#Consumer culture is a blight on this world and I say this as someone who also can't handle horror because of genuine triggers

[nebulainatree]

[Image ID 1: A screenshot of someone's tags. "#You lost me at psychological thriller, could make it more consumable to people who don't like horror, right? #like I watched DDLC out of the corner of my eye in a tiny window, I wouldn't be able to handle watching a show (pleading face emoji)". End image ID.]

[Image ID 2: A cropped version of the previous tags that only contains the phrase "could make it more consumable". End image ID.]

I want someone to make one of these new sterile teen gay romance shows on Netflix but halfway through they pull a Doki Doki Literature Club and it turns into a fucked up fourth wall breaking psychological thriller that deconstructs the heteronormative and middle class ideals of the genre

[space-cowboy-101]

✨ATEEZ as Dragon Age aesthetics pt.2✨

Yeosang, Mingi and San’s have got to be my favorite out of all of them because they’re just so them in this story. Especially Yeosang’s, solely for the picture I used and how it relates to Orlesian culture.

Anyway, onto the backstories!

Even with the giant stone walls, Starkhaven couldn’t hold the great Choi San within its containment. He’s seen everything the Free Marches has to offer; Minanter river, Grand Tourneys, the mysterious gremlins skulking around the outskirts! Out of his father’s promising grasp with the help of a revered mother, he wandered around the Marches without abandon and enjoyed the new freedom to the fullest, and did it taste sweet. Until he met his match just after his departure from a quaint village, someone who’d become a mentor he didn’t think he’d ever have and teach him all the skills of a Kirkwall rat. Someone who’d eventually bring him to the Inquisition’s doorstep.

Song Mingi’s seen many things in his short life. He’s experienced the influx of refugees during the Fifth Blight, he’s watched the Champion of Kirkwall rise to infamy and even got to meet him, and he got to be a first hand witness to the boiling tensions and subsequent destruction between the Kirkwall Templar Order and the Circle of Magic. Nothing more than a stranger to him, the effects of the Champion’s manufacturer-consumer relationship with his father hit him hard once he left Kirkwall. The government viewed his father as a criminal—and he by association—and it was the tipping point of his decision to leave the dying city, what with the mages in the Gallows and the Templar’s strict control of them. So, with the two he met in the tavern in Lowtown, he followed them on their mission to find the next Inquisitor of an Inquisition soon to be brought to fruition.

Life’s never been very kind to Jung Wooyoung, or at least that’s what he’d say if you asked him. Growing up as a prodigy should’ve assured him a life of luxury and ease, for he’d have a place as a Tevinter Magister as soon as he completed his schooling, but no. Life had other plans for him. Hopping from Circle to Circle, the mage never knew home and got into more shit than a deepstalker, until he was confronted by the man who’d help him realize his potential. Before he too fell to his curse, his family destroyed and his mentorship failing when Wooyoung was asked to do the impossible. Tumultuous and bitter, his life spiraled before his father made the choice that any sane person would be scandalized by and forced him to run. And run he did, right into the arms of someone that understood his problems better than himself.

Everyone knew that the Anderfels is a cesspool of depression, even Choi Jongho despite calling the nation his home. Home of the Grey Wardens and their nemesis, the Darkspawn, Jongho heard lots of the stories about fierce warriors that rode into battle on griffins but never did he see that when the Wardens defended their village from the darkspawn that wandered too close. It wasn’t until he was old enough to hold a sword did he realize how shattered and desolate Anderfels was, when he’d fled his village and found himself at the Nevarran border and seen for the first time what a yellow sun at high noon looked like. Nevarra was part desert yet it was nothing like the jagged rocks and bloodied sand that the Anderfels had, and Jongho’s eyes were opened to the beauty of the world, alongside the man who saved him that day.

rip the other guys, i kinda got into their stories without realizing 💀 but at the same time, i’ve tried not to spoil too much because they come into play later on 🫣

poor jongho…going from hot ass desert to icy permanent winter mountains. 💪🏻 you got this guy, i believe in you.

Thanks for checking out my post if you’ve read this far 🥹 and i hope you enjoy my story if you decide to give it a read! the third chapter just got posted yesterday and the next one will be up in a few days. 🫶🏻

[prismaticpichu]

Can you imagine I like to read Sephiroth fanfics???

