of The Toilet

Our next bathroom related urban legend is clearly much more explicit about her haunting, but bears a striking resemblance to her male counterpart.

With pale skin and a red uniform, she hides in the 3rd bathroom stall, but doesn’t offer you any TP.

Instead, you should knock on the stall door 3 times, ask if she’s there, and wait for her to whisper and confirm her presence. Well, that or she’ll stay silent which is really helpful.

Anyway, once you’ve alerted her that you’re there, she will straight up drag you to hell.

Okay, fine, the legend sounds simplistic - I mean, you do just go to hell - but her backstory is slightly more imaginative. There’s actually 2 potential tales that explain her haunting:

The first is that he hid in the bathroom during a bombing in WW2 and the building collapsed around her; or she was bullied and committed suicide in the bathroom.

(I mean, I don’t know what you expected, its an urban legend, okurr, shits gon’ be depressing.)

#3 - Jinmenken // Human-Faced Dog

Let’s lighten things up, shall we? I think a comedic dog with the face of a human which is popularly spotted by surfers mid-joint should do the trick...

Jinmenken are dogs with human faces often seen in urban areas. Not only can they talk, they can also be rude - and specifically homophobic - according to some reports.

The most popular sightings can be traced back to surfers in the 1950s, but the most famous tale can be found in 1810 from which one was supposedly exhibited at a museum.

Gnarly, bro.

#4 - The Cursed Kleenex Advert

This urban legend has already featured in one of my posts as an iconic cursed video, but here’s the lowdown for people that don’t waste their time looking this up:

A Kleenex advert was released in the 1980s in Japan and featured some rather odd goings-on.

There was a baby painted red like an ogre and sitting on a bed of straw, there was german music singing ‘die’ repeatedly, and there was the sudden deaths or spiralling of all of the film crew and actors into mental health crises.

You know, the usual marketing campaign.

Oh, and I nearly forgot - everyone that watched it had sudden suicidal thoughts!

It was quickly pulled from air due to complaints, and is now known simply as an urban legend.

*mysterious pipe music plays in the distance*

#5 - Kuchisake-onna // The Slit-Mouthed Woman

Equally as famous as Kleenex firing most of their TV advertising department (before they all died, anyway) is the slit-mouthed woman, an onryo just like the main characters of The Grudge.

A woman (gasp) supposedly wanders the streets of Japan, and, in the dark of the night, wanders up to those walking alone.

She then asks them how she looks.

If you react with disgust, she will kill you via the scissors she just so happens to have on her. If you react positively and clearly think she's beautiful, she will smile weirdly at you, revealing the slits giving her a permanent smile and repeat the question. If you compliment her, she will give you the same cuts that have slit open a permanent smile.

If you say she looks average or distract her with food or sweets you will be free to go.

And the moral of this story?

We are all beautiful in our own way. Also pls don’t kill me.

#6 - Benzaiten’s Curse

Benzaiten is the goddess of everything that flows: time, water, knowledge, the linings of my womb from my nether-regions every 5 weeks.

But, as made clear by the latter, she isn’t necessarily a positive force. Let’s say you take your partner to the Imokashira pond for a romantic row across the river. As the pond and the park containing it are full of her shrines, for some reason she takes delight in ending relationships.

Jealous of the happy couples enjoying the peace of the park, she curses them, leaving them to split down the middle.

Mwahaha?

#7 - Kunekune // Wriggling Body

There’s no backstory, there’s no explanation, and there’s no evidence of the kunekunes. But this doesn’t stop this story being perhaps the most chilling to haunt this blog.

Kunekunes are slender white figures that stand tall on fields, lingering in the distance.

Get too close? You go insane.

Touch one? You dead.

It is believed that this legend could be linked to claims of scarecrows coming to life at night or if you stare at them too long, but regardless of where it evolved from, this shizz be spooky.

#8 - Teke Teke

Got any more room for another onryo? Good. ‘Cause this one involves a woman who was sliced in half by a train.

Having fallen on a railway and lost her legs to the accident, it is claimed she drags her torso along with her arms, her elbows making the noise titling the legend.

Don’t fancy an encounter with her? Stay away from urban areas. But if she does happen to, uhh, bump into you, here’s what you have to do to avoid your legs being scythed off.

(Actually, sorry to interrupt - how in the hell does she do that like surely a scythe is a long boi and like shes only got her arms as her height so how does this work)

She will ask you where her legs are and you either have to tell her that they are on the Meichin Railway or say in perfect Japanese “mask death demon”.

And no, I don’t think she allows you time to pull up Google Translate.

Oh, and I also just found out that anyone that learns of her story will encounter her within one month. Soz.

#9 - Kāneru Sandāsu no Noroi // The Curse Of The Colonel

Honestly, this be a fucking meme. Like this is hilarious.

This is why I started this blog: for ghosts, for horror films, and for curses relating to fast food restaurants.

The story goes that in 1985 the Hanshin Tigers basketball team won the Japan Championship series. On the night they won, a statue of Colonel Sanders - yep, the KFC guy - was thrown into a river.

Since 1985 they haven’t won the series, something that has been attributed to the bad luck from the statue still being in the river.

In 2009, they began to recover their lucky charm, and all they need now is to find a hand and his glasses.

#10 - Cow Head

Sure, this urban legend might not have a descriptive title, but it is probably the most perplexing. Heck, there are even two stories behind it, both of which I assume are related.

The first claims that a teacher once told his students a story of ‘Cow Head’. They all began to experience strange symptoms over the following days, from seizure-like shaking to their eventual deaths. This slow demise is traced to the story, but only fragments are available to find.

(And, because I’m only gonna let you be haunted by teke teke, I thought I’d let you find that one out for yourself cause I’m nice and also scared.)

The other side of the story goes a little something like this:

A town is cursed after they eat the head of a cow.

Yeah, that's the end of the story.

Or maybe the urban legend is from Ukrainian folklore? A woman received good fortune after offering shelter to a disembodied cow head.

#11 - Kokkuri

This is a classic: it's basically a Japanese ouija board.

A favourite among high school students searching for a quick buzz, all this requires is someone that can write out hangara symbols and someone else willing to cough up a coin.

And all you have to do is ask kokkuri-san a question. Well, the question might go unanswered - they can only tell you of your death.

If you do so happen to stumble into a sesh, make sure you say goodbye to kokkuri-san, spend the coin she used to point out the answer, and use us all the ink from the pen used to draw the symbols.

Other than that, you’re good to find out when you’ll meet the Grim Reaper!

#12 - Kisaragi Station

This one’s fresh from the new age of the urban legend.

It’s 2002, and we are probably on some dodgy 4-chan-before-4-chan website.

The story is pretty simple, and claims there is a railway station that is unmarked on maps which someone has reportedly visited. This unmanned station is spook central, with the name of the station roughly translating to ‘demon station’.

The original story claimed a commuter train which normally frequently stopped took a different route and only a few other passengers - all fast asleep - were on board.

No taxis, no buildings, no guards, no timetables…

All aboard the not-sleeping-ever-again train!

#13 - Hasshaku-sama

Similar to the urban legend previously described, this is ripped fresh from the early days of the web.

It is claimed that a woman towering over 2 metres tall attempts to lure young people into the arms of death, mimicking the voices of their family members. Or, in more simple terms, if she likes you, you gon’ die.

The story attempts to explain her backstory, claiming she might be a divine spirit, or that she is attached to a village the protagonist of the urban legend must escape to avoid her powers.

Who Else Ain’t Sleeping Tonight?

(Or taking a bath/shower/going into the bathroom ever again?)

And which urban legend traumatised you the most?

Why not fall further down the rabbit hole and check out my other articles exploring the reality behind your fave horror flicks?

And while you’re there, be sure to hit follow to see a new ghost story everyday.

(Also this is now you trying to live life but now thinking about the urban legends I told you about lol c ya byeeeeeee)

54 notes · View notes

iandeleonwrites · 3 years

Text

Ian’s Case: A Personal Statement for Grad School Admission

Personal Statement, Ian Deleón

“He felt something strike his chest, and that his body was being thrown swiftly through the air, on and on, immeasurably far and fast, while his limbs were gently relaxed.”

It was more than a decade ago when I first read those words. Written by the American author Willa Cather, Paul’s Case: A Study in Temperament has always felt to me like an intimate account of my own life penned by a woman one hundred years in the past.

That is a feeling which makes me proud; that my personal whims, fears, and desires, could find their echo long ago in a story about a young man and his pursuit of a meaningful life. Because of it, I felt a pleasing sense of historicity at a time when I was struggling so much with my own.

I grew up in Miami Beach. Literally not more than a block away from water for most of my life. My father had emigrated from Cuba with his family in 1980. My mother had come on a work visa from Brazil a few years later. They met on the beach, had an affair, and I came into the world in May of 1987.

My life was marked with in betweenness from the very beginning. My parents’ relationship did not last long, so I grew up traveling between houses. I had two families. I was American, but I was also Cuban and Brazilian. I even have a Brazilian passport. I spoke three languages fluently, but I couldn’t dance salsa or samba. I felt at home with the working class immigrants and people of color in my neighborhoods, but I often had to work hard to prove I wasn’t just some gringo with a knack for foreign tongues.

[A quick note on Paul’s Case––If it happens that the reader is not familiar with the short story, let me briefly summarize it here: A disenchanted youth in turn of the century Pittsburgh feels increasingly alienated from his schoolmates, his teachers and his family. His only comfort is his position as an usher at Carnegie Hall, where he loses himself in the glamour of the art life. Having no drive or desire to become an artist, however, the dandy Paul makes a spur of the moment criminal decision and elopes to New York City. There, he is able to live out his fantasies in a financial masquerade for about a week’s time, until the authorities back home finger him for monetary theft. Learning that his father is en route to the city to collect him, Paul travels to the countryside and flings himself in front of a speeding train, musing about the elegant brevity of winter flowers.]

When I first encountered Cather’s short story I was blown away by the parallels I saw between my own life and Paul’s. In 2005, fresh out of high school, I was living mostly with my father as my mother had relocated to faraway West Palm Beach. I was an usher at the local concert hall, a job I cherished enough to volunteer my time for free. I became entranced by the world of classical music, opera, theater, and spectacle––often showing up for work early and roaming the performance spaces, probing high and low like some kind of millenial phantom.

In school, however, I had no direction, no plan. I had good enough grades, but no real motivation, and worst of all, I thought, no discernible talent. I probably resented my father for not being cultured enough to teach me about music, theater, and the arts. No one in my family had ever even been to a museum, or sat before a chamber orchestra. And it didn’t seem to matter to them either, they could somehow live blissfully without it.

Well I couldn’t. I began to mimic the fervor with which Paul immersed himself in that world, while also exhibiting the same panic at the thought of not being able to sustain my treasured experiences without a marketable contribution to them. But here is where Paul and I take divergent paths.

