She was a Chinese prostitute who married a pirate and took over his fleet when he died. She ran her ships with an iron fist and took no shit and was super successful, to the point that the Chinese government sent out an armada to stop her. She kicked their asses and captured 63 of their ships. They fought for two years and even brought in Dutch and British ships before they gave up and offered amnesty to her and her 17,000 crewmen. She got to keep ALL of her loot, spent her later years running a brothel/casino and lived to be 69.
He was a WW2 Commando who served with distinction in a number of theaters, his exploits earned him the Military Cross. He was known as ‘Mad Jack’ by his men and his fellow officers for his ferociousness in combat. Unlike his more conventional peers his weapons of choice were not the traditional British fire arms of the period, instead he chose to rush in to combat with a fucking long bow, a fucking sword and his trusty bag pipes. In 1943 him and a corporal infiltrated a German held town in Sicily capturing 42 men and a mortar position. With only his bagpipes, sword and bow. When the war ended in 1945 after the dropping of the bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, he was extremely disappointed and was quoted as saying “If it wasn’t for those damn Yanks, we could have kept the war going another 10 years.”
This Mongolian Princess insisted that any man who wished to marry her must defeat her in wrestling, forfeiting horses to her if they lost. She gained 10,000 horses defeating prospective suitors.
“I am the punishment of God. If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me to you.” Only someone badass enough to know they are badass enough to say that can be considered the baddest ass in history.
Tank Man, of Tiananmen Square fame. We tend to think that you need an army at your back to be a badass, but when you’re a true badass you face the army in front of you even when there’s no one behind you.
*worked in military intelligence during WW2, the character of James Bond is supposed to be part based on him (Ian Fleming was his cousin.) About his war service (from wikipedia): Lee spent time with the Gurkhas of the 8th Indian Infantry Division during the Battle of Monte Cassino. -While spending some time on leave in Naples, Lee climbed Mount Vesuvius, which erupted three days later. – During the final assault on Monte Cassino, the squadron was based in San Angelo and Lee was nearly killed when one of the planes crashed on takeoff and he tripped over one of its live bombs. *played Count Dracula in a string of popular Hammer Horror films; a James Bond villain in The Man with the Golden Gun; Lord Summerisle in The Wicker Man; Saruman in The Lord of the Rings films and The Hobbit films; and Count Dooku in the final two films of the Star Wars prequel trilogy. *released a Heavy metal album at the age of 88; has won awards for his metal music; the single he released in his 90th birthday made him the genre’s oldest performer; he had a song in the Billboard Hot 100 in December 2013 making him — at 91 — the living oldest performer to ever chart; released an EP earlier this year, at 92. If he’s not the world’s baddest ass, he might still be the worlds most interesting man.
Subutai, Ghengis Khan’s primary military strategist. Tore through Eastern Europe like tearing toilet paper, with only a scouting force. Check out the wiki link, because he was unbelievable.
I’ll always stand by Anne Boleyn – she manipulated an infamous king into turning away from his beloved religion, kill his supporters who objected (Cardinal Wolsey), and broke with the church to marry her. She’s usually seen as conniving, a witch and evil, but in a male dominated world she cut out her own path and went from low born to the queen of England. She’s such an interesting person in my opinion
Frederick the Great is one of the most underrated badasses in history. The guy took on Austria, France, Russia, Poland, Sweden, and a bunch of smaller German and Italian states and won with his tiny kingdom-Prussia. He turned a small obscure German state into the nation that would end up uniting Germany and guide it on its path to evoking the most powerful country on Earth…until WW1. He was also a very wise monarch. He was friends with Voltaire and passed reforms that helped out the serfs and Jews.
The Queen of the Iceni tribe of ancient celts, she led a ragtag army of Celtic tribes against the invading and highly organized roman army. She burnt Londonium (modern day London) to the ground and wiped out a decent portion of Roman forces. And, oh yeah, this is after the Romans came and ignored her rule, beat her up, and raped her two daughters. Boudicca didn’t mess around.
“On the morning of 7 August 1916, after a night of heavy shelling, the Germans began to overrun a portion of the line which included Jacka’s dug-out. Jacka had just completed a reconnaissance, and had gone to his dug-out when two Germans appeared at its entrance and rolled a bomb down the doorway, killing two of his men. Emerging from the dug-out, Jacka came upon a large number of Germans rounding up some forty Australians as prisoners. Only seven men from his platoon had recovered from the blast; rallying these few, he charged at the enemy. Heavy hand-to-hand fighting ensued, as the Australian prisoners turned on their captors. Every member of the platoon was wounded, including Jacka who was wounded seven times; including a bullet that passed through his body under his right shoulder, and two head wounds. Fifty Germans were captured and the line was retaken; Jacka was personally credited with killing between twelve and twenty Germans during the engagement.” And that was the second time he had done something like that. I suspect he was a terminator sent back to save some historically important grandfathers.
Second longest serving Senators in US History (representing Hawaii since it gained statehood in 1959) and a WWII vet with this remarkable story to tell: “On April 21, 1945, Inouye was grievously wounded while leading an assault on a heavily-defended ridge near San Terenzo in Tuscany, Italy, called Colle Musatello. The ridge served as a strongpoint along the strip of German fortifications known as the Gothic Line, which represented the last and most unyielding line of German defensive works in Italy. As he led his platoon in a flanking maneuver, three German machine guns opened fire from covered positions just 40 yards away, pinning his men to the ground. Inouye stood up to attack and was shot in the stomach; ignoring his wound, he proceeded to attack and destroy the first machine gun nest with hand grenades and fire from his Thompson submachine gun. After being informed of the severity of his wound by his platoon sergeant, he refused treatment and rallied his men for an attack on the second machine gun position, which he also successfully destroyed before collapsing from blood loss. As his squad distracted the third machine gunner, Inouye crawled toward the final bunker, eventually drawing within 10 yards. As he raised himself up and cocked his arm to throw his last grenade into the fighting position, a German inside the bunker fired a rifle grenade that struck him on the right elbow, severing most of his arm and leaving his own primed grenade reflexively “clenched in a fist that suddenly didn’t belong to me anymore.” Inouye’s horrified soldiers moved to his aid, but he shouted for them to keep back out of fear his severed fist would involuntarily relax and drop the grenade. While the German inside the bunker reloaded his rifle, Inouye pried the live grenade from his useless right hand and transferred it to his left. As the German aimed his rifle to finish him off, Inouye tossed the grenade into the bunker and destroyed it. He stumbled to his feet and continued forward, silencing the last German resistance with a one-handed burst from his Thompson before being wounded in the leg and tumbling unconscious to the bottom of the ridge. When he awoke to see the concerned men of his platoon hovering over him, his only comment before being carried away was to gruffly order them to return to their positions, since, as he pointed out, “nobody called off the war!”
He was an American pilot during WWII. At the Battle of the Coral Sea, he shot down two Japanese Zeroes in an SBD Dauntless – a dive bomber – and rammed a third. Upon learning of this, the Navy transferred him to a fighter wing flying F4F Wildcats. Later, at the Battle of Santa Cruz, he became an “ace in a day”, shooting down seven Japanese planes in a single sortie. At least one of these kills was accomplished after running out of ammunition; he charged an enemy plane (which was also out of ammunition) head-on at low altitude and forced it to crash. He survived the war, as well.
16th Irish noblewoman, when she was a child her father (the chieftain of the Uí Mháille clan) refused to take her to sea and she cut off all her hair to embarrass him into taking her (her nickname means Bald Grainne). She was born at a time when the Tudor conquest of Ireland was picking up the pace. Throughout her life she was a pirate, she was leader of fighters, under her leadership castles and forts were taken and withstood sieges, she was a revolutionary and war-leader and when Elizabeth I captured her sons and brother, she came to the royal court and negotiated their release in Latin, as she spoke no English and Elizabeth spoke no Irish. Her life would seriously fill about ten books.
Audie Murphy, aka real life Captain America. He was 16 in 1942, weighing 110 pounds and standing 5’5″. He applied to both the Marines and Air Force, but was turned down by both, and eventually managed to get into the Army, where he passed out halfway through training but insisted on going to fight. He contracted malaria in Italy, but was still sent into France in 1944, where he found a German machine gun crew who pretended to surrender, then shot his best friend. Murphy flipped shit, killed everyone in the gun nest, then used their weaponry to kill every Nazi in a 100-yard radius. 6 months later, his company (down to 19 men out of the original 128) was tasked with defending a critical region in France. The Nazis showed up with a ton of guys, so Murphy and his men sent out their M-10’s, which didn’t do much. They were about to be overrun when the skinny short kid with malaria ran to one of the burning M-10’s, grabbed the machine gun, and started mowing down every enemy he could see. He kept going for an hour, until he ran out of bullets, then walked back to his men as the tank exploded behind him.
For starters, he was part of the D-Day invasion. That very day, he killed a squad of German soldiers and captured a half-track that was loaded with intelligence information. Quite a while later, he ran into 4 SS soldiers and killed all of them. However, one hit him with a phosphorous grenade, blinding him in one eye. He refused discharge, saying that as long as he could see through the scope, he had enough eyes. During the Battle of the Scheldt, Major single-handedly captured 93 German soldiers and was offered a Distinguished Conduct Medal. He refused, saying that the man awarding it, General Bernard Montgomery, was an incompetent, so any award from him was worthless. In the beginning of 1945, he was in a vehicle that struck a landmine. He broke both ankles, 4 ribs, and fractured 3 vertebrae. He still continued, refusing evacuation. In April of that year, his unit came upon the Dutch city of Zwolle. His commander asked for two volunteers for a reconnaissance mission. Major and his friend Willie volunteered. They were expected to go see how many German soldiers were in the town. Shortly into their mission, Willie was killed, and the plan changed. Major was out for blood. He went down the street guns blazing and throwing grenades while yelling in French to convince the Germans that the Canadians had sent their whole force into the town. He captured nearly one hundred German troops who went fleeing from their cover. Later that night, he came upon the Gestapo HQ and burned it to the ground. He barged into the SS HQ later that same night, killed 4, and ran the other 4 out of town. At 4:30 a. m. He discovered that the city belonged to the Dutch again, and the Germans had been run out. He received a Distinguished Conduct Medal for single-handedly liberating the town of Zwolle. But he still wasn’t done. In the Korean War, he was asked to lead a strike team of elite snipers to support an American division. He and his twenty men took the hill single-handedly and held it while nearly 20,000 Chinese soldiers attacked their position. He was ordered to retreat. Instead, he held the hill for three days until reinforcements arrived. For this action, he received a bar to his DCM.
While the story is probably embellished some, it’s still amazing. While on a fur trapping expedition, he was mauled by a grizzly bear, which he killed with some help, then passed out. Later, he woke up to find his party abandoned him and he had no equipment. So he cleaned his multiple wounds, used the bear’s skin as a bandage, and spent the next six weeks making it back to civilization. Along the way he fought off wolves, made his own raft to travel down a river, and with the help of natives sewed the bear skin in place to replace his own.
Witold Pilecki was a Polish soldier and resistance member who volunteered to get imprisoned in the Auschwitz concentration camp in order to gather intelligence and escape. While in the camp, Pilecki organized a resistance movement and as early as 1941, informed the Western Allies of Nazi Germany’s Auschwitz atrocities. He escaped from the camp in 1943 after nearly 3 years of imprisonment.
To elaborate, he was a tiny guy that ran track for the US Olympic team in Germany. He got cleated up so bad by the other runners he was bleeding all over the place and he busted it down the final stretch, didn’t win but the crowd was going nuts for the guy so much so that hitler asked to shake his hand after the race. Plane gets shot down in ww2, survives longer a drift than anyone has ever survived while fighting off sharks. Washes ashore a Japanese prison camp, much badassery ensues here. Gets tortured for a couple years and after he’s released, this cat returns to japan to tell his torturer that he forgives him, the coward won’t meet him. This guy even died on the Fourth of July. Oh and some say he was actually the first to run a mile in under four minutes, in the sand.
If Commanding General of the American Expeditionary Forces in WWI, John J. Pershing was alive today, he would probably say the following on how to deal with suicide bombers and deter Islamic terrorists: further action can be taken once they blow themselves up; there is an effective substance that can deter these bombers. Its pork, and it will deny any Muslim extremist what they seek after death. During the Philippine Wars 1899-1913, we fought another Islamic terrorist group called the Moro’s, which were decisively quelled by John J. Pershing. One tactic he employed is said to have happened in 1911, when Pershing was serving as commander of a garrison. Following numerous Islamic terrorist attacks, Pershing captured fifty of the Moro’s, and used their religion against them. Forced to dig their own graves, the terrorists were all tied to posts, for execution by firing squad. American soldiers then brought in pigs, slaughtered them, and then coated their bullets with the blood and fat from the pigs. Pershing turned the tables, and terrorized these terrorists; he ensured they saw that once struck by the firing squad’s bullets, they would be contaminated with the pig’s blood. Even worse, their bodies would be dumped in a grave with a pig carcass, meaning that they could not enter Heaven, even if they were engaged in a Jihad. Pershing followed through with the operation. Forty-nine Moro’s were shot, their bodies dumped into the graves, and the dead pig carcasses and entrails poured all over them. The Fiftieth Moro was spared, and allowed to return to his camp, to spread the word to his fellow Jihadists what happened to the others. He must have made it clear what fate awaits any Jihadists caught by the Americans from that point forward, as it brought an end to terrorism in the Philippines for the next 50 years.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 64%. (I'm a bot)
Dave Prowse, the Bristolian former bodybuilder best known for playing Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy, has died aged 85. Prowse's career as an actor spanned 50 years, but it was his role as the Sith Lord in Star Wars that brought him international fame. Prowse made his film debut in 1967 James Bond spoof Casino Royale playing Frankenstein's Creature, a part he was asked to play again in two films from the iconic Hammer film series, 1970's Horror Of Frankenstein and 1974's Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell. Spotted by director George Lucas in the 1971 film Clockwork Orange, in which he played a bodyguard, Prowse was invited to audition for the roles of Darth Vader and Chewbacca in 1977's Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. With the success of Star Wars, Prowse became a regular on the fan circuit and attended conventions around the world for almost 40 years, but he was rumoured to have later fallen out with director Lucas and was banned from official events in 2010. Despite the enduring clamour for Star Wars, the actor always maintained that playing the Green Cross Code Man, which he first portrayed in 1975, was the "Best job I ever had".