As I’m going back and re-reading some of the dearest, most embedded Crisis Core/Pre-Nibelheim works in my heart, I’ve kinda gotten to thinking why I love them so much. And then it hit me! It’s the stellar characterization of the 7-foot-tall-cat-man-thing that deepens and dimensionalizes and humanizes him all at once. Recently I’ve been reevaluating my own stuff, kinda thinking how I could improve and shoot to be more on-point with my own interpretation (personally I think I make him too squishy). So! To do this, I’ve went ahead and jotted down some key traits that, in my humble bumble opinion, make sane!Sephiroth who he is- both for me and my fellow writers!

Get ready for some overanalyzing, friends. Here we go. Brace yourselves. *applies dollar store glasses*

~~~~~~

• One of the #1 integral traits imo is his RESILIENCE. Sephiroth. Is. Frigging. Resilient, man. He never stops working. It’s an extremely double-edged trait, but that makes it all the more human. On one hand, Sephiroth gauzes wounds through doing this, using work and fighting as a distraction. He’s not a guy to take a day off; he ain’t going to Costa Del Sol for a vacation, no sir. That’s the negative side of things tho. On the other hand, Sephiroth is physically resilient! I’ve never ever ever seen this portrayed better than in LuckyLadybug’s fic Shine Until Tomorrow on FF.Net, wherein after being consumed by flames, knifed in the back, and thrown down a FREAKING MOUNTAIN, this man drags his shredded body all the way across Wutai looking for someone who’ll help him. When help doesn’t come, he eventually falls to his knees, unable to stand any longer. And then he proceeds to crawl (bless this fic I love it so much <333). Whether it’s mentally or physically pushing himself on, it’s a VERY core part of Sephiroth’s personality; giving up ain’t an option. It’s unacceptable in his little kitty eyes.

• Second to resilience, I gotta say, is undoubtedly his loyalty. No better example for this than canon itself! Y’all know the story: Sephiroth was ordered to kill his only buddies in the world, ordered by the company he was supposed to devote every aspect of his life to. And he went ahead and defied them; he spared his buddies’ lives even when their friendship was blighted. He refused missions to fight them at all (see this WHY SEPHIROTH WAS TOO GOOD FOR— *tv bleeping sound; takes deeeeeep breath, collects herself*). Loyalty is prolly the trait I wanna nail most! Sephiroth is a good friend. I’ve seen so many fics explore how deep his care goes and what he’s willing to do for others.

• Sephiroth AIN’T bloodthirsty. The best works I’ve read is where he only ever kills out of defense for others, or when others are a noticeable threat. He does NOT enjoy killing, not at all, and will look for alternate routes when possible. However! At the same time… the guy is well aware that sometimes it can’t be helped—and that bloodshed, sacrifice, that whole jam… it’s all engraved into the line of work he’s in. Additionally, Seph can lose it sometimes (GASP— I know, I know, I know, calm down folks in the back.) There are times when sore spots are hit, and those sore spots unleash the Dragon™️ I’ma bring back LuckyLadybug for this one; in the sequel to the aftermentioned gem, there’s a part wherein Sephiroth is taunted to the point of snapping. Blood is sent flying, bodies crumble like dominoes… The thing is though, when he came back to himself, he’s horrified at what he’d done. He can barely stand. There’s a real human heart in there, folks ;,3 Not a monstrous one. Sephiroth’s hero title is well-deserved.

• In a similar vein—kinda, not really—Sephiroth AIN’T stupid. Not socially, not culturally. This man knows what an oatmeal cookie is, folks! He knows how to dip french fries in ketchup! From what I can gauge, there’s more or less a spectrum of “things that Sephiroth had no idea existed”. Pastries? Yes! Just cause this guy was most likely sheltered and raised by evil slimy scientists, just because he never had one before (we don’t talk about that :,3), that doesn’t mean he looks at a cookie and his mind explodes into a Windows buffering screen. In tandem with that point, Sephiroth is also not socially slow—at least in my opinion. There’s a difference between being unable to express empathy and unable to pick up cues. There’s a little scene in CC wherein Sephiroth sees Zack grumpy and asks what’s wrong. The guy is very empathetic, perceptive, and he is kind <333 But it is true to his character that it doesn’t always come across so palpably.

• Sephiroth’s gotta sense of humor. He does! “This goes on your permanent record” came outta this refrigerator’s mouth. Sephiroth’s amusement is very veiled, very quiet, and it usually takes something reeallllly good to get him to crack a smile. I think everyone knows it, but this guy ain’t made of bricks! (Nor is he made of play-doh. That’s my problem x,D). He is also not all that formal, either. I’m saying this to myself more than anything—little me avoided Sephiroth using contractions like the PLAGUE, which only really crafted someone who you frankly wanted to punch. Though he’s not throwing around slang, he is a perfectly chill fellow and doesn’t speak in Shakespearian riddles (yeah remake Seph.)

• Sephiroth is not thinking about his mommy issues 24/7. They’re usually tucked away, hidden somewhere in his caged little heart. Certain things will trigger them—but they’re rarities imo. Sephiroth is focused, professional, and most likely has accepted what happened to his mother when he was young. It’s not allllllll a mask, y’know? This bean genuinely has moved on, or at least convinced himself that he has.