I was attending the Miami Dade Honors College, breezing my way towards an associate’s degree. I took classes in Oceanography, Sociology, Creative Writing, Acting and African Drumming. I was experimenting and falling in love with everything.

But it was my Creative Writing professor, Michael Hettich, who really encouraged the development of my nascent writing talent. Up until that point my ideas only found their expression through class assignments, particularly book reports and essays on historical events. My sister had always felt I had a way with words, but I just attributed this to growing up in a multicultural environment amongst a diversity of native languages.

As a result of that encouragement I began to write poetry, little songs and treatments for film ideas based on the short stories we were talking about in class. Somehow, thanks to those lines of poetry and a few amateur photographic self portraits, I was admitted to the Massachusetts College of Art & Design for my BFA program.

There, I attended classes in Printmaking, Paper Making, Performance Art, Video Editing, and Glass Blowing. I was immersed in culture, attending lectures and workshops, adding new words to my vocabulary: “New Media” and “gestalt”. I saw my first snowfall. I had the dubious honor of appearing at once not Hispanic and yet different enough. I was overwhelmed. I felt increasingly disenchanted and out of place in New England, yet my work flourished and grew stronger.

It was during this time that I developed a passion for live performance and engagement with an audience. I also worked with multi-channel video and sculptural installations. Always, I commented on my family history, grappling with it, the emigrations and immigrations. I even returned to those early short stories from Miami Dade, one time doing an interpretive movement piece based on The Yellow Wallpaper. Most often I talked about my father. He was even in a few of my projects. He was a good sport, though we still had the occasional heated political disagreement. We never held any grudges, and made up again rather quickly. It would always be that way, intense periods of warming and cooling. A tropical temperament, I suppose.

I continued to take film-related classes in Boston, but my interests gradually became highly abstracted, subtle, and decidedly avant-garde. I had no desire to work in a coherently narrative medium. This would eventually change, but for now, I let my ambitions and aspirations take me where they would.

I returned home to Miami for a spell after graduation. I traveled the world for five months after that. I moved back to Boston for another couple of years, because it was comfortable I suppose, though I was fed up with the weather.

Finally, I wound up in NYC. Classic story: I followed a charming young woman, another performance artist as luck would have it, a writer too, and a bit of an outsider. We were quickly engaged and on the first anniversary of our meet cute we were married on a gorgeous piece of land in upstate new york, owned by an older performance-loving couple from the city. Piece of land doesn’t quite do it justice, we’re talking massive tracts, hidden acres of forest, sudden lakes, fertile fields, and precocious wildlife. As they say in the movies, it really is all about location, location, location.

Nearly all of our significant personal and professional achievements in the subsequent years have centered around this bucolic homestead. After meeting, courting, researching and eventually getting married there, we soon decided we would stage our most ambitious project to date in this magical space––we would shoot...a movie.

We hit upon the curious story of an eighteenth century woman in England called Mary Toft. Dear Mary became famous for a months-long ruse that involved her supposed birthing of rabbits, and sometimes cats. The small town hoax ballooned into a national controversy when it was eventually exposed by some of the king’s physicians. My wife and I were completely enthralled by this story and its contemporary implications. Was Mary wholly complicit in the mischievous acts, or was she herself a sort of duped victim...of systematic abuse at the hands of her family, her husband, her country?

We soon found a way to adapt and give this tale a modern twist that recast Mary as a woman of color alone in the woods navigating a host of creepy men, a miscarriage, and a supernatural rabbit.

Over the course of nine months, our idea gestated and began taking the form of a short film screenplay. This was something neither of us had done or been adequately trained to do before. But we knew we wanted it to be special, it was our passion project. We knew we didn’t want it to look amateurish––we were too old for that. So we took out a loan, hired an amazing camera crew, and in three consecutive days in the summer of 2017 we filmed our story, Velvet Cry. It was the most difficult thing either of us had undertaken...including planning our nuptial ceremony around our difficult families.

It was an incredible experience––intoxicating––also quite maddening and stressful. But it was all worth it. Because of our work schedules, it took us another year to finish post production on the film, but throughout that process, I knew I had found my calling. I would be a writer, and I would be a Director.

Perhaps I had been too afraid to dream the big dream before. Perhaps I had lacked the confidence, or simply, the life experience to tackle the complexity of human emotions, narratives, and interactions––but no longer. This is what I wanted to do and I had to find a way to get better at doing it.

In the intervening months, I have set myself on a course to develop my writing abilities as quickly as I could in anticipation of this application process. I know I have some latent talent, but it has been a long time since I’ve been in an academic setting, and in any case, I have never really attempted to craft drama on this scale before.

I’ve read many books, listened to countless interviews, attended online classes, and most importantly, written my heart out since relocating down the coast to the small college town of Gainesville in Central Florida with my wife in June of 2018. It was through a trip to her alma mater of Hollins University that we learned about the co-ed graduate program in screenwriting a few months ago. After all the debt I accrued in New England, I didn’t think I would ever go back to college, though I greatly enjoyed the experience. But what we learned about the program filled me with confidence and a desire to share in the wonderful legacy of this school that my wife is always gushing about.

Our Skype conversation with Tim Albaugh proved to be the deciding factor. I knew instantly that I wanted to be a part of anything that he was involved with, and I had the feeling that my ideas would truly be nurtured and harnessed into a craft––something tangible I could be proud of and use to propel my career.

I continue to mine my childhood and adolescence in Miami for critical stories and characters, situations that shed light on my own personal experience of life. I’ve found myself coming back to Paul’s Case. No longer caught up in the character’s stagnant, brooding longings for a grander life, I’m now able to revisit the story, appreciating the young man’s anxieties while evaluating how it all went so fatally wrong for Paul. There was no reason to despair, no cause for lost hope. I would take the necessary steps to become the artist I already know myself to be. The screenplay I am submitting as my writing sample is a new adaptation of this story, making Paul my own, and giving him a little bit of that South Florida flavor.

I will close by reiterating how I have visited Hollins, and heard many a positive review from the powerful women I know who have attended college there. As a graduate student, I know Hollins can help me to become a screenwriter, to become a filmmaker. This is the only graduate program to which I am applying––I have a very good feeling about all this.

I want to be a Hollins girl.

#college essay #paul's case #queer writing #hollins university

2 notes · View notes

letterboxd · 4 years

Photo

Life in Film: Ben Wheatley.

As Netflix goes gothic with a new Rebecca adaptation, director Ben Wheatley tells Jack Moulton about his favorite Hitchcock film, the teenagers who will save cinema, and a memorable experience with The Thing.

“The actual process of filmmaking is guiding actors and capturing emotion on set. That’s enough of a job without putting another layer of postmodern film criticism over the top of it.” —Ben Wheatley

Winter’s coming, still no vaccine, the four walls of home are getting pretty samey… and what Netflix has decided we need right now is a lavish, gaslight-y psychological thriller about a clifftop manor filled with the personality of its dead mistress—and a revival of one of the best menaces in screen history. Bring on the ‘Mrs Danvers’ Hallowe’en costumes, because Rebecca is back.

In Ben Wheatley’s new film adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s best-selling 1938 novel, scripted by Jane Goldman, Lily James plays an orphaned lady’s maid—a complete nobody, with no known first name—who catches the eye of the dashing, cashed-up Maxim de Winter (Armie Hammer).

Very quickly, the young second Mrs de Winter is flung into the intimidating role of lady of Manderley, and into the shadow of de Winter’s late first wife, Rebecca. The whirlwind romance is over; the obsession has begun, and it’s hotly fuelled by Manderley’s housekeeper, Mrs Danvers (Kristin Scott Thomas, perfectly cast).

Each adaptation of du Maurier’s story has its own quirks, and early Letterboxd reactions suggest viewers will experience varying levels of satisfaction with Wheatley’s, depending on how familiar they are with both the novel and earlier screen versions—most notably, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 Best Picture winner, starring Laurence Olivier Joan Fontaine, and Judith Anderson.

Why would you follow Hitchcock? It’s been 80 years; Netflix is likely banking on an audience of Rebecca virgins (the same kind of studio calculation that worked for Bradley Cooper’s A Star is Born). Plus, the new Rebecca is a Working Title affair; it has glamor, camp, Armie Hammer in a three-piece suit, the sunny South of France, sports cars, horses, the wild Cornish coast, Lily James in full dramatic heat, and—controversial!—a fresh twist on the denouement.

A big-budget thriller made for a streamer is Wheatley coming full circle, in a way: he made his name early on with viral internet capers and a blog (“Mr and Mrs Wheatley”) of shorts co-created with his wife and longtime collaborator, Amy Jump. Between then and now, they have gained fans for their well-received low-to-no budget thrillers, including High-Rise, Kill List and Free Fire (which also starred Hammer).

Over Zoom, Wheatley spoke to Letterboxd about the process of scaling up, the challenge of casting already-iconic characters, and being a year-round horror lover. [The Rebecca plot discussion may be spoilery to some. Wheatley is specifically talking about the du Maurier version, not his film.]

Armie Hammer and Ben Wheatley on the set of ‘Rebecca’.

Can you tell us how you overcame any concerns in adapting a famous novel that already has a very famous adaptation? How did you want to make a 1930s story relevant to modern audiences? Ben Wheatley: When you go back to the novel and look at how it works, you see it’s a very modern book. [Author Daphne du Maurier is] doing stuff that people are still picking up the pieces of now. It’s almost like the Rosetta Stone of thrillers—it tells you everything on how to put a thriller together. The genre jumping and Russian-doll nature of the structure is so delicious. When you look at the characters in the book, they’re still popping up in other stuff—there’s Mrs Danvers in all sorts of movies.

It remains fresh because of its boldness. Du Maurier is writing in a way that’s almost like a dare. She’s going, “right, okay, you like romantic fiction do you? I’ll write you romantic fiction; here’s Maxim de Winter, he’s a widower, he’s a good-looking guy, and owns a big house. Here’s a rags-to-riches, Cinderella-style girl. They’re going to fall in love. Then I’m going to ruin romantic fiction for you forever by making him into a murdering swine and implicating you in the murder because you’re so excited about a couple getting away with it!”

That’s the happy ending—Maxim doesn’t go to prison. How does that work? He’s pretty evil by the end. It’s so subtly done that you only see the trap of it after you finish reading the book. That’s clearly represented in Jane Goldman’s adaptation that couldn’t be done in 1940 because of the Hays Code. That whole element of the book is missing [in Hitchcock’s Rebecca]. But I do really like this style of storytelling in the 1930s and ’40s that is not winky, sarcastic, and cynical. It’s going, “here’s Entertainment with a big ‘E’. We’re going to take you on holiday, then we’re gonna scare you, then we’re gonna take you around these beautiful houses that you would never get a chance to go around, and we’re gonna show you these big emotions.”

