#and he seems conflicted if its to propose or proposition

[lover-of-mine]

There are not a lot of scenes i REALLY wanna see the script off, but i would pay so much i don't even have for someone to tell me what Ryan was told to portray during the poker date. What was the goal??

[darkshelbyfiction]

Personal Whore (Kink Series)

Pairing: Tommy Shelby x Female Reader

Summary: This Series will explore different fetishes including an innocence kink, somnophilia, anal play, watersports, bdsm, marking, edging, and anything else you would like me to include!

In this series, you are Thomas Shelby's maid. You are innocent and shy. This is your first job. Thomas Shelby takes an interest in you and pays you to become his personal whore. He makes you have sex with him in exchange of money, every day, using perverse techniques to satisfy his needs.

PART ONE: ORAL SKILLS

"You have been working for me for two weeks now Love and you recently turned 18, right?" Thomas questioned and you nodded timidly, nervous about what might come next.

"I... yes sir," you whispered softly, averting your gaze slightly out of shyness. The room seemed impossibly large and dimly lit, accented only by the flickering candlelight reflecting off the pristine white sheets upon the bed.

"Very well, that means that you are of legal age for my proposition." His voice dripped honeyed promises.

"Now let me ask you, Love... Do you know what some of the other maids here do for me in order to earn some more money?" your employer asked quietly, watching you closely.

"They perform various tasks, sir," you answered hesitantly, trying not to imagine where he could be going with this conversation.

"That's right," he said before looking at you with even more intensity in his gaze. "And do you know what these tasks entail?"

He asked, leaning closer, his proximity sending waves of anxiety through your body.

"Well," you began cautiously, choosing your words carefully. "Sarah said that, occasionally, she would touch you down there," you blushed, feeling mortified at having revealed such intimate information, albeit indirectly. You noticed a flash of excitement in his eyes when mentioning sensitive areas—a sign that perhaps this wasn't all just talk?

Thomas nodded thoughtfully, his expression unreadable as he processed your response. Then he rose gracefully from his seat, moving deliberately toward you like a predator closing in on its prey. It felt odd being so close to someone with whom you had worked for almost two months without any physical contact beyond casual banter.

"She occasionally touches me, yes," replied Thomas, maintaining eye contact. "But it isn't always required – merely desired. So I wonder, my dear, how far would you go for some extra compensation?" He smirked subtly, inviting himself deeper into the territory where you were reluctant to venture.

The heat of the moment caused you to feel flustered and uncertain as you attempted to gauge the severity of Thomas' intentions. Your heart raced faster than ever before, threatening to escape your chest as sweat glistened lightly along your brow.

"You want me to touch your pe..., uhm, you know...down there..." your voice trailed off, unable to find the courage to say the word 'penis'. Thomas smiled reassuringly, appreciating your discomfort as he realized you hadn't quite grasped the extent of his proposal.

"Yes, sweetheart. I want you to touch my cock and, maybe, one day, you will even take it in to your mouth or let me put it into your pussy, eh," Thomas stated confidently while running his hand across your cheek, causing involuntary shivers to run up your spine.

Your face colored deeply with embarrassment, though it also held an undeniable hint of curiosity. While your desire to please and satisfy your newfound benefactor burned intensely, something inside you screamed that taking things further than simple caresses went too far - yet another layer of turmoil added to the complex relationship unfolding between you both.

Having sensed your inner conflict, Thomas chose to approach the subject tactically.

Slowly, tenderly brushing aside a lock of your hair, he asked: "How does that make you feel, sweetheart?" His tone betrayed no judgement or impatience, instead offering understanding and acceptance. "Do you think you can handle that sort of responsibility?"

You trembled underneath his gentle ministrations, torn between fear and arousal, struggling to process your rapidly evolving feelings towards your once strictly professional superior.

"I never even seen a man's private parts before, sir. I was saving myself for marriage, but some extra cash would sound nice too," Your statement came out as a quiet plea for guidance, a confession of ignorance that exposed your vulnerability.

"Well, for what it's worth, no one would ever find out, Love. Not even your future husband," Thomas said and there was a sinister edge to his tone.

"I know that you are a good catholic girl, but sometimes it is worth doing bad things for the right incentive, wouldn't you agree?" Thomas said before he decided to lay bare his plans for you. "So, listen very carefully. If you agree to carry out these tasks, then I promise you that I will give you double your usual wages for the duration of your employment. In addition, I will give you £500 for your virginity and loyalty. How does that strike you?"

Stunned and bewildered, you stared at him in disbelief. Double your pay for doing things you didn't understand fully and parting ways with your cherished purity – your whole world suddenly seemed to spin wildly out of control. Yet despite the magnitude of the choices facing you, one thing remained clear: continuing as your present self would lead to financial ruin.

With tears swelling in your eyes, you found yourself considering Thomas' offer, wondering whether surrendering everything you believed in truly amounted to nothing less than selling your soul. Still, it was difficult to resist the lure of instant prosperity, particularly given the dire straits you faced otherwise. As you struggled internally, Thomas watched patiently, waiting for you to decide. Finally, with a heavy heart, you made your decision.

Nodding solemnly, you declared, "Alright, Mr. Shelby, I agree, but I need you to triple my wages and add another £500 for my virtue."

With an approving smile curling at the corner of his lips, Thomas conceded, "Agreed. I will triple your wages and pay you a lump sum of £1,000 for your precious purity," your employer said before unbuckling his belt without bothering to remove the rest of his clothes.

"Understandably, you may need time to become comfortable enough to execute these duties adequately, so I shall start you off slowly," Thomas explained calmly before unzipping his pants and thereby exposing his erect member. Despite your reservations, you couldn't help but notice the size and firmness of his cock as he pushed down his pants halfway. 

"It doesn't look so scary, does it, Love?" he murmured, his voice holding an undercurrent of amusement, attempting to ease your apprehension as he reached for your hand, guiding it tentatively towards his penis. With an anxious breath, you followed his instruction, marveling at the weightiness of his organ, still unsure of exactly what he expected from you.

As your fingers traced delicate patterns over his length, you discovered small nubs on the underside, eliciting a deep groan from him. Uncertain about your progress thus far, you glanced upwards briefly to catch sight of his reaction, finding satisfaction etched upon his features.

"See, Love, we're making headway already," Thomas commented gently, encouraging you with warmth.

Despite your lingering apprehensions, the confidence exuded by your master proved infectious, allowing you to relax somewhat and follow the path laid out before you.

Inch by inch, your exploration continued until you encountered the tiny knobbiness located near the base of his organ. Upon stimulating it, Thomas' moans grew louder, confirming your suspicion that you had struck gold.

Encouraged by this success, you bravely moved onto his sacrum, discovering that a soft ticklish patch accompanied it. Smiling sheepishly, you proceeded to explore the area thoroughly. After satisfying yourself with a leisurely tour, you finally turned your attention back to the main event – his impressively throbbing phallus.

Feeling emboldened, you took hold of the tip, applying a slight pressure that resulted in a low grumble emitting from Thomas.

Taking hold of your hand again, he positioned it correctly, demonstrating proper technique. Encouraged by his expertise, you mirrored his movements and gradually increased the strength of your strokes, matching his fervent pace.

"That's it, love! Keep going!" he urged, his hands now wrapped tightly around yours before making a somewhat unusual request.

"How do you feel about taking my cock into your mouth, Love?" Thomas whispered huskily, watching your every move closely.

"You want me to do what?" you asked, still feeling uneasy about performing such acts. The mere idea sent waves of nervousness coursing through your body, prompting your limbs to quiver.

"I want you to practice sucking my cock, Love," Thomas insisted matter-of-factly, a commanding authority evident in his tone.

Swallowing hard, you hesitated for a brief moment before asking timidly, "Like a lollipop?" 

"No, not like a lollipop, Love," Thomas replied, his words filled with amused indulgence. "Just wrap your lips around the head first and start by licking off my pre-cum. Trust me, it won't be as terrible as you might imagine."

His assurance did little to alleviate your anxiety, but nonetheless, you nodded obediently.

Gingerly, you took his thick shaft into your small hands, immediately experiencing a strange mixture of revulsion and fascination.

Carefully lowering your head, you pressed your tongue to the engorged head, savoring the salty taste of his precum.

"There you go, sweetheart. Lick around the ridge just above the hole," Thomas instructed you kindly, clearly aware of how intimidated you were feeling.

"That's a good girl," he told you and, just as you obeyed his directive, your fingers simultaneously worked to stroke the entire length of his impressive manhood.

"Now take me in your mouth, sweetheart. As far as you can," Thomas commanded authoritatively, his voice full of raw demand as, with trembling fingers, you complied, opening wide to accommodate his girth.

"Beautiful," Thomas breathed, appreciating your attempt before holding onto your hair and pulling slightly to guide your mouth deeper down on his erection.

As your lips grazed the sensitive skin beneath his glans, a wave of dizziness assaulted you, leaving you gasping as you tried to regulate your breathing.

"There you have it, sweetheart, take it all," Thomas directed firmly, pressing your mouth harder against him. Gulping reflexively, you felt the foreign object filling your mouth, causing your cheeks to bulge comically.

"I will fuck your throat now," Thomas muttered roughly, thrusting himself further into your open mouth, causing you to gag involuntarily. Your eyes watered with the unexpected intensity of sensation. But even amidst the choking panic, something inside you recognized an undeniable thrill.

Thomas held you firmly in place, ensuring you maintained eye contact throughout the experience. As your struggle to maintain control intensified, so did his aggressiveness.

"Good girl," he growled approvingly when you managed to adapt quickly, albeit tears streaming down your face and saliva dripping from your chin.

His cock now nestled comfortably within your tender throat, Thomas began moving faster, building momentum. His touch became more forceful as you submitted to his demands blindly, consumed by newfound passion.

"Do you know what happens to a man when he orgasms, Love?" Thomas asked teasingly, raising an eyebrow playfully as he continued to use your mouth and throat for your pleasure. 

Confusion crossed your face, unable to discern the meaning behind his inquiry as you shook your head.

"Well, when I cum, seed will spill out from my cock right into your eager mouth," Thomas clarified casually while fondling your wet cheek. "Are you ready for that?"

Your brow furrowed, processing the implications of his statement. It dawned on you that your role as his sexual submissive required complete submission, including receiving the ultimate release from your employer.

You nodded silently, acknowledging your willingness to accept whatever fate awaited you. And as Thomas' hips started bucking violently, indicating his imminent climax, you steeled yourself, preparing for the inevitable outcome.

"Good girl. I want you to swallow my load completely," Thomas ordered, his voice rough with anticipation as he thrusted in and out of your throat. Without question, you opened wider, bracing yourself for the sudden explosion. As Thomas' hips jerked forward, releasing a torrent of hot semen directly into your gaping mouth, you could barely contain your shock. The searing liquid burned your throat, stinging fiercely, but you endured, determined to satisfy your master. Consequently, Thomas let loose a powerful roar, his muscles tensing powerfully, as his body convulsed in ecstasy.

Pulling away from your tender mouth after the volley was spent, he looked deeply into your eyes, searching for any signs of resistance or regret. Finding none, a satisfied smirk formed across his lips. "Very good indeed, Love. Now open your mouth and show me your tongue once again," commanded Thomas, placing one palm on either side of your face. Submissively, you parted your lips to expose your reddened tongue, waiting patiently for further orders. "Keep practicing, because soon you'll be giving me blowjobs regularly until, in two weeks or so, I will fuck this virgin pussy of yours," he informed you confidently, running his finger along your neck, arousal evident in his gaze.

Understanding implicitly that your services would extend beyond the confines of today's encounter, you silently accepted your fate without protest.

After all, despite the humiliation and unfamiliar experiences you underwent, there remained an inexplicable allure. Something about submitting entirely to the desires of another piqued an unidentifiable desire deep within you, stirring feelings that seemed almost forbidden. In time, perhaps these indistinct yearnings could evolve into something concrete and tangible. For now, however, you must focus solely on perfecting your skills as Thomas' personal pleasure provider and you soon learned that his requests are more than just a little unusual. 

[decipheringsidelines]

Puck Baby is Connor Bedard

Identity Breakdown

The colors orange, green, black, & Red are all colors on the Chicago Blackhawks uniform & logo

Connor is one of the youngest players in the league and puck baby is a double pun on the term ‘Puck Bunny’

In the background of the photo, there’s an image of the bean (cloud gate) which is also located in Chicago

Article Breakdown

““Are You There God? It’s me, Puck Baby!”” - This a reference to the book “are you there God? It’s me, Margaret”. I’ve never read it, but its Wikipedia page says it’s about internal conflicts related to religion. I don’t think Connor is having religious conflict, but I think the religious references are related to the New Utah hockey team.

“Puck Baby just wants to play hockey, but he was recently pitched a deal involving a bizarre roster proposition that defies all standard policies—something eerily reminiscent of the Casino Chivalry team’s antics.” - the Casion Chivalry is a reference to the Vegas knights. We all know there was some BS when their team started regarding cap space and contracts.

“As Puck Baby prays for a smooth skating season, we’ll be here to keep you updated on whether he’ll remain the league’s golden child or rebel against the unholy proposals.” - Connor is seen as the leagues golden child due to his generational talent. The “unholy” proposals are related to the commissioner himself.

Overall, it seems like Bedard was allegedly approached with a sketchy deal that went against league policies that would help them promote Utahs team but him and his family are heavily against it.

[littlesniggy]

I wouldn't want anyone else take me like this

Anon: Hi ^^ I was wondering if you're ok writing a scenario about pegging? 👉👈 If you do can I ask for it with Bartolomeo x active fem reader please? The reader had always been submissive in sex with Bart, but he finally discover her dominant part when she ask to peg him for the first time

Thank you so much in advance <3

Hey Anon! Thank you for requesting! First, I didn't know if I wanted to write about this since I'm not really into pegging but it was actually kind of fun! I've never done it before so I hope this is kinda accurate? Idk but if not I hope you're not too mad 😂 Please enjoy!

Warning: nsfw, 18+, pegging

Pairing: Bartolomeo x female reader

Word count: 2.7k

You were in the middle of a heated make-out session, Bartolomeo on top of you, his hands roaming your exposed upper body, leaving a hot and prickling feeling. His sharp teeth were scratching over your delicate neck, biting down from time to time but not drawing blood. You were panting at his ministration and your hands scratched over his exposed back, feeling some tiny scars on his skin.

The green-haired man pressed his still clothes crotch against yours and you could feel the obvious erection in his pants. You moaned quietly, pressing your body closer against his. Bartolomeo licked along your neck, down your collar bone and eventually capturing your nipple between his teeth and teasing it.

Your hands moved from his back to his chest, stroking down his hard abs and to the waistband of his pants. Swiftly, you opened them and pulled them down a little awkwardly but managing eventually. His hard member sprung free and he groaned in relief, moving his dick against your clothed thigh, leaving a small, wet trail of pre-cum. His hands made their way down your body as well, getting rid of the rest of your clothes.

His hand wandered between your legs, feeling your wet folds and rubbing against them. You moaned, louder this time, and grabbed his stiff member, moving your hand up and down. His finger entered your hot core, his mouth moving to your other nipple. You panted underneath him, enjoying the way he made you feel but today something didn’t feel right. You couldn’t pin point it directly but you had an idea.

Biting your lip, your other hand moved to his back and down to his butt, massaging it gently. Bartolomeo let go of your nipple and looked up at you, a grin on his face. “That’s new. You never grab my ass dabe.” He chuckled but not minding at all. You started massaging the trained ass harder, pressing his hips closer against you in the process.

“Nee, Bart. I’ve been thinking…” you started, second hand still massaging his dick, feeling the light pulsing underneath your touch. Bartolomeo added a second finger but kept looking at you, indicating he was listening. “Can we try something…new?” you suggested, voice a little insecure. After all, you didn’t know how he’d react to your proposition.

“Sure. What were you thinking about?” his voice sounded a little strained due to your touch on his dick; he added a third finger and spread you open, preparing you for his dick. At least, this was his intention. You moaned in response, moving against his touch while your hand on his ass slowly wandered towards a certain spot on his body no one has touched before.

It didn’t dawn on him immediately but when your finger gently and ever so lightly over his anus he understood. He stopped his movements inside of you, his body tensing up a little. “I-if you don’t like it, that’s fine! I just…had this fantasy….” Your voice got more and more quiet and your face felt hot in embarrassment.

