#hillis miller

[nickged]

A good reader is someone on whom nothing in a text is lost, as James said a good writer is in relation to life: “Try to be one of those on whom nothing is lost.” (From On Literature, J. Hillis Miller)

#words to live by #hillis miller

[horrorshow]

The attraction and shared isolation of the siblings locates the work as operating in the tradition of Wuthering Heights, which Finney describes as an example of ‘the siblings-as-soulmates configuration’ […] in terms of the protagonists’ common status as outsiders and their incestuous love that transcends the values of the society that rejects them and the event of death itself. [...]

The consequences of denying the incestuous element of Catherine and Heathcliff ’s relationship are a denial of their love and a reduction of it to a pathological egotism. When, for example, Thormählen states that ‘I have avoided referring to the bond between Catherine and Heathcliff as “love” … because the nature of their passions fits no description of the concepts known to me’, she disregards the established conventions of Gothic and Romantic incest in which the representation of their love is, in part, grounded. — J. Diplacidi, Gothic incest: Gender, sexuality and transgression

Cathy and Heathcliff reach in death what they possessed in this world when they were unself-conscious children, and did not know of their separateness. They reach peace not through obedient acceptance of isolation, but through the final exhaustion of all their forces in the attempt to reach union in this life. Their heroism is, in Georges Bataille’s phrase, an “approbation of life to the point of death.” — J. Hillis Miller, The Disappearance of God: Five Nineteenth Century Writers

SUPERNATURAL + WUTHERING HEIGHTS for @wincestwednesdays prompt: American Gothic (pt 2: Endings)

#spnedit #samdeanedit #wincest #wincest wednesday #supernatural #wuthering heights #whatever it is #** #complementary to the set i posted yesterday

[sprout-fics]

Woodsmoke (Joel Miller x F! Reader x Joe 'Bear' Graves)

Chapter One: Kindling

Read (Here) on AO3

Masterlist

Rating: Mature (Rating will change) Word Count: 6.6k Warnings: Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault (Non-explicit) Tags: Character Study, Angst (Literally so much angst), AU- Canon divergence, Sheep Farmer Joel Miller, Patrolman Joe 'Bear' Graves, Domesticity, PTSD, Night Terror, Love confessions, Rejection, Mutual Pining A/N: So this started off as me wanting to write PWP with Joel and Bear, and then it became smut with context, and now we're here at a three part chracter study that also includes porn, thank you for witnessing my descent into madness. Also a huge shoutout to @soapskneebrace @guyfieriii and @writeforfandoms for listening to my absolutely unhinged raving and ranting about this series. I don't know how I could have done this without you all

Summary:

When spring comes, it melts away the frost, blooms lilac and pink in the hills, and in your heart as well. Like the slow, steady drip of thawing glacier, the interior of your soul at last becomes revealed to you once more. Vivid and bright like forsythia, like jonquils and the first flowers of spring, it unfurls its delicate petals, turns towards the sun.

It's Joel, your heart reveals to you with a tender whisper. Joel, with his steadying and unflinching gaze, his brown eyes the same color of your coffee, his hands that speak of experience, of raw ability. It's Joel, who knocks on your door as you get ready for bed and murmurs a quiet goodnight, his eyes always resting on yours with words he doesn't speak. Joel, with his deep voice like raw timber, his presence a towering, gnarled oak tree that refuses to be felled.

You think you love him.

You don't think you can have him.

How it starts, you don't know. How it begins, however is with you.

With you, with the first time you see the sheep ranch nestled at the very edge of Jackson’s territory, at a distance. Atop the hill that descends into the valley below, your eyes trace across the grey and white bits of fluff that dot the hilly pasture. The cold autumn wind rakes through your hair, bites against your cheeks, freezes against your chapped lips. The reins in your hand feel like steel, tough, clutched tightly in your nervous, anxious grip.

Beside you, Tommy eyes you as you take in the sight before you. A few pastures. A barn, a chicken house, a garden, and atop the other side of the valley- a house. Quaint, quiet, a watchtower of the farm below.

Tommy breathes through his nose, his mare shifting with a little chuff that seems to match her rider's contemplation. He's been quiet for most of the journey, offering only small conversation in response to your quiet inquiries about your destination.

"He's a loner." Tommy tells you, and his eyes are soft, a little broken when he speaks of his brother, the man who would be your employer. There's bitterness there that you recognize, even if you don't really understand.

"He's not...mean." He goes on, even though he hesitates over his elaboration. "He just prefers the quiet is all."

You nod, voice silent. It took months for you to learn how to speak again, and even now the simple act feels too heavy, too awkward.

It had been the better part of a year since you'd arrived at Jackson

It had been Tommy who had found you, out on patrol with the other riders, stumbling upon your form half-buried by snow, curled into the ground. Starving, confused, injured, scared, waiting to die so the earth would swallow you whole. Yet instead of letting you succumb to frost, Tommy had taken you back, allowed the doctors in Jackson to nurse you back to health.

In body, at least. Maybe not in soul.

Tommy leads the way down the steep slope ahead of you, leaning back in his saddle as his mare picks along the barest hint of a path down towards the ranch. You follow him, feeling your breath fog across your face, a warm puff before it dissipates into steam. All the while you steal glances away from the trail ahead of you and towards the livestock dotting the hillside, the grass turning an ashen green as the season inexorably change once more.

Tommy leads you not to the house atop the hill, but rather to a cabin at the bottom of the valley. It's braced against the edge of a tree line that trickles into the dip between the hills, and if you listen above the wind you think you hear a brook there. Yet your attention is drawn to the cabin itself, with its wood walls and stone chimney, from which woodsmoke pours forth. You can smell it, the scent obscured by the raw, frigid taste of oncoming frost. It lingers across your tongue even as Tommy dismounts, ascends the steps, fist raised to knock on the door.

It opens before he gets the chance.

The man that answers the door looks older, worn. Greys dot his temples, his short beard. There's lines across his face that speak less of age and more of grief, a time spent witnessing horrors you yourself have not yet seen. Yet his eyes glint with a keen awareness, a clarity bred by experience. Wary. Ready.

He stands occupying the broad space of the doorway, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, grease caught across his knuckles. There's a furrow in his brow, as if he's annoyed by the interruption to whatever project he has occupied himself with. Yet when his eyes take in Tommy his face relaxes into something vaguely resembling a smile, and he manages to smear the majority of grease away from his palm before clasping it to his brother's.

"Tommy." Is all he says in greeting, but there's a warmth there, a familiarity that briefly has your heart threaten to crack, wishing selfishly someone would regard you that way too.

"Joel." Tommy replies, his tone light, pleased before he turns to reveal you, standing a ways away with the horses. "Brought you a visitor. Meet your new farmhand."

You shift a little where you stand, not making any motion to venture closer, instead offering a timid 'Hello' that seems to be swallowed by the wind.

Joel regards you silently, continuing to wipe his hands on his rag, eyes taking you in silently, cataloguing the uneasiness in your stance, your darting eyes, tense shoulders. yet he doesn't remark on it, doesn't offer so much as a greeting, instead seeming to mull your very presence over in his mind. Contemplating, considering.

"It's cold." Is all he says after moments that seem like hours. "Fire's warm."

With that he turns inside in a silent gesture for you to follow, offering little else in the strangest introduction you've yet to encounter. Absent of expectations or forced niceties, his words saying all that need to be said, and yet somehow containing multitudes.

It is, you come to learn, very much like him.

----

Joel puts you to work immediately, and you quickly learn just how desperately he needed another pair of hands on the ranch.

Your chores begins before dawn most days, the cold of the misty mornings clinging to your skin as you warm yourself by the stove as it crackles to life under Joel's care. You dress by the scant sunlight that seeps over the hilly horizon, step outside into the dewy air and watch your breath fog up and away into the dove grey sky.

The day starts with collecting eggs from the hen house, feeding the chickens, ensuring no creatures have made it past the wire fencing that protects them from predators lurking in the woods. Breakfast is simple fare, quick, not meant to be lingered upon before the work of the day begins in earnest.

There's few words spoken between you and Joel as the sun rises. You understand quickly he's not typically one for conversation unless prompted. He doesn't mince words, prefers to say what needs to be said and then to follow through with whatever he's spoken. It's a gruff, curt personality that might grind with a more extroverted, conversational person. For you, with your quiet, contemplative demeanor, it suits you well. You, like Joel, prefer to speak through actions rather than words, let your hands occupy your thoughts and chase away the memories that linger there.

So you do just that, involving yourself in the momentum that carries the weight away. You toss down hay from the hayloft, herd the sheep out of the barn in the morning, mend the fences, pull weeds from the garden. You sweep the kitchen as Joel cleans the dinner dishes, you chop firewood for the crackling hearth, gather kindling at the edge of the forest but never venture beyond the tree line as Joel tells you.

Joel gives you space for the first few weeks. Yet he isn't without attention. You find that he's quick to notice when you need something, even if you're hesitant to ask for it. It's as if he sees you in a way you aren't familiar with, discerning your hesitation and inward reflection like an extension of himself. His responses come less in the form of words and more in the form of offerings. An extra blanket for your bed. Another pair of socks. Fixing the shades in your bedroom so the light doesn't seep in, refilling the kerosene in your bedside lamp. It's simple but meaningful gestures, absent of words that somehow fills the unfamiliar space between you two.

"It's okay."  They seem to whisper to you, as you lay wide-eyed, awake in your bed at night. "You can stay. I don't mind. You can ask. Take your time."

