#Imagine being mikhail in this bro..

[sugerlem0n]

SLAY JONES SLAYYYY

[amoransia]

Really late, but here's my ekuoto chapter 70 commentary. Nothing special, just me freaking out. You know. The usual.

Watch out for spoilers!

Dante got a very special dialogue balloon with "..." in it. Which is curious to me. I'm sure it means some sort of reflection or surprise happening within him; I really want to what he's thinking. How do you feel? Knowing that the that child you were entrusted can't even bear to be awake anymore? That he runs to escapism? Must suck. Anyway.

On the other hand, dearest Daniel is real composed. Good job on getting info out of Belphegor. That's not really a high bar, though lmao... I mean, how are you a demon and can't LIE? Embarrassing... Go back to demon high school or something. Fall from grace again! The whole premise of your existence is being a lying thing that leads people to sin, and you're here having communication issues??? Dude. That's so moe.

Everyone thinking Belph's got something up his sleeve is fucking hilarious. No. Sorry. He's not Kira or anything like that. It's not all according to his "keikaku". He's just kinda dumb and suffers from Villain Monologue Syndrome...

Him saying "my witch", though... ough! (takes critical hit)

Really funny how he showed him off sleeping and everything. Why are you bragging? Is this something to show off? I guess it is for you... I'd be embarrassed if all my coworkers suddenly saw me sleeping on a plasma 100" inch TV, though. Maybe have a little consideration! Also, I don't think anyone's mentioned this before, but I think it's a cool detail that Priest's in a fetal position. Not only does this position bring one comfort, but it can also represent how he's about to be "reborn" as a witch of Sloth. The sphere he's sleeping in can kinda be a uterus, right?

Belphegor and Mikhail replying to each other while Leah was suffering out of confusion was funny. She got the straight man role forced onto her. Miha's "I see!" was cute. Very casual, as if he wasn't talking to a Demon Lord lol. To be fair, Bel is not really intimidating.

Meanwhile, Vir is busy trying to lead his shounen manga team to victory... (or not really.) They'll definitely get some piece of Belphegor though. I wonder what it'll be... he doesn't have anything like Asmodeus' eyes sticking out, so this is a mystery to me.

Me when I get excited about an interest of mine and end up yapping too much

Dante and Vergilius are heading to the same place, so they'll meet up again... I'm looking forward to the mess that comes out of that 👀.

Imuri needs to step up her game, or I'll be taking matters into my own hands because this is ridiculous. Femme Fatale? Wtf are you talking about. Fraudmuri. The Demon Lord of Fraud. Her true title.

Her biggest crime so far is being more in love with the idea of being in love with Priest than actually caring for him. Does that make sense? So far, she hasn't done any effort in actually coming to know him. She needs to KNOW!!!! At least I can respect that she also takes male rivals seriously... and her aggressiveness towards them. Lole.

She doesn't call Priest "sleepyhead" in the JP raws. I don't really mind the addition, but I thought it was worth noting here anyway. Makes it cute.

"It'll be over soon" Naw bro Imuri is coming at you with a fucking sledgehammer. Watch out.

Tiny Imuri is so fawking cute. I've been craving these Imuri flashbacks for forever because we know virtually nothing about her. What moves her. Why does she long to love!! We'll know in due time, I guess. But please show me a bit of it, Aruma-sensei...

Asmodeus being considerate enough to make sexual things vague to Imuri is nice, but it confuses me a bit. Well. I shan't dwell on it, lest my head blows up.

Imuri seems to have some complex about being a demon with no demon power, because she keeps asserting that she is a demon? Am I explaining this properly? Like in this chapter (ch.70) and chapter 3.

Anywho.

Imuri imagining the BL route... save me... my fucking sides... I burst out laughing the first time my eyes laid on that panel. True to her succubus nature, she didn't even consider the possibility of them using blood or whatever else instead of straight-up KISSING. Those are still bodily fluids, right?? Calm down, girl! Stay put!!!

