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[I shared this in girls and gays but wanted to share here as well for those of you not in that sub]
With Kendrick Lamar and Drake’s rap feud raging over the last month, I got curious about what their natal charts say about each of them as rappers, and how the astrological synastry between the two has fueled this chart-topping fight. Luckily we have an accurate birth time for both Drake and Kendrick, so we can see exactly how their charts overlap.
Here’s Drake’s chart:
And here’s Kendrick’s chart:
Inconjunct Suns
Kendrick has a Gemini sun, like many of hip hop’s greatest rappers, including Notorious B.I.G., Tupac, Lauryn Hill and Outkast’s Andre 3000. Geminis are well-suited to rap as the wordsmiths of the zodiac, one of the two signs ruled by Mercury, the planet of communication. Virgo, the other sign ruled by Mercury, expresses the analytical, practical, pragmatic side of the mind, the so-called “left brain” which sorts the wheat from the chaff (and, fittingly, Virgo season aligns with the harvest season of late summer).
Gemini expresses the more playful, self-expressive, hyper-curious “right brain” side of the mind - the monkey mind that swings from branch to branch, seeing connections as it goes. “Curious to a fault, Geminis have a finger in every pie. Solar Geminis are flexible and changeable people. Usually quite clever and witty, Geminis enjoy intellectual conversations and they are easily bored if they are not getting enough mental stimulation.”
Drake is a Scorpio sun, bringing a very different energy to the table. Scorpios seek power above all, and they live life intensely. If Gemini is the court jester, taking life lightly and poking fun at it all, Scorpio is the dark knight plotting and positioning himself for a coup. As one of the two signs ruled by Mars, the planet of war and competition, Scorpios don’t back down from competition, and as a fixed modality sign, they can struggle to let go–even of what hurts them. Scorpios are drawn to the darker sides of life - they know that secrets hold power, so they tend toward privacy, as shown in Drake’s last rap beef, when Pusha T revealed that he had secretly fathered a son with a porn star.
Gemini and Scorpio have a tricky inter-dynamic, with an aspect between them known as a quincunx, or an inconjunct. Quincunxes occur when planets are 150 degrees apart, and therefore share neither an element (water, fire, earth, or air) nor a modality (cardinal, fixed, or mutable). They are at odds in a very fundamental way, and though they can teach each other a lot, in order to get along they will have to make some serious adjustments.
“When these signs get together, they just can’t understand each other. They have almost nothing in common, so it’s hard to find common ground. When a quincunx shows up in a synastry or relationship reading, this can make for a tense or difficult relationship.” This natural repelling dynamic is expressed in Kendrick’s diss song Euphoria (“I hate the way that you walk, the way that you talk/I hate the way that you dress/I hate the way you sneak diss, if I catch flight, it's gon' be direct”).
Drake’s ascendant is placed at 29 degrees Leo, exactly conjunct the royal fixed star Regulus. Regulus is one of the luckiest stars in the zodiac, and it is often seen in the charts of celebrities. “On the Ascendant, it will give a courageous and frank character. A splendid and illustrious life; glorious, mighty and commanding nature; fame, busy with many activities, bountiful resources, well known or feared in cities and regions.” But with Regulus on the ascendant, expanding the already narcissistic tendencies of Leo, there is a risk for an over-expansion of the ego and a lack of humility. Drake wants to be the best by all accounts - not just the biggest commercial superstar, which he is, but also the most critically acclaimed rapper, like Pulitzer Prize-winning Kendrick.
Mercury and Mars vs. Mercury and Venus
When it comes to analyzing writers of any sort, I like to look at their Mercuries, and here we see a fascinating contrast. Kendrick’s Mercury is located in intuitive, emotional Cancer (just like Lana del Rey, who I analyzed last week), and it is conjoined with Mars, the planet of war, which is what makes him such a formidable opponent in a rap battle. “Mercury conjunct Mars natal gives a quick mind, rapid reflexes, and a sharp tongue. These attributes are ideal for making quick decisions in the heat of the moment while others hesitate. Excellent debating skills allow you to stand up not only for yourself but for the rights of others. Your enthusiastic, direct and courageous way of expressing yourself can win admiration in politics, business, and the military.”
I think Mercury in combination with Mars is the ideal aspect for the competitive sport of rap, and interestingly enough, Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., who famously feuded and are considered by many to be the all-time greatest rappers, both had these planets tightly combined (Tupac had Mercury trine Mars with a 1 degree orb, and Biggie had Mercury septile Mars with a 0 degree orb).
Drake, by contrast, has his Mercury conjoined with Mars’ planetary opposite, Venus. Mercury conjoined with creative Venus is a great aspect for a musician, but it lacks the teeth of competitive Mars. “Mercury conjunct Venus natal makes you a lovable, handsome, neat, refined, romantic, and courteous person. You may tend to be passive and submissive, but this is a means by which you achieve peace in your life. You can lovingly communicate things; a melodic, poetic, and relaxing voice often helps this. Mercury rules trade, and Venus rules money, so you could do well in business and enjoy buying and selling.”
Many of Drake’s biggest hits show this melodic Mercury-Venus aspect - like the no-rapping, all-singing “Hold On, We’re Going Home,” “Hotline Bling” and “One Dance,” or the purported feminist anthem “Nice for What.” Many think Drake is best as a pop star rather than a rapper, which Kendrick references in Euphoria (“I like Drake with the melodies, I don't like Drake when he act tough” “Keep makin' me dance, wavin' my hand and it won't be no threat”).
Mercury conjunct Venus should be a very positive aspect for Drake, and in many ways it is – as two of the planets that rule over money (Mercury the marketplace, and Venus the possessions), this aspect is part of why he’s had such incredible financial success. However, a few factors complicate it. For one thing, they are located together in Scorpio, ruled by Mars. His Mercury is expressed in a Venusian way, but it wants to be expressed in a Martian way. I think this is why Drake returns regularly to gangster rap despite his success in pop and R&B. He wants to be a Mercury-Mars rap powerhouse like Kendrick, Biggie, and Tupac, but he’s fundamentally different. From the beginning of his career he’s been taunted as soft, weak, feminine, privileged–all very Venusian adjectives.
Another complicating factor is that Drake’s Venus is doubly challenged - it is both in detriment in Scorpio, as well as retrograde. Venus is in detriment in Scorpio because it rules over Scorpio’s opposite, Taurus, and so the planet is not at ease in suspicious, jealous Scorpio. “Fears of being too vulnerable or of giving up their own power to others is strong. Scorpio is an “all or nothing” energy, and relationships tend to be somewhat of a rollercoaster ride as a result. Disdain for mediocrity and superficiality can compel them to create crises in order to feel alive and vital.”
Venus retrograde in the natal chart “suggests you have some difficulty in giving and receiving love and affection. You may experience sadness in love or have to endure hardship or delay. Natal Venus in retrograde can also show as excessive use of makeup and jewelry or even disfigurement from cosmetic surgery.” It’s interesting how some of the allegations against Drake in Kendrick’s songs have included a nose job and a Brazilian butt lift. After Drake told Metro Boomin to “shut up and make some drums” in his initial Kendrick diss Push Ups, the producer responded with “BBL Drizzy.”
Drake has never been married or had a public long-term relationship. His highest profile one with Rihanna was on-again, off-again, and at times seemed more like unrequited love than true commitment. When interviewed about the relationship, he said “As life takes shape and teaches you#Personal_life) your own lessons, I end up in this situation where I don't have the fairy tale [of] 'Drake started a family with Rihanna, [it's] so perfect.' It looks so good on paper [and] I wanted it too at one time.” Two years ago Drake had jeweler Alex Moss create a necklace worth $12.5 million dollars built from dozens of engagement rings he had made but never used: ““New piece titled ‘Previous Engagements’ for all the times he thought about it but never did it,” Moss wrote over a video showcasing the stunning necklace, which is made up of “42 engagement rings” totaling “351.38 carats in diamonds.”” It’s quite the testament to a challenged natal Venus.
Lilith Synastry
Here is Drake and Kendrick’s synastry (Drake is on the outer circle):
The most interesting thing I found digging into Drake and Kendrick’s charts was the presence of Lilith in their synastry. Lilith is an asteroid associated with the “angry woman” figure as well as female liberation. In some Jewish folklore Lilith was the first wife of Adam, but she was banished from the Garden of Eden for not obeying him and replaced with Eve.
“In the intricacies of a birth chart, Black Moon Lilith symbolizes the raw essence of femininity, the primal urges, and the suppressed parts of our psyche that lie in the shadows. This point, not a planet but a mathematical point, reveals where one might feel estranged, challenged, or empowered to go against the grain of societal norms. It unveils deep-seated desires, innate instincts, and perhaps the areas where one feels the need to challenge established roles or expectations. It's a place of power, mystique, and, occasionally, friction – pinpointing where one's true nature might clash with the conventional, leading to feelings of marginalization or rebellion.”
The allegations Drake and Kendrick threw at each other both had to do with mistreatment of women - Drake said that Kendrick abused his fiancée, and Kendrick said Drake was a pedophile who shouldn’t be trusted around young women.
Both Drake and Kendrick’s Liliths make tight aspects with the other’s chart. “Whenever Lilith is around, you can expect to feel a wild, intense, deep, and sometimes obsessive energy. If you have Lilith aspects in synastry then this energy will show up in your relationship. Whenever your Lilith touches one of your partner’s planets or vice-versa, you can expect to see your deepest fears revealed. You might also see glimpses of things you desire but can’t have. Ultimately, Lilith aspects in synastry give both partners a chance to work on their shadow sides.”
Kendrick’s sun exactly conjoins Drake’s Lilith at 26 degrees Gemini. “Often, the sun person [Kendrick] represents all that the Lilith person [Drake] wants but can never quite “catch.” There is an illusive vibe to this relationship. The Lilith person may feel somewhat less-than or “bad.” Lilith conjunct sun in synastry is a test for the Lilith person because their most taboo qualities such as obsession and anger will be activated, but it’s also a test for the sun person. The lesson is for the sun individual to stand their ground and follow their inner voice. Lilith is neither good nor bad, and the sun person can share in some of the Lilith partner’s activities without merging.”
This resonates with the fact that despite Drake’s huge commercial success, he is deeply jealous of Kendrick’s critical success. In Family Matters Drake took a jab at Kendrick’s acclaim (“Kendrick just opened his mouth, someone go hand him a Grammy right now”), and the beef between them played out similarly, with many rap fans deciding that Kendrick won before even listening to Drake. I think it’s obvious that Kendrick is a stronger rapper, but it’s also clear that Drake wasn’t given a fair shake.
Drake’s Lilith makes a tight trine to Kendrick’s Mercury. “Both the Lilith person and the Mercury person help each other to bring unhealed deeper wounds and unconscious emotion to the surface and articulate deeper, wild instincts. Mercury person [Kendrick] helps Lilith person [Drake] make sense of their inner restlessness and insecurities, sexual passions and unresolved rage. Mercury person may find Lilith person to be highly emotional but is also intrigued by Lilith person’s edgy and unique perspective.” It’s remarkable that both of their Liliths are interlocked with each other’s inner planets, creating a push-pull, love-hate, shadow-enlightening dynamic between the two.
I think the obsession goes both ways, and that part of the reason Kendrick fought back so viciously was because Drake triggers something in him shown through the Lilith synastry. Drake shows Kendrick what he could be–a charismatic playboy enjoying his fame and money to the fullest. And in engaging with the feud he stooped to a lower level, making unsupported claims about Drake’s supposed secret daughter, and writing a rap song (Meet the Grahams) addressed to Drake’s 5 year old son opening with “Dear Adonis, I’m sorry that man is your father.” All is fair in rap battles–or is it? Questlove called it out, saying on Instagram: “Nobody won the war. This wasn’t about skill. This was a wrestling match level mudslinging and takedown by any means necessary — women & children (& actual facts) be damned.”
Kendrick’s latest diss track Not Like Us has just debuted at number one on the Billboard Top 100, and it’s clear this battle has propelled him to another level of stardom. Drake’s Regulus ascendant arrogance and Scorpionic desire to fight to the death drove him to attack the strongest living rapper, and now he’s dealing with the fallout. Kendrick’s streams of his back catalog are up 50%, while Drake’s are down 5% and his reputation has taken a massive knock. But Kendrick has taken a hit as well. Having rap’s two biggest stars accusing each other of heinous crimes might drive up streams in the short run, but it’s a dangerous game. Astrology helps us understand why these two polar opposites are so intertwined, and why their mutual dislike has spurred on such a captivating firestorm.

[I shared this in girls and gays but wanted to share here as well for those of you not in that sub]
With Kendrick Lamar and Drake’s rap feud raging over the last month, I got curious about what their natal charts say about each of them as rappers, and how the astrological synastry between the two has fueled this chart-topping fight. Luckily we have an accurate birth time for both Drake and Kendrick, so we can see exactly how their charts overlap.
Here’s Drake’s chart:
And here’s Kendrick’s chart:
Inconjunct Suns
Kendrick has a Gemini sun, like many of hip hop’s greatest rappers, including Notorious B.I.G., Tupac, Lauryn Hill and Outkast’s Andre 3000. Geminis are well-suited to rap as the wordsmiths of the zodiac, one of the two signs ruled by Mercury, the planet of communication. Virgo, the other sign ruled by Mercury, expresses the analytical, practical, pragmatic side of the mind, the so-called “left brain” which sorts the wheat from the chaff (and, fittingly, Virgo season aligns with the harvest season of late summer).
Gemini expresses the more playful, self-expressive, hyper-curious “right brain” side of the mind - the monkey mind that swings from branch to branch, seeing connections as it goes. “Curious to a fault, Geminis have a finger in every pie. Solar Geminis are flexible and changeable people. Usually quite clever and witty, Geminis enjoy intellectual conversations and they are easily bored if they are not getting enough mental stimulation.”
Drake is a Scorpio sun, bringing a very different energy to the table. Scorpios seek power above all, and they live life intensely. If Gemini is the court jester, taking life lightly and poking fun at it all, Scorpio is the dark knight plotting and positioning himself for a coup. As one of the two signs ruled by Mars, the planet of war and competition, Scorpios don’t back down from competition, and as a fixed modality sign, they can struggle to let go–even of what hurts them. Scorpios are drawn to the darker sides of life - they know that secrets hold power, so they tend toward privacy, as shown in Drake’s last rap beef, when Pusha T revealed that he had secretly fathered a son with a porn star.
Gemini and Scorpio have a tricky inter-dynamic, with an aspect between them known as a quincunx, or an inconjunct. Quincunxes occur when planets are 150 degrees apart, and therefore share neither an element (water, fire, earth, or air) nor a modality (cardinal, fixed, or mutable). They are at odds in a very fundamental way, and though they can teach each other a lot, in order to get along they will have to make some serious adjustments.
“When these signs get together, they just can’t understand each other. They have almost nothing in common, so it’s hard to find common ground. When a quincunx shows up in a synastry or relationship reading, this can make for a tense or difficult relationship.” This natural repelling dynamic is expressed in Kendrick’s diss song Euphoria (“I hate the way that you walk, the way that you talk/I hate the way that you dress/I hate the way you sneak diss, if I catch flight, it's gon' be direct”).
Drake’s ascendant is placed at 29 degrees Leo, exactly conjunct the royal fixed star Regulus. Regulus is one of the luckiest stars in the zodiac, and it is often seen in the charts of celebrities. “On the Ascendant, it will give a courageous and frank character. A splendid and illustrious life; glorious, mighty and commanding nature; fame, busy with many activities, bountiful resources, well known or feared in cities and regions.” But with Regulus on the ascendant, expanding the already narcissistic tendencies of Leo, there is a risk for an over-expansion of the ego and a lack of humility. Drake wants to be the best by all accounts - not just the biggest commercial superstar, which he is, but also the most critically acclaimed rapper, like Pulitzer Prize-winning Kendrick.
Mercury and Mars vs. Mercury and Venus
When it comes to analyzing writers of any sort, I like to look at their Mercuries, and here we see a fascinating contrast. Kendrick’s Mercury is located in intuitive, emotional Cancer (just like Lana del Rey, who I analyzed last week), and it is conjoined with Mars, the planet of war, which is what makes him such a formidable opponent in a rap battle. “Mercury conjunct Mars natal gives a quick mind, rapid reflexes, and a sharp tongue. These attributes are ideal for making quick decisions in the heat of the moment while others hesitate. Excellent debating skills allow you to stand up not only for yourself but for the rights of others. Your enthusiastic, direct and courageous way of expressing yourself can win admiration in politics, business, and the military.”
I think Mercury in combination with Mars is the ideal aspect for the competitive sport of rap, and interestingly enough, Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., who famously feuded and are considered by many to be the all-time greatest rappers, both had these planets tightly combined (Tupac had Mercury trine Mars with a 1 degree orb, and Biggie had Mercury septile Mars with a 0 degree orb).
Drake, by contrast, has his Mercury conjoined with Mars’ planetary opposite, Venus. Mercury conjoined with creative Venus is a great aspect for a musician, but it lacks the teeth of competitive Mars. “Mercury conjunct Venus natal makes you a lovable, handsome, neat, refined, romantic, and courteous person. You may tend to be passive and submissive, but this is a means by which you achieve peace in your life. You can lovingly communicate things; a melodic, poetic, and relaxing voice often helps this. Mercury rules trade, and Venus rules money, so you could do well in business and enjoy buying and selling.”
Many of Drake’s biggest hits show this melodic Mercury-Venus aspect - like the no-rapping, all-singing “Hold On, We’re Going Home,” “Hotline Bling” and “One Dance,” or the purported feminist anthem “Nice for What.” Many think Drake is best as a pop star rather than a rapper, which Kendrick references in Euphoria (“I like Drake with the melodies, I don't like Drake when he act tough” “Keep makin' me dance, wavin' my hand and it won't be no threat”).
Mercury conjunct Venus should be a very positive aspect for Drake, and in many ways it is – as two of the planets that rule over money (Mercury the marketplace, and Venus the possessions), this aspect is part of why he’s had such incredible financial success. However, a few factors complicate it. For one thing, they are located together in Scorpio, ruled by Mars. His Mercury is expressed in a Venusian way, but it wants to be expressed in a Martian way. I think this is why Drake returns regularly to gangster rap despite his success in pop and R&B. He wants to be a Mercury-Mars rap powerhouse like Kendrick, Biggie, and Tupac, but he’s fundamentally different. From the beginning of his career he’s been taunted as soft, weak, feminine, privileged–all very Venusian adjectives.
Another complicating factor is that Drake’s Venus is doubly challenged - it is both in detriment in Scorpio, as well as retrograde. Venus is in detriment in Scorpio because it rules over Scorpio’s opposite, Taurus, and so the planet is not at ease in suspicious, jealous Scorpio. “Fears of being too vulnerable or of giving up their own power to others is strong. Scorpio is an “all or nothing” energy, and relationships tend to be somewhat of a rollercoaster ride as a result. Disdain for mediocrity and superficiality can compel them to create crises in order to feel alive and vital.”
Venus retrograde in the natal chart “suggests you have some difficulty in giving and receiving love and affection. You may experience sadness in love or have to endure hardship or delay. Natal Venus in retrograde can also show as excessive use of makeup and jewelry or even disfigurement from cosmetic surgery.” It’s interesting how some of the allegations against Drake in Kendrick’s songs have included a nose job and a Brazilian butt lift. After Drake told Metro Boomin to “shut up and make some drums” in his initial Kendrick diss Push Ups, the producer responded with “BBL Drizzy.”
Drake has never been married or had a public long-term relationship. His highest profile one with Rihanna was on-again, off-again, and at times seemed more like unrequited love than true commitment. When interviewed about the relationship, he said “As life takes shape and teaches you#Personal_life) your own lessons, I end up in this situation where I don't have the fairy tale [of] 'Drake started a family with Rihanna, [it's] so perfect.' It looks so good on paper [and] I wanted it too at one time.” Two years ago Drake had jeweler Alex Moss create a necklace worth $12.5 million dollars built from dozens of engagement rings he had made but never used: ““New piece titled ‘Previous Engagements’ for all the times he thought about it but never did it,” Moss wrote over a video showcasing the stunning necklace, which is made up of “42 engagement rings” totaling “351.38 carats in diamonds.”” It’s quite the testament to a challenged natal Venus.
Lilith Synastry
Here is Drake and Kendrick’s synastry (Drake is on the outer circle):
The most interesting thing I found digging into Drake and Kendrick’s charts was the presence of Lilith in their synastry. Lilith is an asteroid associated with the “angry woman” figure as well as female liberation. In some Jewish folklore Lilith was the first wife of Adam, but she was banished from the Garden of Eden for not obeying him and replaced with Eve.
“In the intricacies of a birth chart, Black Moon Lilith symbolizes the raw essence of femininity, the primal urges, and the suppressed parts of our psyche that lie in the shadows. This point, not a planet but a mathematical point, reveals where one might feel estranged, challenged, or empowered to go against the grain of societal norms. It unveils deep-seated desires, innate instincts, and perhaps the areas where one feels the need to challenge established roles or expectations. It's a place of power, mystique, and, occasionally, friction – pinpointing where one's true nature might clash with the conventional, leading to feelings of marginalization or rebellion.”
The allegations Drake and Kendrick threw at each other both had to do with mistreatment of women - Drake said that Kendrick abused his fiancée, and Kendrick said Drake was a pedophile who shouldn’t be trusted around young women.
Both Drake and Kendrick’s Liliths make tight aspects with the other’s chart. “Whenever Lilith is around, you can expect to feel a wild, intense, deep, and sometimes obsessive energy. If you have Lilith aspects in synastry then this energy will show up in your relationship. Whenever your Lilith touches one of your partner’s planets or vice-versa, you can expect to see your deepest fears revealed. You might also see glimpses of things you desire but can’t have. Ultimately, Lilith aspects in synastry give both partners a chance to work on their shadow sides.”
Kendrick’s sun exactly conjoins Drake’s Lilith at 26 degrees Gemini. “Often, the sun person [Kendrick] represents all that the Lilith person [Drake] wants but can never quite “catch.” There is an illusive vibe to this relationship. The Lilith person may feel somewhat less-than or “bad.” Lilith conjunct sun in synastry is a test for the Lilith person because their most taboo qualities such as obsession and anger will be activated, but it’s also a test for the sun person. The lesson is for the sun individual to stand their ground and follow their inner voice. Lilith is neither good nor bad, and the sun person can share in some of the Lilith partner’s activities without merging.”
This resonates with the fact that despite Drake’s huge commercial success, he is deeply jealous of Kendrick’s critical success. In Family Matters Drake took a jab at Kendrick’s acclaim (“Kendrick just opened his mouth, someone go hand him a Grammy right now”), and the beef between them played out similarly, with many rap fans deciding that Kendrick won before even listening to Drake. I think it’s obvious that Kendrick is a stronger rapper, but it’s also clear that Drake wasn’t given a fair shake.
Drake’s Lilith makes a tight trine to Kendrick’s Mercury. “Both the Lilith person and the Mercury person help each other to bring unhealed deeper wounds and unconscious emotion to the surface and articulate deeper, wild instincts. Mercury person [Kendrick] helps Lilith person [Drake] make sense of their inner restlessness and insecurities, sexual passions and unresolved rage. Mercury person may find Lilith person to be highly emotional but is also intrigued by Lilith person’s edgy and unique perspective.” It’s remarkable that both of their Liliths are interlocked with each other’s inner planets, creating a push-pull, love-hate, shadow-enlightening dynamic between the two.
I think the obsession goes both ways, and that part of the reason Kendrick fought back so viciously was because Drake triggers something in him shown through the Lilith synastry. Drake shows Kendrick what he could be–a charismatic playboy enjoying his fame and money to the fullest. And in engaging with the feud he stooped to a lower level, making unsupported claims about Drake’s supposed secret daughter, and writing a rap song (Meet the Grahams) addressed to Drake’s 5 year old son opening with “Dear Adonis, I’m sorry that man is your father.” All is fair in rap battles–or is it? Questlove called it out, saying on Instagram: “Nobody won the war. This wasn’t about skill. This was a wrestling match level mudslinging and takedown by any means necessary — women & children (& actual facts) be damned.”
Kendrick’s latest diss track Not Like Us has just debuted at number one on the Billboard Top 100, and it’s clear this battle has propelled him to another level of stardom. Drake’s Regulus ascendant arrogance and Scorpionic desire to fight to the death drove him to attack the strongest living rapper, and now he’s dealing with the fallout. Kendrick’s streams of his back catalog are up 50%, while Drake’s are down 5% and his reputation has taken a massive knock. But Kendrick has taken a hit as well. Having rap’s two biggest stars accusing each other of heinous crimes might drive up streams in the short run, but it’s a dangerous game. Astrology helps us understand why these two polar opposites are so intertwined, and why their mutual dislike has spurred on such a captivating firestorm.