Bartolomeo didn’t seem to know what to say, being quiet for a moment. You felt more and more insecure, already wanting to backpaddle and tell him it was a joke when he raised his voice. “I guess…we can try something new….what were you thinking about….exactly?” He sat up, looking down at you, his fingers slowly retreating from your wet core.

“Well….how about you just…let me do and if you don’t like something you tell me and I….I’ll stop. How does that sound?” you proposed, biting your bottom lip again. You could see the conflict within him but to your surprise he agreed, his grin finding its way back on his lips. “I’m intrigued dabe.” Relief flooded your body and you grinned at the man above you.

“Then let’s switch positions.” You said, getting up and letting him lay down on his back instead. You climbed on top of him, your ass hovering above his face. Your mouth was close to his dick but before you wrapped your lips around him you looked back at him with a small smile. “Just remember….if you don’t like it, tell me!”

Instead of a response a deep moan escaped his mouth when you put your lips around his head, sucking on the slick dick and taking him in deep pretty soon. Bartolomeo pulled your hips down as well, starting to lick and suck on your core, drinking your juice and making you feel incredible. His sharp teeth scratched against your lips from time to time, making you moan in response around his dick.

Your head moved up and down in tandem to the movements of his tongue fucking you in earnest and your hands moved to his balls, fondling them gently. You let your saliva glide down his dick, over his balls and it disappeared between his cheeks, coating the tiny hole. For a moment, you let his dick pop out of your mouth. “Spread your legs a little. “ you panted and he obliged, giving you better access to his most private part.

You put your mouth around his dick again, sucking and licking his dick like you were eating a popsicle. One of your hands moved further south and your finger brushed over his anus gently, not wanting to scare him immediately. You felt his hips jerk away a little from this touch but he let you continue when you rubbed over the sensitive muscle, pressing against it with some pressure but not entering him yet.

You felt how he let go of your cunt, his hot breath blowing against your wet core. “Hey, Y/n. Use lube, okay? It’ll go smoother dabe.” At this moment you felt dumb. Of course this would make things a lot easier for him. You just weren’t as experienced as him when it came to preparation; after all, he was always the one remining to use lube if needed. Especially the first times you two had intercourse.

“I’m sorry. Of course! Can you throw it to me?” you asked. Bartolomeo grinned, his hand opening the drawer next to the bed, searching around for a moment before he tossed you the bottle. But against his expectations, you didn’t coat your fingers with the lube yet; instead, you got off of him and with a grin told him to turn around and put his ass up. “Let’s focus on you today, shall we?” you giggled when he obliged, presenting you his backside.

“I don’t know if I’m gonna like what you’re about to do but you’re making me so hot right now when you tell me what to do dabe!” he admitted, looking at you over his shoulder. You didn’t reply anything to his words but you couldn’t deny that this was getting more and more exciting by the minute.

You kneeled behind him, your face getting close to his ass and your one hand grabbing between his legs, stroking his dick. The moan rumbled through his body but that was nothing compared to the moan he let out when your tongue licked over his anus. The sound gave you chills of pleasure and it encouraged you to keep going. Your hand and your tongue moved in tandem, your other hand placed on his butt cheek, massaging it and spreading it to the side to get better access. Your saliva coated his entrance and when you were sure he was ready your tongue pushed past the muscle and you felt his dick twitch in your hand.

“Damn, Y/n!” he panted, his face flushed and his eyes closed. He grabbed the sheets underneath him to have something to hold on to. Your tongue pushed in and out of his hole, twirling it inside of him, making him moan and pant in response. You felt your pussy drip as well and you wanted to get to the “fun” part soon. But you knew you had to prepare him properly.

Your grip on his dick tightened a little and after taking a quick look you saw his pre-cum drip down onto the sheets beneath him in a long string. I can go further. You thought and grabbed the lube, letting it drip down between his cheeks and also coating your fingers. The cold liquid had him shudder for a moment and he was looking at you from over his shoulder again.

“Put your face down and don’t look at me. Just enjoy the feeling.” You said, a grin on your lips. You were so excited and didn’t want to wait. “Fuck.” He hissed but laid his upper body down, burying his face in the pillow. You grabbed his dick again after putting the lube away and started coating his balls and dick with the lube as well, the lube turning warm pretty quickly and making slick sounds.

Bartolomeo moaned into the pillow and he moved his hips to your stroking. Your other hand spread the lube across his entrance and you finally pushed your pinky inside of him. You had to moan when he tightened around it. Now you could somewhat imagine how he was always feeling when he prepared you.

You moved your finger slowly inside of him, his chest heaving, his body trying to either get used to the feeling or get rid of the intrusive feeling. But with you continuously stroking his dick he relaxed around your finger and your could eventually add a second one. This time, a muffled moan could be heard. With a concentrated face you moved your fingers in and out, spreading them lightly before adding a third finger. Your curled them up inside of him and apparently hitting his prostate. His body rocked back against your finger, a loud moan echoing through the room, the pillow not doing much to muffle him.

You repeated the motion and watched in amazement how more and more pre-cum dripped down. It made your insides tingle in relief and excitement. You were scared he might not like it. Sure, you would’ve stopped. It wasn’t like sex with him was bad but this fantasy had popped up more and more often in the last couple of weeks and you wanted to try it so badly. During this time you also bought a little something the last time you stopped at a port.

When you were 100% sure that he was ready, you withdrew your fingers and let go of his dick. Panting, he looked at you once again, his face flushed and his eyes glazed. “This feels so good, Y/n. Why did you stop dabe?” he asked. “Just be patient.” You responded and got off the bed for a moment, opening a drawer and pulling out a strap-on dildo. His eyes widened and he looked a little concerned. “Why….? When did you….? What….?” He couldn’t form a coherent sentence which had you giggle. “Don’t worry. If it hurts I will stop immediately.” You reassured him when you got back on the bed. “You wanna take a look at it first?” you asked, smiling at him sympathetically.

You handed him the strap-on and let him examine the piece. His main attention was on the part you’d be shoving up his ass and it had him a little worried. But on the other hand, he trusted you completely and he was sure that you would make it as pleasurable as possible for him. So he eventually handed it back to you with a grin.

“I trust you dabe!” he said. You blushed at his words and nodded. He watched you insert the dildo into your core slowly after coating it with lube. The wet noise had his dick twitch, his eyes glued to the silicone dildo disappearing inside your pussy. You moaned at the feeling and closed the piece around your hips. Now, only the black dildo you were about to sink into him was visible and he had to admit that it looked hot and was making him feel excited.

After putting a huge amount of lube on the dildo, you placed your hands on his ass, spreading his cheeks and positioning the dildo at his entrance.

“Ready?” you asked, looking at him from behind him. Bartolomeo took a deep breath in, then nodded and pressed his face into the pillow again. You took a breath as well before slowly pushing the tip inside of him. You had to moan at the feeling of the dildo inside of you but Bartolomeo didn’t seem to feel too good right now.

His whole body was tense and the knuckles of his fingers turned white while he grabbed the sheets. “Damn!” he panted, trying to relax. It took you a while to think about touching his dick to make him feel better. As soon as you had the thought your hand was already wrapped around his dick, jerking him off with fast and hard strokes, trying to make it more pleasurable for him.

Inch by inch, you pushed further inside of him, seeing how he got more and more used to the strange feeling. When you were buried inside of him completely, your hand still vigorously stroking his dick, you moaned and closed your eyes. It felt incredible. But you couldn’t go all out just yet, Bartolomeo still not too sure how he should feel about this.

“You okay?” you panted, rubbing your thumb over his mushroom head. His dick twitched at this touch, having some sort of its own mind. “Yes…” he pressed out. His body slowly relaxed and when he moved his ass against the dildo you took the invitation.

Your first thrusts were slow and careful but the more you moved the more he got used to it and the faster you got. His moans grew louder and louder, just like your own and soon he was moving against you, the strap-on penetrating both of you, pleasuring your insides just the right way. The dildo inside of you was pushing against your g-spot with each thrust and the one inside Bartolomeo’s ass hit his prostate more often than not.

“Go faster dabe!” he demanded. Sweat was running down your bodied at the exertion, your hand still jerking him off. You leaned over his body, pressing your body against his back, your boobs feeling soft against his skin. You moaned into his ear, biting his neck and leaving light marks. You felt your orgasm come closer but you didn’t want to cum before he did. “Bart!” you moaned. “This feels so fucking good!”

The green-haired male looked at you over his shoulder, his mouth open and his breath coming in short pants. “It feels amazing dabe!” he moved against you as best as possible. “I-I’m gonna cum soon, Y/n!”

“Me too!” you pressed your body closer against his, your hand grabbing him harder, the slick sound mixing with your moans. You felt his dick throb in your hand and with a loud moan he came in your hand, his member twitching with each ribbon of cum shooting out his dick. After a few more thrusts you came as well around the strap-on, your moan joining his.

His body collapsed and you with him, both of you were panting like crazy. After a while, he shifted slightly underneath you. “Y/n…could you…pull it out? It’s getting uncomfortable dabe.” He asked. “Oh, right! Of course!” you just weren’t used to being the one thinking about everything and you kind of appreciated it even more how much effort he put into sex each time.

Carefully, you pulled out and took the strap-on off entirely, letting it fall to the floor. You dropped down next to him, your eyes closed and your mind blank, not thinking about anything at the moment.

Bartolomeo was the first one to speak up again after wrapping his arm around you, pulling you closer against his warm body.

“You were great dabe.” He said with a low voice, sounding tired. “Did you like it?” you asked, pressing your body closer to his. He pulled the blanket over the two of you. “I wouldn’t want anyone else take me like that dabe.”

“That’s good to hear.”

[birdhouse-of-shadows]

   If I’m going to angst jail, I’m gonna go for a good reason. Buckle your seat belts and prepare for some real angst. Also half way through this I came up with a title for this so maybe I’ll put this on Ao3. Also I managed to use the word assfuck for the stupidest reason so I’m happy. 

Side note: HCDISHBKFJ I KEPT FORGETTING THIS WAS HERE BUT ITS FINALLY DONE SO- 

“The Ghost and the Moon God” 

TW: panic attack, mentions of abuse 

It was only two weeks after the war had ended. Many pros were still recovering from their injuries, and Hawks was no exception. His back was healed, but he suffered some severe nerve damage. It was going to take months of therapy to relearn how to fully use the left side of his body. However, the ex pro hardly cared about rehabilitation. Since he had been in the hospital he had not been allowed to see his intern, or rather, his intern was not allowed to see him. 

Tokoyami had to endure questioning about what had happened to Hawks, and whatever else he knew about the villain, Dabi. It took a long time for the teen to say anything at all. He had internalized so much, and would only give broad descriptions of the event. He was so conflicted about what he had done, was it really right to save a murderer? It was his job as a hero to save his mentor, right? Aizawa was busy recovering, so he couldn’t help in coaxing the answers from his student until a week into the investigation. The teacher knew well that Tokoyami would need comfort before he could answer any questions. They were only together for 5 minutes before Tokoyami was crying and spilling his heart out to his teacher. 

Once the Commission got wind of what Tokoyami had seen, they knew that had to do something about him. They decided it would be a waste of potential to simply get rid of him. The HPSC decided instead to invite him to join their program. They thought that the young boy would be absolutely honored to have the opportunity to receive the same training as his mentor. Unfortunately, they were completely right. 

Tokoyami received the invitation personally. He had finally gotten to talk to Hawks and catch up. They 3 hours just talking to each other, venting, crying, apologizing, making jokes, laughing, with just each other. They would always be bros, even if one of them had lost their feathers and couldn’t be considered much of a bird. After he finally departed Tokoyami was met outside of the hospital by the president of the HPSC and principal Nezu. The meeting was a total coincidence, the two were originally going to speak to Hawks. It was quite the stroke of luck because they’d be able to get two birds with one stone. 

“Tokoyami Fumikage, am I correct?” The president was the first to greet Tokoyami. Principal Nezu was next to speak.

“My dear student, I’d like to introduce you to somebody! This is the president of the Hero Public Safety Commission! I assume you’ve spoken to Hawks, yes? We came here to speak to him, but it’s good that we ran into you. We’ve got a proposition for you!” Tokoyami wasn’t surprised when he wasn’t able to get much of a word in, the principal was known for his ramblings after all. Principal Nezu explained that the Commission was grateful for Tokoyami’s involvement in saving Hawks and they wanted to offer him private hero training. It would be the same training that Hawks was given, the training that helped him rise to the top so quickly. 

The young hero was absolutely astonished and humbled at the offer. However he was still hesitant. What about UA? Would he be able to get the same quality education? He would also have to speak to his family about this. The president assured him that the education would be an even higher quality than UA. Nezu agreed, albeit losing a little pride in the process. Tokoyami happily agreed to inform his parent and get a meeting setup. With that, the three went their separate ways. ‘

Hawks was tense when he saw the president entering, but confused when he saw the small mouse creature. No, wait, that’s Tokoyami’s principal. Why would these two be together. Hawks’ mind immediately began racing with thoughts and theories. He was stopped mid-thought when the his intern’s principal climbed onto his hospital bed. Nezu seemed to have a reassuring smile on his face, which brought down Hawks’ anxiety a bit. He opened his mouth to greet the pair, but was interrupted by the small principal. 

“Hello there Hawks! My name is Nezu, though I’m sure you already know that from Tokoyami! We actually ran into him on the way in. I have come here with the HPSC president to propose an offer! I’ll let her take from here.” The cheery little animal swung his feet over the side of the bed, and looked over to the president. She cleared her throat and began to speak.

“Hawks, as I’m sure you know, your injuries are going to prevent you from returning to your hero work. While you could return to your office and simply do paperwork, we believe that would be a waste of your talent and knowledge. We would believe that it would be in the best interest of the future that you pass your knowledge onto the next generation.” She paused and looked back over to the principal. 

“So I am offering you a position as a teacher at my school!” Hawks was a bit shocked at the proposition. A teacher at UA? He could be around Tokoyami and watch him grow. He couldn’t help but feel a twinge of excitement. He could create more bonds, similar to the one he has with Tokoyami. The ability to help children see their true potential. As soon as Hawks came to this conclusion, he accepted the position. The joyful tone was not meant to last. 

“Principal Nezu, would you mind letting me have a word with Hawks on my own?” The president joyfully agreed let the president have her moment alone and exchanged his farewells with his new employee. The President watched the small creature leave before approaching the side of the bed. 

“Hawks, I am sure that you already picked up on the fact that I am not here just to tell you about a new job position.”

“Yes ma’am. I’m almost excited to hear the news.” Hawks tried to let out a small laugh to cover his fear. He already knew what this would be about. The boy who had saved his life, but in the process got far too close. 

“Its about your former inter, Tokoyami Fumikage. We both know that he knows far too much about you and your position with the league. He will need to be taken care of. It would be a waste to prevent him from being a hero, so we’ve decided to be merciful. We have invited him to join our training program to become a top hero just like you, just like his mentor.” Hawks could only listen as she spoke, he knew that he had no opinion on the matter. His heart sank as she continued, he wanted so badly to protest, to cry, to scream, but he couldn’t. With or without him, with consent or not, Tokoyami would be going through that training program. She finally began to conclude her lecture. 

“Hawks, do you understand?”

“Yes ma’am”

“Oh, I have one last thing to inform you of. Since you are no longer a hero, you are no longer Hawks. Keigo Takami, I am looking forward to seeing your work as a teacher. Have a good day.” With that, she was gone. Takami let out the breath he wasn’t aware he had been holding in. After that sigh, he could hardly breathe. His kid was going to go through that same hell that he went through as a child. Takami began getting flashbacks to the training. He remembered the blood, the injuries, the abuse, the punishments. He spent hours just crying in that hospital room by himself. 

- 3 weeks later - 

It was finally time for them to go their separate ways. UA was holding a large scale party celebrating those who fought in the war. Here it was announced that Takami would be joining the staff, here it would be the last time he saw Tokoyami Fumikage. They sat outside together, away from everyone else, simply watching the sun go down. That was until Takami broke the silence

“Tokoyami, I’m proud of you. I am looking forward to the hero you’ll become”

“Thank you, but why say this so suddenly?”

Takami looked over to the confused face of his friend. He was hoping the next thing he said would be the last time he would have to lie to Tokoyami. 

“I just wanted to...” He didn't just want to, he needed to.