(And when he has a friend by his side, those things can’t plague him at all <3)

[infamousbrad]

Middlebrow

I don't think Threads is going to be for me, just like its ancestor Instagram wasn't, just like TikTok isn't. Let me tell you a story.

-----

I've never finished Chomsky's book, Manufacturing Consent, but I did see the documentary and the part he actually knew something about, linguistics, is the thing that stuck with me. Chomsky was analyzing the English language dialects in which news stories were written, and concluded that not just the news, but virtually all English-language media were published in one of three dialects: Ivy League, college English, and grade school English. And when the subject had anything to do with history, science, or policy the subject was first brought up in Ivy-League language publications, then a few months' later trickled down into ordinary-college-dialect English. And that, to a first approximation, nothing even vaguely related to history, science, or policy was ever written or published in grade-school English, or if it was it was never marketed.

This is the heart of his conspiratorial conclusion that pop culture is there to prevent working-class people from engaging with those topics, to distract them. That if the Ivy League graduates could run the country without any interference, they would, but that they encourage media publishing that discusses ideas (once the elite media has ruled out the ones that would be detrimental to existing shareholders and or to political dynasties) in order to obtain their buy-in, so they go along with what rival gangs of Ivy Leaguers are doing. I don't know about that.

But when I heard about this, what leaped out at me was that I have a relentless taste for what Hollywood calls that 2nd category, or used to call it: middlebrow. It used to be the thing that American books, TV shows, and movies famously did better than any other country in the world: entertainment that was as exciting and emotionally vivid as stuff for the working classes, but that engaged on some level with history, philosophy, science, culture, or yes, even policy.

-----

I saw an article last night that interviewed a couple of people from the Threads app team about how they were going to handle news curation, and their answer was unambiguous: they won't. Not for anti-censorship reasons, but for (although they didn't have the guts to say it this bluntly) for pro-censorship reasons: news and politics are not welcome on Threads.

One of them later came back and clarified that they weren't going to overtly censor news or politics, but they're not going to seek out people who post about such subjects and they didn't rule out down-ranking them in the algorithmic feed. They are explicitly seeking to be a social media space that engages with things that are popular, like TikTok or Instagram, by which they (explicitly say that they) mean is pop-culture entertainment and popular consumer brands: music, movies, fashion, food. Everything else "fosters unnecessary unpleasantness."

-----

Look.

I discovered science fiction roughly 51 years ago, at around the age of 12, and tore through the entire collection in my school library, then the local public library, then started a string of not-entirely honest side hustles to buy the latest paperbacks, because I am only interested, it turns out, in three questions?

How did things get the way they are? (And as I sometimes jokingly add, "And why are we in a handbasket?")

What directions are things going in, so I don't get taken by surprise by them? And finally ...

If someone of modest talent and even a modicum of moral courage wanted to do something to influence question #2, what would they do about it, and how would that go for them?

Look, I get why the marketers who are paying for this whole blighted social media landscape want customers who are easy to market to, who come almost entirely pre-marketed to, people with parasocial relationships that can be exploited to sell them shit they don't even need, most of which isn't even different from the perfectly-good stuff they already have. But even if I didn't have an intense aversion to being marketed to?

If a social media platform is going out of its way to keep me from finding something interesting to think about, it's totally butt-useless to me.

[brightblackbird]

I keep seeing all these posts about how the environment is improving due to the Coronavirus, and I have a few Thoughts.

I don’t agree with them at all, and while I get that they’re mostly coming from a good place-scared people trying to look for a silver lining-they’re not only vaguely eco-fascist in flavor and unhelpful, they’re also just not correct.

People have explained eco-fascism and the ways it manifests in mainstream environmental discourse better then I could, so I’m not going to say too much on that.

What I want to really speak too is another undercurrent I see running through a lot of those posts, the whole “this is a punishment for humans destroying the earth” or “Humans are the real virus!” thing.