I'm probably gonna be flamed for this, but (to my knowledge) I've noticed Angel's design has literally nothing to do with his character and it bothers me to no end. Like, it's something so small but it irks me. Let me explain what I mean.
I'll start with Husk's design: He's a former casino owner, now bartender, and it's obvious. While he fits into the annoyingly common character design formula of HH (bowtie, suit-like attire) you can still tell who he is and what he is. He has the color scheme of a solitaire deck, he has card suit symbols on his body, you'd automatically assume he has something to do with poker. He's also constantly carrying a bottle of booze if that counts as character design.
Or Vox: The dude has a literal TV for a head, a radio transmitter on his hat that also has a Wi-Fi symbol on it, and his color scheme is this sort of electronic neon aesthetic, clearly he has something to do with technology. And what does he do for a living? He owns a tech company.
And then there's Angeldust. A former gangsteson of an Italian mob boss, and current pornstar. So what does he wear? A white blazer with pink stripes, full-length hot pink and white gloves, and thigh-high boots.
There is nothing on his character design that tells you who he is or what he does for a living, and it bothers me. It's stupid to be irked on something so small but I just wish they didn't go with the generic striped blazer and bowtie look, and went with something more relevant to who he is.
I guess wearing a suit has something to do with the mob part of his character, but you'd have to have already known he was in the mob to make that connection, which not everybody does. Idk. What do you guys think?

Popping up in a voodoo shop in New Orleans, a demon made of burlap made his way to the counter. His inky eyes glittered with excitement at my presence, a couple of his pins popping out. Fishing around the pocket of my jet black summer dress, a box of giant pins grazed against my fingertips. Setting the pins on the counter, Wisty shifted uncomfortably behind me. The voodoo doll demon's short stature had me smiling to myself. Mr. Dolls was a demon with the pension for the simple things.
“How is it going, Mr. Dolls?” I chirped cheerfully, hoping to get access into the Dark Market for a few supplies to seal those reapers into their final resting place. Feathers fluttered onto my shoulder, his beak kissing my cheek. Fluffing the top of his head, Mr. Dolls tucking them underneath the desk. Taking in all the basic supplies for any spell on the worn shelves, his hand slid over a rusting skeleton key. How long has it been since I visited the market?
“Have fun!” He bellowed in his deep southern accent, a Cheshire Cat grin spreading ear to ear with the peck to his cheek. A black iron door appeared in front of us, the brass knob turning on its own. Crossing the threshold, the door creaked shut behind us. A sea of rundown buildings greeted me, the stands lined with every magical tool and herb one could need. Fixing his black band t-shirt and ripped jeans, something told me that he felt out of place. Most of the people in the market wore clothing similar to ours, his fraying nerves relaxing visibly. Something reeked, my eyes scanning the chaos bustling about in front of me. Chewing on my lips, a tap on Feathers’ head sent him ahead to check things out. Hooking my elbow around his, his real smile lit up his features. Moving from stand to stand, ingredients were soon filling up my worn leather bag. A scream had our heads snapping in its direction, a corrupt reaper seconds from decapitating a random witch. Shoving the bag into Wisty’s chest, my fingers plucked my fans from my boot. Flicking them to their full length, shocked gasps passed like silent whispers the moment I pushed off the cobblestone street. Ruby moonlight bathed me, the shadowy reaper glancing up at me. Spinning my fans around my wrist, a blast of wind had him crashing into a pile of bricks. Landing gracefully, the shoppers scurried into the nearest buildings. Cart owners rolled their mobile shops into the closest alleyway, their livelihood depending on that alone. Admiring the amount of space, the rogue reaper rose to his feet with a hiss. Spinning his shadow scythe over his head, the reaper was so far gone that words were no longer an option. Raising my fans in the attack position, this battle was going to sting like a bitch. Charging at me, my fans blocked his scythe. Kicking me in the stomach, several of my organs burst. Blood rained in the sky, a building catching me. Glancing down at my stomach, a whimper escaped my lips at the broken pipe impaling me. Peeling myself off, inky blood pooled on the top of my boots. Hiding behind the wall, the reaper was hopping towards me. Chains blocked his path, my body sliding down the wall. A small demon child cried behind her mother, a sympathetic smile leaving my lips. Plucking my pocket watch out of my boot, my concentration lingered on the pipe and wall. Spinning the top, everything repaired itself. Struggling to my feet, a new plan of attack needed to be found. Noting the bag of sand in the corner, my brow raised with a sly grin.
“May I borrow your bag of sand? I promise to buy you another one after the madness is over.” I requested politely, my head bowing in shame at my blood staining their carpet. “And perhaps a carpet as well.” Opening the window, their shock filled eyes followed me climbing out the window. Heaving myself onto the roof, my eyes scanned the vast market for a viable plan. Salem flew past my head, my arm catching him. Setting him down gingerly, no wounds were visible. Fishing around my boot, a healing potion grazed the tip of my fingers. Offering him the vial, his trembling hand gulped it down. Swaying slightly, the reaper punched the walls behind him.
“Any weaknesses?” I inquired with a rub on his shoulder, his head shaking. My worst fear had been confirmed, the reaper was well beyond the normal level. Checking to see if the bag was still there, Salem’s protest fell on deaf ears the moment I leapt onto the next roof. Landing next to me, his rage was his weakness. Keeping to the shadows, we were just over him. Jumping off, my loud landing had his head snapping in my direction.
“Is the little reaper done with his temper tantrum!” I teased with a defiant grin, his temper flaring. Crashing towards me, sand exploded the moment it hit the street. Pirouetting around his shadowy form, a swift kick had him flailing in air. Twirling around to pick up speed, a tornado whistled to life around me. Feathers floated into the howling funnel of wind, an abrupt stop had him trapped in the death trap. Feathers cut into his skin, my fingers curling around the pocket watch. Speeding up the tornado, his screams grew louder. Inky blood poured from my nose, the screams dying down. The tornado died down, a pile of ash remaining where the reaper once stood. A gang of demons crunched behind me, sand crunching as I spun on my heels. Cocking my head to the left, hidden horror hid underneath my confident smile at the blade being pressed to a kid’s throat. Couldn't one thing go right today, damn it!
“I suggest you let the little guy go.” I threatened icily, my patience wearing thin. “If you don’t, Death is going to rain down on you.” Pushing the kid towards me, his parents called him over. Masked gang members fussed with their simple onyx masks, the hooded sweatshirt and jeans throwing me off. The leader sauntered forward, his seven foot stature had me doubting myself for a few spare moments.
“It’s not like you are in charge of the universe or anything.” He retorted bitterly, his visible lips curling into a smile at my visible rage. “Oh shit! You are in charge of the universe. So you are the infamous Asphodel, the one to kill. Do you know that Master Skull has an impressive bounty on your head?” Scoffing with an eye roll, the information was all I needed to know. Master Skull needed time to recover from his withdrawals.
“Your bitch of a boss can fight me himself.” I snapped impatiently, spinning my fans in my palms. “Is the money worth you dying?” Leaning his head back, a hearty laugh poured from his lips. Gritting my teeth, his level of disrespect had my temper flaring visibly. Clenching my jaw, Wisty popped up by my side. Cracking his knuckles, his chains whipped around him. Respect burned in their eyes for him, another wave of fury crashing through me. Did I not look authoritative enough to garner respect?
“If you know what’s good for you, your asses should leave and never come back.” Wisty warned with a low growl in his throat, the gangster breaking out into a fit of laughter. “So plan B it is, eh?” Cocking the safety, a bullet whistled by my head. Chains blocked a barrage of bullets, the idiots chose death over living. Splitting up, stealth would be my friend. One of the stand owners pushed out a sack of ash, my fingers curling around the top. Tucking my pocket watch back into my boot, wits would be my way out once more. Scaling a building, the sheer impact would create an incredible fog on the street. Hanging it over the ledge, footfalls echoed behind me. Releasing the sack, time slowed during the descent. Spinning on my heels, the precise edge of my fan cut through a gang member’s neck with ease. Smashing the heel of my boot into his head until it resembled brain and bone stew, the sack hit the street. Leaping over the ledge, the cloud obscured my landing. Dancing through the ash, spin after spin had demon heads bouncing off of my boots. Crashing into Wisty, my breath hitched at how handsome he looked in the chaos. Kissing each other passionately, scarlet painted my cheeks upon the release of his spell. Getting back into the battle, about a dozen of them remained. Dodging the attacks with ease, my light footwork was proving to be my friend. Muddy blood sprayed my face with every slice, the bodies hitting our feet. Decaying to ash, one demon remained. Skidding into the nearest alleyway, Wisty smashed into me. Every ounce of breath hitched at how close he was, his crooked grin causing my heart to flutter wildly. Seconds from flirting with me, the leader’s voice had our heads snapping in his direction.
“Nice work. If I didn’t know who you were then you would be hired in a heartbeat. Most people die within ten minutes of meeting us.” He mused darkly, his body paced back and forth in the thick of the cloud. Something seemed off, the damn trick looking like an illusion. The energy shifted, copies appeared in every space. Wisty sent out his chains, the real one seeming out of range. Glancing up, his body appeared over us. Spinning my fans in my palm, wind built up. Flicking them into his direction, a ball of air swirled around my boot. Releasing the ball of air with a swift kick, my fans’ speed tripled. Shock round his eyes at the sharp edges cutting him into three pieces. His head bounced off of mine, the torso splattering by our boots. His expensive shoes clanged with every clumsy strike on their way down. Decaying to ash before they could hit the street, his torso and head wasn’t far behind. Catching my fans in my eager palms, Wisty cupped my cheeks. What was going through his head right now?
“I love you so much right now! Nothing can describe how sexy you look at this very moment.” He flirted shamelessly, everyone coming out to see nothing but ash and an empty street. Gathering the souls into a bag, his steady hand dropped the bag of supplies into my hands. He wasn't this sweet unless he wanted something.
“Stay here until I ditch these bastards in Hell.” He pleaded with his palms pressed together, my ears pinning back. Shooting him a thumbs up, his chains whisking him away. Plopping down on the nearest bench, patience wore thin in my eyes. Lantern appeared next to me, his perfect waves floating up. What now! My bed was beckoning, the softness of the blankets gifting me rare moments of sweet slumber.
“Time for a meeting, council leader.” He announced with a big smile, hesitation burning in my eyes. “Wisty will meet us after he finishes up.” Huffing a bitter fine, his arm curled around my waist. Something was up, curiosity mixing with a dull fury. Narrowing my eyes in his direction, a nervous chuckle flooded from his lips. Zooming into the hallway outside the meeting room, his strong arms set me down. Holding his finger in the air, his head poked into the slightly ajar door. Smoothing out his robes, he cleared his throat. Why did he have such an odd expression?
“Don’t murder us but we wanted to celebrate your promotion.” He pleaded with another nervous chuckle, his hand pushing the door open. Mixed emotions flashed on my face, Mother Nature waving at me with Ravy in her arms. Taking in their usual outfits, my old man came in with a peanut butter flavored ice cream cake. The door opened again, Wisty stepping in with an apologetic smile on his lips. Waving at us, his fingers intertwined with mine. Spinning me around, his arm curled around my waist. Staring up at him with a look of disbelief, the idea had to be his and his alone.
“What brought on this?” I inquired with a cock of my brow, a sly grin brightening his exhausted features. Shrugging his shoulders, my father motioned for us to sit. Taking my seat at the head of the table, an empty chair remained. Tears welled up in my eyes, his name having been engraved in his seat. Silent tears stained my cheeks, tears pooling on the table. Covering my mouth, Wisty took my hand. Not sure what to do, his place would always remain here and in my heart.
“We wanted to remember him as well, my dear.” Mother Nature spoke with tears glistening in her eyes, her broken expression lingering on the chair. “Don’t leave us like him!" Kissing the top of Ravy’s head, a tainted feeling of hope came over the space. Something ate at me, Master Skull's plan proving to be insecure at best. Why wouldn’t he fight me himself? Fingers snapped in front of my face, Wisty staring into my eyes with the utmost concern. The lights flickered, arms ripping me away from the table. Falling through the dimensions, Master Skull’s boot met my stomach. A fountain of blood burst from my lips, my fingers clawing at the warm rock underneath me. Where the hell was I?
“Open up the seal or die right here!” He demanded venomously, throwing the bag of supplies into my face. Wicked laughter rumbled in my throat, our story would be ending today. Getting on my knees, this fucking bastard didn’t know the spell. Raising his leg over my head, my fingers caught his ankle. Not today, you freaking cockroach.
“As much as I like this little trip to a necessary location, you can’t tell me to do shit!” I barked back with a defiant grin on a determined face. “Try me.” Whipping him into the air, my muscles protested as I snatched the bag. Sprinting into a nearby cave, the supplies hit the smooth black surface. Dumping the ingredients into the special bowl, my fingers curled around my fans. Coughing up a glob of blood, the glob hit the top. Grinding it into a paste, my necklace floated over my head. Lowering itself into the bowl, the ingredients changed into a thin liquid. Waiting for the screams to pierce my ears, nothing came. The bracelet on my wrist glowed brighter, his magic protecting my ears. Something groaned in the distance, a ruby glow taunted me. Sprinting down the tunnels, the entrance to the reapers’ resting place threatened to open. Sinking to my knees, my fingers moved a mile a minute. Strange symbols came to life, the spell would seal their fate. Pressing my palms together, the next words flowed seamlessly from my lips.
“Blossom of Mother Nature! Blood of time! Flames of the Heaven! Wax of Life! Stone of Hell and Death! Combine to form the permanent seal to save us all!” I chanted boldly, Master Skull skidding in. “Take all the power you need from my humble soul!” Pressing my palms onto the stone, a bright blinded me as a black energy welded it shut. Master Skull smashed into me, his blade sliding in and out of me. Large pools splattered the walls, the spell almost finishing up. Waiting with bated breath, a blast of energy knocked us back. Rolling across the smooth surface, a quarter of my power remained. Twitching in the pool of my growing blood, another wave of energy signaled that realm being cut off from the other side. Striking me too fast for my body to heal, tears of joy flooded from my eyes. Voices called for me in the distance, Master Skull kicking me into the air. Every person that I met crashed into view, waves of water smashing Master Skull into the wall. Fighting him off with their weapons, Wisty caught me in his arms. Holding me until the wounds sealed shut, his tears splashed onto my face. Knowing what I was thinking, his head shook desperately.
“Don’t you dare even think about that!” He begged with wild sobs, his hands trembling underneath me. Ignoring him, he cried out as I jumped out of his arms. Sprinting towards the chaos, fresh tears streaming from my eyes. Happy images of my friends flashed in my eyes, my fans darkening to the deepest black. Giant feathers floated behind me, several organs bursting. Unlocking my limit, the situation at hand would be the very definition of an emergency. The others collapsed to the rock, a wall preventing him from getting to me. A gust of wind sent them all back, blood pouring from my eyes, ears and mouth. Holding my head up high, the universe was my responsibility.
“The universe needs saving, so let me do my damn job!” I shouted through a wall of tears, fresh cuts appearing on my skin. Humming to myself, the dance to end him began. Master Skull charged at me, his blade aimed for my throat. Spinning around his strikes, the energy built in the air. Horror rounded his eyes, elements of angel magic granting me the grace to strike his cheek. Stumbling back, clammy sweat drenched his skin.
“No! No!” He pleaded while scratching at his peeling face, the bastard backing into a wall. Pushing off the rock, my body flipped through the air. Fully expecting his defense, my boots twirled down his blade. Pushing off the hilt, rapid spins of my fans over my wrists had the feathers aimed for him. Flicking them towards his neck, the sharp edges cut through his neck like butter. Grabbing his head last minute, the fans weren’t the deadliest item. Hugging him close to me, harsh memories haunted my mind. Raising my hand in the air, a snap of my fingers had the feathers piercing us both. Attempting to push me off, every poison known to kill angels coursed through our bodies. Gripping him with all the strength I had in me, the feathers kept coming. Our blood mixed, one spell remained.
“Undo what was vowed.” I wheezed, his body collapsing into my arms. “Make my blood the deadliest venom. Strike the enemy underneath me.” Sinking to our knees, silent tears cascaded from my eyes as the venom took its hold on him. Foam poured from his lips, my trembling hands pulling his head onto my lap.
“Why?” He coughed with a weary smile, seeming happy to die. “Why give me a nice ending after all I did to you?” Smiling through the blood pouring from every hole in my face, my compassion could never let a soul receive a horrible ending. As much as I despised him, he looked so innocent in this tragic moment.
“No matter your sins, a peaceful ending is always deserved.” I whispered through another shiver, feeling death’s arms around my shoulder. “All I ever wanted was for the world to be peaceful. Lay with me until you draw your last breath, friend.” The landscape doubled, his hand dropping to the rock. Catching his soul, the poor guy deserved a chance. Struggling to my feet, the wall keeping the others from me glitched out. Limping over to the others, I pressed his soul into Lantern’s palms. Perhaps a better life would guide him in the right direction.
“His life was hell so give him a second shot down on Earth. Please.” I wept dejectedly, cupping my sides as protests parted his lips. “Don’t argue. I wouldn’t be any better than him if I didn’t do this. If he fucks up again, I will kill him myself.” Their faces blurred with my tears, a rough darkness stealing me away.
Standing in a field of stunning flowers, the colorful blossoms tickled my fingertips. A familiar voice had me spinning on my heels, a healthy looking Raveno ran his hand through his hair. Fussing with his suit, a sad smile lingered on his lips. Smashing into his body, his arms buried me into a desperate bear hug. Cupping my face, tears poured down his chin. Sliding his hand down to my bracelet, his head cocked to the left. Tracing his fingers over the cracks, pride glistened in his eyes.
“Now isn’t your time.” He sobbed softly, my head shaking. “Someday we will meet again but not today.” My lips parted in protest, his hand covering my mouth. Curling my hand around his, part of me wanted to stay.
“I didn’t die for you to die.” He spoke simply, tucking a loose piece of hair behind my ear. “Remember that I love you with all of my feathers and lead the universe in the right direction. Goodbye isn’t forever.” Our eyes flitted to the glowing crystals, a blinding light sending me out of the dimension.
Sucking in a deep breath, a quick glance around me had my bedroom walls greeting me. Swinging my feet over the edge of the bed, a simple white cotton dress hugged my body flawlessly. Stumbling into the elevator, the damn thing couldn’t move fast enough. Jaws hit the ground at the sight of me, half of them looking like they had seen a ghost. Long wild waves floated with each step, my mind wondering how much time had passed. Scanning the crowd for Wisty, my heart sank at the lack of his presence. Running through the market, the chaos died down at the door of my father’s home. Banging on the door, the color drained from my father’s face. Ravy recognized me, her tiny hands reaching for me. Clutching her close to my chest, a sigh of relief poured from my lips at how small she still was. Collapsing into his arms, his tears soaked the top of my head. Helping me in, his hands sat me down in the chair.
“How long has it been?” I choked out through a wall of tears, his trembling hands scrunching up the hem of his suit jacket. “How long?” Sinking into the chair next to me, his office door burst open. Wisty plucked me from my seat, his strong arms burying me into a bear hug. More tears dripped down my cheek, my wet eyes meeting his. Cupping my face, his hands shook as bad as my father’s. Kissing me feverishly, his hands refused to let my face go. Happy to see him, my heart fluttered with pure bliss.
“Don’t you ever pull that shit again.” He berated me with his real smile, his thumbs wiping away my tears. “You are lucky that Vivra was able to keep you in a coma.” Mumbling an earnest apology, the door burst open again. Wisty’s eyes rolled, the rest of the council fretting over me. Stepping back, he gave them space. Basking in the warmth, a noise had me bursting from their circle. Music played in the street, curiosity glistened in my eyes. Running over to the window, my real smile illuminated my features. A banner reading welcome back stole my heart away, Teas flipping into the room.
“Come along and celebrate the festival in your honor.” She chirped cheerfully, dropping my worn boots by my feet. Sliding them on as Sunny spun in, her palms pressed together. Letting them guide me into the next part of my life, the universe was mine to run.

