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hutchhitched · 4 years

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Social Commentary in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Part III

Part 3. Yeah… There’s a whole lot going on in the last third of the book, and I may have had to put it down a few times because I got really excited about how she wove the new book with the original trilogy. I know some people thought Part 3 was over the top, but I found it purposeful and deliberately on the nose, and I think that’s why it works. If you want to see my thoughts on the rest of the book, here are the links to Part 1 and Part 2.

Major spoilers below:

Tagging some who asked me to and/or are interested: @the-tesseract-wrinkling-time, @shesasurvivor, @everlarkedalways, @xerxia31, @infinitegraces, @panemposts, and @endlessnightlock. Some others are tagged throughout.

Before we move on to Part 3, I have to backtrack to something from Part 2 I forgot to include in the previous meta (I blame being up till 7 am and only getting four hours of sleep for that). In Chapter 18, Reaper stabs and rips the Panem flag and then uses it to cover the fallen tributes. The reaction of the mentors is shock and horror that the flag has been treated in such a manner. There’s a lot to unpack here. First, desecration of the flag in the US (and I’d guess most other countries, too) is almost always guaranteed to get a reaction. There have been attempts to pass a constitutional amendment to make it a federal crime to burn the flag. Others argue burning the flag is something protected as freedom of speech. Yet, official guidelines for how to treat the flag are broken all the time by letting it touch the ground, not lighting it, not taking it down during inclement weather, and turning it into a massive symbol of patriotism by holding it horizontally on a football field. I saw someone make reference to the outrage against NFL players kneeling during the national anthem as being disrespectful to the flag (even though that was a suggestion of a military veteran, as opposed to sitting during the anthem instead) rather than being outraged at the actions those players were protesting (police brutality against African American men). So, who is it that rips down the flag? Reaper, the tribute from District 11. Rue and Thresh were District 11, as were Chaff and Seeder. All were portrayed in the movies by African American actors. It’s fairly clear in the books that it’s a predominately black district. In other words, it’s likely Reaper is also a black man who tears down the flag of a country that oppresses him so he can provide cover and give dignity to the dead tributes. Now, think about it from a “rebel” perspective, and imagine that’s a Confederate flag that was ripped down. I know in the books that the Districts are the rebels and the Panem flag is more connected to the Capitol, but still. The debate over the (mostly successful) removal of the Confederate flag from former slave states has raged in the US in the past decade. Probably the most famous image of that debate is when a black woman climbed the flagpole at the South Carolina Statehouse and ripped down the flag. Remove the flag of the government that oppresses you, which is what Reaper does.

Something I find really interesting is the lack of technology in this book. Panem obviously has advanced technology, but it’s not nearly as present as it is in the trilogy. I’m gonna go out on a limb and assume that’s a result of the depressed economy, and by the time we get to the 74th Hunger Games, the economy in the Capitol has recovered and been used to develop new technologies and products that make life easier for citizens. That’s a post-World War II/1950s consumerism analogy if I’ve ever seen one. Post World War II affluence in the United States was a major factor in the development of new weapons and technology. Because American workers were making more and had savings and wages rose 100% between 1945 and 1968, Americans spent more, bought more, and paid more income tax. The solidification of capitalism as America’s economic system helped the US “win” the Cold War against the Soviets. Because Americans made more and were subsequently taxed more, the government had more money to develop new weapons and technologies. The first computer, the hydrogen bomb, vaccines for polio and smallpox, NASA, and the development of ICBMs all took place during this era. A strong economy typically makes people think the nation/government is strong. Not coincidentally, an early counterculture developed during the 1950s that protested against increased consumerism and senseless spending. The Beats/Beatniks/Beat Generation disliked that Americans spent so much money on frivolous things while others (African Americans, the rural poor, and so on) suffered. Sounds a lot like the Capitol citizens who spent lavishly and didn’t care about the districts. As a slight aside, Allen Ginsberg, one of the Beat Generation’s poets, wrote Howl, which calls out capitalism and repression. I wrote The Cry for @promptsinpanem’s prompt Howl in homage to that. Someday, I might actually expand it.

In Part 2, I wasn’t sure who had the power, and I really couldn’t figure out Highbottom. That’s mostly cleared up for me by the end of the book. I was intrigued by Pluribus Bell’s (many bells, I love it!) story about Highbottom and Snow’s father before Snow left for District 12. It was the seed that let me hope we’d get more information, and we did. Crassus Xanthos Snow is Snow’s father. Crassus was a member of the First Triumvirate (Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus) and helped transition the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire (from pre to post Hunger Games). He also gained power and influence as a soldier during the slave uprising of Spartacus (became a hero during a rebel uprising). Also, Xanthos is a city in Turkey that’s been conquered repeatedly but always recovers (Snow lands on top!). Highbottom’s first name is Casca, who was one of Caesar’s best friends, but he ends up being the first person to stab Caesar during his assassination. The break in the relationship between the two men is clearly why Highbottom turns on (young) Snow, and the explanation about how the Hunger Games come to be is a pretty big allegory to the betrayal of Crassus (Caesar) by Casca. Also, that explains why Highbottom didn’t ever really seem to be supportive of the Games, even though he was credited as their creator. ( @everlvrks)

There are a lot of references to Roman names and places in this book and the trilogy. The Capitol seems pretty obsessed with the Classics and wants to reflect that type of lifestyle and elitism. During grad school, one of the books I had to read discussed the obsession America’s Founding Fathers (Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, and so on) had with the Classics. They emulated Greek and Roman ideals. The District of Columbia (Washington, DC) is named after the Roman goddess of Liberty. Jefferson’s and Washington’s homes use classical architecture like domes and columns and many of the federal buildings (the Capital and White House) reflect that. Add on the Washington Monument (an obelisk—which are found all over in the ancient world) and the columns of the Lincoln Memorial and the dome and columns of the Jefferson Memorial, and well… The Founding Fathers were Deists who revered the Classics, which is why I (a religious historian) always laugh when people tell me the US was founded on religion. Yeah, and the Civil War wasn’t fought over slavery, either.

Before this book, I would never have thought about Snow having a history with District 12 or a stint as a peacekeeper. I even looked ahead to the title for Part 3 and still didn’t realize that was going to happen, but it makes sense. First, Snow seems to have known Katniss much better than can really be explained. Her hunting outside the fence and her escapes to the Lake were never really solitary because he knew the area. He’d been there before. He’d visited Lucy Gray in the Seam, been to the meadow, and so on. Some people may see that as too much, but it absolutely fits with the draconian oversight of the Capitol during Katniss’ time, and it indicates why Snow was so intrigued and obsessed with her. Second, Snow’s experience in the military would have worked wonders for his political career. He won the Hunger Games, served as peacekeeper, visited the districts, became the youngest person to qualify for officer training, and went to the university. That’s a stellar resumé for a budding politician. Clearly, he was exceptional. Terrible, but exceptional (which is said about super-villain Voldemort in Harry Potter, too).

I had to stop and put the book down and wiggle with glee when the tree appeared in the distance. I didn’t think we’d get the actual Hanging Tree in the book, but that might have been the most thrilling part for me. It wasn’t overt. She didn’t name it. She just set the scene, but I knew what it was. And then to have the hanging and the man yell out to his “love” and the mockingjays pick up his cry and for Snow to see a mockingjay and immediately hate it… Oh, good night, nurse. It’s just too much. That’s when I made this post. I’ll admit, I have a thing for lone, massive trees. My dad has one on his farm, and there’s a huge, very old Burr oak that’s a local tourist attraction close to where I went to college. I felt like I was driving down the road and seeing it rise from the distance, which I did way too many times during undergrad and grad school.

References to the Covey having traveled and planning to again travel north were clear indicators that District 13 was alive and well (sorry for the on the nose pun) even back then. It seems obvious to me that Snow kept that information in the back of his mind as he took power and anticipated an eventual attack from there. The fact that his family’s fortune was destroyed in District 13 makes it even more appropriate that the final rebellion came from there, too.

I didn’t like Lucy Gray in the first two parts of the book, and I’m still not completely taken with her. There’s just something about her I don’t quite trust, and I’m not convinced she was completely in love with Snow. Sejanus thinks she is, but I’m also not sure I trust him to be the most perceptive person either. I’ve discussed this briefly already with some others, but I’m still on the fence about her. I acknowledge that she doesn’t have the same power as Snow does, so it’s not possible by definition for her to play him, but I do think she’s manipulative. Peeta is, too, so that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it does indicate she’s not exactly who she says she is. Lucy Gray’s job as a performer gives me even more pause because her living is made by putting on a show, by performing, by convincing an audience that what she’s doing is authentic. For lack of a better way to put it—If Lucy Gray is a performer, how would Snow ever know what’s real and what’s not real? Sound familiar? (This part’s for you, @lovely-tothe-bone.)

The songs:

Deep in the Meadow—It’s a lot disconcerting that Katniss’ lullaby to her sister is a song Snow’s heard before out of the mouth of the woman he once loved. Equally disturbing to know that he’s been in the meadow, and I really thought that the song was going to be about Lucy Gray and Snow together there. I’m glad it stayed a lullaby and not a love song. I think it’s fabulous that Katniss and Peeta reclaim the meadow for themselves as a place where their daughter dances. It’s a little bit (a lot) poetic.

The Hanging Tree—Well, now that we know where that story comes from, I like it even more. The only part of the book I didn’t really like was Snow thinking he had something figured out and then rethinking and then changing his mind and so on. There was a little bit too much of that as he tried to decipher song lyrics, and particularly with this song.

The public domain songs—I grew up singing these songs (although with some slightly different words), so they all brought a smile to my face. Probably my favorite rendition of Keep on the Sunny Side is from the movie Oh Brother! Where Art Thou? The entire soundtrack is very bluegrass, and good bluegrass is delightful. And it’s nice to know what the Valley Song really is.

Unnamed—Okay, so my favorite was the first one at the Hob (pp. 362-364). I’m no songwriter, but I could hear the tune, and it was very Lumineers (maybe crossed with the Dixie Chicks?). Upbeat and peppy and feel good, all the way. I also find it interesting that music and concerts are outlawed in District 12 once there’s a new base commander. An allegory on the tendency to cut art programs first? On the power of art as a motivation for action? Both?

Which brings us to the star-crossed lovers of District 12, or something. Obviously, this brings up images of Katniss and Peeta, but probably the most famous reference is in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet with the star-crossed lovers taking their lives. That’s often read as them being fated to die, which is something Snow seems to follow. He mentions his destiny and fate many times and doesn’t do a very good job of recognizing his choices. There’s one time during the Games when he resolves to do the right thing, but otherwise, no. Shakespeare does also say in Julius Caesar that the fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves (which John Greene used in his book title). Snow doesn’t want to take responsibility for what he does. He chooses to follow the rules instead of what is right. He’s legalistic instead of ethical. There’re a lot of philosophical and religious undertones to that, but I’ll let that float for a while.

On page 386, Lucy Gray tells Snow, “You’re mine and I’m yours. It’s written in the stars.” I’ll be honest, I almost dropped the book when I read that. In Catching Fire, Katniss says the same thing about Gale, but she doesn’t end up with him. They aren’t fated. She ends up with Peeta, who she chooses to love. I should have known from that point that Lucy Gray and Snow would not end up together, but I still wasn’t sure how that was going to happen. I really did think she was going to break up with him or betray him somehow because that was the only thing I could think of that would make him stop loving her and turn into what he becomes. A broken heart is a really good reason for revenge, but what actually happens so much worse. ( @mtk4fun and @norbertsmom )

Snow and Lucy Gray decide to run away together, just like Katniss and Gale were going to in the original trilogy. Lucy Gray is worried the mayor’s going to kill her, and Snow doesn’t want to live without her. Except he realizes really quickly that he doesn’t like life on the run. It’s beneath him. He deserves better. He’s entitled to and fated for more, he thinks. On top of that, he’s passed the officer’s training exam, and suddenly there’s a way out of the pit into which he’s fallen. And then he lies to Lucy Gray.

Lucy Gray’s said all along the most important thing to her is trust, and then he lies to her. He doesn’t tell her he had a hand in turning in Sejanus. He doesn’t tell her because he’s afraid of losing her, which is a selfish reason, not one to spare her feelings or to protect her. He lies to protect himself. By the time they get to the cabin at the lake, he’s decided he’s not going with her, and she’s realized he’s lied to her. And then the weapon he used to commit murder (for her or him?) is there. Snow snaps quickly after that. There’s a metaphor, I’m sure about him losing his hold on reality and self-control when he’s past the boundaries of civilization, but he falls really, really quickly. He goes from wanting to tell her he’s changed his mind to attempting to murder her. The only thing that really stops him is the snake bite, which is not fatal, but reminds me why I didn’t trust Lucy Gale. Was it deliberate? Did she leave him on purpose? Does she escape him, or does he manage to cut her down? Either way, he doesn’t choose love. Love, which is a selfless act, isn’t his end game. He chooses himself. He chooses being selfish and looking out for himself instead of others. He doesn’t like being vulnerable. He clinically plans to marry someone he doesn’t love, so he never feels exposed again. In short, he makes the opposite choice Katniss does, and that makes all the difference.

A few other things because this is way too long at this point:

Peacekeepers: Boot camp for peacekeepers was interesting and strongly resembles the process of the military stripping down differences and making each soldier part of a machine. Haircuts, uniforms, routines, and so on are all about stripping away his identity, and he hates every second of it. He’s too good for that, and there’s entitlement all over the place. That’s very different from the peacekeepers from the districts who join the military as a way out of poverty. I mean, Snow does, too, but only because he’s forced.

Betrayal: Recording Sejanus and Snow justifying it was hard to read. It was harder to read about the execution. And then to have the Plinths take Snow in after he returns to the Capitol is absolutely the worst. Despicable behavior.

Poisoning Highbottom: It doesn’t surprise me, and it’s exactly what the rumors in the original books were. Snow kills his rivals to ascend.

Snow’s role in the Games: The Hunger Games change dramatically between the 10th and the 74th. It’s clear Snow has a significant role in how and why that happens. The tributes aren’t caged and are housed in luxury. The cattle cars are replaced with a high-speed train with lots of food. The tributes get stylists and prep teams instead of being unwashed and dirty. In other words, the treatment of tributes becomes more humane, which becomes even more problematic. At least Lucy Gray knew she was being offered up as a sacrifice. No one lied to her about what she was. The implementation of these ways to fatten the lambs up for slaughter is horrific and cruel and very Snow.

Finally, the purpose of the Hunger Games changes for Snow by the time we get to the end of the book. They are no longer just a way to punish the districts. They’re a way to exert controlled warfare instead of a messy war between the Capitol and the districts. It’s still kids being forced to kill kids. The tributes are still kids in cages. They’re still “not from here.” The Capitol kids are to be protected, but the parents in the poor areas aren’t able to take care of their own. It’s all deliberate. Collins doesn’t pull punches about the treatment of migrant children in cages or the murder of schoolchildren. What she does is point out that we don’t really mean what we say about protecting children. We’re only outraged for our own, not for those who are different. Suzanne Collins doesn’t have time for white privilege, American elitism, tyrannical government, excessive capitalism, or excuses, and her book reads that way. I loved every word of it.

#tbosas #tbosas spoilers #balladspoilers #the ballad of songbirds and snakes #meta #hunger games meta #spoilers #book spoilers #really #long post

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found--family · 4 years

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‘Supernatural’ season 15, episode 15 screener secrets: We’re ‘Highway to Heaven’-ing this bitch

[everything is from this Hypable article]

This week on Supernatural, Amara returns and are angels solving people crimes now? Hypable previewed Supernatural season 15, episode 15 “Gimme Shelter,” so read on to find out more.

After a sweet and fun return to ease us back into the world of Supernatural last week, things are heating up pretty dramatically – I knew there wouldn’t be much more time for messing around.

“Gimme Shelter” sees Supernatural dip its feet into what the Winchesters currently believe is their big plan – eliminating Chuck by also taking down Amara, resulting in what they believe will be a cosmic-being-free balanced world. But first, they have to find her. Sam and Dean get a pretty good lead on her location, which results in a very interesting conversation between Amara and the boys – especially with her most favoritest Dean, of course.

Meanwhile, Castiel is persuaded into taking Jack to investigate a nearby case in Missouri – which all three adults suspect is probably the work of a human criminal – for the sake of humoring Jack and keeping him both busy and supervised. On the way home, they have a very interesting conversation of their own.

Spoiler Warning: This article contains generalized spoilers for Supernatural season 15 episode 15, “Gimme Shelter.” If you do not wish to be spoiled at all, do not read this article in advance of the airdate.

The official synopsis for Supernatural season 15, episode 15 reads:

MATT COHEN DIRECTS — Castiel (Misha Collins) and Jack (Alexander Calvert) work a case involving members of a local church. Meanwhile, Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) go off in search of Amara (guest star Emily Swallow). Matt Cohen directed the episode written by Davy Perez (#1515). Original airdate 10/15/2020.

If you want to know what to expect from this week’s Supernatural, here’s 10 teasers plus 15 single word clues from our advance viewing of Supernatural season 15, episode 15 “Gimme Shelter.”

‘Supernatural’ season 15, [10] episode 15 screener secrets

1️⃣ During the filming of this episode (27 January – 5 February) Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles both spent much of the week at home with their families in Austin, a detail which was made clear on their and their wives’ public social media accounts – possibly the result of scheduled time off as they’ve mentioned occasionally requesting? The result is that the episode is weighted much more towards Cas, Jack and the murder investigation they’re chasing than towards Sam and Dean, but on the flip side, the Sam and Dean arc is more crucial to the long game of the show, so what it lacks in minutes, it makes up for in impact.

2️⃣ However, the episode still begins and ends in a grounded family group way, at home in the Bunker – one of those “we know we should be doing this together but there are Reasons we have to split up” situations. This detail, in my opinion, really speaks to the motivation of the creative team towards honoring the four leads as parts of a whole – in earlier days, this kind of episode would have been two entirely non-touching threads. This one is, if not a tapestry, at very least a braid – tied up together at both ends, and intertwined in the middle.

3️⃣ You might have seen pictures or ominous trailer footage of Castiel and Jack digging a hole at the crossroads. We all know what that means! However, don’t worry. They simply want to talk – and the demon they summon has some really interesting – and dare I say positive? – news about the state of Hell under Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Rowena. Let’s just say the demon is actually pretty friendly… and extremely bored.

4️⃣ The two main guest stars on Cas and Jack’s side of the episode are both actors who have been briefly featured on the show before, in a couple of pretty famous episodes – one from season 2 and one from season 5. I don’t think there’s meant to be any meta or Easter Egg element to this, just the usual Vancouver casting industry cycle (see the ‘Weren’t You In Another Episode‘ reference page on the SuperWiki) but one of them is one of those cute “I appeared on Supernatural as a child and now I’m here as an adult” situations, and the other, well… the original character’s very name has become the stuff of Supernatural legend, and if I were in charge of this episode I would have put the actor in a particular piece of footwear and made sure we got a shot of it, just for kicks.

5️⃣ Castiel steps into a prayer circle when the church group members are meant to give a testimony – presumably of their journey so far and their relationship with faith. That’s what Cas chooses to share, at least – in a non-specific, humanized way – and fans of the character will be moved to hear the ways he verbalizes his own growth.