You never speak to Joel of the circumstances that have led you here, not even when you slowly begin to find your voice again, when words between you two become easier, less forced. Yet Joel somehow seems to know what's happened to you anyways, and you can't help but wonder if he was able to see it from the very start.

There's glimpses you see in him, his eyes becoming distant at times, as if staring into the past. It's as if he's lived your life before you, can see the scenes of his own regret play out in shadowy phantoms across his vision. You feel it in yourself, in the way memories cling to you as night like parasitic fungi, creeping with slow, sinister growth along your veins, old wounds that have yet to heal.

If Joel hears you whimper and cry in your sleep, he doesn't say. Yet in the mornings, after the nightmares have ended but still occupy your shadow, he's gentler. Softer. Extra milk in your coffee, his voice less gruff, allowing you extra time before the mornings begin so you can shed the last of your sorrows.

Slowly, with time, they're chased away by daylight.

You bury the remnants of them with motion, purpose. Joel made it clear from the start you weren't there to freeload.

"Two rules." He told you the first night you were alone, the washed dinner plates stacked to dry, the hearth crackling warmly and filling the silence.

"The first." He begins, and you can hear the age in his voice. Gritty, choked on memories like charcoal. "Is that you do what I say, when I say it, understand?"

His eyes meet yours, and you stare into them, losing yourself for a moment in his brown, keen-eyed stare. You wonder if there was a softness there once, find yourself trying to imagine what it must have looked like.

"This is to keep us safe." He explains, hands clasped together on the aged, wooden table, fingers grazing over worn knuckles. "Just because Jackson runs patrols doesn't mean it's entirely safe out here. I'm your employer, you're my responsibility now, so you listen to me when I tell you to do something, clear?"

You nod in silence, eyes shifting away from him to your mug of weak tea that's long since cooled.

"Clear." You reply, voice soft, a little distant.

Joel nods out of the corner of your eyes, as if to himself. Then his voice raises again.

"The second." He continues, voice maintaining that gruff, even tone. There's a hint of an accent there you try to place but come up empty-handed. Yet it softens, is joined by an indiscernible sigh, a shift of his shoulders that eases into the cracks of your soul. "Is that if you ever need something, all you need to do is ask."

You look at him then, eyes blinking, lips parting, trying to place the strange, sudden wash of feeling that murmurs between your ribs. Joel's stare remains unchanged, but the gentleness of his statement lingers, suspended between you both. An entreaty, an offering.

Slowly, something within you rouses, long laying dormant within the recesses of your grief. A gentle glimpse of color before it's gone again.

"Clear." You tell him, and this time your voice softens too, for the first time allowing yourself to open, unfold within his unwavering, focused gaze.

----

It's quiet, that first year. Joel is closed off, distant in a way that's not entirely unfamiliar to you. You can see the scars on him, even the ones he refuses the bare. It's hard not to see, with the way that his history is written across his eyes.

You don't ask why he can hardly hear from one ear, why he only ever sleeps on his right side. You don't ask about how he knows about how to pour the foundation for a new shed meant to store food for the winter. You don't ask about how he survived this long, why he wants the quiet solitude of the Wyoming steppes compared to the bustle of Jackson.

You don't ask the question everyone seems to ask people like the two of you.

What happened to you? What made you like this?

In turn, Joel doesn't ask you of your own past, of the mistakes and fatal flaws that led to that moment of solemn, fateful near death, your would-be grave a shimmering, white tomb of frost. Nor do you offer them. There's no changing the past now, and even though the screams of the damned still torment you in the witching hours of night, they're just that- ghosts.

They can't hurt you anymore.

Though you don't speak of your past, you do speak. Slowly at first, then with more ease. Joel seems surprised at first, even though the change is gradual. More than once you see him pause what he's doing, turn to you, blinking as he processes your remark about chores, the weather, what to eat for dinner. Utilitarian conversation that seems to mirror his own words.

He, like you, doesn't speak much, doesn't feel pressed to fill the silence. He's more than happy to simply coexist, his hands working alongside yours, his voice directing you with his steadying, unwavering presence. Like a lantern in the mist, the glow of him feels hazy, distant, and yet somehow still there, a signal as you wander in search of yourself.

You watch him, sometimes, over the edges of the worn paperbacks you read in the evening as the fire glows low. The orange flames catch across his face, reveal there the shadows of the things he doesn't say. He stares into the flames like they yield answers he doesn't have. There's a striking gravity there in his gaze, one that pulls you inwards, down into him, causes color to flutter in your heart. Sorrowful, unsummoned, and yet somehow alive.

You gather him in bits and pieces, like sifting for gold along a streambank. The sediment washes away, and what's left there is glimmering dust that catches and glints in the sunlight.

He has a daughter, that you already knew. Ellie is her name. You think you met her once back in Jackson on a misty grey morning where you paced the perimeter in solitude, basking in the absence of others. She'd muttered a brief greeting to you as she blew warmth into her hands, sidling past you towards the direction of the school. Bright eyed, brown haired, dimpled. She looks nothing like him.

Then again, you suppose you're all orphans of the apocalypse.

You meet her once more several weeks into your new residency, ferried there by Tommy. She peeks over his shoulder from where she sits behind him in the saddle, her face faltering when she sees you helping Joel mend the fence of the western pasture.

It's the first time you see Joel nervous, his hands fidgeting, seeking purchase on something that isn't there. You don't understand, eyes darting from him to the girl he's fostered, taught to survive in a cruel world. Yet then he clears his throat, introduces you to her with slow, halting words and you think you see it, the way he seems to look for Ellie's approval.

Ellie regards you warily at first, and like Joel her eyes seem to see more than she lets on, glinting at you as she takes several, heavy moments to judge you by your presence alone.

"Hi." She says at last, and her smile is soft, yet still somehow sincere. "I'm Ellie."

You almost miss Joel's sigh beside you, breathed into the coming winter wind.

His relief is well-placed. Ellie seems to take a shine to you. You happily listen to her ramble about her schooling in Jackson, about her distaste for her teachers, to her pleads for Joel to just homeschool her because "who needs school anyways?" You let her tell you terrible puns from a journal where she's scrawled the jokes with slanted, rushed handwriting. You follow her as she insists you accompany her to survey the ewes, climbing in the hayloft and attempting to hang from the rafters.

You don't notice the way Joel's eyes soften as you smile.

It's only on the third day of Ellie's visit, the morning of her departure, where she turns to you as Tommy and Joel talk next to the horses. Her arms wrap around your middle, head pressed to your chest, the embrace lasting for all of a moment before she pulls away again. 

"Thank you." She tells you, eyes gazing up at you, clear and unwavering in a way you've come to recognize. "For taking care of him."

You freeze, eyes wide, lips parted, trying to process what she's just said. Yet you don't get the chance, because suddenly she's striding towards Tommy with a holler of "Let's get this show on the road!" and you're left alone, caught within the imbalance of her words.

No, you think. It was the other way around. You, you were the one who was taken care of, so you could be saved from yourself.

By him.

Things become different after that. It's as if Ellie's presence, her fondness of you has lifted an unknown weight from Joel's shoulders. Where before you could see cracks in him, now you can see the sunlight that dares to seep through, past the heartache and the grief he carries within.

Slowly, you too begin to change.

You're not sure what does it, whether it was Ellie, Joel, or the thaw of spring that relents the boundaries of your heart, unfolds them like snowdrops, born anew.

It's your voice that fills the silence now. Soft, soothing, still somehow endearingly shy yet undeniably kind. You turn your face to the wind, listen to the sound, try and discern the whispers it speaks to you. As the mountains turn green and lush, so too does your smile, a gentle thing that catches the sunlight and imbues it into your soul.

Joel smiles more too. You're not sure why, but you see it sometimes. When you appear from the hayloft with straw caught in your hair, when you hum a forgotten tune over the sink as you do dishes, when he sees you bolt after the lamb that escapes through the fencing, he smiles.

It always catches you a bit off guard, the way his mouth puckers, tugs the corner of his lips. Yet there's something in his stare that feels strangely like familiarity, of warmth, and you find yourself longing after it. You wish somehow you could trace that too into your soul, allow it to fill the cracks there like a balm, erase all the old wounds that linger with a bitter, sour aftertaste.

Joel remains at a distance from you, even though he seems more relaxed now. There's things he doesn't say, things he refuses to let you see. His words, though perhaps provided more often, remain enigmatic. Short, clipped, you come to realize he says what he means, but means far more than he can say.

Yet there's times when Joel is closer somehow, outstretching a hand to keep you from stumbling over a pit in the pasture, helping you down from the hayloft when the ladder breaks, crouching with you over a newborn lamb as it takes its first breath. There's something different in him in those moments. His eyes shine a little brighter, the draw of his face changes, his voice gets firm in a way that's less of a reprimand and more of concern. You can tell, the way he looks out for you without words.

Things get easier after that first year. Joel lets you gently shoo him from the kitchen when you've had enough of his poorly seasoned cooking to last a lifetime. He lets you wander further from the farm when you have the time, venturing into the woods to check the snares he's set. He comes with you when you hike to the top of the valley in search of wild spring onions, makes no complaint about his tender muscles. He tends to you when you come down with pneumonia, and in your listless, sickened state you think you hear him murmur the words "It's going to be okay."

Slowly, you unravel him. He smiles more often, albeit rarely. You get him to groan at terrible jokes and convince him to trade for art supplies and books for you. He listens to you when you suggest sheepdogs, and then forgives you when the mutt runs off into the woods within the first week to never return.