This is a thought that is super easy to fall prey to as someone who cares about the environment-you see enough degradation and destruction that it starts to feel like all humans can do is take and harm, and that the world would be better if we all died tomorrow. I remember reading a book as a child that had “humans being a blight on the earth” as a central theme-it ended with the humans being killed by aliens, I think-and being profoundly horrified and disturbed. I was already the sort of 12 year old that cried at night because of polar bears on  melting sea ice, and the idea that humans were harming the earth, just by existing, that we were never meant to be here, that we were wrong, sinful-it scared me to my core. For a while, I believed that it was true, and that the best thing we could do would be to disappear.

This is where the Neo-malthusian idea of population control becomes popular-that there are too many of us, that we need some sort of check on ourselves before we greedily consume all the resources. 7 billion is certainly a lot of people, and means yes, more resources are being consumed, but Malthus was proven incorrect back in the 1800s and he’s still wrong now.

One of the last classes I had before my university closed due to the virus was an ecology class where we looked at the concept of Keystone Species-species that are essential for their ecosystem to function, and have a profound impact on it. If you remove a Keystone Species from its ecosystem, it’s not the same, and could potentially fall apart. There’s strong evidence that humans are a Keystone Species, that we played that role in the ecosystems and added value and biodiversity to the landscapes we lived in. We see it in Indigenous cultures across the globe-proper care and maintenance of the land is essential if you wish to continue living there. Harvesting plants, creating soil, prescribed burning-all created healthier, stronger ecosystems, not weaker ones. Large populations lived and are living sustainably, happily.

Humans are not a virus. Humans are not a blight, a disease on the earth. Humans are animals, and to say otherwise is to create an division between man and nature that doesn’t need to exist. I am well aware of the harm that is being done, the vast and cruel systems that have been built. I know that the way we live in the Western world is unsustainable, that it will take profound change for us to have a hope of preventing the worst of climate change. We degrade the environment in a million tiny ways just by living in the systems that were built long before we were born. We will have to work hard to see a future that isn’t dark. But if we ever want to create change, it does us no good to live in fear and disgust of ourselves.

I’m scared right now. I am tired right now. It feels like the whole world is slipping, that the future is unknowable. But I refuse to call this a deserved plague on humanity. Humanity is far brighter than that.

[fanworldbuildingfun]

Musings on “Modern Person in Thedas” trope - The Jump (or the amount of dubious luck one would have to possess to universe-hop)

I admit that like, probably many, DA fans, I have had this recurring daydream fantasy of landing into Thedas. Side-effect of a decent RPG, as it is. 

And while I won’t say I’m at a level of investment at which I would be tempted to sit down and write a fanfiction of it... Thats mostly because I like to overplot things

(In case the blog name did not tip you off, I like worldbuilding. I like knowing the background rules and plots that make the story tick - sometimes more than story and people in the story itself)

Brace yourself. It’s going to be long and possibly somewhat incoherent

Assumption 1: Entering the Dreaming World/Fade is more difficult for Earthlings

The concept of Veil exists in our world too, as a sort of thin film between the ‘otherworld’ (dreaming world, Fae realm, spirit realm etc, etc - depending on the culture in question) and ‘physical world’ (where we are present)

The major difference between our world and Thedas concept of the veil is the addition of “when” to our idea of the Veil. In Thedas, the Veil is mostly spoken of in the concept of “where”: “Where the Veil is thin” (interestingly, for Thedas it’s mostly battlefields and spots where a huge amount of magic has been exercised. Likely due to Thedas’ Veil being an artificial construct. One that can be affected by both), “Where the Veil is torn”. Affecting the “where” is usually enough to bypass the Veil and enter the Thedas’ variant of the spirit world (the Fade). “When” appears to be something that can be affected only once the “Where” part of the Veil has been disrupted

(see the “In hushed whispers” mission, with Redcliffe time travel)

On Earth, we speak of “When the Veil is thin” (e.g. Samhain, Walpurgis Night etc) much more often than “Where the Veil is thin”. Admittedly, special places, most often naturally occurring, that serve as attractions for unusual happenings: fairy circles, places of power, etc are an exception to this. Regardless, both “When” and “Where” exist simultaneously, but apart, not as consequence of each other. Affecting the Earth version of the Veil therefore is a much harder task unless specific steps are taken: both the time and place have to be carefully selected to bypass the Veil

E.g:

Place + time of year (can be found in almost any culture: Ivana Kupala, Walpurgis Night, Samhain, Halloween – and countless more. Often, they seem to be linked with either the beginning or end of harvest)

Place + prolonged (possibly multi-generation) influence on the place (again, not uncommon in any culture. Places of worship, places where people are warned from going to for various reasons)

Any other combination tends to require a great deal more effort