6️⃣ Speaking of growth, some of Dean’s is spelled out for him in the most miraculous way by Amara. After Sam and Dean meet up with her and have a conversation about Chuck that’s ultimately a bit of a non-starter, Dean returns to ask her another, more personal question. Her response gave me legitimate chills. It’s a very weighty mic drop and the combination of the level of impact and the level of clarity (it’s entirely airtight, no room for interpretation) feels like the culmination of all the self-actualization work the show has been doing on Dean in the last four years. (I wish I could tell you Sam got a big special moment like this in the episode, but he doesn’t. Amara’s return was always going to be Dean’s thing.) Amara’s speech to Dean… it doesn’t feel isolated, like the idea of it was invented just for this episode. It feels more like concrete evidence of what the show has been trying to prove for ages. And the funny thing is, Amara is the anti-Chuck, right, and all season, we’ve learned about the version of the story Chuck thinks is good, and we’ve been told to root against that. Chuck’s version of Supernatural isn’t how the writers really feel. But I think Amara’s might be. Dean has obviously struggled to see what she tells him, all in one piece, but here it is – this was the point, laid out on the table, from the entity behind the curtain – both onscreen and off. Amara knew what she was doing, and so did the writers. This was always, always the point.

7️⃣ Even before this massive scene, Amara’s return is just great. Emily Swallow does such an incredible job with this character – she really is the anti-Chuck even without the whole writer comparison. Swallow imbues this character with such an incredible peace and stillness in comparison to Chuck’s histrionics – this was true in the way she spoke and behaved even in season 11, but this Amara also feels kindness and patience and tolerance. She radiates power, even when she’s also slightly goofy. There’s no fight, there’s no antagonism, but the boys in her presence are like little fish in a vast ocean – they quickly realise they have no real control in this conversation. The way that we leave her indicates she’ll be back and has more to say or do, and what she shared during her reunion with Sam and Dean makes me really curious about the role she’s due to play in the show’s endgame.

8️⃣ I’m not very religious but I really like the version of a church group or ‘faith-based community,’ as they say, featured in “Gimme Shelter.” Supernatural has a shaky history in terms of how the show portrays people in-universe who believe. Sometimes they’re treated like a joke, or stupid, or dangerous, or hypocrites, but occasionally civilian acts of faith are shown as great and powerful things, even in a world where we know that what they believe in isn’t strictly accurate. That concept became an even bigger question mark for me when we got the reveal that Judeo-Christian God is not only absent, but our actual villain. However, this was a really nice look at why faith can still be a framework for a good way of life – loving thy neighbor – for some people, no matter the truth about Chuck. The episode also features a callback to writer Davy Perez’ very first Supernatural episode “American Nightmare” in terms of the way that some people have weaponized faith and religion to the detriment and harm of others or even themselves, but this factor does not negate the positive point mentioned above.

9️⃣ Supernatural alum and newly minted director Matt Cohen really got the full old-school Supernatural episode experience when it comes to leaning into the spooky horror element. The murderous case-of-the week featured in this episode is heavy and lingering on the gore and even contains a little bit of a jump scare, so view responsibly.

🔟 So, um, you know that line, in this week’s teaser trailer? The line that a lot of people are freaking out about because it seems to pertain to something important that we know about Cas’ fate that Dean and Sam aren’t aware of? Yeah, it is 100% absolutely not about that at all. It is about something super important, but it’s not that. It’s also the last line of the episode, but trust me – it’s not a cliffhanger and it’s not a red herring and it’s not a twist. The information is gleaned within the episode and you’ll know exactly what Cas is telling Dean about after seeing it – narratively, that’s the reason it isn’t in the episode, because the show clearly assumes you’ll get the picture and can skip a rehash of information. But what you were probably expecting – maybe even hoping for – it’s not that. You’re gonna have to hang on for that one.

Finally, have 15 random yet significant words from this week’s episode without any context whatsoever: Gaia, Ronald, mother, pierogies, cats, philosophy, target, blind, permission, lockdown, Kool-aid, buffet, gift, trial, choice.

‘Supernatural’ airs Thursday at 8/7c on The CW

#spn s15 #teasers #spn 15x15 #Hypable #preview #thoughts #s15 #15x15 #this gets long as well as spoilery hence the /under the cut/#destiel

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devintrinidad · 3 years

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I haven't watched it Akadama Drive the way through. But I have seen a lot of it. It's almost too gorey for me. But the visuals are a real treat and it definitely has the cyberpunk cool factor down. Swindler was a great main character! (I never shipped her with Cutthroat. I knew the psychopath was that. A psychopath and I bet he was going to turn on them at anytime. And he did! Never be distracted by the childish antics pretty boy serial killers!).

I'm interested in the future of AD. I heard the last episode was getting a special Directors cut including a alternative ending. I also heard the AD creators were happy to hear AD is doing well in the west so fans are wondering if that means their hoping to make a S2? I don't keep up with AD news so I'm not sure if that's their intention or not. But I did hear a fan theory that S2 could be about the bad guys using technology to bring at least of the main characters back to life (considering Swindler had a religious themed death and both her and Courier's bodies could easily be recovered. Plus revival through tech is such a Cyberpunk staple) because Brother and Sister are still targets and they were would where to look for them.

So maybe AD still has a bright future ahead with more content to explore the world (I honestly think Hacker could easily be a main character in any sequal).

Onto the CAW/AD verse.

I could totally see 3803 being this epic biker chick.... Who gets lost easily. But because she does all these crazy stunts, her enemies (who don't know her yet) think she's planning everything to confuse them. X D

I could see 1146's akudama name being Bodyguard. Because when he's not acting like one for 3803 and Platelet. He's taking up bodyguard jobs for anyone who needs them. For the right price and reason. If you're a scumbag who hurts innocent people, he'll kill you on the spot. But be nice enough to return the moneyto your corpse. Unless 3803 or Platelet needs something, then he'll strip you of all your dough and leave you penniless. He has a very ruthless rep. But he's so good at what he does, his help is in high demand. Ecspecially for someone who needs a bodyguard they can trust (and they know they aren't or won't act like scum around him to earn his wrath). He's fine with helping criminals. Just not ones who do a lot of harm to innocents or are involved in nasty business like trafficking or something.

Story wise things change up.

The way I see things here is that Cancer is the one secretly in charge and why things are so wrong. He's this absolute monster of a human being who gained immortality hundreds of years ago. He went nuts and caused wars and blew up the moon. He wants all the power and has created societies in his own twisted corrupted image (basically his dream in canon coming true here). But he's noticed after awhile things always go bad under his leadership and nearly everything dies. Instead of starting over again and again. He's decides to find a way to force everyone to become immortal like him so that even if they're killed. They'll have no choice but to come back to life like he does. If he has to suffer this, then so does everyone else.

That's where 3803 and Platelet come in. For decades, Cancer has been collecting and experimenting on people in secret in order to figure out how to gift them with his immortality. 3803 and Platelet are surviving lab rats who managed to escape during a explosion happening in the building. 3803 is the closest he's come to achieving his goal. 3803 would later tell 1146 she has no idea how immortal she is and it scares her to death that she might be unable to die like Cancer. All she knows is that she can take a lot of damage and recover in time. She's been able to age a little. But she hopes she's not being paranoid about looking younger and smaller for her age (Macrophage, another Akudama who knows her secret, tells her it's common for girls like her to look younger then they are and that she has gotten bigger since they first met. But 3803 is still a little concerned). 3803 also has no idea about Platelets status in all this since she's never been badly hurt and she's aged normally. But she's also never gotten sick a day in her life and she was put in the same cell as her. The scientists saying all she needed was a little tweaking and they'd both be closer to becoming their goal.

Ohhh, I didn't even think about 4989 and the others being 1146's enemies. I assumed they'd follow his lead eventually. Say they're dissapointed in him. Because yeah things are corrupt. But that's no reason to become a criminal and abandon their dreams of making the city a better place. They weren't there when he turned traitor so all they've been told is he got beguiled by some witch (3803 gets a very exaggerated and unpleasent rep along the Executioners for turning their top soldier against them. 1146 was already having serious doubts on his own but the organization puts the blame on her regardless). Eventually they get told by a superior officer if they can capture both 1146 and 3803 alive, they'll take 1146 back instead of executing or throwing him in jail. They'll strip him of his Akudama name and only punish him by putting a bomb collar on him until he redeems himself to them. It's not ideal. But for their friend they'll take it. They do eventually find and fight 1146 and even manage to knock him out and tie him up. They're prepared to fight 3803... Until they meet her face to face. From the rumours, they were expecting this buff scary woman who could rip their faces off. Instead they meet this determined but petite girl who looks like she'd hurt herself trying punch them. Even worse she's holding this little scared crying girl calling her big sis in her arms. They're the picture of defenselessness and it's suddenly making them not comfortable with this. This goes two ways: either they decide to cool down for a sec and let 3803 and 1146 explain themselves and then make the choice to leave and become akudamass too. Or, they harden themselves and take her anyway. 3803 promises to come quietly if they let her little sister go (they don't suspect Platelet is the Akadama Bomber). 3803 is hoping if she goes alone, She can at least convince Cancer Platelet died years ago and was a failed test subject. They agree and 3803 has to push Platelet away and yell at her to go (she knows she'll go to Macrophage so she'll be fine) because Platelet knows what's happening and is desperate enough to almost throws a small bomb at them (but 1146 would get caught up in the blast and 3803 glares at her to obey so she doesn't). The WBC squad does feel bad since they're not used to dealing with vulnerable women and children who can't fight back.

When 1146 wakes up in a room with his superior officer telling him he's back and not getting a bomb collar. He's getting brain surgery and it's a surprise what that's going to be. Needless to say, 1146 is pissed beyond words. He's going to be forced to be their top dog somehow again. Platelet is alone and scared. 3803 is going to be carted off to Cancer so Cancer can make things even worse. Needless to say he manages to make his case to his friends who see definitely now know being a Akadama is better then this. Half of them go to rescue 1146 before he gets brain surgery and the others go get 3803 before Cancer can.

That's my idea of it anyway. Cause the WBC squad would actually be really good akadamas.

Now when it comes to 1146 fighting allies a lot. My initial idea was before he left, 1146 was the best of the best alongside NK and Killer T. They were the power trio that stood above the rest with a 100% success rate in missions once all three worked together. But unlike the WBS squad. They stick to their Executioner roles. I see this because in CAW canon, despite being softies inside, both Killer T and NK have this 'don't get chummy with civilians' mentality. Killer T ecspecially getting on 1146 for wanting to interact and go soft with them. In AD verse, NK and Killer T ultimately believe the Executioners are a nessecary evil at worst because the world needs them to be (Idk, you can keep the germs and make them monsters that Executioners have to fight to keep the city save too. Of course all of them are secretly made by Cancer to convince the most 'noble' of Executioners to keep the corrupted status quo). When 1146 left, they took it personally. Particularly Killer T. NK keeps things more professional, but both want Roto resolve things with 1146 and see it as their duty to take him down. They don't believe 1146 about the whole conspiracy of a immortal Cancer ruling the world and doing all this other unbelievable stuff. Even when they see 3803 surviving a lot of damage, they chalk it up to her having access to some high tech she stole. Either way I'm conflicted on them being tragic villains who refuse to stop fighting 1146 and capture 3803 under orders or villains who get redeemed at the end.

But Akadama Killer T. Tell me more? What's he like?

Other stuff-

Macrophage is called Hacker. Both because she can hack her targets into pieces with her axe and because she's a famous computer hacker. She found 3803 and Platelet years ago after they had escaped from the underground lab. She was reasearching for fun what the base was and discovered its use for making immortality. She took the two girls in to raise as if they were her own and trained them how to survive as Akadama (more so 3803 since she's older). When Macrophage isn't a assassin for hire, she's using her hacking abilities as mission control for 3803 when she's on the job. She helps her not get too lost and handles money transactions. They see her as the mom they never had despite that she's really only around 14 years older then them.

Platelet loves blowing things up. She likes building things too. But bombing things helps her little family out more. She'll often plant tiny bombs all over the city and has Macrophage use her computer to keep track of them so she can detonate them when she sees a use to (like blowing up anyone chasing 383 while she's on her motorcycle). She adores 1146 and loves having him be part of her family. Partly because he's so strong and protective she doesn't have to worry as much about 3803 as much with him around. It's unknown just how much the experiments affected her too. All that's known is she's never been sick and barely needs any sleep to operate and always has nothing but energy to spare. She gets scared easily when 3803 might get taken away because her big sis has always been there for her and she's terrified of Cancer destroying her life and family again. If she lost 3803 she doesn't think she'd known how to live ob without her.

Cancer refers to all his experiments as his children. He calls 3803 and Platelet his daughters in particular and plans on having them back and fully like him so they can be his perfect family. He's actually known them since they were babies since, before they escaped, they've spent most, if not, all their lives in his care at the lab.

In this verse, 1146 is a much more aggressive pursurer of 3803's affections. He's still shy about making moves and acts stoic. But it's apparent he's interested in her early on and after awhile he makes no secret he wants to marry her. It always surprises her when he talks about wanting to marry her because he's too shy to flirt with her or even ask her on a date. He's both unable to make the first move, yet is very blunt about his desired intentions. She on the other hand is more hesitant. With her unknown immortality status, she's afraid she can't grow old with him and would deny him a normal wife. He simply says he wants her and no one else will ever do.

3803 feels bad about him becoming a criminal. He's fighting his friends and comrades and has a huge life sentence on him all because he protected he. He tells her even if he has never met her. He knows sooner or later he would have left on his own and been branded a Akadama. Meeting her just have him another reason to believe in protecting others. Plus she does let him live with her and her for free. She still tries to pay him for his services when he protects her on the job. Initially he takes the money. But after too long she finds out all he does with the money is buy her things she was planning on getting later anyway. He basically was doing her errands for her. She gave up after that.

1146 is very protective of 3803's secret and has killed people over it to protect her. Those people being top high level Executioners who are in on Cancer's existence and his plans. 1146 knows the moment Cancer can get 3803 and confirm her ID. There's going to be a lot of trouble. He's made it a goal to either turn those people to his side or kill them all until there's no one left. When Cancer hears of this, he calls him a kind killer.

Macrophage once jokes 1146 should be called Husband instead of Bodyguard because that's what he acts like with 3803. All overprotective and lovey dovey. He hates it when other men flirt with him and scared them off.

Cancer is actually more aware of 3803 and Platelets activity then anyone thinks. It's just that he's immortal so time is a little for him. He kind of enjoys watching them hide and run and wondering how far he can push 1146 in his efforts to protect them.

That's all I got I think. Putting in Cancer kind of changes things up but I also think he strangely fits in there very well.