In the evenings, he sits closer, makes you a mug of tea without asking. He pushes the mug into your hands with little fanfare, and you learn it's through gestures that he says what he means the most.

"I want you here." The steam of the mug whispers to you silently. "Things are...easier with you here."

Yet there's unspoken words that remains between you despite that. You see it in the way he averts his eyes too quickly when you dry off from the bath, the way he watches you when you smile into the summer sunlight. You see it when you strip your jacket during the blazing heat of summer and he coughs suddenly, feigns breathlessness. You see it in his smile when you hold a tiny, baby chick in your hands, eyes glimmering with something akin to hope.

You see it when he warns you to get inside as a courier lets his eyes roam over you in a way that makes your skin crawl.

It's a messenger from another outlying settlement, one you've never seen before. Young, brawny, his smile a little too wide as he greets you from atop his horse, dismounts before you can stammer a greeting and extends his hand to you.

You freeze. There's something about his eyes, the way they don't meet your own, the way they seem to fixate on other parts of you. It summons a vile reminder of things that once were, and you feel your breath catch between your ribs, too shallow, too cold-

"Get inside." Joel tells you, and his calloused hand tightens on your shoulder just a fraction, not enough for anyone but the both of you to notice. The deep, gruff rumble of his voice in your ear conveys all the meaning you mean to hear. Familiar, it whispers to you: Danger. Threat. Listen to me. I'll protect you. I'll keep you safe. Don't ignore me.

"Now." Joel growls, and he pulls away enough to give you a look that lasts a millisecond, too short to go noticed by the courier.

You nod at him, but the prickle of peril still skims across your flesh, nipping in a shallow bite. Tasting, teasing, a parting augury that leaves you shivering as you turn in the direction of the cabin.

The courier's eyes never leave you, not even as his conversation with Joel continues, his voice a lazy drawl compared to Joel's clipped, brusque replies. Your skin crawls, and you feel his stare rake over you with a slimy, lasting touch. Putrid, unwanted, vile. Your hands shake.

You cast a glance behind you once you reach the porch steps, and blink when you find Joel crowding closer to the younger man, fists curled at his side. There's a look that passes over the courier's face then, brow knotted and lips turning into a displeased sneer.

For a moment you turn, ready to go back and intervene in the building confrontation. Yet then you see Joel's shoulders rise as he speaks and the courier's face drops, goes ashen and slack at whatever it is Joel has just said to him. The threat, though you can't hear it, hangs heavy suspended between them. You can see it, the way the younger man looks at Joel with a brief, vulnerable expression of fear.

He swallows, shuffles for a moment before tipping his hat at you in a brief but abashed farewell. Then he's getting on his horse, trembling hands grabbing the reins and turning back towards the hill from whence he came.

"What did you say to him?" You ask Joel when he eventually paces over towards the porch, his shoulders still taut, frown creased across his face. He peels off his work gloves, stuffs them hastily in his back pocket as he brushes past you. You think he won't give you an answer, leave you wondering as to what words he spoke to the man who dared to look at you the way he did.

Joel pauses with his hand on the door handle, still facing away from you. He stays there for a moment, and you watch as the rage eases from his shoulders.

"I told him." He says, voice low, reeking of an imminent tempest, a fury he keeps simmered down low, deep inside himself, ready to boil at a moment's notice.

"I told him if he ever looked at you again I'd pop his goddamn kneecap off."

The door stays ajar behind him, and you're left alone, the autumn wind breathing cold across your nape.

Yet warmth blooms within you, a familiar yet distorted dissension to the icy threat of Joel's words. Rather than settle in your bones with a lurid freeze, Joel's warning instead summons an affection like the proximity of a hearth, ensconced within the promise of his protection.

"I've got you." The heat in your chest murmurs in conjunction with his voice. "I'll keep you safe. Don't think I won't."

You follow him, tracing his back with your gaze, and thinking somehow that you might follow him anywhere if he asked you.

---

The months drag on. Winter is harsh that year, the snow falling gracefully yet accumulating with sinister depth. The fire never stops, and it's on more than one night that you and Joel both abandon your bedrooms and sleep in the main room, closer to the woodstove so the freeze doesn't come for you in sleep. It's on those nights that you awake with an extra blanket draped over you, that Joel walks a little stiffly the next morning, grumbles about the cold irritating his joints.

The blanket smells like him.

It's on one of those nights, where the wind howls and sleet batters at the windows that you shiver under your covers, and the nightmares come creeping past your defenses. Like frost, they grow across the planes of your thoughts, extending, fissuring out and reminding you of that time, of an unearthly, blank, white grave. You sink into it, watch through snowflake covered lashes as the world shimmers with pristine, powdery glimmer, even as your heartbeat slows, your vision fades.

It's on one of those nights that there's hands that seize you in your sleep and you struggle against them with a whimper of "No, please, not again-"

"Hey."

It's Joel's voice that breaks through the ice, hauls you from the depths of exposure and into wakefulness once more.

"It's me." He says when you feebly push at him, mind still trying to discern its own direction, tears burning the corner of your eyes. "It's me. I've got you."

Your vision, wavering and watery, meets his gaze. Brown eyed, brow knotted, hands on either side of your face as he wills you to see, to hear him. You can only cling to him, eyes wide, unseeing, mind a cacophony of screams and sickening, bloody impacts until there's only a cavern of blank, snowy silence that rings between your ears.

"It's over." Joel tells you, voice deep, a grinding whisper tinted with an emotion you can't place. His eyes have a look you haven't seen before, and it takes you a moment to place it.

Fear.

"You're here." He murmurs, keeping your eyes facing forward, into his own. "Safe."

The dying embers of the woodstove flicker across your glassy eyes, and the vision fades, resumes into the now with Joel's thumb stroking across your cold, wet cheek. You shiver into his grip as the nightmares fades, a ghost of a past that's long since transpired, but leaves scars echoing endlessly within the prison of your mind.

Neither of you fall asleep again that night, words unspoken into the silence but presences merging, blending together in the darkness until daylight at last breaks over the horizon.

If Joel is different at that night, you can't tell. He keeps his short, gruff way about you, offers what he needs to, busies his hands with the work to be done. He doesn't remark upon the truth he saw in your eyes and words that night, simply absorbs that truth into himself and keeps moving in the way all survivors do. You find yourself wishing you could do the same, could burrow the hurt down deep so it sleeps, hibernates there until spring, whenever that may come.

Yet when a rake falls loudly in the barn, when a gunshot rings out in the woods from a neighboring hunter, when you hear a coyote scream at night, he's there. Wordlessly, his eyes slide over to your tensed, ashen expression and his voice becomes soft, a reassurance of security, of protection.

"It's just the wind." He tells you when a gale lashes at the windows, clatters against the panes. His hands don't cease as they prod the fire, but his eyes turn to you- looking, waiting, expectant. It's only when you nod that he returns his focus elsewhere, ensures the unease in your bones has settled.

It's in that way that you know. Regardless of whether Joel speaks it or not, somewhere along the way he's decided you're one of his own. Someone to reassure, to protect, to keep safe, even from the doubts of the past.

When spring comes, it melts away the frost, blooms lilac and pink in the hills, and in your heart as well. Like the slow, steady drip of thawing glacier, the interior of your soul at last becomes revealed to you once more. Vivid and bright like forsythia, like jonquils and the first flowers of spring, it unfurls its delicate petals, turns towards the sun.

This is where you're meant to stay, you realize. Here, with him.

It's a realization that feels like relief, hopeful like the lambs that bounce through the meadows and the hatchlings that nest in the eaves of the porch. It feels like a rebirth, like a renewal of yourself as you at last realize the true extent of your feelings.

It's Joel, your heart reveals to you with a tender whisper. Joel, with his steadying and unflinching gaze, his brown eyes the same color of your coffee, his hands that speak of experience, of raw ability. It's Joel, who knocks on your door as you get ready for bed and murmurs a quiet goodnight, his eyes always resting on yours with words he doesn't speak. Joel, with his deep voice like raw timber, his presence a towering, gnarled oak tree that refuses to be felled.

You think you love him.

You think, in another life, you could have been his.

You aren't so bold as to offer him advances, the emotions in your chest too fragile, too fleeting. Yet you do ease around him in a way you haven't before. Sitting next to him on the couch, daring to cover his hand with yours as he reaches for something in the cabinet, stepping closer to point out a hole he missed in the chicken wiring, your breath ghosting over his nape.

He doesn't miss these gestures, you know he doesn't. Joel is too aware to not see them, has too many years struggling to survive in a cruel world to not notice this gentle easiness of yours. Yet he never makes mention of it, never takes the chance to step closer, to narrow the strange distance between you. You don't understand it, can't comprehend why he insists on not venturing nearer to you. It remains one of the things you'll never know about him, why he looks at you with such tenderness and yet refuses to let you come closer.

"I'm too old for this." He groans as you both lay panting in the pasture after wrangling the flock's ram back into the field after his daring escape. "I need to retire."

You huff, something akin to a laugh, staring up at the summer cumulus clouds that roll white and puffy across and egg-shell blue sky.

"I'll stay here, even if you do." You tell him honestly, smiling, feeling for once like you can see into the future ahead of you. You turn to look at him, hair mussed, eyes bright but warm. "I don't want to be anywhere else."

He looks at you then, and the color in your heart wilts to sepia at the emotion that flickers across his face.

Guilt.

