#Poetic Situational Supplement

[theresattrpgforthat]

Mint Reviews: Bxllet Clip (by @ostermad-blog and co)

The following is a review for Bxllet Clip, a supplement for the post-apocalyptic game, Bxllet. I received a copy of this supplement in exchange for a review.

Let’s start by talking about BXLLET. BXLLET, by Rathayibacter, is a post-apocalyptic game that gives you a gun, but encourages you not to use it. How? By accumulating bullets as a form of XP. If you spend your Bullets, you lose access to some pretty wild powers. If you do decide to fire your gun, however, you guarantee death for whomever you shoot.

The system uses a d10, with any roll of a 7 or higher granting success. Players can add up to three +1 modifiers for skills, tools, or situational advantages, as well as one +3 modifier for using advanced technology or supernatural abilities. Conversely, the GM can apply multiple -1 or -3 penalties for wounds, major or minor. After a roll, players can improve their results by introducing immediate or long-term problems or consequences. The game very much encourages multiple paths to success, as long as you’re willing to make things difficult for your character at the same time, which is a style of play that I really like.

If you like a post-apocalyptic wasteland full of mutated beasts and big consequences for firing a weapon, you might like BXLLET.

Bxllet Clip is a supplement published by Danielle Osterman, and contains a number of add-ons to the game for GMs and players alike. It also includes an interview with Rathayibacter Toxicus, talking about the design goals of Bxllet, a small game by Adira Slattery (the creator of Thirsty Sword Lesbians), as well as a Bxllet hack for the game Troupe, called Gxnne. Let’s break down what’s inside.

Lab Run, by Martin Dubuque. This is a location for an old lab whose main purpose was keeping soldiers alive, housing a bunch of technology that is both useful and dangerous. While the setting provides you with obstacles and plot seeds, it’s not a linear dungeon crawl. Instead it’s a collection of ideas that the GM can present to their players as the players make decisions about where to go, what doors to open, and what they’re looking for. I can see this being useful in more games than just Bxllet - I could absolutely use this in Numenera, Rotted Capes, and other sci-fi or horror settings.

Interview with Rathayibacter Toxicus. This is an excellent dive into game design and the decisions made by the designer to encourage a certain kind of play.

Bxllet Aftermarkets, by Rathayibacter Toxicus. This is a series of extra rules to alter the way Bxllet plays. One example is using a pre-determined limited pool of bullets in your game planning to make sure you can be generous with bullets while still incorporating a feeling of scarcity or limitation.

The Bayou, by Martin Dubuque. This is another adventure for characters with slightly more structure than Lab Run. It contains some pretty hefty antagonists, as well as events that will happen as the players explore the town of Sweet-water. I could also see this as being an interesting adventure for a game such as Backwater.

Deadly Weapons, by Adira Slattery. This is a game about gender and violence. You are a girl with a gun, one way or another. There are some mechanics that seem to echo things I’ve seen in other games, such as a sliding scale of how risky your actions are (similar to Blades in the Dark), and Doom and Hope tracks that eventually introduce changes to your character (similar to the Hopes & Dreams system by Fari Rpgs). The design of the game is very poetic, casting the Demons that you hunt as both antagonistic and alluring. It reminds me of Good Omens, in a way.

GXNNE: Troupe Does BXLLET, by TheOriginalCockatrice. I looked up Troupe for this game and it looks to be a game set in the medieval period, about a group of outsiders and wanderers. The original Troupe uses a dice mechanic similar to PbtA, and is less about heroic combat and more about absurdist comedy and the journey being more important than the destination. The main carryover from Troupe to GXNNE is the classes. You could potentially play a game of Troupe, transport the characters to the world of BXLLET, and give the characters the same obstacles of the fiefdoms but in a post-apocalyptic setting.

Overall, if you are a fan of BXLLET, this supplement gives you much more to play with, which is great since the original game had the basic mechanics but little else in form of extras. If you like any of the things I mentioned about Deadly Weapons, this might also be worth checking out.

If you bought the TTRPGs for Trans Rights in Texas bundle, you already own BXLLET. If you would like to own both for a deal, there’s a BXLLET Clip Combo deal that gets you both BXLLET and Bxllet Clip for $25. And Troupe, the game mentioned in GXNNE, was featured in the Indie Bundle for Palestinian Aid!

[alltimefail-sims]

Valentina Contreras

For @kashisun Simblr Office!

Full body shots and loooooads of information below the cut! ❤️

36 years old

Graduated with honors from UBright. Head of the Simblr Office's Public Relations department for around 5 years now. The office employee advocate in any possible legal situations. Will have a company scandal handled before you can call your momma about it.

Ambitious, secret geek, your resident mean friend™️ with a heart of gold. Don't wax poetic to her though, she will barf and adamantly deny that she even likes you (she does) or that she has the capability to be sweet (again, she does - in her own way).

Does not do nicknames but will tolerate "Val" from the coworkers she gets along with. If she doesn't like you, it's Ms. Contreras exclusively.

Chronic desk snacker. Has never ate lunch in the break room in her life. Has been seen running to the conference room in emergency "defcon" situations with her trademark huge ass thermos in one hand, her (newest model) iPhone pressed to her ear, and a bagel hanging from her mouth.

Lives with a lowkey migraine all the time, thus overly prepared. Has a cabinet filled with all the period products, vitamin supplements, and pain relievers the office could ever need. She walked in on two coworkers getting freaky once and, after "vigorously bleaching her eyeballs" (her words), she wordlessly added various contraceptives to the cabinet the next day. (If you take any, DO NOT elaborate to her. Plausible deniability and all that.)

Lives and dies by her smart watch. Calendar queen through and through.

As scary as she is on the surface, she really likes her job and her coworkers (she would never admit this). She's gives straightforward and thorough advice, is a good listener, and always accepts invites to hang out after work (so long as you sent her a calendar invite, obviously).

Competitive as fuck. Scarily good at drinking games.

Serious about the work life balance - you will not find her ass in the office more than a minute after the end of the day. If you interrupt her on a day off or call her while she's on vacation, she will murder you with her perfectly manicured and moisturized hands.

Posted a pic on her (highly guarded) Instagram flashing a huge ass diamond ring with no description. Showed up to work the next day and didn't say a thing. That doesn't stop people from speculating who the brave guy is (no one is ever right). One thing is for sure though - he does NOT work at the office! 😂

Does not have children and probably will never have children. She says she "does plenty of babysitting at work, thank you."

Has been known to call coworkers who piss her off or who create public company-related nightmares "little shits" or "dumbasses." It comes off far more endearing than she wants it to.

She can be heard saying, "Nope. Nope. Not today," "I do not get paid enough for this shit," and/or a slew of obscenities (in Spanish and in English, always in rapid succession) multiple times a day.

You can tell if you're about to be in deep shit with her based upon the pace at which her heels click toward your office/cubicle. 😉

[sanguine-salvation]

Viktor talks a little strangely sometimes, this can be obvious. They supplemented a lot of their English from novels and fantasy books, and they developed a mild fascination with interesting or obscure words, so they can use words that might not be the usual, or come off as a little prose-y or poetic despite the situation. Another quirk, mainly learned from their personal history, is that Viktor can and will use flirting and being cheeky as a defense mechanism to keep control of the social space and distance between them and another person. They can have a bit of a teasing air and like to rile people up, often so much that they forget they're even doing it. So when they start having actual feelings it can be a strange thing to navigate, on top of already having some mild guilt over having people they like having around so much that they have to convince themself it's okay as long as they will 'save them one day, but not today'.

[acyborgkitty]

The Politics of Experimental Translation by Lily Robert-Foley

"Situating norms is obviously a fluid and problematic, culturally specific activity. Examining what is opposed to these norms serves to accentuate this. ... Translation very often is inflected with political or ethical aims, a desire to right wrongs in the original or to intervene in the landscape of authority and canon formation." "... experimental translation is any translation practice that opposes itself to translational norms." "It poses a threat to the mainstream dogma of translation, in particular, the place of fidelity, equivalence, accuracy, transparency, smoothness, and legibility. [...] it defines itself in contrast, or in opposition, to other more frequent forms of translation. ... not solely for aesthetic reasons but for social and political reasons. ... supported by a belief that the structures of aesthetics and poetics are profoundly and radically political." "the idea that translation is also radically political, never neutral, always inflected or even generated by the ideologies that frame it and give it its pulse."

"what separates this practice from other forms of experimental writing is the question of language, of the foreignness of languages, and the act of translating in its formal sense and amidst the chaos of its cultural negotiations."

"Tim Atkins’s ‘7 Translation Types’, as part of his unpublished PhD dissertation, which identifies seven discrete practices, including constraint, editing and domestication, misreading, allusive referential, derangement of the senses, intersemiotic, and hoax and parody."

"the question of fidelity is proportional to the text and most importantly, to the context of manipulation and power dynamics in which it is situated. [...] The implication here is that to translate faithfully, an author who does not have much visibility represents a homologous subverting of norms to a translation that, for example, shoots holes in a source text with a 12-gauge shotgun and translates the resulting text. ... And this is because of each practice’s relationship to the norm."