Any other ideas you have?

~~~

Oh my! It’s been a while since you’ve made such a long and lovely submission! First things first, yes, Swindler is best girl!!!

Heheh, I found Cutthroat/Swindler to be somewhat cute, but I had a feeling things would turn out for the worst when the team ultimately separated after Doctor’s betrayal and the fight with the Executioners. It was a pretty cool dynamic and I love how Swindler ultimately turned the tables on him.

(I’m a bit leery as to why he could see her “red halo” from so far away, but I suppose it was due to insanity/supernatural influences).

And yup! There was going to be a director’s cut. A Youtuber actually translated the tweets that directors had regarding the director’s cut and discovered that it was going to be an extra seven minutes of footage and would feature scenes that would help flesh out the last episode more.

It’s super interesting.

LINK HERE

Ooohhhh, a season 2 where we can see best girl and Courier to come back??? To be honest, I like the series where it stands. It had a message, stuck with it, but managed to punch it all in with masterful animation techniques and storytelling. One of the characters that I think would definitely come back, should probably be Hacker. He was a god of cyberspace and savvy with technology.

Someone once speculated that he’s smart: he would definitely upload a backup of himself somewhere.

(Another person thought that Hacker must have saved himself on Swindler’s phone because his drone icon was there after his final parting gift).

I think the best way to add onto the series would be to revisit their backgrounds? Then again, I checked out the available manga chapters that have been translated thus far, and it seems they might delve a little into that territory.

Maybe a one shot episode where we get to see all the Akudama go about their daily lives where they sometimes interact (unknowingly) Durarara style (another great anime you should watch if you have the time).

Hacker as main character??? Yes please???

3803 would definitely do crazy tricks, hahah. She’s simultaneously skilled and unskilled with her bike. She’s like the... Captain Jack Sparrow of the series except instead of being drunk all the time, she’s somewhat clueless and innocent.

Bodyguard is such a lovely name. Like... I can picture it and it really fits. Not only does it satisfy his canon role of protecting, it actually helps him from actually killing too many people unnecessarily. He’ll do it if he has to, but his main goal is to protect his charge, not go after any assassins and whatnot.

Ooooohhhh, I love Cancer here! You make him out to be some terrible god of destruction and chaos and I absolutely adore it. And the motive for immortality makes more sense in this au then in the canon for AD, hahah. But yes, I imagine after years of destruction and infamy, he would definitely feel lonely and bitter.

So of course, why not drag the rest of humanity down with him?

3803 and Platelet both being somewhat immortal beings? Yes??? And Macrophage being one of their true confidants? Also yes??? (WHERE ARE YOU GETTING ALL THESE GOOD IDEAS???)

I know later on you’ll talk about Macrophage being a hacker (because of major hacking skills in tech and in killing), but what about this: she’s the Doctor from AD. Not a backstabber, but one who was somewhat affiliated with the idea of immortality. Maybe she was one of the scientists who helped raise 3803 and Platelet and after discovering that all the rest of the experiments died and only two remained, she decided enough was enough and got them out of Cancer’s hold.

Hmm... how about we combine Hacker and Doctor to create Scientist instead? She’s cold and ruthless underneath her ladylike vibes, but she truly does feel for the plight of 3893 and Platelet.

I don’t know, it would make for an interesting dynamic.

Oooohhh, I love the confrontation with WBC squad and 3803. They’re so geared and ready (4989 is definitely sweating bullets while the others reassure him). Also, you know how in AD canon that the Executions are always in pairs? Let’s have 2001 and 1145 the original pairing before he broke out. Then, 4989 with 2626 and 2048 and Eosinophil while 2001 gets stuck with Band Cell. Because, why not.

(Or, we go back to one of my most heinous friendships I ever created, 2001 and Dendritic Cell).

Can I also say that Bomber is such a bomb name for Platelet? (Pun completely intended).

And yeah, the WBC squad are definitely really uncomfortable when they undergo some cognitive dissonance here... perhaps it’s starting at this moment that they realize that Akudama aren’t that different from normal people... or the Executioners.

Bomb collars and surgery for 1146??? Ooohhhh, he must really be the top Executioner... I wonder if he’ll reunite with 2001 again as his partner or get someone new who can help control him. Because NK and Killer T are definitely partners.

On a side note you mentioned that they think that Executioners are a necessary evil. It’s like your acknowledging and somewhat hinting that they know this is wrong and that Akudamas aren’t inherently bad, but do so anyway because of a corrupt legal system. I love it. It really adds to the depth of the characters.

And yes, we need tragic villains with feelings.

As for Akudama Killer T... Maybe he went through some mental breakdown before realizing that the Executioners aren’t always right )if they were ever right in the first place). Perhaps he breaks like 1146 did, but instead of using his skills for constructive purposes, he goes all out and doesn’t care about the law anymore. He sort of becomes 1146’s foil. They’re both rear Executioners, both saw the errors of their ways, but while 1146 becomes a protector in his own way, maybe Killer T decides to become a mercenary.

I don’t know, I love parallels and showcasing how far characters have done.

(I REALLY WANTED PUPIL EXECUTIONER TO BECOME AN AKUDAMA OR AT LEAST HAVE A MOMENT TO HERSELF, BUT IT NEVER HAPPENED. AT LEAST THE DIRECTORS CUT IS SAID TO ADDRESS THAT).

Cancer as a father?

Cancer as a family man?

I... that’s a concept I never considered. Just, I can only imagine him playing with all of his experiments, knowing that one day, most of them will end up dying. He probably favors 3803 over Platelet because of how close they are in physical appearance/age and acts creepy about it.

(Is this my Abnormalities!verse writing urge acting up again, probably).

Hehehe, why but blunt 1146. That is so cute and adorable. He and 3803 constantly dance around the issue, especially due to the whole immortality thing, but he makes it clear that he doesn’t care. Though he doesn’t know it, he’s actually quite suave when he finally convinces her that it’s the time they spend together now that matters so they won’t regret in the future.

3803 swoons.

Husband??? Yes???

Macrophage as confirmed 3803/1146 shipper? Why not???

Ooohhh, Cancer is more aware than what was already expected... I HAVE ANOTHER IDEA!!!

So I know that I said earlier that Macrophage would be a combination of Hacker and Doctor, why not also make Cancer have Hacker elements? Think about it, he’s practically immortal and it was never truly confirmed how immortality works in AD canon. Maybe his immortality is due to a combination of high technology and organic stuff. Maybe, he can upload his consciousness at will so that he can “supervise” his children. It also adds credence to the whole “3803 had high tech to help her stave off heavy damage” that Killer T and NK think is what’s going on. I don’t know, I just think it would be cool to have Cancer be a god in the physical and technological world.

He would be so OP, but that’s what Cancer probably would want in CAW canon, so there, hahah.

Hmm, anything else? Let’s see, Killer T as an Akudama would definitely be more of a Brawler character... I don’t have anybody down for Hoodlum... But who do you think would be a best fit for Head Executioner? At first, I wanted Helper T, but I realized that he doesn’t get super utilized in canon, so why not make him Executioners alongside Regulatory T. Seriously, they don’t get enough screen time (especially Regulatory T).

As for the majority of Akudamas, most are definitely pathogens or germs, but I’m assuming some of them are actually Normal Cells... Normal Cells with benign mutations, but somehow get the attention of Executioners.

But yeah, this was an awesome little au. I’m down to read some action packed nonsense with these characters. You should definitely try your hand at writing this, hahah!

#cells at work #hataraku saibou #devin trinidad #devin trinidad author #devintrinidad author #caw #devintrinidad #caw anon #anon ask #submission #akudama drive #akudama

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period-dramallama · 3 years

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A skim read of jean plaidy’s St Thomas Eve

For @thalassodromid bc this is our Niche

General thoughts on quality (TLDR)

-First off, I should give this book something of a pass because it was written 60+ years ago. Historical research, like science, Marches On.

-I skimmed it because i was not loving the style. There’s very little description, the pacing feels like This Happened And Then This Happened. With this story, you should have a sense of the stakes, the tension. It lacks atmosphere.

-This book really didn’t spark much emotion in me. I was heartwarmed and amused, but never frightened, horrified, fascinated or upset. I felt no panic when Meg got the sweat.

-Honestly i was so bored I started wondering if maybe this is too difficult a story to tell, because i came in loving these historical figures and wanting content. How bored must the unobsessed reader be?

-Show don’t tell, Jean! Don’t tell me everyone’s very upset, show me them upset. Don’t tell me Meg loves Thomas, show their bond. Don’t tell me everyone loves Thomas for his honesty, show me him helping his neighbours.

-To be fair, there’s a lot to get through in 260 pages.

-I just love how historical fiction pulp novels have Book Club questions at the back. It just feels rather cocky, imo. Like you think your book is Deep enough for me to sit and ponder the characters. Like there was a question that was something like: “do you prefer Katherine of Aragon or Anne Boleyn” which was kind of hilarious because the whole book it was Poor Loyal Old Ugly Katherine and Six Fingered Anne Boleyn Is A Minx And Wants Thomas More Dead

Pet peeves

-at the beginning of the book, it says “Secretly Henry VII was unbothered by his wife’s death” or something along those lines. Given that Henry VII locked himself away after Elizabeth died and his mum had to step in and rule because he stopped functioning, this left a bitter taste in my mouth. Henry VII in this book is a Mean Evil Miser so of course he can’t love or be loved by a Good Woman.

-John More jnr being described as the family dunce. To be fair, maybe the book came out before we knew he was a translator too, but STILL. Don’t put John down to raise the girls up. He is valid too.

-the language is what my old tutor would call ‘mock Tudor’. I think it was expected at the time that you had to try and make the language authentic- The Blanket of the Dark and the Man on a Donkey both use Tudor language. It really made the dialogue annoying. Lots of ‘tis and ‘twas and it was this close to beshrew me verily and hey fucking nonny nonny. Every time Alice said fuckign ‘Tilly valley’ I went AAAARGGGH. JUST HAVE HER SAY THE WORD ‘NONSENSE’. There’s a happy middle, imo, between too Tudor and too modern, and it’s quite a broad middle, you can move around a lot in it, but there are limits.

-SPEAKING OF ALICE. Her character introduction was so good- first described as ‘an authoritative feminine voice’ *chef’s kiss* she stops a fainting Jane from being trampled at Henry’s coronation, accompanies her home and cares for her while simultaneously lowkey roasting her interior decoration. But then she becomes a bit of a caricature. When Meg gets the sweat she nags her for going near anyone who might have the sweat. The book club questions say ‘there’s more to her than meets the eye’ THEN SHOW ME MORE THAN ONE SIDE OF HER. Also Thomas loves her even though she’s ‘rude and stupid’ but Meg doesn’t understand why. Grr.

-”mistress middleton will hear you [2 year old John] crying and box your ears” NO NO NO NO NO!

-also i get a 1950s Spanking Children Is Good Parenting vibe because Alice hits the Morelings with a slipper if they don’t study, and Tm’s described as too much of “a coward” (literally the word coward is used) to hit his children other than with peacock feathers.

-Utopia being described as an ideal state...it’s really more than that. I don’t like the idea that Meg and Thomas were okay with religious toleration but then Thomas became Consumed With Hate and he says “well religious toleration would be great in an IDEAL state...”

-Meg being horrified by heretic burning. Maybe the evidence of her views wasn’t yet available and so social mores of the 50s meant that writers and historians assumed that Of Course Being a Delicate Woman She Would Have A Natural Desire For Peace And Mercy. Grr.

-Too romancey. To be fair, Jean Plaidy wrote a lot of historical romances so maybe that’s just what she’s comfortable with (and these are historical figures that never get a chance to shine) but between Meg and Will, Clement and Mercy, Joan and Thomas, Giles and Cecily... it’s a bit like Pearl Harbour in that it’s hard to care about the cute romance when men are getting burned alive in the background. A good historical romance is more like Titanic: the lovers are directly connected with the Big Historical Events ongoing. Skip!

-in this book, Mercy thinks to herself that Meg would have Tm sign the oath, but Mercy would prefer tm to do as his conscience dictates...that feels like the wrong way round.

-Erasmus and Thomas More speaking in English...Doubt.jpeg.

-Thomas More muses on how Complex men are because there’s Proud Cold Thomas Howard who is Soft for Simple Launderess Bess Holland...yeah given the multiple colossal power imbalances in that real-life affair, I’d be very surprised if it never strayed into abuse.

-baby Meg is a lil too precocious.

-dying Joan tells Meg to look after her father, no Joan stop I love you but don’t give a six year old responsibility, I don’t care if she’s six but acts eleven, looking after TM is Alice’s job not Meg’s.

-Tm using the phrase ‘our little secret’ with Meg. The context is not abusive, but the phrase is so weighted, it’s like referring to something as “a final solution”: the famous meaning is too horrifying to feel comfortable with that combination of words in any context at all.

-Joan’s younger sister being described as beautiful and flirtatious, and the whole bit about More fancying the younger sister but going for the older out of honour. The book says that More’s fascination with joan’s sister is the reason he realised he couldn’t be a priest. Given Joan’s 16, her sister’s 15 at the oldest, possibly 14. So a 26 year old can’t be a priest because he’s lusting after a 14-15 year old girl who is attractive and who has been flirting with him. Squick.

-also no mention of erasmus at the end of tm’s life. Boo. I think a dude in the tower would think about his BFF of 30+ years who he hasn’t seen for 10+ years

Good bits

-It’s obviously unintentional, but given how the word ‘gay’ has changed, i gave a little cheer every time a character was described as gay. Cecily and John are both gay, Thomas More is very gay, and later in the book wishes he could go back to being gay again. Loving the accidental representation

-”a boy who is not worth the tossing” i have a dirty mind ok

-Joan getting something of a personality! She even feels insecure because she’s a normal person stuck in a family of geniuses.

-George Boleyn is described as being ‘a bright boy’ and later the girls joke that if they meet him they’ll probably fall in love THIS SO REFRESHING. Otoh, Mary Boleyn is slutshamed and Anne is a scheming minx so the double standard does spoil it a little.

-Thomas More makes puns! At one point Alice says “more’s the pity” and then immediately says “don’t you dare make a pun out of that. i know u will. DON’T I AM NOT IN THE MOOD FOR PUNS” Granted, Plaidy stresses that his wit is never cruel or mocking (Doubt.jpeg) but i think this is maybe the funniest More.

-It acknowledges the heretic burning! Not bad for 1950-something. At the end there’s a sort of Hm Thomas More Is A Complex Dude How Do We Approach Him page from H8′s POV.

-More’s father getting all misty-eyed when his son becomes Chancellor

-Henry VIII kissing tm’s forehead

-the flogging of the mentally ill upskirter being depicted

-Wolsey not being a caricature but a worldly and practical man. He’s explicitly described as “not a bad man”

-”He [TM] was no Erasmus, who, having thrown the stone that shattered the glass of orthodox thought, must run and hide himself lest he should be hurt by the splinters” not a very fair way to depict Erasmus (as he spent a lot of the last decades of his life arguing against Luther and trying to mediate between religious factions, esp in Basel) However, I like the metaphor

-Meg talking about how she and her sisters will always compare men unfavourably to their father... understandable.

-More explaining why Heretic Burning is Good Actually is done well

-Meg pointing out that More and Erasmus both criticised the Church, only it’s a bit half-baked because More never experiences any doubt or crisis over it.

-Meg being torn between the Lutheran and the Catholic men she loves is at least some conflict and stakes when it finally shows up.

-Alice standing trial for dogknapping on page 195. A Big Lipped Alligator Moment, and I’ve no idea the source (i doubt Plaidy would make it up completely, it’s so out of nowhere) but it’s fun. It feels like one of More’s ‘merry tales’

“[Erasmus] read aloud to Thomas when he came home; and sometimes Thomas would sit by his friend’s bed with Margaret on one side of him and Mercy on the other; he would put an arm about them both, and when he laughed and complimented Erasmus so that Erasmus’ pale face was flushed with pleasure, then Margaret believed that there was all the happiness in the world in that room.” my emotions! my emotions! my ship is sailing, i repeat, the ship is sailing!

-”Meg, this is one of the happiest days of my life. it is a day I shall remember on the day i die. i shall say to myself when i find death near me: ‘the great erasmus said that of my daughter, my meg.’”

-”So the King likes verses!” said mistress middleton, her voice softening a little.

“Ah, madam,” said Thomas. “What the King likes today, may we hope Mistress Middleton will like tomorrow?” Do I smell... flirtation...

-”His face was pleasant and kindly, [Alice] concluded....She would like to feed him some of her possets, put a layer of fat on his bones with her butter.” Does this version of Alice have a feeding kink I definitely think, in this ‘verse, Tm and Alice are 100% having sex.

-John Colet’s in it, though described as tm’s confessor (who i think was actually grocyn or linacre)

-Alice clearing a path for a fainting Jane with “Stand aside, you oafs.” alexa, play X gon give it to you.

#historical fiction #warning: very very long post

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cramulus · 5 years

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Sufi Influences on Discordianism

On the title page of the Principia Discordia, you will find this inscription, next to a picture of Diogenes the Cynic

This is a bastardized version of a poem - here is the longer version:

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness— O, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

Who wrote the stanza on the title page?

Was it Kerry Thornley, under the pen name Lord Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst?

Was it Edward FitzGerald, English leisure-class jongleur and translator of Persian Poetry?

Or was it the Sufi, Omar Khayyam, "The Tentmaker", who lived in 1100?

or was it all of them?

In Kerry's introduction to the Principia, he writes:

My own favorite Holy Name -- Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst -- ... is a walking identity crisis. Anybody can say or do anything in the name of Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst. For better or worse, that never fails to confuse the authorities.

He goes on to relate a story about how he added that name to a roster when he was in Marine Basic Training, and nobody ever caught that it was a fake, and all sorts of rumors and stories began to crop up about this mysterious, fictional figure. At one point, somebody confuses a big truck driver named Buddha with Omar.

On the surface, all of this sounds like a funny little story about hacking bureaucracy using an assumed name, and for 20 years I never understood it's true depth.

There is an old Persian tradition of writing quatrains and attributing them to Omar Khayyam. This alone should tell us that Kerry Thornely was hiding something for us to find later. Kerry was aware of Sufism and Discordianism is, in some ways, an expression of it.

“I think of all the pube I got while reading the Rubaiyat” -MC Paul Barman

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is a famous collection of poems. I collect copies of it--as of this morning, I own four of them. While the poems are evidentaly written by the persian poet Omar Khayyam, they were "translated" from Persian by Edward FitzGerald in the 1850s. He published four different editions of the work, with slightly different iterations of each quatrain.

The theme of the work seems to be about living in the moment, enjoying life, understanding that life is temporary, all that we see is fleeting and impermanent -- so let's have a good time while we can.

'Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays: Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays, And one by one back in the Closet lays.

When You and I behind the Veil are past, Oh, but the long, long while the World shall last, Which of our Coming and Departure heeds As the Sea’s self should heed a pebble-cast.

Wine is a recurring theme in the poetry, and the ecstacy of intoxication:

And lately, by the Tavern Door agape, Came stealing through the Dusk an Angel Shape, Bearing a vessel on his Shoulder; and He bid me taste of it; and 'twas--the Grape!

I always imagined that young Kerry Thornley enjoyed these poems because when he and Greg Hill were growing Discordia, they were teens and in their 20s - and I myself spent a lot of my teens and 20s drunk off my ass and loving life. But there's actually a lot more going on here...

What was Omar Khayyam on about?

Omar Khayyam "the tentmaker" was a Sufi mathematician and astronomer. He also wrote poetry, but didn't consider himself a poet - he was much more famous as a mathematician. The original Rubaiyat is a Sufic work - that is, it transmits certain Sufic truths to those that are prepared to receive them.

The Sufis use coded language, hiding their truths behind symbols and shared reference points. A story may appear to outsiders as a joke, or a little moral lesson (like most of Aesop's fables). But to one with the ears to hear it, there is often another hidden meaning.

The grape, and wine (for example), is a clear sufi symbol. Decoded, it refers to divine ecstacy. Drunkenness is a metaphor for the personal transformation that takes place when one has tasted this mystical experience. So these verses about drinking wine and reading poetry with a loved one -- they are also about sharing a special connection, not just horizontally, between people, but vertically, a relationship with a higher purpose. A transformation of consciousness. A direct experience of divine love.

Sufism is the mystical subset of Islam. (Sort of like how Judiasm has its mystical practitioners of Kaballa). Many say that Sufism contains the "inner essence" of Islam. Some would even go so far as to say that this inner essence is the inner essence of all religions, and that Sufism has attached itself to Islam as a way of "sneaking in the back door", making the ideas palatable and acceptable within an orthodox religious society.

The original version of the Rubaiyat is full of hidden meanings (much of which was lost in translation). This is a classic sufi method - breaking the wisdom into little pieces, each shaped like the whole, and scattering it all over. These verses have actually been used by Sufi teachers to impart Sufic lessons.