Gravity's Rainbow Group Read | Sections 22-25 | Week 7
Slothrop's Hawaiian Shirt by Zak Smith (2006). I just want to begin by thanking u/Bloomsdayclock for coordinating this endeavor, for all of the previous posts thus far, and for the enthusiastic interaction and scholarship that’s been happening in the comments for each post. This group read has rekindled my love for this book and is helping me understand it in so many different ways and in such greater depth that it's honestly like I’m reading a different book at this point. Also, kudos to each previous poster for creating a coherent post! The book is complex enough on its own but once you start going down the rabbit hole, sussing out the references, reading through some of the scholarship, etc., I almost found myself paralyzed by information overload (kinda feeling a bit like Charlie Kelly trying to figure out who “Pepe Silvia” is :) ). When this reading group started, I was like, “damn, I’m trying to read this insanely complex novel and the group posts are just as long, dense, and complex” and now I’ve gone and written some super long and dense post, too. To paraphrase either Blaise Pascal or Mark Twain (or Woodrow Wilson or apparently a rather large number of dead white guys from history): I would have written a shorter post if I’d had the time! Apologies in advance! Anyways, this post will (attempt to) cover the start of the second section of the novel, Un Perm’ au Casino Hermann Goering. The events that transpire are zany and sinister, titillating and deeply sad. There is a mix of images both gorgeous and disgusting and much of the planning and plotting that took place at “The White Visitation” during the first section are starting to come to fruition in part deux. For each “Episode”, I will provide a general summary of the “action” and then some commentary and we’ll finish this post up with a few discussion questions. Let’s begin! Episode 22 Summary Slothrop is on furlough/leave at a casino in Monaco (from what I’ve read...I thought it was France before, still not completely sure) that’s been renamed in honor of the big fat slob that led Hitler’s air force during the war. He’s in paradise but wakes up “...[waiting] for a sudden noise to begin his day, a first rocket” (p. 181). His friend Tantivy Mucker-Maffick and a somewhat suspicious friend of his, Teddy Bloat (“[there’s] something about the way he talks to Slothrop, patronizing? Maybe nervous…” (p. 182)), are staying down the hall. They’re talking about meeting some girls but, as the first song of the section reminds us, Englishmen can be very shy. Slothrop is happy to help his “buddies” out, but tells them not to “expect [him] to put it in for [them]” (p. 183). Classic Slothrop! Slothrop decides to wear a hideous (or amazing, depending on your sensibilities) genuine Hawaiian shirt that he received from his brother Hogan in the Pacific. The shirt seems to emit a glow (once he steps into the sun, it “blazes into a refulgent life of its own” (!) (p. 184), so Tantivy, “friend” that he is, tries to convince Slothrop to cover it up with scratchy Savile Row coat. The trio hit the beach and the ladies are on them already. They’ve got food and booze and are ready for a nice day on the beach. The morning seems too good even for a bit of the “early paranoia”. And then Bloat ruins everything by drawing Slothrop’s attention to the woman down the beach being attacked by “the biggest fucking octopus Slothrop has ever seen outside of the movies”. Slothrop rushes off to intervene and, left without recourse, starts trying to bash the cephalopod on the head with a wine bottle to no avail. Thankfully, Bloat just happens to have a big, tasty crab on his person, which he tosses to Slothrop with the advice, “It’s hungry, it’ll go for the crab. Don’t kill it, Slothrop.” Slothrop uses the crab to bait away the animal from its current prey, noticing that it does not seem to be in good mental health. He eventually tosses the crab, like a discus, into the sea, and the octopus follows. The damsel has been saved, Slothrop is championed as a brave hero and his first thought is where in the fuck did that crab come from. The exchange: “Tantivy smiles and flips a small salute. “Good show!” cheers Teddy Bloat. “I wouldn’t have wanted to try that myself!” “Why not? You had that crab. Saaay-where’d you get that crab?” “Found it,” replies Bloat with a straight face. Slothrop stares at this bird but can’t get eye contact. What th’ fuck is going on?” (p. 187). The damsel thanks Slothrop. Her ID bracelet identifies her as Katje Borgesius. Slothrop feels like he knows her and “...voices begin to take on a touch of metal, each word a hard-edged clap, and the light, though as bright as before, is less able to illuminate….it’s a Puritan reflex of seeking other orders behind the visible, also known as paranoia, filtering in…” (p. 188). How does Slothrop deal with this? By dividing up his present company into a dichotomy: the increasingly drunk Tantivy, “a messenger from Slothrop’s innocent, pre-octopus past” flirting with the girls and Bloat, “perfectly sober, mustache unruffled, regulation uniform [on the fucking beach!], watching [him] closely” (p. 188). And then there’s Katje, who, with her glance, makes Slothrop think she knows something (what?), asking him “Did you know all the time about the octopus? I thought so because it was so like a dance-all of you” (p. 188). Well, fuck me! Katje then tells “Little Tyrone” to be “very careful” and that “Perhaps, after all, we were meant to meet…” (p. 189). Now that’s a “meet cute” for ya! Commentary/Questions
Is the casino fully owned and controlled by Them at this point (is César Flebótomo (Spanish for “sandfly”) a(n) (un)willing patsy in Their employ?). Is it the “lab” for this “phase” of the Slothrop experiment. Or is it just secured enough to ensure the results of the experiment aren’t tainted by some unforeseen variable/interference?
Teddy Bloat seems like a purposeful pun in reference to the bureaucracy of government/intel agencies
Songs are one way that Pynchon fills his book with “the language of the preterite”, a term from Weisenburger used to describe the “slang, underworld cant, songs, games, folk-genres, and material culture” used by Pynchon to pit “open, unsanctioned, and “low” languages” against the “closed, orthodox, privileged language of a culture”. This idea is expanded on by literary critic/philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin who notes that the “heteroglossic” aspect of novels allows them to be radical, open-ended artworks filled with a variety of voices that each embody a particular time and place (his term for this idea is a “chronotope”).
The whole episode is just soaked in paranoia, from beginning to end. Whatever Slothrop thought he thought he was feeling in Section 1 has been taken up a notch. He senses a plot but keeps playing along.
Is “Borgesius” a tribute to J.L. Borges?
“Little Tyrone” echoes “Baby Tyrone” from Jamf’s experiments and maybe is supposed to make us realize that while the antics in this episode could possibly be construed as a “loss” of Slothrop’s “innocence” that was actually taken from him as a baby.
Episode 23 Summary Dr. Porkyevitch (“Porky the pig”?) and “Grisha” (“[frisking] happily in his special enclosure”) stare back at the “blazing bijou” of the Casino from their ship, contemplating their future now that they may no longer be of use to Pointsman, yearning for traces of the Russia they’ve been exiled from. To the casino: Katje is a vision in shades of green and is escorted by a two-star general and a brigadier. Is it Pudding? RHIP :) Slothrop and Tantivy in the dining room. Slothrop raises the “The Ballad of Tantivy Mucker-Maffic” to get the room singing of his friend’s drunken exploits so that he can speak to Katje who uses the cacophony to invite him to her room after midnight! Slothrop then probes his buddy to see if he notices anything funny going on. Tantivy brushes him off a bit (“there’s always, you know, an element of Slothropian paranoia to contend with…”(p. 192)) but then concedes that the bastard Bloat is receiving coded messages. Ha! And it turns out Bloat has become a bit of a different man over the last few years, something more than being “Blitz rattled”. He’s also warned Tantivy away from Katje (“I’d stay clear of that one if I were you” (p. 193)) and Tantivy feels used by Bloat (“being tolerated for as long as he can use me” (p. 193)). The encounter ends with Tantivy telling Slothrop to be careful and, should he need help, he’ll be there for him. At midnight, Slothrop leaves for his rendezvous with Ms. Borgesius, “ascending flights of red-carpeted stairway (Welcome Mister Slothrop Welcome To Our Structure We Hope You Will Enjoy Your Visit Here)” (p. 194). Arriving, he teases her about her date at dinner and then about their slightly sinister “meet cute” while examining her closet which is absolutely filled to the brim with a variety of outfits. The “Too Soon To Know (Fox-Trot)” before they get down to it. As he is undressing her, he notices “...the moonlight only whitens her back, and there is a still a dark side, her ventral side, her face, than he can no longer see, a terrible beastlike change coming over muzzle and lower jaw, black pupils growing to cover the entire eye space till whites are gone and there’s only the red animal reflection when the light comes to strike no telling when the light-” (p. 196). Yikes! As they fuck, she wonders if his “careful technique” is for her or “wired into the Slothropian Run-together they briefed her on”. Either way, “she will move him, she will not be mounted by a plastic shell” (p. 196-197). Then, a slapstick fight with a seltzer bottle (planted by Them?) that has Slothrop looking for a banana cream pie to toss (classic!) after which they fall asleep, lying like two Ss. In the morning, their post-coital bliss is interrupted as Little Tyrone is rudely awakened by the sound of someone robbing his pants in the room next door. He chases after the thief, first naked, then dressed in a purple satin bedsheet. As he’s chasing, from way down the hallway, “a tiny head appears around a corner, a tiny hand comes out and gives Slothrop the tiny finger” (p. 199). Haha! He chases the thief up a tree only to have the tree cut down while he’s in it. The thief escapes and Bloat and some general find Slothrop a mess. Bloat takes Slothrop to his room where, “every stitch of clothing he owns is gone, including his Hawaiian shirt. What the fuck. Groaning, he rummages in the desk. Empty. Closets empty. Leave papers, ID, everything, taken… Hogan’s shirt bothers him most of all” (p. 201). Nobody knows where Tantivy’s gone off to. Bloat gives Slothrop a uniform (“a piece of Whitehall on the Riviera” (p. 201)) which doesn’t fit but the book advises, “Live wi’ the way it feels mate, you’ll be in it for a while” (p. 201). Slothrop ponders the meaning of the architecture and design of his surrounds, but “shortly, unpleasantly so, it will come to him that everything in this room [The Himmer-Spielsaal, no less] is being used from something different. Meaning things to Them it has never meant to us. Never. Two orders of being, looking identical….but, but….” (p. 202). THE WORLD OVER THERE. Against this realization Slothrop issues the only spell he knows, a defiant “Fuck You”. Walking, rainstorm, entertainment at the casino, no one has seen the dancing girls from the drunken breakfast, Slothrop is “finding only strangers where he looks” before freaking out in the casino, then getting wet in the rain, then returning to Katje, the only place he knew to come. Commentary
I love “The Ballad of Tantivy Mucker-Maffic” and would like to write a similar tune about the inebriated shenanigans committed by my best friend and I during college.
The bit about Oxford and Harvard not really existing to educate was a nice touch (p. 193)
“Snazzy” is an “Americanism” in the 40s! (p. 195).
Slothrop ponders an impending loss of innocence (but, again, it seems like that has already happened). He has nothing and no one in a foreign country and the sensation that his life is being purposefully, possibly nefariously influenced by forces he can vaguely perceive. “It’s here that saturation hits him, it’s all this playing games, too much of it, too many games: the nasal, obsessive voice of a croupier he can’t see...is suddenly speaking out of the Forbidden Wing directly to him, and about what Slothrop has been playing against the invisible House, perhaps after all for his soul, all day - terrified, he turns, turns out into the rain again where the electric lights of the Casino, in full holocaust, are glaring off the glazed cobbles.” And then, “How did this all turn against him so fast? His friends old and new, every last bit of paper and clothing connecting him to what he’s been, have just, fucking, vanished. How can he meet this with any kind of grace?” (p. 205)
The word “holocaust” is used quite a bit in this story
Setting this all in the casino is a nice touch: there is the illusion of chance and luck in a casino but the house always wins.
The juxtaposition of the comic (seltzer fight) with the tragic (Slothrop alone, trying to understand what’s happening) heightens both effects.
Episode 24 Summary They wake up with Katje calling slothrop a pig, which responds to by oinking. At breakfast, he is taking a refresher course in technical German and learning about The Rocket. His tutor, Sir Stephen Dodson-Truck (who speaks 33 languages!) aiding his understanding of German circuit schematics by way of ancient German runes. Slothrop understands immediately that Dodson-Truck is in on the plot but not sure how (“There are times when Slothrop can actually find a clutch mechanism between him and Their iron-cased engine far away up a power train whose shape and design he has to guess at, a clutch he can disengage, feeling then all his inertia of motion, his real helplessness… it is not exactly unpleasant, either. Odd thing. He is almost sure that whatever They want, it won’t mean risking his life, or even too much of his comfort. But he can’t fit any of it into a pattern, there’s no way to connect somebody like Dodson-Truck with somebody like Katje…. The real enemy’s somewhere back in that London anyways” (p. 207). Back in the Himmler-Spielsaal: “in the twisted gilt playing-room his secret motions clarify for him, some. The odds They played here belonged to the past, the past only. Their odds were never probabilities, but frequencies already observed. It’s the past that makes demands here. It whispers, and reaches after, and sneering disagreeably, gooses its victims. When they choose numbers, red, black, odd, even, what did They mean it? What Wheel did They set in motion? Back in a room, early in Slothrop’s life, a room forbidden to him now, is something very bad. Something was done to him and it may be that Katje knows what. Hasn’t he, in her “futureless look,” found some link to his own past, something that connects them closely as lovers?” (p. 208-209). “It is a curve each of them feels, unmistakably. It is the parabola.” No more news from London or Achtung. Bloat is gone now, too. Sir Stephen and Katje with their identical Corporate Smiles to dazzle him while they rob his identity. But! “He lets it happen” (p. 210). Slothrop is getting hardons after his rocket study sessions and then goes looking for relief with Katje. Sir Stephen appears to be timing these erections! So, Slothrop gets the smart idea to get him drunk via a drinking game and many, many people end up getting sloshed on some high class bubbly. Half the room is singing the “Vulgar Song”. Slothrop and Sir Steve get pretty hammered and start walking through a nice sunset, where Slothrop sees robed figures, hundreds of miles tall, on the horizon. Sir Stephen informs Slothrop that he’s got “potency issues” (which makes him the perfect observer for Slothrop’s sexual misadventures… “no nasty jissom getting all over their reports, you know” (p. 216)). He’s about to tell Slothrop the secret of “The Penis He Thought Was His Own”... ...but then starts waxing nostalgic about Sir Stephen’s son and his wife, Nora and her “Ideology of the Zero”. An interlude with Eventyr, Sachsa, Leni… “but where will Leni be now? Either we didn’t mean to lose her - either it was an ellipsis in our care, in what some of us even swear is our love, or someone has taken her, deliberately, for reasons being kept secret, and Sachsa’s death is part of it too” (p. 218). More on Sachsa’s death. Then, Sir Stephen vanishes (“but not before telling Slothrop that his erections of high interest to Fitzmaurice House”). Katje is pissed that Slothy got Sir Steve drunk enough to dish on the plot. They fight and then fuck. More rocket study sessions. The rocket taking off looks like a peacock, def pfau. Slothrop pressing for more information, Katje rebuffing, warning/advising“Oh, Slothrop… You don’t want me. What they’re after may, but you don’t. No more than A4 wants London. But I don’t think they know...about other selves...yours or the Rocket’s. No more than you do. If you can’t understand it now, at least remember. That’s all I can do for you” (p. 224). Then, “They go back up to her room again: cock, cunt, the Monday rain at the windows” (p. 224) (Oh, Tom, you romantic!). And finally, a bit of kazoo music, a final night together, and Katje disappears, too. Commentary
Slothrop makes an important connection to his childhood and wonders if Katje knows about it/whether she’s with him because of it (ol’ Pynch even manages to work in the rocket, too!): “You were in London while they were coming down. I was in ‘s Gravenhage while they were going up. Between you and me is not only a rocket trajectory but also a life. You will come to understand that between the two points, in the five minutes, it lives an entire life. You haven’t even learned the data on our side of the flight profile, the visible or trackable. Beyond them there’s so much more, so much none of us know” (p. 209).