In addition, most of the steps that can be take on Earth Veil seem to require specific conditions that may or may not act as an interference to accessing the Spirit world. An example of this would be the presence of ‘cold iron’, ‘celestial bronze’ or other ‘purified’ or ‘man-altered’ metals. As an assumption, it may also extend to any manmade materials that do not exist in similar state in nature.

There has been a rather interesting Tumblr conversation I came across (on Pinterest, of all places) that argued plastic would have an even worse effect on magicals, but alas, I did not save it. A waste, now that I think of it

With the rapid industrialization and urbanization of Earth, such effect mounts and spreads. So, one may consider that the prevalence of magic in the old stories is not merely due to the failure to understand the world and seeking arcane explanation of it – but also due to our now-inability to access arcane.

In short: Theodoshian Veil is akin to a single layer encryption access with no specific hardware requirements. Well, unless you count whatever was put into making it, of which we know little. Earth Veil is a two-layer encryption access that is really sensitive to mods. Or a fragile ecosystem.

From this: Accessing the Fade from Thedas is a hassle, but doable. Accessing the Dream World from Earth is a hassle that grows even worse with each passing year

Assumption 2: The Dreaming Worlds are interconnected, at some level

But not in constant contact with each other. Think isolated bubbles that are specific to any given world. Over the course of time, they sometimes brush with each other and leave parts of its respective ‘content’ behind.

Thus the set ‘ideas’ of races that never (or, at least, not proven to exist with any degree of certainty) existed on Earth. Some of the typical characteristics of the races reoccur in different cultures that may, or may have not, had contact with each other. For this example, I will count dwarves, elves, and corrupted ones (e.g. orcs, goblins, drow – or, for Thedas, the blighted beings like shrieks, ogres etc)

For the purpose of the plot, crossing from Earthling section of the Dreaming into Fade would require the character to be present in the Dreaming world when such a ‘crossing of bubbles’ occurs

Mind, the actual ‘crossing’ may occur for much longer periods of time than mere moments. Simply, with the failing access to Earthling Dreaming, and installation of Theodoshian Veil, there is no one that can ascertain for sure how long it lasts

Given that time is often mentioned to run strangely in the Dreaming/Fade, it would account for entire decades of stories of people disappearing, reappearing, sleeping for decades and the like (think Rip Wan Winkle. Or Sleeping Beauty. Or any story really that has people disappearing/reappearing/sleeping without dying for exuberant amounts of time without dying with no outside help)

Next assumption is more iffy, because I’m much less sure about it.

Assumption 3: a lot of those who ‘crossed’ the worlds, never return

This one will draw on the idea that eating the food of a different world makes you a part of that world, forever (or at least for a good long time)

Cases in point: any fae-related or deity-related lore that warns against eating their food. Think Greek myths, Irish Fair Folk, Japanese Kamikakushi lore etc.

Food is the building blocks of our bodies. Ergo while the spirit may wander, the body is much more rigid and unchanging. Same applies both to Earth and Thedas: the spirit of Command in Old Crestwood village even bemoans that the waking world will not follow its commands. Bodies are part of Waking world. Ergo, they are intrinsically tied to it

Eating foods from another world would then, in theory, force the body to work off the materials that it was not built from or for, and that tends to end badly for… Anything, basically. Like trying to force a computer system run on the hardware it was not built for. Or forcing the wrong blood type into someone. Or using the wrong pesticides when growing food and then having a severe allergic reaction to it.

The soul or spirit, in most religions, is considered hardier than that. It can survive what the body can’t. So consuming food from another world would, in theory, force the body to shut down and sever the spirit from it. In pre-veil Thedas it -may- not have been as much of an issue, but on Earth the Veil nicely tucks anything supernatural-related away, and with the access diminishing, it’s basically be shut in Dreaming or Die.

Conclusion: to cross over from one world to other, you need to have some damn bad (or good, depending on perspective) luck.

And then to stand the possibility that in crossing into the waking world of Thedas, you have to have your old body die. Ergo returning to Earth is not really an option after that, not as you were. I mean, we have concept of reincarnation but it’s not really you-as-you returning. For those who knew you it’s not the same. And with weak connection to Dreaming you can forget about the more arcane means of getting a body

Also, being born with the original-you memories (if you are unlucky), would be just plain awkward

At least Thedas has recent precedents of embodiment, from spirit to flesh, even with Veil drawn. Case in point – Cole. Possibly Leliana, if you killed her in Origins, but Wikipedia is kind of shifty on that one

[shearintegrity]