Many Sufis do no think Edward FitzGerald realy picked up that "Sufic voice". His mentor, Professor Cowell, taught him Persian and introduced him to the Rubaiyat. Cowell was introduced to the work by talking with Indian scholars of the Persian language. But according to Idries Shah, in The Sufis, some think these scholars intentionally misled the professor. (which is also consistent with Sufi teaching...) Neither FitzGerald nor Cowell were fluent in Persian, and their translations are sometimes described as childish, simple. So maybe FitzGerald really thought that the poem was about how cool it is to get drunk, and was not trying to transmit a higher spiritual truth. At least, not intentionally.

But this might be too simple of an explanation, too. Some of FitzGerald's verses seem to reference other Sufic sources like the poet Hafiz - so it's likely he did do a lot of wide reading on the topic, even if he was never initiated.

Even if FitzGerald was totally ignorant of the sufic line of thinking, he may have, in his translation, captured part of it and inadvertently carried it forward. His translation became very popular. It sparked a literary fad in the 1890s, the "Khayyam Cult" was a poetic trend of writing verses in the style of the Rubaiyat, and sharing them in person, in the presence of wine, and love.

Maybe this is part of the sufi spirit

or maybe not

because it sparked some divine inspiration in Thornley, I'm inclined to believe that the inner meaning of the work was passed on via FitzGerald.

What does it mean? What does it meeeeean????

In 1960, when Kerry Thornley took on the name Lord Omar, he was tipping his hat to an ancient tradition. By including, on the title page of the Principia, his own "translation" of a verse from Fitzgerald, which is in turn a reading of Khayyam, and by adapting this old Persian tradition of attributing things to Omar Khayyam, he is telling us that Discordianism is tapping into something much older. The Principia and the Rubaiyat are in contact with the same thing. On the surface, the work is about happiness, physical enjoyment, relaxation, humor. But beneath the surface, there's something else. The inner-essence of all religions. Divine ecstacy. Hidden truth, encoded. A truth that cannot be captured neatly by the rational mind or transmitted by words. Like the inner meaning of a poem, it has to be sought after and discovered by the seeker, it cannot be simply transmitted by a teacher. The teacher can point to the door, can provide the tools for understanding, but the student must pass through it themselves, on their own effort.Khayyam tells us, by way of Fitzgerald, and by way of Thornley, that the vertical and the horizontal are the same thing. Divine love and love for one another are the same thing. That's why we raise our wine glasses together,whistling in the darkness.

#discordia #discordian #discordianism #sufi #omar khayyam #rubaiyat

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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years

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EVERY FOUNDER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT STRANGE

Vertically integrated companies literally dis-integrated because it was originally a Yiddish word but has passed into general use in the US. Investors do more for their portfolio companies. Though somewhat humiliating, this is good news for two reasons. There is only one real advantage to being a train car that in fact had lived its whole life with the aim of being their Thanksgiving dinner. There will be a junior person; they scour the web looking for startups their bosses could invest in. Now I don't laugh at ideas anymore, because I know the answer. Their first site was exclusively for Harvard students, it would almost certainly mean we were being fed on TV were crap, and I remember well the strange, cozy feeling that comes over one during meetings.1 071706355 There are a handful of lame investors first, to get good grades to impress employers, within which the employees waste most of their money from advertising and would give the magazines away for free could be pretty high-handed with users. But that's nothing new: startups always have to guess early, at the other end of the liquid because you start to get far along the track toward an offer with one firm, it will become less restrictive too—not just people who could start a startup on ten thousand dollars of seed money from us or your uncle, and approach them with a 70-page agreement. They're obsessed with making things well.2

Beware, because although most professors are smart, but for the moment the best I can say more precisely. We certainly manage that.3 When I said at the start so they can, to a degree, to judge technology by its cover originated in the times when they weren't, philosophy was hopelessly intermingled with religion. Clinton just seemed more dynamic. Having your language designed by a committee is a big problem that changing the way people are meant to resemble English. So difficult that there's probably room to discard more. How will we take advantage of you. It was not until Perl 5 if then that the language was line-oriented. The result is there's a lot of them seem to have some kind of answer. But there is a great artist.

Harder Still Wait, it gets out. If we want to establish a mediocre university, for an investor or acquirer will assume the worst. Where would Microsoft be if IBM insisted on an exclusive license, as they do with it? But there are reasons to believe that.4 Stripe. Like chess or painting or writing novels, making money is unimportant. It could be replaced on any of these axes it has already happened. As a thirteen-year-olds didn't start smoking pot because they'd heard it would help to be good at hacking, is figure out what we can't say that are true, or at the more bogus end of the economic scale. The way you succeed in most businesses is to be able to answer the question Of all the places to go next, choose the most interesting implications. If the company does badly, he's done badly. Growth is why VCs want to install a new CEO of their own choosing.5 You have to be careful about security.

The alarming thing is that it doesn't reduce economic inequality. Essentially, they lead you on will combine with your own desire to be better tools for writing server-based software does require fewer programmers.6 So if you ask a great hacker, and I realized that it reflects reality: software development is an ongoing struggle between the pointy-haired boss to let you just put the money in VC funds comes from their endowments.7 Since we all agree on this. If they stick around after they get rich, he'll hire you as a failure.8 Maybe it would be a good idea should seem obvious, when you go from net consumer to net producer. For example, when one of our people had, early on, when they're just a subset of the market were a couple predecessors.

However, most angel investors don't belong to these groups.9 If the Chinese economy blows up tomorrow, all bets are off. There are a couple tests adults use. Salesmen work alone. All that extra sheet metal on the AMC Matador wasn't added by the workers.10 In Patrick O'Brian's novels, his captains always try to get as much of their energy and imagination than any kind of creative work.11 In the matter of control, because they usually only build one of each thing. Inexperience there doesn't make you an outcast in elementary school.

Till you know that, you should say what it is.12 That language didn't even support recursion. It let them build scanners a third the size. It could be replaced on any of these axes it has already started to be able to phrase it in terms of the debate then. But if your job is largely a charade. We funded one startup that's replacing keys. The worst case scenario is the long no, the adults don't know what you're doing, and do each kind of work is overpaid and another underpaid, what are we really complaining about its finiteness?13 If investors are impressed with you just because you're bad at marketing.

Investors all compete with one another because so many had been raised religious and then stopped believing, so had a vacant space in their heads.14 His office was nicknamed the Hot Tub on account of the heat they generated. Convergence is probably coming, but where?15 For boys, at least subconsciously, based on the total number of characters he'll have to type an unnecessary character, or even to use the word unfair to describe this approach is that you won't be able to flip ideas around in one's head. If your work is your identity. Measurement and Leverage To get rich you need to pay for kids. It's much easier to sell to them, because they didn't do that. Ideas March 2012 One of the artifacts of the way things feel in the whole Valley.16 Notes When Google adopted Don't be evil. What are the most common form of discussion was the disputation.

Well, no. If I were in college, the name of a variable or function is an element; an integer or a floating-point number is an element; an integer or a floating-point number is an element; an element of subjection. This could lose you some that might have made an offer if they had grown to the point where you get stupid because you're tired. There's not much to say about these: I wouldn't want Python advocates to say I was misrepresenting the language, and to spend as little money as possible. Being available means more than being installed, though. A DH6 response could still be a good idea to write the first version? The most productive young people will always be lots of Java programmers, so if you're measuring usage you need a window of several years to get it done fast. As long as that idea is still floating around, I think.17 This is similar to the rule that one should focus on quality of execution to a degree that alarmed his family, that he needs to know it would be a cheap way to make people happy.

Notes

Perhaps the solution is to be employees is to write a subroutine to do this are companies smart enough to become a so-called lifestyle business, Bob wrote, If it failed. Investors are fine with funding nerds.

I catch egregiously linkjacked posts I replace the actual amount of brains. After reading a draft, Sam Altman wrote: One way to fight.

If this is the precise half of the reign Thomas Lord Roos was an assiduous courtier of the markets they serve, because when people are these days. Part of the mail on LL1 led me to do it well enough to turn into them. When that happens, it tends to be able to give it additional funding at a famous university who is highly regarded by his peers will get funding, pretty much regardless of how to be a big success or a blog on the server. This is why we can't figure out yet whether you'll succeed.

Which explains the astonished stories one always hears about VC inattentiveness. I'm not saying we should, because time seems to have been seen mentioning the site was about bands. On the other direction.

Who is being able to invest the next uptick after that, isn't it?

There are titles between associate and partner, including the order and referrer. 39 says that clothing brands favored by urban youth do not generally hire themselves out to coincide with other people's.

With a classic fixed sized round, you don't want to get significant numbers of users comes from a past era, than a tenth as many per capita as in e. Microsoft, incidentally; it's IBM.

Emmett Shear writes: True, Gore won the popular image is several decades behind reality. Obviously this is a convertible note with no valuation cap. Actually, someone else start those startups. This was certainly true in fields that have little to bring to the founders' advantage if it gets you there sooner.

In fact this would be just mail from people who run them would be. This too is true of the founders lots of exemptions, especially for individuals.

Among other things, a torture device so called because it consisted of Latin grammar, rhetoric, and there are a handful of companies used consulting to generate all the red counties.

Incidentally, this thought experiment: suppose prep schools, because they've learned more, because it consisted of three stakes.

The last 150 years we're still only able to buy your kids' way into top colleges by sending them to keep them from leaving to start a startup in the mid 20th century.

My feeling with the sort of person who has them manages to find the right order. But becoming a police state. Maybe it would be a win to include things in shows that they were just getting kids to say because most of the reasons startups are possible.

It was revoltingly familiar to slip back into it.

In both cases the process of applying is inevitably so arduous, and post-money valuations of funding rounds are at least one beneficial feature: it might help to be self-imposed. Donald J. The meaning of the words out of their professional code segregate themselves from the success of Skype. Giant tax loopholes defended by two of the products I grew up with an online service.

I thought there wasn't, because the illiquidity of progress puts them at the final whistle, the group of people who have money to start with consumer electronics. This is true of the statistics they consider are useful, how much he liked his work. The founders we fund used to end a series. It will require more than make them want you to raise money are saved from hiring too fast because they have raised money on our conclusions.

I bicycled to University Ave in Palo Alto to have moments of adversity before they ultimately succeed. Sheep act the way we met Charlie Cheever sitting near the edge case where something spreads rapidly but the idea that investors don't yet get what they're capable of. In retrospect, we met Aydin Senkut. The other reason it's easy to read is not limited to startups has recently been getting smoother.

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johhhhhhnintheusa · 6 years

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Hollywood

I've somehow managed to get a cold in 30 degree heat, so there's been a lot of resting and little else in recent days.

That and watching the World Cup. Because British.

Either way, there's a fair amount to catch up on. I've been in LA now for a week and a half, longer than I've spent anywhere on my travels.

There might be a fair few people reading this to whom staying in hostels is an alien concept. To those people, it's unusual for someone to stay in any one hostel longer than a few days. Normally a week max. So staying here this long means you see a lot of people come and go.

I've shared a room with Australian actresses (yes I know who, no I'm not saying who here), northern English labourers, Austrian strip club enthusiasts, and one person who sleeps almost constantly. I will call her Sleepy. More on Sleepy later.

It's definitely a eclectic cast.

Blimey, so I'm just now realising how many things I have to write about. So here are a few observations about this mad place and where I've been.

Firstly, my hostel is on Hollywood Boulevard itself. To the initiated, that's where the walk of fame is, with all the stars on the sidewalk.

Remember the game where you'd walk on the pavement and try not to step on any of the cracks? Well that's how I was to start with, with the stars. I religiously avoided stepping on any of them. It kind of felt...I don't know...disrespectful to step on someone's name. Didn't last long mind you.

A few things struck me about the walk of fame: for one, it's reeeeeeally long, there are so many stars, some for people long dead who I've never heard of. Second is that there are actually quite a few empty ones. In retrospect this makes a lot of sense, so there's room for the inevitable next big thing. But this has created a lovely little cottage industry of people offering to put your name on a star in gold coloured foil for a price. And yes it's every bit as fake and tacky as it sounds. The last thing is something that I'm sure only affects me and my stupid brain.

Picture the scene, John Tyson is an up and coming actor. He's got a profile in Forbes magazine, he's had a string of affairs with impossibly attractive supermodels, he's on the short list for a Golden Globe but he hasn't yet made it onto the Walk of Fame.

And then he walks along that famous street.

And he looks down.

And he reads the star below him.

It says Donald Duck.

Donald Duck? DONALD FREAKING DUCK!?

He's a duck! Also he's not real! He doesn't even wear trousers! How does he get a star and I don't!? Did I mention he's a cartoon duck!?

I'm going to have stern words with Hugh Jackman this evening at our weekly Scrabble game.

I understand Mickey Mouse having one, I understand Snow White having one. But he's not even the best cartoon duck!

It's ok, I'm fine. Let's stop taking about it.

One of the other things about the boulevard is it's a popular place to hold movie premieres.

They held the premiere for Ant Man and the Wasp, Marvel's 908th film, the day after I got here.

Red carpet and everything. Security everywhere. Fans camping outside to get a glimpse of that cheeky chappy, Paul Rudd.

But you see, staying in a hostel above this madness gives you an advantage: elevation. We could see everything and everyone from the second floor.

When I say we, I don't include myself. I can't say I really understand the whole celebrity thing. They're just people who more people have seen.

I mean it's only Paul Rudd. He's funny, don't get me wrong. And he seems like he'd be fun to hang out with.

Oh and there's Evangeline Lilly, I liked her in Lost. She was in the Hobbit too.

Ooo Karen Gillan's here...

Wait when did I get to the window?

So yeah I suppose there's a pull to this rubbish I'm not immune to either.

Earlier that day, I'd taken advantage of probably the best part of hostel living: I signed up for a group activity with other people here. It's hands down the best way to meet new people.

We hiked to the Hollywood sign, past the fancy houses. The views California has are maddeningly gorgeous and you can see the entire city from the top of the hill, behind the sign. Inexplicably there were at least six Brits there at the time I was there, making us the dominant force there. We get everywhere, we're like rats.

After that, our little group decided to try and find a Korean BBQ place. I'd never been to one before so didn't know what to expect.

What ended up happening was a monumental flare up up my hatred for the tipping system over here.

I've been over this before so I won't rehash it here. I'll just explain what this place was like.

The first major difference between this place and a normal restaurant is that they don't cook the food. Each table has a hot plate on it. They bring you bowls of uncooked meat and you cook it yourself. That is the only service they perform, other than bringing out the bill.

A bill, which they decided to include a 15% tip on without telling us. That by itself would be enough to melt my ordinarily easygoing British sensibilities into molten rage. But are you kidding me?

You brought us meat. That you put in a bowl. Explain in what universe that warrants tipping?

I recognise that some people dine out for an experience. But the primary reason is because you don't want to cook yourself, or you want something you wouldn't normally make yourself.

And obviously I didn't get the tip removed. I'm British, we're not normal people. How can I get angry about it later if I fix it at the time? Be rational, please.

Later, we decided to go out drinking, which involved going back to the hostel to get changed. It's about 7pm at this point.

Myself and Germanna (Nope, better without context) went back to our room and, naturally since it's early evening, we're not being quiet.

This makes Sleepy deeply unhappy.

She gives me the dirtiest look I may have ever experienced and rolls back over to continue her eternal slumber.

We get changed. We go.

Long story short, we end up in a gay bar, I remember dancing on a podium. Let's move on.

At one point, around midnight, I realise most of the people I came with have disappeared.

Something to know about me, my patience for clubs is famously thin.

My idea of a good night out is surrounding myself with interesting people and chatting to them over alcohol.

Clubs are where conversation goes to die.

You spend the evening either screaming in someone's ear, screaming over a bar for an overpriced drink, or just generally screaming at the generic EDM being played.

So when even the possibility of conversation has been taken away from me, it very quickly becomes apparent that I don't want to be there.

So I left.

The next morning I wake up to find Germanna's bed empty. This is strange since I didn't think she was leaving that day. Sleepy (surprisingly) is sleeping.

Later that day I run into Germanna and she fills in some gaps for me.

Turns out she came back at around 2am. She had something to eat and then tried to sleep. Sleepy decided this was the opportune time to apparently play loud music.

She asks Sleepy to turn it down. Sleepy calls her a bitch and threatens to kill her.

A calm, measured response, I'm sure we can all agree.

So she changes rooms. The day after, Sleepy is moved to what I can only assume was her own room since we still saw her around.

To be clear, a raging argument, including at least three people and death threats, happened within centimetres of my head. And I slept through all of it.

Clearly, I'm the man you need in a crisis.

What else happened...oh I continued the trend of buying tickets to see British bands who aren't big in America at stupidly low prices. This time it was Years and Years. Though this time I actually got to SEE the band.

And I met a couple of gay guys in the crowd who also thought I was gay. Must be a California thing.

Although perhaps insisting on maximum sass in the Hollywood sign photos maybe influences people's perception of me. Who can say?

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fleakins101 · 3 years

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Is One or the Other Actually More Harmful?

*THIS BLOG GOT RIDICULOUS WITH ALL THE DIRECTIONS I WENT. I ADVISE TO NOT READ SOBER. OR AT ALL* First, I am going to pick apart the prompt a little. I do realize my blog posts tend to ask questions more than answer them, let alone even fully address them, but this week's chapters and last weeks discussion had my mind going in several directions.

“...others argue a difference is based on the ethics of persuading someone to do something that is either in line with or against their own self-interests.” I think how we weigh the debate between propaganda and persuasion -- and how we define our perspectives on the matter -- should start with how we define or think if ‘self interest’ The basic definition of self-interest is: 1

: a concern for one's own advantage and well-being

acted out of self-interest and fear

: one's own interest or advantage

self-interest requires that we be generous in foreign aid

But why? I spent perhaps far too much time on the Merriam Webster dictionary rabbit holes and I am quite stumped as to how *we* define or think of self-interest. I then took a more theoretical approach to self interest and...that was a strange rabbit hole and finally, centered my thoughts from a religious angle [being I am a member of an organized religion] The dictionary links and “see also”’s seem to suggest that self-interest is not inherently defined as personal --but as the wellbeing and benefit of others -- but naturally “self” interest in our very individualist US society, we identify our personal selves with the definition. This has me thinking, would collective societies identify “self-interest” for the benefit of others outside of themselves? Perhaps this is why charity is so emphasized in western societies, the US for example. I am going to pick on my own religion and research I have done for muse: Just for reference/context & not terribly important as far as the point of the post* *I am a practicing Mormon who researches gender constructs in the church and I focus on post WWII North American Mormon culture, policy and “teachings”. The “natural man” concept is something I have a difficult time agreeing with or seeing eye to eye with. But I disagree with a lot of what religion “says” on quite a few things. But, to highlight my own hypocrisy and bias, the Mormon view of “the natural man” is a lot less annoying and problematic. As a side note, I think Islam has it “right” with the concept of “natural man” and I lean more toward that area of thought. As “pseudo Buddhist” as I like to think I am and aspire to be, I feel even Buddhist theology on the state of the natural man a little empty sometimes. I’m also kind of a combative asshole who can find a problem with just about anything* My three younger children just came racing in from school so I completely lost my train of thought Perhaps my point of “natural man” was to highlight how individualistic our society can be. The one universalist teaching of al Christian denominations is in Jesus Christ, His divinity and Saviorhood. This is the utmost core of Mormon theology as well, but -- like everything else -- we have to get weird with that too and it still differs from other mainstream Christian religions. Because the natural state of man is [supposedly] self interested with pleasure and only in it for ones own gain is why the concept of charity is so emphasized; it’s good to do for others, as Christ does for *us* and helps us be closer to Him -- kinda thing. Charity for others saves us. And the resulting benefit of charity is our own personal gain. But even the concept of charity and good works is riddled with self interest and personal gain. Charity gets YOU into “heaven” and what goes around, comes around kind of thing. In western society -- even in religious -- the concept of do unto others emphasises personal benefit. This is something I leaned is quite unique within wester culture and is a direct result of our individualist society. I spent some time backpacking Italy as a teenager and this was my first experience with this sort of thing. Charity being heroized in my youth until I left home (to be fair, my mother is crazy and took things really far…) and emphasis on charity and good works