“...I might not see you for a while. With you going off to that private training and all. It was pretty tough when I was there, and I’m proud of you for stepping up to the challenge.” He knew he wouldn’t be seeing Tokoyami again. It wasn’t just tough, it was hell, no child should endure it. Takami realized that maybe that last part wasn’t a lie. He was proud of his little bro, but he was also terrified. There was a slim chance that maybe, just maybe since Tokoyami already had some hero training, the commission would go easy on him. There was also a possibility that since Tokoyami only had a year and a half left of school, that the Commission would be harsh, in order to make Tokoyami a top hero in a matter of months. 

“Well again I thank you Ha-, I mean Takami Sensei” 

“Don’t call me that, kid.  Its way to damn formal. Remember, we’re still bros.” Takami smiles, he hadn’t done so genuinely in such a long time. Maybe it was all of the memories that he had with the bird headed kid, maybe it was the fact that he was happy to be near somebody he cared for. He didn’t care about the reason, he was just happy to be happy. 

“Are you two done?” Takami almost fell off of the bench he and Tokoyami were currently sitting on. Aizawa has come out of the very depths of assfuck nowhere and scared him. Tokoyami, as one of Aizawa’s previous students, was used to these sneak attacks. The ninja teacher spoke again, 

“Ah, sorry, you’re gonna have to get used to that. Tokoyami, the Commission is here to pick you up.  Hurry and say bye to everyone before you leave” Aizawa jumped in his sleeping bag and disappeared again.

 “D-does he always do that?”

“Yes, Aizawa-Sensei is known for it. You are never quite alone here at UA. That fact could be good or bad depending on the type of individual you are”

“Great, that’s great.” Takami couldn’t help but feel nervous about working with somebody like that. He didn’t have long to feel nervous about that though, he remembered why his fellow teacher had come in the first place. It was finally time. He had to say goodbye.

Takami looked up to his friend, who had already stood to leave. He wasn’t sure what to say. This goodbye is only hard for him, he’s the only one who really knows what is happening. He could stop this now, couldn’t he? Why not stop it before it starts? That’s right, he’s not allowed to, if he does things could be worse off. He let out a soft sigh as he stood, hoping that maybe it would cause some kind of butterfly effect, and save Tokoyami. 

“So, I guess that’s that. My time at UA is over. It was fun while it lasted, and I met many great souls.”

“Are you sad to be leaving?”

“Dark Shadow more so than I, he says he’s going to miss all of the affection he gets here. I believe I will miss people, but I am not sad. I will see them again, even if it’s not within UA’s walls.” The soft sigh that followed seemed both sad and reminiscent. Tokoyami began to speak again, but was interrupted by something warm. It was a hug. Takami was holding him tightly, and didn’t seem to want to let go. The teen hugged back in a moment of understanding. They knew that wouldn’t be seeing each other again for a very long time. The two stood there for a long time before finally letting go. 

“So I guess this is goodbye for now, little moon god”

“Moon god? That’s a new one.” Tokoyami chuckled “But I don’t consider this goodbye. It’s not like the Commission is going to kill me. I mean, you’re not dead. Unless you are a ghost and I didn’t know that. Are you a ghost Takami?”

Takami couldn’t help but laugh. He knew that Tokoyami had been trying to lighten the mood. 

“As far as I know, I am not a ghost. I might just die if you leave me for too long Mr. Moon God.”

“Oh goodness, you seem adamant about this new nickname. Fine then, ghosty. 

“Ghosty?”

“I am convinced that you are a ghost and I’ll be joining you in the afterlife once I am done with my training” The word training snapped Takami back to the reality of the situation. Tokoyami also seemed to come back to reality. There was a small silence before the older of the two spoke up. 

“Seriously Tokoyami, I am going to miss you. I’m not the only one whose gonna miss you though. Your classmates are waiting for you.”

“Right then. I’ll be seeing you then, ghosty.” With that Tokoyami finally turned around and opened the door to go back inside. With one last parting look, he went inside. There was a small black feather that was sitting on the ground next to the door. Takami could only watch as the wind caught it and floated it away. 

- 3 Years Later - 

“All right everyone, that's all I’ve got for you today. You’ve got English with Mikey next. Bye now”. Takami began to leave his class when the sliding door slammed open. 

“TAKAMI! I THOUGHT I TOLD YOU NOT TO CALL ME THAT!” Present Mic managed to sound cheery and angry at the same time. “I’VE HAD TO TELL YOU THAT SINCE YOU STARTED WORKING HERE!” 

“Okay, okay sorry” Takami seemed to be genuinely apologetic until he finally made it safely out the door “Mikey” 

“TAKAMI I SWEAR TO G-” Takami had already shut the classroom door in Mic’s face. He let out a slight chuckle before turning around to head to the faculty lounge. A voice came from behind him. 

“Takami.” 

“CHRIST! AIZAWA STOP DOING THAT. You know I hate that”

“Well, I recall that somebody told you to get used to that years ago. That person is also here to see you.”

Takami turned to face Aizawa with a confused look on his face. “Who? There have been far too many people who have warned me about you.” 

“I would assume he was the first person to have told you” 

Takami seemed to be even more confused. Who was the first person to tell him? How was he supposed to remember who told him something over three years ago? Three years ago was when he had become a teacher for the old class 2-A, Tokoyami’s class. They had all graduated a year ago. Wait, wait a minute, Tokoyami’s class. 

“TOKOYAMI? IS HE HERE?”

Aizawa simply spressed himself against the wall and prepared for Hawks to bolt down the hallway. 

“Meeting room 2-A, please don’t run anybody over on the way there.” Aizawa’s plea went completely ignored seeing as Takami had already bolted down the hallway. He was on the fourth floor, and on the wrong side of the building. He quickly calculated the quickest route to Tokoyami. Left, right, down the south hall, another left, avoid All Might, remember to apologize later, down the stairs. His mind ran on simple instructions. There it was, 3-A! One of the few things Hawks had retained was his ability to move quickly without running out of breath. He stood straight and composed himself, tears nearly slipping out. He took a deep breath and slid the door open. 

The sight that awaited him was something he hadn’t been prepared for. Tokoyami sat looking at him, his eyes dead. There was a large scar across the bridge of his beak. The typical black shirt of his hero costume was replaced with one with the Commission’s emblem. It was the same branding that he had to wear when he had been a hero. Upon seeing the young hero, Takami knew that was no longer the kid he used to know. 

The President sat next to him, as serious as ever. There was a glint of curiosity in her eyes. It was obvious that she wanted to know what Takami’s reaction would be to this new version of Tokoyami. The sick curiosity made Takami’s heart sink. He knew what had happened to Tokoyami, he knew that the teen would never be the same. 

“Hey there, you two. Its been a while, hasn’t it?” Takami moved to sit down. 

“Yes it has, and in this long while Tsukuyomi here has become a wonderful young hero.” 

Tokoyami said absolutely nothing. 

“We’ve come to visit you because next week Tsukuyomi will be having his debut as a hero. We would have done it sooner, when the rest of his class had graduated, but creating a hero is like making a fine wine. More time results in higher quality, wouldn’t you say?” 

“Of course” Takami knew that she didn’t mean that. He assumed that the Comission had issues with getting rid of Tokoyami’s emotions and previous training education. There may have also been issues with how complex Dark Shadow was. Usually the shadow was around whenever Tokoyami was greeting somebody familiar. There was no sign of him, meaning that there was a high possibility that Dark Shadow was only allowed out for combat reasons.

“I have nothing else to talk to you about. I am going to leave you two to catch up, alright?” The president just left without saying anything else. At this point Takami could hardly think. After his peaceful 3 years of teaching, he would have to face Tokoyami and his 3 years of hell. 

“Tokoya-”

“Don’t call me that. You and I both know that is no longer my name.” Tsukuyomi’s voice was dry and harsh. It was obvious that the training had destroyed his personality. He spoke up again, 

“I don’t have much to talk to you about. You already know what the training was like. While I am quite please to be seeing you alive and well, I can’t help but feel betrayed when I look at you. You knew exactly what I would be put through, and you did nothing to warn me. I remember the last interaction we had. You had so many chances to say something, and yet you didn’t. I remember how we joked about how the Commission's training had killed you, and maybe you were a ghost. I almost wish that you were dead, then I never would have met you. However, you did help me with some things, so your life has some value. I hope that my training does not become a waste. That’s all I have to say. Goodbye, Takami.” 

Takami couldn’t get a single word in before Tsukuyomi left. There were absolutely no words to say. Tokoyami Fumikage had been killed by the Comission’s training. The only thing that was left was the vengeful moon god, Tsukuyomi. 

[swirlingdisobedience]

Art and the Environment

“Part of addressing a complex politics of ecology and its aesthetic reach means critically rethinking current or provincialist terms of debate by foregrounding overlooked actors, actants, voices and constituencies. In examining social, political and environmental conditions of crisis, envisaging a post-humanist method of inquiry towards the long-term development of sustainable solutions does call for the rejection of binaries or polarisations. Yet it must also be pursued on a cross-disciplinary basis that aims to animate serious proposals that reject and rethink the ‘restricted economy’.”  

Carolina Caycedo

BE DAMMED (ongoing Project)

In Indigenous cosmogonies of the Americas, all bodies of waters are connected. Rivers are the veins of the planet, their waters associate communities and ecosystems. Be Dammed investigates the effects that large dams have on natural and social landscapes in several American bio-regions. More than 250 large hydroelectric dams are projected or under construction by transnational corporations in Latin America, signifying the transition of public bodies of water into privatized resources. At the same time, the U.S. is the leading country in dam removal, allowing for the restoration of river ecosystems. In Be Dammed, aerial and satellite imagery, geo-choreographies and audio-visual essays intersect social bodies with bodies of water, exploring public space in rural contexts, and conjuring water as a common good.

Conjuro de rios - rio cauca e hidroituango dam

Itaipu river 

The Cosmotarrayas 

a series of hanging sculptures assembled with handmade fishing nets and other objects, collected during my field research in different riverine communities affected by the privatization of waters in Colombia and Brazil.

YUMA, or the land of friends, El Quimbo Dam

Lygia Clark

Baba Antropofágica

In collective works like «Túnel» or «Objetos relacionais,» Lygia Clark initiates psychic processes of exchange which transform the dichotomy of subject and object. In doing so, she follows the transgressive logic of «devouring» and «vomiting». The reception of «Baba antropofágica» («Cannibalistic Saliva») also relies on the documentary film «O mundo de Lygia Clark,» filmed by Eduardo Clark in 1973. But escaping this phantasmal staging of the body seems almost impossible: kneeling over a guinea-pig-like subject lying on the floor, a figure pulls from its mouth—like spiders do from their bodies—a spittle-drenched thread and spins a cocoon around the reclining figure. The precarious division of subject and object is eliminated by this thread-like weaving, with the gestural webbing of the passive subject completing the inversion of the internal and external. In the retrospective, these interactive aspects might have been what was most convincing. In contrast to Performance and Body Art, Lygia Clark understood herself to be an initiator of processes, and was most successful in this respect when her haptic attempts on orderings were targeted at inter-subjective body politics.

“¿Cuál es entonces la misión del artista?”, decía Clark, “Dar al participante el objeto que no tiene importancia por sí mismo y que sólo la tendrá en la medida en que el participante actúe. Es como un huevo que sólo revela su interior al ser abierto. (…) Es menester que la obra no cuente por ella misma y que sea un simple trampolín para la libertad del espectador-autor. Éste tomará conciencia a través de la proposición que le es ofrecida por el artista. No se trata de la participación por la participación, ni de la agresión por la agresión, sino de que el participante dé un significado a su gesto y de que su acto sea alimentado por un pensamiento, en ese caso el énfasis de su libertad de acción.” (1997: 152-153)

re-enactment

Short film records "Anthropophagic Slobber", proposal by Lygia Clark (1920 - 1988) (re)lived at Clark Art Center (CAC), Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, with Jards Macalé. Direction and screenplay: Walmor Pamplona. By Clark Art Center.

she termed relational objects (everyday objects that the artist employed in an attempt used to stimulate the senses)

“Toward the end of her career, Clark coined another term, phantasmagoria of the body, which was also a way of intertwining art and psychotherapy.  It’s a practice that deals with the notion of a life within an art object, something that scholars usually dismiss. It was through the discovery of her concept of the “phantasm” that Clark was able to surpass a mere anticipation of sensorial knowledge to enter the realm of actual fulfillment of that knowledge—a concept that differs from the contemporary notion of performance, and moves into the unconscious. 

(...)

In Anthropophagic Slobber (1973) the ritualistic aspect of the proposition is crystal clear: a person lies on the floor, arms against her body. She doesn’t wear much. She rests, her eyes are closed. A group of people approach, they come, they kneel. They form a circle around the lying person and put colored threads inside their mouths—the threads are expelled from their lips wet, soaked with slobber. Saliva is stimulation. These people are then like spiders, depositing the webs on the person’s body. The spider can see the prone body—but only her “phantasm” can see the spider. It is within this kind of exercise that the object, a simple thread, becomes, for Clark, a powerful tool for the marriage between body and unconscious knowledge through art. When the person allows herself to become part of this embracing web, the slobber accepts her, she accepts herself.“ (from: https://artwriting.sva.edu/journal/post/lygia-clark-at-moma)

Vogue Germany January 2020

Images of a editorial photo shoot of the Voque Germany of January 2020, inviting artist Katharina Grosse as art director for the editorial fashion part. It’s called : Imagine (our title). She invited a platform of women ‘ Wir machen das’, writers, artists, architects, students, musicians to join the project. Their working field is migration, diversity and refugee movements in conversation with and over ….. The shoot shows divers types of women of different ages and shapes together in a shoot having conversations, also exposed in writings in the magazine.

https://wirmachendas.jetzt/en/mission/

WIR MACHEN DAS – and this is who we are

WIR MACHEN DAS (WE ARE DOING IT) arose from a network of 100 women from arts and culture, science, journalism and public life under the association wearedoingit e.V. in 2015.

As a non-profit organisation we use various projects in the fields of arts and public relations to advocate for support, participation and the recognition of diversity in the context of refugee movements and migration.

Our Aims

We address all people not as “the needy”, but with regard to their expertise, because diverse perspectives enrich local discourses. Together we aim to improve career prospects, educational offers and networking opportunities. We foster individual resources and create opportunities for exchange. In this way, we bolster the involvement of people from zones of war and conflict. Together we are shaping a future in which immigration and diversity are seen as an opportunity and asset.

Plastic T-shirt bag invented to save the chopping of trees for paper bags in 1960

The inventor of the plastic bag Sten Gustaf Thulin. He intended the opposite with his invention:

American and European patent applications relating to the production of plastic shopping bags can be found dating back to the early 1950s, but these refer to composite constructions with handles fixed to the bag in a secondary manufacturing process. The modern lightweight shopping bag is the invention of Swedish engineer Sten Gustaf Thulin.[1] In the early 1960s, Thulin developed a method of forming a simple one-piece bag by folding, welding and die-cutting a flat tube of plastic for the packaging company Celloplast of Norrköping, Sweden. Thulin's design produced a simple, strong bag with a high load-carrying capacity, and was patented worldwide by Celloplast in 1965. As his son Raoul said later, Sten believed that durable plastic bags will be not single-used but long-term used and could replace paper bags which need chopping of trees.[7][8]

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_shopping_bag

https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/plastic-bags-pollution-paper-cotton-tote-bags-environment-a9159731.html

https://disposableamerica.org/the-plastic-bag/inventor-sten-gustaf-thulin/

Nzambi Matee

A nairobi-based 29-year-old entrepreneur and inventor — is the founder of a startup that recycles plastic waste into bricks that are stronger than concrete. called gjenge makers ltd, her company initiated following the development of a prototype machine that turns discarded plastic into paving stones. one day at the factory means 1,500 churned plastic pavers, prized not just for the quality, but for how affordable they are.

‘it is absurd that we still have this problem of providing decent shelter – a basic human need,’ said matee. ‘plastic is a material that is misused and misunderstood. the potential is enormous, but its after life can be disastrous.’

before creating gjenge makers ltd, nzambi matee majored in material science and worked as an engineer in kenya’s oil industry. in 2017 she quit her job to start creating and testing pavers, which are a combination of plastic and sand. she gets the waste material for free from packaging factories and also buys it from other recyclers. through experimentation, she understood which plastics bind better together and then created the machinery that would allow her to mass produce them.