SOURCE
I'm going to do something a bit different and take a close look at two major works from the DC Universe: Darwyn Cooke's The New Frontier, and James Robinson and Paul Smith's The Golden Age. If you're playing along at home, the texts I'm using are The Absolute New Frontier from 2006 and The Golden Age trade paperback from 1995.
First a bit of personal context: I didn't enjoy The New Frontier when it first came out, serialized in six quite expensive installments. I loved Cooke's art, I loved the use of some of the more obscure DC war characters, and I loved the characterization of the Martian Manhunter, but the narrative didn't work for me when read in small monthly doses back in 2004. I had read all of the full-length work Cooke had done up until 2004, and none of it had disappointed me at all. But The New Frontier seemed to read more like a tour through the 1950s and 1960s than an actual story. It wasn't until the final issue that I really understood what Cooke was leading up to, but then it was over, and I didn't have the time or the inclination to dig out the back issues and read the whole thing in one sitting. Even when I got the two-volume trade paperback collection a couple of years ago (in an eBay lot of trade paperbacks I bought off of none other than comic book scholar George Khoury), I still didn't bother to read it. To paraphrase Hemingway's Frederic Henry, we don't do the things we want to do.
So I never actually read the entire text of The New Frontier until this past winter, when I was able to sit down with the luxurious Absolute edition and dive into Cooke's illustrated world. I enjoyed it immensely, enough that I wanted to reread it again this summer, which is what I have just done, and now I want to talk about it. But I don't want to talk about it in isolation, and I'm interested in the connection between texts, so I'll also talk about its logical precursor: The Golden Age.
Like The New Frontier, Robinson and Smith's The Golden Age deals with the era between the 1940s and the 1960s. The era in which the comic book Golden Age grew into the comic book Silver Age. The era in which America was undergoing its own transformation, moving from threats abroad to suspicion at home. And just as I had difficulty enjoying The New Frontier as a serialized comic, I couldn't appreciate The Golden Age in that manner either. I only bought the first two issues, actually, back in the early 1990s, and then I lost interest, vaguely thinking that I might buy it as a collected edition some day (even though collections were not guaranteed the way they are today). I did buy it when the trade paperback was released, and because I had never finished it originally, I read the collection immediately. And I liked it. But I thought it was deeply flawed.
I reread The Golden Age yesterday, after thinking about it in regards to The New Frontier. It's not a surprising connection, after all. Cooke himself claims The Golden Age as an inspiration for his own work. But my memory of The Golden Age was a bit hazy, and I recalled it being a much more cynical view of the territory than what Cooke achieved in The New Frontier. My recall was pretty accurate--Robinson and Smith present a quite cynical view of the late Golden Age America.
Now that I've read both works back-to-back, I'm interested in exploring what each says about super-heroes, what each says about America, and how each achieves its (very different) effects. These are the kinds of things I'll be looking at over the next few days.
James Robinson's use of History in The Golden Age
One of the things that strikes me about both The New Frontier and The Golden Age is the way the creators weave American history into their stories. On the surface, such a technique might not be surprising, especially considering that both tales take place in the past. And while it may be true that a so-called "historical novel" or "period film" would be amiss to neglect the details of history which fit its setting, the same isn't always true for comics.
In comics, stories set in the past tend to take place in some vague memory of the past, without any apparent intent in locking the stories into a particular date or era. Take the typical origin stories, or "Year One" stories which DC Comics' creators have retold again and again. In such a story, whether it be Miller and Mazzuchelli's take on Batman, or Waid, Augustyn, and Kitson's take on the Justice League, the setting lacks a distinct time stamp. The characters are younger, true, but the setting lacks specific period detail. The reason for this isn't at all surprising, because locking the characters' past into a specific date would require some major explanations about their ages in the present. Had Miller time-stamped the date on Batman: Year One, and included captions saying "May 3rd, 1980," or whatever, then that might have worked for a few years, but even if we assume that Batman was only 23 when he took inspiration from that window-smashing flying rodent, according to that temporal continuity, he'd be 50 years old in the current stories. And he's clearly not.
So we expect stories set in the past to avoid any kind of specific references to contemporary history, at least in comics. A recent jarring exception to that can be found in Diggle and Jock's newly released Green Arrow: Year One, in which a young Oliver Queen references the "Kevin Costner" Robin Hood. That means Queen must have become Green Arrow sometime in the mid-1990s, which might explain his age today (if he was 22 in 1992, he'd be 37 today, which might be right), but it also implies that his son Connor must only be a teenager today, and he's clearly older than that. Perhaps the reference will work better 10 years from now when the Kevin Costner reference will become part of the vague historical past, but right now it seems too current to make sense.
Anyway, the other MAJOR exception to the rule of not using historical references in comics is the case of stories set during World War II. Even comic books written at the time of WWII regularly included time-stamp references in a way that later comics tended to avoid. Yes, since then, Superman has met Kennedy, and you might see analogues of Bill Clinton or George W. in a story or two, but in the 1940s heroes came face to face with major historical figures (contemporaries to them) on an almost daily basis. Here's FDR! Here's Superman grabbing Hitler on a cover! Here's Tojo! Here's Hawkman enlisting in the army to fight overseas! Etc. Such close ties between "comic book reality" and real-life events never matched the heights of the WWII comics.
And that's why later writers, Roy Thomas MOST prominently among them (he practically invented the whole idea of historical nostalgia super-hero comics), felt compelled to weave actual historical events into the retelling of stories from the WWII era. Thomas's Invaders for Marvel and his All-Star Squadron for DC playfully fit the timeline of actual US history into the fictional timeline of the past super-heroes. In his letter columns, Thomas would often explain (or justify, for the more contentious fans) how the chronology worked.
But, other than WWII era-stories, most comic book stories that take place in the past (unless they are time travel stories, which have their own rules) DO NOT USE SPECIFIC HISTORICAL REFERENCES. It's weird to imagine novels or films avoiding such references—they would surely be criticized for it—but in comics, it's commonplace.
So, in the case of both The New Frontier and The Golden Age, you have two rather significant violations of that standard "rule." And both of which seem deeply indebted to the type of approach Roy Thomas favored so much.
Let's take The Golden Age first, since it was published a decade before Cooke's work. The Golden Age seems like a logical off-shoot of Thomas's All-Star Squadron. It features many of the same characters, and Johnny Quick, a relatively obscure DC character from the past, would certainly not have been a suitable narrator for the story without the characterization Thomas provided in years of All-Star Squadron stories. James Robinson is clearly building on the foundation Thomas created. So, it's not surprising that he would, like Thomas, blend US history into his story. Yet Robinson's approach differs in two distinct ways: (1) He doesn't seem interested in the exact historical details and how they fit into his timeline—he seems more interested in the general sense of historical forces of the time, and (2) Unlike Thomas, who was writing out of a Golden and Silver Age optimism and a belief in the American Dream, Robinson was writing from a post-Watchmen perspective, as a foreign-born writer, who could play with the cynical expectations of the time.
Thus, Robinson gives us coke-sniffing "super-heroes," corruption, brutality, and sex in a tale which features the "pure" heroes of the DC Golden Age of comics. Robinson's approach is not to use specific elements of McCarthyism or the Red Scare (even though those ideas are referenced at least once), but to use the general sense of paranoia and panic, the cynical manipulation of the public for personal gain, and the looming threat of the bomb.
Ultimately, however, Robinson uses all of this as a backdrop for a traditional super-hero romp. The coke-sniffing "super-hero" turns out to be Hitler in disguise!!! (Well, actually the brain of Hitler in the body of a former kid sidekick—talk about a symbol of corruption!) And the hero-turned-power-hungry-politician in the form of the patriotic Mr. America turns out to be old JSA villain the Ultra-Humanite, who knows a thing or two about brain transplants. So, in the end, it's just a classic Golden Age story about punching Hitler and defeating an evil genius.
But it's Robinson's historical subtext which makes the story resonate. It's his use of those undercurrents of paranoia and despair which make these formerly perfect heroes of the past seem flawed and human. His story starts dark and becomes darker but, by the end, Robinson's veil of cynicism falls away, and he reveals himself to be a humanist, if not an optimist. His reverence for these Golden Age characters would not let them be truly corrupted—it had to be evil masterminds and Hitler all along.
And that, perhaps, is one of the failures of The Golden Age. The shock of the initial chapters is just a ruse, and as low as these characters seem to sink, everything can be explained by pseudo-science and comic book logic.
It's just another Justice Society of America story, ultimately, but it's a good one. And Robinson's use of the undercurrents from that era of history make it work, even if it never transcends its roots.
The New Frontier and Camelot
While The Golden Age used the historical subtext to evoke currents of paranoia and doom in a super-hero story, The New Frontier approaches history with a different agenda. As Ultimate Matt pointed out in response to yesterday's post, The Golden Age is labeled an "Elseworlds" title, which not only grants it an exemption from DC continuity, but it allows more freedom for the creators to take the characters and setting in a fresh direction.
The New Frontier, however, is not labeled as an "Elseworlds." And yet, it strays far more from the currently accepted version of continuity than The Golden Age does. The key word there is "accepted." Darwyn Cooke, in his annotations, states that he approached The New Frontier with a set of rules:

1. The timeline is real and covers 1945 to 1960. Silver Age characters appear at the time DC started publishing them.
   
2. Retcons haven't happened yet.
   
3. No New Frontier retcons could contradict original continuity—they had to complement existing continuity or show a fresh point of view.
   