It stabs at you, like a blade in the dark, the razor-sharp edge glinting from a campfire. Your face falls, your stomach drops, and distantly, you think you can hear the sound of your heart cracking at the edges.

He doesn't want you.

There's a deep, lurking, sinister shadow that wonders if anyone ever will.

You try not to dwell on it, even as it slowly consumes you as the days drag on. Doubt festers in your veins, like spores sticking to the edges of your skin, your distant, unfocused eyes.

You lay awake at night, days later, deciding to step outside into the summer air to breath, release your demons into the night sky.

It's only then that you see the orange glow on the horizon, wake Joel with your rising, panic shouts.

Joel stumbles out of his room, eyes quickly clearing of drowsiness as he too looks towards the sight before you.

"Get dressed." He tells you, sleep still clogging his voice. "It's the Johnsons. Something's caught fire."

You follow his command wordlessly, and it's within ten minutes that the two of you are riding over the lip of the valley, speeding in direction of the next farm over.

You arrive too late.

The barn is a single flame against the night sky as you arrive, and the farm's two owners hold each other not far away. Contents of their house are strewn about them. The smell of smoke and blood thickens at the back of your throat.

"Raiders." The wife tells you, voice less of a wail and more of a shattered, trembling whisper. It's all that needs to be said.

You and Joel see to them, spend the day helping them gather the remainders of the farm. You don't arrive back at the cabin until sundown, skin chalky with ash, hands chaffed, form slumped with fatigue. Yet it's not even two steps into the door before Joel turns to you, eyes severe, steely, holding back a fury spawned by fear.

"I'm leaving." Is all he says. "In the morning. Gotta tell Tommy about what's happened."

You feel a low murmur of terror gurgle in your stomach at the idea of being left alone when danger lurks beyond the edges of the valley, at the idea of him going by himself.

"Let me come with you." You try, but he shakes his head.

"No." Is all he gives you. "I need you to stay here. Guard the farm. I'll lock everything up before I go."

Then his eyes soften, and he breathes a sigh as he looks at you, sees the anxiety rising in your gaze.

"I won't be long." He murmurs then, voice dipping. "Just keep that shotgun safe, like I showed you. I'll be back soon."

You know you can't argue with him, stubborn as he is. Besides, he's right. Someone needs to stay. Someone needs to make the journey. One of you has to go. You both know it's him.

So, you watch him, the next morning, watching from the porch as he ascends the edge of the valley, tracing his back until he's nothing more than a speck that vanishes over the rise.

True to his word, Joel arrives back the next afternoon, and on his tail is an entire company of riders. Spooked as you are, you at first think they're raiders, forcing him to lead them back to the farm. You stand on the porch with a shotgun, hands trembling until Joel at last dismounts, approaches you like he would a wild, scared animal.

"It's alright." He murmurs, and makes you lower the weapon as the rest of the group stands at a safe distance. His hands are cold, yet familiar as they touch you, ground you from your own rapid heartbeat.

"Security." He tells you simply as you eye the group warily. They regard you respectfully, eyes shifting from you to Joel and then back again, tall atop their horses, murmuring to each other in low voices.

There's around five of them, hard in the eyes, fit, strong. They're all younger than Joel by a number of years. Their weapons lay across their laps or on their saddles. You can tell at a single glance that they're soldiers by training. You know the look. You've seen the same expression in the eyes of FEDRA soldiers. Focused, disciplined, rife with a cold, calculating instinct.

Your eyes flick from them to Joel, and at last you relax, shoulders dropping all of an inch, letting him take the shotgun from you.

It's only then that they begin to dismount, talking amongst themselves and offering you linger, skeptical glances, as if encountering traces of a predator in the woods. Yet there's one of the group that hands his reins to the man beside him, approaches you both with slow, measured steps.

He's the once you noticed first, with his towering stature and set jaw. A short beard and thick brows frame his face, shoulders tight with coiled strength. There's an air to him that seems more acute, more potent than the rest of his men. Somehow, it warns of danger.

He removes his hat as he nears the two of you, holds it over his heart in a humble greeting.

"Ma'am." He offers with a nod.

"This is Joe Graves." Joel tells you, one hand still cupping your elbow. Steadying, grounding.

"You can call me 'Bear'." He adds and gives you a smile that pierces through the remnants of frenetic, panicked anxiety. "They boys and I all have callsigns.

"Hello." You offer at last politely, voice a little quiet, guarded. Bear only nods at you, seems to take your hesitancy in stride, his smile not faltering. It's warm, understanding, and it's as if he senses the unsteadiness in you, waits patiently for you to right yourself.

Your chest flutters.

"The boys and I are going to take good care of your farm." He tells you, voice measured but easy. "If you ever need anything from us, don't hesitate to ask."

You blink at him, feel his words siphon away the fear, the uncertainty that dwells between your ribs.

"Thank you...Bear." You tell him, voice muted but betraying your gratitude, your slow unwinding tension at his tone with you. Entreating, patient, void of expectations.

There's something that glimmers in his eyes then, and you catch it for only a moment. A spark, a hope, an interest you can't yet decipher. It feels like it coats you in a smattering of glimmer dust, leaving behind a warm, hazy glow that catches in your stare.

You know that look.

"Don't worry." It says. "Take your time. There's no rush. I won't come closer unless you want me to. I'll stay right here until you're ready."

Like the bloom of springtime, color once again unfurls in your heart.

#TLOU #Joel miller #the last of us #joe bear graves #Joel miller x reader #Joe bear graves x reader #reader insert #fic: woodsmoke #AHHHHHH ITS FINISHED

[faintingheroine]

Do you have a list of your favourite essays/criticism on Wuthering Heights? I really enjoy your commentary. Thank you so much!!!

Thanks for your kind words ;)

I don’t exactly have a list but some good essays that I like:

“Emily Brontë In and Out of Her Time” - Nancy Armstrong

“A Modern Way With The Classic” - Frank Kermode

“Wuthering Heights” - Andrea Dworkin

“The Magnanimity of Wuthering Heights” - Joyce Carol Oates

Everything written by Graeme Tytler

“The Ellipses of Interpretation” - J. Hillis Miller

“Impossible Love and Commodity Culture in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights” - Daniela Garofalo

The things written by Inga Stina-Ewbank

“Irresistible Narrative: The Art of “Wuthering Heights”” by Professor Douglas Jefferson

“Heathcliff as Fetish in “Wuthering Heights”” - Dana Medoro

“The Return to Heath” - Henry Staten

“Analyzing Wuthering Heights” (Book) - Nicholas Marsh

“The Structure of Wuthering Heights” - C. P. Sanger

Alex Tankard’s chapter on Linton Heathcliff in their book “Tuberculosis and Disabled Identity in Nineteenth Century Literature”

All 19th century book reviews

I like Erendiz Atasü and Neslihan Cangöz’s essays but they are in Turkish - but you can find quotes from them on my blog

I do not agree with everything in these essays, which is not possible anyway since they often have different interpretations. And I do have criticisms on most of them. But they are all good works I enjoyed reading. And I am sure I am forgetting some.

If you are writing a paper on Wuthering Heights Anon, I must warn you that most of the above essays are quite old, they tend to be from the second half of 20th century. You should probably quote from more recent works in a paper you are writing today.

#wuthering heights #asks #anonymous #wh asks

[athingofvikings]

A Thing Of Vikings Chapter 42: The Pen...

Chapter 42: The Pen …

The economic and demographic growth of Berk's territory can be tracked due to the tribal census records.  Begun in AD 950 under the auspices of Chief Hiccup II, the yearly census tracked a slow, steady and inexorable contraction over the next ninety-one years, with the first census recording a population of 1,373 people from eight clans and nearly 400 clanless freemen, dropping to 712 across five clans and 208 freemen in early AD 1041.  After the end of the Dragon War, however, the pattern reverses itself explosively, with the Eirish annexations and the tribe's own natural growth.  Child mortality drops in all of the tribe's holdings, and immigration begins in earnest.  At the start of AD 1042, according to the census for that year, the total population of the Hooligan holdings was recorded as 4,902 humans, and approximately 12,000 dragons…

…Vedrarfjord, as an Eirish city with room to expand that was unavailable to Berk on its small and hilly isle, is extremely illustrative of the growth that occurred.  Beginning with approximately 2,000 people in AD 1042, plus another 2,000 in the immediate hinterlands within walking distance, the city's population boomed over the next ten years to 31,826 permanent residents—after contracting from a refugee-boosted height of 56,105 in AD 1044, nearly all of whom ended up settling elsewhere in Berk's territory (see Chapter 23: The Eastern Massacres). 

In that first census, the image revealed is of a small Viking trading port, primarily focused on agriculture, with the majority of the population involved in farming, herding or fishing and the other major industries being shipbuilding and other port-related activities.  Recorded in that first census, there were 8 shoemakers, 9 furriers, 10 tailors, 6 barbers, 3 jewelers, 4 tavernkeepers, 4 bakers, 9 carpenters, 12 weavers, 5 chandlers, 2 scabbard-makers, 3 brewers, 5 coopers, 2 butchers, 3 fishmongers, 6 smiths (specializations not noted), 8 healers, 3 millers, 8 ropemakers, 36 shipwrights and 2 tanners recorded. 