‘we must rethink how we manufacture industrial products and deal with them at the end of their useful life,’ said soraya smaoun, who specializes in industrial production techniques with UNEP.  ‘nzambi matee’s innovation in the construction sector highlights the economic and environmental opportunities when we move from a linear economy, where products, once used, are discarded, to a circular one, where products and materials continue in the system for as long as possible.’

Pierre Huyghe - Zoodram

Zoodrams: large aquariums with marine ecosystems, that embody the logic of the exhibition, in particular Zoodram 4 (2011) in which a crab turned a resin mask of the Sleeping Muse (1910) by Constantin Brancusi into its living habitat.

Zoodram 5 (After Sleeping Muse by Constantin Brancusi), 2011, a glass tank that provided living quarters for different species of crabs that cannibalize each other, a none-too-subtle metaphor for human rapaciousness.

The tank is a repeated object in many of Huyghe’s works. They featured prominently in his retrospective, and a massive fish tank currently sits on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum as part of the Roof Garden Commission. Huyghe’s tanks are filled with strange, beautiful creatures. On the roof of the Met are tadpole shrimp, while inside the tanks in the retrospective were hermit crabs. The tank is an enclosed space. The viewer stands outside it, watching the creatures engage in their everyday activities. The tank is a lens through which we can better see Huyghe’s overall project. In an interview with Emily Nathan for Art in America, Huyghe stated:

The work is not “displayed” under a narrative — that’s a system I avoid. I could not imagine a chronological order, either. As you say, most of what I have done is construct situations that happen within a given body. Every one is a constellation network of process, all sorts of heterogenous and anachronistic things come together or are associated within a constructed situation, and so it is difficult to present them in a site where they were not originally, or to organize them in a linear way.

Pierre Huyghe says that life is the core interest of his practice: “I’m interested in how to quantify the different variations of being alive…how to intensify the presence of things.” Many of his performance, film, and installation pieces employ a range of living creatures—insects, plants, animals, and human beings—in order to explore their behavior and interactions. These works become laboratories for articulating complex social phenomena, the precarious distinction between fiction and reality, and contemporary belief systems. 

Pawel Althamer

The sculptor Pawel Althamer, who had a cameo in After Nature with a pair of flayed bodies, has brought an entire parade of the undead to Expo 1. He and neighbours from his apartment block in Bródno, Poland, each created a life-sized alter ego, modelled out of scrap metal and technological trash. Like zombies from an apocalyptic nightmare, the figures in “Bródno People” march sightlessly through a huge gallery, an ungainly procession of solid ghosts that recalls Rodin’s “Burghers of Calais”.

Mel Chin

Revival Field 

1991-ongoing plants, industrial fencing on a hazardous waste landfill an ongoing project in conjunction with Dr. Rufus Chaney, senior research agronomist, USDA

Revival Field began as a conceptual artwork with the intent to sculpt a site’s ecology. 1993 marked a successful conclusion to the first phase of this collaborative effort. The initial experiment, located at Pig’s Eye Landfill, a State Superfund site in St. Paul, Minnesota, was a replicated field test using special hyperaccumulator plants to extract heavy metals from contaminated soil. Scientific analysis of biomass samples from this field confirmed the potential of “Green Remediation” as an on-site, low-tech alternative to current costly and unsatisfactory remediation methods. Despite soil conditions adverse to metal uptake, a variety of Thlaspi, the test plant with the highest capacity for hyperaccumulation, was found to have significant concentration of cadmium in its leaves and stems.

In Mel Chin’s Revival Field FIG. 3 soil is detoxified through the use of ‘hyperaccumulator’ plants in a dumping ground in Minnesota, demonstrating the need for speculative ecological proposals.

Thomas Hirschhorn

Jumbo Spoons and Big Cake

At first glance, Thomas Hirschhorn’s monumental installation Jumbo Spoons and Big Cake resembles a kind of documentation centre turned upside down, filled with papers, chained books, piled archives and photographs. In the centre, the jarring presence of a monumental cake surrounded by twelve giant spoons creates a metaphor on the state of the world today, and on the end of many 20th century utopias. Reminiscent of popular ‘souvenir spoon’ trinkets, the spoons portray individuals or entities that the artist associates with failed utopias: Mies van der Rohe, Rosa Luxemburg, Malevitch, Nietzsche, Venice, China, the Moon, firearms, fashion, the Nazis’ 1937 exhibition of “degenerate art,” Swiss Rolex watches, and the Chicago Bulls basketball team.

Tejal Shah

Between the Waves 

Landfill Dance by Tejal Shah FIG. 5 is a video installation that involves several professional dancers dressed as quasi-mythical creatures, striking poses and moving in synchronicity in an unnamed mass landfill site in India. The work portrays ‘neither a neoliberal optimism nor paralysing despair’, but instead draws on the ‘potential of the bodies to coexist with this environment’, as is part of Boetzkes’s broader thesis that artists have demonstrated the need for an ‘intensive “working through” of the site’ and waste (pp.121–25). How, if at all, the work deals with people that notoriously have little choice but to rummage and work through mass garbage sites on a daily basis is unattended to.

Tejal Shah: Landfill Dance is part of the larger five-channel video installation, Between the Waves. Each channel also functions as a stand-alone piece. I first worked on channel 1, which is a longer film that forms the backbone of the installation.

“I am a big fan of contemporary and folk dance, with immense reverence for the medium. I have been eagerly awaiting an appropriate opportunity to collaborate with dancers. Finally, I decided to work with contemporary dance in this project to create seemingly nonsensical movements within the setting of a landfill to think about the futility of our gestures of sense making and recuperation in the Anthropocene (with a sense of humour of course!).” (https://huismarseille.nl/interview-tejal-shah/)

Olafur Eliasson

“Riverbed was for the Louisiana Museum, whose architecture is from a period where the seamlessness between inside and outside was introduced, as were a number of modern illusions of openness,” he says by way of preface. “Within this very contemplative museum, but also this very well functioning exhibition machine, I wanted something that would almost have the volume and scale to destabilise the museum a bit, pressure it. So I wanted it to look almost like a rock garden, but also to have a sense of a mudslide. Brutal, deathlike; it’s almost an alien landscape, and really it’s there to introduce destabilising qualities that one experiences outside – you’re walking on a slope, keeping your balance, recomposing your walking to fit the landscape – but you don’t really notice, you take them for granted. So I don’t only move the landscape in but also the microconflicts: suddenly we don’t take them for granted. This is what is interesting: the experience, the activities you do, also become exhibited. It’s as much about the interaction as about the actual plateau, the platform, on which people are walking.”

[tbhwhocaresanymore]

God I’ve never done this before, but hi @bnsammydee. As you have probably guessed from the tags, I’m your blacklist secret santa! I have written for you the following Keenler fic (about 3k words), which in the holiday spirit I have done my best to make very cute and fluffy. Happy holidays!

Agent Alina Park liked to think she was a fairly observant person, and she knew she was at least a lot more intelligent than your average John. Add that to a sparsely-indulged love of gossip – fed only through tabloids – and she was afraid she may be reading just a tad too much into her coworkers’ relationship.

Every time Liz and Ressler were in the same room, there was a plethora of small moments. They didn’t so much stare at each other as constantly look over to the other one, seeking reassurance or understanding or a smile at a secret joke. While working together in the field they practically read each other’s minds; and although from what Alina had seen so far Liz seemed to be an island unto herself, she depended on Ressler without thinking twice about it.

Right now they were going over a case report together, standing a smidge closer than absolutely necessary, shoulders and upper arms almost touching.

“Deep in concentration I see.”

Alina blinked, losing her train of thought as she turned to see Aram teasing her. She realized she had been staring at Liz and Ressler for upwards of five minutes, brow narrowed and mouth slightly open, and blushed. “Just thinking.”

“Thinking?”

“Yes. Thinking… thoughts.”

Aram glanced over to where Ressler was stealing a look at the back of Liz’s neck, and lowered his voice. “Please tell me you see it too.”

“Liz and Ressler?” When he nodded, relief flooded through her shoulders. “Thank God, I thought I might be imagining it!”

“I know!” He moved around so he was hovering over her shoulders, Liz and Ressler oblivious to their observation, indeed oblivious to anyone that wasn’t their partner.

“It’s all so chaste half the time,” Alina whispered, “just these little secret smiles and stolen glances. But they’re both so serious, I could never be sure if it was just a good friendship or something more. It’s been driving me crazy.”

Aram gave a derisive snort. “Oh, you think it’s been driving you crazy? You’ve worked here less than seven weeks, I’ve worked with them for seven years.”

She felt her eyes widen in disbelief. “Have they been this bad all that time?”

“Well, not all the time,” he relented. “Liz was married to a sociopath for a while, became a fugitive, and had a kid, so that was a whole thing. But like, 95% of the time I’ve known them both? Yeah, it’s been this bad.”

As they spoke, Ressler closed the file and headed off to go see Cooper, giving Liz the barest touch to the back of her shoulders as he did so.

“I can’t possibly take seven more years of this,” she hissed at Aram, recoiling at the very thought. “I’m this close to locking them both in a room as it is.”

“Well what do you propose we do?” Aram muttered, watching Liz look over at Ressler’s retreating form before turning her focus back to her paperwork.

Alina’s eyes landed upon the calendar hanging on the wall, marking the date as less than a week before Christmas. She began to smile. “I might have an idea.”

*

Liz eyed the decorations distastefully. “Isn’t the federal government prohibited from endorsing any one kind of religion?”

Aram and Park gave her rather pitying glances over the fairy lights on the desktop computer. “It’s not like we’re chopping down a Christmas tree, it’s just some pretty lights and Velcro snowmen. To help everyone get in the holiday mood.”

Liz looked to her left to share a disbelieving expression with Ressler. He appeared as turned off as she was. Apparently their lack of enthusiasm was palpable, because Aram hurriedly continued his defense of the new office décor. “Besides it’s mostly for me. Samar and I would always grab a drink and she’d help me decorate my apartment during this time of year, and I guess I was feeling nostalgic.” He sighed rather theatrically and Liz saw Park step on his foot, causing him to wince. “I can take it down if it really bothers you guys that much.”

Liz stopped herself from sighing. “No it’s fine Aram, just as long as it doesn’t get us fired.”

Ressler scowled. “If I hear any carolers I’m resigning,” he warned, before walking off.

“No danger of that, they’d take one look at you and run away,” Aram muttered. Park choked on her coffee, prompting Aram to thump her on the back.

Reluctantly acknowledging it wasn’t the worst thing in the world, Liz resigned herself to the admittedly subtle festivities and headed over to her office. She noted a sprig of mistletoe hanging from the doorway as she entered and scoffed, reaching up to tear it down. But something stilled her hand at the last second and she quickly dropped it back to her side, hoping no one had noticed the movement.

She was rearranging her files when Ressler came in, swallowing when she saw him notice the plant in the doorframe. “Is that mistletoe?” he demanded.

Liz gave a very casual shrug. “I must’ve missed it.”

He made a displeased sound, but left it alone. Conflicting emotions of relief and confusion tangled inside her chest, and she immediately returned to her own work, hoping they would die down.

And the feelings did die down, at least for a couple of hours, until she and Park were going over witness statements for a museum robbery. The newest agent chose that moment to whisper in a conspiratorial voice, “Is it just me or does Ressler look hotter than usual today?”

“What?” Distracted, Liz knocked the folder off the desk, the papers sliding across the smooth floor. She swore under her breath and knelt down to pick them up, Park moving to help. Hoping furiously she wasn’t blushing, Liz tried to get the pages back in some semblance of organization as they stood up. “Thanks.”

Park nodded before looking at her expectantly, head tilted like an inquisitive bird. “So?”

Thoughts still slightly in disarray, Liz played ignorance. “What?”

Park leaned in close and grinned like they were high school sophomores. “I said, is it just me or does Ressler look hotter than usual today?”

“I don’t – I hadn’t – why would I notice, I don’t –” Liz floundered for an answer, wondering desperately where her normally comprehensive vocabulary had gone before forcefully pulling herself together. “I’m not sure that’s entirely appropriate.”

Park dismissed this with a wave of her hand. “It’s not like I’m propositioning him in the interrogation room, just stating the obvious. Him in suits is nice to look at and all, but dressed like this?” She shook her head. “Damn.”

Certain her face was on fire, Liz managed a shrug. “I hadn’t really noticed.”

She received an unconvinced look. “Do you have eyes?”

Ruefully, Liz laughed. “I do have eyes, and I will admit he looks good in the outfit. It’s just, he’s Ressler. My first reaction to seeing him is not normally ‘hot damn he looks good today’.” Only on days when he’s dressed like this.Ressler did indeed look good in suits, but in winter months when he wore an overcoat on top, or when he was expecting to take a tumble and wore a shirt with long dark sleeves like today, Liz often found herself taking very cold showers later that night.

“Well what is your typical first reaction then?” Park pressed.

Hey Ressler, is there any chance you could pin me up against the wall and kiss me so hard I forget my own name?“It’s generally something along the lines of ‘oh look it’s Ressler’,” Liz said instead. “‘I wonder how he’s been doing in the four to eight hours since I saw him last’.”

Thankfully, Park let the subject drop, and they wrapped out the day with minimal talk of personal lives or feelings. After they did all they could for the day, the task force was wrapping up and she and Aram extended an invitation. “We thought it could be fun if the four of us all went out for drinks,” said Aram, looking excited. “That bar a couple blocks down that only shows bowling on the television?”

“You mean Smithy’s?” she guessed. Park and Aram were going regardless, and Liz was always in the mood to get drunk and contemplate how shitty her life was. “I’m in.”

“I’ll come too,” said Ressler.

Liz and Park grabbed their purses, and the group bundled up and took the elevator to the surface.

The late December evening was coupled with a light snow and a brisk wind, and so they walked hurriedly down the sidewalk. Park and Aram were glued to each other’s side, and so Liz fell into step beside Ressler. He held open the door for her when they reached Smithy’s, and it made her stomach clench. Damn it, but she’d always had a weakness for chivalry.

Aram suggested a drinking game, Park came up with two truths and a lie, one thing lead to another and before Liz knew it she had downed four shots and was riding one hell of a buzz.

“Okay okay okay okay okay, it is Agent Ressler’s turn,” said Aram.

Park giggled drunkenly. “Yeah, Super Special FBI Agent Ressler.”

Liz got the sense he was mostly just going along with this because he didn’t have to pay, but she was still impressed with how he was being such a good sport. He also knew Aram remarkably better than she’d suspected.

Ressler ran a finger around the rim of one of his empty shot glasses. “When I was seventeen I crashed a motorcycle, I chipped my tooth playing basketball as a kid, and I can run a six minute mile.”

“Second one is a lie, you have perfect teeth,” said Park immediately.

Ressler shrugged. “Any other guesses?”

Aram shook his head, looking a bit like a dog with water in its ears. “Second one, you don’t seem like a basketball kid.”

He met her eyes. “Keen?”

Liz held his gaze, doing her best to run through all the things she knew about him, all the personal details he’d dropped, stories he’d shared. “The first one’s a lie.”

Ressler didn’t blink. “Is that your final answer?”

“It is.” Her heart felt a bit like it had clawed its way into her throat, but she somehow managed not to choke on her words.

His face split into a grin. “My cousincrashed a motorcycle when I was seventeen, which is why I never ride them.”

Liz clapped her hands and threw them in the air. “Drink up losers.”

After they each took a couple more turns – apparently Aram had over sixteen cavities and Park had once skydived from a height of 18,000 feet – Aram went to go get a new round of drinks. Liz was not entirely sure this was a good idea, as Park looked like she was about to fall off her chair. “So, Super Special Agent Ressler,” she drawled, slightly slurring her words. “Liz and I were talking earlier, and we agree you look particularly hot today.”

One minute words were leaving Park’s mouth, the next there was the feeling of being in midair before Liz crashed into the floor.

She blinked, disoriented, and realized Ressler was kneeling next to her, his arm around her back. “Liz, are you all right?”

She tried to nod, focusing on his somehow clear eyes. “Have you had less to drink than us?” she accused.

His lips twitched. “I figured at least one of us should be able to tell left from right.”

Liz rubbed the hip she’d fallen on. “Cheater,” she muttered as he helped her back onto the chair. Park looked pleased with herself, though Liz couldn’t figure out why.