"translation always brings out dimensions of cultural context that might be otherwise invisible, reveals what might first appear as transcendent universals as situated specificities."

"norms do not represent the majority but are always determined by power and by the elite minority who wields it."

"that the notion of sense equivalence is deeply connected to a closed, un-situated relationship between two equal languages and can even be associated with culturally blind constructions of sense and sameness."

"Authorial intention then becomes an instrument of justice: respect for the original is connected to the desire to right a transnational wrong – specifically with regard to the ‘neocolony’."

"Luise von Flotow’s four strategies for feminist translation (supplementing, prefacing and footnoting, and hijacking) (1991) are instructions for experimental translators seeking to align themselves with the feminist cause."

"Spivak has referred to her in her article on the politics of translation as ‘intimacy’ with the culture and language original, necessary for the carrying out of an honourable translation. ... a lack of intimacy with an original, specifically in the case of translating across unequal power divides, can lead to essentialisms that serve more to propagate colonial or misogynist ideologies than they do to enact justice."

"By deforming, mistranslating, or rendering unintelligible a white, male canonical text written in a hegemonic language in a power centre, many experimental translators have political aims of posing a threat to forces of oppression ... a faithful translation of a text written by a subaltern author in a non-hegemonic language or in a marginal situation seeks to do the same thing."

"For Spivak, although the original text is not transparent, the activity of translation is – and must be."

[voicesfromthepicket]

Kendall, Literature & Creative Writing PhD Student, UC Santa Cruz

I joined the Department of Literature 8 years ago, one of two applicants accepted into the second ever cohort of the Creative/Critical Concentration. I received a GSI appointment in Creative Writing my second quarter here, and have continued to contribute a significant number of courses as the Instructor of Record in my primary field. Even back in 2015, I discovered what my newer colleagues know all too well: Santa Cruz is ensnared in a housing crisis and escalating costs of living. I moved seven times in three years (including tenuous Craigslist sublets & crashing on friends’ couches during summer months) before being fortunate enough to find a tenable living situation. Relative housing security has come with its own costs, however, including structural issues with plumbing, roofing, and appliances; significant rat infestations; a revolving door of five other housemates; and safety concerns related to vandalism and trespassing.

The irony of preparing lesson plans on Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own”—in which Woolf predicates intellectual productivity on adequate material conditions—while I struggled to make a home here is not lost on me.

Over the years, I have also had to supplement my UC income with a number of side hustles ranging from retail to catering, housekeeping to intensive high school summer programs.

I share all this not because my experience is the exception, but because it is the norm for graduate students who want to exist, let alone thrive, in Santa Cruz. Consequently, many of my cohort members chose alternative paths.

At least three of my peers quit or transferred within our first year. After two years, I was the only local member of my cohort. And more than any personal financial stability, I mourned this loss of community, a vital creative force.

So I pull hard on this slack, trying to produce for my students what Santa Cruz has failed to produce for me. The space of the classroom is a community—a microcosm of society—what bell hooks would call a “contact zone.”

When I ask my creative writing students to share and respond to one another’s work, I am really asking them to be good neighbors.

When I invite my students to revel in the excess of poetic language, I am really inviting them to honor difference & multiplicity.

When I require my students to revise their submissions, I am really requiring them to re-envision, to imagine, to, as Ezra Pound has said, “make new.”

I want the role of higher public education to be practicing the conditions of change that will bolster more compassionate citizens, more critical thinkers, and more daring makers against a pretty fucked up world.

And I believe striking graduate student workers and researchers want the same. I believe this so strongly that it was worth being effectively fired for 3 quarters as a result of participating in the wildcat strike, and I believe this so strongly that I strike again, out of love. It is because I love teaching and writing at this university that I demand the UC do better. I would not be doing my job if I didn’t strike—if I did not hold the UC accountable to the same values to which I hold my students.

Don’t get me wrong—I strike because I do want the UC to straight up give me more money. I am exhausted by having to choose between repairing my car or paying my medical bills. I am angry with a system that tells me with every trip to the food pantry when I’m broke at the end of a month that I don’t matter, that Literature doesn’t matter.

But I also strike for my students, my kindred meaning-makers.

I strike for my faculty mentors, whose seminars & research have radicalized me.

I strike for my friends at other, increasingly corporatized universities.

I strike for my parents, who know nothing about poetry, but who have nonetheless instilled in me that anything worth having is worth taking risks for.

And, as grandiose at it might sound, I strike for the future of quality higher education.

I hope you will, too.

[chinesepoliticalmemearchive]

Pffff~

Retrieved:10-07-2021

[crispyjenkins]

Skysolo prompt: Han wont stop bragging about how brilliant, talent, gorgeous, etc. his boyfriend is. Luke wont stop blushing and Leia is absolutely fed up.

(thank you for the prompt!! i put this in the nebulous time between a new hope and empire strikes back, so sometime pre-hoth. i hope you like it! now with a part 2 here!)

  It doesn't get any easier when one of them gets captured, no matter how many times the Empire manages to get their claws on them. Most of the Resistance agrees that it's always worst when it's Luke, because Darth Vader has a strange obsession with him and they never know if a rescue mission means trying to sneak around the Emperor's right hand. 

  With Leia, they mostly have to worry about the body count when they finally reach her, because Force knows she doesn't go, or stay, quietly. 

  Han, though, they worry because they don't know if Jabba is somehow behind the hit, if they'll even find him alive when they track him down. Luke worries enough for the whole Resistance, of course, because Han might think he can talk his way out of anything, but Luke knows better, and knows his man is one misplaced eye roll from a Spacer's Funeral. 

  So when Han misses a second check-in on what was supposed to be a routine reconnaissance on a planet they’re considering for a Resistance base, Luke groans and sets himself up to be unable to sleep for the next few days.

  On the way to the unnamed moon Han’s signal had gone dark on, Leia tries to tell him that Han had probably just forgotten to check in, and that they’re probably worrying for nothing.

  “Chewie wouldn’t forget,” he reminds her softly and flicks a few switches to get the Falcon ready for descent.

  Leia purses her lips and says nothing else until they’re planetside.

  It takes all of ten minutes to find the Imperial outpost, the black building standing out rather dramatically against the light blue sand covering the surface of the moon, and it takes even less to slip into the base. Through the Force, Luke senses five signatures and several droids, and —thank Keplar and Ghomrassen— Han, who doesn’t feel hurt so much as confused. Leia nods in agreement with his silent question, and they head quickly deeper into the tiny outpost.

  They hear Han before they see him.

  “And he flies the Falcon better’n even Chewie, y’know?” Han’s voice drawls from the only open doorway in the rather short hallway. “Well, not better, but prettier. Kark, have you even seen how pretty his hands are?”

  There’s a long-suffering sigh from the room, and one from Leia as she aims her blaster at the ground. “Well, it’s certainly Han, alright,” she mutters, as if Luke hadn’t frozen against the wall in absolute embarrassment. 

  Because Han isn’t shy about his affection, he’ll tell just about anyone who’ll listen that he’d somehow managed to snag “The Saviour of the Known Universe”, but he usually keeps it under wraps around anyone not in the Resistance; what if someone used them against each other? Against Leia? This is the first time Luke has heard him slip-up around an Imperial.

  “Just tell me where your base is so I can kill you,” a new voice pleads, one of two Force signatures in the room that aren’t Han, and even to Luke, it sounds like an empty threat. 

  “Base... Base...” Han slurs, and oh kark, had they drugged him? 

  Luke looks wildly back at Leia, who has come to the same conclusion and swears under her breath. “Can you take them?” She jerks her head towards the open door. 

  Nodding, Luke unhooks his ‘saber from his belt and leads the way down the hall, hoping against hope that Han hasn't said anything the Empire can use.

  “‘Don’t know anything about a base,” Han says slowly, “but the last time me’n the kid went to ground– it was this desert planet out in Wild Space, and he grew up in a desert, y’know, so he knew how to keep us alive, and he made this soup-stuff out of this lizard and some sort of bush, I think it was scrag I don’t know, and kark, it tasted awful but it kept us alive, and how smart is that? And he built a fire like it was nothing, and knew how to read the dunes before a sandstorm, and have you seen how blue his eyes are? Probably not the best for bein’ in the sun all the time, but kark, are they pretty.”

  If nothing else than to save himself from the mortification, Luke ignites his ‘saber and steps into the room quickly.

  Han is strapped to a table with one end raised, and Corellia knows where his vest has gone. Two Imperial officers sit behind a desk on the other side of him, the younger one halfway to his feet at Luke’s sudden entrance, but the older officer looks up tiredly from where his chin leans into his fingers.

  He looks Luke up and down before sighing. “You must be the boyfriend, then.”

  Luke would honestly rather face Vader right now, especially when Han rolls his head towards the door and notices him. “Kid!” 

  “I’ll be taking him off your hands,” Luke tells the Imperials, the older one sighing again as the younger looks like he wants to argue, but thinks better of it. 