Ten years later, the portrait of Vedrarfjord is that of an industrial and educational center, featuring glassmakers (207), teachers (572), bookbinders (17), papermakers (98), ropemakers (453), weavers (429), tailors (168)…

—Origins Of The Grand Thing, Edinburgh Press, 1631

AO3 Chapter Link

~~~

My Original Fiction | Original Fiction Patreon

#a thing of vikings #httyd #how to train your dragon #alternate history #historical fiction

[ciceroballtorture]

"Wuthering Heights" and the Ellipses of Interpretation by J. Hillis Miller

#.wh

[ausetkmt]

HOW ARE THEY REINSTATING MURDERING COPS IN ATLANTA?

U.S.|Atlanta to Pay $1 Million to Rayshard Brooks’s Family

Nov. 21, 2022, 9:50 p.m. ET

The city of Atlanta agreed on Monday to pay $1 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the widow and the estate of Rayshard Brooks, a Black man who was fatally shot by a white police officer in 2020, and whose death touched off nationwide protests.

The City Council’s unanimous vote came nearly three months after prosecutors determined that the two officers involved in the episode committed no crimes on June 12, 2020, when Mr. Brooks, 27, was shot by one of the officers in a Wendy’s parking lot. The Council also found that the use of deadly force had been reasonable.

Lawyers for Mr. Brooks’s family, from the firm Stewart Miller Simmons Trial Attorneys, said in a statement that “although the children of Mr. Brooks have lost their father, settling the case will undoubtedly assist them with future plans as they come of age.”

They added that the family was “disappointed that prosecutors didn’t pursue a criminal case against the officers involved in Mr. Brooks’s death.”

Councilman Dustin Hillis said at a Council meeting on Monday that the settlement would be paid to Mr. Brooks’s widow, Tomika Miller; the Brooks estate; and the lawyers’ firm.

He added that the city attorney had determined that “the city of Atlanta’s potential financial exposure in defending plaintiff’s claims is in excess of the settlement amount.”

The family’s wrongful-death lawsuit had claimed that the killing of Mr. Brooks was “senseless and unjustified,” and that the city had violated his civil rights.

Mr. Brooks was killed about three weeks after a police officer in Minneapolis murdered George Floyd. The Atlanta killing spurred fresh rounds of street demonstrations in 2020 and became part of the broader national debate about the treatment of Black Americans at the hands of police officers.

The authorities said that Mr. Brooks had fallen asleep in his car in the drive-through lane at Wendy’s on June 12, 2020. At first, the encounter between the officers and Mr. Brooks was calm. But after 40 minutes, the episode turned violent when the officers moved to arrest him. Mr. Brooks hit one of the officers, grabbed the other’s Taser, fired it and took off running.

A widely shared video captured the moment when one of the officers, Garrett Rolfe, who had worked with the department since 2013, fired his handgun three times while he was chasing Mr. Brooks, who fired the Taser he had seized as he ran.

Mr. Brooks was shot twice, in the back and buttocks, prosecutors said. He was taken to a hospital, where he died after surgery, the authorities said.

In the wake of the shooting, the Wendy’s restaurant where the shooting occurred was burned down after angry demonstrations, and the Atlanta police chief at the time, Erika Shields, resigned.

Officer Rolfe was initially charged with murder and 10 other criminal counts in connection with the fatal shooting of Mr. Brooks, and the other officer, Devin Brosnan, faced a number of lesser charges. But prosecutors announced in August that they would drop all charges.

Officer Rolfe was fired from the Police Department the day after the shooting, but reinstated in May 2021 by the city’s Civil Service Review Board.

#Atlanta to Pay $1 Million to Rayshard Brooks’s Family #Rayshard Brooks #apd #murdered by atlanta cops at wendys #HOW ARE THEY REINSTATING MURDERING COPS IN ATLANTA? #Black Lives Matter #BLM

[knowstruth]

the first tributes arista ever mentored were selby miller (16) and baxter accola (15), in the 55th hunger games. their arena was hilly, with small abandoned-looking huts scattered throughout the arena - some of which hid traps or mutts waiting to be stumbled upon. baxter died day one, trying to escape the bloodbath. selby died day three, caught by the career pack. it never gets easier, but watching that first time was a kind of pain arista will never forget.

#arista. about. #images under the cut because Yes i picked out fcs for them #and Yes this is partially because i have been wanting to use sa.mia as a fc for so long #death tw

[bellshazes]

narrative is, of course, part of games - hillis miller defines it as when we "give experience a form and a meaning." there are a million words written and a million more to be said about the intensity and immersiveness of game narratives, even if you restrict it solely to the narrative of playing the game (the meaningful actions and relationships constituted by the game's players) instead of the game's premise or backstory for play.

last life explicitly rejected continuity of narrative in its rules, likely as an attempt to keep things fresh and open and not have people solely play to old grudges or team-ups. the random chance mechanic of the varied lives received at start of play contributes to that re-focusing on current season social dynamics; the boogeyman mechanic does this twice over, in that it's randomly assigned and there are also random quantities (after session 1).

salen and zimmerman argue in Rules of Play that "when we frame a game as social play, the social relationships constitute the entire experience of the game," an especially useful framing for LL. it is more made of relationships which dynamically shift between and within sessions than it is a death game. and so even thought he randomized mechanics that define the season emphasize these ahistorical, immediate tensions, the players' ability to navigate these novel situations are predicated on prior knowledge and relationships with other players.

you can, of course, play social deduction games with strangers, but if you play over and over with the same people, the players retain those memories and that knowledge and necessarily must use it to their advantage to assess other opponent's truthfulness, predictability, trustworthiness, etc. you use your prior knowledge to give your experience a form and a meaning that allows you to make choices within the game - you construct a narrative inseparable from the narratives that precede and surround the game, even if it is distinct from them.

in structuring last life, they tried to use the mechanics to paint a stark line dividing third and last life, and the brushstrokes blurred them instead.

what i find truly most compelling about the etho-bdubs-cleo alignment in LL from "man this brings back memories" to "now it feels like home! / I leave you alone for two seconds and you're already teaming up with her!" to "I trust you because Bdubs trusted you" is their transformative social play, defined as "players us[ing] the game context to transform social relationships. They actively engage with the rule system of a game, manipulating it in order to shift, extend, or subvert their relations with other players."

the relationships shifted and changed alongside the rule system of the game - most glaringly, the embargo on continuity was lifted for double life. the "ideal" rules set at the beginning buckled in the face of the "real" rules produced through and negotiated by the players actually playing the game. and the narrative of last life for these three is fighting against fate in the sense that games of chance are games of fate (1) and also the per-ordained rules that asked them not to acknowledge what was necessary to their survival.

they failed in that they did not win the season, but i don't think that was the true goal, only one (2). narrative continuity reigns, and so it's no small wonder - devastating as it is to me, a fan of the series - that it keeps popping up in other series: double life, hermitcraft, empires, now the crastle in cleo's witchcraft smp. of course cleo does, after everything. even forgotten history is only built on, not erased; games encourage patterns and social play and those two in the context of recorded play produce narrative throughlines for both the joy of the audience and the player making the content. I don't think I can end this any better than directly quoting rules of play one last time:

A game’s goal defines its endpoint; once it is reached, the game is over. In this sense, a game’s goal is the death of play, the mark of the end, foretelling the moment the magic circle will disappear. There is a curious poetic quality to the struggle of game players as they make their way through the system of a game, playing to no end but the one provided by the game itself, even as their joyful pursuit of that end means the death of their pleasure. Until, of course, the next game begins.

1 Luck is very much fate’s last hope. It is the play of the last chance. It is the play of everyman.… In this sense it is useful to think of games of chance not only as models of the irrevocability of fate but also as fate fantasized. —Brian Sutton-Smith, The Ambiguity of Play

(2) "DeKoven’s main point is that in the context of a game, the struggle of players against each other is also a struggle with each other, as players meet the challenges that they provide for one another."

"Rather than obeying game rules as an ultimate authority, DeKoven would like players to assume authority over the rules. Once they feel confident and in control of the rules, players can break them and modify them in the course of playing a game. They do so not out of a mischievous desire to disrupt the authority of the rules, but out of a directed attempt to create a deeper experience of play." - Rules of Play

#peter posts #LONG POST #last life #third life #clethubs #<- just. trust me. it's in there it is in fact the point of this LONG ASS POST #i have another thousand words in my heart abt them as the shining example of new games philosophy but that's not for now. #i could've gone into more detail on rythyms and the role of the game designer #& also dekoven on transformative play esp in convo with player strategies and many other things. but. jesus this is long

[kwebtv]

The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey  -  Apple TV+  -  March 11, 2022 - April 8, 2022

Drama (8 episodes)

Running Time:  60 minutes

Stars:

Samuel L. Jackson as Ptolemy Grey

Dominique Fishback as Robyn

Cynthia Kaye McWilliams as Sensia

Damon Gupton as Coydog

Marsha Stephanie Blake as Niecie