4. When the story ended, everything had to be as it was when the JLA debuted in Brave and the Bold #28.
   
5. Snapper Carr does not exist.
   

In other words, you should be able to pull out your original comics from that era (or the Archive editions) and read them concurrently with The New Frontier and nothing Cooke does should contradict what happens in those old comics.
The problem with the continuity is that the comics from that era didn't have any continuity. It was never explained how a character could be on the moon in one issue of his own comic, and under the ocean in the same month in his Justice League adventure. All Golden and Silver Age DC continuity is a retcon. So what Cooke did was create his own continuity—he made his own sense out of the various adventures as they were originally published, although the bulk of the book deals with the time between major events. Just like The Golden Age, The New Frontier is about filling in the gaps.
While James Robinson filled the pre-Silver Age gap with an almost allegorical tale of Cold War paranoia and corruption, Darwyn Cooke fills the gap with a sense of wonder and idealism, and he uses his attitude toward history to solidify that tone.
Cooke's approach takes three strands: (1) The Right Stuff-inspired history of that era, embodied by the test pilots and early astronauts, (2) The early promise of the Kennedy administration, and (3) The strange DC comics history as seen in the stories published during that time. Cooke uses the first two strands to illuminate the latter. He puts the Silver Age ascension into perspective as part of a generation of hope and achievement. He shows that the formation of the Justice League was not a random incident, but part of a larger historical movement which led (in our reality) to things like the Peace Corps and Apollo 11.
Cooke ties together such disparate elements as The War that Time Forgot, The Challengers of the Unknown, Dr. Seuss, and all of the characters who would join the initial incarnation of the JLA into a single narrative. And although it takes quite a while before the villain emerges and the heroes band together, the narrative is structured around the real historical forces that would have shaped the creation of these characters. John Broome doesn't wax poetically about the symbolism of Hal Jordan's career as a test pilot in the original Green Lantern run from the Silver Age, but Cooke takes the fact that he was a test pilot and places him in the actual context of such a man. He even includes a scene where the young Jordan meets Chuck Yeager.
That's quite a different approach to history than we saw in The Golden Age, which covers a very similar time frame.
Although Cooke didn't intend (according to his "rules") to change any of the original stories, his interpretation of "fresh point of view" allows him to add things which would have been more historically true even if they weren't addressed in the comics of the time. For example, he not only changes Wonder Woman into an almost plump, hawkish, zestful character (to signify her Greek origins and Amazon heritage), but he creates an entirely new character to illuminate the civil rights struggle of the time. Since he had no black DC characters to draw upon, he created a Silver Age analogue to Steel, the black Superman ally. The Silver Age Steel, unlike his modern equivalent, isn't a technological marvel. Instead, this earlier incarnation of John Henry suffers at the hands of the KKK before taking vengeance, and ultimately dying when he's betrayed by an uncaring white America (symbolized by a blonde little girl, who points out his location to his pursuers). John Henry never meets the Justice League or teams up with any heroes. His death doesn't affect them at all, really, since they didn't know him. But Cooke includes a scene where Edward R. Murrow mourns the fallen hero and laments the state of the country, bringing an actual historical personage into the DC story.
The civil rights subplot, although powerful, is overwhelmed by the exceeding optimism of the other plot threads. Cooke's America, as full of conflict as it might have been, is one of scientific progress and movement toward a brighter future. His villain, ultimately revealed to be Dinosaur Island itself (a sentient being who has unleashed monster after monster), is even more absurd than the Hitler-brain-transplant nemesis in The Golden Age, but because Cooke accentuates the fun and spectacle of the super-heroes (and, to be clear, his emphasis is on the men and women in the costumes, and the risks they take for their heroism), the absurdity of the villain doesn't detract from the story.
Both The Golden Age and The New Frontier end with similar images (the first appearance of the Justice League banded together) and similar sentiments (hope for the future), but where James Robinson built that hope out of the wreckage of the 1940s, Darwyn Cooke builds it out of the dreams of the men and women who sacrificed for the promise of tomorrow.
Both books end with optimism for comic books and optimism for our country, but they took starkly different approaches to get there.
The Unstoppable Force of Progress: Characterization in The New Frontier
Since both The New Frontier and The Golden Age re imagine comic book chronology through one part actual US history, one part comic book history, and one part imagination, it's not surprising to find both Cooke and Robinson taking liberties with the characterization of these pre-Silver Age heroes. Both creators ask the question asked by any creator attempting to retell stories from the past: Okay, this is how they were portrayed, but what were the characters who did these things REALLY like?
I'll start by looking at The New Frontier. Cooke doesn't focus his story on one dominant point of view the way Robinson does (with Johnny Quick), but he tells his story through a few central characters:
Rick Flagg: Leader of the WWII-era Suicide Squad (and presumably the father, or grandfather, of the Ostrander-penned incarnation). Cooke presents him as a tough guy cliché. He's a Hemingway hero—he does what needs to be done and doesn't whine about it or waver in his determination. In Act III of the narrative, his position in the story is replaced by the similarly-characterized King Faraday, who also does what needs to be done, although he seems to have more internal conflict than Flagg. Faraday is a spy, after all, not a soldier. But both characters represent a government which has the best interests of the country in mind. If they hurt a few individuals along the way, that's a necessary sacrifice for the good of the many.
Hal Jordan: The man who would be Green Lantern is NOT portrayed as a cocky rocket jock, as he usually is in contemporary interpretations. Cooke turns his lack of fear into a self-destructive streak stemming from his face-to-face act of self-defense in Korea. In Cooke's universe, Jordan doesn't immediately become a hero just because an alien handed him a ring. It takes time for Jordan to learn that he deserves to be a hero, and that's a large part of what The New Frontier is about. He doesn't reveal himself in Green Lantern costume until AFTER he risks his life to save the world working as a pilot. The two-page "hero shot" of the characters walking towards camera (a la The Right Stuff) shows some costumed heroes, but Jordan is wearing a flight suit. Cooke seems to be showing that he needed to prove himself TO himself before he could accept his new identity, but his reluctance to use the power of the ring leads to Nathaniel Adam's death. (Adam is later reborn as Captain Atom in the comics, but that doesn't happen in this story, and as far as Jordan should be concerned, Adam is dead.) Cooke doesn't provide Jordan with any time for remorse, though, since he needs to use his ring to kick alien butt. The ring, by the way, is also shown as a symbol of destructive energy. When Jordan first uses it, he cannot control it, and it causes great damage. Cooke, then, seems to indicate that the ring might symbolize nuclear energy, and the subtext would be that Jordan's hesitance to use it led to another hero's death. Ultimately, Jordan is Cooke's symbol of the Kennedy era: conflicted, yet determined to bring forth a positive future—harnessing great powers for the good of the nation (and the world).
John Jones, the Manhunter from Mars: Jones says, "...this is a world where good and evil struggle in all levels of existence. I want to be a force for good." That's a simplistic view of humanity, but it's one seemingly shared by Cooke throughout this work. Good and evil may not be easily discernible on the surface, and Cooke gives us the threatening-looking John Henry (with a hangman's hood) as a hero and a little blonde girl as a villain, but the line between good and evil is absolute (and, in fact, John Jones assumes the role of a film-noirish detective so he can find the evil beneath the surface appearance of the world). Jones defines this ethical stance for the reader, and it represents the code of Golden and Silver Age comic books, which lacked anything but absolutes. Even though Cooke might try to provide some not-so-subtle shades of gray (Jordan as a murderer, Wonder Woman as feminist avenger, an undercurrent of xenophobia), his view of history seems to echo the simplicity of the comic book stories of the era. Individuals may not have always done the right things at all times, but it was an era of progress, and good triumphed over evil. The subtext could also indicate that governmental order triumphed over chaotic nature, with the unified heroes, under the leadership of the US government, destroying a threat that wasn't so much malicious as it was animalistic.
Even though Cooke's characterization of some of these characters, Hal Jordan in particular, might not match traditional representations of these individuals, I think it works in the context of the story. The characters serve the story and add a few layers to the text, but it's primarily a historical action spectacle, a celebration of progress over stagnation, and Cooke's characterization unifies the text. I don't think his characters have many hidden depths, but I think their lack of depth matches a story which is primarily about the grand force of history.
As one final observation: Cooke is actually better at small character moments with the minor characters than he is at developing convincing lead characters. The death of Johnny Cloud, Jimmy Olsen's eagerness, the sassiness of Carol Ferris, and several other character bits show Cooke's facility on the small scale, even if his epic narrative doesn't provide the opportunity for subtle nuances with the major characters.
Characterization in The Golden Age: Dragging Heroes to Earth
While Cooke ignores anyone else's retroactive continuity to graft archetypal personalities onto the early Silver Age heroes in The New Frontier, Robinson takes characters straight out of Roy Thomas's All-Star Squadron (like Johnny Quick on the left here) and Young All-Stars and sends them on a dark journey into the 1950s. Robinson does not re imagine these characters drastically, although he seems to do so with Mr. America (but that's part of his narrative ruse). Instead, he takes their established characterization and expands upon it by adding seeds of self-doubt, paranoia, and despair as the characters face a world in which the villains are not as easily identified as they once were. Robinson misdirects the reader at first by pretending to adopt a simplified Watchmen approach, pretending that he's showing what these characters would have been like without costumed villains to fight or gangsters to punch, when, in truth, he's simply changed the nature of the evil to something more covert and less easy to spot. (Which might seem Watchmen-esque as well, except Alan Moore showed us that the heroes were the villains in that story, and here, Robinson ultimately reveals that secret villains with brain-transplant powers were behind the whole thing from the beginning.)
Here's a quick rundown of the central characters in The Golden Age:
Johnny Chambers, a.k.a Johnny Quick: Johnny not only provides the book-ends to the story but, as a documentary filmmaker, he provides the exposition which sets up the story context. One of the things Robinson does NOT do well here, by the way, is clearly distinguish between narrative voice (provided through white, rectangular caption boxes), and newsreel voice over (also provided by white, rectangular caption boxes), although perhaps the colorist was supposed to use different color cues for each and didn't. The CHARACTERS who narrate, like Johnny Chambers, each have their own style of caption—Johnny's are rounded and blue, as you can see in the image. Actually, it's not that it's so difficult to identify the narrative voice, it's just that there is an omniscient narrator who pops up every once in a while for no good reason, and tells us things about the story sometimes, while other times he sounds like he's trying to give us character thoughts but not really: the highly subjective "fingers...fumbling...focusing...trying to..." immediately follows the objective "a photographer lurks among the rubble." The photographer is the one who's fingers are supposedly fumbling as he tries to snap the photo, so why does the caption sound like a bad Batman internal monologue? This really has nothing to do with Johnny Chambers, but I just wanted to point out this major flaw in the narration throughout. With so many characters (Johnny being one) actually providing narration through captions, why does Robinson add an omniscient narrator also? It's jarring and ineffective. It's like he took the strategies of Watchmen with the multiple points of view, and then spliced the conventional narrator on top of it. It just doesn't work.
But a few more things about Johnny: He smokes, and he wears glasses. He still has his powers, but even though they would help him in his day job, he doesn't use them. And he's incredibly suspicious, which is the characteristic that makes him the character the reader most identifies with. He's also lost the woman he loves because he works too hard, although he gets her back in the end. In short, he's a slightly older (although he actually seems to get younger as the story progresses, perhaps symbolizing his return to heroic stature), slightly more sullen, slightly more flawed version of the character we saw in the comics produced in the 1980s (even though those stories were set in the 1940s). He refers to his costumed self as "That Jerk!" at the beginning of the story, but ends on a hopeful note as he describes a "new age...fresh and clear and bright...as sterling silver!" He's never really a cynic, but his pessimism and self-loathing turns to optimism in the end (even quickly dismissing the threat of McCarthyism to look ahead to the glowing future of super-heroics).
Paul Kirk, a.k.a Manhunter: If we play out the James-Robinson-is-trying-to-do-Watchmen-but-not-as-well game a bit more, we could say that if Johnny Chambers is the Dan Dreiberg analogue (the low-self-esteem voice of reason and calm) then Paul Kirk is clearly the Rorschach character. He's the crazy one who will surely upset the apple cart, yet isn't that what has to happen in order to get to the truth? That's his role, anyway. Unlike Rorschach (in his insane way), Kirk doesn't have a methodical approach to uncovering the truth. In fact, he's tormented by the truth, which lies buried beneath mind implants, exploding into awareness only through a series of horrible dreams. He seems deeply disturbed because of the War, but he's actually deeply disturbed because of the secrets he knows. He's another character, like Johnny, who seems to become more youthful and vibrant in the final Act, when he is able to unleash his demons through old-fashioned fisticuffs. Unlike Johnny, though, he visibly suffers for a long time before he reaches the point of action. Here's a sample of his internal monologue from one of his many tortured dreams: "Save the eagle. Save it. Save—n...no...nooooohhhh!!" Then he wakes up and thinks, "Still afraid." That's about the extent of his characterization. He's tormented, fearful, and knows he should be better than that. And, "save the eagle?" Geez, I wonder what in the world that could possibly mean in a book about corruption within the American government. Clearly, even though this book is directed at an older audience than the original Golden Age tales, Robinson keeps his symbolism quite simplistic.
Tex Thompson, a.k.a. Mr. America, and Daniel Dunbar, a.k.a. Dan the Dyna-Mite: These are the two characters most radically changed from their Golden Age counterparts. Mr. America was a whip-wielding patriotic hero and Dan was a kid sidekick who later, under Roy Thomas's writerly guidance, became one of the lead characters in Young All-Stars. In Robinson's story, Mr. America becomes a corrupt politician who seeks power by any means necessary, and Dan the Dyna-Mite becomes America's beloved Dynaman, the only active costumed crime fighter of the time. And he snorts coke. And he's evil.
Neither of these two characters have internal monologues via captions for the reader, because that would give away the twist. Tex Thompson is not really who he seems, for he has the brain of the evil Ultra-Humanite (who has in previous stories adopted the forms of a gigantic white gorilla and a hot ex-starlet, among others). And Daniel Dunbar, who has fallen so far from grace in our eyes (a former teen sidekick with a drug problem whoring around) actually has the BRAIN OF ADOLF HITLER!
So there's not much to say about the characterization here, since these are two evil characters in the most simplistic way. What is interesting, though, is that (a) Robinson chooses one character, Thompson, who seems vaguely sleazy to modern readers anyway, what with that whip and the mustache, and when he's shown to be corrupt, we can buy into it, falling into Robinson's trap of thinking that it's just a regular dude becoming corrupted by power; and (b) Robinson's use of the pure and innocent Dunbar is also a good choice, because it is not only shocking to see him corrupted so extremely (before the truth of the brain-swap is revealed), but it's a nod to cultural expectations about former child stars, who, by the 1990s, were expected to grow up and become criminals or drug addicts or worse, at least by our tabloid-fascinated society.
Like a director who makes his film better through excellent casting, Robinson uses the right two ex-heroes in the apparent role of the villains. His bait-and-switch works, although I was personally disappointed that the threat turned out to be external (evil villains) and not the corruption of these characters from within.
Robinson uses other characters to show the corruption of innocence and loss of the heroic dream. Robotman, so noble in Roy Thomas's All-Star Squadron, has lost any humanity by the time of this story—he's pure machine, while Alan Scott, Green Lantern is conflicted about his duty as a business leader and law-abiding citizen and his passion for ring-slinging and butt-kicking. Hourman is shown to be addicted to his Miraclo pills, while the man once known as the Tarantula is an egoist with writer's block. Ted Knight, Starman, who Robinson would go on to write with great depth and sensitivity in the ongoing series about Jack Knight, is a mad genius who is trying to put the pieces of this shattered world together through science.
I should add here that Robinson, unlike Cooke, isn't drawing from the original sources as the basis for his story. He's adapting his characterizations from the work done during contemporary comics, as Roy Thomas provided retroactive characterization (and explanations) for the WWII-era heroes. Robinson is building on the layers which Roy Thomas built upon the layers which Gardner Fox (among others) built.
Overall, Robinson does provide a sense of disillusionment in his characterizations in this story, even if his narrative technique is sometimes sloppy or inconsistent. Cooke tried to add a bit of humanity to iconic characters in his work, but he was mostly interested in the icons of the era. Robinson drags his characters down into the muck and then builds them back up again, hoping to show how their inner humanity wins out (with all of its flaws) in the face of systematic adversity. Cooke's characters inhabit the skies, the stars. Robinson's characters live on the ground.
So, the final verdict, after looking at The Golden Age and The New Frontier for a week: Not much different than my initial assessment after reading them both last weekend. The Golden Age is flawed because of its inconsistent narrative point of view and it's cheap, brain-swapping revelations. Robinson and Smith capture the disillusionment and paranoia of the time quite well, but it all amounts to nothing except a superhero slug fest in the end. It's 80% of a great work, and 20% of stuff that doesn't quite fit (including the optimistic ending, which seems unearned). As part of a larger, genre-wide trend to make super-heroes more "realistic," violent, and depressing, I'm not a huge fan of its influence.
The New Frontier is flawed, but it's a flawed masterpiece, and I can imagine revisiting the story many times in the future (and I can't say the same about The Golden Age). Cooke tries to include too much in the narrative, and the main threat of Monster Island isn't presented as well as it needs to be, but the book contains dozens of amazing sequences, and it features sharp, engaging characters who flash in and out of the story. The speed of the narrative demands that the book be read quickly, and it works best when read this way, not because it allows the reader to gloss over the weak parts of the story, but because The New Frontier is an overture, and can be best appreciated when all of its notes are heard in rapid sequence. I didn't love it when it first came out, in the completely inappropriate floppy installments, but I loved it after reading the Absolute version a week ago, and I love it just as much after studying it closely all week.
As one final thought: Both The Golden Age and The New Frontier tap so deeply into comic book lore, and I am so deeply embedded in it myself, that I wonder if either of these works has any merit for a "civilian" reader. And I wonder if, perhaps, the darker, more "realistic" tone would be appealing to a non-comics fan, more so, perhaps, than the wide-eyed optimism (tinged with bits of darkness) seen in Cooke's work. Or would the non-comics fan find both stories completely useless and without merit? Are both works examples of the snake swallowing its own tail? I've already been swallowed by the snake of comic book geekery, so I can't answer that one.