  “It was just a truth serum,” the younger grumbles, dropping stiffly back into his seat as Leia pushes in behind Luke and heads straight for the terminal against the wall. “But he won’t shut the kark up.”

  “Sound like Han,” Leia says with mock cheer, slicing into the terminal to release the cuffs around Han’s wrists and ankles. Han gets himself upright just fine, grinning loopily, but the moment he tries to take a step, he tips forward and Luke has to move quickly to catch him. He turns off his ‘saber so he doesn’t accidentally stab either of them: he trusts Leia and her blaster. 

  “Hey, beautiful,” Han slurs as Luke slings one of his arms around his shoulder and gets a grip on his belt.

  Despite the situation, Luke finds himself fond, and sighs even as he offers Han a small smile. “Leia’s still going to have your dick for getting captured again.”

  “Damn straight,” she agrees, snapping binders around the Imperial officers’ wrists before shooting the terminal so they can’t send out any communications. “C’mon, ‘beautiful’, we need to get Chewie.”

  They head back towards the stairs to the surface together, but Luke doesn’t follow her when she turns sharply down another hall purposefully; she’s more than capable of sensing and rescuing Chewie on her own, and with Luke supporting more than half of Han’s weight, it’s not like he’d be of any use anyway. 

  “You look good in black,” Han says apropos of nothing, head flopping against Luke’s shoulder before he seems to remember how to hold it upright. 

  “It’d be so much easier if you were gross about it,” Luke grumbles, hauling him up the stairs and thanking Old Ben’s ghost that he can supplement his strength with the Force.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Han scrunches his face cutely, an expression he would never have allowed had he been sober. 

  “I could hate you if you were gross about it,” he says, though he isn’t sure what he hopes to accomplish with Han drugged to Corellian Hells and back. “And that won’t work on Leia.”

  “Mm,” Han grunts in agreement, going slightly cross-eyed in an attempt to focus on the steps underneath his feet. “S’fine, she’s not as pretty as you.”

  Luke has to close his eyes and beg the Force for patience, because nobody calls Luke Skywalker, a farmboy from Tatooine pretty, or beautiful, or talented, or at least they hadn’t before Han Solo. He’s almost grateful Han had latched onto Leia first, because it means that by the time that ship had flown, Han already knew Luke almost as well as he knew himself. 

  “You’re the worst,” he sighs, shouldering open the last door out into the desert night, and drags Han towards the Falcon.

-

    “He’s finally asleep,” Leia says as she drops into the copilot’s seat, settling in to help get them out of atmo. “Chewie’s fine, only needed a little bacta.”

  Luke shoots her a smile, and hopes she knows how dead they’d all be without her. “Has Han begged for forgiveness yet?”

  She snorts, inputting the coordinates for their first hyperspace jump. “The Imp was right: he wouldn’t shut the fuck up, at least not until I knocked him out. If I have to hear him wax poetic about your flying skills even one more time, I’m throwing him out the airlock.”

  Wincing, Luke fiddles with a few settings to avoid looking at her. “He didn’t used to do this with you?”

  “Kark no,” she grumbles. “We were too busy arguing to get soft for each other. Luckily he didn’t spill anything more important while with the Imps, and Admiral Ackbar is sending a nearby team to finish taking down the outpost.”

  Luke nods slowly, just thankful they hadn’t had to kill anybody in their rescue attempt. Leia seems disappointed for just that reason, and that’s definitely something they’ll have to talk about someday, but for now, Luke lets himself slump into the pilot’s seat and tiredly guide them all back home. 

[linhnguyen125]

Week 1 Reading & Video Review

Reading #1

- Text 1 - Video Art / Characteristics, Origins, History, Famous Postmodernist Video Artists

- Video art is a new type of contemporary art, commonly seen as installation.

- Video technology and digital computer can manipulate film sequence.

-2 basic varieties: Single-Channel & Installations.

- Single Channel: Video is either screened, projected, shown in single series of image.

- Installations: Environment & Assemblage or Performance art of several distinct pieces.

- 1965 Sony released the Portapak, a portable recoding device.

- Using synthesizers to produce abstract work.

- Famous Video Artist: Andy Warhol, Peter Campus, Nam June Paik, Joan Jonas, Bill Viola.

- Text 2 - Busting the Tube

- Kate Horsfield described the history of video practices, from society oppression from gender biased exploitation to political oppression.

- In the 1950, Television was starting to get notice and becoming more popular, government would take control of the media and to only cast news that praised the good deed and hide the ugly truth.

- In 1965, Sony released the Portapak, a portable recording device.

- Artist saw the Portapak as a new undiscovered medium that allows the user to capture in the moment event, that has not been tampered with by the government.

- Artists use the Portapak as a way to communicate with the society outside the restriction of the mainstream news

- In the 70′s technology became more advance with better feature to show their work and thoughts. However it come with a high price to possess it. 

- Artist help with AIDS activist to prevent hysteria

- Low funds supported to artist, lead to the release of Sony Cam Recorder 8, a cheap device with powerful feature.

Reading #2

- Text - Cinephile: The Voice Over

Voice Over in Romantic Comedy Today

- Dual Focus: Seeing both of the male and female train of thoughts, opinions, and feelings towards each other. Ultimately ending up together with all knowing viewpoints

- Single Focus: Seeing only from one side, male or female. Viewer shows more emotion and feel sympathy and other emotion towards the actor. Viewer are more likely to be anxious to know the ending. Male can be seen as more romantic. 

What Does God Hear?

-  Malick used voice-over in a variety of unconventional ways for a number of different effects.

- “Linda’s voiceover expresses a number of different views and serves multiple functions, leading us “to re-evaluate what we see and hear…to become conscious of the narrating agency’s presentation of the diegetic world, and perhaps to become suspicious of it””.

- Voice Over can set up a different multitude of sound perceptions.

- The voice over let the viewer to be in the position of god.

- The voice over allows the viewer to empathize with the character through hearing and grasp the bigger picture through seeing.

Native American Filmmakers Reclaiming Voices

- “Myriad of invisible storyteller”

- Use multiple off screen voice over actor as “invisible storyteller”

- Rule of synchronous sound: the match between the human body and the human voice appear seamless and result in the representation of a homogeneous thinking subject whose exteriority is congruent with its interiority.

- Voice over (almost always) allows the male subject to be superior with power and knowledge

The Voice Over as an Integrating Tool of Word and Image

- Voice over as a tool or device attempt to integrate words with images in manner of poetic techniques.

-  Role of voice-over in alloying words and images in Asian films are more prominent, the variety of languages in which the written word takes on both aural and visual form.

- Japanese Benshi: A Japanese performer performs live narration for a silent film.

- Chinese calligraphy is a form of art.

-  The mode of poetic expression in traditional Chinese poetry.

-  “If we consider cinema as a poetic form, we might then say that words and images are juxtapositions in a metonymic flow”.

-  The voice-over acts as a generic tool, carrying nuances of Chinese form and methodology of expression (the poetic modes of fu-bi-xing)

- Visual technique of dissolve acts as another generic tool, helping the natural flow of images be coordinated by words

Voice Over Narrative Agency and Oral Culture

-  The god-like third-person cinematic narrator that recalls the autonomous narrator in some African oral performances, the griot.

-  Oral performance informs a diverse range of African films, straddling the canon of Sembène.

-  Borom Sarret achieves this transgression via its voice-over’s unstable situation within the heterogeneous soundtrack.

Reading #3

- Text -  Mary Ann Doane 

-   Photogénie: supplement an object to enhance a photographic medium.

-  Walter Benjamin: “the close-up was one of the significant entrance points to the optical unconscious, making visible what in daily life went unseen."

Reading #4

- Text - Exercise in Style 

- 99 ways of retelling the same story

- With each way he adds in a little more of details

- Different style of writing with each way being told according to the expression.

WEEK 1 VIDEO REVIEW

- Richard Mosse: The Impossible Image - 

- Showing the beauty of what under the war image.

- Unique concept to contextualise beauty.

- Soldier looking macho and expressive with their poses and actions, when being film, some stare down at the camera or having the eyes of not being wanted to film. Being really self-conscious.

-  South Africa - Mohau Modisakeng - Passage - Venice Biennale 2017 -

- A 3-pannel projection showing the history of slavery towards the people that were in South Africa

- The water represent both the flow of life and death of many who have arrived or departed in the slave trade. 

- All human beings are referred as “voyager” and all voyager has a beginning and an end. 

- Exploring the dark past of South Africa history. that the present time usually doesn't pay attention to or simply went unnoticed.

[katieskarlette]

Sorry I kind of disappeared for a couple days.  I had an extra-long shift at work that wiped me out, followed by binge-playing Sims 3.  