After High-Rise, you ended up circling back to more contained types of films, whereas Rebecca is your lushest and largest production. How was scaling up for you? Free Fire does feel like a more contained film, but in many ways it was just as complicated and had the same budget as High-Rise, since it’s just in one space. Happy New Year, Colin Burstead is literally a contained film, that’s right. What [the bigger budget] gave me was the chance to have a conversation where I say I want a hotel that’s full of people and no-one says you can’t have any people in it. You don’t have to shoot in a corner, so that scale is suddenly allowed.

Elisabeth Moss and Tom Hiddlestone in Wheatley’s ‘High-Rise’ (2015).

The other movies I did are seen as no-budget or, I don’t even know the word for how little money they are, and even though High-Rise and Free Fire were eight million dollars each, they’re still seen as ultra-low budget. This is the first film that I’ve done that’s just a standard Hollywood-style movie budget and it makes a massive difference. It gives you extra time to work. All the schemes you might have had to work out in order to cheat and get around faster, but now it’s fine, let’s only shoot two pages today. We can go out on the road and close down all of the south of France—don’t worry about all the holidaymakers screaming at you and getting cross! That side of it is great.

You had the challenge to cast iconic actors for iconic roles. What were you looking for in the casting? What points of reference did you give the actors? I don’t think we really talked about it, but [Armie Hammer] definitely didn’t watch the Hitchcock version. I can understand why he wouldn’t. There was no way he was going to accidentally mimic [Laurence] Olivier’s performance without seeing it and he just didn’t want to have the pressure of that. I think that’s quite right. It’s an 80-year-old film, it’s a beloved classic, and we’d be mad if we were trying to remake it. We’re not.

The thing about the shadow that the film cast is that it’s hard enough making stuff without thinking about other filmmakers. I’ve had this in the past where journalists ask me “what were your influences on the day?” and I wish I could say “it was a really complicated set of movies that the whole thing was based around”, but it’s not like that. When you watch documentaries about filmmakers screening loads of movies for their actors before they make something—it’s lovely, but it’s not something I’ve ever done.

The actual process of filmmaking is guiding actors and capturing emotion on set. That’s enough of a job without putting another layer of postmodern film criticism over the top of it—“we’ll use this shot from 1952, that will really make this scene sing!”—then you’re in a world of pain. Basically, it’s my interpretation of the adaptation. The book is its own place, and for something like High-Rise, [screenwriter Amy Jump] has the nightmare of sitting down with 112 pages of blank paper and taking a novel and smashing it into a script. That’s the hard bit.

Armie Hammer and Lily James in ‘Rebecca’.

Current industry news is not so great—cinemas are facing bankruptcy, film festivals in the USA are mostly virtual, Disney is focusing on Disney+ only. How do you feel about a future where streaming dominates the market and the theatrical experience becomes, as we fear, an exclusive niche? Independent cinema was born out of very few movies. If you look at the history of Eraserhead—that film on its own almost created all of cult cinema programming. One movie can do that. It can create an audience that is replicated and becomes a whole industry. And that can happen again, but it needs those films to do that. They will come as things ebb and flow. The streamers will control the whole market and then one day someone will go “I don’t want to watch this stuff, I want to watch something else” and they’ll go make it.

It’s like The Matrix, it’s a repeating cycle. There’ll always be ‘the One’. There’s Barbara Loden in 1970 making Wanda, basically inventing American independent cinema. So I don’t worry massively about it. I know it’s awkward and awful for people to go bankrupt and the cinemas to close down, but in time they’ll re-open because people will wanna see stuff. The figures for cinemagoers were massive before Covid. Are you saying that people with money are not going to exploit that? Life will find a way. Remember that the cinema industry from the beginning is one that’s in a tailspin. Every year is a disaster and they’re going bust. But they survived the Spanish Flu, which is basically the same thing.

Two months ago, you quickly made a horror movie. We’re going to get a lot of these from filmmakers who just need to create something this year. What can you identify now about this inevitable next wave of micro-budget, micro-schedule pandemic-era cinema? I’ve always made micro-budget films so that side of it is not so crazy. There will be a lot of Zoom and people-locked-in-houses films but they won’t be so interesting. They’re more to-keep-you-sane kind of filmmaking which is absolutely fine. Where you should look for [the ‘pandemic-era’ films] is from the kids and young adults through 14 to 25 who’ve been the most affected by it. They will be the ones making the true movies about the pandemic which will be in like five years’ time.

People going through GCSEs and A-Levels [final high-school exams in England] will have had their social contracts thoroughly smashed by the government after society tells them that this is the most important thing you’re ever gonna do in your life. Then the next day the government tells them “actually, you’ve all passed”, then the next day they go “no, you’ve all failed”, and then “oh no, you’ve all passed”. It’s totally bizarre. Anyone who’s in university at the moment [is] thinking about how they’ve worked really hard to get to that position and now they’ve had it taken away from them. That type of schism in that group will make for a unique set of storytelling impetus. Much more interesting than from my perspective of being a middle-age bloke and having to stay in my house for a bit, which was alright. Their experience is extreme and that will change cinema.

Kristin Scott Thomas as Mrs Danvers in ‘Rebecca’.

It’s time to probe into your taste in film. Firstly, three questions about Alfred Hitchcock: his best film, most underrated film, and most overrated film? It’s tricky, there’s a lot to choose from. I think Psycho is his best film because, much like Wanda, it was the invention of indie cinema. He took a TV crew to go and do a personal project and then completely redefined horror, and he did it in the same year as Peeping Tom.

There’s stuff I really like in Torn Curtain. Certainly the murder scene where they’re trying to stick the guy in the oven. It’s a gut-wrenching sequence. Overrated, I don’t know. It’s just a bit mean, isn’t it? Overrated by who? They’re all massively rated, aren’t they?

Which film made you want to become a filmmaker? The slightly uncool version of my answer is the first fifteen minutes of Dr. No before I got sent to bed. We used to watch movies on the telly when I was a kid, so movies would start at 7pm and I had to go to bed at 7:30pm. You would get to see the first half-hour and that would be it. The opening was really intriguing. I never actually saw a lot of these movies until I was much older.

The more grown-up answer is a film like Taxi Driver. It was the first time where I felt like I’d been transported in a way where there was an authorship to a film that I didn’t understand. It had done something to me that television and straightforward movies hadn’t done and made me feel very strange. It was something to do with the very, very intense mixture of sound, music and image and I started to understand that that was cinema.

What horror movie do you watch every Hallowe’en? I watch The Thing every year but I don’t tend to celebrate Hallowe’en, to be honest. I’m of an age where it wasn’t a big deal and was never particularly celebrated. I find it a bit like “what’s all this Hallowe’en about?”—horror films for me are for all year-round.

What’s a brilliant mindfuck movie that perhaps even cinephiles haven’t seen? What grade of cinephile are we talking? All of the work by Jan Švankmajer, maybe. Hard to Be a God is pretty mindfucky if you want a bit of that, but cinephiles should know about it. It’s pretty intense. Marketa Lazarová too.

‘Marketa Lazarová’ (1967) directed by František Vláčil.

What is the greatest screen romance that you totally fell head over heels for? I guess it’s Casablanca for me. That would be it.

Which coming-of-age film did you connect to the most as a teenager? [Pauses for effect] Scum.

Who is an exciting newcomer director we should keep our eyes on? God, I don’t know. I would say Jim Hosking but he’s older than me and he’s not a newcomer because he’s done two movies. So, that’s rubbish. He doesn’t count.

[Editor’s note: Hosking contributed to ABCs of Death 2 with the segment “G is for Grandad” while Wheatley contributed to The ABCs of Death with the segment “U is for Unearthed” and also executive produced the follow-up film.]

What was your best cinema experience? [Spoiler warning for The Thing.]

Oh, one that speaks in my mind is seeing The Thing at an all-nighter in the Scala at King’s Cross, and I was sitting right next to this drunk guy who was talking along to the screen. It was a packed cinema with about 300 people, and someone at the front told him “will you just shut up?” The guy says “I won’t shut up. You tell me to shut up again and I’ll spoil the whole film!” The whole audience goes “no, no, no!” and he went “it’s the black guy and the guy with the beard—everyone else dies!” That made me laugh so much.

Do you have a favorite film you’ve watched so far this year? Yeah, Zombie Flesh Eaters.

Related content

Classic Gothic Literature to Film—Jennifer Boddaert’s list

Ava’s Dark Romance list

Ben Wheatley’s Life in Film list

Follow Jack on Letterboxd

‘Rebecca’ is in select US theaters on October 17, and streaming on Netflix everywhere on October 21.

3 notes · View notes

aion-rsa · 4 years

Text

Lucifer Season 4 Recap: The Devil’s in the Details

https://ift.tt/326aYtT

The following contains spoilers for Lucifer season 4.

Lucifer is the rare show that didn’t reach its full potential until it was canceled. Always fun, supernatural camp, the show reached another level in season 4 following its move from Fox to Netflix.

The first three seasons largely used Ellis’ ability to slip so easily and believably from semi-sleazy boundless cad to genuinely hurt lost child to raging demon to tell the story of the devil’s emotional development from the rejected and perpetually abandoned son of God (and Goddess) to (semi-)self-aware friend, partner, and potential (chaste) lover. In this, he was aided by a cast and characters to play off who made silly moments funnier and touching moments sweeter or more heartbreaking.

Sadly, however, that’s largely all that humans Detective Chloe Decker, douche Dan, Dr. Martin, and quirky forensic scientist Ella were allowed to do. Their characters were given little development. Charlotte theoretically was given some space for movement, but this was largely due to her becoming literally a different character halfway through, and her last-minute heaven-winning transformation felt a bit hollow in the end. Demon Mazikeen and angelic brother Amenadiel fared better, both coming to grips (as foils to Lucifer’s own development) with what their move to the City of Angels meant for them. But still, the primary focus—and thus all that was most interesting—was Lucifer.

But this all changed in season four, when Netflix picked up the show. The move away from broadcast television shortened the season (to 10 episodes, down from a high of 25) but lengthened the episodes, which meant that much of the procedural quality and one-off episodes dropped away and the show focused more consistently on its primary arc, and with it, the development of its characters.

With Lucifer season 5 set to arrive on Netflix on August 21, now is the right time to recap the events of Lucifer season 4.

Chloe Finds God

Season four’s opening scene grabs us immediately and sets the tone for the rest of the season as we watch and listen to Ellis’s Lucifer sing Radiohead’s “Creep” in a montage, night after night, as he slowly disintegrates over time over the loss of Chloe, who has taken Trixie and run away after Lucifer’s true nature has finally been made inescapably clear to her. This absence is quickly rectified when the Detective (Lauren German) shows up at a crime scene unannounced, throwing not just her celestial partner but the whole investigative team for a loop.