"I'm not letting his first kiss go to some guy that just appeared!!" HE'S BEEN THERE FOR A DECADE! YOU ARE THE NEWCOMER!!! IMURI, GIRL!! You absolute buffoon! Clown, even!

Whew. Lmao.

This arc also feels like a callback to that one "sleeping beauty" comment from chapter 3.

...except their roles have switched.

This time, Imuri will be the one kissing Father on the cheek to wake him up, and it'll be so, so cute. Trust. Trust me. This will happen. (Going insane).

Go and make him your witch, Imuri... Dew it... Make a move... (screaming and crying)

[bluerosesburnblue]

I feel like I already know the answer to this, probably (LOL), but if you could add any other Square Enix series to Kingdom Hearts, what would it be and why? Bravely Default, Dragon Quest, NieR, The Bouncer, Parasite Eve, Forspoken, the Mana series, Xenoblade Chronicles, Valkyrie Profile, Fullmetal Alchemist, Soul Eater? Something else I didn't list here? (You can cheat and choose more than one, if you want:))

Actually, I don't know if I would add any other series. Don't get me wrong, I love the characters from a lot of these, but for me it's a question of how well they could fit into KH without losing the things about them that make them unique, you know?

I love the cast of NieR and NieR: Automata, but those games are SO dark, and a lot of the appeal of those games is the uniquely bleak and hopeless atmosphere, and I can't see them being added to KH without scrubbing away any of the traits that made people like them in the first place. Parasite Eve, too, falls into this category. I mean, The 3rd Birthday kinda already proved why wackier JRPG plots don't work with that cast, they're far too grounded for it. At best you could hope for some of them as background NPCs in an Enchanted NYC, but they'd basically have to be the equivalent of Setzer's KH2 appearance and at that point it just feels kinda cheap

Characters from The Bouncer could make decent cameo appearances in a KH-exclusive world like Twilight Town, since that game is obscure enough that I doubt anyone would get super offended if they were represented weirdly or relegated to just a cameo. But that would also run into the same issue as the Parasite Eve example, where the cameo doesn't really do much other than go "oooooh, look, CHARACTER" (which is my main issue with the use of some of the FF characters in KH already). Alas, this one will probably only ever be referenced as Pence's Dog Street shirt and that's probably for the best given how weird that game is

And then there's just a ton of games that I don't know enough about to say. Forspoken, Octopath Traveler, and Triangle Strategy all come to mind

If they had to bring other properties in, then Bravely Default would work the best for me, at least of the properties you listed that are actually Square Enix owned-and-produced and not just Square Enix published and/or affiliated. Not only is Bravely Default meant to evoke classic Final Fantasy, so it's not too far off from what's already in the game, but the characters already have a lot of "modernisms" in their speech and behaviors that would make them very adaptable to a lot of different worlds in KH and the tone of the games overall. Not to mention that the classical fantasy setting of the games could be pretty reminiscent of some of the more fantasy-focused Disney films, allowing them to blend together. I'm imagining, like... an Edea cameo in Arendelle, not unlike Auron in Olympus. That all being said, I've never played Bravely Default II, so I can't say how well that one would hold up. I'm only thinking of Bravely Default and Bravely Second's casts

And while I do like Xenoblade Chronicles, I would never call them Square Enix series. That's not even close to accurate. Those games are produced by Monolith Soft, and while the company was founded by an ex-Square game director and a lot of the initial employees there were ex-Square employees who brought a lot of those same sensibilities over, the company itself really has nothing to do with them. Would I like it if Nomura's guest designed characters from Xenoblade 2 showed up? Sure, I think having Jin and Lauriam interact could be funny. Or Mikhail and Demyx. But it's not going to happen, because those aren't Square Enix characters. Sora's just gonna have to hang out with Shulk, Pyra, and Mythra in Super Smash Bros. and leave it at that

[thatonesongyouretryingtoremember]

Incorrect quotes with the boys (p11/?)

Micheal : So are you gonna explain how the hell you crashed my car?