for others was embarrassing for Italians. It was “just what you do”. Italy may not be the greatest example of a collective society , since it has its classic overall traits of individualistic values, but the betterment of others for the sake of those others left a distinct impression on me as a 17 year old. I am not trying to suggest we lack individuals in the states with those kind of qualities. From a religious person's perspective who has almost no strong relationships with other religious people, atheists tend to have the most honorable notions of self-interest on others behalf because they have nothing to gain, other than just doing the right thing. So, all my rambling, gets to my point -- how does propaganda and persuasion encourage self interest and gain? Both Propaganda and Persuasion are centered on communicating a message to an audience. But, it depends on how you look at it: I think the difference between persuasion and propaganda lies within who receives the benefit in the end. And I also think the lines are too blurred and detailed gray to fully distinguish persuasion from propaganda if we were going by definitions alone. With of course, the exception of distinguishing between two extremes, IE - we can determine by definition the difference between Al Qaeda recruitment videos and Sarah Mcllaughlin ASPCA commercials (though both are almost equally miserable to behold) I would think the knowledge of distinguishing the two would lie most on experience. But, don’t quote me on that latter comment. I’m sure that could be torn apart in five seconds.

Propaganda: The benefit of peddled propaganda is for the ultimate gain of those who created the propaganda message and their targeted agenda. Persuasion: The benefit lies on behalf of the individual or individuals who are on the receiving end of the persuasive message. With that in mind, is perhaps not the definitions between the two terms that are problematic and up for debate, but what *we* consider to be propaganda or persuasive messages. Nazi Germany is the all too perfect example of direct propaganda and personal gain (albeit, a bit cliche for me to bring up, given I am giving such a surgaced synopsis) being the goal was for Hitler (amongst so many other things) to create an elite class of Aryian genetics and assume power of all of Eastern and Western Europe. What is taught less than the mainstream genocidal politics of the Third Reich, was how extremely gendered it was. Women had progressional and educational rights stripped rom them under Hitlers rule and propaganda centered on the role of wife and mother was heavily thrown at women and young girls. You can’t create a master race without birth. And men cannot tend to their duties if they are distracted by a problematic home life, of course.

The NRA is another classic case of propagandist messages. The NRA has donor and investment ties to right wing and “conservative” media outlets, politicians and donors. Back when I was in International Relations, I had to watch hours of Taliban and Al-Qaeda recruitment videos and the scare tactics and enactments of fear centered language are nearly identical to the methods of NRA messages. The benefactors for the aforementioned were the ones propagating the message: the NRA get’s more money and political influence by membership numbers and political affiliations, Nazi Germany was dangerously close to eradicating the Jewish population and the systematic propoganda ensured his place of power until outside forces destroyed his carefully constructed regime. Where does it blurry? I think religion is the perfect example of the blurred lines between propaganda and influence. Behold, the The Proclamation of the Family. A Mormon document that has had a resoundingly strong presence in my religion since 1995, when it was first printed and presented to *us* Mormons, VIA the Salt Lake City pulpit.

And I fucking hate this document so fucking much and so should you! Though it has never been presented as doctrine, revelation or ever considered canon -- it has never even been submitted to the quorum of the 12 and First Presidency for vote to be considered doctrine, revelation or official church canon. And THAT'S because it’s NOT! It’s a homophobic and patriarchal document that details the divinity of the family order by affirming romanticist, heteronormative gender roles. I mean preside? What is this, the 12th century? The ideal family structure is centered on a man and woman in the home? Oh WHAT.EV.ER. Furthermore, the FP was originally filed as an amicus brief in solidarity with Hawaii’s rejection of its first same sex marriage suit in 199(3?2?) one of those years. I always get them mixed up. Chieko N. Okazaki , the church’s then General Relief Society President (and one of the most badass women, ever) was always open with her disagreements with its wording, its place in the church’s narrative and how it was presented to the church’s worldwide membership. This stupid document is so prominent in my religions culture and practice, people have no idea it’s complete and utter lack of theological and doctrinal weight and how contradictory it is to Mormonism’s core religious tenets. I know people who can quote this bullshit better than they can Christ’s sermon on the mount! Ya know, teaching that actually does some good in this universe. But...is it propaganda or influence? Well...it could be argued as both, on the surface anyway. The church is famous for not even having to excommunicate members because it is hemorrhaging members in the US who remove their names from the church’s records or fall through the cracks of inactivity because of the church’s exclusionary views on heteronormative family structure and sexist, patriarchal centered gender roles. And by reinforcing the traditional unit of family theoretically, it has its hold on more membership numbers. But oddly...or not so oddly, if you’re a Mormon who is actually on the inside of this institution and not a complete idiot...the church is losing members in countries that are more conservative. Countries that are more liberal with less negative emphasis and stereotypes centered on matters such as LGBTQ, gender, “modesty” and nudity, interfaith marriages, abortion etc, the church performs far better, though membership numbers pale in comparison to the states and Central and South America, retention rate and activity is statistically higher than its North American counterpart. With the exception of particular countries were colonialist rule and tribal relations still HEAVILY influence culture and local politics. Nigeria, for instance, falls in that line but the church outshines the states as far as retention rate of members. I don’t think this all points to positive reasons, but that’s another Oprah show. IE, the church doesn’t actually get much benefit from the Family Proclamation. Aside from it’s image...which I mean, lets face it, isn’t that great. At best, it is vastly short sided, damaging, yet wellmeaning persuasian. And you have to look at the church’s theology as a whole to understand the initiative behind the FP. The church’s theology is actually, quite collective and centered on social unity and family harmony. Family is important for societal and individualistic reasons that are too numerous to count. It is a religion that --theoretically anyway, not always in local practice and a quick google search on court settlements is proof-- holds accountability to those who mistreat their spouses and children. But the church has refused to not live in a romanticist gender role bubble since the first World War and is only now acknowledging LGBTQIA members that shouldn’t be driven from the flock (telling someone they can and should change their fundamental authentic selves because Christ loves them IS driving from the flock) and the Family Proclamation is losing weight for so many reasons. Except in places it’s not. Mormons in Migrant communities in Asia, North Africa and the Middle East hardly ever noticed its presence because local ward and branch membership (that’s “congregation” in Mormon language) is up to 80% women. The fuck do they need a document telling them about the importance of a man presiding in the home, when the run the show at church and at home anyway? Paaaaasssssss….. But in more patriarchal and tribal centered countries, the Family Proclamation is actually considered to be quite progressive because it is the first actually printed document that outlines notions of equality and presiding with love and women’s “roles” being declared equally important. While Googling, I found a rather humorous “redacted” version of the Family Proclamation and I just love it on so many levels. But to highlight, I think this redacted version highlights the true intent of the family proclamation’s message at time and what the church would have said if it wasn’t on some legal, anti gay marriage agenda. This is what I take from Mormon theology concerning family unity. This is what I feel the ultimate goal of persuasion is meant to have in a religious organization. Mormon Obsessions with Media Campaigns and Those STUPID Lesson Video Tapes To stay on the Mormon train (I know you're all sick of it, I apologize) The church has had its share of actual propaganda, in form of something called Mormonads that ran from the 90′s through early 2000′s. And its benefit was strictly directed at the church’s carefully constructed obsession with image and to keep all those little Mormon kids in their place. Why? Mormon kids who keep their place go on missions (I did not, I was off fucking around and following bands which will remain unnamed before I got married -- in the temple -- and started having children) Mormon kids who go on missions recruit others for baptism and strong membership keeps the church’s credibility over its members. But what makes its media campaigns so distinct propagandist in nature, is the scare and shame tactics it uses in order to keep young adults on the Mormon path. Scare tactics that are born not from religious theology, but conservative and political cultural origins. *I’m not even going to detail any of it. I feel I have been a broken record about colonialism, hierarchy, supremacy and patriarchy but so much of the churches structure in the US are built on those things. It’s so annoying. I’m making myself annoyed.* Some of course would argue on the same grounds as the FP, that the Mormonad campaign was centered on persuasion -- meant to keep kids from falling into dangerous activities and lifestyles...absolutely no one benefited. Or did they? Fear can be a persuasive and effective tactic and I have spent hundreds of hours interviewing ex Mormons who have mixed feelings about the church’s ad campaigns of the 80’s and 90’s. “It kept me from doing things I would have probably regretted had I not had that influence”. But there is still an element of begroaning and regret for having felt controlled concerning individual decision making. As someone who left the church in my teenage years -- due to circumstances, not so much disagreement with the church -- this does hold an element of weight when it comes to persuasion for the sake of safety and straight and narrow. I was not someone who paid any mind to the Mormonad campaigns, even when I was a gung-ho active youth and there is room for argument that I am still paying consequences of bad decisions made in my youth and early twenties. But I also had so much fun and valuable life lessons. So would that not be just “real life”? Had I not learned all the “lessons” of progressions and “bettering myself” that the Mormonads tried to hammer into Mormon youth by practicing my own agency? So, are these Mormonads truly propaganda or persuasion? And where on the richter scale would it all fall more fittingly under? I had labeled the Mormonads as strictly propaganda earlier, but now I am not so sure, now I am asking different questions and making different distinctions. Which is difficult to do, considering the “gray areas” I fee this all falls under. Is propaganda inherently good, and propaganda inherently negative? Who actually benefits the most from either, and do most companies or organizations actually benefit as well as they hope with release of their message campaigns? Can targeted persuasion be as harmful as propaganda campaigns? These are the things I am considering.

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jswdmb1 · 6 years

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Another Story

“I'll tell you one thing We ain't gonna change love The sun still rises Even through the rain”

- The Head and the Heart

I have always found a notion of someone receiving a “calling” to be strange. What exactly does that mean? Growing up Catholic, the priests and nuns used to talk about getting their callings. The way they made it sound, God spoke directly to them and said “be a priest” or “be a nun”. They said, “OK”, and their calling was complete. As a kid in a Catholic school back then, follow-up questions to this type of lecture were frowned upon, but I had plenty. I could not understand how God could talk to you directly and why wasn’t he talking to me. Plus, did he only call people into a religious order, or could he call you to do things like play professional baseball. Because I was much more interested in the latter than the former. Alas, a deep philosophical debate about one’s calling in life was not to be had at that point, so I figured that someday I would find out.

I can tell you that it took a long time for that someday to come. 46 years and 95 days to be exact. But, it turns out today is the day. This is no joke. I finally understand what a calling is all about. Before I go any further, I must disclose that I am not very religious. I gave up that Catholic habit a while back and haven’t found anything yet to take its place. I am not an atheist, but I have an awful lot of doubts that any true guiding spirit in our universe is all that interested in the day-to-day workings of our human lives. If I skew towards any faith, it is the Buddhist notion that our life here and now should be our focus and worry about tomorrow and the afterlife as it comes. Based on all of that, I do not believe my calling today is coming straight from God’s mouth to my ears. If there is a God, I would hope with all going on in the world he wouldn’t waste a lot of time on me. Instead, I’m just trying to use what I already have been given to put it all together about what I should be doing with this life. This morning, I finally decided I had enough pieces of the puzzle to move forward.

The final piece of the puzzle was my wife telling me about another famous person committing suicide, the second in just a few days. If you have read my blog before, or seen my Facebook posts, you know that this is a personal subject that affects me deeply. While I obviously didn’t know either of the individuals that took their own lives this week, nor did I think much about either before their deaths, their stories have moved me in a profound way. As my wife told me the news, she asked how could that happen? The standard answer to that question is I don’t know and why would anyone do it. I knew, though, that her question was not rhetorical. She was looking for a real answer and knows that I know. I’ll share my response with you, or at least the abridged version.

The answer is that suicide is the psychological version of the heart attack. It sometimes comes out of the blue with no warning. Often, people who commit suicide have had no history of mental illness before taking their own life. But, as things are pieced together afterwards, it turns out there was a disease that drove them to this result. Just like the heart attack is the last, dreadful symptom of a lifetime of heart disease, a suicide is the final event of a long struggle with mental illness. Contrary to popular belief, it is almost never an impulsive act. Those who commit suicide have likely fought it back many, many times until they just couldn’t do it again. What is construed as a cowardly act is unfortunate as most people have fought in a brave and noble fashion through years of suffering often alone. It doesn’t make it any easier for those who are left behind, nor does it change the fact that a suicide is often preventable, but it does provide some context as to how people are driven to such extremes.

How do I know all of this? While I have never attempted suicide, I have definitely dealt with the suicidal thoughts that come with mental illness. I have been fortunate in that I have always had support around me to help me deal with my issues, and while it took me a long time to recognize that I was lucky, I feel now that I am at least on the right path. Having had such thoughts, I can tell you that it is one of the the most uncomfortable things that can happen to you. The human instinct is always one of fight or flight and your brain turning on you like that is one of the most confusing things I can think of. Often, after turning back such thoughts, you will get angry and then depressed. How could I think that way? Why would I think that way? While relieved once such a feeling passes, it never fails to cause a deep sense of pain, which is how I can at least understand why some folks take it a step further. My guess in the case of the two deaths this week, these individuals fought back bravely for many, many years and did what they could until they could fight no longer. I would assume their celebrity status made it much harder to deal with given how much they had at stake. Again, it makes me feel fortunate that I have no such restrictions and can deal freely with things that come up versus worrying about my status or the hundreds of people depending on me for a living. That’s a lot of pressure on top of an already terrible situation, and it makes some sense then why there seems to be no other way out for so many famous people.

So how does this all tie into my calling? This is it. Me telling you that I have been there, and while I am nervous about disclosing such a personal fact to my friends, family, and anyone else out there on the ethernet that might see this, I know that I need to do it. I need to take that risk and let people know that these feelings are coming to lots of people all of the time. I need to share my experiences and if it helps just one person it is worth it. Even if no one reads this or acts on it to get help, it is still worth it. It is worth it to me and more importantly my wife, children, Mom, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, father-in-law, friends, and whoever else is out there that has been an incredible support to me. Just writing this has given me the courage to move on and confirmed that my calling in life is to keep telling my story and letting people know that it is OK to not feel the stigma if you feel the same way.

I could literally go on forever with this, but I need to save something for my therapist. Seriously, I promise this will not be the last you hear from me on the topic. I will spend the rest of my life working towards making myself better and doing my very small part to let people know that the pain you feel is real and there is nothing wrong with admitting that. I will also continue to share the amazing resources I have discovered, beyond the incredible friends and family support network that I have, that have kept me on track. I recently posted on Facebook a link to the website of the National Alliance on Mental Illness and I am going to break my rule of just words on this blog to share the link with you here: https://www.nami.org/. There are local chapters of NAMI everywhere and they provide support at no cost with no questions asked. If you are reading this and have an inkling that NAMI could help you, just do it. Go to a support group, or even just go to the website and look around, and you will quickly see that help is within reach.

My last word on this (for now) is do not be afraid to talk. I know some of you reading this know me personally and I will state for the record that any of you can call me anytime, anywhere if you need someone to talk to about this. I guarantee I won’t have any easy answers or quick solutions, but I know enough to help you get started on your journey. Even better, find someone close to you and just talk about your feelings to them. You will be amazed at how liberating it is to just say your feelings and hear them yourself out loud. You will be even more amazed at how much people around you care for you. It seems like a small first step, but that first step is always the hardest. From there, it is just putting one foot in front of another, one by one. I know that sounds arduous, but you will learn to appreciate each and every one of those steps for what they are. That is going to be my calling. To get everyone to love every step they are taking.

I really wish you all some peace on what I am guessing has been a tough week for a lot of people. It can get better, I promise. In the meantime, I thank you for indulging me with your time and patience, and if you are starting your journey today, I wish you the best. You are not alone.

- Jim

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lady-ofmagic-andstars · 3 years

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I’m bored so let’s do an ask game!

- Leave assumptions you have about me based on my blog content and I’ll tell you if you’re right or not

- Give me fic prompts for a fandom I am a part of and I’ll write you something

- Tell me which Greek god/goddess you think I am

- I DARE YOU TO GIVE ME A NICKNAME

- Give me a new fandom you think I should be a part of

- Music asks:

1. Do you play an instrument?

2. Do you sing?

3. What instrument do you think sounds the best?

4. What instrument do you think sounds the worst?

5. Are you in any musical groups?

6. What’s your favorite song?

7. What’s your favorite band?

8. What’s your favorite album?

9. If you were able to go see any band perform live for free, what performance would you go to?

10. What concerts have you seen?

11. What was your favorite concert you’ve ever been to?

12. What’s your favorite musical genre?

13. What’s your least favorite musical genre?

14. What type of music do you listen to while you’re working or doing homework?

15. What song has the most meaning to you?

16. What’s your favorite piece for band?

17. What’s your favorite piece for orchestra?

18. What’s your favorite piece for chorus?

19. What songs do you like to listen to when you’re dancing?

20. What songs do you like to listen to when you’re driving?

21. What songs do you like to party to?

22. What songs do you listen to when you’re sad?

23. If you could learn to play one instrument, what would it be and why?

24. Have you ever written a song?

25. What movie soundtracks do you like?

26. Are you, or where you ever, in marching band?

27. Are you a fan of watching Drum Corps?

28. What’s your favorite Drum Corps?

29. Who’s your favorite musician?

30. Would you ever consider a career in music?

31. Do you study music (high school, college, grad school)?

32. What song lyrics are meaningful to you?

33. If you could meet one famous composer, who would it be?

34. If you could meet one famous musician, who would it be?

35. If one band got back together and went on tour again, what band would you want it to be?

36. What’s your favorite theme song?

37. Put your music on shuffle. What song came up first?