More on the import of setting the action in the Casino: “The Forbidden Wing. Oh, the hand of a terrible croupier is that touch on the sleeves of his dreams: all his life of what has looked free or random, is discovered to’ve been under some Control, all the time, the same as a fixed roulette wheel-where only destinations are important, attention is to long-term statistics, not individuals: and where the House does, of course, keep turning a profit…” (p. 209).
A beautiful passage: “‘Holy shit.” This is the kind of sunset you hardly see any more, a 19th-century wilderness sunset...this anachronism in primal red, in yellow purer than can be found anywhere today, a purity begging to be polluted...of course Empire took its way westward, what other way was there but into those virgin sunsets to penetrate and to foul” (p. 214). Always dualities in this book.
“A pornography of blueprints” (p. 224). is a nice turn of phrase.
Foreshadowing: “She has her hair combed high today in a pompadour, her fair eyebrows, plucked to wings, darkened, eyes rimmed in black, only the outboard few lashes missed and left blond.
Connection to Nabokov: I really do think “Signs and Symbols” influenced this novel. Lines like this, “Here it is again, that identical-looking Other World - is he gonna have this to worry about, now? What th’ - lookit these trees - each long frond hanging, stuny, dizzying, in laborious dry point against the sky, each so perfectly placed…” (p. 225) remind me so much of the atmosphere in the story (itself about paranoia (“referential mania”)). This is a key excerpt from the Nabokov ditty: “In these very rare cases the patient imagines that everything happening around him is a veiled reference to his personality and existence. He excludes real people from the conspiracy - because he considers himself to be so much more intelligent than other men. Phenomenal nature shadows him wherever he goes. Clouds in the staring sky transmit to one another, by means of slow signs, incredibly detailed information regarding him. His inmost thoughts are discussed at nightfall, in manual alphabet, by darkly gesticulating trees. Pebbles or stains or sun flecks form patterns representing in some awful way messages which he must intercept. Everything is a cipher and of everything he is the theme.” Obviously this guy is, uh, slightly more clinical, but I still think the atmosphere/tone is similar between the two.
Episode 25 Summary We begin this episode with a Pavlov lecture about the physiological symptoms of hysteria and one of Pointsman’s poems (which he never shows to anyone). Then to the “White Visitation” chaps (Pointsman, Grunton, Throwster, Groast) rumor-mongering about their future. Things are looking bleak. Pudding might cut off funding, “Slothrop’s knocked out Dodson-Truck and the girl in one day” (p. 227), and Sir Steven’s got the P.M.’s son-in-law making embarrassing inquiries. But Pointsman is calm. Very calm. In fact, “[b]y facing squarely the extinction of his program, he has gained a great bit of Wisdom: that if there is a life force operating in Nature, still there is nothing so analogous in bureaucracy. Nothing so mystical. It all comes down, as it must, to the desires of individual men. Oh, and women too, of course, bless their empty little heads. But survival depends on having strong enough desires - on knowing the System better than the other chap, and how to use it. It’s work, that’s all it is, and there’s no room for any extrahuman activities - they only weaken, effeminize the will: a man either indulges them, or fights to win, und so weiter” (p. 230). And then we find out that Pointman’s figured out how to play Pudding to keep his support (more on that in a bit…) as he’s figured out Treacle, Groast, and Throwster, how to use them and manipulate them to get what he wants. What a fucking devious guy! Webley Silvernail sticks around after the meeting and imagines the lab animals putting on a beguine performance of a song called “Pavlovia” (right after this realization by Silvernail: “From overhead, from a German camera-angle, it occurs to Webley Silvernail, this lab here is also a maze...but who watches from above, who notes their reponses?” (p. 229)). And it’s all song and dance for a bit but since it’s Pynchon, it’s followed by an incredible poignant/tragic moment of clarity: “They have had their moment of freedom. Webley has only been a guest start. Now it’s back to the cages and the rationalized forms of death-death in the service of the one species cursed with the knowledge that it will die…. “I would set you free, if I knew how. But it isn’t free out here. All the animals, the plants, the minerals, even other kinds of men, are being broken and reassembled every day, to preserve an elite few, who are the loudest to theorize on freedom, but the least free of all. I can’t even give you hope that it will be different someday - that They’ll come out, and forget death, and lose Their technology’s elaborate terror, and stop using every other form of life without mercy to keep what haunts men down to a tolerable level - and be like you instead, simply here, simply alive….” The guest star retires down the corridors” (p. 230). What a soliloquy. [Tangent: almost 50 years later, how prescient is this passage?! This little monologue filled me with so many conflicting emotions: hope (because humans like Pynchon exist to dream this stuff up) and also dread because this paragraph describes a fundamental aspect and egregious flaw (or flaws) in human nature. Reading and re-reading this passage depresses me a little (hence my question about mental health below). Now Pudding is sneaking about the bowels of “The White Visitation”. He heads past the cells of loonies on his way to a secret rendezvous. It seems like Pointsman may have drugged him at some point to get at hidden desires. We watch as our dear old Brigadier putters from room-to-room, finding items left for him by Pointsman that mock him and describe his descent into a personal hell (for info on the symbolism, the Weisenburger book is quite helpful). In the final room, Pudding drops to his knees at the feet of his Domina Nocturna (with “her blond hair...tucked and pinned beneath a thick black wig”... “naked except for a long sable cape and black boots with court heels” (p. 233)). Pudding is thinking of the night they first met. He saw “her” “...through the periscope, underneath a star shell that hung in the sky, he saw her….and though he was hidden, she saw Pudding. Her face was pale, she was dressed all in black, she stood in No-man’s Land, the machine guns raked their patterns all around her, but she needed no protection. “They knew you, Mistress. They were your own. And so were you” (p. 233). And then he offers her a “nice” memory of a legion of Franco’s troops killing and getting killed at a massacre at Badajoz for which he is “rewarded” with her beating and then pissing and shitting in his mouth… … … … However off-putting this may be for some (most), it does something for Pudding. He needs pain. “They have stuffed paper illusions and military euphemisms between him and this truth, this rare decency, this moment at her scrupulous feet….no it’s not guilt here, not so much as amazement - that he could have listened to so many years of ministers, scientists, doctors each with his specialized lies to tell, when she was here all the time, sure in her ownership of his failing body, his true body: undisguised by uniform, uncluttered by drugs to keep from him her communiqués of vertigo, nausea and pain. Above all, pain. The clearest poetry, the endearment of greatest worth…” (p. 234-235). Munching down on a hot turd makes Pudding think of the horrible smells of his service during WWI: putrid mud, rot, death, “...the sovereign smell of their first meeting, and her emblem” (p. 235). After eating her shit, he jerks off (his release), in a style that Domina Nocturna has learned from watching Captain Blicero and Gottfriend (at this point, it is safe to say, Domina Nocturna is Katje. Will we ever be able to look at her the same?). Pudding is then dismissed to “...a late-night cup of broth, routine papers to sign, a dose of penicillin that Pointsman has ordered him to take, to combat the effects of E. Coli” (p. 236). So thoughtful, that Pointsman... Commentary
The Silvernail hallucination/phantasmagoria seems like something straight out of “The Big Lebowski” had Jodorowsky had a bit of influence over the Coen Bros. art direction. Many of the songs in this section feel “Lebowski-esque” but this one especially so to me. Maybe its the detailed choreographic notes: “They dance in flowing skeins. The rats and mice form circles, curl their tails in and out to make chrysanthemum and sunburst patterns, eventually all form into the shape of a single giant mouse, at whole eye Silvernail poses with a smile” (p. 230).
The Franco bit is a nice way of linking facism and death worship
Pudding eating Domina Nocturna’s shit really, to quote an earlier passage, gave “de wrinkles in mah brain a process!”. There is so much symbolism there! Instead of ascending to heaven, Pudding heads down to hell. We have so many dualities linked in the act: between young and old, sacred and profane, pleasure and pain, pleasure through pain, WWI and WW2, man and woman, life and death, the general as a slave, even the food transformed through Katje into waste, all linked through the act of eating shit. For a moment they are linked so intimately, so delicately. No parabolas, a circle. And, of course, there’s also the diabolical Pointsman in the background, pulling the strings and manipulating to keep Pudding in line. I remember reading this for the first time and just being shocked and confused and now reading it again and finding so much meaning. That ol’ Pynchon is a devious bastard, hiding such loaded symbolism in such an obscene encounter. The Pulitzer committee had no idea what was coming for them!
So, if you’ve reached this point, congratulations and I am sorry! Here are my discussion questions. Looking forward to future posts! Discussion Questions Both On Topic and Tangential
Why is paranoia described as a “Puritan reflex” in Episode 22?
In Episode 23, as Slothrop peruses Katje’s extensive wardrobe, what is the significance of the line, “Aha! wait a minute, the operational scent in here is carbon tet, Jackson, and this wardrobe here’s mostly props” (p. 195)?
In Episode 24, what’s the significance of “the watchmen of world’s edge”? Is this an intrusion of the spirit world? Is Slothrop just hallucinating?
In Episode 24, when Peter Sachsa gets the blow to the temple from Schutzmann Jöche, why is his last thought, “How beautiful!” (p. 220)
In Episode 25, there’s a line in the part where Pudding is sneaking around: “A voice from some cell too distant for us to locate intones:...” (p. 231). Why us here? Why the change in perspective?
How’s this book affecting everyone’s mental health (you know, given that we’re in the end times right now)? Seriously, though, there are times when this book makes me so happy to be alive and proud of humanity and also times where it depresses the everloving shit out of me and makes me think that, as a species, we’re doomed to continue making the same mistakes, over and over again, until we end up destroying ourselves.
In a similar vein, do you think people as prodigiously talented and brilliant as Pynchon have any responsibility to counter the evil they see in the world? Is writing books enough or should they do more (lead, teach, etc.) to fight against the awful things they are able to see before the rest of us do?