She’s been to the Vatican—among other places—in search of answers, although it is never entirely clear what her questions were. Here she has fallen prey to a priest with an agenda. Father Kinley (played alternately with touching kindness and religious hysteria by Outlander’s Graham McTavish) has been tracking Lucifer’s comings and goings throughout history and is convinced that he is every bit as evil and malicious as the Bible has said. Although she does not entirely believe this, she is moved by the argument that, wherever he goes, destruction follows, and he must return to hell. She agrees to help him sedate Lucifer so Kinley can perform an exorcism on him.

Lucifer Season 5 Part 1 Review (Spoiler-Free)

By Kirsten Howard

All of this comes to naught, of course, since Chloe cannot reconcile the picture Father Kinley paints of Lucifer with the flawed but essentially good man that she knows, and she backs out of the plan. Kinley retaliates by informing Lucifer of the Detective’s intended betrayal (leaving out the key bit of information that it was and continues to be his plan) in an effort to drive a wedge between Chloe and her partner because he believes that she is the “first love” of a prophecy that promises that “when the devil walks the Earth and finds his first love, evil shall be released.”

Lucifer eventually confronts her and she tearfully admits not only her plan but hesitates just an instant too long when he asks her if she will ever be able to truly accept all of who he is. Here Lauren German is finally given the opportunity to add some real depth to what has too often been a fairly flat character, and she steps up nicely throughout this subplot as we watch Chloe struggle to come to terms with her love for the man developing behind the face of the originary monster.

Lucifer’s Rebound, Eve

Lucifer is crushed by Chloe’s confession, and it is this which jumpstarts the primary plot of season four as we are introduced to probably the most famous of Lucifer’s exes: Eve, who has recently escaped the unending boredom (we are told) of heaven, and is looking to hook up with her former lover. Eve’s conflict, as a character, comes from the fact that she was “created for (Adam). Turns out an arranged existence kind of takes the spark out of things.” She is, apparently, willing to accept all of what Lucifer is—something that he desperately needs at that point—and proceeds to join (or rather lead) him back into the life of debauchery that he was living before he began working with the Detective. Unfortunately for all involved, she seems to also have a fetish for his ability to punish people and actively rekindles his desire to do so, further estranging him from Chloe and the rest of his friends.

Charlie the Marginal Angel

Those friends, however, have their hands full. Dr. Martin and Amenadiel’s all-too-brief romantic alliance, it turns out, has borne fruit: she’s pregnant, though whether she will give birth to a fully human child or a more celestial being is unclear until the very end of the season when we learn that, while Charlie has no (obvious) wings, he likely is, in fact, at least marginally angelic. The angel Remiel does appear at one point to end Linda’s pregnancy by taking the unborn child, as an angel/human hybrid is forbidden, but Amenadiel manages to convince her to leave his family alone. Watching Linda and Amenadiel attempt to come to grips not just with impending parenthood but the uncertainty of their specific type of parenthood (including the VERY timely issue of what it means to be a Black parent to a Black son in America) allows both actors to turn in their best performances on the show to date.

Others struggle to make sense of their places and feelings in a changing landscape.

The Lucifer B-Team

Dan is essentially destroyed by Charlotte’s death at the end of season three and goes on a vengeful crusade against Lucifer, reverting to his corrupt ways in his attempt to alternately punish his ex-wife’s partner for her death—though his rationale for Lucifer’s guilt is murky at best—or cut through procedural red tape on cases. He believes that Lucifer is responsible for another outrage, that of having broken a criminal suspect’s back (which Dan is correct about), but his missteps eventually put Trixie at risk and he continues to spiral down, including trying to provoke Mazikeen into hurting him, as well as starting an ill-advised affair with Ella.

Ella is likewise struggling with Charlotte’s death which has shaken her religious beliefs. Over the first half of the season, we watch her go from being “on a break from the Big Guy” to outright stating that God does not exist. It is likely this which opens the door to her sexual entanglement with Dan. When she learns that Dan is the one who told a suspect’s criminal father that Lucifer broke his son’s back—which led said criminal to send muscle to Lucifer’s penthouse to kill him and catching Trixie in the crossfire—Ella keeps Dan’s secret but tells him he is in pain and needs help.

Mazikeen has had one support after another knocked out from beneath her on the show. First she faced rejection and/or betrayal (in her eyes) from both Lucifer and Amenadiel; then her best friend snuck around with her former lover, and now she has found out that her roommate, Chloe, is only pretending that things are okay between the two of them after the Detective learns of her true nature, and that she is actually keeping Mazikeen’s first friend, Chloe’s daughter Trixie, from being anywhere near her. When she attempts to then base her self-worth on her status as the impending child’s aunt or as Dan’s partner in marginal crime and definite violence, both possibilities collapse, and she’s left rudderless.

Eve’s Original Sin

In the midst of this, Eve has been tempting the Devil, and he is lapping it up, joining her in sexual debauchery and violence-rich punishment of the criminal, though we begin to suspect that Eve cares little about their targets’ actual guilt. This leads to mistakes and escalating estrangement from Chloe, as well as Lucifer’s growing sense that while Eve says she wants him to be himself, her view of who he is is as misguided and ultimately self-serving as the Detective’s was until she saw his true face. He knows that while he has always claimed he is not evil, he is skating dangerously close to becoming so, and as Amenadiel sussed out, an angel’s perception of himself has tangible effects: Lucifer’s wings are back but they are the leathery, horrific appendages humanity has always imagined him having rather than the beautiful ones that left humans awestruck in previous seasons. He becomes intent on stopping his transformation, and knows that this begins with rejecting Eve.

He tries, at first, to tell her of the prophecy, but all she hears is that she is his “first love” and takes it as a declaration of his feelings. He then attempts to get her to leave him, perhaps too guilty at having used her to get distance from Chloe. He turns himself into the prototypical bad boyfriend, forgetting perhaps that adapting herself to her man is her jam. When he finally confronts her, he tells her that he doesn’t like who he is with her, which, while true, isn’t the whole truth as he later admits to Linda: he doesn’t like himself. Full stop. He hates himself and it’s that that fuels his continuing transformation.

Not Standing by Your (Wo)Man

But that’s not his greatest danger. Nor the greatest danger he poses to humanity. Eve’s desire for him drives her to extremes, and after Maze’s standard man-getting advice fails, Eve kidnaps Father Kinley from police custody in an attempt to get him to convince Lucifer that the prophecy isn’t true and they can be together (though her intentions are unclear perhaps because Eve’s thinking is becoming more random and desperate). But Maze finally confronts her with the truth: he doesn’t return her feelings (anymore, Maze realizes, then Eve does hers, the demon having fallen for Eve) and she needs to get over it. But Eve cannot and when Kinley tempts her with the possibility of having Lucifer to herself and rendering the prophecy moot by getting him to return to Hell with her as his queen, she takes advantage of having to kill the priest (in self-defense) by telling him to deliver a message to the demons who control Hell: come get your king.

The demons, able to inhabit the bodies of the recently deceased, begin to possess the dead (starting with Kinley, who is taken over by the demon Dromos). When Lucifer orders them back to hell, informing them he has no actual plans to return, the demons come up with a backup plan: they grab the nearest defenseless celestial (since Hell’s king must be an angel): the recently arrived Charlie. They plan to perform Kinley’s exorcism on Linda and Amenadiel’s son and raise him to rule Hell as they want it run. Lucifer eventually cows them and forces them to return to Hell and all seems to be happily resolved.

Except that just about everyone is either heartbroken or otherwise shaken.

Eve has redeemed herself in the final battle, but knows that Lucifer will never love her. Rather than turn to Maze, she decides she needs to stop trying to define herself by who she is in a relationship with, and chooses to head off on that most quintessential of LA quests: to find herself. Maze is devastated. Dan is left to deal with the emotional fallout of his bad decisions, and while Charlie is safely back in his parents’ arms, it is with a very clear understanding of the risks they face as a family.

And, of course, the long awaited declarations of love between Lucifer and the Detective finally do happen, but only as he announces that he now knows that Hell cannot remain unguarded—that the demons would just return and that they could hurt Charlie or her–and he must go back…with no hope of return.

So thank uh…hmmm…Charlotte(?)…that Netflix renewed Lucifer for a fifth season because, while that would have made for an excellent end to a tragedy, I have now become a fan and am hoping for a happier ending. Now that we know there’s also to be a sixth season, I doubt that we’ll get that type of emotionally satisfying closure this year, but the trailers thus far have promised more than enough of the type of action, angst, and even comedy that has made the show such a favorite. It’ll be a Hell of a ride.

The post Lucifer Season 4 Recap: The Devil’s in the Details appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2YeTY3F

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

3 notes · View notes

cincinnatusvirtue · 4 years

Text

1799: The Tiger of Mysore. A tale of an 18th century Indian superpower, British imperialism and the rise of Arthur Wellesley, future Duke of Wellington.

220 years ago in 1799, the Indian Subcontinent was divided into several different polities, both native Indian kingdoms and European colonies. A mix of Dutch, Portuguese, French and most consequentially British. Europeans had interacted with India off and on since the days of Alexander the Great and the Macedonian Empire and subsequent Greco-Indian kingdoms in its wake. By the late 18th century, the great maritime powers of Europe were invested in trade with India and were more importantly invested in an arms race with one another to expand territorial and commercial influence the world over, particularly between France and Britain. They also sought to exploit the internal fighting and power vacuums created by changes amongst the various Indian kingdoms.

The biggest change in 18th century Indian century politics was the decline of the Mughal Empire, an Islamic empire founded in the 16th century by Turco-Mongols who laid claim to Northern India by way of conquest and subsequently ruled over most of India. They were in the position of ruling over a mostly Hindu country, though many were converted to Islam as well. Overtime, a caste of Hindu warriors in the western-central and southern portions of the country, called the Marathas who had served as mercenary warriors for the Mughals arose and asserted their independence. Not only did they gain their independence they expanded their power and the military stagnation and economic exhaustion of the Mughals led to a weakening and fracturing of their power. Further wars with Nader Shah of Persia, saw the sack of Delhi and weakening of Mughal power and wealth. Overtime, the Maratha Empire itself became decentralized and fought amongst itself and other powers which saw its own weakening by the late 18th century.

One power that grew increasingly influential in the 18th century was located in the south of India, the Kingdom of Mysore, having for centuries been vassals of the Vijayanagara Empire but by the 16th century it gained gradual independence and rose to autonomy in the 17th and 18th centuries. A Hindu majority country ruled by the Wodeyar dynasty, its kings however by the mid-18th century were also weakened when power was gradually handed over to its prime ministers, much like the neighboring Maratha Empire, the Wodeyars became rulers in name only, with the prime ministers exerting near total control. Enter, the Sultans of Mysore, Hyder Ali and his son Tipu Sultan. Men who would change the destiny of Mysore and India in the later half of the 18th century.