“So you think I’m hot today?”

Liz groaned, before glaring at Park. “Those were her words, not mine.”

“You didn’t disagree,” the younger agent snickered. Liz made a mental note to get her fired when they were both sober. “Anyway, you do look totally hot. Shirts like that do great things for your shoulders.”

“You do realize this is going to go straight to his ego,” Liz deadpanned.

“No please, keep going,” Ressler grinned into his glass. “This is the most fun I’ve had in weeks.”

Liz made a face. “I feel that speaks to your lack of a social life more than anything else.”

“Says the woman who’s practically agoraphobic.”

“I am notafraid of spiders!”

He laughed. “No, Keen, agoraphobia is the fear of social situations.”

Liz swatted at him. “I knew that.”

Aram got back with the drinks, but Park stopped him before handing them out. “Let’s switch it up. I vote for… Never Have I Ever.”

Ressler groaned. “It’s like high school all over again.”

“Speak for yourself, some of us didn’t get invited to any parties in high school,” quipped Aram. For some reason this struck Liz as enormously funny, and she laughed hard enough she almost fell off her chair again. But this time rather than tilting in the direction of open space, she tilted in the direction of her partner, and he wrapped an arm around her waist to make sure she didn’t fall.

“Easy there Liz,” he murmured, his lips a hairs breadth away from her ear.

Liz could practically feel as every ounce of rational thought left her brain, and moved over so she was sitting on his lap. She felt his chest hitch beneath her fingers as she draped her right arm over his shoulder for balance. “What?” she asked in her most innocent voice as he looked at her in a state of semi-shock. “I clearly can’t be trusted to take care of myself in this state.”

Ressler didn’t answer just kept looking at her, hand still wrapped securely on her waist, before turning back to the other two who were looking simply delighted. Aram drummed his hands on the table. “I’ll go first. Never have I ever punched someone in the face.” Everyone else immediately drank, and Aram looked vaguely disappointed in them all.

Ressler went next. “Never have I ever shot the attorney general.”

Liz whipped around to give him a betrayed look. “Seriously?”

His eyes twinkled at her. “Drink up Keen.”

Keeping eye contact the entire time, Liz downed the shot. “My turn,” she said emphatically. “Never have I ever hired a date to my cousin’s wedding.”

Now it was Ressler’s turn to look betrayed. “Low blow.”

Her smile widened. “Drink up honey.”

Ressler drank, his throat bobbing as he swallowed and Liz felt her mouth go dry.

“My turn,” said Park, and Liz turned to look at her, realizing too late her expression was entirely too smug. “Never have I ever been in love with a coworker.”

Dimly, Liz thought that Aram should probably drink, but all she could look at was the glass in Ressler’s hand. In her periphery, she could see that he was looking at her. Then she saw him raise the glass up to his lips and swallow. She met his eyes as he put it down. “What’ll it be Liz?” His voice was thick.

Liz reached blindly towards the table for a shot glass, and quickly swallowed it down. Her face burned, her throat burned, her lips burned where his eyes flickered to them; every part of her burned. She wanted someone to set her on fire. Aram and Park stood and walked over to the bar, Liz thought they may have given an excuse but she didn’t care, she was incapable of caring about absolutely anything when Ressler was looking at her like that, the way he always looked at her, the way he’d been looking at her for years now.

She leaned in to press her lips to his, cautiously, afraid of his rejection despite the alcohol surging through her veins. But his hand came up to gently cup her cheek, and now she could let herself lean into it. His lips were soft and tasted like scotch, she pulled herself closer to him, feeling their chests press together as his own grip on her tightened. He bit down softly on her lower lip and she moaned into the feeling, opening up more fully to him.

Eventually they broke apart, both panting, foreheads touching. When Liz could bring herself to open her eyes, she saw he was staring at her again. She summoned her courage. “Never have I ever gone home with someone after a first kiss.”

His eyes darkened. “Let’s fix that.” * Alina clinked her glass with Aram’s as their two coworkers got up from where they were practically grinding on a chair, threw on their jackets and hastily made their way to the door.

“Very impressive,” her co-conspirator praised. “How’d you do it?”

Alina laughed. “Holidays plus unresolved feelings plus alcohol and just a little bit of meddling tends to yield good results.”

“Hopefully they don’t both wake up in the morning and decide to pretend it never happened,” he muttered, throwing back a drink in one go.

Alina shook her head. “They won’t.”

He raised his eyebrows. “And how do you know that?”

She shook a chastising finger at him. “Haven’t you learned by now not to question me?”

Aram raised his hands in surrender. “My apologies. Am I forgiven?”

She laughed. “Oh, what the hell. It’s Christmas.”

[ikesenmotonari]

Reputation

i am so grateful to @ikesenhell for being an amazing friend and this is a humble present for them!! ily and thank you so much for being there for me :"3

word count: 972

warnings: none, just one pink-clad dude being heroic and kinda sexy

     Two individuals, one in pink and one in violet, met at the border of Izumo province. These men carried similar titles: peerless, ruthless, ingenious -- all of them were words that described the perfect samurai general.

     Perhaps they were too alike.

     "General Sue." Shikanosuke grimaced and his rose-coloured eyes scanned the suspicious man in front of him. "Welcome to Izumo."

     Harukata smiled back. He dismounted his horse effortlessly and bowed deeply. "Thank you, General Yamanaka. For my presence to be accepted by none other than yourself, why, it is a great honour."

     Shikanosuke glowered down at the lowered head his enemy. He could easily behead him like this, he thought coldly. One swing of his sword and Harukata would be dead, but the youth let it slide. He took a moment to scrutinize the Ouchi general before urging his horse to circle the other. "Tell me why you met me here before I call this off and kill you."

     Harukata blinked, then he broke into laughter. "So very bold! Your loyalty is admirable, but please, there's no need for that." He opened his violet haori and patted himself down with his unnerving smile still fixed on his face. "See? I am unarmed. I believe you have your honour to uphold. Killing a helpless man seems a bit low for a hero Chugoku looks up to."

     "And 'helpless' is a bit unfitting for the unrelenting Harukata Sue," Shikanosuke said plainly, still skeptical of the other man.

     "Very well. Moving on, I have a proposition."

     Shikanosuke hissed, "You come to my province as my enemy and you have the nerve to --"

     "I wasn't finished." Harukata's voice was icy and commanding. The authority in it made Shikanosuke flinch away from another retort, but he was still annoyed by the attitude the older general had.

     "You are young," Harukata continued, unfazed. "And you are bursting with potential. Someday, you will grow to understand the choices I am making. We aren't that different, after all." 

     "Am I supposed to be repulsed or flattered?"

     "Take it as you wish." Harukata strode casually to his horse and reached for something in a bag. Shikanosuke tensed, but made no move when his enemy came back with a pouch bulging with coins.

     Shikanosuke paused. "What is this?"

     "My offering." Harukata put a finger to his lips, which curled into an off-putting sneer. "I am going to rebel against Yoshitaka Ouchi."

     "And you would buy my silence?" Shikanosuke dismounted his horse and kept one hand protectively at its side. He narrowed his eyes.

     "Yes and no. See, Yamanaka, you of all men are well aware that internal conflict can weaken a clan. Considerably. I am going to give you the perfect opportunity to destroy your enemies from within." Harukata motioned to the bag. "This is just in case you see little reasoning in my proposal. However, we are both logical, yes? I hope it isn't necessary."

     His words were like knives at Shikanosuke's throat. The Amago general seethed and his hand clenched around the hilt of his katana. "You're just as bold."

     "Thank you." Harukata took it as a compliment. He nodded, satisfied. "I will stage it so that your spies, whom are no doubt in Nagato, are the ones who started rumours that Yoshitaka Ouchi's drive for war is failing. He grows weak, and thus the people will be fearful."

     "I have a feeling those stem from the truth." Shikanosuke's hand didn't leave his weapon. "And you're making my spies say this because it'd be too quick if the rumours spread on their own."

     "Exactly."

     "Hmph. What else are you planning?"

     "Oh, those are my secrets." Harukata weighed the coins in his hand. "I'll stay out of your way as long as you agree to do the same. After this rebellion is done, of course. Then you may chase the Mouri to your heart's content."

     Shikanosuke rolled his eyes and turned to his horse. "A general so brutally plotting against his own daimyo… I'm sure you have your reasons. I don't want to know them. Go along with your rebellion."

     "Do you want the money?"

     "No."

     Harukata stepped in front of Shikanosuke's dark steed, preventing him from walking ahead. The Ouchi general shushed the startled horse and gently patted its nose. He turned serious. "What a shame. You and I both know that a weak daimyo makes a weak clan, and Haruhisa is… not the best candidate. Don't you need the extra help?"

     Shikanosuke shook with rage. He reared his horse back and unsheathed his katana in the blink of an eye, pointing it at Harukata's neck. "How dare you. Haruhisa Amago is not weak. He is strong, so strong in ways that you'll never understand!"

     Harukata tilted his chin up, wary of the steel pressing against his skin. Then, his smile dissipated and was replaced by an expression of disappointment. "... I was only trying to help."

     "I don't need the help of a general who would carelessly reveal his disloyalty. I'll stay out of your way as long as you never speak to me again." Shikanosuke pulled his blade back and slid it into its sheath. He turned his steed and galloped away, cursing himself for being so foolish as to accept a meeting with General Sue. He wanted something more out of it, but instead he went away with a sense of foreboding that made him feel physically ill.

     Harukata put the coins back in his bag and he swung onto his saddle. He watched the other samurai dash away with his bright carmine cloak billowing out behind him. He truly looked like the folk hero that everyone admired so much.

     The Ouchi general smirked and headed in the opposite direction. Just like all heroes, he was naive and blind to the truth.

     Maybe they weren't so alike after all.

[vagrant-soul]

Yet again, I got hooked by a stinger implying something interesting that wound up amounting to nothing, and I’m starting to feel like the lore is just never going to be able to escape the consequences of being built on an endless string of cliffhangers with disappointing exposition for resolution.

Extensive analysis of why the Empire narrative failed in 4.5 under the cut.

I really liked the twist where Varis was a knowing puppet of the Ascians; sure, it introduced another boring, flat villain characterized primarily by Crazyface, but it did so in a way that gave a character we were more familiar with, who has more emotional weight, a few more shades of complexity. 

Varis previously had one apparent goal (maintain + grow the Empire), a logistical struggle to attain that goal (defeat the warrior of light), and no apparent concerns outside of the scope of that goal beyond glimmers here and there that there might be something more going on beneath the surface (as with your first encounter with him in Heavensward, or when he dismisses his own son as a monster despite the apparent hypocrisy). The twist gave the story an opportunity to provide us with something other than a stock villain in a fancy tin can.

Except, of course it didn’t.

Varis shows his hand immediately, revealing that his solution to the tension and conflict created by the disadvantaged position we’ve just discovered is really just additional brute force. Jumping to any conclusion is disappointing when you’ve only just introduced a concept that leaves room for doubt, surprise, tension, character growth, and all the other things that make a story interesting, but the particulars of this conclusion are especially disappointing because it’s a very simplistic idea dressed up in complexities and contrivances.

His resolution - to kill the Ascians in order to permit humankind greater control of its own affairs, separate from divine meddling - is a plot point once again lifted directly from Final Fantasy XII. In FFXII, it was an excellent motivator for the villain that elegantly added dimension to the story, and that’s probably why it was chosen for reuse here - where it doesn’t work, because the two worlds have VERY different relationships to divinity and use their plot-moving God characters to different ends.

The Ascian narrative particulars have always been hazy, but their central purpose to the story has ALWAYS been to cut across the more political and human stories and play devils-ex-machina. They’re an easy, boring and perpetual threat that allow the player’s eye and the writer’s time to be drawn elsewhere. This is, in fact, the EXACT purpose Ascian-Solus serves; it creates unity in the story through keeping the Greater Evil consistent and it allows the human characters in the foreground the capacity for a little more depth. Crucially, the fact that they’re meddling is not the problem, as Hydaelyn meddles all the time and the narrative tends to agree this is Good - the problem is just that they’re evil (or “agents of chaos”, if you will).

The idea of adding a divergent motivation to a villain by proposing they team up with the heroes to defeat the Greater Evil is itself fine, but the constraint that made this interesting in FFXII is that said villain still had to do it at cross-purposes with the hero’s interests, goals, and well-being; they were still a villain, even if they were aligned on a single point. The writers clearly tried to achieve the same effect here, but because the greater evil in this case is not the silent hand of fate but a bunch of saturday morning cartoons, it became much more difficult to keep the Emperor villainous as well. They needed his methods to keep him antagonistic, and there wasn’t any tool on the table to let them do this besides to make up something arbitrary.

Varis’ proposal to kill the Ascians therefore involves just killing a load of people. In fact, it involves doing all the same stuff the Ascians want to do, except more. His plan heavily references FFXIV’s bloated and complex cosmology, introduced an expansion ago and entirely inconsequential ever since, making it difficult to recall as well. It also introduces a new, unexplained, unsubstantiated idea that going along with the Ascian’s desired plan to unite all the worlds will also, somehow, transmogrify everybody who didn’t die in the process into a race of ultra-peaceful super-humans that will then be able to rid the world of Ascian influence.

It’s a new, thinly explained concept that doesn’t have any connection to any of the narrative mechanics we’ve learned in the past. You can’t draw on past story experience to intuitively understand why this character believes this plan would work and is worth pursuing, because it has no basis in anything we’ve learned so far. 

The other problem is the story information we do have - just a few story-hours ago we were introduced to another character who has been hunting Ascians, manually, with, like, a sword and a gun. And he’s been, apparently, quite successful in this approach! Of course, we, the player, have also been pretty successful in a similar approach as well, and have killed 4 or 5 of what were once-12 Ascians in the course of doing other kinds of business. 

The net result is that Varis’ proposal appears both foolish and hasty. It’s a high-effort, high-cost, ???-reward proposition that closes the door on further introspection he or any other character might have about how to solve a difficult problem (i.e. “How do we free the empire of Ascian influence”) that might in turn create a new world state (i.e. “What does Garlemald look like WITHOUT that influence?”). It ignores proven, in-world story information in favor of something invented on the fly, making it obviously irrational to anyone who has taken even a cursory look at the other options. It doesn’t make him look complicated, dastardly, or cunning - it just primes us to expect another cartoon villain, this time with exciting new fascist overtones.

The most frustrating part isn’t the lost opportunities or the strain on believability or even the way the lore seems like an overly complex rusty jungle gym, duct-tape hastily applied to support whatever direction the writers care to go in this time. It’s that this one scenario I’ve written a thousand words on is a microcosm of the interplay between these problems and the greater ones they have created in the past. It just seems inevitable they’ll be repeated into the future.

[borealismcanada]

The Biophilia Effect

Nature Deficiency Disorder 

“The person who fully loves life is attracted by the process of life and growth in all spheres.” — Eric Fromm

I spend a lot of time in nature. Never as much as I’d like, but enough to keep me grounded through the turbulence of everyday life. In doing so, I’ve noticed a few things.

Primarily, there’s an urge inside of me that slowly builds up, louder and stronger with each passing day or week, calling me to go and get lost on the trails of a nearby national park. It’s a pressure valve, because once I do, my mind is once again calm, refueled and calibrated.

After an intense hike or mountain bike, swim or snowshoe, I find myself utterly relaxed, rejuvenated, at the tantalizing pinnacles of euphoria. I used to think that this was due to my physical exertion and the pleasant rush of endorphins that follow suit but, after suffering a broken collarbone and being reduced to leisurely strolls through the woods, I began to realize that there was something more at play.

Then I had stumbled upon the concept of Shinrin Yoku — the Japanese practice of Forest Bathing — a trend that developed in the late 80’s whereby people would stroll through the woods to experience somewhat of a forest therapy by opening their senses to the natural sentience of nature. I figured it to be nothing substantially more than a good way of living, of a healthy activity that helps clear the mind, get the blood moving and maybe infuse some needed fresh air into the lungs. But there seems to be more to it.

From there, it wasn’t long until I turned a corner and was met with the philosophy of Biophilia, a hypothesis credited to Eric Fromm, proposing that humans possess an innate tendency to seek connections with nature and are drawn towards all that is alive and vital. This is where things began to get interesting.

“Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.”— Frank Lloyd Wright

From a psychological perspective, the theory began to materialize a little bit more. As we in the West tend to need our materially-conclusive factum, the propositions extended by the concept of Biophilia became more concrete. Eric Fromm approached the matter from a Freudian perspective, finding that contact with nature is essential and crucial for the human psyche. He described a psychological orientation of being attracted to livelihood, that life seeks to be around other life and that these deep affiliations between life forms for one another are innately rooted in their biology.

This concept isn’t necessarily new, as it’s origins can be traced as far back as Aristotle and beyond, sometimes contextualized differently as something along the lines of symbiosis, synergy, naturalism, and the like.

Fromm’s approach, however, weaves in the biological impulse we seem to hold for preferring the natural over the unnatural, an affinity for anything with a pulse in a world that has becoming largely inanimate.

Collectively, we’re beginning to realize this. Biophilic-based design has been adopted into the trends of architecture and interior design — more and more designs incorporate plant life and greenery, a natural essence to an artificial presence. We can see the same thing taking shape with artificial intelligence, endeavors into renewable energy sources, and dietary or recreational lifestyles; we’re increasingly revering life in any form. Ultimately, we seem to have strayed too far from our natural origins and are now trying to reconcile with them — all this for good reason.

“The biophilous person prefers to construct rather than to retain. He wants to be more rather than to have more. He is capable of wondering, and he prefers to see something new rather than to find confirmation of the old. He loves the adventure of living more than he does certainty. He sees the whole rather than only the parts, structures rather than summations. He wants to mold and to influence by love, reason, and example.” — Eric Fromm

We’re coming to find that the absence of bioactive substances throughout life, whether at home or in the office, is aesthetically unpleasant and, as has been recently studied in more vigor, has undeniable effects on our mood. But what may be of more bewilderment is the actual scope in its physiological effect. Newest findings have shown that our physical health depends on influences of nature.

One such study conducted by a team of scientists, led by Marc Berman, assessed neighborhood greenspace as a health factor in a large urban center — Toronto. Drawing on comprehensive greenspace metrics and health records, overall findings indicated that residents who live among a higher density of trees reported ‘significantly higher health perception’ and ‘significantly less cardio-metabolic conditions’.

“We find that having 10 more trees in a city block, on average, improves health perception in ways comparable to an increase in annual personal income of $10,000 and moving to a neighborhood with $10,000 higher median income or being 7 years younger.” M. Berman et. al.

Several studies, beyond this one alone, have shown that exposure to greenspaces can be physiologically and psychologically beneficial through a number of means, including of course, self-perception. There are, of course, the obvious points — greener suburbs typically have greener residents in terms of lifestyle — despite this, physiological evidence has become apparent.

Is it so hard to accept that nature helps us maintain a healthy equilibrium beyond just the generally-accepted psychological benefits?

Human beings evolved in and with nature through hundreds of thousands of years. Moving into sealed, airtight conditions — can we be so sure that our biology has caught up to adapting to the fluorescent hums of offices or the closed artificial environments that we increasingly find ourselves in?

Beyond getting away from paint or exhaust fumes, we can look at the physical emissions of trees. Pines or coniferous trees, for instance, emit a class of chemical called terpenes, compounds that are increasingly being said to promote emotional and physical health. Terpenes have recently become all the rage with cannabinoids (THC and CBD oils) but are found in every corner of nature — shurbs and trees and plants all emitting this compound.

“Recently it’s been identified that the terpenes also act directly on brain cells to modulate their activity.” — Dr. Josh Kaplan, neuroscientist at The University of Washington

For myself, I don’t have to be convinced — I believe whole-heartedly that nature benefits more than just the mind. I feel that we have a hard time placing much emphasis on things we can’t see; water, for instance, is a staple to good health that we’ve accepted, but what of the countless microbial compounds that flow about in the air that we inhale or coat our skin so as to allow for epidermal absorption. We slap chemicals on our face or in our hair regularly, inhale artificial fragrances everywhere we go, and coat our skin with synthetics. But when it comes to simply being out in nature, we don’t tout the true benefits of what we’re really exposed to.

Personally, I stand firm in my belief that there’s more than just fresh air out there.

“I believe that man is the product of natural evolution that is born from the conflict of being a prisoner and separated from nature, and from the need to find unity and harmony with it.” — Eric Fromm

Read more: Borealism.ca 

Sources

https://savvytokyo.com/shinrin-yoku-the-japanese-art-of-forest-bathing/

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331364905_Initial_Evidence_of_the_Relationships_between_the_Human_Postmortem_Microbiome_and_Neighborhood_Blight_and_Greening_Efforts

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279989471_Neighborhood_greenspace_and_health_in_a_large_urban_center

https://fromm-online.org/en/biophilie-liebe-zum-lebendigen-biophilie/

[jkottke]

"Mr. Winston Churchill Presents His Compliments to Mr. Winston Churchill"

Before Sir Winston Churchill became a politician, he was a writer. In the late 1890s, Churchill published a pair of books about British war campaigns and continued writing throughout his life.

Around the same time, an American writer also named Winston Churchill was gaining popularity across the pond. His 1899 novel Richard Carvel sold 2 million copies and made him rich.

As the British Churchill recalled in an autobiography of his early life, around this time he reached out to his American counterpart to address the potential for their respective readers to confuse the two. In a letter dated June 7, 1899, it seems that Churchill had a bit of fun with it:

Mr. Winston Churchill presents his compliments to Mr. Winston Churchill, and begs to draw his attention to a matter which concerns them both. He has learnt from the Press notices that Mr. Winston Churchill proposes to bring out another novel, entitled Richard Carvel, which is certain to have a considerable sale both in England and America. Mr. Winston Churchill is also the author of a novel now being published in serial form in Macmillan's Magazine, and for which he anticipates some sale both in England and America. He also proposes to publish on the 1st of October another military chronicle on the Soudan War. He has no doubt that Mr. Winston Churchill will recognise from this letter -- if indeed by no other means -- that there is grave danger of his works being mistaken for those of Mr. Winston Churchill. He feels sure that Mr. Winston Churchill desires this as little as he does himself. In future to avoid mistakes as far as possible, Mr. Winston Churchill has decided to sign all published articles, stories, or other work, 'Winston Spencer Churchill', and not 'Winston Churchill' as formerly. He trusts that this arrangement will commend itself to Mr. Winston Churchill, and he ventures to suggest, with a view to preventing further confusion which may arise out of this extraordinary coincidence, that both Mr. Winston Churchill and Mr. Winston Churchill should insert a short note in their respective publications explaining to the public which are the works of Mr. Winston Churchill and which those of Mr. Winston Churchill. The text of this note might form a subject for future discussion if Mr. Winston Churchill agrees with Mr. Winston Churchill's proposition. He takes this occasion of complimenting Mr. Winston Churchill upon the style and success of his works, which are always brought to his notice whether in magazine or book form, and he trusts that Mr. Winston Churchill has derived equal pleasure from any work of his that may have attracted his attention.

The American Churchill answered back a couple of weeks later in similar fashion:

Mr. Winston Churchill is extremely grateful to Mr. Winston Churchill for bringing forward a subject which has given Mr. Winston Churchill much anxiety. Mr. Winston Churchill appreciates the courtesy of Mr. Winston Churchill in adopting the name of 'Winston Spencer Churchill' in his books, articles, etc. Mr. Winston Churchill makes haste to add that, had he possessed any other names, he would certainly have adopted one of them. The writings of Mr. Winston Spencer Churchill (henceforth so called) have been brought to Mr. Winston Churchill's notice since the publication of his first story in the 'Century'. It did not seem then to Mr. Winston Churchill that the works of Mr. Winston Spencer Churchill would conflict in any way with his own attempts at fiction.

The proposal of Mr. Winston Spencer Churchill to affix a note to the separate writings of Mr. Winston Spencer Churchill and Mr. Winston Churchill, the text of which is to be agreed on between them, -- is quite acceptable to Mr. Winston Churchill. If Mr. Winston Spencer Churchill will do him the favour of drawing up this note, there is little doubt that Mr. Winston Churchill will acquiesce in its particulars.

Mr. Winston Churchill moreover, is about to ask the opinion of his friends and of his publishers as to the advisability of inserting the words 'The American', after his name on the title-page of his books. Should this seem wise to them, he will request his publishers to make the change in future editions.

Mr. Winston Churchill will take the liberty of sending Mr. Winston Churchill copies of the two novels he has written. He has a high admiration for the works of Mr. Winston Spencer Churchill and is looking forward with pleasure to reading Savrola.

I couldn't find any evidence that either man ever placed a note into any of their books about the possible confusion, but their relationship was cordial. When Mr. Winston Spencer Churchill traveled to the US the next year, he was hosted by the American Mr. Winston Churchill -- "He entertained me at a very gay banquet of young men, and we made each other complimentary speeches." Nonetheless, the confusion continued: "all my mails were sent to his address and the bill for the dinner came in to me".

Eventually, the fame of the British politician and writer eclipsed that of his American counterpart, whose books slipped from public memory when he stopped writing and withdraw from public life. Mr. Winston Spencer Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. (via @jackshafer)

A shorter version of this post first appeared in this morning's Noticing newsletter. You can subscribe to Noticing right here.

[paladin-andric]

Jotober, Day 9: Precious

A bit of a happy short for you all, featuring a favorite character of mine...

Wind gently breezing, the beast moved through the sky. The winged lizard moved toward the city.

A dragon.

The people had been debating about this all day. The old empire had been destroyed, individual towns, villages and cities ripe for the taking. What the other races didn’t conquer or reconquer, the dragons took. With no real system of law in place besides cultural norms and taboos, the dragons all rushed about the humans’ lands, taking whatever uncontested land they could and declaring it theirs.

The humans living there were their property, in the dragons’ eyes. Most of them, at least. They COULD exterminate them, but the populations of the cities had already been slaughtered so much that there weren’t many left in the first place. Most new dragon “lords” treated the populace as a source of income, and nothing more. They taxed and taxed, bleeding the people dry to gather their own personal hoard.

Well, there were a few exceptions. The dragons, though united in their conquest, were now bound to no law or leader. Completely operating by their own merits and ideals, their treatment of the people varied, from brutal oppression to benign neglect.

With the dragon overlords came conflict. As more and more territory was claimed, the “free” cities and towns were becoming very low in number. Draconic norms and codes of honor had resulted in peace thus far, but there were more dragons than towns. Some arrogance and rivalries would result in bloodshed, eventually.

It was these things the council debated. They were a major city out in the open, thus far unclaimed. What would they do when a dragon came? Arguments all the way from fighting to the last man to groveling for mercy were brought up, but they had their consensus now.

They would ask for partial autonomy, showering the dragon in gifts and treating it with honor if the beast accepted. If a hike in taxes was the only difference in city life, they would just have to deal with it.

If the beast murdered randomly and tormented them however, they would resist. Likely fruitlessly, but there were some things no human being would tolerate.

Now, a dragon approached, their plan put into action. A few people came outside to greet it, with archers on the walls. They were told to ‘go for the eyes’, the only thing not covered in impenetrable scales.

The dragon landed. It had black scales...a horrifying realization. These were rumored to only feel emotions when relishing in torturing and killing. This was the worst possible outcome. Out of any type of multitudes of dragon in the known world...they just had to get a black dragon.

Were negotiations even possible?

They noted that the dragon was very small...by draconic standards anyway. It was either just barely reaching adulthood, or was still near the end of adolescence. Well, that was...good? Maybe it wasn’t experienced in diplomacy. They could make it think it was getting a much better deal than it was, perhaps.

A man approached, offering a bow. “Greetings. Welcome to Pasir.”

The dragon seemed to be, well...appraising them, eyes running over every person there with vested interest. What did it plan? Were they all about to die?

Nervous, the man continued. “I am Vercan. I represent the mayor of Pasir. I’m here to negotiate with our new...ruler.”

More silence. A smile slowly formed on the dragon’s face. What horrid torture fantasies were running through its head?

“Ah, we, had some propositions on the shifting of power, and your lordship. Perhaps you might like to hear some of these proposals…?”

The grinning dragon finally spoke. “Lordship…?” its voice was shockingly soft and gentle.

“Err, yes. That is why you have come, no? To claim this land as yours?”

The dragon let out a soft chuckle. “First of all, that is LADYship to you, sir…”

“O-oh! Terribly sorry, Lad-”

“And secondly...I suppose, while technically true...I have no interest in being your mistress. You may put me down as the ruler of Pasir on parchment, but...I am not here to tell you what to do.”

A few people looked at one another in confusion and surprise. The diplomat, Vercan, retorted. “The people may need your clarification...what is it you intend? We had a reorganized legal system made to incorporate your rule ready for you to review…”

“I just...wanted to learn more about you all. I am certain you can tell, but...I am very young and inexperienced,” she gestured to herself, “I have never met humans before, and well...I just had to see for myself! And my goodness, are you so precious!”

Everyone was taken aback by this. Even the militiamen on the walls lowered their bows and looked at each other with both amused and incredulous looks on their faces, as if saying to one other, “Can you believe this?”

“Err...I’m sorry?”

“Oh you are just so small, and yet courageous, facing me plainly! I do so admire your resolve! You impress me, good sirs!”

“I...thank you?” Vercan, experienced in diplomacy as he was, couldn’t keep a straight face. He shook his head in disbelief.

“I would just love to learn more about you all! I would like to stay and speak with you daily, learning of your activities and culture! Could I do that? Would that please you?”

The dragon had a look of anticipation and excitement on her face, as if a child who had just been told they would be getting sweets.

Vercan, recovering, put on a false smile, still inwardly in disbelief. “Nothing would make us happier, Lady…?”

“Ah! Oh, goodness! How could I forget to introduce myself! How rude! I hope you will excuse this slight. I am...Gira!”

“Well, Lady Gira...you said you would be taking the mantle of Lady of Pasir, correct? Yet you also said you don’t want to rule...what is it you WOULD like, than?”

Gira scratched her chin with a claw. “Hmm...oh, I know! Do you have any sick or injured? If so, bring them to me!”

Vercan managed to hide his shock and fear, though some broke through the facade. “Are you...culling the weak?”

Gira look horrified. “N-no, never! I would never harm a hair on any of your lovely heads, humans! I promise, I am only trying to help!”

The diplomat grimaced. He wasn’t sure that was true, but to maintain good relations with their new “ruler”...

“...very well. I will speak with the people.”

A few people emerged from the gates, two groups carrying two different people. The first was an older looking bearded man, covered in bandages all over. There were even wraps over one of his eyes. The second was a young woman, covered in pustules and slick, greenish skin. Her eyes were vacant, as if she was unaware of everything around her.

“Oh, no! What is this?” Gira asked, looking at the two with concern written on her face.

“This is Mikkos,” Vercan pointed at the man, “He’s an herbalist. He was out foraging when he was attacked, and then mauled by a wolf. Gregory, a hunter, heard his screams and just barely got there in time. He’s been ruined, and the poor man’s lost an eye.”

“Oh dear!” Gira cried, genuine sorrow apparent in her eyes.

“And this is Rhea,” Vercan announced, pointing to the woman, “She came down with...some kind of horrid pox. No one knows what it is, but she lives in agony. We fear it to be contagious as well, so...these brave volunteers that brought her to you...whatever it is you’re planning, I hope it was worth it.”

Gira gasped. “Oh, no! Please, you fellows, place the two on the ground before me! You bringers of Rhea, stay as well! I shall aid you all!”

The two groups complied, bringing the two close and laying them in the grass before the dragon.

“Wonderful! Now...this may be frightening for you, but just remember that there is nothing to worry about! I am here to help, this I swear!”

Varcan frowned. “W-what is it you’re planning on doing, Lady Gira?”

“Just trust me!” the dragon exclaimed happily, “And please...just Gira will do! Now...” She lowered her gaze to the sick woman and injured man, those that had brought them standing beside the two. The dragon, for the first time, didn’t have an excited or joyful expression.

If he could place it, Varcan would wager she looked...determined. He wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

Suddenly, she reared back, moving back and then forward as she opened her maw. For a split second, Vercan thought they had been had, and she was about to devour the two. Why she wanted to eat a diseased peasant, he didn’t know.

Instead, she leaned close and blew a strange, blue mist over the group. As everyone watched, the boils on Rhea shrank, and shrank, and shrank, until they were all gone, and her skin was back to the normal, pale complexion that it had been before the illness.