Will: Well we were driving and there was a deer in the road, so I said "Mikhail , deer!"

Micheal : ...And what did Mikhail do?

Will: ...They said "Yes, Honey?"

8/10 they would

------

Mikhail : Can we talk about that mass email you sent?

Micheal : Why? It was important.

Mikhail : All it says is, "I'm back on my shit".

Will, shrugging: The people need to know.

5/10 the possessed shit or the gay shit?

------

Micheal : I know you love them.

Will: I am not in love with Mikhail !

Micheal , staring at Will: I never said who...

Will: *realizes*

Will: Shit. Well, anyways-

7/10 if these two were in love with different people, this is exactly how they would act.

------

Will: You are irrationally angry 365 days a year.

Mikhail : Well, that’s just your personal opinion, I don’t have anger issues. Do you guys think I have anger issues?

Micheal : Well, I wouldn’t really call it an issue. An issue is something you can fix.

4/10 hosting from the sun in all this shade

------

Micheal : Due to personal reasons, I will be fucking sinking to the bottom of the ocean in a large metal box.

Mikhail : Did Will say 'I love you' and you said 'Thanks'?

Micheal : THE REASONS ARE PERSONAL–

7/10 clone hive mind

------

Will: So, Micheal is no longer allowed to take the trash out at night.

Mikhail : Why?

Will: Because I've caught them trying to train raccoons to fight five times in a row.

Micheal , arms crossed and pouting: You'll be thanking me when the third raccoon battalion saves your ass.

10/10 racoons>demogorgons

------

Mikhail : Welcome to Fucking Applebees, do you want apples or bees?

Will: Bees?

Mikhail : THEY HAVE SELECTED THE BEES!

Will: Wait-

*Micheal approaches, shaking a jar of bees menacingly*

6/10 wut

------

Micheal : Why would you give a knife to Mikhail ?!

Will, shrugging: Mikhail felt unsafe.

Micheal : Now I feel unsafe!

Will: I’m sorry…

Will: Would you like a knife?

8/10 never gets old

------

Will: Hey, Joe said he's coming over this afternoon.

Micheal : Cool.

Will: Do you know who Joe is?

Micheal : JOE MAMA!

Mikhail , not even looking up from their phone: Damn, that backfired.

10/10 *tries to imagine the word backfired in a Russian accent*

------

Will: *yawns*

Mikhail : Yeah, being that pretty must be tiring.

Will: Then you must be exhuasted.

Micheal : Will you two shut up? Some of us are lonely.

10/10 pushing my "they all live in Micheal's basement" agenda

------

Mikhail : Would you slap Micheal -

Will: Yes.

Mikhail : I didn't even finish!

Will: Sorry, continue.

Mikhail : Would you slap Micheal for 10 dollars?

Will: I would do it for free.

Micheal : Rude...

8/10 Will deserves to commit whatever violence he sees fit

------

Mikhail : The results are in, I’m afraid you have updog…

Will: What’s updog?

Mikhail : Micheal ! Get in here, I told you I could do it!

10/10 (Micheal hands him a $50)

------

Micheal : So… I’ve seen you’ve been spending a lot of time with Mikhail recently.

Will: No, Micheal , it's not what it looks like, I swear.

Micheal : Oh really? So no reason for me to be jealous?

Will: No! You’re the only one for me.

Micheal : Is that so?

Will: I promise! Mikhail and I are just dating, okay? They’re my partner.

Micheal : So there are no best-friends-feelings involved?

Will: You are still my one and only best friend! They’re just the love of my life, nothing more!

Micheal : But I’m still the platonic love of your life, right?

Will: Of course bro!

Micheal : Bro...

Mikhail : What the-

10/10

------

Will, knocking on the door: Micheal , open up!

Micheal : It all started when I was a kid.

Will: That’s not what I-

Mikhail : Let them finish!

10/10 *starts recording*

------

Mikhail : When you work at lush and a customer comes in and bites the soap because they think it’s cheese... this happens way more frequently than you think.