Hyder Ali was a soldier and Muslim, born into the Karnataka region of southern India, where Mysore was located among other kingdoms. Ali served essentially as did his father as mercenaries in the service of the Rajas (kings) of Mysore. Gradually in the wake of the Rajas own weakness and the subsequent transfer of power to Mysorean prime ministers, Hyder Ali due to much military and administrative success took over the country for himself. Becoming the de-facto if not nominal ruler of Mysore by 1761, he established a court at Srirangapatna and expanded Mysore’s power. Ali was said to have a great memory despite his illiteracy and had great financial accounting skills, this helped to stabilize Mysore’s economy which combined with diplomatic and military prowess lead Mysore to become the leading native power in the southern portion of the subcontinent. Ali styled himself Sultan Hyder Ali and ruled Mysore for the next twenty one years. During this time, Mysore increasingly came into the power struggle between France and Great Britain. The British East India Company, supported by the British government and in treaties with local Indian powers, played the local rivalries against one another and gradually began expanding its power into Southern India from its base, the Presidency of Madras.

Britain’s East India Company had formed as a state chartered enterprise alongside the French and Dutch East India Companies for control of trade in Africa and Asia, gradually this turned into colonization and two events really saw British interest in India turn from trade monopolies into gradual imperialist ventures. The first was the Seven Years War (1756-1763) which saw Britain gain control of many of the Kingdom of France’s colonial possessions the world over, including becoming the premiere European power in India. The second was Britain’s defeat in the American Revolution, which saw, Mysore as a co-belligerent of the Americans and their Allies of France, the Dutch Republic and Spain in coalition against Britain. Britain’s defeat in North America and its loss of the Thirteen Colonies that made up the USA, transferred Britain’s interest of imperial focus from North America to India, becoming its eventual crown jewel, figuratively and literally.

Hyder Ali had fought a successful war against the British in the 1760′s and by 1780 war was again sounding out between Mysore in alliance with France against Britain, linked in part with the American Revolution. Mysore would be victorious once again against the British, in no small part to the great innovation in artillery, that was Mysore’s trademark weapon, rocket artillery known as the Mysorean rocket. The rockets were not especially accurate but were devastating if launched in numbers. The genius of their crude design was they were iron cased attached to bamboo shafts as opposed to the paper ones used elsewhere in the world. The soft iron casing of the rockets gave them greater range and explosive power and damage when the black powder charge exploded. Even more frightening was the use of attaching sharp instruments to their end which could maim or kill its targets before exploding and sending shrapnel elsewhere. 1780′s Battle of Pollilur which resulted in a Mysorean victory is the first time the British were privy to the Mysorean rocket and its effects. Britain was again defeated by 1784 on terms favorable to the Mysoreans.

1782 saw Hyder Ali die and he was succeeded by his son Tipu Sultan, who thanks to his role in the Second Anglo-Mysore War and the use of the tiger in his personal standard became known as the “Tiger of Mysore”. A nickname earned due to his fierce opposition to the British, his tiger hunting prowess and appreciation for symbolism of the animal. His summer palace had ornate paintings celebrating his victory over the British at Pollilur. Also he had a mechanical toy crank operated pipe organ made of ornate wood designed in the form of a tiger mauling a European man made for his entertainment, known as Tipu’s Tiger.

Tipu continued his father’s mix of diplomacy and aggression in foreign affairs, playing the French and other Indian powers against the British. He also upped the living standards of every day Mysoreans, reformed the coinage, calendar and government apparatus of his kingdom and improved the rocket artillery innovations introduced by his father. Tipu helped make Mysore one of the absolute wealthiest countries on Earth. Mysore became a leading agricultural and textile producer especially of fine silks. Mysore under Tipu became so wealthy that the per capita incomes were on average higher than even in Europe in the Netherlands and Britain in the 1820′s. Tipu also garnered controversy over his religious policies however, he was a devout Muslim himself but practically speaking ruled a Hindu majority kingdom. He appointed many Hindus to positions of power in his administration and gave land grants to as many as 156 Hindu temples as examples of his religious tolerance. On the other hand evidence of massacres, imprisonment and forced conversion to Islam of both Hindus from outside his kingdom as well as of Indian Christians, notably the Catholics of Mangalore and captured British soldiers are cited as evidence of his cruelty. His legacy of religious tolerance is a matter of debate into the modern day.

Things went well for Tipu and Mysore until the Third Anglo-Mysore War (1790-1792). This saw Mysore’s first major defeat when Britain with a coalition of Maratha Empire, Kingdom of Travancore and the Nizam of Hyderabad all with unresolved issues against Mysore defeated Tipu Sultan in the 1792 Siege of Srirangapatna, led by General Charles Cornwallis, famous for his defeat at Yorktown during the American Revolution. This in some ways redeemed Cornwallis for his defeat in America. The battle saw the use of Mysorean rockets en masse once more. However, the British advanced and knowing without negotiation utter defeat was at hand, Tipu agreed to negotiate a peace. He ceded half of Mysore’s territory divided among the British and their allies and also handed over two of his sons as hostages to Cornwallis to be cared for by the British to ensure good behavior and compliance on Tipu’s part.

Mysore never fully recovered from this defeat and it was only a matter of time before war broke out again. The fourth and final Anglo-Mysore War broke out in 1798, now in the context of the struggle between the French Republic and British lead coalitions against the French Revolution. Tipu turned to his traditional French allies once more. In 1794 in touch with the French Republic under the auspices of French military officers, Tipu established the Jacobin Club of Mysore, the first Revolutionary Republican club of its kind in Indian history. He symbolically planted a “liberty tree” in solidarity with the French and was made an honorary Citizen Tipu or Tipoo. In 1798, French General Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt, then nominally part of the Ottoman Empire, but really under the centuries old rule of the Mameluke dynasty which French forces defeated. Napoleon’s stated goal was to secure Egypt and the Levant as a base from which to advance onto British India and link up with Mysore and defeat the British once and for all, delivering a blow to their most precious colony which would end the war in France and Mysore’s favor. Napoleon conquered Egypt and parts of the Levant but his fleet was defeated in the Battle of the Nile by the British Royal Navy, effectively stranding his army in the Middle East. Though he would escape in 1799 and initiate the coup that lead to his rise as First Consul and later French Emperor coming to dominate European politics for nearly the next two decades. Without French help, Mysore was left to its own. Its army was still formidable and Tipu was determined but 1799 was to be the end of it all.

The British Governor-General of India in 1799 was Richard Wellesley, 2nd Earl of Mornington of the Anglo-Irish family from Dublin. His younger brother, Arthur Wellesley, had found structure in an otherwise aimless life in a military career, fighting against the French in the Low Countries in the earlier part of the decade. By 1797, Arthur had transferred to India to assist his brother and the British East India Company expand its power, he was made a Colonel and set out with his regiment, the 33rd Regiment of Foot infantry in spring of 1799 under a larger British force made of British regulars, British administered Indian regiments (sepoys) and supported by the Nizam of Hyderabad’s army once more, they marched on Srirangapatna once again. The battle was a last stand and fierce, with the Mysorean rockets launched en masse one last time. Wellesley himself suffered a minor wound, finally a breach was made in the walls of the fortress and the British advanced in, volleys of fire and hand to hand combat took place and Tipu Sultan, armed with his ornate sword and modern European blunderbuss flintlock rifle fought to the very end, killed by a musket ball lodged in his head above the right ear and lodged in his left cheek. Wellesley himself pronounced Tipu dead upon checking his body on the scene. The Tiger of Mysore was no more, dead aged 48 and Mysore was conquered. In the aftermath of the battle, some British soldiers were engaging in looting and pillaging of the city and rape of Indian women. Wellesley, later famed for the discipline he attempted to instill in his troops, had troops he found engaged in this behavior, tried and executed by hanging for their crimes. Tipu’s body was buried honorably next to his father the following day. His sword lost in battle later found it’s way into British hands and his automated toy organ (Tipu’s Tiger) was confiscated by the British and is on exhibit to this day in the British Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

For his part, Wellesley was made Governor of British Mysore in the wake of his victory. His first step to military renown was achieved here. He would stay in India for a few more years, greatly expanding British control there, most notably defeating a large army of the Maratha Empire at the Battle of Assaye in 1803. Before he would return to Europe and face Napoleonic France in the successful Peninsular War in Spain of 1808-1814, then most famously defeating Napoleon Bonaparte himself by leading the British and Allied forces at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, he was made the Duke of Wellington and subsequently served as British Prime Minister. He always remarked it was his time in India, that he truly discovered himself and learned the lessons he later applied to armies under his command against Napoleon.

One of Tipu’s and Mysore’s lasting influences on the British military and military development in general was the use of the Mysorean rockets, the British studied the iron casings and under William Congreve, developed the Congreve rocket, based on descriptions of the Mysorean originals. The British began employing Congreve rocket regiments of artillery in Napoleonic battles as well as the War of 1812 against the United States, it helped contribute to advances in later missile and artillery technology up on through the modern day. So while the Tiger of Mysore may long be gone, his legacy in many ways, survives.

11 notes · View notes

antoine-roquentin · 5 years

Link

The initial rise of McKinsey and other management consultancies was due less to the force of their ideas or the ability of their people than to government anti-monopoly legislation, specifically the Glass Steagall Act of 1933. According to Christopher McKenna, in addition to separating commercial and investment banking, “the legislators also outlawed the consultative and reorganizational activities previously performed by banks.” This created an opening for management consulting firms: “Corporate executives, aware that the New Deal laws prohibited them from employing trade associations, industry cartels, or bankers to create industry benchmarks and to learn about administrative innovations, turned instead to management consultants as their primary source of interorganizational knowledge.” At McKinsey, there are benchmarks for everything, whether it’s the percentage of expected R&D savings following a pharma merger or the cost of temporary IT labor in the American Southwest. Over the years, McKinsey’s work with pretty much every player in every industry has made it the panopticon of global business, willing to share what competitors are up to (as anonymized “best practices” of course), for a price.

In addition to the favorable regulatory environment, McKinsey’s pro-market, hyper-rational ideas spread through what organizational theorists Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell call “mimetic isomorphism,” the tendency of institutions facing uncertainty to become more and more alike. In a quest for legitimacy in the eyes of employees, customers, and competitors, “Large organizations choose from a relatively small set of major consulting firms, which, like Johnny Appleseeds, spread a few organizational models throughout the land.” As a result, “…schools assume the structure of the workplace, hospital and university administrations come to resemble the management of for-profit firms, and the modernization of the world economy proceeds unabated.”