Probably one of the most requested (after Mileena) character to appear in this Mortal Kombat, Havik the cleric of Chaos is, indeed, a possible character to lead the next Kombat Pack. Maybe he would join, maybe he won't due the fact he was the major threat in MKX prequel comic, but still, one should wonder, how would NRS update and improve them most Chaotic character? My personal answers was giving him incredible and really innovative moves messing with everything we take for granted in MK11 and in fighting game in general. Probably his fighting style would be too erratic and difficoult to program in the game, but after all this is just a concept, and it follow the canon of the character: amaze and shock with it unpredictability. Here you have, my own version of Havik! . . Name: Havik Origin: Chaosrealm Species: Chaosrealmer (possibly undead) Alignment: Chaos (possibly evil) Bio: Coming from a realm which worship water for not having a shape and to flow freely without bounds, Havik is a difficoult man to decipher. Beliving in Chaos and coincidences, he doesn't seem to follow a real scheme or a plan, he just fight to create as much anarchy and chaos as possible, in every factions and every real. Loyal to no one beside casuality, he fights Raiden and Knonika's both, as both seek to put order in the sand of times. But the cleric, he only seek to free them and to let them flow, making the future obscure and unwritten, where everyone action would be unpredictable and chaotic just as he wishes. Skins:1st model - Chaos cleric: Havik first custume would be a modern adaptation of his Deception look, which is also the look he did wear in MKX comic series. Havik would have his half-body suit with just one sleeve, the gloves and the straps. Also he wears his headgear, black pants and the big boots with metal plates./10 colors 2nd model - Chaotic newby: Havik alternate costume from Deception enhanced for the current generation. The V-shapes overcoat vaguely resembling a classic ninja attire would be bigger and with longer shoulders, to looks like the tunic of a (blood) mage, while the hood would cover a little more of his head to looks like the grim reaper hood. Also, the armguards and the boots would have leather straps instead then metallic insert, reinforcing the concept he's more a mage then a warrior with this costume./10 colors 3rd model - Knight of disorder: If his second costume made Havik look more like a mage, the third one would make him look like a warrior, with metal armor protecting the cleric. However, most pieces of his equipment would not matches, looking like he put on different armor sets, in a deliberate way to represent Chaos even in his clothes. The cleric would wear a dragon-like helmet leaving his face esposed, a metal collar of Egyptian fashion with a samurai like shoulderpad, but the other one being a more barbarian like shoulder guard with horns and bones protracting from it. On his chest, he would have just a pectoral resembling a metal place keep in place by big leather straps. One arm would be covered with chainmail and an oriental like gloves with 'claws' (like those Shang Tsung wear in aftermath story mode), while the other arms doesn't have chainmail, but have a bigger metal gauntlet covering almost the entire arm. He would also wear a leather with metal insert kilt and a metal boot on a leg and a long shinguard with sandal on the other, making the outfit pretty 'chaotic' indeed./10 colors 4th model - Thief for greater evil: We had mage and warrior, now is time of thief. Havik would wear dark clothes, the chest piece resembling a ninja garbs, but his shoulders would be left exposed, partially compensated by long sleeve-like armwarmers made of leather armor. His right hand would have a fingerless glove, while his left one have a full glove. He would also wear buggy black pants and short dark boots. His headgear would be no more then a semple headband, but with a medialion in the middle resembling a circle divided by a cross with some writing on the various section, kinda like his chestpieace in his first model./10 colors Gear:Mace: Havik signature morning star, with variation which would include similar clubs, hammers and even a pike with an head on top. Kamidogu dagger: Havik most important relics from MKX comic series, used to perform powerful blood magic. Variation will include daggers from realms beyond the bounds of MK, like a OCP dagger, Skynet (and Legion color alternative) dagger and even DC dagger. Mutilation: Why limitating to Havik headgear? His most prominent feature is his skeleton jaw, isn't it? Why not make this a gear item? Havik would have a collections of ways to mutilate his own face and his body, comprising scars, scarnifications, bone exposure, burn, missing eye and even organ exposure. Or even a completly healed one in homage to MKX comic which show his healed face for the first time before he would ripe it off himself. or Headgear: If fusing Havik with Meat would be too much, we can always stick with headgear, giving him hats, masks and helmet of chaotic nature. Intro:Anarchy warrior: Havik swing his mace around as he approaches his opponent and while talking with it, puting the weapon away right before the round start. You'll be agent of Chaos: Havik holds the Kamidogu's dagger on his chest with both hand, his eyes closed, opening them just after a moment, checking the blade sharpness as he talks with his opponent. How does he still move?: Havik is on the ground bended in vary poses, not a single one of them right, when suddently the corpse starts moving, relocating his bones as he stand, fixing his body even while talking with the opponent getting fully fixed for good just as the announcer says 'Fight!' From... Where?: The camera gets some statics, turning the immage of the arena to a pixelated mess. When things fixes, Havik is standing in front of his opponent. Outro:No order: Havik grabs his mace, holding it for the handle in the palm of his hand. The mace seem in balance, so the cleric tip it with a finger, letting it falls, grining as a subtle reference about his crusade against 'balance'. God blood magik: Havik pull out his dagger, and carve its own face with it, when the wound emit a sinister red light, as the glow 'contaminate' his eyes too while he smiles. No fear of pain: Havik starts dislocating his own body, breaking his legs, his chest, his arms until her turns his head to 180° degrees facing the camera and laughting evily. Creepy cleric: Havik stand still as the camera zoom on him. Suddently the cleric turns to stares into it, grining, until the camera apparently breaks in an error screen. Very softly, a voice would whispers "You are next." Competitive variations:Chaos incarnate: A risky variation which gives Havik the ability to heal himself in multiple ways with risk to damage himself or heal the opponent too. Gain Gambler, Medic and Inversion. Power through pain: High risk high profit variation which gives Havik the ability to buff himself through self inflicted damage. Gain Blood pression, Stomatitis and Eye for eye. Real blood magik: Peculiar variation which gives Havik the ability to use the kamidogu dagger to gain control of his opponent. Gain Kamidogu's blade, I control you and Hurt yourself. Special moves:Head snap: Havik twist his neck in a lethal position, but instead then damages, he gets healed by that. Can't be amplified and have a 'recharge time'; if used before an ammount of seconds are past from the last use, the ammount of healt recoverd would be minimal. Corpse taunt: Havik breakes his back, laying on the floor basically broken in two, but gets back up healed of a considerable ammount of healt, but it leave Havik expose for a moment both as he's bended and when he stand back up. It have a 'recharge time', as if used before an ammount of time is past from the last use, it would heal just a minimal ammount of healt. Can be amplified to going back up and acting almost instantly, taking by surprise an enemy, becoming similar to a parry since when bended on himself Havik can dodge high attack. Torso spin: Havik rotates his torso extending his arms, hitting the enemy close by. Amplified, Havik would draw his mace, rotating faster hitting the enemy at longer range. Craking legs projectile: Havik cracks his legs backward, extending his arms forward sending a projectile of energy toward the enemy at mid trajectory. Amplified Havik cracks his hip too forward and sending a second low projectile to the enemy. Spine catapult: Havik cracks his spine bending backward until he touches the floor with his hand. He can be hold in this position for a second keep helding the attack button. On release, Havik snap like a spring hiting the enemy with his legs knocking it away, bringhing them behind and standing up normaly. Amplified, the kick toss the opponent in air, while Havik stand up and swing his mace and performing an home run with the enemy. Gambler - 1st variation: Enhance Head snap and Corpse taunt. Both moves regenerate more healt and doesn't have a 'recharge time', but there 25% chance uppon use to harm Havik instead then healt him. Conflict with Blood pression and Stomatitis. Medic - 1nd variation: Havik places his hand on the opponent chest and gives him some of his healt actively healing the enemy at cost of Havik own healt. Can be amplified lasting longer and passing more healt to the enemy. Inversion - 1st variation: Havik charges the energy of Chaos on himself for a moment, before his colors reverse (black becomes white, red becomes blue and so on) becoming a negative of himself. In this status, any harm done to him become an healing, but also any damage he does become healing for the opponent. Also, his Head snap and Corpse taunt moves drains his healt instead then healing him (unless Gambler is active, in that case there a 25% chance the moves would still restore healt). His Medic ability, however, drains the enemy healt replenishing Havik during the time. Can be amplified while casted to last longer, but also the cast time becomes slightly longer, increasing the chances the enemy would interupt it. To be noted, the duration of this ability vary at every attivation (it would last between 3-6 second for normal and 5-10 second for amplified), making difficoult to predict when Havik would get back to normal. It also happens without any warning, even in the middle of a combo or a special attack. Blood pression - 2nd variation: Replace Head snap. Havik use his dagger to stab himself in the neck, losing a little ammount of healt but gaining ability to gain 30% of the damage he deal as healt. Amplified, Havik stab his neck and slit his own throat, losing more healt, but gaining 75% of inflicted damage as healt. Conflict with Gambler. Stomatitis - 2nd variation: Replaces Corpse taunt. Havik stab himself in the guts with his dagger, losing some healt but gaining a buff to every damage he deals of 15%. Amplified, Havik stabs and rip his stomach open, losing more healt but gaining 30% of damage boost. Conflict with Gambler. Eye for eye - 2nd variation: Havik stabs his arms with his dagger, start dragging a line on it, losing some of his healt. The attack button can be held to make the move last longer, but that would also make Havik lose more healt. If the enemy attack Havik with an high melee (no projectile) attack while he perform the move, he grabs the enemy arm and cut it instead, absorbing the blood drawn restoring some of his healt. Amplified, Havik would parry attack from any direction instead then just high ones and would lose less healt when the move is been held. Kamidogu's blade - 3rd variation: Selecting this ability gives the player a little icon with a counter resembling a Blood Drop near it meters (where Erron Black bullet counter would be). Using the move, Havik takes a step forward trying to stab high the enemy with his Kamidogu's dagger. If connected, the Blood Drop counter augment of 1 to a max of 6 charges. The move have a different amplify depending if Havik already had a charge of Blood drop when he use the move. If Blood Drop was at 0, amplify cost normal attack metter and Havik stabs again the enemy, gaining 2 charge of Blood drop but inflicting minimal damage. If instead Blood Drop wast at 1 or more, amplify takes 1 charge of Blood Drop instead then attack meter, and Havik holds the dagger into the enemy's meat, charging it with a powerful magik blast which send the enemy away inflicting high damage. I control you - 3rd variation: This move requires a charge of Blood Drop to be used. Havik takes control of the enemy mind, not inflicting damage, but making it confused and open for a combo. To amplify, it takes another charge of Blood Drop. Amplified, the enemy not only stay confused, but it start walking toward Havik basically asking for a combo. Requires Kamidogu's blade. Hurt yourself - 3rd variation: This move requires a charge of Blood Drop to be used. Havik force the enemy to punch itself, autoinflicting damage. To amplify, it requires another charge of Blood Drop. Amplified, Havik order the enemy to drop down and slam it head on the ground, inflicting more auto-damage. Requires Kamidogu's blade. Diving corpse - Optional: Havik dives like a dead body forward under his enemy knocking it down. Amplified, instead to get knocked down the enemy is propelled up for a juggles. Cracking arms projective - Optional: Havik turns around cracking his arms backward sending a projectile toward the enemy in high trajectory. Amplified, Havik bend his back backward sending a second projectile in mid trajectory. Heal me - Optional: This move requires a charge of Blood Drop to be used. Havik makes the enemy spit a ball of blood taking damage. The ball fly toward Havik healing him on contact. To be amplified, requires another charge of Blood drop When amplify, it force the enemy to spit a stream of blood which forms three balls of blood, all of them would heal Havik uppon contact. Requires Kamidogu's blade. Taunts:Round lost:Fall on front: Havik places his feet on the ground and unearthly lift his legs with his back bending backward making the back of his head touching his feet, then slowly he raises forcing in place every single vertebra of his spine with a cracking noise as he does so. Fall on back: Havik bend his back in a 90° degree angles backward and places his hand on the ground, before lift himself correcting his back and placing his feet on the ground standing up. Round win retreat:Too much...: Havik stretches pulling his arms, but this crack and seem dislocating itself. The cleric walks backward as nothing happenes, fixing his arm back in the shoulder shocket before the next round starts. - "What a curious coincidence!" Don't break the wall: Havik toss his mace toward the edge of the arena, but it seem to bounces off the side of the screen, getting back in his hand as he put it away. - "The bound of this world have no meaning to me." What just happened?!?: Havik laughs and suddently the whole screen appears pixelated before to go black for a moment, when everything goes back to normal, Havik would be distant from his opponent. - No quote, just a laugh Round win stationary:Give a pray: Havik unite his hand like offering a pray to the Chaos' god - "Chaos would choose its winner now." I'm unbreakable: Havik grabs his own jaw before to bend his head backward, dislocating both head and jaw, before to reconect them. - "No pain is too much." Is he watching me?!?: Havik stares at the camera, pointing toward the player before to turn back to face his opponent - "Are you having fun?" After Brutality:Contortionism's king: Havik turn his torso in a 180° degree angle, also turning his head at 180° degree, watching the camera with a grin before to spin his chest returning normal. - "You are a mere casualty." or "Didn't seen this coming, not then I mind." Cleric of Chaos: Havik beat his own chest with a fist a couple of time, crossing his other arm on the first beating his chest with the fist once more before to bend his head forward in meditation. - "Chaos will find the way." or "Order will never prevail." Throw (forward): Havik land his mace on the enemy shin, forcing it to kneel. Then he grabs it head, raising his mace high charging a blow, but instead he unpredictably kick the enemy in the face pushing it away. Throw (backward): Havik hit the enemy in its head with his mace forcing him on the ground, then the cleric jump on the enemy back stomping to inflict more damage before to jump off. Fatal blow:Master mind: Havik swing his mace vertically in front of himself with a very short high range, but the blow is unblockable. When connected, the enemy is knocked up when Havik grabs it for its feet and slams it down. Then the cleric jumps on his opponent and stab it in the chest with his dagger. Last, but not least, the Chaosrealmer step back, imposing his will on the opponent, forcing it to grab the dagger still in its chest and push it deeper before to cut open it whole abdomen by itself. The moves ends with the enemy losing the grip on the dagger tossing it toward Havik who grabs it in mid air and put it away. Crushing blows:Uppercut: Must hit the enemy after ducking under an high attack. The attack button must be held. Havik use his mace to hit the enemy crushing his jaw and making him losing teeth. Throw (forward): The opponent must have already soffered a Crushing blows or more and Havik must be in the right side of the screen. Havik kicks the enemy face making it hit the side of the screen, kicking again to break its skull. Throw (backward): Must hit the enemy with a Throw (backward) after have used the Fatal Blow (can be between rounds). Havik stomps on the enemy's back pushing with all his weight, shattering its spine. Talk to mace: Must hit the enemy with Talk to mace combo (Back Punch, Forward Punch, Forward Punch) as counter or punish. Havik ram his mace against the enemy mouth making its losing various teeth. Head snap: Must have used Inversion three times. Havik crack his neck so hard he recover a great ammount of healt (Gambler ability won't apply: it won't augment the amount of healt recoverd this way, but also won't turn it into a damage). Eye for eye: Havik must have less then 50% healt left. Havik cuts the enemy arm so deeper the blade tip would emerge on the other side. Kamidogu's Blade:Blood drop counter must be at it maximal ammount (6) and Kamidogu's Blade mist be amplified. Havik charges the enemy with an huge ammount of blood magik shattering its ribs when the cleric makes the energy explode. Fatality:It used to taste better: Havik grabs one of the enemy's arms, planting his legs on it armpit and pulling to rip it off. Then, he bites the fingers, chewing them off, but he coughs them up spitting them grunting as they didn't taste good, before to use the arm as a mace to knock down the enemy, before to force the shoulder down the opponent throat making it choke to death. Hidden - From alt to Chaos lord: Havik suddently pull out a scythe from his pockets, using it to cut the enemy stomac wide open. But then the cleric let the scythe falls and places his hand on the wound, healing it forcing the gut back in place and sealing the skin. The enemy watches confused as the wound seem heal, but then it suddently start spitting blood and pieces of gut, and its chest starts explode in multiple places, spilling blood and guts until a wide hole opens in the enemy chest. Friendship:You didn't expected this, ain't you?: Havik grabs his own head and remove it, offering it to the enemy before to falls down. The opponent watches the head, when suddently it starts to grins chuckling, making the poor soul throw it in air and run away. The friendship ends in a loop where the head rolls for the screen, chasing a running enemy first, then escaping Havik headless corpse which try to get it and lastly with Havik body rolling on it toward the other side of the screen (like Komo in Nightwolf friendship). Brutalities:The not-so-klassic: Last hit must come from an uppercut, Back Punch must be held and must not block a single attack during the whole final round. Havik would strike his opponent with an uppercut from his mace so hard the enemy's feet detaches. Close enough klassic: Last hit must come from a sweep (Back+Back Kick) and must have connected at least 3 uppercut during the match. Havik sweep his opponent down, pinning him on the ground with a knee on its back and then proceed grabbing the enemy's head ripping it off it body with all the spine attached. Morning meal: Last hit must be a forward throw and a mercy must have been performed. Havik raises his mace, but instead to hit the opponent, he let it falls grabbing it for it head and rams the handle down the enemy throat, leving it to choke to death. It slipped: Last hit must come from the combo Feet up (Forward+Back Punch, Front Punch, Down+Back Punch) and Havik must be in the left side of the screen. Instead then sweep the opponent with his last blow, Havik grab it for a foot and pull until take off the enemy's leg. The Chaosrealmer then pretend to hit the opponent with its own legs, but it slip passing by the enemy without hurting it. The opponent watches the leg fly away confuse before to turn around just in time to see Havik ramming it against the screen edge and sliting its throat with his dagger, cutting so deep the enemy head falls off forward ward while the body falls lifeless. Aces and eights: Last hit on Havik own life must come from Head snap or Corpse taunt as an unlucky effect of Gambler. Havik takes a step backward, looking up and screaming before to be squashed by a giant Casino's chip. Backfire: Last hit on Havik own life must come from Head snap or Corpse taunt while under the effect of Inversion. Havik start screaming before to suddently burst into flames to have played too much with the forces of Chaos. Take my life: Last hit on Havik own healt must come from Medic while not under the effect of Inversion. Havik would pass his whole life force to the enemy, becoming just an emaciated mummy, falling down. Give me your life: Last hit must come from Medic while under the effect of Inversion. Havik would drain his enemy life force leaving behind just an emaciated mummy, letting it fall on the ground. This is gonna s...: Last hit on Havik own healt must come from Blood pression, Stomatitis or Eye for eye. Havik gets mad due the blood magik stored into him and grabs his own dagger, stabbing himself over and over falling in a pool of his own blood still stabbing until he's completly death. Eye for whole body: Last hit must come from Eye for eye and Havik must have hurt himself at least once in any way possible before this use of this move (he can hurt himself using Eye for eye, but must do it at least once before to use it to perform this Brutality). Havik absorb the enemy blood as he keep cutting the enemy, ripping off its arms before to assault it stabbing and cutting the opponent repeatedly, until the cleric is satisfied. Is dangerous to go alone: Last hit must come from Hurt yourself and Havik must have at least 1 more charges of Blood drop. Havik toss his mace to the enemy, which grab it and raise it high, but before the opponent can use it in any way, Havik shoot a red projectile of red blood magik destroying the enemy head and letting it fall down. I'm a shark!: Last hit must come from Diving Corpse and the enemy legs must have been hit at least 10 times during the match. Havik starts biting the enemy leg, cutting it off leaving just the femur, making the opponent limp before to die for the blood lost. All your blood: Last hit must come from amplified Heal me. Havik would force the enemy to spit up a lot of his blood, before to use it as an high pressure stream right on the enemy face, leaving behind just the flesh. (or the skull as an alternative if Block and Front Kick are held while performing the Brutality)
[Anime Discussion] Magia Record Anime Episode 6 notes + General Opinion (Warning! Contains Spoilers!)