Which brings us to the story of Luis the Unlucky Fisherman:

When I play Sims I seem to gravitate toward either very wealthy households (yay for money cheats) or flat broke ones.  It’s a fun challenge to buy the most expensive lot my brand-new Sim can afford, so they start with basically no money. Then I send them dumpster diving every day and just use whatever mismatched odds and ends they find.  I usually buy them a sleeping bag (World Adventures expansion, I believe) instead of a bed, which comes in handy any time they’re about to pass out when away from home.  Better to suddenly pull a sleeping bag out of nowhere and snooze on the sidewalk than to faint!

Anyway, one such down-on-their-luck Sim is Luis Pescadero.  Pescador is “fisherman” in Spanish so I just twisted it a bit to make it sound more like a last name.  My Sims either have clever names or literal gibberish like Narpytooble.  (Unless they’re Jack Sparrow, Jaime Lannister, or a Warcraft character...  *ahem*)

Anyway, Luis was doing fairly well for himself after starting out with basically nothing.  He was a professional fisherman (Ambitions expansion), had found enough junk in dumpsters to have all the necessities in life (even if his dining room chairs didn’t match and he had the cheapest TV there is), had a nice little garden, found a pet rat at the junkyard, and was even able to buy a shower to supplement the bathtub that came with his house.  Sure, there was that one time he was so busy fishing and gardening he forgot to pay the bills and the repo man took his outdoor lights, but overall life wasn’t bad.  

He was lonely, however, so I set off into town to find him a mate.  He had a best friend who was already married, but otherwise his social circle was pretty small.  In the entire town, the only person of either gender he got the little hearts of attraction for was a woman who dressed like paparazzi but worked for the military.  Odd, but the heart wants what it wants, I guess.  Alas, she was also married, and Luis is not a homewrecker.  

He asked out another woman instead, despite the lack of hearts, and they went to the museum on a date.  She found him boring and awkward and told him it was the worst date ever.  Ouch.  He chatted up everyone else in the museum before leaving without any sparks flying.  Poor Luis.

He went to his best (and only) friend’s house for a party.  The friend’s wife burned the food she cooked, but everyone ate it with no complaints, then sat around and watched TV.  They even let Luis stay the night (in his sleeping bag on the floor, as they didn’t have extra beds.)

Luis’ lifetime wish was to have thirteen perfect fish in bowls.  Now, fish bowls are torture devices and should be made illegal because it’s the equivalent of keeping a puppy in a shoebox, but the Sims 3 doesn’t give many options for fishkeeping.  I did buy the Stuff Pack for apartment living that has an actual aquarium in it, which I prefer to use, but the lifetime wish specifies the fish have to be in bowls, so...well, they are just pixels.  Luis turned the spare bedroom into a fish room with reef wallpaper and ocean floor tiles, then put counters along the walls with room for thirteen fish bowls.  

He had 10 of the 13 when he camped out overnight at the lake to get some serious fishing done.  When he came home all ten of the perfect fish he had collected were dead!  Noooooooooooooo!  I guess he stayed gone longer than I realized.

So there was poor Luis with no romance in sight, and back to square one with his lifetime wish.  (Well, not quite, as his fishing skill was maxed out and it didn’t take too long to fish up more perfect specimens, but it still sucked.)

I said screw it and gave him a new next-door neighbor.  Nora was a Sim I had made back when I first got the Pets expansion.  She had a dog and a lifetime wish to adopt two of each kind of pet.  That didn’t mesh with what I wanted for Luis, so I edited her to change her into a natural cook with a wish to be a top chef.  He already had a nice garden for her to work with.  (I’ve long since lost the save file where I actually played her, but I still had the original version of her in my created Sims library.)

I immediately sent Luis over to welcome her to the neighborhood.  No little hearts of attraction popped up, but they got along really well.  They shared the Love the Outdoors trait, so they stood on the deck and waxed poetic about nature for awhile, and she didn’t react negatively to his flirting.

The next day he invited her over, made her pancakes, watched TV with her, talked and flirted for awhile, then let her use the bathroom while he cleaned up the dishes.  Figuring she was in as good a mood as she could be at that point, he went in for a First Kiss.  It ended up happening in the bathroom, which was not exactly romantic, but it went so well I figured I might as well go for it, and, well, by the time they left the bathroom they were married.  LOL gotta love Sims relationships.

She was pretty broke, too, but she brought enough money into the marriage that I was able to put on a small second floor for a master bedroom and second bathroom.

So now Luis has a slightly less crappy house, a lovely wife, and a dog.  After a few more fishing trips, he’s only missing one perfect specimen to get his lifetime wish.  He may not have had the actual “unlucky” trait in the game, but he definitely didn’t have the best start to life so I’m glad I got him into a better situation before I went to bed last night.  ;)

[shadowoflightx]

Quarantine Survey 😷👽💌🐛🦋

Hey, I was tagged by @entropydemons to do this. I usually don’t feel comfortable doing these, but I wanted anyway, because she did an effort to make it and the questions are truly interesting. <3 I am pretty boring so don’t expect much of this...

Where are you isolated? (Country or city too if you like) Bulgaria

What are you currently reading or watching? Anna Karenina, Tolstoy; Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky; Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë; Selected Poetry, Goethe; Great Expectations, Dickens, Phenomenology of the Social World, Schütz (rereading); Letters to Milena, Kafka (rereading); Essential Dialogues of Plato, Plato; Studies in Ethnomethodology, Garfinkel, many Bulgarian sociological books. 

If you can go outside, what do you like to do during this time?  My wish to be in nature is continuous, so I would like to go to: mountains, forests, rivers, among animals, anywhere in nature, really. Besides this, probably a graveyard...

Any fascinating concept you’re studying? Well, I am mostly studying about viruses since our situation happened. Besides that, I am constantly studying Absolute idealism and I am fascinated by many Hegelian ideas, mostly about our duality emerging in something complete: being - non-being; subject - obeject; real - unreal. It is essential for me to “collect” contradictions and am looking for ideas how to further transform this theory. I was also looking into Quran lately... I am not a religious person, but I am constantly searching for meaningful spiritual (not religious) ideas that I can incorporate for myself. I am trying to study as many forms of spirituality as possible.

What kinds of acts of creativity/forms of art are you currently doing? Not as many as I would like to, sadly: I am mostly doing fragmentary writing, about what I am feeling at that time - philosophical, poetical, or none of the above - just spilling my thoughts, basically; and I am doing a sociological work, but I consider it rather unpleasant. I am actually dividing things into two categories: things I do from my soul and things that I do for money. You could be creative in both fields, and in this sense, my creative ideas are also divided in two fields: about the first, I would like to write something big and collected at some point, I would like to be back into music as well; and about the second I have two ideas I would like to try that I prefer keeping a secret.

A song/s that resonates with your state of mind at the moment? Day, Katatonia; La Nuit Marche Avec Moi, Alcest.

Favourite impulsive/’bad’ coping techniques? I actually don’t have anything here that’s utterly bad: I don’t take drugs, I stopped smoking a long time ago, I am not drinking any alcohol. Maybe that I am drinking a bit too much coffee, and that I am usually not sleeping at night. Oh, and that I spend too much money on “healthy supplements” that I would say I am probably addicted to them, and most of them are probably just a scam.

Favourite healthy/’good’ coping techniques? Well I try to eat healthy (that is highly subjective, I know) and I workout a lot and move a lot during the day... I am always looking for good content for diet/fitness... Of course, any brain activity, I also consider extremely healthy. Part of my philosophy is working on this mind-body connection, thus I feel the healthiest. Also, the environment is very important: if you feel really unwell you might want to consider changing your environment. But that’s just my opinion, this is rather individual. I hate to do this as well, but I guess I would tag...: @she-initiates, @hapless-hollow, @ancientxrage, @the-sea-of-immeasurable-loss, @littlelonelymoonx, @thehalfofapast, @remnantofasoul, only if you feel like doing this, of course, it is not my intention to pressure anyone.

[tanadrin]

Reordberend

(part 21 of ?; first; previous; next)

(BTW, as of this update, Reordberend is, by my count, a little over 45k words long, putting it in the territory of a shortish novel. That also makes it one of the longest SF stories I’ve ever written. It’s not the most popular thing I’ve ever posted on Tumblr, but it has gotten a steady trickle of notes. Knowing there are people out there who enjoy your work, even if it’s fairly niche, is the best motivation there is to keep writing. Thank you for reading!)

Katherine Alice Green The Guest Room in the Village Hall The High Settlement McMurdo Dry Valleys ANTARCTICA

to Dr. Eunice Valerie Gordon Trinity College Dublin Dublin 2 IRELAND

Dear Dr. Gordon,

I am writing yet another letter I won’t be able to send, which, I realize might make me seem like kind of a crazy person. The only defense I can plead, I guess, is that the perpetual darkness of the winters here does funny things to you if you’re not used to it, and I’ve had a lot of down time lately that I need to do something productive with. I have already written to my parents, to a couple of friends, and to my cat, which leaves only you. And these letters seem to have a way of focusing my thoughts, so maybe it’s not an entirely useless exercise.