McKinsey’s reorganization of most of the large companies in post-war Europe demonstrates mimetic isomorphism in action. Facing extreme uncertainty and pressure from American firms, European companies modeled themselves after organizations perceived to be successful (American ones) and relied heavily on a single source of vital resources (McKinsey). Whether American corporate success was due to the decentralized organization model or the fact that their competition was in literal ruins is of little consequence. Decentralization took off because the cool companies decentralized, with McKinsey whispering in their ears. The net effect of these forces was to exacerbate some of the most damaging trends in contemporary life: the growth of wealth inequality and the increased insecurity of private employment.

In the 1950s, McKinsey consultant Arch Patton pioneered the field of executive compensation after discovering that worker wages had risen faster than management wages. (Gasp!) This led to a lucrative business: helping executives justify more and more extreme paychecks. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the typical CEO made 20 times the median employee’s compensation in 1965. In 2015, that ratio had climbed to 286. When Patton was asked in the 1980s how he felt about his legacy, he had one word: “Guilty.”

In the corporate world, the most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from McKinsey, and I’m here to help. The firm’s appearance is known as a harbinger of layoffs (one of most famous representations of consultants in pop culture is “the Bobs” from Office Space). While McKinsey will claim that it never identifies individuals to be cut, its willingness and effectiveness in recommending the axe begins in its roots. In 1935, James O. McKinsey left the firm he started to run a client, the Midwest department store chain Marshall Field. He was tasked with implementing the cost-cutting measures he recommended, resulting in “McKinsey’s purge” of 1,200 employees. In The Firm, McDonald writes, “McKinsey was a true forerunner of the 1980s revolutions in reorganization, downsizing, and rationalization– which are really just layoffs in different guises… McKinsey once argued that it ‘only assesses situations, not people.’” Note the classic obfuscation. What are situations without people? McDonald goes on, “…it may not be too far off the mark to suggest that McKinsey has been the impetus for more layoffs than any other entity in corporate history.”

Would these companies have laid off their employees, McKinsey or no? The presence of data-driven outsiders provides cover for executives to do things they may not have done otherwise. McKinsey could also point out that their competitors were taking similar steps (probably following the firm’s recommendations). Would these companies have survived without mass layoffs? In some cases, no, but in many cases, alternatives were possible but not considered (like looking at executive compensation or the cost of expensive consultants). Sometimes, layoffs are not even framed as necessary, like when McKinsey client Proctor & Gamble laid off 13,000 workers and the CEO said the public “has come to think of corporate restructuring as a sign of trouble, but this is definitely not P&G’s situation.”

In most companies, the fastest way to find savings is to reduce headcount, but McKinsey doesn’t have to live with the consequences of the decisions it makes—the irreparable damage mass layoffs can do to a company’s culture and operations, in addition to the impact they can have on the lives of the terminated.

small part of a long and wonderful article. see also McKinsey Advised Purdue Pharma How to ‘Turbocharge’ Opioid Sales, Lawsuit Says (NYT)

In 2009, McKinsey wrote a report for Purdue Pharma saying that new sales tactics would increase sales of OxyContin by $200 million to $400 million annually and “suggested sales ‘drivers’ based on the ideas that opioids reduce stress and make patients more optimistic and less isolated,” according to the lawsuit.

It was that year that Craig Landau, then Purdue’s chief medical officer and now its chief executive, had an email exchange that included a McKinsey consultant about how to counter mothers whose teenagers had overdosed on OxyContin. The solution: bring in patients to emphasize how the drug helps to relieve pain.

In 2013, amid the rapidly intensifying opioid crisis, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration and the Justice Department reached a settlement with Walgreens, the second-biggest American pharmacy chain. Walgreens agreed to new procedures to crack down on illegal prescriptions. In a report to Purdue Pharma, McKinsey said that “deep examination of Purdue’s available pharmacy purchasing data shows that Walgreens has reduced its units by 18%.”

According to the lawsuit, McKinsey recommended that Purdue “lobby Walgreens’ leaders to loosen up.”

McKinsey also recommended that Purdue redirect its sales force to focus on doctors who were especially prolific prescribers of OxyContin, according to the suit. One slide made public by the attorney general’s office, attributed to McKinsey, focused on one doctor in the town of Wareham, Mass., who almost doubled his annual output of OxyContin prescriptions after a big increase in visits from Purdue sales representatives.

If doctors resisted, McKinsey recommended that Purdue employ “patient pushback,” getting patients to lobby for OxyContin, according to the suit....

In 2018, after it spent years advising Purdue Pharma on how to increase sales of OxyContin, McKinsey published a report titled: “Why we need bolder action to combat the opioid epidemic.”

124 notes · View notes

andsoshespins · 4 years

Text

Tripping

My upcoming trip to Mexico City is one that I have wanted to take for quite literally half of my life, ever since I discovered Frida Kahlo, studied the Mexican Revolution, and did related art projects in high school. I have always been drawn to various aspects of Mexican culture and of indigenous peoples of the Americas, to both pre-Columbian and post-Columbian culture and the fusion of both where that may exist. I have yearned to see the famous DIego Rivera murals, taste and experience a few days in a vibrant city. I am in love with the language and the customs and crave some authenticity. And I’m not trying to “exoticize” it as an ignorant white American tourist or anything like that (and I hope I never come off as such). I truly just have a deep respect for the country and am fascinated by its history as a whole.

Why, then, am I suddenly experiencing so much anxiety about this very trip?

In the logical part of my brain, I know that I am assigning my current anxieties to this trip when most of them are unrelated. I also know that because this is probably one of the larger upcoming events in my life, I am focusing more attention on it. So let’s break it down...

Timing

The timing of this trip is unusual for me. I realized as I was reflecting on my worries that almost all of my trips abroad have been during a long vacation, usually summer, away from work or school. Having this trip situated in the midst of the school year, while still during a mid-winter break, I feel is setting the tone for more anxiety. I never before thought about what happens at work if something terrible were to happen to me. The ever-growing pile of papers in desperate need of homes in files and binders looms in my mind, and I feel like I do not want to leave anything undone. Part of me also thinks this is a mild guilt thing happening: Any time I have traveled within the school year has been for a specific event, usually a family affair like my cousin’s wedding in Cancun, my other cousin’s Quinceañera or a bridal shower as a bridesmaid in San Diego. I am wondering if i am feeling slight guilt for taking a pleasure trip. It’s absolutely ridiculous because it is my vacation and logically I know I can spend it however I damn well please.

Location and Reactions

I am certainly a critical-enough thinker to not vilify a country or city based on negative media coverage and xenophobia. I am open-minded and want nothing more than to experience different cultures and learn. But, realistically speaking, Mexico City is likely the “riskiest” place I have planned to travel. I have been through a few parts of Europe and the United States as well as a foray into the Caribbean. Mexico City has a tough reputation, and I think that is one major part of my fear. My travel companions and I have done a fair amount of research and are cautious individuals on the whole. I know we are mature and fairly experienced travelers who would take care to be safe. But there is always the risk of the unknown.

I knew that members of my immediate family would react fearfully when I told them about this trip. And I internalize these reactions a bit too much, I recognize. However, when I spoke to my uncle who has traveled there and visits various parts of Mexico frequently as his wife hails from there and they live in San Diego, I was surprised. His reaction was not as positive as I was anticipating and said, “It’s a dangerous city,” and talked about thieves, etc. He said it was beautiful and that traveling with four people should be good. Since I was not expecting his initial negative reaction, that’s all I focused on. He is a world traveler and would typically be more open and accepting about traveling. I think this made me have second thoughts more than anything. He did not mention kidnapping, though, just thieves and people ripping you off with prices (which, I can deal with haha).

On the reverse side of this coin are two other friends who have mentioned people in their close circles have visited the city in the last few months and enjoyed the experience immensely. My brain always seems to head toward the negative.

Fears, Rational or Not

What exactly am I afraid of? As ridiculous as some of these fears sound, I need to lay them all out in order to ease my brain. The biggest fear I have is death. I am afraid that I may die traveling to Mexico City, while there, or on my way back. I am also afraid of kidnapping; I had read about “express kidnappings” in which people force you to withdraw money from an ATM and then bring you back somewhere. I am afraid of never seeing my family again because of any of these. I am afraid of contracting coronavirus or some other sickness. I am also weirdly afraid of not being able to relax and enjoy myself for fear of all the aforementioned fears.

I think the fear of death has been something on my mind recently as I watch my grandparents and even parents age. I have been to a few wakes and funerals in the last few months, and each time, I just keep thinking about how amazing and special another birthday is.

I have a huge and shared responsibility with my new house. All this thinking and overthinking has led me to think about drawing up more concrete contracts and last wills and testaments at least for determining what will happen with our property. Strangely, this responsibility has been “sinking in” in many ways.

I think my current state of mind coupled with upcoming plans have compelled me to examine my own mortality, and therefore, reexamine the impact I am making on the world and in my life. I have always feared living an “unlived” life and not having some kind of legacy. I think my lack of motivation for work-related things has colored my contributions to society as less-than-ideal. I know in my heart I am doing the best I can, but all of these things are weirdly connected.

Residual Break-up Stuff

I know that breaking up with my boyfriend also plays a role in this recent bout of overwhelming anxiety. And I think this role is interesting, too. In some way, no longer having a constant support or presence in my life makes me subconsciously question the constancy of anything or anyone in my life, my own self included. Part of this healing process is not taking anything or anyone for granted.

I also feel like the change of routine from relationship to singledom has also impacted my frame of mind. I think that always having someone to look forward to and constantly planning setting off on unplanned adventures with, and then not having that plays with the mind and makes different events and ideas carry different weight or prominence. The absence of it is sad and the mind, at least my mind, looks for other substitutes to latch onto. And, I’m seeing now, that this may happen in unhealthy ways. Now is not the time to say I miss him, because, well, I don’t know (I’m too proud to admit it? I actually don’t miss him really? The time for that has passed and this is another feeling?) But I have a heart that is not yet finished feeling all the feelings that come along with a long relationship and its end.

Miscellaneous Anxieties

I always get a little nervous the few days before and while in the airport and on the airplane. But I always thought those were typical jitters that were always allayed quite quickly. Because I have been thinking and overthinking this trip for more than just a few days before, I feel like I must keep worrying about it in a way, as if that is the solution.

This is where my brain truly fucks me up then: I have these anxieties. Because I have these anxieties, it must mean that I have some premonition about something bad happening. So it becomes a torturous cycle of trying to be rational but so fearful that letting go of the fear will make bad things happen in some twisted way.

Conclusion?