Walton Goggins as Dr. Rubin

Supporting

Omar Benson Miller as Reggie Lloyd

Maury Ginsberg as Moishe Abromovitz

JoAnn Willette as Judge Alison McCarty

Arischa Conner as Sonia Lavendrell

DeRon Horton as Hilly

Percy Daggs IV as Young Ptolemy

#The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey #TV #Drama #Apple TV+ #2000's #Samuel L. Jackson #Dominique Fishback #Cynthia Kaye McWilliams #Damon Gupton #Marsha Stephanie Blake

[rockzone]

Tracklist: 27 Dec 2023

This week it's my Rock Album Review of 2023

7pm Jared James Nichols - Easy Come, Easy Go (2023) Ten - Something Wicked This Way Comes (2023) Ronnie Romero - No More Tears (Feat. Gus G.) (2023) Khymera - Could Have Been Us (2023) Robin McAuley - Can't Go On (2023) Austin Gold - Mountain (2022) John Diva & The Rockets Of Love - Believe (2023) The Answer - Livin' On The Line (2023) Axel Rudi Pell - Room With A View (2023) Jason Charles Miller - Better Late Than Never (2023) House Of Shakira - Something In The Water (2023)

8pm Wytch Hazel - Strong Heart (2023) Foo Fighters - Nothing At All (2023) Shakra - Tell Her That I'm Sorry (2023) Mitch Malloy - My Pleasure (2023) Kent Hilli - A Fool To Believe (2023) Albany Down - Don't Look Back (2023) When Rivers Meet - Perfect Stranger (2023) Twisted Rose - Bring Back Those Days (2023) Electric Black - Take The Roof Off (2023) The Cadillac Three - Comin' Down From You (2023) Svartanatt - Mad Stranger (2023) Southall - One Day At A Time (2023) Bad Touch - See It To Believe It (2023)

Recent shows can be heard On Demand and via Google Podcasts

#Tracklist

[jaynedolluk]

Film from 2013 about the legendary New York music venue CBGB starring Alan Rickman as Hilly Kristal (the owner) + also featuring Taylor Hawkins as Iggy Pop, Mickey Sumner as Patti Smith, and Malin Akerman as Debbie Harry as well as portrayals of many other musicians from that New York punk scene.

#cbgb #alan rickman #iggy pop #patti smith #debbie harry #punk

[raybizzle]

"Halls of Anger" (1970) is a film that approaches the topic of desegregation in an alternative form. And until this movie, I never thought to ask myself, "Did white people integrate into black schools?" I don't know if that ever happened, and I never thought about that being a possibility. So that is a mental paradox for me. However, whether true or not, "Halls of Anger" explores the topic of white students integrating into a black school. The film features Calvin Lockhart, who was well into his acting career and was peaking as a dedicated actor. Alongside "Halls of Anger" in 1970, he also finished filming "Cotton Comes to Harlem," "Leo the Last," and "Myra Breckinridge." And all four of those films were utterly different roles where he had to adjust his performance style. Nevertheless, it showed his versatility as an actor, and in "Halls of Anger," he put on his usual powerful presence on screen. More so in this film because he was responsible for leading a complex issue. The movie's cast is a mixture of seasoned actors and actors emerging into their careers, such as Janet MacLachlan, James A. Watson Jr., Jeff Bridges, Rob Reiner, and Dewayne Jessie. Dave Grusin is responsible for the title theme, "Reaching Out To You," with vocals by Maurice Miller. Overall, the movie tackles race relations, philosophies, and prejudice among a generation going through a considerable change. Although the plot is straightforward, I enjoyed this movie and the message. Therefore, I recommend it for viewing. Director: Paul Bogart Writers: John Herman Shaner, Al Ramrus Starring Calvin Lockhart, Janet MacLachlan, Jeff Bridges, James A. Watson Jr., Dewayne Jessie (Otis Day), Edward Asner, John McLiam, Rob Reiner, Patricia Stich, Gary Tigerman, Ta-Tanisha, Paris Earl, Christipher Joy, Hilly Hicks, Randy Brooks Storyline The court-ordered desegregation of an inner-city Los Angeles high school brings 60 white students into the predominantly African-American student body. Ex-basketball player Quincy Davis (Calvin Lockhart) returns home as the school's vice principal to take on this challenging job. https://www.daarac.ngo https://www.daaracarchive.org/.../halls-of-anger-1970.html Available on DVD and streaming services. https://www.amazon.com/Halls-Anger-Calvin.../dp/B0062KME3S

[packedwithpackards]

Chapter II: Escaping the throes of persecution

This is the 4th in a series of articles which serializes my family history, which I wrote in November 2017, titled "From Samuel to Cyrus: A fresh look at the History of the Packard Family." Below is the 2nd chapter of that history  titled "Escaping the throes of persecution." This has been updated to include helpful comments by Dale Cook, most recently on November 4, 2019, to remove the sentence "while Samuel’s appointment as a constable in 1664 and 1674, a licensed innkeeper in in 1671, and among “Bridgewater’s proprietors” in 1682 cannot be proven" along with some other minor changes.

It was June 1638. [11]  Newlyweds Samuel Packard, possibly 25 years old, and his wife Elizabeth, possibly 23 years old, brought their young daughter, Mary, on a ship to a new land. They were among 133 passengers, on the 350-ton ship, the HMS Diligent, mainly from Suffolk County’s Hingham, England (“Old Hingham”), destined for Hingham, Massachusetts (“New Hingham”), with John Martin as the Master and Captain of the ship. [12] These passengers comprised nineteen families, twelve of whom were from Old Hingham. Reportedly, there were about twenty servants in total, who served a number of the families, including ancestors of Abraham Lincoln, but not the Packards. [13] On August 10, after making a perilous journey from which a few passengers died and stops in the Carney Islands and Caribbean, before heading north, the Diligent arrived in the eight-year-old city of Boston. [14] Early American historian Alan Taylor, who notes that about 14,000 Puritans participated in the “Great Migration” from England to New England from approximately 1630 to 1630, describes that the journey across the Atlantic from England was extremely perilous for these new colonists to say the least:

Emigration across the Atlantic in a small and crowded wooden ship was…a daunting prospect. Battling the prevailing Atlantic winds and currents, the slow-moving vessels usually took eight to twelve weeks to cross. Few of the Puritans, who were mostly artisans and farmers [like the Packards], or their wives and children had to travel by ship. On board the standard vessel, about one hundred passengers [in this case 133] shared the cold, damp, and cramped hold with their property…The emigrants consumed barreled water, salt meat, and hard bread, a fare that worsened as the voyage proceeded…Only in relatively calm weather…could the passengers partake of the fresh air and distant views from the deck…Close quarters and proximity to death gave a new intensity to the daily prayers…of the passengers [15]

When they arrived in the city of Boston, recently established as part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, an English colony answerable to the British Crown with John Winthrop as the governor. The city had major fishing and whaling industries, gaining great wealth and power in the region. Samuel and Elizabeth were unlike other emigrants from England: they were “skilled and prosperous people” who usually stayed at home rather than going across the Atlantic, which would assist them in the northern hilly land with dense forests, “sharp slopes, stony soils, and a short growing season,” reinforced by their Puritan faith. [16] This faith, while it didn’t help them become rich like those who emigrated to the Chesapeake Bay region, was the well from which “increasing commercialism of New England” sprung since land was cheap and plentiful but little labor was available, so many farmers had to “rely on their own families or the labor” needed to maintain their “especially demanding farms.”

The Packards, among the hundreds on the ship were not coming to Massachusetts for new opportunities. The passengers, comprised of working-class folks like shoemakers and millers, a number of ministers, and gentry, were mostly Puritans, or more specifically, East Anglians. [17] Historical context helps gain a better perspective of who these colonists were and why they had traveled the seas. In early modern England, church and state were united, with the law demanding that all support the Church of England, also called the Anglican Church, which was headed by the English monarch since its creation in the 1530s. The monarchy used the church to promote religious and political conformity, creating a hierarchical social order, but there were certain “devout reformers” called Puritans (originally as an epithet) which wanted to change the Anglican Church and larger society, feeling that the Protestant Reformation was incomplete within England. [18]

Even with this goal, they were divided on the details, with some, called “Separatists” who wanted to withdraw and form their own independent congregations. They did agree on the disdain of medieval Catholicism, seeking to recover the “original, pure, and simple church of Jesus Christ and his apostles,” stripping away church ceremony and formulaic prayers, engaging in moral living, reading the bible, and “devout prayer.” Satirized by Ben Jonson as “Zeal-of-the Land Busy” character, their beliefs appealed to residents in England’s most “commercialized area,” specifically in East Anglia, Sussex, and London, with most belonging to the “middling sort,” those who were small propertyholders such as skilled artisans, shopkeepers, and farmers. The Packards, who were among this mix of people, felt their salvation by working hard in their occupation was proved by God, including “a strict code of personal discipline and morality,” with their rhetoric depicting England as a place which was “awash of thieves, drunks, idlers, prostitutes, and blasphemers.” While this zeal made them unpopular, as most English people “preferred Anglicanism,” it also alarmed English kings who wanted “unquestioning loyalty.” As the latter recognized the “subversive potential” of the insistence of Puritanism on “spiritual equality to all ungodly men,” they tried to accommodate the Puritans until King Charles I who hoped to “reconcile English Catholics” while bishops favoring the British crown dismissed Puritan preachers who “balked at conducting high church liturgy” and prosecuted numerous “Puritan laypeople.” [19] Any attempt for redress was eliminated when Charles I dissolved Parliament in 1629, ruling arbitrarily for next 11 years.