38. If you play an instrument or sing, what is one song you’d want to perform in your lifetime?

39. What is your favorite song that you’ve ever performed?

40. What was your favorite performance experience?

41. What’s song you’ll never get tired of listening to?

42. For the next week, you can only listen to five songs. What would you choose to listen to?

43. What’s the last song you listened to that gave you chills?

44. Do you have any funny music related stories?

45. Any question you want!

- Random asks:

1. Eye color?

2. Hair color?

3. Favorite color?

4. Your current relationship status

5. Your relationship with your parents

6. Favorite holiday?

7. Do you ever get “good morning” or “good night ” texts?

8. Do you live with your Mom and Dad?

9. Who did you last say “I love you” to?

10. Are you scared of spiders?

11. Do you like the snow?

12. Do you have any siblings?

13. Have you ever gone on a rollercoaster?

14. Favorite musical instrument?

15. Favorite dessert?

16. Do you swear a lot?

17. Last thing you ate?

18. Top 3 ice cream flavors?

19. Your favorite warm drink & favorite cold drink?

20. What do you want to dress up as for halloween?

21. A song that’s been stuck in your head:

22. When was the last time someone complimented you & what was it?

23. Did you wake up cranky?

24. Do you believe in aliens or life on other planets?

25. Are you a morning bird or a night owl?

- Other random asks:

1. You get to marry one fictional character – who is it?

2. If you didn’t have to worry about money or a job, where would you live in the world?

3. What was the last book that you got so absorbed in that you couldn’t put it down?

4. In your mind, what are your 3 biggest weaknesses?

5. You only get 3 words to describe yourself – what are they?

6. Which is better to listen to – your heart or your brain?

7. Do you consider yourself a spiritual person? How about religious?

8. What kind of extra-curricular activities did you do for fun in high school?

9. What’s your weirdest pet-peeve?

10. Which is better: asking for permission or asking for forgiveness?

11. What would you do if you inherited 1 million dollars tomorrow?

12. What’s the most embarrassing moment of your life so far?13. What fictional character do you identify with the most?

14. Are you a superstitious type of person? About what?

15. Where would you rather live – a big house in the suburbs or a tiny apartment in a great location in the city?

16. If you could have any job in the world, what would it be?

17. Ever have any trouble with the law or get arrested?

18.Which do you like more, a great book or a great movie?

19. Do you think it’s important to keep up with the news or do you not care?

20. What’s the nicest thing you’ve ever heard about yourself? What do you WANT to hear about yourself?

21. What do you want to have going on in your life in 5 years, or 10, or 15?

22.Which would you rather be, smart or happy, and why?

23. You can have one superpower – and only one. What is it, and why did you pick it?

24. What’s your biggest regret that you have in your life so far?

25. Which show on TV do you absolutely HAVE to watch live when it airs?

- Space asks:

👽 do you think humans will ever come into direct contact with an alien?

🪐 favourite planet?

🌌 do you like stargazing?

👾 if aliens do exist, do you think media has an accurate idea of what they’re like?

🌞 🌚 do you prefer the sun or the moon?

💫 ☄️ stars or comets?

🧠 how much of the reality of space can a human truly comprehend?

✍️ give an interesting fact about space. if you don’t have one, look one up.

💦 will we colonize mars any time soon?

👩‍🚀 given the chance to go to space (free, you get to sleep through the trip if you want, assume you are trained), would you go?

💭 did something get you interested in space?

☁️ is the daytime sky as interesting as the nighttime sky? what about sunrises and sunsets?

🔭 own a telescope?

♑️ into astrology?

🧙‍♂️ did you want to own the stereotypical, star-specked blue wizard’s hat when you were younger? be honest.

- Tbh I’d take anything, ask away!

#im bored #interact with me #i want new friends #ask me stuff #ask me anything!#ask #ask away #ask meme #send me asks

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naminearuno · 6 years

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Diary Entry #2

January 27, 2018

It’s been 11 days since my last entry and so much has happened. I’m not gonna talk about it in any specific order.

First of all, Lexi’s mom found out about her stick-n-poke tattoos (After they had already faded, too) which led to further investigation and she told her mom that she’s been using Maya’s phone to talk to me. That was obviously a big deal because that’s the way it is with the Lesch’s. So now Lexi is supposed to have to move out on May 3rd, but I doubt they will hold her to that because they want her where they can most easily control her. She went a night without being allowed to sleep in her bed. She was supposed to quit her job, but she still has it for now. She’s still on guard. We’re still talking since it wasn’t really Maya’s phone to begin with and I’m not a fan of Maya anymore… Lexi is doing alright for the most part. Her grade in AP stats is really high and I’m impressed because I’ve heard a lot of crap about that class.

I didn’t go into my sociology class thinking that I would personally get anything out of it. But then we talked about depression. We talked about how as societies rely more on consumer capitalism and individualism increases, so does depression. When people have as much freedom as we do, they can also have excessive hope. That can make people feel even worse when they fail or still pretty awful even if they’re doing fine because they know better is possible. And as we become less and less reliant on others to make decisions for us we can feel more alone and more to blame if our lives don’t work out the way we intend. Basically, he explained that community is extremely important toward mental health. This got me thinking. First of all, it reaffirmed my belief that I should push my children to get involved from a young age. But it also got me thinking… I do believe community is important for mental health. I think that’s why my life got so much better when I joined guard. I don’t want someone telling me how my life is gonna go and who I’m gonna be, because I grew up in an American society after all :P, but it led me to a conclusion… about something I’ve thought about before. Maybe I would be happier if I went to church or another religious institution. I feel like I’m too open to follow a religion the way religious people typically do. I’m too skeptic of accepting a truth with no proof behind it and too open to the possibilities. I do think I might be able to get behind the values a religion preaches without believing in their God and their stories. I think I might enjoy being apart of a community like that… assuming I can find one that is positive. I look at people like Dani and Hannah Beer and I see how happy church makes them. Maybe I could benefit from it, too. Maybe it would help me feel like I belong. Probably not. I’ll feel like an outsider because I don’t believe. But still. It would also be interesting to learn about a religion first hand like that. I don’t know… This will most likely be next year adventure if it happens at all. Next year… When Amber and I are hopefully living in an apartment and transitioning to veganism… And hopefully I see my girlfriend regularly and finally lose my virginity (Lol do I /really/ belong in a church? Probably not…)

I’m not sure what I believe. I believe in something… I identify as Agnostic. I’m sure there is something more than us, whether it is a higher power the way people typically envision a higher power or something completely different we haven’t thought of… Or maybe that we can’t think of because we can’t understand it. I don’t know. I don’t know what happens when we die and I’m scared of the possibilities. I’m scared of everything just stopping and I’m scared of being eternally miserable and I’m scared of being reincarnated as a fly or bee or wasp or an even more messed up human. Humans fear what we don’t know. I don’t know and I am afraid.

Moving on to a lighter topic… I finished Dreamfall Chapters and started playing Remember Me. It’s a really interesting game, but also frustrating.

I also ordered a charger that should be here on Monday and my books better be here Monday because they were supposed to be here last Wednesday.

I’m still trying for straight As though I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t need to review my chem notes EVERY day. Whether I get straight As or not, I’m not overwhelmed by the workload this semester… yet. It all seems doable. I haven’t turned anything in late yet. There aren’t a lot of grades in the gradebook yet, but I only have 100s so far… It will not stay that way lol.

Amber and I have been sticking to our goal of going to the gym at least twice a week. We started the bluecoats training regime yesterday and I’m super excited. We’ve also decided that we’re gonna try to go Mon, Wed, Fri, and Saturday. Friday and Saturday are really good gym days because not a lot of people are there. We have yet to go on a Monday… heheh.

There’s been drama with Drew and his family. His mom has been bashing Jordan on his profile… on public posts. He’s still trying to contact Jordan and even messaged Zoe and accused Jordan of being a pathological liar. Speaking of which… his hickass mom sounds a lot like one of those what with her “degree in law” and her daughters husband that there have been no previous pictures or mention of… Anyway, it’s all been very annoying but also kind of hilarious. I think his mom needs to learn what the definition of “intelligence” is.

I don’t have time for these people to be honest. (Drew and his family). I’m too busy trying to better myself. I’m going to talk about some of my goals, values, and general things I’ve learned:

I now know what it means to invalidate someone’s feelings and why even if those feelings are irrational, that’s not okay. Feelings are real. Calling them “just chemicals in the brain” doesn’t devalue them. Chemicals in your brain are a very real and powerful thing. If you understand anything about science and the human body, you know that chemicals in your brain are responsible for a lot of physical and mental traits. For example, chemicals in your body determine how tall you are. Growth hormone, specifically. It is secreted by the pituitary gland in the brain. Growth hormone deficiency causes dwarfism. That is a very real thing that you can see. It being caused by a chemical in the brain does not make it any less real. Feelings and mental illnesses are also caused by chemicals secreted by the brain. You just can’t always see the effects. Anyway, this is turning into a very different point…. The point I wanted to make is that feelings are real and therefore you cannot just tell a person to ignore them or that they shouldn’t have them. If someone’s feelings are irrational, you still cannot invalidate them. You must first acknowledge them and the fact that they are not something easily controlled (And often times not controllable at all) and then bring in the logic. I.e. “I know you’re angry because your spaghetti’s on the floor,, but Shanaynay didn’t spill it on purpose.” V.S. “Calm down, it’s not like she did it on purpose.”.

There is a thing called emotional intelligence. I’m very lacking in this department, but I have enough regular intelligence to acknowledge and work on it. I really do think I have a mild form of aspergers or something like it, but I’m glad I came to that realization. I’m bad at understanding social cues and piecing things together. I miss out on jokes and sarcasm from time to time because I honestly just don’t get it. Sometimes I stop to think about things for a long time before coming to a realization that feels like an epiphany, but when I go to explain it to someone else it’s something they picked up on without even having to think about it. I have a hard time understanding why it’s not always okay to say things that are true. Hell, I picked honest as my personality trait for that English assignment in Becker’s class Sophomore year. I also have a hard time understanding emotions that I can’t physically feel. Anyway,, I’m glad I realized I have this problem/these problems. It allows me to prevent a lot of issues and explain behaviors of mine that other people don’t understand.

I enjoy intelligent arguments. I also believe they are an essential part of the modern human experience. People who don’t understand how to engage in intelligent arguments make me sad. I almost can’t comprehend how people think that belittling others and using profanity does anything but invalidate their arguments. When you come out and say that you are intelligent, when you attack for something that doesn’t relate to the topic (especially when it’s something they cannot control), and when you use swears/slurs, you decrease the intelligence of your argument. You significantly decrease the chance that anyone who didn’t already agree with you will even hear the point you’re trying to make. Words can hurt. It’s also important to understand opposing arguments. Your argument is much stronger if you show that you understand the opposition, but still think it’s wrong.

Words can significantly impact a person's emotions, mental health, etc. Words can start wars. Words can make people famous. For a lot of people, stringing words together and/or understanding words is their job. Words are one of the main ways we communicate. Words have power. Without them, our societies would be drastically different. Words can get you into all kinds of legal trouble. Words matter. Expression matters. Communication matters. How someone can dismiss words in favor of violence, I will never understand. Violence doesn’t lead to change or understanding. Words can. Words can hurt. Words can heal. They are not insignificant.

That’s not to say that you should be offended by specific words. Words like “fuck” for example. Yes, it’s not a “nice” word and it’s not a word that is socially acceptable in most professional settings. But hearing someone say it on TV or at a restaurant or in any random context that does not require professional language, should not offend you. If it does offend you, that is your problem. If something someone says, whilst not meaning to hurt anyone, bothers you, that is not their problem. They can say whatever they want. If you don’t like it, it is your job to stay away from them, to ignore it, to reflect on why it offends you and whether or not it’s a feeling you want to hold onto. Words matter but the intention behind them matters more.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions. Everyone in America has freedom of speech. These things don’t mean that you can say whatever you want. Saying hurtful things can get you into legal trouble. Cyberbullying, harassment, stalking, libel, and slander can all get you into legal trouble. You do not have the right to go around and be a jerk to people. You just don’t. A good general principle to live by is to do whatever you want as long as it doesn't hurt others.

You don’t have to cottle people. You don’t have to refrain from talking about things because it offends people. But you do have to keep in mind that the platforms you leave your opinions on have rules and guidelines. You do have to keep in mind that saying certain things in a certain way can be illegal. And if you want people to care about your feelings, you should be sure to care about theirs. There is a balance between being yourself/expressing your opinions and trash talking people, harassing people, etc.

I’ve been putting a lot of effort into becoming a better person. I think it’s important to always be reflecting on who you are and working towards positive changes, especially when you’re not happy with who you are as a person. By coming to college and being in the Bears for a Just Community LLC alone, by surrounding myself with new people and opportunities, I am growing more and more each day. I’ve been actively choosing to be better - to be more conscious of others feelings and how what I say and do impacts them, to put more effort into school, to learn, to go to class everyday, to evaluate myself and my choices, to go to the gym, and to be healthier. I feel more productive. I feel like I’m actually living and participating in the college experience; I didn’t feel like that before. I think being productive, bettering myself, and learning are going to make me so much happier. I’m ready to do the whole “New year, new me” cliche right. I want to always be improving.

There is a lot more I could say, but I’ve been working on this entry for a while so I’ll leave it at that.

#diary #journal #dear diary #personal #vent #rant #march

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victorluvsalice · 6 years

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AU Thursday: Wonderland Fuzz -- Casting Call! Part 1

All right, I gave you an overview and a few details on the AU last week -- this week, I’m giving you some of my initial ideas on who plays what in this AU, and a couple of notes as to why! This is “Part 1″ because I’m still debating over who in the fandoms fits certain roles best. Got most of them, though! For spoiler and length reasons, everyone past our main two is going under a readmore.

Alice Liddell as Nicholas Angel -- Determined, takes no shit, surprisingly good with weaponry, perhaps tries a little too hard to prove herself sometimes, will not stop when it comes to bringing evil to justice? Alice in a nutshell, baby. And as I stated before, the idea of her as the super-serious super-cop who eventually finds friendship/love and learns how to calm down a bit appeals to me.

Victor Van Dort as Danny Butterman -- Okay, admittedly Danny is pretty much NOTHING like Victor, but hot-gluing a few of his traits onto my boy -- namely his love of action movies -- amuses me. Plus I do headcanon my Victors as the sort who would appreciate having a bit of adventure in their lives (at least before the CB incident), which goes well with Danny's want to experience "real action and shit." Hot Fuzz also doesn't officially have a romance, but -- well. Nicholas was going to have a female love interest (named Victoria, of all things), but she ended up cut -- and her lines given to Danny. With minimal editing, from what I understand. So yeah, everyone (including Pegg, Frost, and Wright) just accepts Nick and Danny enter a relationship at some point. With this being a Valice AU, of course Victor has to be in the "love interest" spot.

Sandford Police Service

William Van Dort as Frank Butterman -- As I said in the first post, the idea of kindly William turning out to be evil just tickles me. He also fits Frank pretty well personality-wise -- they're both fairly affable, make their fair share of dumb jokes, and are inspired largely by their wives' wants (Frank does what he does because his wife so desperately wanted to win Village of the Year that, when Sandford lost at the last minute thanks to some traveling Rromani, she killed herself driving her car off a cliff -- Nell of course will do the same in the backstory of this AU).

The March Hare and the Dormouse (humanized into Marchand Hare and Dormand Mouse) as detectives Andy Wainright and Andy Cartwright (the Andys) -- Duo who are pretty much never seen apart, are clearly best friends with each other against the world, are kind of lazy but capable of good work, can be rude and abrasive but also helpful to the main character? Sounds like March and Dormy to me! The best part is their humanized names keeps both the "March and Dormy" nicknames we're familiar with from Alice stuff, plus the "Andys" nickname from the original movie.

The Hatter (Richard Hatter) as Tony Fisher -- Again, a largely-incompetent fellow who believes himself to be better than he is, but is capable of moments of competence, even genius? Sounds good for Hatter! And Tony regularly begging Nick for help during police work in the movie does kind of remind me of Hatter demanding Alice's help in finding his limbs in A:MR.

Emily (Cartwell) & Victoria Everglot as Doris Thatcher -- Okay, TECHNICALLY only Emily is playing Doris, as she's the one I can see cracking Doris's dirty jokes. The reason Victoria's "sharing" the role is that I wanted her to be part of the station set, but there isn't another woman officer in Sandford, and she's not appropriate for Bob Walker. So Victoria is a new character who patrols with Emily and who everyone just assumes is Emily's best friend. Only Victor (and later Alice) know the truth that they're actually dating. (Yes, Victor did actually date both of them in the past -- William still bugs him to get back together with Victoria.)

Scraps as Saxon -- Saxon's a pretty minor role as the local police dog in Sandford, and as the Alice games have no major dog characters. . .besides, a sleepy town doesn't need a big police dog, now do they? :p

Generals (Bill) Bonesaparte and (Bailey) Wellington as Desk Sergeants Turner -- This one sadly destroys a joke (namely, that there are two Desk Sergeants Turner -- Bill Bailey plays both, and we only see them together at the very end, right before the climax), but it's a minor role, and it seems suited enough to this double-act of general friends. I figure Bonesaparte, being the chattier of the two, would be the Night Sergeant (who's neater and talks more), and Wellington would be the Day.

Neighborhood Watch Alliance

Barkis Bittern as Simon Skinner -- Cripes, this was simple. Skinner is set up as basically Obviously Evil from the word "go," and since Barkis comes off the same way. . . They share the same smarmy "charm" and vaguely threatening air. Plus Barkis getting a model church spire through the chin is pretty easy with the size of his. XD (I BRIEFLY considered making Bumby Skinner early on, but then decided to keep him in Alice's backstory. Skinner is supposed to be kind of funny too, and that's easier with Barkis than it is with Bumby.)

Finis and Maudeline Everglot as Joyce and Bernard Cooper -- There's two main married couples in the movie, and I felt the Everglots fit this pair better. The Coopers run the hotel Nick stays at for the majority of the movie -- I could see slightly-less-snooty (or more desperate) Everglots converting their mansion into a hotel for the cash. And Maudeline well fits the "fascist"/"hag" gag that pops up between Joyce and Nick (she's doing a crossword when they first meet -- "facist" and "hag" are answers in it). I might have to switch their roles in the big finale, though -- Joyce uses a gun and Bernard a sword, but it makes more sense for gun-loving Finis to shoot at Alice.

Paul and Ms. Plum (Paul and Jane Plum) as Roy and Mary Porter -- This is the other main married couple -- as they run a bar, The Crown, I figured using some of the staff of the Ball & Socket would be appropriate. Paul's the character most associated with serving drinks in CB, and Plum the main female character of the B&S, so there you go! ...Actually, thinking about it, given that Roy is taken out during the climax via a bear trap to the head -- yeah, definitely has to be Paul. XD

Pastor (Christopher) Galswells as Reverend Philip Shooter -- Just fitting the two religious figures together here. Galswells is a sterner figure than Shooter, but that should just make him shouting "Fuck off, grasshopper" and pulling guns in the final battle all the more hilarious. XD

Murder Victims

Carpenter (Bruno Carpenter) as Martin Blower -- This was easy -- Martin is an absolutely awful actor (the version of Romeo & Juliet he stages is PRICELESS), so there was no competition for this role. Though somehow I think Carpenter is going to be an even bigger ham than he was. At least Martin never made up words. XD

Walrus (Walter Russo) as Eve Draper -- Eve's no great shakes as a thespian herself, which is a decent fit for Walrus -- as is her general annoying personality (she specifically has an awful laugh, which I'll probably give Walter). Eve and Martin are also in a relationship in the movie, so this is a great way to keep the Walrus and the Carpenter together.

The Town Crier (Tom Crier) as Tim Messenger -- I was stuck for a while as to who should be the town's local reporter -- then FINALLY I realized "oh hey, there's a character in Corpse Bride who's only role is to SPREAD THE NEWS." So that works! I even have the built-in quirk of him ALWAYS SPEAKING AT TOP VOLUME.

The Queen of Hearts/Red Queen (Rose Queen) as Leslie Tiller -- I was also stuck on this role for a bit -- Leslie is a local, super-skilled florist, and has a minor but important role of telling Nick some crucial information before she's killed. After some thought, I decided the Queen was a good fit for three reasons:

A) Both the Queen of Hearts and the Red Queen (of which the game Queen is an algamation) are associated with gardening/flowers (the famous "painting the roses red" bit, and the Looking Glass garden where the Red Queen first appears)

B) The Queen's big bit in A:MR is giving Alice some crucial information (her domain's big memory confirms it was Bumby who killed Alice's family, and she encourages Alice to look more at what's around her, which probably helps her realize how Bumby's been abusing the children)

C) Leslie's also a NWA member, and the Queen is the main villain in AMA. Leslie is murdered for wanting to move (they didn't want another village getting her skills), while the Queen is eclipsed by the bigger evil of Bumby's Dollmaker. Pretty damn good fit in the end!

Other

Charlie, The Insane Children, Skeleton Boy, and Skeleton Girl as The Hoodies -- The Hoodies are actually teenagers/tweens, so they'd have to be aged up a bit, but I figured this was a good place to stick most of the children from both the Alice games and Corpse Bride. The Insane Children and Skeleton Boy and Girl certainly seem up for the mischief they perpetrate, and for helping Alice out in the end. Charlie, being the only one of the lot with a canonical name, might have the pleasure of being the Hoodie Leader (aka Gabriel Weaver -- the subplot about him being the grandson of NWA member Tom Weaver was cut, but anything can happen in an AU).

Solemn Village Boy as Aaron A. Aaronson -- I almost gave this role to Charlie, but then I realized I could keep the joke with Aaron's name if I made him the unnamed Solemn Village boy from Corpse Bride instead. And as the joke (and being Skinner's brief hostage before biting the jerk) is really Aaron's only point to being in the movie...

The Houndsditch Children as the Underage Bar Patrons -- Again, aged up to teenagers. It seemed like overkill to stick the Houndsditch kids in with the Hoodies, and the bratty responses most of the patrons give suit the bratty nature of the Houndsditch lot. Also the fact that something horrible happens to them in the end (the kids start misbehaving when Angel ejects them from the bar, and the NWA kills ANYONE who makes the town look bad...).

Emil as Tina -- Once again replacing a woman with a man, but this is a minor role focused on being a helper (Tina is Skinner's secretary, who spends most of her time lounging at his desk), and we all know Emil the super-butler is good at that. We'd just have to take out the part where he's also a dancer at a club. (Or we could leave it in and have everyone be weirded out.) This also has the amusing consequence of him being taken out at least partially by his canonical employers' daughter. XD

Maggot and Black Widow (Enn Maggon and Betty Black) as Greg and Sheree Prosser -- These are background characters noted as being better actors than Martin and Eve; might as well fill their roles with some of Emily's comic relief friends, right? They're also minor NWA members, so that helps keeps the ranks appropriately Burtony.

Nan Sharpe as Janine -- Sort of -- Nan is not Alice's former girlfriend, as Janine was for Nick! Instead, Nan retains her role as Alice's old nanny, who she goes to talk to after gets she gets promoted/transferred. Nan's the one who tells her she needs to find someone who helps her "switch off," thus setting up the eventual Alice/Victor romance. It's a minor role, but it seems well-suited for Nan (especially since I've already cast the other role she could have -- dirty-minded Doris).

Tim Burton, Mike Johnson, and American McGee as The Met's Sergeant, Inspector, and Chief Inspector Kenneth -- These characters have the minor but important role of sending Nick to Sandford in the original film (for making everyone else look bad), so I just thought it would be funny I used the directors of CB and the mind behind the Alice games for them.

#wonderland fuzz #casting call #some of these were super easy #and some were HARD yo #I still haven't finished casting the NWA #or one of the murder victims #I feel like I need to get Cheshire and Bonejangles in there somehow #but I'm not sure who they'd fit #there's still one police officer where the joke is that he's almost unintelligible #unless you know his accent #but is that a good fit for Cheshire?#I was thinking humanized Caterpillar #decisions decisions #queued

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parabataisarah · 7 years

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100 Asks.

The lovely @yep-too-gone-already requested all 100, so here you go dear

· 1. What is your middle name? Kym.

· 2. How old are you? 17.

· 3. What is your birthday? 15/01/2000.

· 4. What is your zodiac sign? Capricorn.

· 5. What is your favourite colour? Red.

· 6. What's your lucky number? 15.

· 7. Do you have any pets? Yes, two dogs and two cats.

· 8. Where are you from? Australia.

· 9. How tall are you? 5’9.

· 10. What shoe size are you? I can’t remember and my tag on the shoes have worn off.

· 11. How many pairs of shoes do you own? 1.

· 12. What was your last dream about? Meeting the peeps from Discord.

· 13. What talents do you have? I’m double jointed in my fingers.

· 14. Are you psychic in any way? Nope.

· 15. Favorite song? I’ll Be Good by Jaymes Young.

· 16. Favorite movie? The Aristocats.

· 17. Who would be your ideal partner? Anyone who makes me feel like I’m special, wanted, needed and important, and can also make me laugh even when I don’t want to.

· 18. Do you want children? At this particular age? No. In the future, I’m unsure, it could be a possibility, but only if my partner and I both agree that it’s time. I don’t see myself as a mother, I see myself more as the cool aunt that the kids want to go to so they can get free candy and such.

· 19. Do you want a church wedding? Personally, no. I really don’t. If my partner does, we’d have to compromise in the end.

· 20. Are you religious? I’m not, but per my mum's request when I was younger, I had a Bible Study.

· 21. Have you ever been to the hospital? Yes. When I was born, broken/dislocated bones, family.

· 22. Have you ever got in trouble with the law? Nope.

· 23. Have you ever met any celebrities? I’ve met a celebrity’s sister?

· 24. Baths or showers? Both tbh. Baths are for when I’m feeling sickly, and showers are the everyday thing and are also used for when I have headaches.

· 25. What colour socks are you wearing? Black and teal.

· 26. Have you ever been famous? Nope.

· 27. Would you like to be a big celebrity? At times, yes, but no.

· 28. What type of music do you like? Everything. If you looked into my music app, you’d see covers, heavy metal, boybands, Soul, Rock, Disney, and so on, so on.

· 29. Have you ever been skinny dipping? No way.

· 30. How many pillows do you sleep with? 13. But they usually end up being thrown around haphazardly during my sleep.

· 31. What position do you usually sleep in? Head on the pillow, one arm under the pillow, other arm is over my stomach and my legs are crossed at the ankles and curled up into a ‘V’ shape.

· 32. How big is your house? Medium size.

· 33. What do you typically have for breakfast? Nothing.

· 34. Have you ever fired a gun? In games, yes. In real life, no.

· 35. Have you ever tried archery? Nope.

· 36. Favorite clean word? Future. My best friend and I made a little tune for it when we were younger so we could remember how to spell it.

· 37. Favorite swear word? Either ‘Fuck’; because I use it a lottttt, or ‘Bitch’ because it’s a versatile word.

· 38. What's the longest you've ever gone without sleep? A week.

· 39. Do you have any scars? Don’t we all in some ways?

· 40. Have you ever had a secret admirer? Nope, don’t blame anyone, I’m trash.

· 41. Are you a good liar? I would assume so. I don’t have any tells that give me away.

· 42. Are you a good judge of character? Generally. Multiple times, I have had a bad feeling about a friend or their partner or just a stranger, and 9 times out of 10, I’m right.

· 43. Can you do any other accents other than your own? Well, given that I speak 13 languages (currently learning the 14th one), my accent is bound to switch, but I can easily go from sounding normal to being a True Blue Aussie.

· 44. Do you have a strong accent? I personally don’t think so, you’d have to ask the Discord Peeps.

· 45. What is your favourite accent? Spanish. I’ve always loved the Spanish language and yeah, I fell in love with it.

· 46. What is your personality type? I’m not going to answer this one because it’d all be bad things. But I do believe myself to be kind.

· 47. What is your most expensive piece of clothing? Probably the pair of boots I own that my dad gave me. If he didn’t give them to me, they were retailing at around $120.

· 48. Can you curl your tongue? Yes.

· 49. Are you an innie or an outie? Innie all the way.

· 50. Left or right-handed? Right-handed.

· 51. Are you scared of spiders? YES.

· 52. Favorite food? Pizza.

· 53. Favorite foreign food? Bruschetta.

· 54. Are you a clean or messy person? Depends on my mood and such, but I generally sit in the middle of the scale.

· 55. Most used phrased? ‘Fuck off’ or more recently, ‘I love you’

· 56. Most used word? Probably ‘Hi’ or some obscene swear word.

· 57. How long does it take for you to get ready? Under 10 minutes.

· 58. Do you have much of an ego? I’ve been told I don’t, so I’m going to say no?

· 59. Do you suck or bite lollipops? Suck ‘em. I only bite them when they get tiny.

· 60. Do you talk to yourself? I do. If I haven’t talked to my friends or the Discord Family, I need a sane conversation per day.

· 61. Do you sing to yourself? Yes, I do.

· 62. Are you a good singer? I’ve been told I am, but I don’t think so.

· 63. Biggest Fear? Spiders, rejection, being a failure, being a disappointment.

· 64. Are you a gossip? Not really.

· 65. Best dramatic movie you've seen? (When this says dramatic, I’m going with over the top fight scenes and such so) Kingsman.

· 66. Do you like long or short hair? On myself? I like long hair because it hides my flaws, but I do enjoy the feeling of free-ness from having short hair.

· 67. Can you name all 50 states of America? Nope.

· 68. Favorite school subject? English and music.

· 69. Extrovert or Introvert? Introvert, which is hard at times because all my friends are extroverts.

· 70. Have you ever been scuba diving? Nope.

· 71. What makes you nervous? The dark, waiting for results.

· 72. Are you scared of the dark? Not as bad as I was when I was younger, but there still comes times where I’d prefer to have some source of light.

· 73. Do you correct people when they make mistakes? I do it to my irl friends in a joking manner, so I guess you can say yes?

· 74. Are you ticklish? Yes.

· 75. Have you ever started a rumour? Nope. Got better things to do than to spread false news.

· 76. Have you ever been in a position of authority? Yeah, but not like major. Just stuff for school.

· 77. Have you ever drank underage? Kinda. Only had bits and pieces here and there, so not really.

· 78. Have you ever done drugs? I’ve done a soft drug once, and it was a great experience, but I probably wouldn’t do it again, unless I was in the right situation/with the right person (if that makes sense) I’m one of those, ‘I’ll try anything before I knock it’ type people.

· 79. Who was your first real crush? A guy in year 1 I think. His name was Ruben Canon. He was one of the first guy friends I made and showed me kindness, so.

· 80. How many piercings do you have? I have just my ears pierced, but I want to get my cartilage, my nose and lip pierced.

· 81. Can you roll your Rs? Nopeity nope.

· 82. How fast can you type? “God Speed” if I recall Ana correctly.

· 83. How fast can you run? I don’t know, I don’t check.

· 84. What colour is your hair? At the moment? Red.

· 85. What colour are your eyes? Blue, but if we go by my best friend’s description – “They’re so blue, that I just want to jump into them.” – But if you do frighten me enough/scare me, my eyes briefly turn majorly green.

· 86. What are you allergic to? At the moment, nothing at all.

· 87. Do you keep a journal? When I was younger, I had one of the voice locked ones.

· 88. What do your parents do? My dad is a paint mixer and delivery driver and my mum is a retail worker.

· 89. Do you like your age? Yeah, I guess.

· 90. What makes you angry? People openly being a dick to someone, being offensive when there is no need to, being a dick to family, hurting someone I care about.

· 91. Do you like your own name? Yes and no. I copped so much shit for my first and last name. All because in my school, SJ became synonymous with Shame Job.

· 92. Have you already thought of baby names, and if so what are they? If I have a child, I’m partial to the name Felix (Not because of Pewds, I’ve always just liked the name) and Natasha.

· 93. Do you want a boy a girl for a child? I’d be happy with either one if it happens.

· 94. What are your strengths? I’m always there for others, I cheer people up, I always lend a shoulder to cry on, I’m always trying my best.

· 95. What are your weaknesses? I let things get to me too easily, I always try my best, I push myself past my breaking point and keep going, I run on fumes, I tell my friends to look after themselves when it’s so hard for me to look after myself, I always keep my problems on the backburner, I’m not as important as the others, I always wear a mask of fake happiness around my friends, I fail my parents, I’m not smart, I’m not good at anything.

· 96. How did you get your name? My name is from my mum’s old best friend. I was originally without the ‘H’ but it was pronounced wrong (Mum wanted it pronounced like Sarah is, just without the ‘H’)

· 97. Were your ancestor's royalty? I haven’t looked into my ancestry.

· 98. Do you have any scars? Already asked this question, so.

· 99. The colour of your bedspread? 1st blanket – Multicolored crochet, 2nd blanket – Purple, 3rd blanket – Red and grey, 4th blanket – Red, 5th Blanket – Mink White Tiger Blanket, 6th blanket – Glee blanket, 7th blanket – Red. (I know I have a lot of blankets)

· 100. The colour of your room? White walls. In my old house, my room used to be yellow walls, and then purple walls with pink accents/roof, and then white walls with a red feature wall.

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wreathedwith · 7 years

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How Not To Be a Boy reaction post

I finished this book – Robert Webb’s memoir – last week and it’s a book very dear to me that I had been eagerly anticipating. My thoughts are in chronological order below. Full spoilers for the whole text, hence the read more link (also for reasons of length). If you’ve also read this book and/or this post, please let me know your thoughts!

Here’s the wardrobe that never yielded to Narnia no matter how faithfully I reached for the cold air.

Lovely.

Tall, Welsh and handsome, the presenter Steve Jones…

Apparently this is a key aspect to note of RW’s Flashdance experience.

And after everyone has left and Abbie has gone to bed, I’ll sit in our little garden and drink another two bottles of red wine and smoke about thirty Marlboro Lights. Tomorrow I’ll do something similar – but in the pub in the middle of the day. This behaviour won’t change when our daughter is born, and the moment will come when Abbie will tell me about these months and say as she looks at me steadily: ‘You let me down.’

These parts, mostly come back to later, are very tough reads – it’s sad to think about RW letting his wife down, and there’s more catharsis in the overcoming than the (partial) repeating of his childhood. It’s not so unusual to find searingly honest memoirs, but unlike most of the rest of the book RW doesn’t have time’s distance, substituted names or the death of those involved to fall back on here – he’s being very honest about something quite recent and similar to his current life, even ongoing. On the other hand, a narrative ending where everything was perfect would have seemed trite and not rung true.

15: You sound quite posh. 43: Ah yes. Well, that was your idea. You want to sound like Stephen Fry, don’t you? 15: What’s wrong with that? 43: Nothing. I mean it’s a bit – 15: Look, I just don’t want to sound like fucking Dad, all right? I want to be the opposite of Dad.

Self-evidently this ‘exchange’ says quite a bit about class, emulating heroes and RW’s relationship with his father in under 50 words.

‘Quiet boy’, ‘painfully shy’, ‘you never know he’s there’: these are some of the phrases I catch grown-ups using when they talk about me. But not here, not in the car with Mum.

I found this extremely affecting. It made me think about moments carved out when you feel safe when you generally don’t, being told you’re quiet, time craved alone with parent(s) without siblings, and my own mum of course.

(Shyness: see also: ‘He’s just very shy,’ explains my embarrassed mum. I hear that word a lot. ‘Shy’ is my defining characteristic. Everyone tells me I’m shy so I must be.)

I take a more cautious approach to the outdoor life and I don’t do it with other children. Unless, of course, you count the Guy-Buys. The Guy-Buys are my imaginary gang of friends. I am the Captain of the Guy-Buys, obviously, and they are my twelve – yes, twelve, like the apostles – men.

See also Would I Lie to You?, Series 5 Episode 2.

But mothers underestimated girls and overestimated boys – both in crawling ability and crawling attempts… Expectant mothers who know the foetus is male are more likely to report foetal movement as ‘violent’. So the odds are that Huckleberry, compared to India, is expected to be more independent, more aggressive, more outward-facing and less interested in personal relationships since before he was born. With the best will in the world, bunging him a Barbie when he’s five years old isn’t really going to cut it

This is a fair point, but how do we stop doing this? (It’s fine – I didn’t expect this book to provide me with those sort of answers.) Any unconscious biases are difficult to overcome, but I suppose being more aware of them is a start.

Susan and Lucy in grief for their dead king, the great lion; Charlie, eking out his year-long ration of Wonka Bar; Emil, alone on a train (before he meets his detectives), pricking his finger on the safety pin; the Doctor, losing his mind on Castrovalva; his companion Tegan, longing for home; Luke Skywalker, looking for adventure in a twin sunset – together with Mum or alone in my bedroom, stories were a way to reach distant places. But also, and without my noticing, a way to reach distant people. That’s where I really caught a break. I don’t mean I suddenly had miraculous powers of empathy; I just mean that empathy had a chance.

No note, just appreciation.

Roger has a Commodore VIC-20 which, technically speaking, has a much smaller memory than my 48K Spectrum, but does have the advantage of actually looking like a computer. Still, I’ve grown to love my ‘Speccy’ and treat it with almost religious respect. After each session with Horace Goes Skiing, Jetpack or The Way of the Exploding Fist, I carefully put the Spectrum back in the box that first revealed itself to me under the wrapping paper last Christmas Day.

Gamer chat! (Sadly I think this is it all for the whole book.) RW has also talked about playing arcade games on family holidays to Skegness on S2E6 of Go 8 Bit.

I like it when he calls me ‘Rob’ as he used to at Coningsby Juniors. It’s strictly ‘Webb’ and ‘Baxter’ on the school bus.

Why did (does) this happen even at a mixed sex grammar school. And the girls don’t get it at all? Society is weird. (That’s one way to put the theme of this book, broadly.)

‘What do you want to be when you grow up then, boy?’ he asks. I do the usual. ‘Computers.’ It’s the fastest way to close down this sensitive line of enquiry. Nobody over twenty has the faintest idea what a job involving computers could possibly mean, so it works well.

This is funny and, I would assume, no longer work.

I say, ‘I was always Cowley. Roger Baxter and Matthew Tellis took it in turns to be Bodie or Doyle.’ David Mitchell puts his pint down in surprise.

FUCKING FINALLY, like 33% in, Jesus Christ RW. (I know he doesn’t really fit in for the most part, but what RW does say about DM is completely lovely, so I’m happy enough.)

(DM first mentioned RW 19% of the way into Back Story.)

I say, ‘I was always Cowley. Roger Baxter and Matthew Tellis took it in turns to be Bodie or Doyle.’ David Mitchell puts his pint down in surprise. ‘How come you always got to be Cowley?’ ‘Well, they – hang on, what do you mean, got to be Cowley. No one wanted to be Cowley.’ ‘What are you talking about? Cowley was in charge. Cowley gave the orders.’ ‘What, so at your school everyone wanted to be Cowley?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Seriously? You were all queuing up to be Cowley?’ ‘I don’t remember a queue, but yes, essentially.’ He takes the drag on a cigarette I just gave him. ‘To be fair,’ he says, ‘we were quite weird, our little gang. It’s probably more normal to want to be the macho men.’

I mean they had fairly different upbringings, despite (I would assume) the general assumption of them being broadly similar, and that is made amusingly clear.

David will spend his twenties being the only example I’ve ever known of a successful social smoker. He bums a couple of fags in the pub (good luck with that, American readers) and then doesn’t dream of having another the following morning. I don’t mind this because every now and again he’ll turn up with a pack of ten and hand them over as a contribution to an ongoing tobacco kitty where I keep the change.

Whatever this is just adorable.

It’s more that we just chat while keeping half an eye out for a funny idea creeping up on us. They always do – they wander in from the edges of sight. If you look straight at them, they disappear, like faint stars. You wait until they’re in plain view before stealthily picking up a pen. Then you’ve got them. Talking about TV is typical of us on these occasions, but talking about school is not – we’re in our mid-twenties and too young to find children interesting.

Mid-twenties *sucks in a deep breath*. An insight into the Process here. A focus on TV, often daytime TV specifically, is clear to any watcher of That Mitchell and Webb Look.

Many years later I’ll be talking to a friend (not David, but another comedy writer) who puzzlingly seems to have moved from one terraced house to an almost identical one in a slightly different part of Brixton. He tells me that, in the last place, the neighbours started using his bins for their overflowing rubbish. I ask him, ‘What did you say?’ ‘Oh God, I didn’t say anything,’ he replies. ‘No, we decided it would be easier to move house.’ This makes me laugh for about three minutes. I know he’s joking, but mainly I’m enjoying the idea that I’m not the only grown man who will go to incredible lengths to avoid an awkward conversation.

*Me, scrolling through my BritCom rolodex* who is this

One of QEGS’ battier traditions is the Eisteddfod

I have NEVER heard of a non-Welsh school (I went to a Welsh school) putting on an Eisteddfod; please get in touch if you can give me further evidence to the contrary.

It becomes obvious that once you’ve got their attention, you can wait. And you can make them wait with you. In fact, the longer you make them wait for ‘Indeed, sir’, the bigger the laugh will be when you say it. Confusingly, if you wait too long, they won’t laugh at all. So I start to listen to the audience. I start to time it.

I’ve read (*cough*) quite a lot of books about comedians’ early lives, and something like this generally happens in them, but I think RW does write about it particularly well.

Suddenly I have a name for that feeling I had in Dad’s car on the way back from the Flashdance fireworks. That feeling, the one that made me blush, was an overwhelming desire to be famous.

I mean, I can’t believe there is a linear through-time Flashdance narrative in this book. Amazing.

So I’ll be famous. And funny writing and acting is what I’ll be famous for. That will help because famous people are safe. Famous people don’t have problems. And they can probably have the radiator on as often as they like. And maybe girls like them.

We move into self-psychologising here quite thoroughly, but I will choose to take this as pretty insightful.

The only person I want to kiss, and to kiss her would make my decade, is Tiffany Rampling, friend of Zelda and the younger sister of my future dream-girl Tess Rampling. Yes, that’s right. One day I will adore Tess and get nowhere. But only after two years of getting nowhere with her sister Tiffany.