I am forcibly reminded of a short period of time a few years ago when I had a truly irrational fear of taking the train/subway into the city. Whenever I went into Manhattan during that month or so, I would drive instead. It was truly unexplainable, but SO overwhelming. I think back to how I survived and so did every person who traveled on the trains in and out of the Big Apple during those few weeks without incident. I am trying to draw a parallel to this irrationality here, too.

I stumbled upon a “Savvy Psychologist” podcast on Spotify that actually spoke specifically about travel anxiety. I did feel a little more logical after listening to it. In the last part of the bit she said something that struck a chord with me, “Do what you want, not what your anxiety wants.” So, I think that I have to better measure out realistic concerns and possible concerns that my overactive imagination creates.

I think this current experience will propel me to think more closely and critically about my own self and how I react internally and externally.

P.S. Shortly thereafter, I read a part in my revisit to Anne of Green Gables about how Anne is terrified of the “Haunted Wood” she and Diana invented in their minds that she refuses to go but Marilla forces her. And she survives. :)

#tripping #mexico city #travel #anxiety #exploration

1 note · View note

mostlysignssomeportents · 5 years

Text

The European Copyright Directive: What is it, and why has it drawn more controversy than any other Directive in EU history?

During the week of March 25, the European Parliament will hold the final vote on the Copyright Directive, the first update to EU copyright rules since 2001; normally this would be a technical affair watched only by a handful of copyright wonks and industry figures, but the Directive has become the most controversial issue in EU history, literally, with the petition opposing it attracting more signatures than any other petition in change.org’s history.

How did we get here?

European regulations are marathon affairs, and the Copyright Directive is no exception: it had been debated and refined for years, and as of spring 2017, it was looking like all the major points of disagreement had been resolved. Then all hell broke loose. Under the leadership of German Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Axel Voss, acting as "rapporteur" (a sort of legislative custodian), two incredibly divisive clauses in the Directive (Articles 11 and 13) were reintroduced in forms that had already been discarded as unworkable after expert advice. Voss's insistence that Articles 11 and 13 be included in the final Directive has been a flashpoint for public anger, drawing criticism from the world's top technical, copyright, journalistic, and human rights experts and organizations.

Why can no one agree on what the Directive actually means?

"Directives" are rules made by the European Parliament, but they aren't binding law—not directly. After a Directive is adopted at the European level, each of the 28 countries in the EU is required to "transpose" it by passing national laws that meet its requirements. The Copyright Directive has lots of worrying ambiguity, and much of the disagreement about its meaning comes from different assumptions about what the EU nations do when they turn it into law: for example, Article 11 (see below) allows member states to ban links to news stories that contain more than a word or two from the story or its headline, but it only requires them to ban links that contain more than "brief snippets"—so one country might set up a linking rule that bans news links that reproduce three words of an article, and other countries might define "snippets" so broadly that very little changes. The problem is that EU-wide services will struggle to present different versions of their sites to people based on which country they're in, and so there's good reason to believe that online services will converge on the most restrictive national implementation of the Directive.

What is Article 11 (The "Link Tax")?

Article 11 seeks to give news companies a negotiating edge with Google, Facebook and a few other Big Tech platforms that aggregate headlines and brief excerpts from news stories and refer users to the news companies' sites. Under Article 11, text that contains more than a "snippet" from an article are covered by a new form of copyright, and must be licensed and paid by whoever quotes the text, and while each country can define "snippet" however it wants, the Directive does not stop countries from making laws that pass using as little as three words from a news story.

What's wrong with Article 11/The Link Tax?

Article 11 has a lot of worrying ambiguity: it has a very vague definition of "news site" and leaves the definition of "snippet" up to each EU country's legislature. Worse, the final draft of Article 11 has no exceptions to protect small and noncommercial services, including Wikipedia but also your personal blog. The draft doesn’t just give news companies the right to charge for links to their articles—it also gives them the right to ban linking to those articles altogether, (where such a link includes a quote from the article) so sites can threaten critics writing about their articles. Article 11 will also accelerate market concentration in news media because giant companies will license the right to link to each other but not to smaller sites, who will not be able to point out deficiencies and contradictions in the big companies' stories.

What is Article 13 ("Censorship Machines")?

Article 13 is a fundamental reworking of how copyright works on the Internet. Today, online services are not required to check everything that their users post to prevent copyright infringement, and rightsholders don't have to get a court order to remove something they view as a copyright infringement—they just have to send a "takedown notice" and the services have to remove the post or face legal jeopardy. Article 13 removes the protection for online services and relieves rightsholders of the need to check the Internet for infringement and send out notices. Instead, it says that online platforms have a duty to ensure that none of their users infringe copyright, period. Article 13 is the most controversial part of the Copyright Directive.

What's a "copyright filter?"

The early versions of Article 13 were explicit about what online service providers were expected to do: they were supposed to implement "copyright filters" that would check every tweet, Facebook update, shared photo, uploaded video, and every other upload to see if anything in it was similar to items in a database of known copyrighted works, and block the upload if they found anything too similar. Some companies have already made crude versions of these filters, the most famous being YouTube's "ContentID," which blocks videos that match items identified by a small, trusted group of rightsholders. Google has spent $100m on ContentID so far.

Why do people hate filters?

Copyright filters are very controversial. All but the crudest filters cost so much that only the biggest tech companies can afford to build them—and most of those are US-based. What's more, filters are notoriously inaccurate, prone to overblocking legitimate material—and lacking in checks and balances, making it easy for censors to remove material they disagree with Filters assume that the people who claim copyrights are telling the truth, encouraging laziness and sloppiness that catches a lot of dolphins in the tuna-net.

Does Article 13 require "filters?"

Axel Voss and other proponents for Article 13 to remove references to them from the Directive in order to win a vote to remove them in the European Parliament. But the new text of Article 13 still demands that the people who operate online communities somehow examine and make copyright assessments about everything, hundreds of billions of social media posts and forum posts and video uploads. Article 13 advocates say that filters aren't required, but when challenged, not one has been able to explain how to comply with Article 13 without using filters. Put it this way: if I pass a law requiring you to produce a large African mammal with four legs, a trunk, and tusks, we definitely have an elephant in the room.

Will every online service need filters?

Europe has a thriving tech sector, composed mostly of "small and medium-sized enterprises" (SMEs), and the politicians negotiating the Directive have been under enormous pressure to protect these Made-In-Europe firms from a rule that would wipe them out and turn over permanent control over Europe's Internet to America's Big Tech companies. The political compromise that was struck makes a nod to protecting SME's but ultimately dooms them. The new rules grant partial limits on copyright liability only for the first three years of an online service's existence, and even these limits are mostly removed once a firm attains over 5m in unique visitors (an undefined term) in a given month, and once a European company hits annual revenues (not profits!) of €10m, it has all the same obligations as the biggest US platforms. That means that the 10,000,001st euro a company earns comes with a whopping bill for copyright filters. There are other, vaguer exemptions for not-for-profit services, but without a clear description of what they would mean. As with the rest of the law, it will depend on how each individual country implements the Directive. France’s negotiators, for example, made it clear that they believe no Internet service should be exempted from the Article’s demands, so we can expect their implementation to provide for the narrowest possible exemption. Smaller companies and informal organizations will have to prepare to lawyer up in these jurisdictions because that’s where rightsholders will seek to sue. A more precise, and hopefully equitable, solution could finally be decided by the European Court of Justice, but such suits will take years to resolve. Both the major rightsholders and Big Tech will strike their own compromise license agreements outside of the courts, and both will have an interest in limiting these exceptions, so it will come down to those same not-for-profit services or small companies to spend the costs required to win those cases and live in legal uncertainty until they have been decided.

What about "licenses" instead of "filters"?

Article 13 only requires companies to block infringing uses of copyrighted material: Article 13 advocates argue that online services won't need to filter if they license the catalogues of big entertainment companies. But almost all creative content put online (from this FAQ to your latest tweet) is instantly and automatically copyrighted. Despite what EU lawmakers believe, we don’t live in a world where a few large rightsholders control the copyright of the majority of creative works. Every Internet user is a potential rightsholder. All three billion of them. Article 13 doesn't just require online services to police the copyrights of a few giant media companies; it covers everyone, meaning that a small forum for dog fanciers would have to show it had made "best efforts" to license photos from other dog fancier forums that their own users might report—every copyright holder is covered by Article 13. Even if an online platform could license all the commercial music, books, comics, TV shows, stock art, news photos, games, and so on (and assuming that media companies would sell them these licenses), they would still somehow have to make "best effort" to license other user's posts or stop their users from reposting them.

Doesn't Article 13 say that companies shouldn't overblock?

Article 13 has some language directing European countries to make laws that protect users from false copyright takedowns, but while EU copyright sets out financial damages for people whose copyrights are infringed, you aren't entitled to anything if your legitimate posts are censored. So if a company like Facebook, which sees billions of posts a day, accidentally blocks one percent of those posts, that would mean that it would have to screen and rule on millions of users' appeals every single day. If Facebook makes those users wait for days or weeks or months or years for a ruling, or if it hires moderators who make hasty, sloppy judgments, or both, Article 13 gives those users no rights to demand better treatment, and even the minimal protections under Article 13 can be waved away by platforms through a declaration that users' speech was removed because of a "terms of service violation" rather than a copyright enforcement.

Do Article 13's opponents only want to "save the memes?"

Not really. It's true that filters—and even human moderators—would struggle to figure out when a meme crosses the line from "fair dealing" (a suite of European exceptions to copyright for things like parody, criticism and commentary) into infringement, but "save the memes" is mostly a catchy way of talking about all the things that filters struggle to cope with, especially incidental use. If your kid takes her first steps in your living room while music is playing in the background, the "incidental" sound could trigger a filter, meaning you couldn't share an important family moment with your loved ones around the world. Or if a news photographer takes a picture of police violence at a demonstration, or the aftermath of a terrorist attack, and that picture captures a bus-ad with a copyrighted stock-photo, that incidental image might be enough to trigger a filter and block this incredibly newsworthy image in the days (or even weeks) following an event, while the photographer waits for a low-paid, overworked moderator at a big platform to review their appeal. It also affects independent creators whose content is used by established rightsholders. Current filters frequently block original content, uploaded by the original creator, because a news service or aggregator subsequently used that content, and then asserted copyright over it. (Funny story: MEP Axel Voss claimed that AI can distinguish memes from copyright infringement on the basis that a Google image search for "memes" displays a bunch of memes)

What can I do?

Please contact your MEP and tell them to vote against the Copyright Directive. The Copyright Directive vote is practically the last thing MEPs will do before they head home to start campaigning for EU elections in May, so they're very sensitive to voters right now! And on March 23, people from across Europe are marching against the Copyright Directive. The pro-Article 13 side has the money, but we have the people!