Where to begin? Well, first of all, I’m alive. That may come as a surprise. It occured to me not long after I was marooned here that perhaps nobody knows that. No one has come looking for me, and why would they? If any rescue parties did go looking for the Albatross, I doubt they’d come this far south. Not in winter. But I did in fact survive the ship going down. I don’t think anybody else did. The Dry Valleys People didn’t find anyone else on the shore, alive or dead. I try not to think about that too much, but, to be honest, it still has me kind of fucked up.

Oh, that’s the other things. I’ve made contact with the Dry Valleys People. I am, as the return address indicates, currently living with them. They have welcomed me, rather reluctantly, and I’ll be able to remain at least until the first sunrise of spring. This was not necessarily a widely popular decision, and I’ve come to learn that the political situation among the DVP is rather complicated. They have always guarded their isolation and their independence, and they’re keen to keep guarding it in the future, but there are some among them who worry how long that will really be possible. I think this is something Dr. Wright foresaw, and tried to warn them about in the letter he sent with me. But as you might expect, this is something a large part of their community doesn’t want to hear or even think about, and my presence here is definitely fraught.

As for my original mission… well, it’s an unqualified success, despite the difficulties. I’ve learned a lot. The language, to start with. You won’t believe this, but they speak Old English here. No, not thee and thou and maketh yon Old English. Not Chaucer, even. Older. From their books and what they’ve told me, their ancestors used the West Saxon dialect of Old English, as spoken about the year 1000 AD, as the basis for the language they taught their children. Dr. Wright knew this, of course. That’s how he was able to communicate them and win their trust; he showed an affinity for the same history and the same long-term perspective they cared about. If it seems weird that a bunch of people would move to Antarctica, forsake almost every modern convenience, and deliberately teach their kids a dead language that would be useless in the wider world, well, all I can say I guess is that humans have done a lot of weird shit for a lot of weird reasons throughout history. I think I am beginning to understand why the ancestors of the DVP did what they did. Some of them have tried to explain it to me, but there is a gap in our worldviews here that is difficult to bridge.

One of the DVP that I have befriended is a poet named Leofric. His sister, Leofe, taught me the language, but I’ve learned a lot more about their literature from him. It’s primarily an oral literature, although they do write some of it down. They like long, semi-narrative poetry that draws heavily on the imagery of the natural world, and I would say that it owes something to the ancient Anglo-Saxon poetry they keep in their books, except that, of course, the environment here is nothing like the environment of England one thousand years ago. But there are still some poetic traditions they have inherited from those earlier examples. For instance, their world is harsh, and unforgiving, and from a certain angle looks like a world in decline. The ancient English (so I am told) were surrounded by great Roman ruins they spoke of as being the work of metaphorical giants; here, they have the ruins of two hundred years of scientific and industrial exploration of the Antarctic coast. And their world, too, is enclosed by a vast cold sea, although this one has penguins in it at least.

Aside from the language, the founders of the DVP don’t seem to have intended to recreate medieval English society. There are no kings. There is a semi-formal system of village headship by seniority, but the social hierarchy is very flat. Marriage, inheritance, and choice of occupation all take place on fairly egalitarian terms, and their strictest taboos surround the sharing of labor and resources, not sexuality or religion. I wonder how much of their customs are the result of gradual cultural evolution, or some deliberate effort at creating a planned community. There are lots of funny Utopian experimental communities out there, but most tend to fail after a generation. In a way, this one couldn’t fail, because they had no way to leave Antarctica. They had to make it work. Is this what a real utopian project looks like after six or seven generations?

But honestly, one of the most fascinating aspects of the DVP is their material culture. As you might expect, their day-to-day existence is profoundly shaped by the environment they live in. Their houses are all heavy stone, designed to trap scarce heat, and arranged around the village halls as a windbreak against the dry katabatic gales that sweep the McMurdo Valleys clear of ice. Despite this being one of the driest locations on Earth, it’s still a better habitat for them than the glaciers of the Antarctic lowlands, or the rough, icy terrain of the mountains--here, you can actually build, and you don’t need skis and snowshoes to get around. But, as a consequence, much of their most important infrastructure is underground.

I don’t know if the ancestral DVP brought the right tools with them or if they scavenged them once here, but they have accumulated a small stockpile of laser borers, ultrasonic chisels, and crystalsteel digging equipment that they use to carve out underground chambers in the hills as meeting places and ritual sites. But they don’t do their agriculture there; that happens in networks of buried trenches just below the villages, where they grow cold-resistant mosses and lichens to supplement a meat-based diet, and what seems to be a form of genegineered fibergrass they use to weave their clothing and tapestries, and to make books.

Their art is very beautiful. Their coats, books, and tapestries--even their stone carvings--all depict elaborate lineate forms of plants and animals, inherited I suppose from ancestral memory, since none of the organisms in question are found in Antarctica. They also make images depicting the mountains, of course, and the sea, and the animals that live on the coast; even some of the coastal settlements, as seen from far off. They’re often abstracted, but these images are geographically grounded: they’re not just “generic mountains” or “generic coastline,” they’re specific mountains, specific coastlines, and they add up--if you are exposed to them every day of your life growing up--to something like a conceptual map of all of Victoria Land. It seems that if you dropped an average adult DVP individual anywhere from Oates Land to the Queen Elizabeth Range, they could probably find their way home, even during the dark months of winter.

(Oh! And the dark months! You’d think they’d be depressing, but I never imagined in my life I would see such a sight as the aurora australis, or even the clear polar stars! I can’t describe it to you. Maybe Leofric could, if I could do justice to his verse.)

They’re very communitarian, and great emphasis is placed on making sure no one goes without, but the price of that is, apparently, extremely elaborate dispute-resolution mechanisms; for a culture without courts, government, or attorneys, they are remarkably bureaucratic. Each physical object seems to have its own laws attached to it. Some may be shared by all objects of that type--for instance, if you need an electric firestarter, you always go to the house windward of yours to ask if they have one. If they don’t, you go to the next, and so on; firestarters pass from house to house, as needed, but only in one direction. Other objects may have completely unique rules. There is a knife with an elaborately carved handle meant to be used only by left-handed people. I don’t know why; nobody I asked knew, either. But that was the custom, and it was scrupulously obeyed. As a rule, the more elaborately decorated an object, the more particular the rules associated with it, but the elaboration of the object doesn’t seem to connote anything about the rules. It only marks it out as somehow special. The rules themselves are transmitted orally. All of these rules at bottom are about making sure that resources are evenly distributed--making sure nobody has to walk too far in bitterly cold weather to find a firestarter, for instance--and even the ones that don’t make sense now probably were created for good reason. For instance, the southpaw knife. Their knives for carving meat all have handles that curve in one way, to help separate flesh from bone, and I suspect that one is the result of a left-handed steelsmith getting fed up with with tools he couldn’t use very well. The blade is that of a carving-knife, though the handle attached to it is straight. The handle was probably later replaced when it broke, and somebody needed the knife for a different purpose--but the custom attached to it remained the same.

This system of sharing is, if anything, even more scrupulously observed when there’s a windfall. We went on a salvage expedition a month ago and brought back some much-needed supplies, and they spent days working out what would go where, first to each village and then, once we got back to the High Settlement, each house in each village--and even then, this was just what went to who first. Anything that’s not a finite supply, like food, will get passed from house to house. Leofric tells me that a few years ago, a whale--an entire blue whale, actually--beached itself to the north, and they had to have a weeklong assembly (on the beach, next to the whale, natch) to decide what do with every scrap of meat and bone. They still talk about the arguments that went down at the Whale Parliament sometimes (for which their word is hwaelthing, by the way. Literally it means exactly what it looks like: “whale-thing.”). Funny thing is, they also very carefully manage arguments in these discussions. That’s not normally the case--if two people have an argument and what to physically fight each other about it, that’s considered their business. But when it comes to disputes about food or metal or tools, everybody is very keen to show how Not Mad they are, even if they’re actually seething about it on the inside. And if voices get raised, people get hustled aside, and the whole matter is dropped completely until everybody has a chance to calm down. This looks like a system that was either deliberately designed to keep fights from breaking out and feelings getting permanently hurt, or one that sprung up after some nasty experiences of actual fights. I suspect the latter. It’s all very informal, but there’s a lot of social pressure that enforces it. The price for division and discord in an environment this hard to live in would be death, and I think all their social institutions are built around that reality.

I will admit, this has not been the easiest experience. I mean, there’s the almost dying part, and the part where all my cybernetics are broken, and I had a bad bout of something flulike a few weeks ago and almost died again, but I don’t actually mean the physical hardship. It is a more isolating experience than I thought it would be, being the lone outsider in such a close-knit community. Everyone knows everybody and everything, except me. They all have their own jokes and stories and long-running feuds, and they can communicate a great deal to one another with just a glance, and I’m left wondering what just happened when everybody laughs at something, or a fight breaks out. I have struggled sometimes to learn the language. I mean, I’ve had no other choice, and it’s amazing what you can learn when your survival depends on it, but even now I still sometimes find myself struggling to communicate ideas, or staying silent even when there is something I might want to say, just because I can’t find the words. It’s infuriating not being able to express yourself well, and maybe for good reason I sometimes think they all see me as this hapless idiot who almost got herself killed, who they have to put up with until the spring as a result.