Since many Puritans refused to conform to the wishes of the King, his loyal Archbishop, and other authorities of the Anglican church, they began to think of journeying across the Atlantic to a new land. While past colonies in the region, specifically one in Maine from 1607-1608, had been a failure, promotional literature by Captain John Smith, of “Jamestown fame” appealed to those Puritans angry with their “Anglican rulers,” especially those who were Separatists. [20] As the years went by, new colonies expanded from coastal areas into the interior since they could not resist the allure of gaining “larger tracts of land for farming,” with 20,000 inhabitants by 1660. The Puritans believed that “religion and profit jump together,” meaning that they felt, as mainly small property holders, that they would feel the next economic pinch, also burdened by new taxes and increasing crime. As they had to “divest themselves of much of the property they had so painstakingly accumulated” to emigrate, which was painful for them since they “cherished property as their security,” they sought a new land which had no “profitable plantation crop,” and attained a longer-lived, healthier, and more sex-balanced population than other areas. With land grants within towns were granted to those men who banded together, colonists cut clearings in forests, chopped firewood, built barns and houses, constructed mills, and much more by “hand labor” which was demanding. With the raising a “medley of small crops” like beans, potatoes, maize, rye, wheat, and garden plants, the tending of farms was much work, leading to a population of short-lived indentured servants in an economy which had few, if any enslaved laborers, and family units where couples came together after the marriage was approved by the Puritan parents of the spouse and groom. [21] To finish up this summary of the history, the Puritans unlike their counterparts back in England and in the rest of the English-speaking colonies had more access to preaching, while they also rejected any form of religious liberty.

The Packard family story ties into this history. In 1633, migration from Hingham, England to the future site of “New Hingham” had begun with a group aboard the Elizabeth Bonaventure. Robert Peck, reverend of St. Andrew’s Parish Church, fled with half of his congregation, likely all of the 133 people on the Diligent, embarking from Ipswich, England. [22] Most of the passengers, including Samuel and Elizabeth, settled in “New Hingham,” a very wooded, fishery-based, agricultural town, by the water, similar to Plymouth, with the town’s population doubling after their arrival. The town, within the Plymouth Bay Colony, with 10-20 houses, some ships docked, and a few craftsmen as evidenced by a representation by a local artist in a soon-to-be-opened museum at the Hingham Historical Society.

The Packards were not the first, but were part of a considerable wave of new settlers, living in crudely and quickly built houses. “New Hingham,” founded in 1635 by Peter Hobart and a “group of Puritans,” was the removal town of “Old Hingham” “physically, mentally, socially, and spiritually” to New England. [23] With the town established, Hobart and Reverend Robert Peck became powerful individuals, a significant point since many families in “New Hingham” were part of their Church. [24] Samuel helped build, reportedly, numerous houses and lodgings across the colony as he fulfilled his vow with Elizabeth. They would grow up in a very traditional society with about 5.5% of the women remaining single throughout their lives, and an established division of tasks along gender lines. [25]

By the 1640s, as one genealogist, Dale Cook, writes, Samuel and his family were in Hingham, where they stayed from 1638 to 1654. [26] Others say that Samuel was a proprietor in Hingham (in 1638), that the family eventually moved to Weymouth where he was appointed a selectman, staying there from 1654 to 1664, and eventually moved to Bridgewater. During this time period, of living in Hingham, eight children were reportedly born: Samuel (d. 1697), Israel (d. 1699), Hannah (d. 1727), Deborah (d. 1725), Zaccheus (d. 1723), and Deliverance (d. 1708), while only two children would have been born in Weymouth: John (d. 1741) and Nathaniel (1655-1736). [27] There  were two other children: Thomas and Jaell.  As Dale Cook noted below, Jaell was one of their daughters and was a "Biblical name – that of the wife of Heber, a Kenite. Jael fulfilled the prophecy of judge and prophetess Deborah by killing Sisera, leader of the Canaanite army [Judges Chapter 4]."  These two individuals were clearly children of Samuel and Elizabeth.

The Packards were part of a society in Hingham but the growing colony in New England. Iron was imported into Hingham while “timber, planke, and mast” was exported into Boston for shipping and “cedar and pine board” was exported to other towns. By the 1640s, most of the “free colonists” in New England were “better fed, clothed, and housed” than their “common contemporaries” back in the “mother country” of England, with certain Puritans feeling that the settling of New England was a waste of time and resources, with effort better spent “at home.” [28] Residents participated directly in “King Philip’s War” in 1676. The Packards did participate when they were living in Bridgewater, 20-23 miles away. Samuel Packard Jr., Samuel’s son, was a sergeant and John Packard, also his son, was a soldier. The claim that his son, Israel was killed in action is erroneous. [29] Still, there was clear participation in King Phillip’s War, a genocidal action by English settlers against the original Indigenous inhabitants of New England. In one record transcription, it shows Israel Packard agreeing to serve “as a trooper” for the town of Bridgewater in May 1671. [30] It is also clear that it is clear that Samuel owned the “Nipenicket” farm near Bridgewater.

Notes

[11] Some sources claim that the sailing started from Gravesend on April 28, 1638 (ex: “Genealogical Guide to the Early Soldiers of America,” The Spirit of ’76 , Vol. 6, no. 3, Nov. 1899, p. 86, another genealogical book edited by William Richard Cutter, a book by Samuel Deane and a book by the Colonial Dames of America and the “Gilman Family History”) but these specific sources have not been examined independently at the current time. Sometimes their last name is spelled Packer or Parker, among many other spellings.

[12] James Savage, A Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England Vol. I (Boston: Little Brown &Company, 1860), 489-490; “Genealogical Gleanings in England,” New England Genealogical Register, Vol. L (Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 1998, reprint), p. 131; Henry F. Waters, Genealogical Gleanings in England Vol. II (Boston: New England Genealogical Society, 1901), 1122; Henry Whittemore, Genealogical Guide to the Early Settlers of America: With a Brief History of those of the First Generation (Baltimore: Clearfield Publishing, 1967), 284, 308, 374, 396, 426; James Savage, A Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England Vol. IV (Boston: Little Brown & Company, 1862), 202; Hingham, MA, History of the Town of Hingham, Massachusetts, Vol. III (Hingham, MA: University Press, 1893), 114; Solomon Lincoln, History of the town of Hingham, Plymouth County, Massachusetts (Hingham, MA: Caleb Gill, Jr. and Farmer and Brown, 1827), 46-48; Ezra S. Stearns, History of Ashburnham, Massachusetts, from the Grant of Dorchester Canada to Present Time (Ashburnham, MA, 1887), 841; Meredith Bright Colket and Keith M. Sheldon, Founders of Early American Families: Immigrants from Europe 1607-1657 (Cleveland, OH: General Court of Order of Founders and Patriots of America, ca. 1985), 235; William Richard Cutter, New England Families Genealogical and Memorial (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1913), 119, 122; Ted Clarke, Hingham: Four Centuries of History (London: The History Press, 2015), 9-10; Nahum Mitchell, History of the Early Settlement of Bridgewater, in Plymouth County, Massachusetts (Boston: Kidder & Wright, 1840), 253, 366, 329; Samuel G. Drake, Result of Researchers Among the British Archives (Boston: New England Historical and Genealogical Register, 1860), 78-81; Roger Thompson, Mobility and Migration: East Anglican Founders of New England, 1639-1640 (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994), xi; Charles B. Packard, The Crepe Myrtle (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2009), 12; Lee A. Whitters, “A Diligent Effort,” Dartmouth Medicine, Winter 2007; “Historical Timeline,” accessed Aug. 1, 2017.

[13] Savage, A Genealogical Dictionary Vol. I, 29, 142, 145; Whittemore, 284; Savage, A Genealogical Dictionary Vol. IV, 116, 133, 230, 233, 341; John J. Waters Jr., The Otis Family in Provincial and Revolutionary Massachusetts (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968), 13; “Genealogical Guide to the Early Soldiers of America,” The Spirit of ’76, Vol. 6, no. 3, Nov. 1899, p. 50; James Elton Bell and Frances Jean Bell, Sir Robert Bell and His Early Virginia Colony Descendants (Tuscon, AZ: Wheatmark, 2008), 44; Mitchell, 115; Drake, 79-81; Nathaniel Bradstreet Shurtleff, John Beal of Hingham, and one line of his descendants (Boston: 1865), 1; “Folsom History,” accessed August 1, 2017.

[14] Carolyn St. John Elliott Battles and James Bruce Battles, A Puritan Family’s Journey: From Hingham to Hingham and onto Sanbornton, New Hampshire: The Ancestors of Marion Gilmon Elliott (Carolyn St. John Elliott Battles, 2013), 30; Packard, 12; “Daniel Cushing’s Record of Early Settlers,” accessed August 1, 2017.

[15] Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America (New York: Penguin Books, 2001), 168-169.

[16] Ibid, 159-160, 168-169.

[17] Savage, 145, 353; Whittemore, 398; Stearns, 606, 661; Battles and Battles, 29; Waters Jr., 15; Mary Gant Bell, Dixon Family History (Mary Gant Bell, 2007), 309; Ira G. Peck, A Genealogical History of the Descendants of Joseph Peck (Boston: Alfred Mudge & Son, 1868), 14; “Passenger List of the Diligent 1638,” accessed August 1, 2007; Clarke, 11-16, to give a few sources.

[18] Alan Taylor, American Colonies, 160.

[19] Ibid, 161-162, 164.

[20] Ibid, 165.

[21] Ibid, 166-167, 169-170, 170-174, 179, 181, 185-186. During this process, two sets of parents “negotiated a property settlement to provide the new couple with the land, tools, and livestock to commence a farm or trade.” The region, as Taylor notes in page 176, depended on a “trading system that serviced the wealthier slave-based economy of the West Indies.”

[22] Battles & Battles, 29-30; Bell & Bell, 6; History of the town of Hingham, Massachusetts, Vol. II, Part 2 (Hingham, MA, 1893), p. 2-3, 36; Peck, 13; Brian E. Aiguier, “The History of the Hingham Police Department,” accessed Aug. 1, 2017.