Micheal : If you stopped literally presenting soap as deli food this wouldn't happen.

Mikhail : Who goes into a bath store and thinks something covered in glitter is cheese?

Will: Who goes to the store and just takes a bite from the cheese?

8/10 I didn't even think of that💀

Peace, fuckers! ✌️

[elysiumrp]

Kevin Mikhail Darden || Unregistered Werewolf || Pro-Equality Portrayed by Aaron Taylor-Johnson

Biography /

Kevin Darden grew up in the outskirts of Sacramento, California. He was born to wealthy parents and throughout his childhood was given the best that life could offer. Privileges were seen as the norm to Kevin, and attending expensive private schools was nothing more than normal. Effort wasn’t put into his classes where instead he was able to skate by on his natural intelligence alone. Having to try for things was never something that Kevin had to fight for over the years. The things he wanted, he was given, and for everything that he couldn’t be given, he was able to use his natural intelligence and charm to gain what he desired. It was a life of privilege, but also a life that bored Kevin, and that boredom led to a shift in his lifestyle as he entered his middle school years and began to hang out with the kids a couple grades older than him. Substance abuse took hold of him like a trap, and what started off as the rather common toying with alcohol fell quicker into harder drugs. Alcohol turned to cigarettes, and cigarettes turned to things that were illegal under the law. Upon graduation, Kevin was kicked out of his parents’ home and living couch to couch as he stumbled into an underground way of life that he had only witnessed before in the movies. Fighting didn’t give him much money, but it was at least something to help him scrape by. That was, until the night that changed his life. Kevin had always had a temper, and entering into a fight with steam to burn off ended with deadly consequences. Punch after punch was thrown, even after his opponent was bruised and motionless on the ground, and it took three men to finally pull Kevin off of the lifeless body. He fled from the scene immediately, and didn’t stop running until the Greyhound dropped him off on the opposite coast as a murderer with an eternal curse, and no control over the wolf gene that had been activated. Living in a city with so many supernatural creatures helped Kevin with being able to learn control, but just like so many other lives, his was shattered when the supernaturals were revealed. Now, for one of the first times in his life, Kevin is taking an active approach in trying to change the world for the better as he works in the forefront of the Resistance, risking everything to try and provide the world with a better tomorrow.

Important Points /

-- Kevin has taken to being a werewolf easier than most, and this is something that he attributes to his careers assisting him in being able to let out his aggression. Although he is no longer fighting, taking up a job as a bouncer at Strange Brew is another, slightly more civilized way, that he is able to let out some of his pent up, natural werewolf aggression. Kevin has also found that being able to feel needed is something else that seems to have helped sate the overpowering feelings that have hit him in the past, and being able to finally have somewhat of a family in the city has helped Kevin to mellow considerably compared to what he used to be like. Kevin is finally maturing because of the state of the world and where he is at in his life, and although the world around him has been going to hell for a while now, it seems that Kevin’s own personal life is only growing both in purpose and his own personal maturity. He finally feels that he has things and people to fight for, and it's a feeling that brings him more comfort than he ever could have imagined.

-- Finding Antonia Moreno was the first thing that truly brought a shot of life into what had felt like a monotone existence. Dating a vampire was never something in his plan, in fact, he was fairly certain that because of his nature that he was destined by fate to stay away from them, but he fell for Antonia, and he fell for Antonia hard. She was fun, interesting, and brought light into his life that he had never imagined possible. Antonia was the first woman that ever truly meant something to him, and the relationship, although sometimes tumultuous because of their supernatural lives, it was something that Kevin was always willing to fight for. He loved her, and before long they fell into the classic rushed engagement based on emotions rather than perhaps the most logical of thinking. Besides Antonia, New York City also introduced him to the first friend that Kevin felt truly valued him for who he was as opposed to what he had. Kyle Davidson was a true friend, and a person that surprised Kevin when it was discovered that the pair suffered from the same curse after Kyle fell into the same situation that Kevin had experienced. Losing the both of them so close together after the city went to hell is something that jarred Kevin to the core. He is lonely, and after finally finding out what it was like to live with a family of friends, it hurts more than he knew possible to lose the kinship and trust that he had felt towards both.