Take Action

Stop Article 13

44 notes · View notes

wolf-nir · 5 years

Text

The Members of the Decay of Angels

The Decay of Angels is a five-member terrorist organization. They specialize in being a “murder association”. Although few in number, all its members have powerful and threatening abilities.

So far has been presented two members of this organization, Fyodor Doystoyevsky and Nikolai Gogol. The other three members remain a mystery, however it is known that possibly all of them are infiltrated into the government and the Japanese police force.

From the two members hitherto presented, it is possible to deduce that the organization is probably formed by classical russian authors, since Asagiri likes to present groups and organizations with members having the same nationality. This is the case with the ADA, Port Mafia and The Guild.

However, I believe that only two of the remaining members can be russian authors, since Asagiri has been playing reference to one of the classic Japanese authors, Mishima Yukio, which would make sense for an organization with predictable base in Japan needing a Japanese connection.

Following this theory, we know that there are several classic russian authors, an example is the very organization commanded by Fyodor, who has mostly russian authors. However, because it is a tremendously dangerous organization, it is possible to deduce that the authors chosen by Asagiri are the best known and/or controversial in the history of russian literature, both IRL!Fyodor and IRL!Gogol being part of this list.

Among several choices I have separated five authors known for their fame and influence in literature. Since this is a theory, I will introduce some of the IRL! and their possible ability. Since I’m not Asagiri and I don’t have much knowledge about russian literature, I may be wrong on some points here and there, but I hope you enjoy it!

❝ Leo Tolstoy ❞

⌈ IRL! Facts ⌋

✓ Leo Tolstoy, born as Liev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, was a Russian writer who is considered to be one of the greatest authors of all time. ✓ Born to an aristocratic russian family in 1828, he is best known for the novels War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877), often cited as pinnacles of realist fiction. He first achieved literary acclaim in his twenties with his semi-autobiographical trilogy, Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth (1852-1856), and Sevastopol Sketches (1855), based upon his experiences in the Crimean War. ✓ In the 1870s Tolstoy experienced a profound moral crisis, followed by what he regarded as an equally profound spiritual awakening, as outlined in his non-fiction work A Confession (1882). His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him to become a fervent Christian anarchist and pacifist.

⌈ Ability ⌋

❝ Karenina ❞

✓ Anna Karenina is the tragic story of Countess Anna Karenina, a married noblewoman and socialite, and her affair with the affluent Count Vronsky. The story starts when she arrives in the midst of a family broken up by her brother's unbridled womanizing — something that prefigures her own later situation, though she would experience less tolerance by others. A bachelor, Vronsky is eager to marry Anna if she will agree to leave her husband Count Karenin, a senior government official, but she is vulnerable to the pressures of Russian social norms, the moral laws of the Russian Orthodox Church, her own insecurities, and Karenin's indecision. Although Vronsky and Anna go to Italy, where they can be together, they have trouble making friends. Back in Russia, she is shunned, becoming further isolated and anxious, while Vronsky pursues his social life. Despite Vronsky's reassurances, she grows increasingly possessive and paranoid about his imagined infidelity, fearing loss of control. ✓ Seen from a small perspective, Karenina is a novel focused on a toxic relationship because of Anna's mistrust and paranoia. (in fact I may be quite wrong, since I have never finished reading the book and probably never will -q) ✓ Thus, Tolstoy's possible ability could be something connected to causing paranoia/delusions in the victim or incubating the victim to betray his own allies. ✓ Seeing that Leo Tolstoy is probably also infiltrated in the Japanese government, it is quite possible that he is using his ability to cause discord among politicians, and if he finds himself infiltrated into another government or public force, his ability continues to be useful in conflict of national or international disposition.

❝ A Confession ❞

✓ The book is a brief autobiographical story of the author's struggle with a mid-life existential crisis. It describes his search for the answer to the ultimate philosophical question. “If God does not exist, since death is inevitable, what is the meaning of life?”. Without the answer to this, for him, life had become “impossible”. ✓ According to IRL!Tolstoy, in the face of the inevitability of death and assuming that God does not exist, the most intellectually honest response to the situation would be suicide. ✓ Thus, the ability of BSD!Tolstoy would also be manipulative in content, perhaps something close to the ability of Yumeno or Fyodor, in that by touch or any other kind of contact, Tolstoy could manipulate the victim's mind to commit suicide, perhaps by incubating existential doubts or personal insecurities that, in extreme circumstances, could lead the person to the suicide. Honestly, that would be the last ability I'd like Atsushi, Akutagawa or Dazai to face (even if Dazai can cancel the ability).

❝ Andrei Bely ❞

⌈ IRL! Facts ⌋

✓ Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev, better known by the pen name Andrei Bely or Biely; 26 October [O.S. 14 October] 1880 – 8 January 1934), was a Russian novelist, poet, theorist, communist, and literary critic. ✓ His novel Petersburg was regarded by Vladimir Nabokov as one of the four greatest novels of the 20th century. ✓ Boris Bugaev was fascinated by probability and particularly by entropy, a notion to which he frequently refers in works such as Kotik Letaev. ✓ As a young man, Bely was strongly influenced by his acquaintance with the family of philosopher Vladimir Solovyov, especially Vladimir's younger brother Mikhail, described in his long autobiographical poem The First Encounter (1921); the title is a reflection of Vladimir Solovyov's Three Encounters. It was Mikhail Solovyov who gave Bugaev his pseudonym Andrei Bely. ✓ Bely's symbolist novel Petersburg (1916; 1922) is generally considered to be his masterpiece. The book employs a striking prose method in which sounds often evoke colors. The novel is set in the somewhat hysterical atmosphere of turn-of-the-century Petersburg and the Russian Revolution of 1905.

⌈ Ability ⌋

❝ Petersburg ❞

✓ To the extent that the book can be said to possess a plot, this can be summarized as the story of the hapless Nikolai Apollonovich, a ne'er-do-well who is caught up in revolutionary politics and assigned the task of assassinating a certain government official — his own father. At one point, Nikolai is pursued through the Petersburg mists by the ringing hooves of the famous bronze statue of Peter the Great. ✓ The main character of the book is known for wearing a strange red domino mask and cape. This visual is a way of “acting like a fool” in front of the woman who spent a lot of time courting and being rejected. ✓ The ability of BSD!Bely could be deceptive, illusory, very similar to that of Oguri. ✓ His ability could be to hypnotize the victim so that she was able to see and do catastrophic things as just “silly things”. An example would be to turn a bomb into a simple bouquet of flowers or something else that would make the victim cause chaos without actually realizing it.

❝ Mikhail Bulgakov ❞

⌈ IRL! Facts ⌋

✓ Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov (15 May [O.S. 3 May] 1891 – 10 March 1940) was a russian writer, medical doctor and playwright active in the first half of the 20th century. ✓ He is best known for his novel The Master and Margarita, published posthumously, which has been called one of the masterpieces of the 20th century. ✓ After illness Bulgakov abandoned his career as a doctor for that of a writer. In his autobiography, he recalled how he started writing: "Once in 1919 when I was traveling at night by train I wrote a short story. In the town where the train stopped, I took the story to the publisher of the newspaper who published the story". ✓ His first book was an almanac of feuilletons called Future Perspectives, written and published the same year.

⌈ Ability ⌋

❝ The Master and Margarita ❞

✓ The story concerns a visit by the devil to the officially atheistic Soviet Union. The Master and Margarita combines supernatural element with satirical dark comedy and Christian philosophy, defying a singular genre. ✓ The ability of the BSD!Mikhail is very similar to that of Lucy Montgomery, the only exception is that instead of a doll, Mikhail has the body of a dead woman as his marionette, he calls her Margarita. ✓ Margarita is described as a woman in a Russian style dress of the 19th century in a lush shade of red. His eyes are black and empty-looking. ✓ She is able to obey Mikhail's three specific orders. She “comes to life” during this process through the drinking ritual of Mikhail's blood. The more complicated Mikhail's desire, the more blood Margarita consumes.

❝ Heart of a Dog ❞

✓ The Heart of a Dog is a satirical work in which a doctor does an experiment on a dog rescued by him in which he transforms the animal into a human of personality and primitive aspects. (or at least that's what I understood, frankly I'm so confused with this book) ✓ The ability of BSD!Mikhail, in this case, would be quite simple: through physical contact, he is able to make a human being surrender to his most primitive and savage side, until that person becomes, in fact, a dog. ✓ Mikhail is able to control the duration of the transformation, meaning he is able to make someone turn quickly or slowly, depending on his intentions. Besides that, once the person is totally transformed, it is impossible to undo the transformation.

❝ Anton Chekhov ❞

⌈ IRL! Facts ⌋

✓ Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904) was a russian playwright and short-story writer, who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short fiction in history. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. ✓ Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov practiced as a medical doctor throughout most of his literary career: "Medicine is my lawful wife", he once said, "and literature is my mistress." ✓ Chekhov had at first written stories only for financial gain, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations which have influenced the evolution of the modern short story. He made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them.

⌈ Ability ⌋

❝ The Seagull ❞

✓ The Seagull is generally considered to be the first of his four major plays. It dramatises the romantic and artistic conflicts between four characters: the famous middlebrow story writer Boris Trigorin, the ingenue Nina, the fading actress Irina Arkadina, and her son the symbolist playwright Konstantin Tréplev. ✓ The ability is to "send" your fatal injuries to the body of other people. According to BSD!Anton, the people with whom he makes this exchange are his mere seagulls who used to live happily and ignorantly, but who know him only to be a tool to kill his boredom. ✓ For the exchange to take place Anton must have made a "contract" with the other person. For the most part, people are women who have previously been their lovers or who are in love with him.

❝ Maxim Gorky ❞

⌈ IRL! Facts ⌋

✓ Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (28 March [O.S. 16 March] 1868 – 18 June 1936), primarily known as Maxim Gorky, was a russian and soviet writer, a founder of the socialist realism literary method and a political activist. He was also a five-time nominee for theNobel Prize in Literature. ✓ Gorky's most famous works were The Lower Depths (1902), Twenty-six Men and a Girl (1899), The Song of the Stormy Petrel (1901), My Childhood (1913-1914), Mother (1906), Summerfolk (1904) and Children of the Sun (1905). ✓ He had an association with fellow Russian writers Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov; Gorky would later mention them in his memoirs.

⌈ Ability ⌋

❝ The Lower Depths ❞

✓ The play is centered on lower-class characters living in a shelter. Everyone has questionable ethical actions throughout the plot. ✓ Gorky's ability is based on people's lies. He is able to turn any and every lie that the person has already said into reality, most often causing the destruction - be it physical, mental or social - of the victim.

#bsd #bungou stray dogs #decay of angels #bsd theory #this is huge #i dont even know #please dont hate me #my theory #bsd fyodor #bsd nikolai gogol

73 notes · View notes