Episode 6:
I actually really appreciate starting this episode not with a flashback, but with a fight scene, so that we can be introduced to best cat girl, Felicia. Speaking of introductions…
Felicia’s introduction, just like the ones of every other major character, is just great. Her just repeatedly saying “crush them” goes to show her obsessive hatred towards witches, and her rushing into battle despite her magical girl comrades telling her to wait goes to show how her hatred towards witches makes her impulsive and hotheaded. However, the fact that while all of her comrades struggle to take down the familiars, she just effortlessly mows them down, sending them flying implies that while she just rushes in without a plan, she’s at least got more than enough strength to cover for her rash nature. That, or she’s got some SERIOUS berserker rage. Nonetheless, I know that I would sure as hell want her on my party if I was an isekai protagonist. Her comrades staring at her in awe as she leaps in the air, familiars flying away from her, as she yells “I’ll massacre you!” sort of goes to show a point that I think was handled rather poorly in the game. Now, this is all based on my poor memory of Felicia’s introduction in the game, so bear with me. It is rather heavily hinted at that when Felicia enters her quote unquote berserker rage, she not only becomes a hotheaded witch slaying machine, she also becomes someone that even somewhat terrifies her magical girl allies. This introduction comes to a spectacular, albeit abrupt ending when the opening pops in. Overall, great introduction. Rather short, but still, a great one. 9/10.
So, just my 2 cents, but I like how the moment the opening ends, Iroha’s alarm clock goes off, as if to symbolize that Iroha thinks that Felicia’s introduction scene was just a dream. Or that the scenes in the opening were just a dream. It goes to imply that Iroha saw SOME dream, that I can tell. My logic is fucking impeccable, I know.
Iroha wakes almost instantaneously. OK, I call BULL! I’m a 15-year-old that has an alarm clock, mine being something rather cheerful and energetic, and even I don’t get up and out of bed in less than 5 minutes. Then again, it MIGHT have something to do with the fact that this is a fantasy show… Nah, doubt it. Fantasy show makes no sense! Quick! Add one to the sin counter! Oh, great, ShaymemeSins is back…
“Ah, right, Yachiyo’s house.” Ahem, excuse me, but I insist. “Miss Nanami’s house for magicary and gifted kids”. Yes, I am well aware that “magicary” is not a real word. Sue me.
So, in 04:51, is that Asuka’s dojo? Because if so, have I mentioned how much I legit just love this show’s world building so far? Like, legit, just fucking great.
Well, I will give Iroha points for being a somewhat responsible 15/16-year-old and not immediately drinking the obviously evil water when she’s offered to drink it. I will not take points off for Felicia drinking it immediately without a second thought because, come on, it’s Felicia. She’s SUPPOSED to sort of be the group’s rash, hotheaded “Imouto”. I will, however, take points off for Kyouko not appearing and drinking the water with them. She IS supposed to do that, after all. Then again, it’s an adaptation, so I guess they DO get a bit of leeway.
Felicia just straight up tries to mug Iroha. Isn’t Felicia 13? And Iroha IS a 15-year-old magical girl. Couldn’t Iroha just like, IDK, Judo flip her and tell her to fudge off? I know Iroha would never do that because a. She’s WAY too polite, b. She doesn’t want to leave a bad impression on the Kamihama magical girls, and c. she doesn’t know Judo, but still. It’s fun to imagine, I guess.
Yes, Felicia’s transformation scene is short. Yes, it’s great. Yes, I love it. No, I am not a lolicon. No, I have no idea why I felt the need to say that.
Big hammer loli just 1 hit KOs a witch by herself. Remind me again why does anyone think those creatures are dangerous?
“The fee for saving you is 1,000 yen”. Ah, yes. Capitalism. Surprisingly enough, it actually doesn’t feel weird in this show about hopes, dreams and magical girls. And no, I am not being sarcastic, surprisingly enough.
Iroha: “So, like, I’m low on pocket money. Can I just buy you ice cream?” Felicia: “shut up and give me that ice cream!” Iroha: “huh. I guess what works on my little sister will work on every loli.”
And the series’ greatest steaming pile of aggression, Kyouko Sakura is back, bitches! I’ll be honest, can’t wait to see more of her. She’s a fun character, what can I say?
Wait wait wait wait WAIT! Felicia is a 13-year-old, and Iroha is a 15-year-old. By Japanese standards, even Yachiyo is a minor, and Yachiyo is 19, the oldest magical girl to date! (not including the spin off manga). What are these two underage girls doing in a casino? Actually, from the quick research I did, it seems slot machines (which is what Iroha and Felicia seem to be playing) are illegal in Japan, period, and are only operated by Yakuza members. I know Felicia is a mercenary, but she’s a MAGICAL GIRL mercenary, and 13 years old to boot! You CANNOT expect me to believe that she has connections to the Yakuza. (note: yes, I am well aware that we’re not expected to believe she has connections with the Yakuza, and that the only reason Felicia and Iroha are in a casino is to show their insane luck. Don’t @ me.)
So, list of games and what Iroha and Felicia got in each of them: 1. They got a triple crown at a slot machine, which I assume is meant to replace the triple 7 you usually see in American slot machines. 2. Iroha and Felicia get a royal straight flush, AKA a straight flush, which is the strongest hand in poker. It’s also over a 1 in 6 million chance. 3. They get what is called a “FEVER!”, which I assume corresponds to a ridiculously high score in a quick reflex or a dancing game. 4. They’re on the verge of pulling a 4-star rarity character in the incredibly popular Gacha game – “Magia Record: a Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica Side Story”.
Felicia: “We’ve got it! Luck is on our side!” Me: “Cool it, Kazuma.”
Felicia: “You’ll cook for me?” tries not to cry Iroha: “Felicia, are you… Are you crying?” Felicia: “No! I can just already smell the onions you’ll be cutting! That’s all!” Iroha: “OK…”
Kyouko just lying on a rooftop, eavesdropping, eating a pocky stick.
OK, the feathers are actually pretty damn creepy.
Felicia is just fucking terrifying from 22:03 to 22:08. Legit nightmare fuel.
Overall opinion: Truly, a great episode, and a really fun one. It thrusts us into the action of the next “arc” without much wait, and a lot of the important things are paced properly. I’ll be honest, when I originally saw that Kyouko wasn’t with Felicia and Iroha to drink the water, I was a bit worried about how they were gonna integrate her into this “arc’s” final conflict, but when I saw her eavesdropping to Felicia, Iroha, Tsuruno and Yachiyo’s conversation, intrigued about this talk of an “Uwasa” and “lucky water”, it calmed me down. It finally reassured me that even though they might change things, they’re still gonna make sure everything makes sense. I really liked this episode, and I also really liked how they didn’t feel the need to delve into Felicia’s psyche or something like that. Don’t know about later, but she’s not exactly a complex character this early in the story. She’s the gang’s “Imouto” (or little sister, if you prefer), who’s angry at witches for doing such and such truly horrible things to her parents, and has a SERIOUES case of “berserker rage”, for better or worse. She doesn’t believe in teaming up, and she’ll work for whoever pays the highest. Her “character arc” for now is to learn that she should help her friends, no matter what, not the highest bidder. For now, she’s not exactly complex, and that’s OK. Not every character needs to be “complex” and “compelling”. The final score is a solid 9/10.
Please forgive any formatting or spelling errors. I usually post on mobile, but I needed to pound a keyboard today. I don't know what I want- maybe advice; maybe just sympathy. Or maybe just typing out the words will make me feel better. You decide! LOL Honestly, I'm so gutted, angry, and hurt even days later that I can't get my head around it. TL;DR at the end. Relevant background to my story, which happened three days ago. I've been married to my DH (dear) for nearly fifteen years, and I was friends with him and his family for years before that. DH and I do things separately often- just have different hobbies and interests. I might see a movie I like without him; he may go hunting without me and so forth. At the end of the day, though, and I mean every day, we are together at home and happily cuddling and talking about the day. Two or three times in these fifteen years, we've spent a night apart. Staying with my grandson, a work seminar, random things like this. Ninety nine percent of the time though, we are TOGETHER. Our last vacation together was seven years ago. Over the years, I have had ZERO issues with MIL, SIL, or Niece. Holidays? Great! Birthday celebrations? Awesome! MIL has been like a second mom to me and SIL like a sister. Niece, who is twenty-something is SIL's daughter and we have always had a good relationship as well. I was invited on a Caribbean cruise with them and was reluctant, only because I didn't want to be away from my DH that long. But who am I kidding? I've never been on a cruise and so arrangements were made. I cried a bit when I left DH that day. The four of us cruisers occasionally separate on our Island Bound Caribbean Cruise Ship. There's so much to do, and soon...SIL, an experienced cruiser, started to have some BEC moments. Just behaving as if she knows everything. I should add that MIL has some balance issues and is in baseline poor health. We all took turns pushing her wheelchair and accommodating her needs. Cruise staff helped enormously with this too. Soon, SIL and Niece began doing things around the ship without me and MIL. A couple extra minutes finding an elevator or an amenable restroom for her were no big deal to me. In my mind, she is lovely and without her, my DH would not exist or be in my life. I would go to ends of earth for her. Her attitude was "sorry you have to do this for me, I appreciate it." Then I began noticing the annoyance of SIL because of MIL, her mother, having to do things like take extra time in the shower before dinner or return to stateroom for medication. SIL was conveniently squirrelling off to shop or hit the casino without a thought to her mother's needs or wants. It's MIL's cruise too (and probably her last- as I said, her health is poor overall.) These things, I just let go. No big. I did my best to make things nice for MIL and still have a TON of fun. Three days in, we arrived at Port #2, which is where we finally get to the meat of the story. It's simple, really: free day off ship, places to shop for cheesy souvenirs to take home and spend the rest of the afternoon lounging on the beach together (which was the distance of my living room away from shopping) on a very nice but very large public beach. Cool blue water, sunshine, waves...What could POSSIBLY go wrong?! I bought a sweatshirt to wear home to Frozen Tundra Home State, that's what went wrong. SIL and/or Niece was pushing MIL in wheelchair, and MIL wanted to visit a shop we'll call the Silly Sparrow. Less than 20 yards away, I spotted a sweatshirt in Beachwear Shop next door. I clearly said to all three of my family, "I'm going to run over to Beachwear Shop and grab a sweatshirt and will see you at the Silly Sparrow in a couple of minutes. " I stated this no less than three times and got the nod and okay. It wasn't super crowded in this area overall, and one shop being in line of sight from the other shop assured I wouldn't get separated. It would be hard to miss SIL, Niece and MIL in a wheelchair. Right? RIGHT? So I bought my shirt. I didn't shop otherwise, there were two choices of sweatshirt (pink or blue.) I selected pink, there was no line at register, I whipped out my credit card, paid, and was at the Silly Sparrow in under three minutes total. Where my SIL, Niece, and MIL weren't. Okay, no big I thought, they went to the shop next door or the restroom or to somewhere and will be right back. I stayed at the Silly Sparrow and purchased a souvenir presuming they would arrive back within minutes. And I stood outside the Silly Sparrow for another ten minutes, in clear sight of both shops and the bank of restrooms. Perhaps they went out the opposite door of the Silly Sparrow? I circled the building (without exaggeration, ten times, also scanning the immediate surroundings and re-entering the Silly Sparrow four times for a search- to the point the clerks probably had me pegged for a shoplifter. LOL but not LOL. I explained to them I was to meet my family here hence the loitering. After circling the building repeatedly I sat outside (still in line of sight of Silly Sparrow, immediate area shops, and restroom bank.) I will spare you another hour's worth of the details of desperately leaving my name at Silly Sparrow, the multiple re-checks of this goddamned shop, and spending the next hour roasting hot, miserable and by this time QUITE angry and feeling alone, abandoned, and vulnerable on Island in Foreign Country. Finally, after a total of an hour and a half, I started thinking of myself and returned to the ship (abt 500 yards away) to drop off souvenirs, pee for fuck's sake, reapply sunscreen, and return to enjoy MY day. No family, no messages and after a final check in at Silly Sparrow, I learned they had (finally) been back to look for me. Well, thanks for not telling me where you were going to be after that, either. I decided to go for a drink. That's where Niece 'found' me, at the bar getting a margarita-my first drink that day. Two hours have elapsed and she had the nerve to greet me with "WE THOUGHT WE'D LOST YOU FOREVER!" In a way, yes they did lose me forever. They fucking abandoned me. I told her to go back to wherever she came from, which was NOT the Silly Sparrow, and to enjoy her day. I did this with dignity and tact. I took my drink out onto the shaded balcony there and had my first couple of sips, where SIL decided to try me on for size. Her approach was "WE LOOKED EVERYWHERE FOR YOU." I asked her why? Why did you have to look for me? You knew where I was going to be." I then said, in a calm and measured tone, that I felt alone, I felt abandoned, and I felt hurt and angry. That's all I said, then I picked up my drink to take a sip. Guys. GUYS. This is where she began with "well, we need to talk this out and clearly now alcohol is involved so we'll do that later." OH. The script flipping has now commenced, people! This from the bitch that was HAMMERED the previous day and who had just conveniently forgotten me for the last two hours, wanted to blame me for having a drink after having been left behind for this considerable time period. I simply, and with dignity, asked her to go enjoy her day and I waved her off. And by the next day, SIL approached me with "we looked for you, we went back to the Silly Sparrow but you weren't there." OH! LOL If you 'didn't know where I was', how did you know to even go back there?!?! Lies. And then SIL tried again and doubled down: "You're not thinking of how WEEEEE FELT! WEEEE were ANGRY TOO that we had to waste our day looking for YOUUUUUU" More lies. And then, for the love of Christ, later that day AGAIN SIL tried, "Well, Niece thought you might have just needed some alone time and so you went off by yourself." Oh now it's NIECE!!! My response? "If you genuinely believed that, why did you (air quote) 'look for me' at all? Congrats SIL, you've now thrown your own daughter under the bus to top it off! ALL I wanted was a simple "I'm sorry, we got distracted and the time got away from us." I never got that. A simple apology. Of course I got back to the ship okay, had a good cry, paid the million dollars a minute to call my DH back home to hear his voice, and spent the remainder of the vacation largely begging off when asked to join them for an activity. Except once on the last cruise day, I offered out the olive branch and SIL/Niece invited me to have lunch with them. They stood me up for that and (I learned later) went to the casino instead. That was a "fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me" scenario. This vacation was over in my mind, and I got a big lesson in Who I Cannot Trust. I haven't mentioned MIL much here, because she was, I 100% believe, an innocent wheelchair passenger and captive audience in all of this. Later, on the plane back to Frozen Tundra, MIL asked me in her own words to please rugsweep, forgive, move on and have peace. And I said to her that I'm thinking on it and that I don't know what will happen. I want to honor her request because she has been good to me for YEARS. DH is PIIIIIIISSSSSEEDDD at SIL, and he's not really responded yet except to hold me and keep me warm and happy in Frozen Tundra State. I'm having nightmares, not sleeping well and am still unutterably pissed off. So here's the TL; DR: got left behind on Foreign Island by family for hours; trust destroyed. Have shop receipts clearly showing timeline. SIL, aka Bitch, doubled down rather than apologizing and is now flipping script and lying. Innocent MIL in poor health wants me to rugsweep which is I think her usual role. I feel grief at the loss of a trustworthy relationship with SIL, and am basically angry and unwilling to accept a gaslighting attempt. EDIT to clarify and remove reference to PTSD. SECOND EDIT: I have received a wordless message on Book of Faces Messenger from SIL with a picture of SIL's younger child, Niece 2, who is a cute kindergartner. I have NEVER in life received a single photo of this child via Book of Faces Messenger, which I only downloaded for vacation. I consider this a silent plea with a "won't you think of the CHILLLLDRRREENNN" flavor to it. They really want this to just go away. They have pissed off DH and You Wouldn't Like DH When He's Angry and I think SIL is maybe, MAYBE realizing the consequences of her actions might involve having to deal with DH at some point.