-- Loss was never something that Kevin allowed himself to experience. Even after he was kicked out of his parents’ house, he refused to accept it as the truth, and instead forced himself to write them off completely as opposed to mourn the loss that truly impacted him below the surface that he allowed himself to feel. When the government announced that the supernatural community was no longer allowed to reside in New York City, and especially wasn’t allowed to meet up in groups because of the danger they would inevitably cause, Kevin wasn’t prepared for the changes that would occur all too abruptly. The life he had finally started to carve out for himself slipped between his fingers as his fiancé was forced to flee to Europe, a place that was at least slightly more tolerating, and Kyle was forced to take the entire pack, a pack Kevin had considered himself a part of, to Canada. Kevin himself was asked to stay behind by Kyle, and stay behind he did to keep an eye on a bar that was owned by the pack. Strange Brew operates under the guise of a typical human establishment, but the hope is that one day its true supernatural catering purpose will be able to come to the surface. One of his few connections that remained in the city was his friend, Kaden Kingsman, one of the first people that he had actually met in the city after he had arrived. The pair had been friends since the first Christmas season he had spent in New York, and although they had butted heads at time, friendship between the pair was something that had always remained. Through the abandonment of the majority of their friends and family, Kevin and Kaden grew inevitably closer, and have decided to both serve the supernatural community that remains. Kevin wants equality for all, and all he has wanted was for everyone to be able to come home. Now that the full ban has been chipped away at slightly, Kevin’s new goal is to make the city livable as opposed to the oppressive place that it still is now.

Connections /

ANTONIA MORENO ; The relationship that Kevin had with Antonia Moreno was truly the first relationship he had that meant anything to him. Antonia was his fiance before she was forced to leave the city for her safety, and having to say goodbye was one of the hardest things that Kevin has ever had to do. He loved her, he loves her, and when he said goodbye he felt that he had had to say goodbye to a part of himself. Kevin thought that the pain would fade away with every passsing day, but although the pain is something that he can live with, Kevin stil feels that it is a constant that he is just getting more used to. Life just isn't the same without the vampire that he loves. Things certainly weren't always great between them, as Nicholas used to get in the way, and freak events with humanity and other worlds caused dramas, but Kevin wouldn't change their relationship, or her, for the world. Now that Antonia is back, Kevin is relieved, but a part of him still hurts that she didn't beg harder to get him to come with her. It's selfish, but he can't help it, even if the idea itself is hypocritical.

KYLE DAVIDSON ; Kyle is the closest thing that Kevin has ever had to a brother, and the two are certainly the cliche, classic bros. Beers and watching sports was a typical night for the two, and it was a friendship built not only on genuine human connection, but werewolf connection as well. Unlike others that might be turned off by Kyle becoming a werewolf, it only drew the pair closer together cause it gave them something to bond over. Distance, however, has put a certain strain on their relationship, and Kevin hasn't seen Kyle in many months. He was personally asked to stay behind to take care of things, but once again Kevin can't help but feel that he was forgotten about by those that felt like family. Both Antonia and Kyle left him behind, and sometimes he can't help but think that his previous way of life, living for himself and only for himself, was easier than the whole friendship thing. Managing Strange Brew is something that has come easily for him, but he doesn't feel like it was worth having to be away from his pack, and a part of him resents that he's the one that was asked to stay behind.

TEREZA CASTELO ; Tereza is a person that reminds Kevin almost eerily of Antonia, and it has bred an automatic trust because of that false familiarity. Tereza has been a member of the Resistance since the beginning, and was present at the first small meeting that Kaden dragged him along to. That alone has forced a kinship between them, and over the months since the Resistance started, Kevin has started to feel the protectiveness over Tereza that he has felt over the rest of his friends. She is an ally, and seems to be a genuinely good person as well, and Tereza is a person that he actually enjoys being around because she brings the same aura that Antonia brought. In the darkness of New York City, it's a light that they all need. He doesn't vocalize the respect that he has for the vampires, but Tereza is a person that he would follow almost without question, and with all of her years with life experience, Kevin truly does trust the decisions that she makes.