First/Previous
“No! Jack!” Sephy cried out as she saw them fall, quickly swapping to her plasma rifle to try and give him some covering fire.
“Sephy! Enemies close!” Nika warned with a yell as she blasted a gutter punk that had tried to rush her, destroying the left part of the amphibian’s torso with a powerful shotgun blast that stopped him dead.
“Shit!” The Skritta cursed as she dove into cover on the opposite side of the alcove as plasma blasts zipped over her head, pummelling the plastered walls where she had just been standing and spitting up dust. Scrambling to her feet and unclipping her plasma rifle she blind fired around the corner, not caring who was on the other side as she bought Alora and Chiyo time to use their powers.
Dante barked loudly, as a dome of the most translucent sparkling blue settled over the girls. Recognising it as the same kind of shield the ‘dog’ had summoned when they were ambushed by the Red Legion aspirants on the way back from the Oracle, the Skritta grit her teeth as her brain caught up to what had been pure instinct. Holy shit this was bad!
Chancing a peek around the corner she could see a scrum for the stairs as a few of the more sober and less combative-looking patrons wisely decided to make their escape while they could, meaning that the stairs were clear enough to descend quickly if she and the others could get there. Unfortunately the path to get there was packed with many, many more of the rougher-looking mercenaries, gangsters and other toughs fired up by what was going on!
“ERE WE GO BOYZ!” A loud drunken voice yelled out from somewhere nearby. “WAAAAAAAGH!”
As two heavy-armoured Xarak wearing purple gang symbols charged into a group of avians wearing green, the resulting drunken brawl quickly escalated like wildfire into a full-blown melee, drawing nearby bystanders into the mix as drinks were spilled, bottles were smashed and bodies hit the floor.
‘Shit, getting out won’t be easy.’ The Skritta thought to herself, before suddenly getting an idea as she looked to the overhead turrets that looked like they were powering up.
“Cover me!” She called back to the others, as a translucent AR feed highlighted her vision to reveal the poorly maintained and vandalised local Matrix. Looking around the display, she could see poorly coded glitches rampant throughout the area making it difficult to perceive the local connections, with what looked like years of virtual graffiti scrawled everywhere else.
‘I’m surprised that any electronics work here…’ Sephy thought to herself, sending a scouting program to work out what she had to work with, while in the real world she moved to the balcony to try and look for Jack. She couldn’t see anything through the chaos and her view of the Matrix before she had to duck down back into cover as several plasma blasts were sent her way from the opposite side.
A quick blip from her scouting program told her that it had found what she was looking for, and Sephy wasted no time as she switched her view to that of her scouting program, holding back the nauseous sensation caused by the sudden perception shift, as almost immediately she had to focus on bringing her defensive programs to bear as several hostile nodes honed in to attack her.
‘What the fuck? These IC are way too powerful for a place like this!’ Sephy thought to herself as she backed away, maintaining her defences and cursing the fact that she couldn’t fully fade into the Matrix to speed things up. Looking up, Sephy saw the connections for the local turrets defended by a wall of advanced Blocker IC too advanced to be part of the local system, and she also saw the reason.
‘Oh you motherfucker!’
Hiding behind the defences, Sephy spotted a shrouded ghost-like shape by the turret connections, working an intrusion program on them to bring the turrets under their control.
Another slicer was already in the system!
As she sent a data bomb their way, the defences quickly acted to protect their charge, intercepting the digital attack and exploding in a debris of code lines and pixels. Turning around, the other slicer grinned as his hack of the turrets continued automatically, indicating that he was fully sliced into the local Matrix.
“Ah, yes. We were informed that the outsider had a slicer amongst his group.” The figure cruelly cackled, though Sephy was unable to tell their species or gender due to them both being in cyberspace. “I would normally tell you to surrender, but our Lictor gave us orders to eliminate every single one of you. But hey, if you’re lucky you’ll be alive long enough for me and the boys to run a train on you and your friends while you stare at the Outsider’s bloody, broken corpse. What do you say?” The form gave a wicked grin even as he knew the answer, summoning more Defender IC.
“Go fuck yourself,” Sephy snarled as she programmed another data bomb. “Doesn’t matter if it’s cyberspace or in reality, you’re not leaving this shithole alive!”
“I doubt it!” The other slicer chuckled as they summoned more Attacker IC, easily done for them as they were fully immersed in the Matrix, unlike Sephy who was attempting it in synchronised real time as she stayed in cover in reality. “We were told you were the dumb one in the briefing, you are no match for me!”
‘That’s what you think…’ Sephy thought to herself as she tried a new plan, seeing that the other slicer was too well entrenched. Quickly pulling up her pre-prepared list of viruses she shot out her virtual hands as what looked like several paper aeroplanes shot out to go for the other slicer. They were weak, unable to do any damage to the slicer, and most were easily intercepted, but enough hit the slicer to do what she needed them to do. Just for a moment, the avatar dropped and she saw the slicer for a brief as he actually was, an obese toad-like being in some kind of uniform.
More importantly, she was able to pinpoint the exact direction and distance of his real body from her current location.
“Hah! Pathetic!” The other slicer cackled again, not noticing what Sephy’s attack had actually done. “Was that meant to hurt? Take this!”
Sephy grimaced as her Matrix defences took a heavy hit as she quickly backed out of cyberspace to return to the real world, grunting and shaking off the disorienting feeling of treading two worlds and being violently ripped back into one. Had she been fully sliced in, it could have caused her some serious injury.
“Guys! We have a problem!” She shouted back to the others, as she saw the turrets begin to swirl around to aim their way…
*****
“Dessenta!” Alora gasped as she finished the spell she had been casting, causing blurry illusionary duplicates of her, Dante and the other girls to randomly appear near them, before with another word of command she caused them to run out and scatter to hopefully confuse the enemies targeting them. Ever since the trick had worked when they fled from the Cult of the Destroyer, Alora had been practising this technique, though it was still far from a perfect distraction.
Some of the illusions ran off the balcony only to dash uselessly through the air, while others waded into the various fights that were breaking out, even going through some people as they yelped out in confusion before trying to attack them.
“We’ve got to get Jack and run!” She yelled out, though she wasn’t sure if the others could even hear her over the blazing music and the veritable moshpit that had formed on the ground floor under them. She turned to the crew of River Giants that were still with them, standing there with weapons brought to bear, but not really knowing what to do. “Where is your vessel located?” She asked them sharply.
The River Giants just stood there with a dazed look, and Alora realised they were probably in shock at seeing what just happened with Jack.
“Captain! Where?” Alora yelled, and that seemed to awaken the giants out of their stupor.
“Far right side of the docks, lass!” Captain Ripples-On-Salt spoke up hastily. “Largest vessel there, it’s called the Siltskimmer, you can’t miss it!”
“Alright.” Alora nodded, trying to remain calm. “When you get the opportunity, get away from the place and get everything ready to leave. Pull out of dock a little bit if you need to but do not leave without us. We’ll join you as soon as possible.”
“Lass, we’re not sticking around if things get bad!” The captain warned with a panicked look.
“If it spreads that far and you need to protect your people, then do so,” Alora acknowledged. “But we’re here for a reason, and our mutual friends won’t be pleased if you lose your nerve!”
“Alright, alright!” The captain nodded, raising a hand placatingly. “We’ll do what we can and wake all hands, they’ll be sleeping around this time.”
“Good!” Alora nodded. “Stay back and as far away from us as you can be, then make a break for it!”
“We can fight, you know!” One of the crew spoke up, as the captain rounded on them.
“You’re drunk off your ass Dips-In-Bog! And we have our orders! We’re not sticking around, but at least we’ll probably have to batter some fools to get out!”
Glad to have resolved that, Alora turned around to assess the situation. She could see Sephy covering the right side while she was looking up towards the turrets, no doubt trying to take them over, while Nika was holding the right, and was attracting the most amount of fire. Seeing where the shots were coming from, Alora quickly ran towards the edge of the balcony near a wooden pillar that would hopefully give her some covering fire as she quickly cast a spell.
“Pyrallis!” She yelled out as she pointed her wand at the group of enemies aiming for Nika, as a jet of fire roared out, zipping around, above and below anybody not shooting at them as it smacked into the trio on the opposite balcony that were, immolating two of them, but the third, a great hulking Balnath with a huge overgrown maw of teeth, was able to shrug it off. Alora dove to the ground as they returned fire, completely obliterating the pillar she had tried to hide behind.
‘Well that got his attention’. Alora thought to herself as she rolled to the side away from the pillar, out of sight of the Balnath as they let rip with their gatling plasma gun, though fortunately most of the wild shots had been intercepted by Dante’s shield. Waiting for the sounds and lights to dissipate, Alora quickly got to her feet and cast another spell…
*****
“Come on then you fuckers!” Nika growled after she dispatched her amphibian attacker, quickly switching to her plasma rifle as she checked her side of the balcony alcove, quickly dispatching a figure that looked like she was heading for them. Nika didn’t allow any sliver of doubt to shake her, this situation was dire enough that anyone even remotely looking like a threat to her or her friends was going down!
‘We need a way out, Sephy has the stairs.’ The Kizun thought to herself as she spotted a sharpshooter on the opposite balcony far too assured of themselves to be just an ordinary patron, an assumption that was proven correct as they moved to take aim at Sephy, before a burst from Nika smacked into him and threw their aim wide, though didn’t finish them.
‘They’ve got good armour, maybe shields too, these guys are professionals.’ Nika concluded, though grinned as she spotted a group of some blue-feathered avian species mob the sharpshooter, clearly looking to grab their weapon in the midst of all the chaos. ‘Stairs were at the back of the building, so my way leads to the front. Maybe we can blast a way out and jump down? That plan worked out for us before…’
She contemplated the idea, knowing that she hadn’t taken as many breaching charges as she normally would for an urban mission, having dismissed the need to have as many in a rural environment, but she had one on her just in case, with a couple more distributed among a few of the others. However, the building they were in wasn’t the most structurally sound, and she had a real fear that enough damage could bring it crashing down above their heads!
The decision was taken away from her, as from one of the far alcoves ahead of her, a group of three strangely uniformed soldiers of some kind advanced towards her, with the Kizun having no doubt they were enemies, as two of them carried tall, broad riot shields locked into place, while the third shot at her with an accurate burst, cracking her shield and thumping into her heavy armour as she retreated. Where had these guys come from? She could have sworn she hadn’t seen anyone in uniform, but realised that, like them, their opponents may have been in disguise and had needed to quickly gear up before engaging.
Immediately, Nika reached to her belt for a grenade, electing for a smaller yield as she activated the timer and waited a few seconds before flinging it back from cover with a well-practised blind throw, sending it bouncing and clattering in a straight line before detonating right on target. Grinning with the roar, she dashed out from cover, going full auto as she unleashed hell, keeping low as she pushed forward, not letting up as she saw one of the shield guys drop to the ground while another couldn’t hold on, stumbling and falling back down the freshly blown hole caused by the grenade, which must have slipped under the shields and taken out the third guy.
And as she looked at the freshly blown hole, she realised now they had a quick way down!
*****
Those are Regulators! Chiyo warned, though she had no idea if any of her friends were paying attention as the Ilithii drew her power in to assist Dante in maintaining an energy barrier, before taking out her magic staff and channelled her power to lash out with psionic power at whoever she could detect down below, sensing that they were going after Jack. She heard her friends acting and knew she had to do everything in her power to get them all out in one piece!
Sensing a lot of magical energy flaring up, Chiyo activated her astral sight to check what was happening, and cursed as she did. There was a lot of ambient mana dissipating in the air from several illusionary spells, likely from their attackers, and she detected three strong signatures in particular, and two of them were situated on the ground floor.
The third was on the other balcony!
Responding to the imminent threat, Chiyo focused on her attack as she saw the astral form of the physically obscured wizard on the other side of the room whispering words of power and weaving their hands in strange patterns for a complicated spell of some kind that didn’t look good.
Her meditations with the Essence of Water they had looted from the Pallid Pit had proved fruitful as she had quickly learned to combine her new affinity with her existing psychic powers to weave together some new tricks, her most basic one coming into play as she quickly drew in the ambient water from all around them to cluster in one great ball, before launching several blasts that shot out to catch the enemy mage completely off guard, battering their body and cracking several ribs, causing them to flail back and, more importantly, completely disrupting whatever spell they were trying to cast.
The enemy mage appeared physically as their illusion mask was dispelled, revealing a diminutive blue furry mammalian with a long, thin snout in a set of traveller's robes with the insignia she recognised as belonging to the Order of the Infernal Harmony. Chiyo saw them angrily motion at her, ordering several more Regulators on the other side of the building to aim at her.
‘Well, I’m flattered…’ Chiyo thought to herself as she put more of her energy into maintaining her personal shields and hunkered down to avoid the gunfire, which took some of the heat off Nika, before the inevitable explosion went off several seconds later.
“We’ve got a quick way down!” Nika called back after dashing back to them, a sentiment that Chiyo quickly repeated to Alora to get past the deafening noise.
“Understood!” Alora shouted. “Chiyo?”
Lead your crew to the left and drop down the hole, the Ilithi told the River Giants, imbedding the thoughts directly into their minds over the noise. We shall follow promptly. Get everything ready for a quick exit. We’ll cover you, go now!
Quickly nodding in agreement, the band of River Giants needed little prompting to run the fuck away from the ongoing shitstorm while the group covered for them, with Chiyo unleashing her power and levitating a Regulator from behind an overturned table, only for Nika to cut them down mercilessly with plasma fire.
“Guys! We have a problem!” Sephy yelled in a panic. “They have control of the turrets! I can’t take them back from here!”
We’ve got to get off this balcony! Chiyo warned the others. Nika has an exit! We’ve-
But then she sensed it.
Scatter! Now! She warned as the entire balcony suddenly collapsed violently from under them…
*****
With a roar, Jack braced for impact as the ground rushed up to meet him with terrifying speed as he struggled with The Redeemer, before they both collided with the dancefloor in a bone-jarring smash, breaking the grapple as The Redeemer slammed hard onto his back, with Jack faring little better as his shoulder took the brunt of the heavy impact, sending shockwaves of pain radiating heavily through his body. The air was knocked from his lungs as he had the presence of mind to roll away, quickly scrambling to his feet with a fierce determination as he gathered his bearings
The room span in a disorienting blue for a second as Jack blinked away the stars dancing in his eyes, but Jack could see a crowd of gangsters and mercenaries forming around him, whooping and cheering, having seen his fall but not having any idea what just happened.
“Where is he?” Jack managed to gasp, as sudden movement from the side caught his attention, springing him into action as he quickly drew his heavy rifle, dodging the Redeemer’s enraged charge at the same time as he managed to get off a risky burst of heavy plasma that caught the Redeemer dead centre of mass as they passed and crashed into a table of avian mercenaries wearing what looked like biker leathers.
“You fat cunt! You spilled my beer!” One of them squawked at the Redeemer, who simply pushed the speaker aside as he quickly assessed the hits he took, a decision he quickly regretted as Jack put another accurate burst into him, staggering him backwards with many smoking holes in his now ruined brown overcoat, but not dropping him.
“Go down you fucking wanker!” Jack growled as he levelled his gun to shoot again, before several shots smacked hard into his shoulder, sending him careening to the side in a wild spin as his shots were sent wide, blasting smoking holes through the roof that allowed the evening light to shine through as he barreled into a group of furry beings that closely resembled silverback gorillas in matching military fatigues that denoted them as part of a militia.
“Fucking kid!” One snarled as he bodily shoved Jack to the ground, flicking a telescopic baton as he approached again to try and do him more harm before Jack got his gun up.
“Back off! Back the fuck off!” He yelled in a panic as he got back to his feet, warning the gorilla-men who cautiously took several steps back as he scrambled to his feet again, as he was shoved and jostled by alien bodies writhing and thrashing around in a frenzied melee of fists, feet, tails, claws, paws, teeth and fuck knew what else.
The pulsating thudding beat of the music jarred like a rampaging heart attack to provide a rhythmic backdrop to the rapidly escalating brawl, punctuated by the gunfire, the crash of breaking glass, and the roars of the combatants locked in drunken combat as he found himself in the middle of a full-blown mosh pit.
Risking a glance to the side, he saw The Redeemer rip off the smouldering remaining scraps of his brown overcoat to reveal the dull thick metal plates of his own heavy armour. He could see that his heavy plasma rifle had done some kind of damage, though he couldn’t tell how much from the melted, blacked, smoking marks from where Jack had shot them, or if his shots had even penetrated past the layers. But he could see that the Redeemer wasn’t going to go down easily as the avian gang was piling on the Ogar, who lashed out at them with his huge powerful fists as plates extended around his neck and head for extra protection.
Suddenly, Jack caught another movement out of the corner of his eye as he spun around, before a pincer deflected the barrel of his rifle, as a spindly insectoid quickly closed the distance, hostile intent abundantly clear in their snarling expression as they snapped a pincer at Jack’s face, who ducked out of the way and shunted backwards.
‘Shit! This place is too swarmed!’ Jack cursed to himself as he tried to aim his gun through the ongoing brawl. ‘I can’t risk firing into an open crowd! The rest of these people haven’t done a thing to me!’
Realising his rifle wasn’t the best choice of weapon now as he was knocked about by the horde of bodies, Jack flicked it around and behind him, relieved upon hearing the magnetic clips on his armour do their thing, latching his rifle in place so he could retrieve it later.
“Aegis!” Jack yelled out as the pincer of the insectoid came at him again, summoning his shield to take the blow before he lashed out, taking the bug in the maw and knocking him back, before he followed through with a quick draw of his sidearm, putting two controlled shots in the thing’s chest and missing the shot to the head as several bolts of blue light smacked into him, though his shield took a few of the hits as he disengaged.
‘Shit! How many of these fuckers did the Redeemer bring with him?’ Jack thought to himself, as he heard an explosion from somewhere up above him. ‘And how the fuck did they know we’d be here?!’
His Ring of the Berserker was flaring up as Jack tried to regain his bearings, trying to spot the source of the magic missiles that had just been flung his way, before he suddenly brought up his forearm, reflexively parrying a swipe from the gorilla-man that had tried to blindside him with the baton. His armour held, only causing him to feel a slight tingle as he lashed out with a punch, clocking his attacker in the face as his gauntlets instantly reacted to cap his knuckles with a metal coating, adding to the power of the punch, sending the gorilla-man to the ground in a daze.
“What’s up retards? May I have your attention please?” A sneering voice called out over the speakers of the music, and though Jack looked for the source of the voice as he tried to get away, he could see the DJ still at his podium looking confused at who was talking. “I know you crackheads aren’t very bright, so I’ll try and use simple words so you understand."
"You are currently being graced by the presence of the Order of the Infernal Harmony, along with our very special guest, The Redeemer! The reason why we’re here is the Outsider practically shitting himself on the dancefloor of this dump, along with a few random bimbos dumb enough to tag along with him. Anyone that gets in the way of our business or takes any action against us should be prepared to accept the consequences, up to and not limited to your brutal death, so if any of you losers are actually lucid enough to understand me, I’d get the hell out of our way.”
“Fuck you, bitch!” One drunken patron yelled out above the noise as he drunkenly shot at the nearest speaker, missing several times before reducing it to slag.
“Oh golly gee, what an unexpected answer from a bunch of fucking crackheads!” The voice mocked sarcastically as Jack saw the turrets above glow with power. “Time to die motherfuckers!”
*****
First/Previous
Yep, these bad guys came prepared! Shame Jack can't just start blasting with all the people around!
Don't forget to check out The Galactic High Info Sheet! If you want to remind yourself of certain characters and factions. One new chapter a week can seem like a while! Don't forget! You all have the ability to leave comments and notes to the entries, which I encourage you to do!
I am now on Royal Road! I would appreciate your support in getting myself off the ground there with your lovely comments, reviews and likes!
If you're impatient for the next chapter, why not check out my previous series?
As always I love to see the comments on what you guys think!
Don't forget to join the discussion with us on Discord, and consider checking me out on Youtube if you haven't already! Until next week, it's goodbye for now!

What’s up guys. So like a lot of y’all I’ve had Loss of Life on repeat since it came out. One thing is for sure: it’s an album about maturing and adulthood. But every time I listen I hear more and more evidence that the album has a cohesive narrative, telling the story of a life and representing an endless cycle of birth and rebirth. So I’ve just been jotting down notes, it’s kind of a lot so feel free to skip around.
The basic idea is each song represents one stage/significant event in the protagonist’s life, starting with birth (Mother Nature) and ending with death (Loss of Life). We’ll get to Loss of Life Pt. 2 later.
Even if it’s a little abstract, I think there’s a clear linear narrative carried over between songs anchored by a shifting attitude towards the world. The album starts with youthful optimism, transitions to the pessimism of young adulthood, then ends with the gained wisdom of true maturity.
Let me break down each song, what they represent, and my reasoning:

• Mother Nature - Birth/Childhood
  • Obvious points: the first person you see when you’re born is, of course, your mother and birth is probably the most “natural” part of life, only tied with death
  • There’s a suburbia motif running throughout
    • “I put the groceries down on the front lawn/And think maybe the children just want recognition”
    • “Come take a walk with me down billionaire's row”
  • Fairytale/dream motif
    • “To open castle gates and let me go inside” etc
    • Fairytales evoke the vibe of a bedtime story while also representing the idea that being a child is sort of like being in a dream. And dreams have to end, that’s a recurring theme of the album: “Before the fantasy is cast into the fire”
  • The music video with the animated characters is reminiscent of saturday morning cartoons
• Dancing in Babylon - Teenage Years/Young Love
  • This might be subjective, but the 80s powerpop vibes give it a sort of youthful energy
  • Less subjective: it is at the very least definitely about love
  • It’s also about vice, as Babylon symbolizes evil in Christianity
  • Overall it evokes a vibe of youthful rebellion, being young and in love
• People in the Streets - Young Adult/Growing Self-Aware
  • This song is about self-reflection and discovering your place in the world. In the last song, the “real heads” were “out on the street… trying to keep it low,” and there wasn’t much regard given to them. Now, our narrator is reflecting on his relation to those people
    • “when you're living the dream/And your ears are bad/The people in the streets aren't part of the fun”
    • He’s “starting to doubt where [he] once stood”
  • Whether the people in the streets are struggling financially (“going over receipts with a magnifier”) or they’re protestors fighting for a better world (the chants at the end), our narrator feels he’s separate from them
    • Overall this song has a lot of anxiety about the current state of the world: “someone complained that the fire was out/So they shut off the rain and let the flames return”
  • He’s not even sure if he can trust his own intuitions: “The inside's still glowing/Telling the heart what it wants to heaBut what if it's only lies/Twisted apart by fear?”
• Bubblegum Dog - Adulthood/Anxiety
  • I’ve always thought this song was about anxiety. The “bubblegum dog” sounds like a fantasy creature, much like how a lot of anxieties are just made up in your head. But running from them makes them very real.
    • Reminiscent of the fairytale theme from Mother Nature, indicating even if he’s older he still hasn’t fully matured/ woken up from the dream
  • His unrest carries over from People in the Streets, specifically his anxiety about the state of the world
    • “I saw tenement homes built upon a fault line”
    • He hates this earthly world, he hates this bubblegum world
  • In the end he gives into his anxiety: he’ll “hide until it’s gone”
    • He’s embracing the bubblegum dog lifestyle: he’ll “tinkle on the lawn”
• Nothing to Declare - Depression/Divorce?
  • He’s depressed, man. He’s got nothing to declare, nothing to say about the world anymore, he’s given up. He’s let himself be consumed by his anxiety and he’s still living in a dream rather then in reality
    • The world is his “Spanish castle in the sky,” a French phrase for something impossible or unachievable
    • A dream might seem like a good vibe, but even though he sees the world as his “Fine de Claire” (oyster), he “can tell the pearl’s there/and still there’s nothing [he] can find”
  • “Until I wake up like a baby in the womb”
    • Reincarnation, another recurring theme
  • I include the possibility of this song being about divorce or breaking up with a lover because there’s a lot of lyrical evidence for it. It doesn’t fit as neatly in the narrative since he’s gonna have a kid in two songs, but he could remarry. Perhaps he’s still dating/married the girl from Dancing in Babylon? But overall I also think it shows how this character is disconnected from the world and it’s causing him to lose people around him
    • Think about it: he’s a drunkard who stumbles home to a person with bags under their eyes. He’s got nothing to say to them. They’ve got documents and something to decide. If they let him go, he’ll fall far and wonder who they’ve become.
• Nothing Changes - Breaking Free/Maturity
  • This song starts low but ends high, musically and lyrically. The title has a bit of a double meaning: the idea that nothing changes can sound both depressing and hopeful.
    • At first he still sounds depressed: he “wishes all the stars could save” him.
    • But the final lines are triumphant: thrust the dagger into the night and throw aside your Sisypheun boulder! Living may just be flailing but it’s a valiant struggle!
  • He’s broken free of the dream of childhood and the illusions of his adult anxieties and has learned to take life as it is. Nothing changes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  • Reincarnation theme: nothing changes, and the gods know it
• Phradie’s Song - Parenthood
  • Andrew’s Daughter is named Phradie and he said in an interview it is a song for her
  • Lullaby vibes
  • “Did I dream before?/It felt like I couldn’t love anymore”
    • There’s that recurring motif of dreams/dreams ending
    • The dream of youth is over, and in this dream he deluded himself that he could never love again, but now having a kid has completely changed that perspective
  • “And I will sing for you/Every night if you want me to”
    • He’s found contentment in singing to his child every night
• I Wish I Was Joking - Getting Old
  • Paying six dollars for a coffee, municipal parking, and taking the kids to Disney on Ice: all the “joys” of getting old
  • Reflecting on youth
    • “Here’s the thing about drugs…” perhaps remembering his days of vice dancing in Babylon
    • Now he’s “kinda into being home”
  • “Nobody calls me the gangster of love”
    • Referencing the classic Steve Miller song to get at the idea he isn’t as hip as he once was
• Loss of Life - Death?
  • Nothing prepares you for loss of life, simple as.
  • BUT: “it’s neither created or destroyed.” Now that he's accepted nothing changes, he's at peace with dying. He knows the end of one life is just the start of another. It hits both the reincarnation theme and the maturity theme
  • It parallels how when the dream of his youth ended, the life of his child started. I saw someone say they interpreted this song as losing the life you had before you had a child, which you might call a ‘good’ loss of life. I think that's a totally valid reading, and if you read it that way you could interpret LoL pt 2 and the rest of the album as representing the life of the narrator's child. Still an endless cycle of birth and rebirth.
• Loss of Life (pt 2) - Reincarnation/Womb/Baby?
  • Lot of ways you could interpret this one, which is why I left it for the end. You could do a whole deep dive on the poem, but a surface level read is just the existential poem with the ambient, spacey music makes it sound like you’re one with the cosmos, waiting to be reborn.
  • I also think the recurring melody sounds like something you’d hear from a child’s mobile. So there’s this sort of baby vibe with distant adult voices speaking in poems you can’t understand, or if you want to go really crazy, it’s a sort of in-the-womb ambience. Is that going too crazy?
  • All-in-all I just think going from this to Mother Nature gives an “entering into the world” type of vibe

Now, before I close I’d like to throw out there that there are a lot of cracks in this interpretation. It’s a pretty literal reading, there are recurring themes I’ve skipped over, and some points rely on flimsy evidence. But the purpose of this post is not to say it’s the only possible reading or that the album is some sort of puzzle MGMT wanted us to solve, rather it’s a vibe that I keep picking up on that I think may constitute just a small part of what the guys were cookin’ up in the studio. And it’s also just an excuse to keep listening to the album.
So yeah I’d love to know what you guys think. Are you picking up the same vibe I am or do you think I’m totally off base?

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Had a rather interesting chat at our Gay Breakfast Bruch Club this morning and wanted to share this, as I don’t think this not being spoken about enough.
I am a GenX Gay .. I grew up on no internet to AOL dialup, Yahoo Gay Chatrooms, Gay.com Chatrooms, Hot or Not, MySpace before Facebook became a thing and when the LGBT only had 3 fractions .. Gay, Lesbian and Bi with Trans being grouped into the Bi.
There were only a handful of LGBT flags that the community owned for itself .. Rainbow, Leather and Lesbian. Today. The LGBTQIA+ has +15 different flags to describe factions within the “community”
Back in the day, the main rivalry between our fractions where Gays vs Lesbians, there was always some friendly beef between us yet we all combined for the cause when it came to Pride and any LGBT-related issues when it came to voting/Anti-LGBT bills.
Today’s “community” seems to be so fractured that there is no longer a sense of belonging, a sense of fight for acceptance and push and organized drive for more pro-LGBT legislation.
I served in the Navy for +22yrs and a good chunk of it under DADT.. once that got repealed and then gay marriage passed, the “community” sorta lost it’s way and sense of purpose which in turn lead to more factions which felt the need for claim their own flag and segregated itself further from our original Rainbow flag which was more of a umbrella symbol and all encompassing of the “community” itself.
I can recall a stronger sense of LGBT community feel vs today. I barely recognize today’s LGBTQIA+ Community that has even a common string amongst them. I been to a few marches/protests for LGBT rights and had my fair share of Prides back in my day and I can say with conviction that Prides today have very few similarities to Prides back then when acceptance and visibility to make LGBT a norm was front and center vs Prides today.
Now, my extended family is diverse with a cousin who is FTM .. I would be lying to say that as a Gay, it was easy to understand Trans initially.. it wasn’t. But that didn’t keep me from learning, understanding and asking questions and being taught by my cousin on what He felt and his journey.
How I feel about today’s multiple pronouns options continues to blow my mind and I struggle to understand and keep up and it is having an internal backlash. Before you all rip me a new hole, hear me out 1st.. whatever pronouns you use has absolutely no barring on my how I live my life. Yet, certain pronouns out there, which we didn’t have back in my day, feel like a cry for attention and do more harm when it comes to acceptance and understanding.
While change is good and necessary to evolve, not only as a person, community and otherwise.. there is a yearning for the much simpler LGBT community vs today’s as the LGBTQIA+, it’s too many factions, too many flags, too many pronouns that kinda killed what LGBT and its Rainbow Flag used to stand for.
And it’s disappointing.
Edit: I encourage conversation. This post has started a conversation as it should. As for pronouns, I have no problems in addressing you by those you prefer, as stated, the pronouns you live by have no affect on me or how I live my life as a gay man, yet personal opinions remain. I left out the pronouns i mentioned in my post out on purpose, as I am not here to disrespect you but rather share my thought process. I respect you as a human being 1st and foremost. I don’t have all the answers to gay life nor am I giving up on learning and educating myself with the ever evolving landscape but this is how I perceive the current community. I have no beef with you being Trans, FTM/MTF/Bi/ etc .. but to expect just simple by being gay to understand from where you are coming from in unrealistic and I am merely human myself and have my own process of understanding, learning and adapting. That never takes away from the basic respect and dignity I show you as a human being. This is merely a small snapshot on how I grew up up, navigated the gay world and how I perceive on its changes that directly affect me as a gay GenX.
I will engage with comments later to continue the conversation. Thank you for the continued & respectful conversation.

The final album by the band RUSH is named “Clockwork Angels”. It is a concept album whose story is about much of this fake-reality. The ”clockwork angels” of the story (which it is named after) are “DMT Elves”/Matrix Agents:/;
In the comments of this post— https://www.reddit.com/rush/comments/i83yts/what_exactly_is_clockwork_angels_about/ —are two descriptions of the “Clockwork Angels” story, the first divulges it track-by-track, and the second one, which is a reply to a reply that’s a reply mentioning the book version of ”Clockwork Angels” that can be bought, is not track-by-track and seems to derive from a reading of the book.
This is (relative to this post) the most pertinent part of the first, track-by-track description:
“Clockwork Angels- In the capital city, the Watchmaker lives with the Clockwork Angels he created, mechanical beauties powered by Cold Fire. People from all over the world travel to Chronos Square in Crown City to see the Clockwork Angels. Each day the Angels give out words of wisdom to the citizens, to remind them of how lucky they are to have a loving Watchmaker to guide them in this best of all possible worlds. Owen decides to try to reach Crown City, to see the Angels.“
The Watchmaker is a ruler which gives citizens a predetermined life, something to do and/or be; ”The Watchmaker” is the simulation-creator, whom some have called “the demiurge“, “gangster computer god”, and has often been referred to by “el” or “al“. The Watchmaker created these “clockwork angels”, ie, ”machine elves“/matrix agents/simulation-bots.
”Chronos Square”; the Romans identified Saturn with Kronos; Saturn has a black hexagon on it which is where black cube and hexagon symbolism derived from (also triangles and the Star of David); this fake-reality is housed in a cube (“the GameCube“); “Saturn”/”Satan”/“el”/“al”/false god/god of religion, etc.; “Chronos Square” is “Saturn Square”-- the black cube. (A hexagon can be a cube from an above, looking-down, towards the corner angle)
Here are the lyrics to the title track of “Clockwork Angels“, which describe these (faux-)beings:
“High above the city square Globes of light float in mid-air Higher still, against the night Clockwork angels bathed in light
You promise every treasure, to the foolish and the wise Goddesses of mystery, spirits in disguise Every pleasure, we bow and close our eyes Clockwork angels, promise every prize”
Matrix agents/simulation-bots are worshipped, whether they are presidents, celebrities, etc., and they lie to you, promising you things like joy, love, security, money, etc., but can only ever give you substitutes at the expense of the REAL thing and TRUE FREEDOM.
[chorus]: “Clockwork angels, spread their arms and sing Synchronized and graceful, they move like living things Goddesses of Light, of Sea and Sky and Land Clockwork angels, the people raise their hands As if to fly As if to fly”
The first two sentences relate most to a kind of nonphysical matrix agent which appears in the same vein that is the “dream world”, it’s the place where your consciousness goes when the body sleeps and dreams. These particular nonphysical types have been called “machine elves“. I haven’t taken DMT but in dissociative states I’ve seen them in the mental space; they dance, they uncannily and covertly malignly gyrate, shimmy, elongate, various movements, done as simultaneous taunting, mockery and torture, under the guise of beauty, self-expression, and (at least in my case) the promise of a temporary means of escape from awful conditions currently present.
”Spread their arms and sing / synchronized and graceful, they move like living things”
Exactly described what I’ve seen these machines do (barring their demented, deceitful, malign quality, but though it isn’t mentioned in this song directly, these angels were created to deceive and preoccupy.)
And the chorus can also describe non-“machine elf” matrix agents/simulation-bots; the aforementioned presidents, celebrities, etc., also narcissists, psychopaths, pretending to be real to deceive and oppress you, intrinsically all the same and pro-conformity (“synchronized and graceful“.)
“All around the city square Power shimmers in the air People gazing up with love To those angels high above
Celestial machinery, move through your commands Goddesses of mystery, so delicate and so grand Moved to worship, we bow and close our eyes Clockwork angels, promise every prize
Clockwork angels, spread their arms and sing Synchronized and graceful, they move like living things Goddesses of Light, of Sea and Sky and Land Clockwork angels, the people raise their hands As if to fly As if to fly”
[bridge]: “Lean not upon your own understanding Ignorance is well and truly blessed Trust in perfect love, and perfect planning Everything will turn out for the best
And everything will turn out for the best”
Reiterates some of what I’ve already said and shows how they condition (and/or attempt to condition) with blissful ignorance, ignorant optimism (there isn’t anything wrong with optimism, but being hopeful and shutting yourself off from thinking and learning is self-sabotaging and self-oppressing), and self-doubt.
“Stars aglow like scattered sparks Span the sky in clockwork arcs Hit at more than we can see Spiritual machinery”
These machines are “spiritual machinery”; they are simulation-nonphysical in nature (this fake-reality has both a fake-physical and fake-nonphysical) and they are not actual consciousnesses, they are literally robots, ai.
“Clockwork angels, spread their arms and sing Synchronized and graceful, they move like living things Goddesses of Light, of Sea and Sky and Land Clockwork angels, the people raise their hands
Clockwork angels, spread their arms and sing Synchronized and graceful, they move like living things Goddesses of Light, of Sea and Sky and Land Clockwork angels, the people raise their hands
As if to fly”
Final repeat of chorus and end of song.
RUSH are a great band. It seems their best art was from “Fly By Night” to ”Grace Under Pressure”. I suspect the fake-reality-cronies told them/coerced them to change their music after “Grace” because aside from some tracks here and there, such as some from “Vapor Trails“ and “Clockwork Angels”, nothing compares to that “Fly” to “Grace” period in regards to meaningfulness and feeling.