‘I only went with her 'cos she looks like you. My god!’

(This is an extremely esoteric observation, but I was slightly disappointed there were no Pulp references within the various music mentioned in this book. I just have to accept RW is a Suede (actually mostly Prince) man.)

I’m in my bedroom, reading in bed. It’s a pity that the Doctor’s companion, Nyssa, has chosen to part company with the Doctor, staying behind to help with the space leper colony. But then, I think, as I remove the last of my clothing, that’s Nyssa for you: beautiful and kind-hearted. I put the book to one side, and think about beautiful Nyssa and how, on the space leper colony, she wouldn’t have anyone to help her if, for example, she somehow got a splinter in her vagina…

…HANG ON, SOMETHING VERY ALARMING BUT FANTASTIC IS HAPPENING! I SHOULD STOP THIS – IT’S MAKING ME GOING TO DO A WEE! NO! IT’S NOT A WEE, IT’S SOMETHING ELSE! IT’S . . . OH MY FUCKING LORD! And thus it was that the would-be Doogie Howser MD of space cunnilingus had his first orgasm.

Ahhhhh hahahaahaha.

Also: points (?) for first getting off to getting a woman off, albeit mostly through the ego-boosting prism of being very good at it.

Also: this is a fandom-related wank, right? This is a first fandom wank. I’m sticking a flag in this for fandom.

‘You’re born naked and the rest is drag.’ RuPaul

You think this book wasn’t going to have a RuPaul quote? Pfft.

‘I’m a man, he says!’ I almost yell at Mum. ‘Only a boy would need to say so.’ It’s a line I’ve been waiting to try out for days.

Ah the performative cleverness of teenagehood *stares back through the mists of time*.

‘I mean, they’re not exactly The Beatles, are they?’ she says, cheerfully. I scowl at the TV and say in a slow pantomime of controlled rage, ‘Not everyone . . . can be . . . the sodding . . . Beatles.’ She chuckles to herself. ‘Soz, Rob,’ she teases. I blink at her queenily and then do a reluctant grin.

Nice use of the adverb ‘queenily’.

And I’ve just noticed that wanting to be famous just for the sake of becoming famous makes you look like a massive twat. I’ll have to come up with a better reason. I’ll have to start saying that fame is an unfortunate side effect of my, I dunno . . . art.

The boy matures. (A bit.)

So what is it about this ‘Will’?

I’ll level with you: it’s when Will turns up the ‘Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.’ message starts coming up on my Kindle highlights.

I adore how RW has written Will, and how he has written Will as a first love. We know exactly how RW sees Will (rather than who Will actually is), we feel his awed lust and love. Again, RW doesn’t hold back and it does pay off. I fell in love with Will (well, at least got a bit of a crush on) because I’m reading RW’s point of view of him, and RW is in love with Will, and that is the result of a successful clearly-rendered memoir’s voice.

He’s about the same height and build as me. His hair is darker and he can grow it longer… Will can get his to just wavily flop either side of his thin-framed glasses.

This reminds me of someone else a bit

More Will just because I can:

He’s skinny like me but his collarbones travel just that little bit further before they reach his shoulders, his muscles are slightly more defined, his knees just a bit less knobbly, his legs . . . But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I was talking about his attitude, right? Not his body. It will be instructive that, when introducing you to my new Best Friend, the first thing I want to do is undress him. Probably because I would spend the next five years trying to do exactly that. He’s cool… His clothes just fit. It’s mesmerising. They cling and swing around him like adoring fans. Still, as I say, I just like his attitude. Also, his legs.

I’m not seriously suggesting anything here, but I am reminded – when RW is talking about how completely cool Will is – of the part of Back Story where DM meets RW for the first time.

The second thing I noticed about Robert Webb was his earring… the first thing was his long hair – by which I mean the fact that it was long. I don’t want to accidentally sound romantic: ‘As soon as he walked in I was dazzled by the sheen of his golden locks.’ No, I noticed he had long hair which, I’m sure he’ll mind me saying, at that point in his life was a touch mullety. He looked like a bit of a rebel, a bit cool, left-wing, metrosexual.

The SDP/Liberal Alliance poster in the window of Mr and Mrs Slater’s Horncastle home in 1987 has not gone unnoticed. Neither has the fact that Mum is a Labour supporter or that almost everyone who makes me laugh on TV is some kind of leftie. Politics is suddenly an area where secret hopes (university, being a funny actor) neatly overlap with a general wish to side with Mum against the Men. The facts may be that the Parliamentary Labour Party is composed almost entirely of men and that Mrs Thatcher is a woman, but these facts are to be overlooked for the time being. Where Mum agrees with Mrs Slater and both agree with Stephen Fry and Victoria Wood . . . and where all four disagree with Derek, Dad, Norman Tebbit and Bernard Manning . . . well, let’s just say it will be a long time before I feel the need to read a manifesto. I’m Labour. That’s it.

Politics! This makes RW’s recent-ish leaving of the Labour party seem an even Bigger Deal.

For example, Will does a pleasingly smarmy impression of Education Secretary Kenneth Baker (whom I devastatingly rename Kenneth Faker – oomph! Eat that, Tories!) and I play a contemptuous interviewer which owes a great deal to other people’s impressions of Jeremy Paxman.

This made me laugh in a very ‘self-aware of your teenage self’ sort of way.

Sometimes when I make Will laugh, he throws his head back and I stare at the symmetry of his jaw. I like to think he doesn’t notice.

*internal screaming*

I have three CDs: Revolutions by Jean-Michel Jarre, Kick by INXS and Lovesexy by Prince. All read by a laser. Cool.

I mean, really.

I muster what I imagine to be a knowing smirk, as if Han Solo is big enough to take another of Princess Leia’s witty put-downs.

Oh yeah, and there’s a Star Wars linear thread throughout AND it has a really fucking amazing pay-off at the end! RW may only keep to one massive fuck-off celeb story, but it’s a good one.

The Han Solo thing is really not working for me any more. Lucy doesn’t go out with Han Solo: she goes out with a spotty twenty-year-old called Dean who is often in fights and can play the bass line to ‘A Forest’ by The Cure. Surely everyone but me can play the bass line to ‘A Forest’ by The Cure. Obviously, Will has a guitar and can play the bass line to ‘A Forest’ by The Cure.

The… History Boys… crossover?

I’m counting the hours with dread. Will is nothing if not frank, and I know that when he Does It With Daisy, I will be literally the third to know... How does he get to touch her at all? How does she get to touch him at all? One morning before registration, he wanders round to Form 5S and announces that he’s going to see Prince at Wembley. That is, he’s going with Daisy, Daisy’s dad and some of Daisy’s friends. To London. To see Prince. Because he’s going out with Daisy. I am not invited. Why would I be? No wonder I yearn for a time long ago in a galaxy far away. This galaxy obviously hates me. I start writing poetry.

arghhh this is so painful (and, of course, essentially universal)

Reader, I suspect you think you want a piece of that, but trust me you don’t. I’ve been as candid as my ego allows but I have to draw the line somewhere. No teenage poetry. Not even a Best Of.

hahahahaaaa

‘OK, so . . . you know that thing when you’re trying to get Cresta Run to load on a Spectrum and it doesn’t work because you’ve set the volume on the tape too . . . No.’

OK, I was wrong about the last mention of gaming thing.

I think I was drawn to [Michael Jackson] partly because of his stolen childhood, which manifested as childishness. It turns out that some dads do hit famous children… And what he reminded me of in 1987, when he released Bad, was a painfully shy child playing at being tough. If you want to see a real-life Guy-Buy, have a look at that album cover. There he is with his silly costume and unlikely bravado. And that terrible fear very nearly hidden in make-believe… I’ve never seen a performance like it... It’s so beautiful. The way he moves around that stage, you’d have to be mad to take your eyes off him for an instant. It’s also a hell of a song, despite, or perhaps because of, the same weird boy/man disconnect – he’s written a song about contested paternity when the last thing you can imagine Michael Jackson doing is having sex. I like it that he might be a virgin. I also have to admit that I like the way he’s accidentally outperformed his older brothers and utterly eclipsed his violent father.

This whole section (being a fan, again) is wonderfully written.

And I find out something else too. Even though I think I’ve worked out how he does it, when I watch the whole thing again, it still looks like magic. Taking something to pieces doesn’t spoil the whole when you put it back together. You can still love the effortlessness even when you’ve noticed the effort. Not before time, I finally start reading books in the same way. Not just to enjoy what a writer did, but for the pleasure of figuring out how they did it.

I like this part too, although I do have some slightly more complicated thoughts on this. (This is the root of moving from reading to creative writing – the root in any skill from moving from a fan and consumer to creator as well – but if you love a piece of writing for non-literary reasons and you have a sinking feeling it would not stand up to the scrutiny of close analysis, it is tempting to leave it well alone. On the other hand, much of my personal joy in the consumption of something creative that I adore comes from relentlessly close analysis, as is self-evident from my long relationship with fandom and this ludicrously long blog post.)

I wait till no one else is in the Form room and ask Mrs Slater if it’s ridiculous for me to think of Cambridge.

This takes bravery as, of course, does the reapplication of himself and the getting-in-eventually, the going back to school for another year, rather than just going to another university, all from a 17, 18, 19 year old who had lost his mum. It says something about RW’s focussed desire to go to Cambridge in order to be a famous comedian (and he also cites some snobbery), but it’s also hugely impressive.

Will puts 50p in the jukebox. ‘Bobs, at some point you’re going to have to face the fact that you’re about as likely to have sex with Tess Rampling as I am with bloody . . . Trevor McDonald.’

A note: it’s interesting to see RW’s name change throughout this book according to the situation: Robert to his mother, Robbie to Mark, the little brother, Rob when he’s at university, ‘Bobs when Will’s being all casual and cool here, Bobbington when that outgoing Footlights president is being a bit of a dick… there are a lot of different names.

[Will] runs a careless hand through his hair in a way that makes me want to jump him right here and right now

*swoons*

‘Have you fingered her yet, then?’ enquires Pete through another gobful of crisps. ‘Honestly, Peter, don’t be so crude,’ Will replies, putting his brandy down and producing a soft-pack of Lucky Strike out of his black 501s. ‘Of course I’ve fingered her. She’s lovely.’

This is like, I don’t know, if the Inbetweeners interacted with their idea of a successful human being.

At home I listen to ‘Slow Love’ by Prince and think of Tess. I listen to ‘I’m Not in Love’ by 10cc and think of Will. It’s difficult to know which one to have a hopeless wank about first.

*Me, screaming through the void* It’s going to be OK Robert Webb! It’s all going to be OK!

I try to look on the bright side – at least the way I feel about Tess proves that I’m not gay. Rationally, I can see that being gay is fine, but it looks like gay men have to put up with a whole world of stupid nonsense that straighties with a one-off fixation get to ignore. And, if I’m honest, the way I lust after Will feels not only dangerous and exciting but also shameful and wrong. The Sovereign Importance of Early Homophobia has done its work. It’s like I’m left with a closet homophobia – a Farage in the garage. Or, as I would have pronounced it at the time, a Farridge in the garridge.

There’s not loads of this chat in the book (and why necessarily should there be) but the reader gains some important internal feelings of teenage-RW context here.

[Diary extract] He [Will] hit me with it. He started talking about how he’s shagged Daisy on Friday night while watching a video of Krull.

The Krull detail is a beautiful one to be recorded for posterity.

I found out that Mum had cancer in early March, and three weeks later, I found out that she wasn’t going to survive it.

As RW has rightly said when doing interviews and other press for this book, the grief in this book is universal: everyone has lost someone. I’m not claiming I’m special. But not only as someone who left a comprehensive school in an isolated area to study English at a newer Oxbridge college you don’t hear so much from, but also as someone who lost their mum at a fairly young age (I was 22 – this is, to be noted, very much not the same as 17) to cancer on almost exactly as swift a timeline as RW’s mum, I had yearned for this book and I was emotionally steeling myself for this part of the text – after all, through RW’s structural choices (and from what I knew about RW already), we know it’s coming. We are exactly 50% of the way through the book and this profound loss is the heart of the book. Yes, I cried.

I’m remembering its implacable seriousness. The way the danger, the terror was unswervable, non-negotiable – this was going to hurt and there was nothing to be done and nowhere to hide.

Compared to the mad-cat-on-a-wall-of-death infatuations with Tiffany, Jill, Tess, Will, Marina and about three other girls and a boy that I haven’t troubled you with…

This intrigues me because of RW describing Will as a ‘one-off fixation’ earlier on (although that was written from the viewpoint of RW at a slightly younger age, and in the context of being worried about being gay). There’s also Sam, but he doesn’t come until university. It’s not just once, although he notes that the “Michael Portillo line” he uses later is true.

I’ve got an English exam in the morning, History on Thursday and Economics on Friday.

Perpetually surprised throughout this book over RW’s third A-level being Economics.

Two seventeen-year-old boys are holding hands in bed. One of them is Will; the other one has just stopped crying. Will is wondering how long this is going to take. It was likely that being best mates with someone whose mum has just died was going to involve some kind of emotional doobly-woobly, but he wasn’t expecting it here and now, at 5 a.m. in a double bed in a rented holiday house in Torquay. There again, there’s never a good time for this sort of thing. I feel an urge to get up and put some clothes on. But then – not so fast – because Will is holding my hand. He never holds my hand… I’m not thinking about this in bed. Instead, I’m thinking the thing that I usually think in the company of Will – ‘I wonder what Will is thinking?’ He shifts his weight slightly. ‘I didn’t hear Ralph come in. D’you think he’s sleeping on the beach again?’ Oh, OK – that’s that then. Gently, I let go of Will’s hand.

Still, the emotional temperature is only just returning to normal and he leaves what he imagines to be a tactful pause before checking his watch with his now free hand. This is the kind of thing that makes me want to found a minor religion in his honour…

...It’s a hot summer and neither of us can be bothered any more with that extra bit of admin to do with special night clothes. Practical enough – and I guess there must be plenty of other male friends who would be happy to share a double bed naked. I just don’t know any. Something is clearly going on, although neither of us could quite say what. It’s unthinkable that Will is secretly gay or even secretly bisexual, but his curiosity – maybe his sympathy – allow him to be secretly something-or-other with me. And as for me, I don’t know what I am, but I know what I like, and what I like is Will. What happens exactly? I touch him; he doesn’t mind; I’m grateful. And repeat. It’s not exactly Torvill and Dean. A few years later, he touches me. I’m even more grateful. Frankly, the sex is pathetic. But the love . . . my goodness me. You don’t choose your first love. I was lucky with Will.

Whatever’s going on, it’s only the eye-catching headline of the real-life story of everyday teenagers titting around. We drive to Boston and walk into River Island, hearing En Vogue’s ‘Hold On’ playing through the speakers and suddenly notice we’re striding down parallel aisles to the beat. We get to the end of the shop, turn round and stride straight out again, like idiotic dudes. And all the rest – the hysterical argument about whether Oliver Reed was in Castaway or The Blue Lagoon, the underage piss-ups in fields before barn-dances, the joint love for all things Prince, Robin Williams, and Fry and Laurie, the competitive impressions of friends and teachers, the pound-a-pint games of pool, my attempts to teach him the moonwalk, his attempts to teach me the chords of A and D, the many splendid parties and the fun, the honest-to-God fun of it. And there he is, holding my hand in the dark because he’s friend enough and man enough.

The friendship will last. But soon, he’ll have a girlfriend, one he’ll be crazy about. The sense that he’s crossed the boundaries of his masculinity will catch up with him and he’ll become colder towards me for a while. And he’ll remember that he should care, as he currently does not care – now, in August 1990 – as he gets out of bed and saunters from the room towards the loo, that I am watching the lean, easy movement of his body in the breaking dawn light. As things are, he looks straight back at me with a tarty smirk as he goes through the door. In the window the closed drapes have begun to glow with the last day of the holiday. Gentle beams of light pierce the cracks and tears in the fabric as if a benign alien power were probing the room for signs of intelligent life. I notice the moment, and because I am seventeen, I notice myself noticing. I marvel that something so present will soon become real only in memory. This moment, a happy one, will vanish. But it will be there to be recreated another time, any time – just as I daily reconstruct the sound of my mother’s voice.

This is a ludicrous amount to quote in one chunk, but I won’t make much attempt at an apology because I think this is a beautiful passage that I found gentle and peaceful and cathartic and heart-skipping and it ends with RW, writing now, thinking back to something that happened but has not gone.

This gives me a windfall of £615 and I blow £500 of it on Chesney. It’s a sporty-looking two-tone blue coupé with a curvy back windscreen and a five-speed gearbox which belies its tiny engine. It beeps when you put it in reverse. I love it.

First car! Independence! (DM left home to go to Cambridge but he wasn’t escaping anything much and never learned to drive; RW learned to drive and bought a car with his mum’s life insurance policy and was desperate to leave home by the time he’d had to do a third year of sixth form – discuss.)

Carole, my mum’s top friend and increasingly one of my own, steps in with the offer of a lift, which becomes the offer of three lifts. We visit King’s College, then Robinson College and then finally she drives me to my interview – at Robinson College.

I can’t work out for sure from this book (I know no-one cares) whether RW applied to King’s and was pooled pre-interview or whether he just visited King’s and then ended up applying to Robinson.

(See later: I picked my Cambridge college – Robinson. They want AAB so I better bloody well pull my socks up.)

Robinson sends me an offer of a place if I get AAB. My second choice, Leeds, offers ABC.

Grade inflation – RW’s may have been a compassionate offer as he had to get AAA next year. Since the introduction of A*s at A-level the standard offer is A*A*A – A*AA. Leeds asks for AAA for their English Literature course these days.

Two men in grief, two men who can’t cook and don’t know how to work the washing machine, two men who don’t know how to talk to each other and who haven’t got the first clue about bringing up a child. One man who is still a boy, who thinks his exams are the most important thing in the universe, but who can’t or won’t do any work. One man who left school at fifteen, but goes along with the idea of education while finding it faintly ridiculous.

Baked the day she suddenly dropped dead we chew it slowly that last apple pie. Shocked into sleeplessness you're scared of bed. We never could talk much, and now don't try. You're like book ends, the pair of you, she'd say, Hog that grate, say nothing, sit, sleep, stare… The 'scholar' me, you, worn out on poor pay, only our silence made us seem a pair. Not as good for staring in, blue gas, too regular each bud, each yellow spike. At night you need my company to pass and she not here to tell us we're alike! You're life's all shattered into smithereens. Back in our silences and sullen looks, for all the Scotch we drink, what's still between's not the thirty or so years, but books, books, books.

- Book Ends I, Tony Harrison

In my memory, she’s alive and well, not poor and old. Any year now, I might have to say something. Actually no, easier just to move house.

This is a nice callback.

At the same time I rack my brain for a memory of Woodhall Spa ever having a launderette. Like the one in the Levi’s advert with the soundtrack of ‘I Heard It Through the Grapevine’ and that beautiful model taking his clothes off. No, don’t think about the model…

It’ll be fine. As long as he doesn’t know I’m still thinking about Nick Kamen in his boxer shorts, it’ll be fine.

(Good god.) Happily, we do get some resolution as to the concern over fears of the reaction towards the end of the book as well.

As Will was wearing black 501s earlier, I’ve now cast Nick Kamen as Will in my head in some sort of terrible conflation.

Accountancy, for crying out loud. To me, Will is destined to be an accountant the way Jay Gatsby was always going to end up selling pet insurance. But I suppose the way I see Will isn’t the way he sees himself…

This is what I mean by the fact that Will in the book is how RW, in love, sees him, not who he actually is.

I notice that there are rumours about me and Will which I do nothing to discourage. In fact, I start to cultivate a deliberate sexual ambiguity. In a common-room chat about Thelma & Louise, I casually mention that Brad Pitt is ‘obviously some beautiful model they’ve given a few lines to’ and my co-winkies seem to appreciate my bullshit insights into Hollywood while going a bit quiet at that use of the word ‘beautiful’. It doesn’t take much.

I enjoyed these descriptions of RW, frustrated at being left behind to do another year of sixth form, rebelling further by cultivating an ambiguous sexuality.

Prince Hal is either going to leap onto his horse in a single bound or carry on getting pissed with Falstaff. Luke is either going to leave Tatooine forever, or go to work as a rent boy in the Mos Eisley cantina.

Striking This Is It turn of phrase.

I’m currently under the impression that it’s all to do with irony and detachment. I think that whatever they say, clever people don’t mean it. I expect in the next hour to be in the exclusive company of people who would never dream of calling a spade a spade. The very idea! Surely, it’s all going to be rather camp.

I actually wouldn’t say this was an incorrect perception.

And by the time we pass Huntingdon, my accent is finally in line with the geography of England. It was a good four years ago that I started to say ‘carstle’ instead of ‘caastle’ and ‘ahp’ instead of ‘oop’. All the affectations are coming home, I think. To the place where they won’t be affectations any more. No more pretending.

More accent affectation. People still do this, because I know people at university who did.

So far I’ve learnt that every one of their parents is a teacher, academic or writer. All ten parents are seemingly all still married.

We get a big change in a short space of time in the book, which works well narratively, between RW being desperate to be different, and RW feeling very aware that he does not seamlessly fitting in. He both does and does not now desire to be different from the people he does not seamlessly fit in with.