The rest of this series can be found here First Previous Next “Ah, this is the life,” Shelia said as she sipped coffee and grabbed a beignet, “It’s nice to actually set foot on Terra again.” “Yeah,” Jacob said as he grabbed one, “but why did you have to drag us to this humid bug infested hell?” “Watch your mouth,” Sheila said with a laugh, “You are talking about my homeland here.” “What the fuck is in this coffee?” Jessie said with a sour face. “It tastes like ass.” “It’s chicory and you just don’t know what’s good.” “I like it,” T’sunk’al said as he took a sip while he nibbled some chocolate. “This chocolate is amazing! Why didn’t you bring me this stuff?” “Because, my dear z’uushling, chocolate isn’t illegal. If it were on the black market I could hook you up easy but I either had to grab whatever shit was laying around a spaceport or ask for a favor from a smuggler. If it had been drugs, guns, or nukes I could have gotten you the good stuff,” Shelia said. “That’s incredibly funny,” T’sunk’al chortled as he picked up another truffle. “Are you sure our passengers are going to be ok?” “Oh they’re good,” Eno said with a reassuring smile. “We dropped them off with the Red Cross and they will be transported to one of the refugee processing centers. I hear they are nice.” “And,” Shelia said with a grin, “we ‘ensured’ that they will get priority as far as processing goes.” She raised her mug. “To corruption, one of our best friends.” “Ah yes, good old corruption,” T’sunk’al said with a nasty click, “It’s nice to be on the right side of that for once.” “Get used to it,” Shelia responded. “We like to ‘cultivate friendships’ wherever we go. It makes things go much more smoothly. It’s amazing what a few credits in the right places can do for you. Speaking of...” She said with a grin, “I think it’s about time we harvest a couple of those friendships.” “Oh?” Greg asked. “What do you have in mind?” “Our next job.” “What exactly do you propose?” Eno asked suspiciously. “I have learned to mistrust that particular smile.” “Ladies, gentlemen, and z'uushlings...I think it is time for us to hit the White Star.” “Are you fucking serious?” Jacob asked in alarm. “Didn’t we decide that was too much to tackle?” “We have already cased the thing and it wasn’t that we decided that it was too difficult,” Shelia said around mouthfuls of beignet, “We decided that it would draw too much heat on us. And now since we really can’t get much more wanted than we already are...” “What’s the White Star?” T’sunk’al asked as he poured himself more coffee. “It’s one of the biggest fanciest luxury star liners in the Federation,” Eno said, “It is worth… I don’t know… billions, maybe even trillions.” “With everything in it I bet it’s worth more than a trillion easy,” Shelia said, her eyes glittering. “It’s a flying piggy-bank just waiting to get hammered.” “Flying piggy-bank?” T’sunk’al asked in confusion. “It’s a figure of speech,” Jessie said in her normal rapidly paced voice, “It means that there is a whole lot of money in there.” “See,” Shelia said, “The White Star isn’t just a fancy high-dollar flying resort for the rich. It also has the distinction of never entering inhabited systems. To get to it you have to be flown there by one of its launches and its exact location is never disclosed. It’s its big gimmick. Absolute privacy without any hassles.” She pauses while she stuffs another beignet in her mouth. “It’s a favorite with celebrities, the uber-rich, politicians, and last but not least wealthy fugitives.” Shelia, while happily bouncing up and down, continues. “That’s not all. People like to hide money there too. It has its own bank complete with a whole bunch of lovely encrypted numbered bank accounts and good old fashioned safety deposit boxes. And for dessert, there is even a lovely casino that will be a nice soft target even if we can’t crack that bank open. All we have to do there is put a gun to somebody’s head. Same goes for a slew of high-end shops and shit like that.” She swirls the last of her coffee in her mug. “The thing is absolutely stuffed full of bounties, credits, and highly ransomable individuals.” “And incredibly effective automated defenses, and a shitload of heavily armed guards, and literally thousands of automatic blast-proof doors, and probably tons of shit we don’t even know about,” Jacob says shaking his head. “Taking it is impossible.” “Nothing is impossible, sweetie. Where is that army spirit?” Shelia asks with a smile. “That army spirit is exactly where it needs to be. Keeping our asses alive and out of the joint.” “Speaking of,” Shelia says to Jessie, “exactly how hot are we?” “Hang on,” Jessie says as she pulls out her tablet, “Just have to get to a hyperspace terminal… Annnnd access Federation police… Gonna be a minute...” She says as she sets her tablet down on the table and grabs more beigniets. The gang debate back and forth about the sanity of going after the White Star as the minutes pass. About an hour later Jessie’s tablet beeps. “Ah! Here we go!” Jessie says as she reads the results, “Oh we are pretty goddamn hot. We are so hot that all arrest warrants and bounties have been pulled.” “Oh, shit. We really did it this time,” Eno says as he flags down a waitress. “Excuse me, ma’am, could I get some coffee without the chicory?” “Sure thing,” the kalesha says brightly and scooches off. “Why did they pull our arrest warrants?” T’sunk’al asked. “One would think they would add more.” “Oh they would if they wanted us arrested,” Shelia said with a chuckle, “They don’t want us arrested anymore. They want us dead. The police are off the case and Fed Intel is on it. This is gonna be fun!” “We have a difference of opinion as to what constitutes fun,” Jacob says with a wince. “I can certainly see the appeal,” T’sunk’al says calmly as he sipped his coffee. “Less chance of minor hassles and when we do run into ‘an issue’,” he said making air quotes with his manipulators, “We won’t have the entire system searching for us like we would if we killed a cop. Besides, I would feel really bad about killing an honest police officer just trying to do his job but wasting a fucking Fed? I think I could live with that.” “See!” Shelia exclaimed happily, “Ol’ Eight-Eyes over here gets it!” “I’m still voting against it,” Jacob said with more than enough quiet nods from the others to kill the plan. “There is one more reason why I want to do this and do it now. Jessie, tell ‘em.” “Oh right,” Jessie babbles with a grin, “I have it on good authority that none other than Councilor Morgan, you know, the asshole who really pushed the whole fucking war... That asshole? He is about to get his pee-pee stomped 'cause of the stuff that we leaked. He is hiding from a Federation inquest at this very moment. Anyone want to guess where?” Everyone looked at each other for a few moments. “Ok,” Jacob said with sigh, “If and I mean if we do this we have to do it right. We need a plan and it needs to be a fucking good one.” “Well, let’s get started then,” Shelia said with a wolfish grin. Cyrus Red was standing outside of his limousine with six of his henchmen in a deserted Capital City construction site when Morgana Farstan appeared out of the shadows. “I have to hand it to you,” Cyrus said, “You gotta a lot of balls showing up here.” “Well,” Morgana said with a pleasant smile, “We have some things to discuss.” “You shoot up my guys and mess with my business? You are goddamn right we have something to discuss, like why I don’t show you why we are called the Red-Teeth.” “Yeah, yeah, you used to eat people during the Sol Wars… boring,” Morgana replied, “You have a lot of balls just showing up with just six people.” At that moment half a dozen vans drove into the lot at high speed. “Now that is a bit more interesting,” Morgana said with a soulless smile. “That bitch is fucking crazy,” Jak’kul’sha quietly buzzed. “No argument here. Shit goes south she’s dead before we can even pull a trigger,” Bal’sur’kala said as he adjusted the scope on his sniper rifle. “What do we do if that happens?” Mul’sha’kal asked. “I’ll tell you what we do,” Jak’kul’sha whispered, “We put a fifty caliber slug in her head for good measure and split.” He turned to Ray’shel’zun. “That mic that brainiac over there made? Is it picking everything up?” “Works like a charm.” Ray’shel’zun replied. “You sure they won’t detect it?” Jak’kul’sha quietly asked. “Give me some credit,” Bal’sur’kala scoffed. “I seriously doubt they have the right stuff on hand to properly analyze that beam’s wavelength and modulation. It should just look like background noise from all the communicators in the city. They are much more likely to pick up your bitching so please for the love of the creators shut the fuck up.” “So, bitch, what do you want?” Cyrus said as a few dozen of his men surround Morgana. “Not much,” She replied, “I want Shelia Donovan. I understand you can get her for me.” “What? You fuck with me just to get to that bitch?” Cyrus spat, “You’re fucking crazy.” “That observation has been made more than once,” Morgana laughed, “Now you are going to lure her in or I am going to take apart your entire organization piece by fucking piece.” “Ok, stun this bitch. We are going to have a bar-b-” Morgana flicked her wrist and as she did the head of the guy right next to Cyrus exploded into a fine mist. “Fuck!” Cyrus yelled as he dove for cover. “Hold your fire!” “Have you and your little friends been vaccinated against type six hyper-accelerated staph aureus?” she asked as she pulled out an aerosol grenade with a large bio-hazard symbol on it. “I have, just in preparation for this little meet and greet. I understand this stuff is kind of nasty.” Everybody froze as the pin hit the ground with a little “plink”. “Ok… ok… just calm down,” Cyrus said as he got back to his feet. “Feel like actually having a reasonable discussion now?” Morgana asked. “Look, lady,” Cyrus said dusting off his suit, “I can’t just whistle and have Shelia show up like a dog. I have to set up a meet and that takes time.” “Ok, you have a week. I’ve been playing nice up until now,” Morgana said, “Next week... Next week things get really fucked up.” She picked up the grenade pin and then turned and walked away, disappearing into the shadows. Cyrus snarled and turned to his men. “Find out who that cunt is and find out who is working for her,” he said breathing heavily. “And get me in touch with Shelia. I want to talk to that bitch.” The rest of this series can be found here
Every weekday evening at around 9pm, in the Daily Mail’s headquarters in Kensington, west London, the slightly stooping, six-foot three-inch figure of Paul Dacre emerges into the main open-plan office where editors, sub-editors and designers are in the final stages of preparing pages for the next day’s paper. The atmosphere changes instantly; everyone becomes tense, as though waiting for a thunderstorm. Dacre begins with a low growl, like an angry tiger. His voice rises as several pages are denounced, along with those responsible. Imprecations reverberate across the office, sometimes punctuated by the strangely anomalous command to a senior colleague, “Don’t resist me, darling.” Pages must be replaced or redesigned, their order changed, headlines altered. New pictures are required with new captions. Dacre waves his long arms, hammers the air with his hands, shouts even louder and, if particularly agitated, scratches himself. Nobody tries to argue. For all the fear and exasperation – “He never thinks of logistics and he has no idea of what’s an unreasonable request,” says one former sub-editor – there is also admiration. Dacre, Fleet Street’s best-paid editor, who earned almost £1.8m in 2012, has been in charge of the Mail since 1992 and, by general consent, is the most successful editor of his generation. The paper sells an average of 1.5 million copies on weekdays, 2.4 million on Saturdays. Only the Sun sells more but, on Saturdays, the Mail has just moved ahead. Its 4.3 million daily readers include more from the top three social classes (A, B and C1) than the Times, Guardian, Independent and Financial Times combined. Its long-standing middle-market rival, the Daily Express, slightly ahead when Dacre took over, now sells less than a third as many copies. Under Dacre, the Mail has won Newspaper of the Year six times in the annual British Press Awards – twice as many prizes as any other paper. If anything, its authority and clout have grown in the past two years as Rupert Murdoch’s Sun has struggled with the fallout from the hacking scandal. Politicians no longer fear Murdoch as they once did. They still fear Dacre. The opposition from Murdoch’s papers to the government’s proposals that a royal charter should regulate the press is muted. Dacre’s Mail is loud and clear about the threat to “our free press”. Summoned twice before the Leveson inquiry – the second time because he had accused the actor Hugh Grant of lying in his evidence – he didn’t give an inch. Everyone who has ever worked for Dacre, who has just passed his 65th birthday, praises his almost uncanny instinct for the issues and stories that will hold the attention of “Middle England”. No other editor so deftly balances the mix of subjects and moods that holds readers’ attention: serious and frivolous, celebrities and ordinary people, urban, suburban and rural, some stories provoking anger, others tears. No other editor chooses, with such unerring and lethal precision, the issues, often half forgotten, that will create panic and fear among politicians. “He’s the most consummate newspaperman I’ve ever met,” says Charles Burgess, a former features editor who also occupied high-level roles at the Guardian and Independent. “He balances the flow of each day’s paper in his head.” “He articulates the dreams, fears and hopes of socially insecure members of the suburban middle class,” says Peter Oborne, the Mail’s former political columnist now at the Daily Telegraph. “It’s a daily performance of genius.” But Murdoch’s decline leaves the Mail under more scrutiny than ever. Is Dacre at last running out of road? Rumours circulate in the national newspaper industry that members of the Rothermere family, owners of the Daily Mail, are increasingly nervous of the controversy that Dacre stirs up, notably this year with its attack on Ralph Miliband, father of the Labour leader, as “the man who hated Britain”. More than any other editor since Kelvin MacKenzie ruled at the Sun – and, among other outrages, alleged that drunkenness among Liverpool football fans led to the Hillsborough disaster of 1989 – Dacre attracts visceral loathing. His enemies see the Mail, to quote the Huffington Post writer and NS columnist Mehdi Hasan (who was duly monstered in the Mail’s pages), as “immigrant-bashing, woman-hating, Muslim-smearing, NHS-undermining, gay-baiting”. The loathing is returned, with interest. In Dacre’s mind, the country is run, in effect, by affluent metropolitan liberals who dominate Whitehall, the leadership of the main political parties, the universities, the BBC and most public-sector professions. As he once