[23] Waters Jr., 11-14; Thompson, 23, 108, 141, 200, 206, 221, 261-262; Richard Caldwell, A Tour of Hingham (East Weymouth, MA, 1974), 1, 33, 70, 78; Clarke, 16, 20-24. Those living in “old Hingham” told the British House of Commons that “most of the able Inhabitants have forsaken their dwellings and have gone severall ways for their peace and quiett and the town is now left and like in the misery by reason of the meanness of the [remaining] Inhabitants.”

[24] Ibid, 17-18; Peck, 25-26; Clarke, 28. The Diary of William Bentley Vol. III Jan. 1803-December 1810 (Salem, MA: The Essex Institute, 1911), 282; Thompson, 189; John Winthrop, Winthrop’s Journal: “History of New England” 1630-1649 (ed. James Kendall Hosmer, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1908), 229-232, 245, 289, 321, 330; Packard, 12-13. “Hobart’s Diary” is within the Diary of William Bentley, found in 1807, when before it was a record that was within the Hobart family. There is also Hobart’s Journal, but this is a different record.

[25] Carol F. Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998), 204-5, 339.

[26] See “Samuel Packard Family,” Plymouth Colony Pages, Early Bridgewater Families, 2011. As one Packard family member once said, “almost all of the Packards in America descend from Samuel & Elizabeth Packard who came to America in 1638.”

[27] Some cite different dates, saying that Zaccheus was born in 1643, John in 1655, and Deliverance in 1652. Looking through existing town records of Hingham shows no Packards born in the town. When I said that, I was referring to town records on Family Search, but as Dale Cook noted, "the baptisms of Packard children Hingham are found in the journal of Rev. Peter Hobart, who was Pastor there while Samuel and his family lived in that town," a journal published in NEHGR (New England Historical and Genealogical Register) in 1967. See my comment below for more.  In researching at the Hingham Historical Society in July 2017, no direct links to the Packards could be found, with only tangential links in Vol. II of the History of the Town of Hingham by George Lincoln (p. 195, 398) and a short mention in Vol. I on pages 104 to 105. Nothing else is known currently. See Find A Grave entry for Col. Thomas Packard, Sr. as well.

[28] James E. McWilliams, Building the Bay Colony: Local Economy and Culture in Early Massachusetts (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007), 48, 67, 74; Taylor, American Colonies, x, 168.

[29] William Hubbard, The History of the Indian Wars in New England (Danbury: Stiles Nichols, 1803), vii, 62-3, 67, 122, 135; Pansy Modesitt Gleason, “Gilman Family History,” Indiana Magazine of History, 1941, Vol. 37, Issue 4, pp. 405-407; Mitchell, 39-41 (from 1897 reprint). During this conflict, five houses in Hingham were apparently burned. Samuel and his sons were reportedly soldiers, part of a company led by Capt. Benjamin Church which captured 17 indigenous people and plundered along the way. On the town’s website, it says that in the town, founded in 1622 as Wessagusset, was boosted by the arrival of 100 settlers from Weymouth, England, in 1635. The town was later incorporated into the Massachusetts Bay colony and becoming a “fishing and agricultural community.” There is an extreme lack of records when it comes to Weymouth. Nothing is available from Family Search’s Family History Library, and records held by the town do not date back to the 17th century. Even the varied genealogy pages for the area, as shown here, here, and here, are lackluster

[30] Bridgewater, “Town Records 1656-1808 Vol. 1-4,” p. 60. Also see here and here. The verification of these claims is hard because at the time no newspapers of Bridgewater were published or still survive.

Note: This was originally posted on July 13, 2018 on the main Packed with Packards WordPress blog (it can also be found on the Wayback Machine here). My research is still ongoing, so some conclusions in this piece may change in the future.

© 2018-2022 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

#packards #family history #genealogy #genealogy research #lineage #hingham #puritans #world's end #massachusetts #bear's cove #farmers #boston #religious liberty #ipswich #bridgewater #king phillip's war #indigenous people #slave trade #slavery

[castpajama50]

Step

It has a 3.5 CHP motor and a 20-by-60 inch running path with a StrikeZone cushioning system, which softens your feet’s impact in entrance and helps propel your kickoff on the back. All together, it adds as a lot as a quieter mechanism that redirects your body’s force to a more energetic workout. You can take it up to 12 mph and simulate hilly runs with an incline of as much as 15%. The ProForm SMART Pro 2000 is a deceptively giant treadmill, heavy obligation throughout and geared up with a generously wide 22-inch working deck. But it doesn’t must take up lots of ground space 24/7, because when it’s not in use the Pro 2000 folds up for a a lot smaller footprint. One reason indoor biking has gotten so much love is that it’s a fantastic type of exercise for novices to get began with. It’s additionally a low-impact kind of train that’s straightforward on the joints, and unlike biking, pedaling indoors lets you sneak in a tricky cardio exercise without taking to the streets. Stationary bikes also enable a certain stage of engagement that a road bike can’t offer you, syncing as much as health apps though Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity. During the peak of the pandemic and social distancing, at-home health boomed. This light-weight 40-pound bike is amongst the finest house train bikes for cyclists on a finances who still need a performance monitor to look at their stats. The one on this bike will observe your time, pace, distance, calories, RPM, and pulse. Extra perks embrace a dumbbell holder on your weights, flooring stabilizers to keep the bike level, and a tablet stand so you probably can watch Netflix while you cycle. “This bike goes to journey easily and is straightforward to set up,” says Bianca Matamoros Koonce, a Spin instructor at CycleBar Chandler and Paradise in Arizona. The stepper comes in over five totally different colours and contains a non-slip broad surface for sturdy use throughout intense workouts. Best of all, the broader platform can assist up to 300 kilos at once. With its heavy-duty polypropylene materials and advanced injection molding expertise, this cardio step platform comes with a shock-absorbing, non-stick, non-slip floor. Take note of the number of risers a step platform includes or whether the peak of the platform may be adjusted. The first house video of step aerobics was released during the weekend of July 28–30, 1989, by Cathe Friedrich who offered out her provide of tapes at the IDEA International Aerobics Convention in Nashville. Also in town for the conference, Gin Miller appeared on Nashville's TV present Talk of the Town on July 28 to advertise Bench Blast. New Jersey fitness instructor Dawn Brown launched Step It Out in 1990, one of many earliest adopters of Step Reebok. A smaller gadget called Super Step was promoted with a video by Brenda Dykgraaf and Kathy Smith. The peak of the step should be tailored to the person; lower levels for newbies. The step is never approached with the participant's again toward it. Stair climbing exercise was already thousands of years old when physiologists began finding out its medical characteristics within the 20th century. Climbing stairs was lengthy identified to be wholesome train for the center. The act of stepping up and down on one bench was studied in 1986 by a staff led by Doctor Fredric L. Goss of the Human Energy Research Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh. Goss adopted this in 1988 with an evaluation of the vitality expenditure of step aerobics combined with hand weights. It additionally acts as a shock absorbent to guarantee efficient workout results. This stepper adjusts in two ranges, 4 and 6, to accommodate totally different exercises and individuals. But it’s the attention to element that ultimately wins this stepper our vote. best aerobic stepper comes with a single riser that permits you to adjust the height of the platform to both 6, eight, or 10 inches to go properly with your exercise plan, health goals, and top. We reviewed dozens of aerobic steppers and exercise step platforms to determine the most effective of one of the best. We examined a variety of factors, including materials, dimension, stability, maximum person weight, convenience, cost, and common customer evaluations.

The stepping and leaping actions in a step aerobics class problem your coronary heart and lungs. Your heart rate rises, your respiration turns into more fast and you start to sweat. This sort of exercise challenges your cardiovascular system and makes it stronger over time. Regular cardio exercise, corresponding to step aerobics, may help manage or decrease high blood pressure and prevent heart disease. Even higher, it’s versatile, and you can change up your routine from day to day. However, for folks that already undergo from bone and joint problems such as osteoporosis, high impression workouts like running can cause more hurt than good. People who have weak ankles or knees or for many who undergo from degenerative bone diseases undoubtedly wish to engage in low influence workout routines versus excessive influence ones. You can add your individual variations to make these moves more difficult. Many of these workout routines isolate one leg at a time and thus goal the core leg muscles- Femoris, Lateralis, Medialis, and Intermedius. Injuries can occur rapidly if your foot slips whereas utilizing the stepper.

#aerobic stepper #aerobic step platform #best aerobic stepper

[ciceroballtorture]

The disappearance of God by J. Hillis Miller 

There was once a girl who said, “When I grow up, I’m going to marry Daddy.” I wonder who she actually ended up marrying. Blood relationships are the only relationships we have where people want us exactly as we are. To a child, the daddy who affirms everything about her is her prince and the “world” itself. So the words, “When I grow up, I’m going to marry Daddy” mean the same thing as “I’m going to make the whole world mine.” However. In the process of becoming an adult, there comes a moment for each of us when we’re rejected by the “world.” The person we were so in love with dumps us. The school we wanted to go to so badly doesn’t let us in. The career we were trying for doesn’t pan out. Everyone has a moment like that. And that’s okay. There’s no such thing as something which mustn’t be lost. Everyone has the freedom to love someone or something. We are free. We mustn’t forget that.

Ikuhara's commentary on episode 32 'Her Tragedy' of RGU

#.wh #.rgu #connections that exist to me and mean something