Both her and Mikkos sat up, suddenly fully awake and energetic. The man tore at the bandages on his face, revealing...a perfectly fine, functioning eye! As he tore at the rest of his wrappings, he found no slices or gashes, and no scars...it was as if he was never attacked in the first place.

Gira looked to be absolutely beaming with pride and joy as everyone else stared with gaping mouths.

“There! See? I told you all that you could trust me!”

“W-what…? How…?”

Gira continued grinning. “My father was a black dragon, and my mother was a white dragon! Though I completely inherited my father’s scales, I inherited the healing breath of a white dragon! I can only help you with this power!”

She pointed at the citizens that had carried Rhea. “And you! If you did happen to catch anything from bringing the fair Rhea here...my magic has surely purged it from your systems!”

As Mikkos and Rhea stood up, looking up in wonder, Vercan approached, bowing. “L-Lady Gira, on behalf of the Council and People of the City of Pasir...I offer you our deepest, sincerest thanks.”

“Oh, it is nothing!” Gira said shyly, “I just...like helping you, is all!”

“It is NOT nothing, Lady Gira...if there is ever anything we could offer you…”

“I said Gira would do!” the dragon cried, eyes averted in a show of timidness, “I-I am not your mistress! I do not mean to turn this into obedience! Please, I will take you up on this offer, but...I only ask to be allowed to stay beside the city, allowed to speak with your fine people as I reside here!”

“...of course. If that is what you want, you are more than welcome to stay wherever you wish...Gira.”

A sudden roar in the distance grabbed everyone’s attention. Far up in the sky, another dragon approached...headed right for Pasir!

Gira’s head shot up in alarm. “Quickly! Get behind me!”

No one asked questions. Everyone moved behind the admittedly small, black dragon as she turned and stood as imposingly as she could, facing the newcomer.

The other dragon, red in color, noticed her, quickly shifting its flight to the side, passing by Pasir in search of different territory.

Everyone was silent as this happened, until the red dragon was finally gone over the horizon.

Gira turned back and smiled. “There! We are safe! Do you see now? As your technical ‘ruler’ I show the other dragons that these lands are considered occupied, and so they are not allowed to impose on you!”

Vercan shook his head. “You can heal all of our people, and turn away other dragons, sparing us all from their tyranny and wrath...and you ask for nothing more than to live here in return?”

“Correct!” Gira said happily, “I am simply dying to meet you all, and learn more about all of you! You can do whatever you want, I will not be dismantling whatever old system you had in place, surely I would only muck up the effectiveness of it!” she said with a laugh.

“So...you do not want to divert the treasury funds to your own collection?”

“Oh, how silly! What use do I have for coins?” Gira asked, “It is not like I will be buying tomatoes from a market! I will sustain myself, and you will do, well...whatever it is you do! I just want to be your friend and helper, is all!”

She looked over the crowd. Those humans, all looking amused and in awe…

Goodness, how precious they are!

Tag list: @thereisnothingwrongwithbeingmad, @lady-redshield-writes, @paper-shield-and-wooden-sword, @sheralynnramsey, @the-true-shadowmaster, @tawnywrites, @writer-on-time, @oceanwriter, @zwergis-spilledink, @fluffpiggy, @elliewritesfantasy, @homesteadhorner, @laurenwastestimewriting

[sparklyjojos]

[THE CHILDISH DARKNESS Recaps, Chapter 7]

[tw: gore, child abuse, bad things happen to a dog again]

-------

SEVEN

Saburou never had to use his imagination to describe what violence would look like in his books. Personal experience was enough. He’d been living with the storm of violence called Jirou under one roof for years.

Once when Saburou and Jirou were on their way home from school, they were attacked by a gang of three boys. Jirou barely broke a sweat severely beating them up. Naturally, as someone who enjoyed playing with his victims he wouldn’t just let the three go. Instead he brought a small dog with him, some kind of a small brown terrier wearing a collar, and had one of the hapless attackers do an unspeakable act to it. This event resulted in serious injury to both the boy and the dog. Jirou didn’t even glance at the terrified group as he picked up the wounded animal and took it to a vet clinic, even if he’d been the one at fault. In the end, the dog survived, and Jirou returned home laughing that he should have used a horse instead.

Saburou was confused by the shape of violence in his house. After beating Jirou, Maruo would often cry alone, and Jirou always had tears in his eyes when lashing back. No doubt Jirou loved and hated his father at the same time, the father who wasn’t able to outwardly show his love towards Jirou.

When Jirou was in middle school, he once beat up another student so badly that his furious father drove to the Natsukawa house. But before he could even enter the house, Jirou immediately pounced upon him and beat him savagely while straddling his chest, the same manner of violence that Maruo always used. This time, Jirou wasn’t laughing at all. He only snapped out of it and stopped the assault once the man’s son arrived and desperately threw himself between the two. Maybe only at this moment did crying Jirou remember that this was someone else’s father, and not his own. After that, Jirou got into less fights, claiming that they were a bother.

What is love? Why does it give birth to violence? Why does it sometimes make us hurt the ones we love? Maybe Maruo and Jirou wouldn’t stop their conflict until one or both were killed or until someone else died.

Then again, Saburou had a thought that if he were to die, he’d just get instantly forgotten. Poor Mercutio in the middle of a greater tragedy.

--

By the time March came around Yurio seemed happier, even if she still sometimes had a spell of apologizing to her dead boyfriend, or stood by Saburou’s bed in the middle of the night telling him to die. Maybe it’d be better if she left this cursed house. That being said, when Saburou contacted her parents, they said that they’d rather have her go to a good institution than have her stay at their house in that condition. Saburou didn’t want to hear about that possibility. He wouldn’t give up on Yurio. Atena and Shirou had already been taking good medical care of her, and besides, Yurio surely wouldn’t feel good in an institution full of strangers.

Or maybe he was mistaken and really just pulling Yurio into the vortex of his own emotions instead of doing what would be the best for her.

Yurio would cry and say “I love you, Saburou” while beating him so badly Shirou and Atena had to restrain her. But Saburou felt as if it was his duty to get beaten up by her. After all, he was the one who kept dragging her into his own emotional turmoils. The crime and the punishment. Every punch sparked a little joy inside him.

Maybe he really shouldn’t be comforting her after each time she lashed out. Maybe he shouldn’t say that since he loved her, it was alright.

One night, she broke his finger while laughing and crying uncontrollably, but Saburou refused Shirou’s proposition to go get some rest in a calmer place for a few days. This was a punishment he had to take.

--

One day, Shirou said that Saburou really should try to catch whoever had killed Yurio’s boyfriend Hashimoto. No doubt the girl had been hoping all this time that Saburou would be able to bring the killer to justice. She was still thinking about poor Hashimoto, whose body had been found tied to a ping pong table in the middle of a school courtyard, his legs, arms, and head cut off, a note about the “Death God Jawakutora” attached.

Saburou retorted that there wasn’t anything he could do, to which Shirou told him to try, goddamit!, and that people often repeated they couldn’t do something that they just didn’t want to try. During the argument Shirou punched him so hard that he lost consciousness.

When Saburou woke up, Yurio had been in the middle of carving bloody letters into his chest:

LOV

“It’s alright,” he told her when she tried to run away in tears. “It’s alright, it’s alright, it’s alright.”

Was it really alright? He had to start moving. He’d have to catch Hashimoto’s murderer before Yurio tried to pull out his still beating heart.

--

Shirou had already gathered useful data for him and spread it on the kitchen table.

“Before I share my thoughts about the case, I’d like you to look at the evidence and tell me what you think of it. Someone who wrote a bunch of stupid mystery novels can’t be that bad at figuring things out. Do your best, Ehimegawa Juuzou.”

The victims, all found naked and with a note saying ‘Death God Jawakutora’, all in Nishi Akatsuki or nearby towns:

-- Hashimoto Takashi – as mentioned, his body had arms, legs and head cut off. Marks of strong impact on the body. Cause of death: decapitation. The body parts were wet with tap water. Lack of blood suggested Hashimoto had been murdered in a place different than the schoolyard where he was found.

-- Ogata Shuuichi (43) who had been impaled from mouth to bottom with a wooden pole, which was then stood vertically by an elementary school near the victim’s house in Imadate. The body showed marks as if it had been tied with rope several times around the chest. Cause of death: impalement. Like with Hashimoto, the murder must have been commited in another place.

-- Amaya Yoshiaki (31) and Ogaya Masayuki (32) who were killed by hitting a concrete parking lot in Takefu many times in a row, each time landing face down. It was estimated that each time they had fallen from 10 m, probably from the window on the fourth floor of the elementary school the parking lot belonged to. The victims’ arms and legs bore rope marks.

-- Sakamoto Rio (27) -- found with most his bones broken, the resulting internal trauma being the cause of death. Once again found in Takefu by an elementary school (but a different one than the two victims above). Near the body stood two poles usually used to support the bar in high jump.

-- Nanbu Takahiro (18) – found next to a middle school in Imadate, impaled with a pole from bottom to top. His arms had been cut off, and investigation concluded that his severed head had been violently pushed onto the end of the pole several times. The cause of death was blood loss.

Saburou noticed that all the bodies were found near a school. The note “Death God Jawakutora” could come from its follower, maybe someone calling themselves Jawakutora, but it could also be a proclamation: “death TO God Jawakutora”. Saburou proposed that if Jirou really was connected to Jawakutora, then the murders could be his doing (Shirou was for now staying silent with his own judgment).

Next, Saburou wondered if there was mitate involved. Every murder scene could symbolize a different historical execution method. He couldn’t find any execution methods that would resemble exactly what happened to Hashimoto, however. The boy’s torso had been cut into several pieces like a squid tentacle cut into rings.

Thinking about Hashimoto, Saburou figured out the source of the water. The victim’s body had been frozen so that the body slices wouldn’t spill out their contents. The murderer must have wanted to keep those slices in shape for whatever reason.

Another confounding thing was the first impalement. The pole had been driven through the body in the other direction than in historical executions, with the sharp end stuck into the ground. And what about the unexplained rope marks? Saburou thought that maybe the rope was used on many victims to hide its significance in a single crime scene (“hide a tree in a forest”), but quickly dismissed it as a stupid concept from ridiculous mystery novels.

Next, the two victims who had been thrown out a window. Why do it more than once? Why have the victim always hit the ground face-down and never with their back or side? Maybe the murderer wanted to make sure the two would die, but then why not throw them from somewhere higher like the school’s easily accessible roof?

Then there was Sakamoto, also considered to have hit the ground many times in quick succession, but from relatively smaller height, almost as if somebody performed a wrestling move on him over and over again until all his bones were broken.

As for Nanbu, why would the murderer repeatedly push the head onto the pole?

Saburou didn’t get it at all, so he raised his head to ask Shirou, but Shirou had already fallen asleep on the couch.

“The hell, figure something out first before you wake me up!” he complained after being shaken awake.

“Why should I be the only one here who’s actually trying to think?!”

“Because Yurio wants you to think. Today at the therapy she said stuff like ‘Saburou isn’t serious about doing a single thing!’, ‘He won’t even face me properly!’. If a 13-year-old girl’s roasting you like this, then it’s over, bro! Wake me up when you find something, OK?”

Saburou tried, but couldn’t think of anything more. He went to the kitchen and sunk into the darkness of the storage again, thinking, thinking, thinking. Just like he had closed himself off in the darkness of the warehouse after Runbaba’s death.

Tired of thinking, Saburou fell asleep and had a dream.

--

Saburou and his three brothers were still children, playing outside the Nishi Akatsuki elementary school. Yurio showed up, somehow older than them, and proposed that they play jump rope. When they said they didn’t have any rope, she pulled out a knife and asked the kids to hold Saburou down. Saburou felt uneasy, but his brothers were all laughing cheerfully, so he smiled too. Yurio sliced his abdomen open and pulled out his instestines, and his brothers used them as their jump rope. It didn’t really hurt, although Saburou was a little concerned how they’d put everything back later. But his brothers and Yurio were all laughing, so he laughed too.

--

Saburou woke up and returned to the living room. Shirou didn’t appreciate being stirred awake once again, but Saburou was really at the end of his rope with the case. He related what little he had figured out.

“I think we should forget about the execution methods idea,” Shirou said. “Let’s try to look at it from a different point of view… hm?” Suddenly he brightened up. “I know! I know what the murderer did! Ha ha ha!” But he refused to tell Saburou anything before leaving. “I’ll swing by the crime scenes to make sure!”

“Wait, Shirou! Just give me a hint!”

“It’s a child! Children play! And children’s games are sometimes cruel!”

--

A few hours later Shirou stil hadn’t come back home and didn’t answer the phone, so Saburou decided to check the crime scenes and find him, taking Yurio along as it was better than leaving her all alone in the house. The two headed to the Nishi Akatsuki middle school. Saburou had Yurio wait outside and entered the staff room. Despite the late hour, three teachers were still there. They instantly recognized their former student Saburou – then again, it’s not like there was a single person in Nishi Akatsuki that didn’t know what the Natsukawas looked like, especially after the Nozaki case. According to the teachers, Shirou had shown up some time ago claiming to be looking for footprints.

When Saburou left the staff room, Yurio had disappeared. He quickly spotted her alone in the schoolyard, shaking all over. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to take her to where her boyfriend had been killed. But as Saburou came closer, he realized it wasn’t Yurio.

The ghostly pale girl was standing there.

Saburou closed his eyes in fear.

“You’ll protect me, right, Saburou?”

He opened his eyes. Yurio was standing in front of him, crying, and he had a sudden feeling that she’s going to hurt him. He took a step back. She took a step forward.

“Saburou. Saburou. Saburou.”

Her face morphed into the ghostly pale girl, her eyes completely black.

“Don’t run away. Protect me.”

He tripped and fell together with her, closing his eyes on instinct. When he opened them again, it was Yurio looking down at him, crying in despair.

This time he found himself only able to embrace her after a long moment.

“I’m sorry, Saburou, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for being such a child.”

A child. Didn’t Shirou say…

Saburou realized just what Shirou meant. ‘Children’s games are sometimes cruel’. The murders didn’t symbolize execution methods, but different games. Now that he thought about it, didn’t he have a dream about a bloody edition of jump rope? It’s like his mind actually had figured the truth out and attempted to tell him! Just like his body in the dream, the victims’ bodies all served as toys for the murderer:

-- Hashimoto – daruma-otoshi, a game in which a daruma doll is placed on top of several round pieces of wood, and the player hits the pieces out with a hammer trying to get the doll to the ground without it falling off. That’s why the murderer had to freeze the body and make sure the round pieces wouldn’t fall apart. The limbs were cut off so they didn’t get in the way, and the severed head played the role of the daruma.

-- the reverse-impaled man – a spinning top. This explained why the sharp end of the pole had to face the ground. The victim was additionally tied to the pole with rope to keep balance while spinning.

-- the couple in the parking lot – menko, in which one player throws a card on the ground, and the other tries to throw his own card in such a way that it overturned the first one. The victims’ arms and legs were bound with rope so that they could be thrown flat on the ground like cards.

-- Sakamoto – served as a pachinko ball. He was sent flying multiple times like from a slingshot using a rubber tape stretched on the two poles. Repeatedly hitting the ground and other objects broke most his bones.

-- Nanbu – kendama, a variant of the cup-and-ball game in which the player tries to catch a ball onto a spike or into cups… or in this case, tries to catch a head onto the sharp end of the pole or the wounds where arms had once been.

There was no doubt that the murderer had used the victims as toys. But what child could play with toys that giant?

--

Shirou still didn’t answer his phone, and quick calls to all the other schools proved that he hadn’t showed up at any of them lately. Atena and Shirou’s various friends didn’t know where he had gone either. No way Shirou was just laying low trying to catch the murderer, he was the type of guy to go around loud and flashy at all times. Had he been the one to be caught instead this time? He’d said he would examine the crime scenes once more…

Saburou remembered a line from The Silence of the Lambs.

Clarice, does this random scattering of sites seem overdone to you? Doesn’t it seem desperately random? Random past all possible convenience? Does it suggest to you the elaborations of a bad liar?

Was it the case here too? Could this revelation lead Saburou to find the murderer’s hiding place?

What is the first and principal thing he does, Hannibal Lecter also said, what need does he serve by killing? He covets. (…) How do we begin to covet, Clarice? (…) We begin by coveting what we see every day.