Posted @withregram • @damianmonzillo My brother Sunday Mensah & I were talking about how Black Hair is understood and talked about within the consumer and professional worlds a few days ago. John Oliver did a show on Black Hair that was interesting and I hope informative to people who don’t have that social or personal experience. This is a subject that I’ve been interested in as long as I’ve done hair. It’s not only strange to me that someone can say they’re a hairdresser, hairstylist, etc and not have any idea or interest about African or textured hair. If there’s one culture and people who have been incredibly creative and knowledgeable about hair it’s our African brothers and sisters for a millennia. My family history is European. When I’m at work doing hair for photoshoots I’m not generally expected to be able to do much with texture that’s not like my own. Yet, it’s one of my favorite textures to work with. I’m happy to chat with the model about what we’re going to do before I start so their confident that I’m competent at MY JOB. I’ve had several experiences where models are surprised that I do anything with their hair which is such a shame and honestly a blight on the industry that should be technically inclusive to everyone’s hair. Hairdressers can help lead the way by taking time and understanding even a simple working knowledge about African and or mixed textures. Having first worked with Maya Angelou as my first celebrity, Jessica White, Salt N Pepa, Tyson Beckford and Aldis Hodge to name a few I can say that throughout my career , I’ve always been given an opportunity to prove myself. With that, whether it’s from professional to professional or not this is a beautiful for us to come together! #blackhairmatters https://youtu.be/Uf1c0tEGfrU (at Queens, New York) https://www.instagram.com/p/CO80575j-EM/?igshid=1hv1ff5klypi1

[stoweboyd]

Christopher Caldwell subtitles his City Journal piece about Christophe Guilluy A social thinker illuminates his country’s populist divide. This is someone I have never heard of, perhaps since his several books have not been translated from the French, yet. But Guilluy seems to be something like Paul Mason in this rejection of the industrial era’s left versus right dialectic, and instead finding a cleavage between the globalist, urban elite -- whether conservative or liberal -- and the rural, disenfranchised working class.

At the heart of Guilluy’s inquiry is globalization. Internationalizing the division of labor has brought significant economic efficiencies. But it has also brought inequalities unseen for a century, demographic upheaval, and cultural disruption. Now we face the question of what—if anything—we should do about it.

A process that Guilluy calls métropolisation has cut French society in two. In 16 dynamic urban areas (Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Aix-en-Provence, Toulouse, Lille, Bordeaux, Nice, Nantes, Strasbourg, Grenoble, Rennes, Rouen, Toulon, Douai-Lens, and Montpellier), the world’s resources have proved a profitable complement to those found in France. These urban areas are home to all the country’s educational and financial institutions, as well as almost all its corporations and the many well-paying jobs that go with them. Here, too, are the individuals—the entrepreneurs and engineers and CEOs, the fashion designers and models, the film directors and chefs and other “symbolic analysts,” as Robert Reich once called them—who shape the country’s tastes, form its opinions, and renew its prestige. Cheap labor, tariff-free consumer goods, and new markets of billions of people have made globalization a windfall for such prosperous places. But globalization has had no such galvanizing effect on the rest of France. Cities that were lively for hundreds of years—Tarbes, Agen, Albi, Béziers—are now, to use Guilluy’s word, “desertified,” haunted by the empty storefronts and blighted downtowns that Rust Belt Americans know well.

Guilluy doubts that anyplace exists in France’s new economy for working people as we’ve traditionally understood them. Paris offers the most striking case. As it has prospered, the City of Light has stratified, resembling, in this regard, London or American cities such as New York and San Francisco. It’s a place for millionaires, immigrants, tourists, and the young, with no room for the median Frenchman. Paris now drives out the people once thought of as synonymous with the city.

Yet economic opportunities for those unable to prosper in Paris are lacking elsewhere in France. Journalists and politicians assume that the stratification of France’s flourishing metropoles results from a glitch in the workings of globalization. Somehow, the rich parts of France have failed to impart their magical formula to the poor ones. Fixing the problem, at least for certain politicians and policy experts, involves coming up with a clever shortcut: perhaps, say, if Romorantin had free wireless, its citizens would soon find themselves wealthy, too. Guilluy disagrees. For him, there’s no reason to expect that Paris (and France’s other dynamic spots) will generate a new middle class or to assume that broad-based prosperity will develop elsewhere in the country (which happens to be where the majority of the population live). If he is right, we can understand why every major Western country has seen the rise of political movements taking aim at the present system.

Guilluy takes on the manifold layers of ‘political correctness’, and suggests that the manipulation of what can and cannot be spoken of, and in what terms, is a means to control discourse:

In France, political correctness is more than a ridiculous set of opinions; it’s also—and primarily—a tool of government coercion. Not only does it tilt any political discussion in favor of one set of arguments; it also gives the ruling class a doubt-expelling myth that provides a constant boost to morale and esprit de corps, much as class systems did in the days before democracy. People tend to snicker when the question of political correctness is raised: its practitioners because no one wants to be thought politically correct; and its targets because no one wants to admit to being coerced. But it determines the current polarity in French politics. Where you stand depends largely on whether you believe that antiracism is a sincere response to a genuine upsurge of public hatred or an opportunistic posture for elites seeking to justify their rule.

Guilluy is ambivalent on the question. He sees deep historical and economic processes at work behind the evolution of France’s residential spaces. “There has been no plan to ‘expel the poor,’ no conspiracy,” he writes. “Just a strict application of market principles.” But he is moving toward a more politically engaged view that the rhetoric of an “open society” is “a smokescreen meant to hide the emergence of a closed society, walled off for the benefit of the upper classes.”

I hope someone will take on the task of translating Guilluy, or at least that more English observers will dig into his thought and writing. At the very least, I will be using his metropolitanism and considering his take on the changes below the surface in France and other industrialized nations in the postnormal.

PS Guy Sorman has an additional article at City Journal, A New Political Spectrum, addressing the notion of a new political realignment along open versus closed society instead of the old left versus right.

[casualarsonist]

American Psycho: A review for people who are scared to read it.

I have a theory that American Psycho was something of a literary template for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time <cue howls of indignation>. Let me finish – I know that psychopathy is not autism, although the conditions can share some personality similarities, and I know that there is nothing more stigmatising and incorrect than to conflate the two, but from a textual point of view, let’s consider this for a second: both are written from a first-person perspective, narrated by characters who categorise the world around them in meticulous analytical detail. Both characters spend a lot of time explicitly explaining their actions to the viewer in a clinical, methodical way. Both novels devote entire chapters to musings on pop culture. Both novels depict their characters’ struggle to interact with the world around them as a result of their conditions. Obviously I don’t think that Mark Haddon sat down to read American Psycho and thought that he could write Patrick Batman-lite, but there is an interesting familiarity in reading American Psycho in terms of how it’s structured, and in how Bateman details his world. So perhaps my ‘theory’ is more of an interesting coincidence, but it stands that American Psycho is, at its core, a fantastic character study of a man who feels little connection to the world around him, and a vicious skewering of conspicuous consumerism. It has also been hugely misunderstood and misinterpreted by critics and the public alike for the entirety of its existence.

American Psycho is a 1991 novel by Bret Easton Ellis, centred around the obscenely wealthy New York yuppie, Patrick Bateman; a self-confessed ‘fucking evil psychopath’. It follows his life over a period of a couple of years (although the amount of time that passes between the various scenes is vague at best) as Bateman guides us through whichever experiences he chooses to show us. Now I know what you’ve heard, and don’t get the wrong idea - the majority of the novel simply depicts the superficial banality of Patrick’s life - vacuous conversations with his friends over dinner at expensive restaurants (or over drinks and cocaine at exclusive clubs), detailed dissections of certain musical icons, meticulous descriptions of the clothes and things owned by the people around him, and his liasons with various women in his social circle as they sleep, eat, drink, and do drugs with each other without any respect for established ‘relationships’. And that’s ‘relationships’ in inverted commas, because these people are self-centred-ness made manifest. Consumed by their obsessions with money and possessions, all of the characters seem incapable, undesiring, even, of forming genuine emotional connections to anyone around them. Their loyalties to their friends are tenuous, to their lovers even more so, and their conversations revolve almost entirely around fashion etiquette, which restaurant is the most chic (certainly not the same one that they’ve eaten at that one time in the last two weeks), and which piece of meat (apologies, ‘woman’) they’d like to have sex with.