said, “. . . no day is too busy or too short not to find time to tweak the noses of the liberalocracy”. The Mail, in his view, speaks for ordinary people, working hard and struggling with their bills, conventional in their views, ambitious for their children, loyal to their country, proud of owning their home, determined to stand on their own feet. These people, Dacre believes, are not given a fair hearing in the national media and the Mail alone fights for them. It is incomprehensible to him – a gross category error – that critics should be obsessed by the Mail’s power and influence when the BBC, funded by a compulsory poll tax, dominates the news market. It uses this position, he argues, to push a dogmatically liberal agenda, hidden behind supposed neutrality. Scarcely an issue of the Mail passes without a snipe and sometimes a full barrage in the news pages, leaders or signed opinion columns at BBC “bias”. To its critics, however, the Mail is as biased as it’s possible to be, and none too fussy about the facts. In the files of the Press Complaints Commission, you will find records of 687 complaints against the Mail which led either to a PCC adjudication or to a resolution negotiated, at least partially, after the PCC’s intervention. The number far exceeds that for any other British newspaper: the files show 394 complaints against the Sun, 221 against the Daily Telegraph, 115 against the Guardian. The complaints will serve as a charge sheet against the Mail and its editor. This year, the Mail reported that disabled people are exempt from the bedroom tax; that asylum-seekers had “targeted” Scotland; that disabled babies were being euthanised under the Liverpool Care Pathway; that a Kenyan asylum-seeker had committed murders in his home country; that 878,000 recipients of Employment Support Allowance had stopped claiming “rather than face a fresh medical”; that a Portsmouth primary school had denied pupils water on the hottest day of the year because it was Ramadan; that wolves would soon return to Britain; that nearly half the electricity produced by windfarms was discarded. All these reports were false. Mail executives argue that it gets more complaints than its rivals because it reaches more readers (particularly online, where the paper’s stories are repeated and others originate), prints more pages and tackles more serious and politically challenging issues. They point out that only six complaints were upheld after going through all the PCC’s stages and that the Sun and Telegraph, despite fewer complaints, had more upheld. But the PCC list, though it contains some of the Mail’s favourite targets such as asylum-seekers and “scroungers”, merely scratches the surface. Other complainants turned to the law. In the past ten years, the Mail has reported that the dean of RAF College Cranwell showed undue favouritism to Muslim students (false); the film producer Steve Bing hired a private investigator to destroy the reputation of his former lover Liz Hurley (false); the actress Sharon Stone left her four-year-old child alone in a car while she dined at a restaurant (false); the actor Rowan Atkinson needed five weeks’ treatment at a clinic for depression (false); a Tamil refugee, on hunger strike in Parliament Square, was secretly eating McDonald’s burgers (false); the actor Kate Winslet lied over her exercise regime (false); the singer Elton John ordered guests at his Aids charity ball to speak to him only if spoken to (false); Amama Mbabazi, the prime minister of Uganda, benefited personally from the theft of £10m in foreign aid (false). In all these cases, the Mail paid damages. Then there are the subjects that the Mail and other right-wing papers will never drop. One is the EU, which, the Mail reported last year, proposed to ban books such as Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series that portray “traditional” families. Another is local authorities, forever plotting to expel Christmas from public life and replace it with the secular festival of Winterval. It does not matter how often these reports are denied and their flimsy provenance exposed; the Mail keeps on running them and its columnists cite them as though they were accepted wisdom. The paper gets away with publishing libels and falsehoods and with invasions of privacy because the penalties are insignificant. Often the victims can’t afford to sue and, if they can, the Mail group, with £282m annual profits even in these straitened times, can live with the costs. The PCC, even when its rules allow it to admit a complaint, has no powers to impose fines or to stipulate the prominence of corrections. Besides, many victims don’t pursue complaints because they fear the stress of going to war with a powerful newspaper. They included the late writer Siân Busby who, the paper wrote in 2008, had received “the all-clear from lung cancer” after “a gruelling year”. In fact, the diagnosis had come less than six months earlier and she hadn’t received the “all-clear”. More important, as her husband, the BBC journalist Robert Peston, explained in the James Cameron Memorial Lecture in November this year, she wanted to keep the news out of the public domain to protect her children. “The Mail got away with it,” Peston said. “As it often does.” (The Mail, in a statement after the lecture, said the information had been obtained from Busby herself and that the reporter had identified himself as a Mail writer.) In his 2008 book Flat Earth News, the Guardian journalist Nick Davies compared the paper to a footballer who, to protect his goal, will deliberately bring down an opponent. “Brilliant and corrupt,” Davies wrote, “the Daily Mail is the professional foul of contemporary Fleet Street.” Even a list of official complaints and court cases doesn’t quite capture why the Mail attracts such fear and loathing. It has a unique capacity for targeting individuals and twisting the knife day after day, without necessarily lapsing into inaccuracies that could lead either to libel writs or censure by the PCC. For instance, as publication of the Leveson report on press regulation approached, the Mail devoted 12 pages of one issue – and several more pages of subsequent issues – to an “exposure” of Sir David Bell, a name then almost entirely unknown even to well-informed members of the public. A Leveson assessor and former Financial Times chairman, Bell was allegedly at the centre of a “quasi-masonic” network of “elitist liberals”, bent on gagging the press and preventing freedom of expression. This network, based on the “leadership” training organisation Common Purpose, had spawned the Media Standards Trust, of which Bell was a co-founder, which in turn had spawned the lobby group Hacked Off, an important influence on Leveson. To the Mail, this was a perfect illustration of how well-connected liberals, through networks of apparently innocuous organisations, conspire to undermine national traditions and values. The paper also targets groups, often the weak and vulnerable. The Federation of Poles in Great Britain complained to the PCC that the Mail ran 80 headlines between 2006 and 2008 linking Poles to problems in the NHS and schools, unemployment among Britons, drug smuggling, rape and so on. Most of the stories, as the federation acknowledged, were newsworthy and largely accurate. The objection was to the way they were presented and to the drip, drip effect of continually highlighting the Polish connection so that, as the federation’s spokesman put it, the average reader’s heart “skips a beat . . . with either indignation or alarm”. The PCC eventually brokered a settlement that led to publication of a letter from the federation.  Yet there is something magnificent about the Mail’s confidence and single-mindedness. Other papers, trimming to focus groups, muffle their message, but the Mail projects its world-view relentlessly, with supreme technical skill, from almost every page. It is a paper led by its opinions, not by news. It is not noted for big exclusives, nor even for rapid reaction. “We were often known as the day-late paper,” a former reporter recalls. “Dacre wouldn’t really be interested in a story until he’d seen it somewhere else. We would sometimes give our exclusives to other journalists. Dacre surveys all the other papers, selects the right lines for the next day and follows them.” Although Dacre has little enthusiasm for new technology – he still doesn’t have a computer on his desk – his paper is perfectly primed for the age of instant 24-hour news, when the challenge is not so much to find and report news as to select, interpret and elaborate on it. Long before other papers recognised the merits of a features-led or views-led approach, the Mail under Dacre was doing it. The Mail gives its readers a sense of belonging in an increasingly complex and unsettling world. Part of the trick is to make the world seem more threatening than it is: crime is rising, migrants flooding the country, benefit scroungers swindling the taxpayer, standards of education falling, wind turbines taking over the countryside. Almost anything you eat or drink could give you cancer. Above all, the family – “the greatest institution on God’s green earth”, Dacre told a writer for the New Yorker last year – is under continuous assault. The Mail assures readers they are not alone in their anxieties about this changing world. It is a paper to be read, not on trains or buses or in offices, but in the peace and quiet of your home, preferably with an old-fashioned coal fire blazing in the hearth. “Readers like certainty,” says a former Mail reporter. “Newspapers that have a wavering grip on their ideology are the ones that struggle. The Mail is like Coke. It’s consistent, reliable. Dacre is one of the best brand managers in the business. He lives the brand.” Dacre lives mostly in the shadows. His two appearances before the Leveson inquiry gave the wider public a rare glimpse; apart from Desert Island Discs in 2004, he never appears on television or speaks on radio. If the Mail needs to defend itself (and it deigns to do so only in the most desperate circumstances), the job is assigned to an underling. Requests for on-the-record interviews are invariably refused, as they were for this article. A rare exception was made for the British Journalism Review, whose then editor, Bill Hagerty (a former editor of the People), interviewed Dacre in the tenth year of his editorship. There was also that audience with the New Yorker last year. Public lectures are equally unusual for him, though he gave the Cudlipp Lecture (in memory of Hugh Cudlipp, a Daily Mirror editor who was an early hero of his) in 2007, and addressed the Society of Editors in 2008. Even former staff members mostly prefer not to be quoted when talking about Dacre. If they agree to be quoted, they wish the quotations to be checked with them before publication. BBC Radio 4 used actors for several contributions to a recent profile. The journalists’ fear is not only that they may be cut off from future employment or freelance work – “The Mail pays far better than anybody else and you don’t want to jeopardise the £2,000 cheque that might drop through the letter box,” said one writer – but also that the Mail may hit back. These concerns are shared by many politicians, who are equally reluctant to be quoted. Dacre has few social graces and even less small talk. His body language is awkward, his manner prickly. He seldom smiles and, according to one ex-columnist, “He doesn’t laugh, he just says, ‘That’s a funny remark.’” He treats women with old-fashioned courtliness, opening doors and helping them with coats, but is otherwise uncomfortable with them, perhaps because he was one of five brothers, went to an all-male school and has no daughters. He speaks gruffly, with a slight north London accent and an even fainter trace of his father’s native Yorkshire. He sometimes buries his rather florid face deep in his hands, as though exasperated with the world’s inability to share his simple, common-sense values. He became notorious for the ripeness of his language – so frequent was his use of the C-word, almost entirely directed at men, that his staff referred to “the vagina monologues” – but when Charles Burgess told him women didn’t like hearing it he was profusely apologetic. On Desert Island Discs, he confessed to shouting at staff. “Shouting creates energy,” he said. “Energy creates great headlines.” He still shouts, but in recent years, as an insider reported, “He’s no longer the expletive volcano he once was; his barbs these days tend to concern the brainpower of his target and their supposed laziness.” He owns three properties: a home with a mile-long drive in West Sussex (known to Mail staff as Dacre Towers), a more modest weekday residence in the central London district of Belgravia and a seven-bedroom house in Scotland with a 17,000-acre shooting estate. He is a member of the Garrick Club, and sometimes takes columnists to lunch at Mark’s Club in Mayfair, which one recipient of his hospitality described as “very decorous, the sort of place you could have gone to in the 19th century”. He sent both of his sons to Eton. There are no stories of past or present indiscretions involving women, alcohol or drugs. Jon Holmes, a contemporary at Leeds University who is now a sports agent, recalls him as “a very cold fish; he never, ever, seemed to go out in a group for a drink or a meal or anything”. A former Mail reporter says: “We’d all be in the Harrow [a Fleet Street pub, heavily frequented by Mail journalists], and he would come in, buy a half-pint, take it to the opposite end of the bar, drink alone, and leave without speaking.” He has an apparently stable and successful marriage to a woman he met at university, which has lasted 37 years. He frequently attends Church of England services, but is not a believer. He likes and sometimes goes out to rugby union matches, the opera and theatre – the last partly because his wife, Kathleen Dacre, is a professor of theatre studies and partly because he has a son who is a successful director and producer with surprisingly avant-garde leanings. Asked what television he watched, he once mentioned Midsomer Murders and nothing else. He mostly eschews the trappings and opportunities of wealth and power. It is impossible to imagine him as a member of the Chipping Norton set or anything like it. He rarely dines or lunches with the powerful or fashionable, nor does he attend glitzy parties and social events. Frequently, he lunches in his office on meat and two veg. Sometimes he will lunch with politicians, but he has little respect or liking for them as a class and thinks it wise to keep his distance; Oborne recalls how, one evening, he ignored at least five increasingly urgent requests to take a call from a senior Tory minister. He declines nearly all invitations to sit on committees; his chairmanship of an official inquiry into the “30-year rule” (under which Whitehall records were kept secret for three decades) was unusual. “Editorship is not for him a route to something else,” says a former employee.