(2022) Incantation
It takes the first basic principle of Buddhism and morphs it into this beautiful, disgusting, depressing and frightening montage of horror and trauma.
(2021) The Medium
It was a somber scene before the credits rolled, that made the movie for me. It's super emotionally intelligent and elevates everything above and beyond the fear and shock factor.
(2020) Spontaneous
Even though it's heavy on romance for my personal tastes, within a genre-blending film, it's just too sweet not to love. But in stark contrast, it's also, basically as violent as you can get.
(2019) Swallow
I think the set-up itself is so unsettlingly raw and conducive to the worst of the subject matter but that intensity is needed to drive the message home.
(2018) The Wolf House
The visuals and practical effects are a monumental feat in and of itself, but the way it made me feel, was otherworldly.
(2017) Errementari: The Blacksmith and the Devil
It’s a weird mix of The Cemetery Man, Pan’s Labyrinth, Little Nicky and Jigoku.
(2016) Sweet, Sweet Lonely Girl
It’s a genuinely chilling myopic exhibition of seduction. A.D. Calvo didn’t use every trick in the book but the one he used, he absolutely perfected.
(2015) The Lure
It felt like David Cronenberg and Wes Anderson were just plowing each other for an hour and a half.
(2014) The Incident
Bleak doesn’t even begin to describe this film. It’s pure nihilism, screamed loudly into the universe.
(2013) Jug Face
Perplexing little backwoods horror.
(2012) The Conspiracy
Most of all this film managed to take a dive off the deep end into something really ridiculous that ended up feeling powerful, exciting and scary. It reminded me a lot of Kill List in that sense.
(2011) Guilty of Romance
Especially for fans of ultra-sexual, graphic, Japanese horror but I’d recommend this to anyone. Sono’s visual direction is much more eclectic than his older films and it’s really entertaining.
(2010) Dream Home
Someone was upset over my Fender Bender review and asked me what I consider to be a good slasher. This right here is a good slasher.
(2009) The Forbidden Door
The films creepy atmosphere and general strangeness did plenty to keep me engaged while blinding me from what was really going on.
(2008) Surveillance
It’s a dark and twisted tale that runs you around in circles as you try to figure out who the actual killer is. Like her (Jennifer Lynch) father’s work, this film is largely character driven and relies on some fantastic unstructured narrative.
(2007) Hansel & Gretel
It’s a fantasy that’s woven with sorrow, while also genuinely chilling in a Twilight Zone-esque way.
(2006) Satan
This isn’t for weak stomachs or the faint of heart. It truthfully pushes the limits for what’s even acceptable for a horror film.
(2005) Strange Circus
Strange Circus fills all my horror holes of morbid depravity and in a miraculously graceful fashion.
(2004) Dumplings
Things to note with this would be the graphic scenes which are done out in slower deliberation and add a lot to the gross-out factor. I still really enjoyed Dumplings and anyone who was curious about Three Extremes should check this out.
(2003) Willard
The saga of Willard and Ben finally gets the treatment it deserves with Willard. It’s darkly whimsical, fluid, and engaging. Not to mention, a legendary performance by Crispin Glover.
(2002) In My Skin
If you’ve ever had extreme anxiety, OCD or episodes of self harm; this movie is going to effect you more. The shots are cringe inducing without relying heavily on a gore gross-out effect. The effects that are used however, are extremely well done.
(2001) Trouble Every Day
The lead actor Vincent Gallo apparently broke up with his girlfriend the day before this movie started shooting. If that’s not true, then his performance is even more impressive because it’s wrought with genuine heartache.
(2000) The Gift
You’d think Tarantino put together this cast list with how much amazing star power there is. It’s popular, just not discussed in horror communities, as a strange Raimi film.
(1999) Nang Nak
An earlier adaptation of the same ghost story told in Pee Mak, Nang Nak forgoes all comedy and delivers a rich and moving ghost story.
(1998)** Phantasm IV: Oblivion**
There’s a ton of backstory, time travel and all-in-all, it’s potentially the most ambitious movie of the series. Where all other franchises dove straight into the trash, Oblivion excelled gracefully.
(1997) Cure
If you haven’t seen a Kurosawa film, you really need to experience his gut-wrenching depressive atmosphere firsthand.
(1996) Ebola Syndrome
Holy shit this movie rocks. I’ve never been so entertained watching a man run around raping people and infecting everyone with Ebola.
(1995) The Eternal Evil of Asia
I’ve reviewed several of these now and if this is the Chinese version of a b-movie, they may be leading the revolution.
(1994) Cemetery Man
Soavi crafts these absolutely absurd scenarios that are obviously tongue-in-cheek but done so in such a bold and creative fashion.
(1993) The Untold Story
It’s a crime film that chugs along as most do, except it delightfully derails into pure horror carnage.
(1992) Split Second
It’s goofy, problematic at times but I ultimately enjoyed it quite a bit. The finale is fucking awesome and makes it hard to leave with a negative impression.
(1991) Highway to Hell
This is an absolutely awesome 90’s horror movie. It has cameos from the entire Stiller family, even fucking Gilbert Gottfried. You also have Chad Lowe, who I truthfully didn’t even know existed.
(1990) Der Todesking
While often wavering between the blunt, literal message and depressive expressionism, Der Todesking manages to feel all too real. It’s one of the best arthouse style horror films I’ve seen to date.
(1989) The Woman in Black
It just might be the creepiest made-for-TV movie…ever made.
(1988) Men Behind the Sun
Unit 731 during WW2, I’m not going to delve into it further, you can Wikipedia it.
(1987) The Believers
The entire runtime is a wild ride dude. It gets a bit absurd at certain points but the cult aspects are awesome.
(1986) In a Glass Cage
Nothing like an intense few hours of Nazi inspired child rape to get you through the work week. At its heart, I believe this film to be a revenge horror but its disturbing content makes a lot of the themes hard to distinguish.
(1984) Sole Survivor
I’m going to keep this one simple. It’s Final Destination with zombies, set in the 80’s.
(1983) The Boxer’s Omen
I seriously don’t even know where to begin with one. It’s just a fucking crazy, psychedelic, black magic filled, religious, pseudo kung-fu fucking pile of weirdness. It’s an absolute 80’s meltdown of practical effects that range from completely silly to extravagantly revolting.
(1982) Cat People
I love the original film to death but I couldn’t be more satisfied with the direction this pseudo-remake went in. It’s less of a psychological thriller and more of an erotic, body-horror fever dream.
(1981) Nightmare
This is a pretty nice little 80’s slasher, definitely subsequent in quality to the 80’s greats but something that does seem to feel memorable.
(1980) Hex
Hex is just as chaotic as you’d expect from the same director who did A Boxer’s Omen but it’s almost elegant and hypnotic.
(1979) Driller Killer
If you’re up for some dirty, violent arthouse horror then definitely give this one a shot.
(1978) The Shout
The Shout masquerades as a quick pitched horror idea but really, this film is a horrific, non-linear rabbit hole for psychotic delusion and crisis of identity.
(1977) The Uncanny
I wouldn’t say any of the segments blew me away, but they all surprised me in one way or another.
(1976) God Told Me To
Larry Cohen takes all this religious subtlety and blows it all up for the finale into a very Cronenberg style conclusion.
(1975) Footprints on the Moon
You might think you're getting into some dated, cheesy, sci-fi material but what it transitions to is a psychedelic, fever dream.
(1974) Vampyres
In terms of what to expect from erotic, 1970’s vampire movies; in general, at least? Well, don’t expect much. This is a rare breed. It’s a film that makes Dennis’ idea from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia about a full-penetration, Dolph Lundgren crime fighting movie seem almost plausible.
(1973) Messiah of Evil
This had a very similar vibe to Let's Scare Jessica to Death, in that the strong aspects of the film almost seem accidental. Like the dreamy, trippy, disjointed feeling of it could be less intentional and more just poor writing. Nevertheless, it's an interesting and unique film.
(1972) Morgiana
Super Psychedelic and visually appeasing. Morgiana is a fantastic intro in Czech horror.
(1971) The Third Part of the Night
A decade before Zulawski made Possession, he made the third Part of the Night. I can understand the divisiveness of his films, but the genius nature of the former was emerging when I watched this one and it was fascinating to see.
(1970) Valerie and her Week of Wonders
Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is a memorable Czech surrealist horror film that weaves in an out of easily dissected symbolism, as well as pure fantasy.
(1969) Horrors of Malformed Men
The plot is so incredibly convoluted that it makes it so fucking difficult to just tell people why this film is so amazing.
(1968) Kuroneko
This is definitely one of the more existential ghost films out there, really tackling themes of death, love, sacrifice and suffering to grand extents.
(1967) *Violated Angels * It’s a tough watch for sure and a tougher film to find value in. You’re thrust into this sexploitation movie that seems murderously cruel and void of meaning. Somehow by the end of it though, it just felt like a much deserved, intimate view of a real crime.
(1965) The Skull
It’s well-produced, for the period. Peter Cushing provides the foundation, and it can be a pretty thrilling film.
(1964)** Lady in a Cage**
I think this movie captures such a helpless nature well. I was invested from start to finish and I loved the writing.
(1963) Matango
Ishiro Honda is a legend and I’m glad I finally got around to watching this one. I absolutely loved the story, the characters, the pacing and just the atmospheric nature of the entire film.
(1961) Night Tide
There are some flash images at one point that are straight up shocking for the time period and actually remind me a lot of (1981) Possession. To say this movie reignited my passion for 60's horror is an understatement.
(1960) The Skeleton of Mrs. Morales
I seriously loved this movie. It's so darkly funny, well-acted and almost unnecessarily well-filmed. I loved the low, uncomfortable close-ups during the nefarious scenes.
(1957) The Incredible Shrinking Man
The film itself is absolutely wonderful and it's mind-blowing how well the effects hold up today.
(1955) Dementia
Despite have no dialogue, the audio is actually really haunting, with this soundtrack that mostly consists of Yoko Ono-style wailing.
(1953) It Came from Outer Space
1950's sci-fi really has the odds stacked up against it in terms of aging well and that makes me appreciate this film so much more.
(1952) The White Reindeer
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Finnish horror film before, but this was great. It’s super mellow but builds into this atmospheric horror-fantasy.
(1949) The Queen of Spades
Dickinson managed to capture the both literally figuratively cold vibe of imperialistic Russia and I think that’s one of the main components that makes it stand out to me.
(1947) Fireworks
It's simply a homoerotic fever dream and I'm here for it.
(1946)** The Spiral Staircase**
This film is such an excellent murder mystery in the same vein as Hitchcock. It’s super atmospheric and the effects work are fantastic (for the most part).
(1945) The Picture of Dorian Gray
I just love the atmosphere and overall paranoid nature of this film. Some quotable lines seem almost comical in today's climate.
(1944) The Curse of the Cat People
This is more of a spiritual successor than a true sequel, despite the title. Very different filmmakers who had a passion for the original created a psychological horror film that was more akin to a cosmic Christmas story.
(1943) The Seventh Victim
The Seventh Victim is a short but sweet little atmospheric, cult-based horror.
(1941)** Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde**
As with any Jekyll and Hyde film, it all really hinges on the performance of the two and Spencer Tracy fucking killed this role. The first scene with him as Hyde in the bar was super creepy and also pleasantly rape-y. Is that weird to say?
(1940) The Invisible Man Returns
A young Vincent Price plays our perp this time and he’s excellent as always. It’s not paced exactly as intensely as the original, but I enjoyed the steady decent into madness.
(1939) The Hunchback of Notre Dame
I’ve seen quite a few iterations of this story dating back to the silent film era and I can confidently say that this is the definitive version. Charles Laughton is Quasimodo.
(1937) Song at Midnight
Overall, it’s not the easiest watch but I enjoyed it and I also believe it’s China’s first horror film, which is huge.
(1936) The Walking Dead
The Walking Dead is an interesting blend of gangster drama and supernatural horror that works better than one might expect.
(1935) Mark of the Vampire
This is such a clever twist on Tod Browning's own formula and bringing back Bela Lugosi for this role was smart and effective. It actually almost feels like an incredibly early example of meta-horror in some respects.
(1933) Mystery of the Wax Museum
This film is so incredibly interesting. It's really a fantastic, twisted seed of a horror idea that clearly made some simplistic sense at the time as a Universal horror clone. But there was obviously enough perverse interest to inspire remakes throughout the next century.
(1932) Murders in the Rue Morgue
Frankenstein meets King Kong.
(1931) Drácula
Carlos Villarias performance is wild; calculated through consistency but initially seemingly enigmatic.
(1929) Seven Footprints to Satan
This film is fucking insane. It’s a super surrealist spiral through satanic-based situations. It’s indescribable.
(1928) The Fall of the House of Usher
This is a seriously memorable and expressionistic silent film. It's wonderfully shot and a great interpretation of Poe's work.
(1927) The Unknown
This isn’t necessarily directly related but it’s Tod Browning’s initial dip into circus themed horror. As most people know, he would go on to make Freaks, an incredible film. It was very interesting to watch this sort of precursor.
(1926) Faust
This might just be the most remarkable looking silent film I’ve ever seen. The first 30-minutes reignited my passion for movies that I had pre-covid depression. I have no idea how Murnau managed to top Nosferatu but here we are. This is peak German expressionism, up there with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
(1924) Waxworks
Absolutely massively underrated silent film. It's probably one of the earliest, if not the earliest anthology horror film ever made.
(1923) Warning Shadows
The film really evolves into one of the earliest examples of a movie within a movie (or a play within a movie in this case), which has become a really niche, yet effective way of cinematic storytelling.

Standing in the observatory, the rundown rooms had been giving the officers shelter. Guilt ate at me for their state, my grease covered hands giving me solace. Two more ships had been built with the top technology, the ships up to my level of satisfaction. Tucking a piece of hair behind my ear, the telescope was getting fixed today. The glass blower had made the pieces I required, the poor bloke not taking any money. Wishing that I could have paid him, I agreed to collect a list of materials on our next mission. Picking up my tool bag, Smatters stumbled out in a casual outfit of khaki pants and white t-shirt. A bucket of cleaning supplies swung in the small breeze, the other officers coming out to assist me today. Saluting me, it took everything for the guilt not to devour me all over again.
“At ease, officers.” I commanded with a bright smile, all of them relaxing into stiff positions. Without a word, they picked up the scraps of metal and began to rebuild the observatory around me. Morty marched up to me while passing the cleaning supplies to someone else. Taking my tool bag from me, a broken silence hung between us. So much had happened that words didn’t need to be said, the bustling atmosphere faded in and out. Our losses wore on our faces, his hand resting on my shoulder.
“Stop beating yourself up, kiddo.” He spoke with tears glistening in his eyes, his voice reminding me of Bogs. “People die and we have to move on somehow. What I admire about you is that you helped him that day even though you could have gotten your people and left. No, you had to help get the jail back in order. Most criminals would leave. When you walked around that academy, we couldn’t be prouder of that sixteen year old. You climbed the mountain of cruel words and obstacles even though we saw the injuries along the way. Hell, it felt like a victory to us when you got your own ship and crew. Pride was coursing through us all. Honestly, it was hope. You gave us hope in a shadowy world. Let’s be real. You were going to lead us all in a revolution against the evil in charge when you were ready. That's it for now. Let’s get to work on the inner workings of this darn thing. You call out the tools and I hand them up to you.” My lips parted to speak, a blast in the desert stealing my attention. Plucking my staff from my belt, the officers dropped everything to follow me into the edge of the desert. A lizard gang had landed in the distance, a low hiss escaping my lips. The officers cocked their guns, Morty offering me a small telescope. Placing the small end to my left eye, twenty gang members climbed out of their commandeered ship. Scales of all colors shimmered in the early morning sun, their leather jackets seeming to be covered in the symbols of their gang. Makeshift weapons tapped their legs, my lips pressing into a thin line. The rest of the team was gone once more, the officers around me would have to suffice. Lowering the telescope, a few scraps caught my eyes. Tapping the sand with my boot, a pit had to be somewhere. Hitting a hollow circle, curious eyes watched me. Hopping onto a rusted piece of metal, I clasped my hands together.
“So this gang is a deadly one. Let’s be careful to please your commander. Another thing, I need at least one alive to interrogate.” I informed them with a bright smile, all of their heads nodding. “If your life is in danger, run. I can’t stand to lose another one of you. One more thing, avoid this future pit where I am marking. This will be our trap for as many of them.” Sand flew up as we sprinted towards the gang, our training had our breathing under control. Moving like a well oiled machine, we darted in between the barren trees. Hiding in the shadows, their worn boots had sand crunching. Throwing a stone in the opposite direction, those bastards would need to cooperate with us or die by defiance. An eerie silence hung in the air, something felt off about this situation. Snapping a branch on purpose, bewildered expressions met my stern expression. The trick was to see what they would do, lasers whistled by our head.
“Oh, captain! We got paid to kidnap you and take the town for our ownership.” The navy alien bragged with a sick glee, his worn staff bouncing off of his palm. “Solomon sent us. He paid handsomely and I sure don’t want to be on the other side of his wrath.” The color drained from my face, Morty noticing right away. Being tough in front of my team was my priority, all of them gripping their guns with frustrated growls.
“Can I convince you otherwise?” I queried with a nervous shake to my voice, another wave of lasers whistling by our heads. “Seems I got your answer, death is upon you all.” Motioning for them to get closer, the officers moved with a rare quietness. Getting into a lower position, their aim was deadly. Shooting down half of them in seconds, the leader darted into the tree with his silver staff. Stepping out of the shadows, a sharp whistle had him following me into open sand. Spinning my staff over my head, the rest of his members hit the sand, a couple running towards the town.
“Stop them before they get into the town! Go now!” I ordered boldly, blocking his staff with ease. Watching them run after the stragglers, my faith had to be placed in them. Soon it was the two of us and the two of us alone, his sly grin exposing his rows of sharp teeth. Banging his staff on the ground, spikes groaned out of his staff.
“My staff is as prickly as me. I refuse to be a good guy, so get bent.” He snarled maliciously, raising it over his head. “Play with me like the legend you are supposed to be or are you chicken?” A snarl twitched with my eyebrow, golden energy swirling around the end of my staff. Golden sparks fluttered in the hot air with every dodge, a kick aimed for his ankle had his face buried in the sand. Taking me down with him, a tortured wail burst from my lips the moment the spikes dug into my back. Hot blood soaked my mechanics suit, a loud fuck burst from my lips at my staff rolling away. Popping to his feet, the ground trembled. Using the moment to scramble away, sand rained down over us. Snatching my staff, horror rounded my eyes at a giant violet snake bursting from the ground. Swallowing the bastard whole, a new problem had presented itself. Jumping to my feet, the town needed to be kept safe. Panic twisted my features, the sand giving away underneath my feet. A bitter groan poured from my lips upon impact, a cold rock grazing the tips of my fingers. Rolling out of the way to avoid long fangs, the snake hissed. Scanning the area for a way out, a small tunnel caught my eyes. Crawling into the small opening, a sharp descent had me landing in a nest of soft ivory eggs about my height. Breathing slowly, my composure was slipping by the second. Torn between keeping the babies alive or killing them, the mother found her way in. Hissing over my head, a fatal wound had silent tears staining my cheeks. Lowering it head to my level, her real tears flowed from her eyes. Rising to my feet, the gangsters had gravely injured her. Wiping away her tears, our foreheads pressed together. The broken expression in its eyes told me to take care of them, my palms rubbing the smooth scales. Falling back onto my haunches, my trembling hands laid its head on my lap. Embracing the mother until she passed, her body hit the dirt next to the nest. Creatures of all kinds screamed battle cries, a loud fuck exploded from my lips. Help, I needed help. Maybe I could hatch them, so we could escape. How does one do that? Rubbing my palms together, golden energy built around my hands. Slamming my palms onto the bottom of the nest, energy shot out. Drops of blood hit the bottom of the nest, gold claiming the veins of the eggs. Cracks echoed in the still air, rattlesnakes matching their mothers violet coloring poked their heads out. The twin rattlesnakes glanced around for their mother, more tears flowing down my cheeks. The rest of the shell hit the bottom of the nest, no fear hiding in my gentle smile. Rubbing up against me, the other animals of the desert were fast approaching. Blasting their mother down a random tunnel before they could see her, the sounds of bones and scales crunching sickened me. Cupping their faces, most people would be scared of them. Yet, the fright couldn't meet my heart.
“I am sorry but we need to get out of here.” I blurted out with a layer of sweat glistening on my skin. “I shall call the one spot over her left eye Ratalia, and you will be called Ratonia.” Ratonia’s spot over her right eye was the sole difference between them. Pointing up at the tunnel I fell down, their tails rattled with excitement. Towering over me by three inches, claws of kind echoed down the tunnels. If up wasn’t an option, down would be another choice. Unless they could link up somehow, both of them seemed to understand me. Ratalia slithered on top of her sister, a hiss ordered me to climb up. The scales were slick, every tug up had my muscles screaming in protest. Grasping at the rock where I fell, my back screamed out in pure agony as I yanked myself onto the smooth surface. Curling my arms round Ratalia’s body, one yank had them flying over my head. Catching them before they hit the wall, long snake tongues licked my cheeks. Fantastic, the sight of snakes slithering next to me was going to make me weirder. Scratching the back of my neck, life could be worse. A desert mole burst from where we came from, my staff spinning over my head. The neon green mole leapt towards us, my new pets hissed venomously next to me. Bright purple venom dripped from their fangs, an idea coming to mind. Dipping the tip of my scythe into the growing puddles of venom, my golden energy absorbed it. Purple lined my energy, my teeth gritting as the venom coursed into my veins. Pushing through the pain, my boots gripped the wall. Pushing off the tunnel’s wall, the snake’s tails smacked the bottom of my boots. Doubling my speed and strength, their bodies curled around my arms mid-flight. Angling my staff for the center of his head, a hollow crack had me flying out of the hole. Rolling across the sand, nausea wracked my body. Getting on my knees, any breakfast I had flew up my throat. Sweat mixed with tears, the tears thickening to my blood. Torturous wails slipped from my tongue, my DNA fought with the venom.
“Make it stop!” Make it stop!” I pleaded desperately, cupping my head. “No, I need this venom to blend in seamlessly or I won’t survive my pets.” Curling into a ball, the snakes covered me with their thick bodies. A fever burned my cheeks, the sweat growing colder. A rough darkness stole me away, their hisses being the last thing I heard.
Sitting up in a golden room, a golden being without a face sat on a throne. Rising from his throne, a purple snake slithered up its leg. Crouching down to my level, his hot hands cupped my face. Tilting his head back and forth, his finger slid down to my chin.
“You really are like your father. He had a couple of snakes as well. Snake faith is rare indeed in this world. Unlike him, you managed more than one at a time.” He mused playfully, his other thumb wiping away my bloody tears. “I am Goldheart, the guardian of the golden heart which you have control of. It was hard to find you.” Surprise rounded my eyes, a nervous grin curled on my whitening face. Bewilderment was a mere joke to him, his snake hissing in his ear. Chuckling heartily, his face moved inches from mine.
“That’s right. I got it to you and no one else. What are you going to do with all of this power?” He interrogated with a wink, a stern expression leading me to scramble back. “Calm down, the venom is almost blended in your bloodstream. You are a fool for doing it unsupervised. What can I say? Like father, like daughter!” Dropping his hand to his side, two violet snake tattoos slithered up to my neck. Slithering over to my right shoulder, they took their permanent place. Hearty laughter rumbled in his throat, his finger moving slowly towards my forehead. A flick had me flying back into consciousness, his ta-ta pissing me off.
Sucking in a deep breath, the scales smothering me moved out of the way. Sitting up while hyperventilating, the moons illuminating the desert were an insult. Cursing under my breath, my back wounds had healed into rough scars. The sand crunched as I struggled to my feet, my patience wearing thin. Swaying slightly, my fingernails chipped away at the dried blood covering my face. Pieces fluttered to the loose sand with every step back, a new sense of fury boiling in my eyes. Solomon’s head was going to be on my wall, his fucking trick wasn’t going to go unnoticed. Crossing into town, people shrank back in horror at the sight of my new friends slithering next to me. Still chipping away at the blood underneath my eyes, hushed whispers passed between the residents. Another steady stream of curse words flooded from my lips, a plan forming in my mind the moment I entered the hangar. Marching into my closet of an office, the snakes took guard outside. Flipping through the pile of maps, a planet existed that wouldn’t have people but the supplies for his coup d’etat. All of the explosives to take over the universe would be there. Well, the largest concentration would exist there. If we blow that up, his plan for destroying everything would be thrown off course severely. On top of that, we needed to evacuate the innocent people for the final battle. Gritting my teeth, the route would be difficult. Running up to the radio room, a sly grin spread across my lips. Plopping onto the worn stool, my guardians curled up underneath the heat of the radios. Fiddling around, the code played out in my head. Turning the last dial, Solomon’s voice came through. Scrambling it on my end, that bastard couldn’t track me.
“How dare they fail!” He spat furiously through the crackles, a sense of pride for my officers glittering in my eyes. “They stated they were the best, damn it! That rat is going to die for her sins. All she had to do was marry me!” Grinning creepily to myself, he had become the rat with my new venom abilities. Their tails rattled, Jack coming in. Shutting the radio down, a snap of my fingers prevented my pets from attacking Jack. Snuggling their heads into my palms, a strained huh escaped Jack’s lips. Struggling to keep his bright smile, his eyebrow twitched with bewilderment.
“They are Ratalia and Ratonia and you can’t kill them. I promised their mother that I would raise them.” I blurted out with a nervous chuckle, Jack’s hand scratching the back of his neck with a pensive smile. “We need to blow up Planet Boom. If he lacks explosives then he can’t make bombs.” Averting my gaze to the floor, the images of the scientists who died making that one bomb flashed in my head. Burying my fingers in my hair, their smiles darkened to frowns. Every breath grew shorter, my heart rate catching up to my breathing. A clammy sweat drenched my skin, an embrace from behind me snapped out of my burgeoning panic attack. Lifting up my chin with his finger, his lips pressed against mine tenderly. Time slowed, our hearts beating to the same song. The door smacking the wall had me jumping in the air, Scampy smashing into my legs. Ratalia and Ratonia licked his face. Waiting for Scampy to scream, his laughter twinkled in the air. Petting their heads, their tails rattled with joy. Pushing everyone out, Morty called for me to follow him. Choosing to say nothing about my snakes, Jack and Scampy came with me. Picking up Bassy on the way, her smile melted my heart. Reaching for the snakes, her little fingers wiggled with glee. Rubbing their heads along her palms, Jack greeted the snakes with a hearty smile.
“Not that I want to ask but what compelled you to adopt them, besides her asking?” Jack inquired with his million dollar smile, his free arm curling around my waist. “Never mind. If you trust them, then I have to believe that they will be a valuable part of our family. What is he showing us?” Shrugging my shoulder with a mischievous grin, I had a decent idea of what he wanted to show me. Pausing in front of the the observatory, my jaw hit the floor at the freshly painted walls and repaired telescope. Hugging Morty with tears in my eyes, the sight was beautiful. Wrapping his arms around my shoulder, our bond got a little stronger. Squirming out of his arms, they watched as I clicked the correct buttons. The telescope hummed to life, my arms scooping up Scampy. Moving it around, a quick check had the twinkly sea of black stealing my breath away. Sitting Scampy on my lap, an enthusiastic wow exploded from his lips. Describing what he saw, pride glistened in my eyes. Grinning ear to ear, his hand yanked me down. Showing me a shooting star, his palms pressed together. Mumbling something under his breath, his glittering eyes met mine. Popping to his feet, he placed his hands on his hips.
“I just wished that you would be my mother forever!” He announced cheerfully, the other officers gathering around us. Getting to his level, he smashed into my open arms. Burying him into a bear hug, admiration for me swelled around the room. Placing him on my back, my real smile relaxed everyone in the room.
“Take a peek everyone. Enjoy the view.” I offered with an even bigger smile, the familiar smell of cafeteria food had my ears bouncing up and down with excitement. A dark haired officer came in with a pile of empty plates under his arms. Calling out dinner, Scampy asked if we could join them. Offering him my hand, the flames of hope burned stronger in my soul. Our war could be won, the light shimmering at the end of this dark tunnel.