Okay, I mean, I kind of am that. But I am also genuinely interested in their society, in the DVP as individuals, in their stories and their history. But I feel like the best I can hope for is being kind of a mascot. Or a well-meaning but dim-witted pet. A Labrador or something.

Not that I haven’t made friends. I would say Leofric is a friend. The salvagers--Eadwig and Andrac--they’re friends. And I seem to have won at least the grudging toleration of the ones like Aelfric who initially wanted to leave me to die. But sometimes I think I’ve made a connection, somehow bridged the unbridgeable gulf between my life experience and the world of the DVP, only to find out I’ve done no such thing. I thought Leofe was a friend; but now she’s not speaking to me, and she’s left the High Settlement for one of the other valleys. I don’t know why, and the others just shrug when I ask them.

Ugh. This is turning into whining. Now I know I’ll never send it. Sorry. It’s been a long day. It’s amazing how tired you can get when your muscles can’t rely on your augs to help them do shit.

But I need to find a way to bridge that gap. I mean really bridge it. Because I feel like I’m starting to understand something the DVP aren’t ready to hear. Their ancestors came to Antarctica at a time when the rest of the world wasn’t much interested in it. It was a wasteland, so sure, let’s treat it as an international, shared territory. Nobody goes there but scientists and the occasional tourist. And during the Collapse, not even that--Antarctica was truly empty for the first time in a hundred and fifty years when the ancestors of the DVP came to its shores. But it isn’t anymore. And it won’t ever be a real wasteland again. Every year the mining consortia move a little further down the Transantarctic Mountains. Every year a new outpost pops up on the coast, more ships come to Port Alexander, more icebreakers cut through the polar sea. Antarctica is warmer now that it’s been at any time in the past. Heck, without some global warming, I don’t think the Dry Valleys would be habitable. But that means more exposed rock, more open ground to build on, more people coming to the continent to work on the mining platforms or the offshore factories, and one day, I think, they’re going to come here.

What will the DVP do when that happens? This isn’t North Sentinel Island, which nobody ever goes to because there’s no reason. There’s gold in the hills here--the DVP make jewelry out of it--and maybe other precious metals, and you could build a geothermal station on Mount Erebus and power a small town, if you wanted to build some autofactories. The Antarctic Authority exists to promote “science and industry,” but with a big emphasis on industry. And by science they mostly mean, like, watching penguins bone and building telescopes at the South Pole. Not soft stuff like anthropology. And certainly not protecting three valleys full of cessionist oddballs whose parents had an unreasonable fondness for dead languages.

I think Dr. Wright knew this. I think maybe he tried to warn the DVP when he was here, but back then the danger was even further away. And it’s hard to get people to pay attention to danger that seems far away, even if it might be an existential threat. And when dealing with that danger would require you to completely change the only life you’d ever known… well, that’s a hard sell. The DVP don’t really like change. I can’t blame them. But one day things are going to change here, and if they’re not prepared for it, it could get really ugly, really fast. It’s one thing to shut yourself away when the world is ignoring you. It’s another when the world comes knocking.

If I think I can persuade them, I’m going to talk to the elders here, Aelfric and Wulf. Some of the DVP have had very fleeting contact with outsiders before me. I think one of them should come with me in the spring, as a sort of emissary. I’m not sure who they should talk to, yet. Maybe the Authority. Maybe somebody in Port Alexander’s local government? Or maybe we should just try to tell their story directly to the world. That might bring the DVP more attention than they’d like, but better a little good attention now than a lot of bad attention later. I would have asked Leofe--she’s smart, she’s tough, she could handle the culture shock--but that’s not an option now. Something to think about, anyway.

Well. I hope this letter finds the imaginary version of you well, my love to the imaginary family &c, hope the undergrads aren’t giving you too much trouble this year. If for some reason you do find this letter--like I freeze to death on my way to the weather station in September and they find this document on my corpse--please forgive my stubbornness, my insistence on going on this stupid trip, and any worry I’ve caused you as a result. And if I really am dead, please tell everybody I died doing something badass, like, I dunno, fighting a polar bear. I guess those are extinct and they never lived in Antarctica anyway, but something along those lines. Make it good.

All the best,

Kate

[myyearofbutterflies]

An Introduction

This all started with a BBC Documentary called ‘Tales from the Green Valley’, made back in 2005.  I found it while doing research for a historical fantasy/horror novel I wanted to write, but while I was taking notes about life on a 17th century farm I was entranced by the joy of the people participating in this archaeological experiment.  They came in every day for a year to this farm and ran it using only the materials available in the 1620s.  What struck me was that this was not portrayed as a group of people surviving against the odds or suffering, the way it might have been if this was a reality television series rather than a documentary.  Instead, they were passionate about history, about agriculture, and about experiencing those things themselves.  It was presented consistently as a joyous but difficult undertaking done by people who had dedicated their lives to this subject.  

The notion of this joy, of pursuing a passion of your life in a new way, was something I didn’t realize I needed.  I’d been stuck in a rut, likely similar to a lot of people in the world right now.  Quarantine left me at loose ends.

I am a pathology resident working to become a forensic pathologist.  I do autopsies.  I determine causes of death.  I see scene photographs.  Before I went into medicine I was an archaeologist.  I used to study how people in the past lived, and now I study how they die.  I am confronted every day with the fragility of our lives, of their potential brevity, and of lives ended before their time, surrounded by the remainders of a life of struggle or joy or a mix of both.  A lot seem to skew, though, toward sorrow and struggle.  

And yet there is beauty, even in this particular career.  The scene photographs can be striking.  A man who died after he fell from his horse is photographed next to that horse, still saddled, with the burning orange of the sun coming up behind them.  The hand of a man who overdosed is sprawled into the corner of a frame, fingers lightly clasping a syringe.  On the table in the center of the frame are the remains of drugs and drug paraphernalia. There is nothing beautiful about the situation, but the framing adds a strange and striking symmetry.  It’s poetic.

Quarantine has altered the way I live and work.  I’m currently rotating in surgical pathology, in which we dissect specimens removed during biopsies or surgeries, and we look at them under a microscope to diagnose the problem.  But all the elective surgeries are cancelled, and in the Veterans hospital where I’m currently working, that means that any given day tends to have very few specimens.  Certainly not enough for the two residents who are supposed to be working at a time.  So we switch off.  One week I’ll go in and do the job in person, and the next week I quarantine at home and study slides and materials online.  

The time of Coronavirus is an acute mixture of boredom and anxiety.   The best thing most people can do is to stay at home and away from other people.  Usual sources of happiness, such as gathering with friends or going out to eat or drink, are no longer available.  For those of us who live alone, a once a week meeting to walk with a friend might be the only source of social contact we have.

I’m lucky.  I still have a job, and every other week I have a place to go and a way to be productive.  But even so, quarantine left me feeling like I wasn’t doing enough.  Every day we get new information and new emails.  Every time I go into work, I am confronted by how few people are in the department, and how far they stay from me.  I’ve been told that I might get called in to cover clinical floors or to supplement testing personnel.  The testing I’m at least trained to do.  Taking care of the living though?  In person?  It’s been years, and I wouldn’t know where to begin.  I’ll do what’s needed, because we all need to pitch in, but I’m still worried.

Everywhere, in every hospital department, there is talk of the virus, of the latest projections for our hospital and for the world.  There is exchange of information, but just as often there is a realization of how much we don’t yet know.  There is no sense of when this might end, but there is a sense that things will not return to ‘normal’.

This is something terrifying, but watching ‘Tales from the Green Valley’, I decided that I had to turn the situation around for the sake of my own mental health.  If we won’t return to ‘normal’, then this, from this day on, is a new beginning.  And to make it a good beginning, I’ve decided that I’m going to spend a year setting aside a little time every day to think about joy, to write about it, and to chase it.  

This will be a loose collections of my thoughts and my activities in pursuit of joy.  It’s not meant as a guide for others, though if they find some inspiration here to chase their own joy, I would be delighted.  But in the end, each of our joy is unique.  We have to find what makes us happy, and we have to find ways of limiting what doesn’t make us happy while not eschewing our responsibilities. Life is a balancing act, but I’ve decided to tip mine toward joy.

[marvelicious-concessions]

Golden Hearted

Chapter 2/6

This turned out way longer than expected... over 3.5k words

Quick note, if you're unfamiliar with inhumans... her origins may be a little confusing ~

Oh and I'm swapping the order of 2 of movies, hope no one minds:))

The jet left them a few miles away, having to hide their presence so they wouldn't spook her, but Thor had been impatient the entire the flight there. As soon as the airlock opened he took on ahead, hammer in hand, ignoring The Captain's shouts. He prouded himself for having grown a lot in the past few years, having learned from his lessons and becoming more calculated with time. It all seemed to have gone out the proverbial window as the aircraft hit the ground. He was filled with a thrill he couldn't explain, something akin to the one before a battle. He blamed it on the urgency of the situation, the Tesseract was highly important and it needed to return to Asgard as soon as possible. But deep down he knew he was lying to himself. And doing quite a poor job at it, too.