KADEN KINGSMAN ; Kaden Kingsman was the ex-girlfriend, and then girlfriend, and then ex-girlfriend, and then wife, and then ex-wife of his best friend, but even before all of those crazy, complicated connections, Kaden was a girl that he had met on his own and become friends with. For a brief time, it was Kevin, Antonia, and Kaden as a group until coupling between them, adding Kyle into the mix for Kaden, caused things to distance slightly. That distance has been erased since everyone else has left the pair, and now they're two of the only other people that they have. Kaden provides a familiarity that Kevin needs with so many things having been changed, and she has, in a way, taken a place between Antonia and Kyle. There is no romance between them, but he spends a lot of time with her, and spending time with Kaden is one of the few things that helps him to feel normal because it reminds him of the times before the world began to go downhill.

OLIVER HEATON ; Kevin has never been a fan of Oliver, and no matter how many good things Oliver does, he's not sure that he'll ever be able to forgive the warlock for all of the bad things that he has done in the past. In fact, he's not sure that he even wants to forgive him even if he felt that he was able to. Oliver has caused pain, whether intentionally or unintentionally, and whenever a person has hurt those that Kevin cares about, it is certainly difficult for Kevin to find it in himself to forgive another for such actions. Yes, Oliver has been there for the supernatural community by offering up his shop and his help for the Resistance, but for Kevin it is far from enough. Even if Kaden, and Antonia, and others are able to forigve him, Kevin has no desire to do so anytime in the future. Holding a grudge is something that he is all too happy to do.

EMILY VILLANOVA ; Hiring a human at Strange Brew was definitely not one of the things on Kevin's to do list, but whenever she came by asking for an application, Kevin couldn't help but let his curiosity get the best of him. It turns out that Emily wasn't always as human as she is now, and that alone was enough to allow Kevin to hire her. Her situation reminds him a lot of what Kaden has had to go through with losing her magic, and he can't help but feel bad for her. Although Emily tries to stay strong and hide that it bothers her, Kevin can tell that it does. Although the werewolf curse is obviously considered a curse, thus the name, at the same time, Kevin isn't sure that he would be the same person without it, and losing it would feel like a loss of a part of himself. It's not something he likes to think about.

JASPER PITZEN ; Jasper is a person that Kevin was not a fan of for a long time, mostly because of the influence of Kyle and drama that had occurred with the previous Council. It seems like a lifetime ago now looking back since the Council has been disbanded for a year, and Jasper has slowly been making his way into Kevin's good graces because of his invovlement in the Resistance, and using his public position to speak out positively in favor of supernaturals. Kevin still feels a loyalty to Kyle and Kyle's dislike for the other werewolf, but at the same time, Kyle is no longer around, he ran away to Canada, and Jasper is the one that has actually stayed in the city and fought--more than that since he is doing it through a public platform and risking his entire name and image for the good of the supernatural cause.

KEVIN DARDEN IS CURRENTLY CLOSED

[spamzineglasgow]

Dogs in Fiction (Canine Crisis); (Maria Sledmere)

In this essay, Maria Sledmere responds to ‘The Trouble with Dogs for Writers’ by Karl Ove Knausgaard in The New Yorker. 