Dacre was born and spent much of his childhood in Enfield, an unremarkable middle-class suburb of north London whose inhabitants, he told the New Yorker, “were frugal, reticent, utterly self-reliant and immensely aspirational . . . suspicious of progressive values, vulgarity of any kind, self-indulgence, pretentiousness and people who know best”. Though his parents divorced late in life, his family was then (at least in his eyes) stable, happy and secure. But the more important clue to him and his relationship with the Mail’s Middle England readership is the Sunday Express of the 1950s and 1960s under the editorship of John Gordon and then John Junor. “That paper,” Dacre told the Society of Editors, “was my journalistic primer . . . [It] was warm, aspirational, unashamedly traditional, dedicated to decency, middlebrow, beautifully written and subbed, accessible, and, above all, utterly relevant to the lives of its readers.” Talking to Hagerty, he described Junor’s Sunday Express as “one of the great papers of all time”. After leaving school in Yorkshire at 16, his father, Peter Dacre, joined the Sunday Express at 21 and stayed there for the rest of his working life – mainly as a show-business writer but also, for short periods, as New York correspondent and foreign editor. Each Sunday that week’s paper was discussed and analysed over the Dacre family dinner table. It was then in its heyday, selling five million copies a week, and it didn’t go into severe decline (it now sells under 440,000) until the 1980s. It was a formulaic paper, which placed the same types of stories and features in exactly the same spots week after week. As Roy Greenslade observes in Press Gang, his post-1944 history of national newspapers, it was “virtually devoid of genuine news”; what it presented as news stories were really quirky mini-features, starting, as Greenslade put it, “with lengthy scene-setting descriptions or homilies”. Its staple subjects were animals, motor cars and wartime heroes. Its biggest target was “filth”, in the theatre, the cinema, books, magazines and TV programmes. It particularly deplored any assault on the delicate sensibilities of children. Dacre’s father criticised the BBC in 1965 for the unsuitable content of its Sunday teatime serials. Lorna Doone, he wrote, ended “gruesomely”, with a man drowning in a bog, and in the first episode of a spy serial the actors used such expressions as “damn”, “hell” and “silly bitch” at a time supposedly reserved for “family viewing”. “Have the men responsible for these programmes,” asked the elder Dacre, “forgotten that there can be no family without children? What kind of men are they? Do they have families of their own?” Another piece denounced the BBC’s Sunday evening play for “an overdose of twisted social conscience”. The young Dacre was hooked by newspapers. He only ever wanted to be a journalist and he always had his eyes on editing: “I’m a good writer, but not a great writer,” he told Hagerty. As a child in New York, during his father’s posting there, he would wake to the clattering of the ticker-tape telex machine outside his bedroom. In school holidays, he worked as a messenger for Junor’s Sunday Express and then spent a gap year before university as a trainee on the Daily Express. At the fee-charging University College School in Hampstead, north London, he edited the school magazine, and once ran, he told the Society of Editors, “a ponderous, prolix and achingly dull” special issue about the evangelist Billy Graham. It “went down like a sodden hot cross bus”, teaching him the essential lesson, which the Mail remembers every day on every page, that the worst sin in journalism is to be boring. To his disappointment, his application to Oxford University failed. He went instead to Leeds, where he read English and edited Union News, taking it sharply downmarket from, in his own description, “a product that looked like the then Times on Prozac” to one that ran “Leeds Lovelies” on page three. It won an award for student newspaper of the year. The paper supported a sit-in (led by the union president, Jack Straw, later a Labour cabinet minister), interviewed a student about “the delights of getting stoned”, wrote sympathetically about gay people, immigrants and homeless families, and called on students to help in “breaking down the barriers between the coloured and white communities of this town”. At the time, he subsequently claimed, he was left-wing, though Jon Holmes, who worked on Dacre’s Union News, says: “I never heard him express a political view except in favour of planned economies for third-world, though not first-world, countries.” His left-wing period, as he calls it, continued until the Daily Express, which he joined as soon as he left Leeds, sent him to America in 1976. He stayed there for six years, latterly working for the Mail. “America,” Dacre told Hagerty, “taught me the power of the free market . . . to improve the lives of the vast majority of ordinary people.” The Mail brought him back to London in the early 1980s and made him news editor. According to various accounts, he would “rampage through the newsroom with arms flailing like a windmill”, shouting “Go, paras, go” as he despatched reporters on stories. He climbed the hierarchy until in 1991 he became the editor of the London Evening Standard, then owned, like the Mail, by the Rothermeres’ Associated Newspapers. Circulation rose by 25 per cent in 16 months and Rupert Murdoch sounded him out about the Times editorship. To stop him leaving, the Mail editor David English resigned his chair, recommended that Dacre should replace him, and moved “upstairs” as editor-in-chief, another title that Dacre eventually inherited after English died in 1998. Dacre’s editorship has been more successful than his mentor’s but most staff do not love him as they did English. English, though capable of great coldness to those who fell into disfavour and no less likely to fly off the handle, had charm and charisma. “He would be delighted when you rang,” a former foreign correspondent says, “and he’d want to gossip and know about everything that was going on. Sometimes we’d talk for an hour. But Paul doesn’t give good phone.” He will invite writers into his office, push a glass of champagne into their hands and start saying their latest story is rubbish even as he does so. “And you hardly got time to finish the bloody drink,” a former reporter complains. A former executive says: “His track record for creating columnists is nil. He buys them up from elsewhere. He doesn’t home-grow talent because he doesn’t nurture and praise it. That’s where he’s unlike English.” Dacre is a passionate and emotional man. Though the story that he sometimes sheds tears as he dictates leaders is probably apocryphal, nobody who has worked with him doubts that he is sincere in the views he and the Mail express. “He’s not an editor who wakes up in the morning and wonders what he should be thinking today,” says Simon Heffer, a Mail columnist. Another columnist, Amanda Platell, a former editor of the Sunday Mirror and press secretary to William Hague during his leadership of the Conservative Party, says: “When I was an editor, I had to second-guess my readership because they weren’t my natural constituency. Paul never has to do that.” But while his views are mostly right-wing, he is not a reliable ally for the Conservative Party, or for anyone else. This aspect of his way of working is little understood. More than most editors, it can be said of him that he is in nobody’s pocket, not even his proprietor’s. He inherited from English a paper that was slavishly pro-Tory (“David was always in and out of No 10,” said a long-serving Mail editor), firmly pro-Europe and read mainly by people in London and the south-east. Dacre changed the politics of the paper and the demographics of its audience. Today, it is resolutely – some would say hysterically – Eurosceptic and a far higher proportion of its readership is from Scotland and the English north and midlands. The Mail has ceased to take its line from Tory headquarters or to act as a mouthpiece for Conservative leaders. Indeed, every Tory leader since Margaret Thatcher has fallen short of Dacre’s exacting standards. That applies particularly to John Major and David Cameron. According to a former columnist, Dacre regards the latter as “brash, shallow, unthinking and self-advancing” and he takes an equally jaundiced view of Boris Johnson. Twice he backed Kenneth Clarke for the party leadership, despite Clarke’s enthusiasm for the EU. Clarke is a model for the politicians Dacre generally favours even if he disagrees with most of what they say: earthy, authentic, unpretentious, consistent in their values. Jack Straw and David Blunkett – both, like Clarke, from humble backgrounds – are other examples. For a time, Dacre took a relatively kindly view of Tony Blair, having been impressed by the future prime minister’s “tough on crime” approach as shadow home secretary. But he was always suspicious of Blair’s socially liberal views on marriage, gays and drugs and he told Hagerty that once Labour attained power, he saw the new government as “manipulative, dictatorial and slightly corrupt”. He wished, he added, that Blair had “done as much for the family as he’s done for gay rights”. Gordon Brown, however, was smiled upon as no other politician had ever been. The two men developed a strange friendship, involving meals together and walks in the park, which one Mail columnist described to me as “the attraction of the two weirdest boys in the playground”. Brown, Dacre told Hagerty, was “touched by the mantle of greatness . . . he is a genuinely good man . . . a compassionate man . . . an original thinker . . . of enormous willpower and courage”. At a Savoy Hotel event to celebrate Dacre’s first ten years as editor, Brown was almost equally effusive, describing the Mail editor as showing “great personal warmth and kindness . . . as well as great journalistic skill”. “We tried to tell Dacre,” says a former Mail political reporter, “that Brown was not a very good chancellor and the economy would implode eventually. But frankly, Dacre has poor political judgement. They were united by a mutual hatred of Blair. Both are social conservatives; they’re both suspicious of foreigners; they both have a kind of Presbyterian morality. Dacre would say that Brown believes in work. It’s typical of him that he seizes on a single word as the key to his understanding of someone else.” It is inconceivable that the Mail would ever back a party other than the Conservatives in a general election, but Dacre’s support can be cool, as it was in 1997 and 2010. Although he described himself to Hagerty as “a Thatcherite politically” and though self-made entrepreneurs are among the few people who can expect favourable coverage in the Mail, Dacre is, to most neoliberals, a tepid and inconsistent supporter of free enterprise. Nor is he a neocon. The Mail opposed overseas military interventions in Iraq, Libya and Syria. It has denounced Guantanamo Bay, extraordinary rendition and torture. It may be hard on immigrants and benefit scroungers, but it is often equally hard on the rich and famous, pursuing overpaid bosses of public-service utilities to their luxurious homes, exposing “depravity” among the well-heeled and high-born, and rarely treating TV and film celebrities with the deference that is the staple fare of other tabloids. Many Mail campaigns have centred on liberal or environmental causes: lead in petrol, plastic bags, secret justice, the extradition to the United States of the hacker Gary McKinnon, and so on. For a time, the Mail furiously campaigned to stop Labour deporting failed (black) asylum-seekers to Zimbabwe, even though, almost simultaneously, it was berating ministers for allowing too many illegal immigrants to stay. Other campaigns, such as those against internet porn and super-casinos (both of which influenced government action), though reflecting the Mail’s conservative social agenda, highlighted issues that concern many on the left. Dacre’s most celebrated campaign, which even some of his enemies regard as his finest hour, was to bring the killers of Stephen Lawrence to justice. In 1997, over the five photographs of those he believed were responsible, he ran the headline “MURDERERS” and, beneath it, asserted: “The Mail accuses these men of killing. If we are wrong, let them sue us”. It was hugely courageous, but did it exonerate the Mail from accusations of racism? Critics point out that the paper rarely features black people except as criminals, though this is not exceptional for the nationals. The “soft” features on women, fashion, style and health are illustrated almost entirely by white faces and bodies.
Dacre’s somewhat belated support for the Lawrence campaign was prompted by a personal connection: Neville Lawrence, Stephen’s father, had worked as a decorator on Dacre’s London house of the time, in Islington. The Mail’s campaign, critics argue, was based on substituting one frame of prejudice for another. Young Stephen eschewed gangs and drugs, did his homework and wanted to go to university. His parents were married, aspirational and home-owning. In everything except skin colour, the Lawrence family represented Middle England, while his white alleged killers were low-class yobs who threatened the safety of all respectable folk. In that, as in much else, Dacre’s Mail recalls 1950s Britain, which rather patronisingly welcomed migrants from Asia and the Caribbean as long as they behaved as though they and their ancestors were English. “If you’re in twinset and pearls, your colour is irrelevant,” says a former Mail journalist. “And Dacre’s attitude to gays changed when he realised it’s possible to be an extremely boring gay person.” The Mail’s attitudes to drugs are also redolent of the 1950s. Writing about the disgraced Co-operative Bank chairman Paul Flowers, Stephen Glover – the Mail columnist whose views, according to insiders, track Dacre’s most closely – criticised commentators who “concentrated on his financial unsuitability”, placing “relatively little emphasis” on his “moral turpitude”. Most of all, the Mail seems determined to uphold the 1950s ideal of womanhood: the stay-at-home mother who dedicates herself to homemaking and prepares a cooked dinner for her husband on his return home every night. That, the paper’s defenders say, is something of a caricature of the Mail’s position. It objects not so much to working mothers as to middle-class feminists who insist that women can “have it all”. English aimed at turning the Mail into “the women’s paper”, and succeeded: it became the only national newspaper where women accounted for more than half the readership. That remains true, and yet Dacre sometimes seems determined to drive them away. The paper subjects women’s bodies, clothes and deportment to relentless and detailed scrutiny, and often finds them wanting, particularly in the thigh and bottom department. It gives prominent coverage to research that warns of the negative effects of working mothers on children’s lives. The Mail’s poster girl is Liz Jones, the columnist and fashion editor celebrated for her self-hatred and misery. “She has so much,” says another Mail journalist, “lots of money, expensive houses, the newest clothes. But she’s never had a child, she hasn’t kept hold of a man, and she’s unhappy. The message is: it’s what happens to you, girls, if you pursue worldly success. You can succeed but, oh boy, you will suffer for it.” The Mail’s punishing hours, requiring news and features executives to stay at the office until late into the evening (not uncommon in national newspapers), and its largely unsympathetic attitude to part-time employment make it an unfriendly environment for working mothers. When Dacre took over at the Mail, he immediately appointed a female deputy, which, said another woman who then had a senior role in the group, “was quite a statement”. But the paper now has few women in its most senior positions, other than the editor of Femail (though sometimes even that post is occupied by a man), and few staff have young children. Yet in some respects, the Mail, even though it does not recognise the National Union of Journalists, is a good employer. Unlike the Mirror, it is not under a company ruled by accountants who single-mindedly seek “efficiencies”. Unlike the Times and the Sun, it does not have a proprietor who touts his papers’ support to the highest bidder. Unlike the Guardian and Independent, it is not beset by financial problems. The proprietor, Viscount (Jonathan) Rothermere, whose great-grandfather Harold Harmsworth founded the paper with his brother Alfred in 1896, allows his editors wide freedom, as did his father, Vere Rothermere, who appointed Dacre. The Mail, alone among national newspapers, has had no significant rounds of editorial redundancies in recent years and its staffing levels (it employs about 400 journalists) are comparable to what they were a decade ago. Dacre’s paper is his sole domain; MailOnline is run separately (though Dacre, as editor-in-chief, has oversight) and although the website carries all daily and Sunday paper stories, much of its content is self-generated and the editorial flavour is distinct. Dacre demands, and mostly gets, a generous budget, paying high salaries for established editorial staff and columnists and high fees for freelance contributors. Journalists are driven hard but, at senior levels in particular, they rarely leave, not least because Dacre is as loyal to them as they mostly are to him. Outright sackings are rare and nearly always accompanied by large payoffs. Those who do leave often reach the top elsewhere. The current editors of both Telegraph papers – Tony Gallagher at the daily and Ian MacGregor at the Sunday – are former Mail executives. Despite more than two decades at the helm, Dacre shows few signs of slowing down. After heart trouble some years ago – which caused an absence of several months from the office – his holidays, which he usually takes in the British Virgin Islands, have become slightly longer and more frequent. But he still routinely puts in 14-hour days. Nevertheless, speculation about his future has grown among journalists on the Mail and other papers. At the end of November, Dacre sold his last remaining shares in the Daily Mail and General Trust, the Mail’s parent company, for £347,564; he disposed of the majority in 2012. His latest contract, signed on his 65th birthday, is for one year only. Geordie Greig, the 53-year-old editor of the Mail on Sunday, is widely regarded as the most likely successor, though Martin Clarke, the abrasive publisher of the phenomenally successful MailOnline, now the most visited newspaper website in the world, is also tipped and Jon Steafel, Dacre’s deputy, is favoured by most staff. The surprising announcement in November that Richard Kay, the paper’s diarist and a long-standing friend of Dacre’s, is to leave his position looks like another straw in the wind, particularly given that his almost certain replacement is Sebastian Shakespeare, previously the diary editor at the London Evening Standard, where Greig was editor before he moved to the Mail on Sunday. Fleet Street rumour has it that Kay is being moved because he upset friends of Lady Rothermere, the proprietor’s wife, and that she is also behind the abrupt departure of the columnist Melanie Phillips, apparently on the grounds that her style – particularly during a June appearance on BBC1’s Question Time – is too shrill. Lady Rothermere, it is said, is desperately keen to oust Dacre in favour of Greig. Senior Mail sources pooh-pooh such tales, but they stop short of outright denials that Dacre is nearing the end of his days on the paper.
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