The mansion came into view fast, golden statues decorating the front lawn in dissaray. It was quite huge compared to other midgardian houses, but not much compared to anything on Asgard. As he got closer, he realized the figures were not statues at all, but human men encased in gold, their faces forever twisted in horror. It was a cruel fate and he wondered if they died instantly or slowly suffocated on the inside. He was not scared of the woman and he was not one to turn down a fight, but even he had to admit what he was doing was foolish - going head first to an enemy he knew close to nothing about. Could she turn him to gold as well? Could she do it from afar or did she need to touch him? Will he join the poor souls scattered in her garden?

None of the scenarios he played in his head as he pushed open the heavy doors could have prepared him for what actually happened.

Evelyn had been expecting the Avengers to make their entrance sooner rather than later. The blue toy she acquired was even more spectacular than she could have ever dreamed, it gave her the power she had always wished her: teleportation. She was happy with her newfound set of skills. Never had she thought a silly supplement pill was going to give her powers and flying was still pretty neat. But as it was human nature to crave just a little more, it could have been better.

Though, apparently she was not entirely human. On the other hand, inhuman was rather dramatic and made her feel like she just had to be bad. Or at least just a bit on the morally gray side. She wasn't entirely sure if the Terrigen did more to her than activate her powers. In the brief explanation she was given by some S.H.I.E.L.D. agents she was left under the impression some people were not as lucky as she had been with her new abilities. She should probably stop complaining about not getting exactly what she wanted and be grateful she hadn't grown scales or went insane instead.

The truth was she had always harbored a darker side, pushed deep down by society's never-ending list of rules and proper etiquette and a desire to make her mother proud. But under those layers of pristine white shirts and ugly plated sweaters there had always been a little devil waiting to burst out. It would have been tragically comedic if she would have sprouted horns and turned red, but in a poetic justice kind of way. Thought it seemed that the Terrigen didn't care much for moral alignment.

She petted the orange tabby that brushed by her leg, one of the many strays she had gathered over the day and a half she had been living there and went to the window. She was admiring her handiwork on the front lawn, wondering if she should add one more statue on the far left corner by the hedges, when he came down from the sky. She had not been expecting the God of Thunder to show up.

After her encounter with Earth's mightiest and after she stole from them, research had been in order. She spent way more time than she cared to admit to anyone reading about each and every one of them. People everywhere were curious about New York and the heroes that saved them and news, or sometimes just rumors, blasted the internet like wildfire. She found more about some and close to nothing about others, but what everyone was clear on was that the gods of Thunder and Mischief had went back to Asgard. Yet there he was, looking all sorts of hot and just a little bit angry. The smirk on her lips was impossible to control as she made her way to the door to greet her first guest of the day. She was going to enjoy herself a little bit.

Thor pushed the door open prepared for anything. Or so he had thought.

She had been right there by the door and in the second it took him to realize, her arms were around his neck pulling him further inside the hallway, soft lips crashing onto his, sweet and warm and entirely irresistible. And so he kissed her back, their mouths like two pieces of a puzzle. Her nails scraped the back of his neck as she grabbed a hold of his hair. Her body was pressed flushed to his as she was floating off the ground, just a bit above him, and for a moment she felt like she was slipping away. On instinct, his own arms encased around her frame pressing her even tighter to him and she smiled into the kiss, biting his lover lip when she pulled away.

"And I thought you'd never come." She was just as he remembered her from that day: confident and flirty. And a little too dangerous. His grip tightened around her, but this time to make sure she wasn't going to escape. Her intoxicating smile only grew, her eyes lighting up with what he could only call, for lack of a better word, mischief. Still in his arms she let her finders trace one of the clasps on his cape and it started turning golden beneath the skin. It spread like ink on paper and stopped suddenly as her hand took hold of his chin instead and lifted his head to meet her sharp gaze. "Careful there, handsome. It would be a real shame if you'd be reduce to a garden gnome."

"I'm not here for games. We know you took the Tesseract. It belongs on Asgard." She traced a finger from his chin down his neck, her eyes soft and warm. She looked nothing like the killer she truly was. Or was she? Maybe she couldn't have killed him on the spot, but her seemingly delicate hand was still resting just above the collar of his armor.

"Maybe I should visit there next. I imagine it's quite the sight."

"The only place you'll be visiting is a prison cell." She laughed, placing her head on his shoulder like it was the most natural thing to do.

"Oh you're so sweet, thinking any prison could hold me." He wondered if he should demand she be taken to Asagard to be imprisoned. If Loki couldn't escape, Evelyn surely had no chance. But before his thought was fully formed her lips were by his ear, a shiver running down his spine as her hot breath tickled.

"Your friends are finally here." She was out of his grasp in an instant, her hands pushing his apart just enough to fly up and away. As the team barged through the door he finally took her in better, the silky black robe hanging dishevel from her body. Her arms were covered under the long selves, but her legs were bare and neckline revealing. He was glad he hadn't noticed her state of undress when she had been in his grip. She wicked at him when his gaze finally went from the ridiculously low helm of the robe to her meet her eyes.

"Miss Evans, there doesn't need to be a fight." The Captain stepped forwards, reminding Thor there were other people in the room now. What would they have thought if they came just minutes earlier and saw them in their embrace? What had he been thinking? From the air above them, Evelyn sighed and crossed her arms, the top of her breasts even more in sight.

"I imagine there will be, I'm not handing over the cube."

The arrow was shot without warning, but she still caught it with little effort. What she didn't count on was the explosive on it. She was blasted on the opposite wall, the air being momentarily knocked out of her.

"Find the Tesseract!" The redhead took off running along the hallway. Evelyn almost smirked, but she decided to play it as if she was worried. No need to play all her cards just yet. She pretended to go after the other woman, but as the Captain came to intercept her she turned, taking him by surprise mid jump and hitting him square in the face. What followed was a series of dodging various things throws at her, from shields to hammer to arrows. She learned her lesson with the last one, no more catching stuff. They were good opponents,but her focus turned to the one who claimed he was a damned God. She had seen him fight in New York; he was not on his best game. Was it perhaps because of her? She made it her mission to taunt him.

"God of Thunder or not, you're getting slow." She flew around him, his other 2 team mates stuck under a bookcase she punched them in. Her hands went around his neck from behind, her chin resting on his shoulder as he tried to grab at her. "Or maybe your heart's not really into this fight. Rather we'd be up for other things."

"Stop this nonsense!" His large hand took hold of her ankle and he pulled her off him. Or more precisely, she let go and floated in front of him, his fingers still curled around her leg. She smiled innocently, but her eyes spoke of sins, daring him to move his gaze up her leg. He heard the Cap finally help Clint from under the pile of books and splintered shelves and was met with her other led in his face as she spun in mid air. He was sent flying, releasing her ankle in the process. She was gone from sight for maybe a moment, before returning with Natasha, her hand glowing around the Widow's neck, the fabric of her suit already turning to gold.

"Guys, we have a problem." The redhead had the Tesseract in hand, or rather, just the carcass of it, one of the sides smashed open. It wasn't glowing anymore, clearly missing whatever had been inside of it. The sleeve on her right hand, the one curled around Natasha's neck, moved up her arm revealing a blue stone encased in a golden bracelet. She already had the Space Stone on her, they lost before the fight even begun.

"This is going to play in two ways. One, you leave here, never come back and we all live happily ever after. Or two, your friend here is going to be very shiny in a minute." Her eyes snapped to Clint as he was pulling on the bow's string. "I may not have time to fully turn her, but she will have one hell of a hard time ever breathing again." He lowered the bow reluctantly, his jaw clenched.

"Just let her go and we'll be out of your hair." The Captain put his shield down and held his hands up in surrender as he took another step towards the two women.

"And for a short while you maybe actually will..." She looked serious then, lips in a tight line and brows furrowed, no more games. She looked at each of them in turn, lingering just a moment longer on Thor. "You really don't have anything better to do than chase little ol' me and this silly blue rock?"

Just as she said that Stark's voice echoed Natasha's in their earpieces. "Guys, we have a problem."

They didn't get to hear the rest of it, the roof coming down on them in a blaze. Evelyn used the stone to get outside, discarding her hostage there with a push. She went back into the house, zapping in and out of places, making sure all her kittens had gotten out safely and saving one that got trapped behind a fallen door. She got back outside, feline in hand, the once pristine white fur covered in some sooth. She scowled at the small patch of dirt like it had insulted her entire blood line.