> It’s easy to get yourself familiar with the aesthetic and sensory tastes of Karl Ove Knausgaard. Read just one volume of his six-part series, My Struggle, and you’ll find out exactly how the Norwegian author likes to relish his cornflakes, observe the sky or hide at a party. The beauty in Knausgaard, I suppose, is how he makes of daily life a literary form of crack cocaine: this furiously addictive rush, without hits of which we would suffer immensely. The cognitive estrangement he casts by ‘slow’ forms of attention prompt various kinds of reawakening in the reader. Boiling things down to simplicity explodes in curiosity over component parts; I found myself extrapolating similar kinds of Knausgaardian introspection and reverie in the weeks after finishing A Death in the Family. Everything was a crumb that fell out of something; every action, event, thought or sense seemed to contain the kernel of a grander knowledge. But like crack cocaine (at least, er, as I imagine it), the after effects of this attentiveness, this intensity of suspended experience, are pretty nauseating.

> Therefore it’s with some relief that I stumble upon a short extract from Knausgaard’s book Summer, a collection of essays on everyday things and concepts, part of his Seasons quartet. The subject is a familiar one within the sphere of domesticity, but not often noticed within fiction: dogs. Sure, Virginia Woolf wrote that autobiography of Elizabeth-Barrett Browning’s dog, Flush, and maybe you read Jack London’s The Call of the Wild as a kid. The fictional dog I remember most is probably Garth Nix’s Disreputable Dog, the anthropomorphised, wise and wayfaring hound in Nix’s YA novel Lirael. It’s maybe easier to think of cartoon dogs, dogs in children’s books. Snoopy, The Hundred and One Dalmatians. Can we take dogs seriously in fiction, or must they remain peripheral, comic or secondary, often as placeholders for human affairs? Knausgaard, it seems, doesn’t hold much lingering affection for dogs. With all their insistent yacking, dogs carry the law of father: the barked impasse of communion between dog and human represents, for Knausgaard, ‘a kind of law, they marked a boundary I couldn’t cross, and it was the dog that enforced it’. He goes on to explain that this comes, partly, from a sense that dogs embody, in their pathetically loyal, pleading behaviour, his own weakness: he can hardly look at his family’s dog, ‘without a feeling of irritation or even rage rising in me, the way it often is when one recognises one’s own least attractive traits in others’.

> The identification is so strong that Knausgaard starts to view his dog as a shackle on his writing. Dogs demand routine, movement, companionship: they have to be ‘walked several times a day’, they have to be accompanied. In that sense they’re a practical impediment to the solitary requirements of the writer’s life, imagined as a kind of hermetic stasis. To write, for Knausgaard, is to be free of the ‘law of the dog’, a ‘a place where one can express oneself freely’. I’m struck by how this attitude differs to that of someone like Donna Haraway, canine enthusiast par theoretical excellance, or poet Eileen Myles, who recently published Afterglow: a dog memoir, about their pitbull Rosie. For Haraway and Myles, dogs are companions: a source of creativity, flourishing, of interspecies exchange and biosociality. Haraway, in her Companion Species Manifesto, even claims an ethics for the stories told ‘about dog-human worlds’. Playing with one’s canine, walking one’s dog, Haraway argues, helps us realise ‘that history matters in naturecultures’. Kinship reveals the contingency and enmeshment of our being. Dogs, as domestic animals, raise all sorts of interesting ecological questions about coexistence and hospitality, how ‘animal happiness’ might differ from that of humankind, as well as the ways in which our affective natures overlap. Is it a coincidence that Knausgaard’s title, ‘The Trouble With Dogs’ seems a provocative repartee to Haraway’s Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene? There seems an almost mythic divide between Knausgaard, giving up his irritating dog to a loving family, and Haraway’s ‘Positive Bondage’ of human-dog relations—a sense that one cannot write ‘objectively’, but rather in collaboration with the ‘objects’ (animal or otherwise) of a story?