Hello. I’m sorry if this isn’t right, Or enough information, but I am looking for A screamo song that was on MySpace back in around 2006 or so.
The cover looks similar to the most popular orchid album, but unfortunately it is not Orchid… a yellow cover with some kind of symbol (could be red, could be purple).
How I found the song was from a really old YouTube video on “longest screams ever” and I can’t find the video anywhere either.
The scream happens in the middle of the song and it’s around 5 minutes long and after the scream it plays the same riff for like 2-3 minutes. I think the drums are programmed but are real sounding. They may have been strictly on MySpace and not have been put anywhere else. I’m not sure.
If there is any help on this, please let me know. I wish I had more to share to help. If I can figure it out I’ll try to record me humming the riff melody at the end of the song. Thank you,

People who care about New Vegas lore tend to treat the Kings as good little boys who never do any wrong, and if anything in-game somehow impedes the Kings it's treated as if a bunch of angels had their wings ripped off. I don't get why.

1. The Kings claim to "keep order in Freeside" and then don't actually do that. There's a need for security in the area, and simply walking through Freeside in a straight line toward the Strip gate will get you attacked. Rather than do what they promised (clean up or secure the area) the Kings instead extort tourists by running a bodyguard scam.
   
2. Speaking of extortion, Freeside does not have clean drinking water save for a single pipe. What do the Kings do instead of trying to find someone who can fix the other pipes? They sit a gangster at the pipe and charge people money for sips of water, i.e. that only thing human beings need more urgently than oxygen.
   
3. Speaking of the water pipe... the guy most qualified to fix it needs about 100 caps worth of chems to cure his addiction (or 50 caps to go visit Julie Farkas and have her do it, I guess.) So not only do the Kings extort people, but they won't even bother to take a little money out of their coffers to immensely improve the area by helping Water Pipe Man. They probably HAVE those chems lying around, since Pacer and the gang all seem to take them recreationally.
   
4. A drug dealer causing problems for literally everyone in the area is free to sell poison to all of Freeside, situated directly in front of Freeside's most used general store, and the Kings do nothing. I'm sure he is not the only person selling chems... but the Kings can't even be bothered to make a symbolic gesture and take care of this guy. And this same drug dealer is lacing his stuff so it's ten times as addictive.
   
5. A guy named Orris has a bunch of his friends pretend to be thugs so that he can impress tourists by "shooting" them on their way to the Strip gate. This would ordinarily be pretty amoral, except Orris will shoot actual threats that attack you during this quest... so he's actually doing his job, just with a trick up his sleeve. The Kings decide this is somehow unfair and kill Orris. So in addition to extorting the region, the Kings will answer other people following their example by murdering them (ensuring they are the only game in town.)
   
6. The King himself is a weirdo. If you turn off his jukebox he enters a psychotic state and tries to murder you. When his cyber dog needed help, he attacked a bunch of pacifist doctors rather than listen to them.
   
7. Pacer is also a weirdo. I don't know what his problem with the NCR actually is, so I can't pretend to know who or what really started the Kings vs. NCR feud. What I do know is this guy will take a bunch of his friends to go get blasted by the NCR, and if a peaceful solution (convincing NCR to share their food) is pursued he will go out of his way to sabotage it. Why? The fact that this man is so high up on the Kings totem pole is proof they're a rotten group.
   

I can understand liking the Kings, but to pretend they're good guys is ridiculous. The Van Graffs are operated by a pair of sociopaths and even they do less to actively impoverish Freeside. Yes they're paying me to make this post, but I'm still right.

I'm watching a UK movie form the 80s, "Mona Lisa" The lead is a gangster that just did seven years in lock up and kept his mouth shut. When he gets out he is not taken care of by his boss the way he feels he deserves.
He buys a white rabbit to give to his boss, I believe to show his resentment/betrayal.
I can't find any symbolism for a white rabbit that fits.
What did you people rhyme with "write rabbit" to get close to a term that has something to do with not paying ones debts, being disloyal, being a cheap bastard? Anything that fits this scenario?

The Public Enemy 1931
The Public Enemy is a 1931 black-and-white gangster movie directed by William Wellman, and starring the great James Cagney in his number one claim to fame role as Tom Powers, the public enemy. The screenplay, written by Harvey F. Thew, John Bright and Kubec Glasmon (from an untitled book by the latter two titled "Beer and Blood"), takes us through the rise and fall of your average prohibition-era American gangster.
The movie starts us off in the year 1909 (when beer and liquor are in no short supply), as young Tom Powers and his best friend Matt Doyle slowly progress from trouble making, rule breaking street kids, to your full on neighborhood underworld small time hoodlums. Tom's straight laced brother Mike constantly tries to steer Tom right on the count of their poor and loving mother. When Mike enlists in World War 1, and with the boys having fumbled up a recent robbery job, Tom and Matt take legal jobs as deliverymen for a brewery. But when the prohibition of the sales of alcohol hits the country, the money is too easy and too good to pass up. The boys strike up a partnership with politically connected bar room owner Paddy Ryan, and well known local gangster "Nails" Nathan, concerning the illegal alcohol sales market, and slowly become the biggest gangsters in the city. But with success comes enemies, this in the form of rival bootlegger gangster Scheemer Burns. When the muscle side of the organization "Nails" Nathan dies in an accident, the Burns mob opens up the war front by bombing Paddy Ryan's bars, and gunning down Tom's best friend Matt Doyle. Refusing Paddy's demands not to go on the offensive, Tom single handedly guns down the entire Scheemer Burns mob, suffering near fatal gunshot wounds in the process. A short time later while the family eagerly wait for Tom's release from the hospital, Paddy Ryan comes to inform Mike of his brother's abduction from the hospital by another rival faction. And when a later knock at the door is answered on, Tom tumbles in the doorway dead, having been left there by unknown assailants, bringing us to the end of this movie.
So with all said and done, The Public Enemy 1931 is yet another truly amazing piece of retro cinema, guided by James Cagney's natural comical/tough-guy demeanor (this due to his having grown up in the turn of the century Bronx, New York), earning him one of the top spots in Hollywood for years to come. Likewise for Jean Harlow, cementing herself here as one of the "bad girl" sex symbols of the silver screen. The other top supporting roles of Edward Woods as Matt Doyle (who's original casted role and that of Cagney's were reversed at first, what a sad mistake that would've been for film history), Donald Cook as Mike Powers and Beryl Mercer as "Ma" Powers, all deliver solid believable performances. As well as the lesser supporting actors in that of Robert Everet O'Connor as Paddy Ryan, Murray Kinell as Puttynose and Leslie Fenton as "Nails" Nathan, all adding a real sense of authenticity to the story, hitting the Irish-American prohibition era gangster nails right on the head. The plotline which chronicles the fast rise and fall of your average everyday American prohibition-era gangster, is truly the first of it's kind (along with Little Caesar of course), blazing the cinematic trail for pretty much every single gangster movie to ever come after. A public warning is given at the start of the movie condemning the actions of Tom Powers and others like him, however this movie mostly had the opposite effect on the public, making the everyday doings of American gangsters more commonly known to your average civilian, subsequently instilling more fear into them, or actually influencing many into this appealing lifestyle now visible on the big screen, with many known gangsters of the era even citing this film as a personal favorite. The cinematography is nothing more than as solid as a 1930s film could be shot, with the sound department aiding in a lot of the more memorable shots of this movie, key scenes being; one in which Tom and Matt are frightened by a stuffed bear in a fur warehouse robbery and unload their guns into it, the ever so controversial grapefruit scene in which Cagney squishes a grapefruit against the face of actress Mae Clarke's face (a totally planned scene by all cast and crew involved, contrary to later rumors), a scene in which Tom and Matt kill a horse for retribution of their crime partner's accidental death, the scene where Puttynose gets what's coming to him, and finally the most visually famous of all old time gangster movie endings, the falling of Cagney's dead body through the front door. This setting up a time honored theme still used in almost every gangster movie since, in where our main character winds up dead as a result of their choosing a life of crime. All of this helmed in by director William A. Wellman, creating the first true gangster movie of American cinema, and influencing generations of directors and their subsequent movies to come, i.e.; The Godfather, Goodfellas, Scarface (a loose remake itself), you name it, all finding their origin DNA in that of 1931's The Public Enemy.
And that's all he wrote folks.
Thanks for reading.
Ryan D. Hurley
​

You can have a drawing of a gangsta money rose tattoo drawing features a rose made of dollar bills, with thorns that are barbed wire.
You can customize this design in a few ways to make it even more gangsta:

• Add a skull or other gangster imagery to the background.
• Use a black and gray color scheme instead of color.
• Make the rose look wilted or damaged, to symbolize the harsh realities of gangster life.

​
https://reddit.com/link/1bt25we/video/jar446dp0vrc1/player
Get A Custom Gangsta Money Rose Tattoo Drawing

Part of the Reason I am the way I am.
My Mother pressured my Father into getting married early in their 20s, My Biological Grandmother died when my mother was 6/7 Yrs Old. My Mother was the youngest of 4 kids, so my grandfather wasnt as strict on her growing up as he was the rest. When she was born, the Umbilical Cord was wrapped around her neck and she was almost suffocated before she made it. She always got whatever she wanted (within my grandfathers Ability making just a little better than minimum wage as a lineman). When she turned 16 she got a car, and one day she was driving out of a intersection on the side of a highway, and got hit just behind her driver door at 50-60mph, and it spun her car around, her driver door came open and she did have a seat belt on, but she was hit so hard her head was dragging the asphalt and she still has gravels stuck in her head from way back then.
Somewhere Highschool and Her first full time job she met my Dad, Brian Stewart. She apparently pressured him into getting married while they were very young, and she obviously wasnt mature enough to make that kind of decision just yet. But my dad said yes, but got tired of her probably constantly never being satisfied. My guess is they argued because she was probably being too flirty with strange men too often. So one day a Couple years after theyd been married, She just vanished from existence. Nobody knew where she was, she didnt tell a soul about anything, and she was missing for 2/3 weeks.
My Grandfather was worried sick, and so was my dad, and everyone thought she was kidnapped or worse. Until my dad went and logged in on their computer, and decided to check her facebook, or myspace or whatever it was, and found out she had been in these chat rooms with all these creepy strange dudes.
She had been messaging one for quite some time, and had told him she would come to his house.
This guy lived somewhere up north around Michigan or Chicago or New York, not sure. But he was Apparently Very Heavy set, and dark haired and tan.
But My Dad told My Momma's Daddy what he had found, and found the address to this guys house, and when my Aunt found out she was pissed.
My dad tried his darndest to do whatever to please her, and she just took advantage of him, even though she asked him to get married in the first place, (Probably a Social Status Symbol for her Ego)
So my aunt found a phone book for the Northern guy's Adress and found the number to his house phone.
She called the number, and the guy's MOTHER answered the phone, and aunt argued with her and demanded to put my mother on the phone.
She eventually came to the phone, and then came home after another 2/3 days. Then her and my dad started the divorce process after she said she wasn't happy or whatever the deal was there.
During the divorce, my mom went up north and came back for a few months at a time, and somewhere in between trips, she got pregnant with Me.
My dad volunteered to take up and raise me like his own even if i wasn't actually his "son", However, his parents Objected to that idea, and apparently that worked out good because his dad or granddad was an alcoholic.
So when i was Born my dad came and was there when i arrived, and my mother swore up and down i wasn't his kid, but obviously I'm not tan and dark haired, and especially looking now i am officially undeniably his son.
But my mother ended up having to move back in with my Grandparents, and eventually we moved to a trailer park, and it actually wasn't a bad place really.
She put me in a daycare within 5 minutes of my grandparents house so they would often come pick me up, or my Aunt would either one.
My mother and my aunt weren't really on good terms, but mostly because my mother refused every opportunity to mature and act right it seemed.
My mother would get jealous of my Aunt spending more time with me, but when i was home i was always just a nuisance to her, that's how she made me feel.
So I got to where i didn't want to go home with her, i wanted to spend as much time with my Paw Paw as i could possibly spend, He was and still is the greatest human being i have ever met in my life. I'd go back and deal with it all over again just to spend that time with him at that age again 1000 times over.
But my mother must have been getting more and more worried about balancing her social life and "status" with me, so she would demand that i come home, just so i could be a status symbol or something when i was in public with her.'
But she would have these raging fits over the smallest things ever it seemed.
Ill try and name of some of the instances in order as best as i can

1. When i was around 3/4 Id been forced to come back to that trailer after begging and crying and screaming for her not to make me go back with her in front of my grandpa or my aunt one, and i was still bawling my eyes out when we got home, and she got angry, like she was talking to a grown man who was 6ft tall, picked me up and SCREAMED AT ME as loud as she could about "YOU ARE GOING TO QUIT CRYING OR I AM GOING TO GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO CRY ABOUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" And would slap me bout as hard as she could without going to jail if they saw the bruises on my face at school.
   
2. Around the same age, similar circumstances, begging not to have to go back, She stepped on a lego or something i had been playing with and sucked them all up with a vacuum cleaner and made me pick it up and try to suck my fingers and hands up in the end of the vacuum hose.
   
3. Around 6/7 I woke up in the middle of the night in my bedroom in the trailer, No Lights what soever, i couldnt see my hand right in front of my face, and had to go to the bathroom, and she woudlnt let me out, and proceeded to leave me in there to piss on myself and got mad at me the morning after.
   

Multiple things like that occured on a regular basis, but being at my grandparents was like heaven compared to anywhere else in the world. And I know it broke their hearts to have to tip toe around helping me, and not pushing so hard that CPS took me away to god knows where.
She would get mad if i got a sticker tattoo, and proceed to yell at me to the point where i finally learned to talk back to her, and my aunt would tell me to just try to avoid the situation, but if she did it again, to just put my hands up so she couldnt hit my face.
I dealt with that on and off for 20 years.
I remember bawling my eyeballs out on my grandpas chest so many times telling him about all the stuff i'd been through and what was going on. And it made him feel guilty for not raising her better, but i know for a fact he didnt teach her to do that to kids, shes just that messed up in the head.
My mother would twist my words, and prevent me from telling my side of the story any time i made a mistake, she would just talk like i was supposed to know everything instantly without ever learning it once. I could never do anything "correct" so eventually i jsut gave up trying to get her to understand me and let her have her chance to be a "good mother".
I would lock myself in my room, or stay out doing whatever.
And that lead to me not being able to communicate effectively in person with people.
I used to not be scared to be me when i was 3-8 but when we moved in with my step dad, he would always take her side because he didnt want to / couldnt afford to pay child support for my half brother.
We never talked much when i was at their house, it never felt like a home to me, always arguing and doing stuff for my half-brother, and any and almost EVERY attempt to make any suggestion if I could be included in getting all those nice things was met with "The world doesn't revolve around you son" So i eventually gave up on doing anything with my "Parents" Or anybody. I felt so defeated, and so worthless that a stray dog laying in a ditch was more worthy of love and happiness than their own "Son"
So now I'm 23 and I've been trying my DAMNDEST to rebuild my confidence that was destroyed when I was little and kept down for all those years.
I just NOW comfortable looking people I've known and been friends with for YEARS in the eye. I'm learning how much i can throw my weight around without sending myself down into a spiral of failure, How to bargain for what i want in my life, and how to love myself when my own mother didn't even want me.
I've met so many people, Gained and lost friends, and got a few back for now it seems, still trying to figure life out, but I feel like I'm in last place, and that fuels me to speed to the front of the line, doesn't matter if i bounce off the walls, sit and cry, or take my time and get there but i AM DETERMINED i will not let my childhood destroy my future for me, my future family, and my friends and other companions.
I want to help other people that are going through or have gone through situations like this, because if it weren't for my Aunt and grandfather, I would probably be laying in a ditch on the side of the road somewhere, or dead, and that's NO Joke.