The day was turning more troublesome than she had anticipated and she was thinking of just getting out of there and leaving everything behind. It would take them a while to find her in some small town in Japan and she was pretty sure the cherry trees were in full boom that time of the year. She cared very little for the house in particular, but she did long for a place of her own. Next time, she will just buy the damn thing with gold. She turned to see the rest of the Avengers scurrying out of the flames, Thor helping the limping archer. She looked at the Asgardian, his long hair clinging to his face from the heat inside, his jaw so sharp and well defined it could probably cut diamonds. She remembered the feeling of being crushed in those strong arms, his lips on hers hungry for more. There was definitely some chemistry there and it was a god dammed shame he wasn't up for some more fun, even it turned out to be jut that - some harmless fun. Their eyes met across the lawn of golden statues and after a moment he frowned. She blinked out of sight the next second, completely missing the robot that blew her mansion up.

She was halfway across the world, underneath a cherry tree with a bottle of sake, Gandalf - the white kitten - snoozing on her lap, when news of Ultron reached her. She hadn't stopped to analyze why or who fired at her house that day and it turned out to bite her in the ass. The Avengers were an annoyance, sure, but that murderous robot was something else entirely. She scrolled on the phone, her mind already half made to interfere, when she stumbled on a video of the AI.

"I was designed to save the world. People would look to the sky and see... hope. I think I'll take that first. There's only one path to peace: their extinction."

Well she couldn't have that, could she? She looked up the robot a little more, until she found something big was going down in Sokovia. That had to be good enough. She chugged the rest of her sake and let out a long sight. For being called Earth's mightiest heroes, the Avengers were sure attracting a lot of trouble. She stood up, placing Gandalf on the blanket in her stead and straightening her kimono before using the stone still on her bracelet to get to where all the action was at.

She hadn't expected to find Sokovia in the air, slowly ascending. She cocked her head at the sight, arms crossed and lips pursed. She should have probably researched more, but she doubted she'd understand the science behind it or the reasoning of an AI gone rogue. She flew closer to the edges of the city, still cautious of the whole thing when she heard screaming from her left. There was the good ol' Captain America trying hard to keep two cars from falling over the crumbling edge. She was already flying towards them when the cars slipped forward and a second later she was beneath one of the cars, stopping it midair. The other one flew past her, but there was no one in it anymore. As she flew up towards the edge, she saw the Captain and Thor looking strangely at her, car held overhead. She placed it on the ground with a thud, the family inside scurrying away to safety.

"What are you doing here?" The God of Thunder sounder almost panicked. She eyed him curiously, eyebrow raised. He had been missing from a few of the heroes' fights with the AI, but she hadn't taken it as anything. Those reports were mostly speculations and hearsay anyway, but there was something strange about him, something different.

"Well, that's a nice way to thank me. I should just go, let you guys handle... this." Annoyance was seeping through her every word as she gestured towards the edge of the road, large chunks still falling away.  He glared at her and turned to walk away.

"Go ahead, we don't need you."

"Actually we could really use all the help we could get." The Captain chimed in, looking her up and down before nodding once more. "Don't think this gets you off the hook for the Tsseract though."

"One crisis at a time, right?" She winked at them and darted towards the sky where a flock of robots were coming in, smashing them to pieces with her bare fists. They looked like the Ultron fellow, but not quite and she figured if she killed the brain the minions would follow. Wasn't quite sure what the floating country would do in that scenario... hopefully descend back in it's place painfully slow. She was scouring the place, punching robots and occasionally helping people to safety when the blonde god turned up again, his hammer getting a robot that had snuck behind her and the two kids she was leading away from the street and into the carrier. She turned towards him, the kids running toward who she assumed were their parents.

"I could have handled it."

"Sure you did."

They smacked a bunch more of the metal pests, their supply seemingly endless. He got quite a few at a time with his hammer and she observed his tactics and tried mimicking a few. She was strong, but had little experience in actual fighting. So as he grabbed a mini-Ultron and swung him at his brethren she copied the move, a little squeal of excitement leaving her lips. She knew how to punch stuff, that wasn't hard, but it was actually kind of fun to smash things in style. They were back to back again, robots swarming around and Evelyn got that deja vu feeling.

"This reminds me of New York." She offered the god a cheerful smile, but his scowl seemed to only deepen. Had she lain insult on him and his family somehow? Was his ego that bruised over not retrieving the damn glowing stone from her? "So, would you fill me in on what's happening around here? I seemed to have misplaced my earpiece." She was met with more silence from the man, albeit they were busy tearing robots apart. Still, it bothered her she had no idea if there was a plan in sight or not. They were evacuating the civilians, so things were not looking good. They were done with the latest batch of Ultron's spawns and she flew away from him. No need to ponder on what was going in that pretty head of his, not her problem.

She made her way to across Sokovia, smashing and punching robots here and there, but still no sight of Ultron. She was about to search for any other Avenger besides Thor to get some information, when she stumbled upon the archer, Hawkeye, with a kid in his arms. A ship came in sight, guns drawn, before she could even open her mouth to ask any question. Now, she had very little experience with any of the mess she found herself in, crazy AI and floating chunks of earth, but that aircraft screamed trouble. It started firing but she was on it, picking up a long metal pole, probably from a street light, and throwing it like a javelin. It hit the guns straight on, but not before she got hit in the shoulder.

The next couple of minutes were a blur. For all her strength, she was a bit of a baby when actual pain hit her. Or perhaps she had gotten too used to not feeling it. She had gotten hurt in New York as well and at her mansion a few days before, but those were scratches and bumps compared to whatever was happening to her then. Blood was soaking her kimono, so it was probably not pretty. She didn't quite dare look.

What she remembered came in flashes. A white haired man appearing out of nowhere and stumbling before them, right leg bloody. Hawkeye helping her and the man to the carrier, the three collapsing on the floor. She remembered hearing thunder like never before, right before Sokovia was blown to bits. And she remembered Thor coming on the carrier, all wet. Even with all the blood loss she would have still teased him a little, if not for the surprise and concern in his steel blue eyes when they landed on her. Her breath caught in her throat at the sight, her patchy vision focusing only on him.

And then he took a step towards her and she blinked away.

[artbookdap]

'Marcel Broodthaers: Industrial Poems,' the first complete catalog of Broodthaers’ rebus-like poetical plaques, is NEW from @hatjecantzverlag !! ⁠ ⁠ Industrially fabricated as vacuum-formed plastic plaques, the 'Industrial Poems 'of Marcel Broodthaers (1924–76) express the enduring fruitfulness of poetry as a paradigm in the poet-turned-artist’s witty, language-oriented brand of conceptualism. These works draw on the popular visual language of commercial signage, incorporating symbols, images, letters, words and punctuation that often refer to earlier poems and artworks. As mass-manufactured signs produced in a popular material such as plastic, the Industrial Poems partake of a visual and material clarity that belies the strongly enigmatic character of their associative semantic functioning.⁠ ⁠ This 400-page volume compiles for the first time a comprehensive inventory of all the Industrial Poems. These are supplemented by a selection of Broodthaers’ own writings and his “open letters,” along with essays that situate the Industrial Poems in relation to each other and the artist’s oeuvre generally.⁠ ⁠ Pictured here:⁠ L’oie, l’aile, 1970⁠ Livre tableau ou Pipes et formes académiques, 1970⁠ Modèle: la pipe, 1968-69⁠ L’Alphabet, 1969⁠ Académie I, 1968⁠ ⁠ Read more via linkinbio.⁠ ⁠ #marcelbroodthaers #broodthaers #broodthaersindustrialpoems #industrialpoems https://www.instagram.com/artbook/p/CYedaKKFn5y/?utm_medium=tumblr

[chinesepoliticalmemearchive]

Nothing,

I completely feel nothing

Retrieved: 07-07-2021

[fragmentsofchaldea]

WWA Epilogue Insight

Crafting this ending was a little difficult because it’s supposed to tie into the beginning of the next supplement. At the same time, I still wanted to be uplifting, but it wasn’t going to resemble the game’s ending. Not yet. That beautiful moment was moved to later where it will actually have profound impact. Right now, they just needed a quick band aid over the lingering anxiety.

It needed to feel conclusive though, so I do hope it turned out that way. I wanted it to feel like a memoir of what was while also serving as a good transition piece. I feel it wasn’t as ‘poetic’ as RFS’s ending, but it did what it needs to in such a bittersweet spot.

Goetia was overall interesting and difficult to work with through this whole ordeal. I understood its intricacies throughout the canon plot, but the circumstances for this one are different. At the end, I did like the entire take on the beast finally understanding what having a finite life felt like. Even if his human form was ‘robbed’ of a final big fight against Gudao, I definitely wanted to draw a parallel with his last situation. There was no final conversation, but he didn’t need one.

Usually I have a very curious tie in with the story’s title to end the story, but it was only briefly mentioned because the true reference happened in Roman’s monologue. I just left a small little reminder in Da Vinci’s thoughts to refer back to it. I’ll make a separate post about it for the story’s “theme song” post.

And, of course, some final tear-jerking and feels tugging for the ending. Da Vinci tries to keep spirits riding off the wave of triumph, but even she feels the lingering anguish. I wanted the readers to feel the mix of emotions, and definitely keep them in mind for the next supplement.

Thanks for reading the third supplement!

Final, unofficial soundtrack. Works best for Scenes IX and X, but for X especially.