> For all Knausgaard likes to linger on objects throughout his writing, there’s a remove here, perhaps. There’s still a very clear human orientation. A specific gaze that is the masculine anthropos in moments of strength or glimpsed vulnerability. The weirdly alluring thing about Knausgaard is his embodiment of that straw man of the vigorous novelist, fighting against himself as much as the world; the way he perceives dogs reflects the absurdity of that position, that absolute anxiety about the animal that impersonates one’s inner animal. Note the slippage: personify/impersonate, the animal/human, animism/humanism. The Animal, as Jacques Derrida put it, That Therefore I Am (More to Follow). And yes, Derrida, who questions whether there can be ‘animal narcissism’, who documents the eerie, arresting ‘animalséance’ that arises in ‘the single, incomparable and original experience of the impropriety that would come from appearing in truth naked, in front of the insistent gaze of the animal, a benevolent or pitiless gaze, surprised or cognizant’. Musing one’s nudity before the gaze of the radically animal other, we have to confront a special kind of meta-shame, a shame ‘for being ashamed’. Perhaps it’s appropriate, then, that I think of cats when I think of poets: those slinky mercurial beings who owe loyalty to no-one but elicit your affection with every sideways smile of a tail-licked sentence. Who loiter and wallow in shame, their own or otherwise.

> But we are talking here of dogs, not cats. I write this in the living room of my flat, with my friend’s dog Maisie, a six-year-old black lab whining in the corner. She’s going through her first ‘season’, the time of her first period. She’s moody and languid and all the women in the room relate to her trouble. If Derrida sees the cat’s gaze as a threat to his phallus (and of course cats are often linked negatively to femininity, witchcraft and the like), then Knausgaard sees the dog as a pitiful embodiment of his failed masculinity at the point of manly assertion, the law of the father. Is it that dogs, like men, create the ties that bind them? Dogs cower, fight; dogs piss on lawns; dogs eat everything; dogs die outside the pack; dogs allow themselves to be domesticated, chained. In one sense, we might think of Knausgaard’s aversion to dogs as a reflection of that romanticised writerly introversion, the self-flagellating need to sacrifice social contact and give space to poetic ‘genius’, to mark territory. The parasitic psyche of a dog just can’t be a part of that; he requires a cleaving, whereas writing for the likes of Haraway and Myles seems to spring, often, from collaborative, interspecies storytelling. Much more can be explored here: the binaries of active/passive, physical/cerebral, man/woman, master/slave, culture/nature—to name but a few in our theoretical bestiary.

> The essay, in its single paragraph ramble, sort of resembles a dog walk. And of course at the end, we come to that phrase: ‘The Dog’, asserting its presence again. Knausgaard tries to walk away from dogs, explain their trouble, but he lands back at the dog, the law of the father. He admits of the dog a sort of haunting within his ipseity: ‘The Dog’, we discover, was actually the original title of Knausgaard’s ‘first autobiographical manuscript’. When I think about it, dead dogs, mutant dogs, haunting dogs are everywhere. The dog on the front lawn speared with a pitchfork, the central cipher in Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. The dog with a human heart in Mikhail Bulgakov’s political satire of the New Soviet man, Heart of a Dog. The dogs that refuse to breed in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, unlike the obnoxiously fertile cats, who Crusoe must kill, as Jane Goldman argues, to assert ‘his own sovereignty’. I’m reminded of brooding stoner bros on that Mac DeMarco album, This Old Dog, but also of Knausgaard’s canine self-loathing, when Goldman points out how Crusoe sometimes refers to himself as ‘Dog’, ‘in a sanguine, matter of fact way, when recalling the danger of losing his life, his own sovereignty: “I only said to my self often, that I was an unfortunate Dog, and born to be always miserable”’. Somewhat companionably, he later uses the term in reference to Friday, his human subject: ‘“You Dog, said I, is this your making us laugh?”’. Where is the line between companionship and subjugation, submission? Terror and humour, master and slave? How do we relate in writing to the objects and animals that make up our worlds, our stories, our selves? Where do we, as beautiful souls, come apart as fallacy? How can we unravel in words the sovereignty of the anthro: as species, experience, as being itself; is it time, even for the more dog phobic among us, to embrace or question or love the trouble, to unsettle its position within our lives, our bodies, our homes? Will we find ourselves tangled in our own leads, running away with multiplicity?

As for me, I’m gonna go buy a goth collar for the anthropocene.

~

Text: Maria Sledmere Image: Dallas Reedy