But the novel is controversial for a reason, and there are certain parts of American Psycho that contain some of the most repellent and detestable things I have ever read. There was more than one occasion where I simply had to put the book down, cursing internally and aloud the lack of artistic merit and the pure sadism of these sections and the actions contained within. But it also stands true that the more reactionary among us will read these parts, or hear of them, and damn the book as misogynistic torture-porn, and will miss the point entirely. I can’t excuse the scenes of violence, and I still struggle to understand why they must exist in such a way. Perhaps they’re there to make the reader feel ashamed – to lure them into a trap with promises of titillation and taboo bloodlust, and then horrify us into self-reflection? But to boil the purpose of the novel down to these moments is far too simplistic. The characters and their actions are misogynistic, yes, because American Psycho is an apocalyptic look at America’s lust for wealth and reverence of the god Economy, forsaking all other virtues along the way. It is money as a substitute for masculinity. These men are disgusting, and their actions are disgusting, but at the centre of every single one of them lies nothing of value. They are pathetic - empty shells existing only for an induced high, for the hollow prestige of things that serve no purpose other than to be gaudy and far-too-expensive. They repeatedly order high-priced drinks and meals that they don’t touch and entertain themselves by abusing and belittling homeless people in the street. They’re pitiful, and prey on the equally vacuous women that surround them, bouncing from mate to mate, from drug to drug. American Psycho forces the reader to take a look at an unvarnished and extrapolated depiction of what corporate America desires most, and absolutely savages it in the process. The novel won’t let you relax - the rate of murders and the horror of the descriptions escalate in its latter half and it certainly makes it a difficult slog to the end, and just as you think you’re becoming complacent towards the nastiness, it ups the ante and leaves you feeling angry and repulsed all over again, but the truth is that other 90% of its 380-odd pages are really just filled with meticulous descriptions of things. To this end, and spoiler-free, it all feels a little pointless upon its conclusion. But perhaps that’s the point? It revisits a scenario that it has portrayed a dozen times before, and the text could be word-for-word copied from any one of a number of other points earlier and it really feels a little boring, a little underwhelming. And it should, because no matter the lengths Patrick goes to in order to stimulate himself, to make himself feel something – anything – other than boredom and disgust, neither he nor his friends can escape the empty repetitiveness of their lives.

If there were a narrative, it would be that we follow Patrick’s unravelling sanity as time progresses. He admits within the first few pages that he is a psychopath, but for a long time we only get hints here and there of his deviant actions. Then, one by one, and almost too casually, we are introduced to his disconnections from reality, and then his murders. They come without warning and unpredictably. He begins to hallucinate more vividly and frequently, and the novel reaches a point where one can doubt almost everything he says. At one point he describes in a rambling stream-of-consciousness his deranged ravings in the streets as he goes shopping one afternoon, assaulting people in public and screaming and banging his briefcase along a wall, eating his melting hair-gel and standing for an hour in a trance in a shop. At another point much later on he leads police on a chase through the city as he murders at will and blows up police cars. Whether or not he actually performs any of these actions is left almost entirely uncertain, and all confessions of his crimes are misheard or taken by others as jokes. He kills an associate and claims to drag the corpse through the street in a sleeping bag; he is even investigated for the man’s disappearance by a private detective, but then months later someone claims to have lunched with the man only a short time prior. Did Bateman really kill the man, or was it a hallucination? One can’t ever know, as all his friends look the same and they all frequently mistake one-another for other people; in this very conversation, the person who claims to have lunched with the dead man has mistaken Bateman for someone else. This is the level of unreliability that the novel operates on. The most stark degradation of his lifestyle is exhibited in the way his home life changes from a militaristic adherence to his beauty regimen to literally eating viscera on the floor of a blood-soaked apartment, and this is all interesting enough to read until we are jerked back abruptly to another table at another restaurant with another fancy meal and another asinine conversation.

Patrick Bateman’s life is hell. His environment is affluent, but it is hell. He knows this, and yet he wouldn’t tolerate the idea of another way of life as he’s so enslaved by his own mental state that he barely even realises that he hates everything about it. Easton Ellis takes us through this hell, bludgeoning us with mundanity and violence alike, until we understand that what Patrick Bateman has is not something worth dreaming of, that America is sick and Wall Street’s unfettered lust for money is a blight, a cancer. It’s at times sickening, at times humourous, and at times rather tedious, and that’s the point. You aren’t meant to read this novel and think ‘damn, I’d like some of that’. You’re meant to feel disgusted and kind of bored. You’re meant to see this extreme depiction of an affluent life it for all that it is, and all that it isn’t. The memories of the abhorrent actions fade surprisingly quickly, given the horror they invoke, which is the only reason they are bearable, and I’m not sure that it’s good for the sanity to read this novel repeatedly, but it is certainly one of a kind, and one of the most savage indictments of greed-soaked materialism ever put to paper.