Hashimoto had been killed first. A student of this school. Probably murdered somewhere in the school grounds. What person had had the ability to see him every day? The killer had to be someone living in Nishi Akatsuki, and since Shirou hadn’t gone to any other crime scene, it’s likely he and the murderer ran into each other somewhere near the school. Could a student be killing people?

Saburou along with Yurio returned to the staff room and asked for a list of all the people that had been at the school that day. Saburou’s former physics teacher Kamimura Tetsurou, who had only just entered the staff room too, quickly wrote down all the names for him, claiming he remembered them perfectly.

The list consisted of 38 people. None of them was Shirou’s. Maybe the old teacher just forgot about him, but how on earth do you miss someone so obnoxious?

“I think I’ll head to your house next, professor,” Saburou said.

Kamimura moved like lightning, but Saburou was faster. He wrenched the knife out of the teacher’s hand. Yurio picked the knife up from where it fell and before anyone realized what was happening stabbed it into Kamimura’s neck.

--

“I’m sorry, Saburou,” Yurio cried as they were escaping in his car, “I’m sorry, I thought he hurt you so I stabbed him, I thought you were hurt…”

Saburou was silent as he pulled up by Kamimura’s house. Never in his life would he think that it’d come to this. That he would kill his own teacher.

That he would kill?

Yes. Even if Yurio was the one holding the knife, things she did were things he did too. Her actions were his actions.

Shirou. Where’s Shirou? Was he still alive or already turned into some grotesque toy? To think Shirou could possibly be dead, this cursed and smart and obnoxious and always blunt and wonderful little brother of his, to think Shirou could never again criticize his books or tell him to go fucking die…

No. He couldn’t lose Shirou. He didn’t want to be left alone in the darkness.

He bolted out of the car. Shirou’s Bentz had still been parked by Kamimura’s house. The house itself was dark and quiet. Saburou entered it yelling Shirou’s name again and again.

“Dad?” came a quiet voice in response, in childish tone but an adult pitch.

Someone was in the storage under the kitchen floor. Who was that? Would Saburou open the trapdoor only to find himself there, curled in the darkness?

“Dad, let me out!”

Saburou opened the trapdoor and saw a long empty room with a ladder leading further underground.

“Dad!”

The voice came closer, but there had to be yet another wall between them, so Saburou felt safe going down the ladder. A sound of something hitting against something else echoed.

“Dad, let me out already!”

Saburou started climbing down another ladder.

“Dad, let’s go and play already!”

This room was empty too, but in the light of a few lamps Saburou could see another trapdoor surrounded by a puddle of fresh blood. If it belonged to Shirou, then Saburou was more than ready to enact a terrifying revenge upon whoever hid there further down. He opened the last trapdoor.

From the darkness climbed out a monster. A giant naked man – four meters tall and even more in width -- with his head big and round, skin as white as a snowman’s, and fingers as thick as Saburou’s wrists. The monstrous man was dragging Shirou’s bloody limp body behind him.

Saburou’s world turned on its head.

He moved back to the house, found an axe in the garage and wielding it returned underground. Shirou was now lying discarded and completely still on the floor.

“What are we going to play today, dad?” The giant was smiling.

“Let’s see -- a game of murder out of love!”

A moment of wild flailing with an axe later the giant became little more than a bloody pool, but before Saburou could completely pulverize the body, he heard a noise and turned around to find Shirou had regained consciousness. Axe forgotten, Saburou pulled his brother up all the way to the kitchen. His warm, living brother.

Shirou said later that the child from under the floor had grown so big because he had been raised in an ozone-rich atmosphere, much like vegetables that grow better in that condition. [Whatever you say, Maijo.] Kamimura must have experimented on the child for whatever reason.

--

When Saburou had used the axe, his chest was bursting with a feeling of love. For whom? Shirou, Yurio, someone else? He only realized this later, but with every swing of the axe he had been chanting ‘It’s alright, it’s alright, it’s alright”. Who was he saying that to? Maybe to himself. To remember he was still alright.

Maybe that love he had felt was directed at that giant kid. Maybe, in a way, Saburou saved him by taking his life.

Wasn’t death the best option for someone who only hurt people, and didn’t really know anything, and spent his days alone in the darkness underground?

--

 “I love you, Yurio,” he said. “I’ll protect you. Please finish writing what you started.”

Yurio hesitated, but after his reassurance took the knife and carved the rest of the phrase into his chest:

LOVE ME TENDER

[>>>NEXT>>>]

[feedbackest]

The Cycle of Conflict and Everyday Tranquility in Breath of the Wild: a Critical Reading

Long post and major Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild spoilers under the cut. Google Drive mirror for anyone who doesn’t want to read on tumblr.

Breath of the Wild’s story caught me off guard. I was expecting simple, and I guess what I got was simple. Maybe I was underestimating the Legend of Zelda franchise, this may be the first game in the series I’ve actually played but I know Nintendo—and maybe more so the fans—love Zelda stories; however, despite its barebones plot framework and overall story presentation, the game delivered on a level of thematic depth I normally find sorely lacking from most video games as a whole. All I thought I would get going in was a basic beat-the-baddie-save-the-world plot and some environmental storytelling, both typical of well-acclaimed open-world games nowadays, and I got both of those, but on top of that Breath of the Wild presented narrative concepts that niggled in the back of my head well after playing enough to, well, inspire me to write around 800 words about the topic for no real reason.

Ganon’s back. Again. This might seem like an obvious point—I mean, it’s a Zelda game, of course Ganon’s back—but it’s relevant to the point the game’s trying to make: Ganon is back because Hyrule can’t get rid of him. Last time, he won, Link mortally wounded and Zelda captive in Hyrule Castle; this time, he won’t, and before this he’s “been back” for every other encounter with Link and Zelda in every other Legend of Zelda game; they can’t get rid of him. And there’s no reason to believe that this time will be the time he’s be gone for good, and every time he pops up again Hylia will choose a new champion to defeat him. With all of this, Breath of the Wild poses the question: are we, as in us, doomed to forever repeat the same cycles of conflict? Is there any way out, or, regardless of who wins in an individual skirmish, are we simply doomed to keep repeating the same problems and fights of all our history? Even beyond the overall story and how it fits into the lore, the game reflects this in one of the core game elements present throughout any playthrough: the blood moons. You can never truly remove the enemies from Hyrule, defeat any random Bokoblin or enemy camp or Lynel and they’ll all just be right back where they were before you even hit them. Hell, there isn’t even a postgame, if you do beat Ganon he doesn’t even go away, you just get a little white star on your save file while he continues to swirl around the castle and dominate the landscape—some would call this a simple design oversight, but it works awfully well with the game’s proposition that there is no end for the eternal fighting that besets humanity. As far as Breath of the Wild is concerned, there is no way out, and no matter what will we may have we are stuck with conflicts much larger than us always looming overhead.

If Breath of the Wild seems to have such a hopeless outlook for the fate of humanity, what does it propose we do? Quite simply, it says, nothing. Let those forces battle it out; we have no real control over it anyway, whatever the outcome may be the only task we have is to live our lives. However much the conflict between Link and Ganon rages on, the squirrels and the trees and the hot-footed frogs take no notice. No matter how dire or pressing the calamity may be, in Breath of the Wild there’s always tranquility to be found in nature and in the settlements that dot Hyrule, as the deer continue to roam and Tarry Town continues to be built. Link has to fight Ganon because that’s what Link was destined to do, and nobody, aside from those directly contracted by Zelda a century ago, can change that. When faced with impending disaster of world destructive consequences, Breath of the Wild peacefully says, “I cannot change that, and the only thing I may do is live for the world and the people around me, as I have always done and as I will forever continue to do.” Beneath any layers of deterministic nihilism that the game wears, and at the core is a deep sense of serenity underlying anything stress the game might sport. There are sights to see, landmarks to visit, people to meet, wildlife to witness, and a world to get lost in; “With so many details to appreciate,” it asks, “what’s the point in caring that the whole picture is grim?”

Which is what Breath of the Wild is about, a sense of where you are and the space you take up; let Link deal with the Ganon problem, that’s his role, and let him deal with it every time Ganon rears his ugly face again; everyone else can simply busy themselves with the ever present beauties of life.

[thesparkjournal]

WHAT IS LEFT FOR PHILOSOPHY? A DISAGREEMENT WITH STEPHEN HAWKING

By René Simard

Hawking in action, explaining black holes.(2018) [Redux/Muir Vidler]

Physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking, who died on March 14th, was an inspiration not only because of his spectacular scientific achievements in the face of the neuronal disorder that gradually paralyzed him over the years. He deserves credit for progressive political stands on behalf of the environment and the campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people. But that needn’t stop us from debating with Hawking over what he had to say about philosophy.

***

In a conference for Google Zeitgeist in 2015, Stephen Hawking repeated what was already found in his book Grand Design, written jointly with Leonard Mlodinow. Here is what he wrote there:

Humans are a curious species. We wonder, we seek answers. Living in this vast world that is by turns kind and cruel, and gazing at the immense heavens above, people have always asked a multitude of questions: How can we understand the world in which we find ourselves? How does the universe behave? What is the nature of reality? Where did all this come from? Did the universe need a creator? Most of us do not spend most of our time worrying about these questions, but almost all of us worry about them some of the time. Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge. The purpose of this book is to give the answers that are suggested by recent discoveries and theoretical advances.1

If Hawking is right, philosophy cannot respond to such gazing or wondering as has been traditionally considered the beginning of philosophy.2

The reason for such hostility towards  philosophy is perhaps the mistake made in expecting that particular discipline to provide us with definitive answers. For, according to Bertrand Russell, “The value of philosophy is, in fact, to be sought largely in its very uncertainty,”3  Then, once definite knowledge on a subject is possible, that subject does not belong to philosophy any more and turns into a science. This has indeed been true about cosmology, and astronomy, for instance. So Hawking faults philosophy because it does not give us a supply of uncontested, demonstrable truths, and this lack of definite answerability is considered to be a characteristic feature of philosophical questions.4

Russell is not alone in this assessment. In Qu’est-ce que la philosophie? (What is Philosophy?), Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari say, “What science is about isn’t concepts, but [mathematical] functions that are given as propositions in discursive systems. The elements of functions are called functors. A scientific notion is not determined by concepts but by functions.”5

Let us reformulate our initial question – What is left for philosophy? – in the framework of the three questions that Immanuel Kant thought his whole philosophy aimed at answering: What can I know? (the question he responds to in the Critique of Pure Reason); What do I have to do? (to which he responds in the Critique of Practical Reason and The Metaphysics of Morals); and, What may I hope? (to which he responds in several works, particularly Religion within the Boundaries of Reason Alone). While scientists such as Hawking can say that philosophy has nothing to say about the first question, the second and third questions, thanks to their nature, might seem to remain for philosophy.

In what follows we can see a response by the philosopher of practice – Marx6, who, unlike Deleuze, does not foresee a future for philosophy if it does not get past itself.

In the Eleventh Thesis in Marx’s “Theses on Feuerbach”, which Marx wrote in 1845, we read, “The philosophers have merely interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it”.7

Bees constructing new comb. (n.d.) [Public Domain]

We can see that in saying this Marx is offering a response to at least the second and third of Kant’s three questions. These are matters that remain beyond purely scientific demonstrability. But one may ask if Marx thinks that this changing of the world is on the agenda for the first time in his own epoch. An answer to this can be found in the first volume of Capital, where he writes about what distinguishes us from animals:  

A spider conducts operations which resemble those of the weaver, and a bee would put many a human architect to shame by the construction of its honeycomb cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is that the architect builds the cell in his mind before he constructs it in wax. At the end of every labour process, a result emerges which had already been conceived by the worker at the beginning, hence already existed ideally.8

Here Marx acknowledges that even a bee changes its life. In order for an organism to change its physical environment the only necessary condition is its existence.9 This point, recently discussed in the philosophy of biology, was already recognized by Marx.  But it is necessary from the very beginning to draw a distinction between biological changing and human changing.

It is possible to go even further and emphasize the point that Marx doesn’t say for whom it is important to change the world. Is the second part of Thesis Eleven the problem of philosophers also? Who, after all, is it that has to change the world? According to the understanding being proposed here, the question for Marx is not whether philosophers should or should not change the world: in a sense, they do that in their daily life. What important is, in a different sense, to replace this world with another one.

Marx’s slogan is therefore not “let’s change the world”, but “let’s change the world by replacing the existing world with the true reality”. The textual support for this reading may be found in Marx’s letter to Arnold Ruge of September1843:

Reason has always existed, but not always in a rational form. Hence the critic can take his cue from every existing form of theoretical and practical consciousness and from this ideal and final goal implicit in the actual forms of existing reality he can deduce a true reality. Now as far as real life is concerned, it is precisely the political state which contains the postulates of reason in all its modern forms, even where it has not been the conscious repository of socialist requirements. But it does not stop there. It consistently assumed that reason has been realized and just as consistently it becomes embroiled at every point in a conflict between its ideal vocation and its actually existing premises.10

By adopting such a standpoint, Marx in a sense follows a tradition known ever since Plato said (in The Republic 509b) that the good is transcendence of what exists, beyond being.

A term in need of explication, used also in the Theses, is the Germam word Praxis (translated as “practice”). Etymologically related to the verb prattein in Greek, it means human action. There is a need to distinguish involuntary from voluntary actions. If what a human does is different from other animals, it is just because it is the action of a human being. At the same time, what Marx wants to propose here is: for humans, in order to exist biologically they have to exist socially. In any case, all humans are already incessantly changing the world. Even more: in fact, every organism, changes its own environment. And, in the same way that there is no organism without there being the environment of that organism, there likewise is not that environment (the way it is) without that organism. Each organism determines its environment and is also determined by it.  

A young Karl Marx speaks to his fellow students, flanked by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus, in a painting from China's Marx200 Exhibit. (2018) [Public Domain]

From this follows the critique, in Marx’s Third Thesis on Feuerbach, of the materialist doctrine that takes humans to be the passive products of circumstances and education. This doctrine takes the transformation of humans simply as the product of the transformation of circumstances. In so doing it

forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that it is essential to educate the educator himself. This doctrine must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society.

The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.11

One key word in this passage is “coincidence”, which signifies that by coevolution, mutual transformation of the organisms and the environment, we and our environment co-adapt.11a The world is then in constant change, and we can neither stop this change nor stop playing a role. For the human organism, the change means simultaneous creation and destruction. Whereas in D’Alembert’s Dream Denis Diderot (1713-1784) tells us “everything changes, everything passes away, the only thing that remains is the whole”, for Marx the whole changes as well. We, as long as we exist as organisms, constantly and inevitably export entropy to our environment, and, in so doing, we change our world as well as ourselves.12

This truism is to remind us that philosophers are not exceptions here. Hence, the point stressed here by Marx in this Thesis is nothing but an invitation for a particular change. He thinks that, although humans make their history and change their world, including themselves, they do not do this on the basis of conditions they have chosen, “but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.”13

This is a point established in the philosophy of science. In his article “Extended Phenotypes and Extended Organisms”, Scott Turner, the philosopher of biology writes:

“When organisms can modify environments to beneficial ends, they are liberated from being simply slaves at the mercy of the environment, and become, in a profound sense, its masters.”14

This could also be the slogan of Marx. Philosophy, according to Marx, is a practice engaged in by humans, and like all other practices has some direct or indirect influence on life. What is characteristic of Marx’s era is the following (to quote Ernst Bloch): “Thus the beginning philosophy of revolution, i.e. of changeability for the better, was ultimately revealed on and in the horizon of the future; with the science of the New and power to guide it.”15

If this interpretation is acceptable, Marx intends to introduce an epistemonic approach,16  without employing the term – the term which I want to use to emphasize an approach that retains the unity of intellectual and material life without accepting Hegelian idealism. Once more, like all of us in society, philosophers are certainly changing the world in their daily life. What Marx wants to say is rather that the world’s philosophers, along with all others, should orient their philosophy towards this particular change; a change that is on the one hand conscious and on the other hand enriched by their daily life as philosophers. To give a concrete example, like all other members of the society, the philosophers either participate in elections, or they do not. They make their definite choices in a social milieu and choose one candidate against another, or refuse to vote. Here, as always, even in choosing to be passive, one is in another sense inevitably active.17  

In insisting on this type of transformation of the world, Marx remains in the philosophical tradition seen since, for instance, the portrayal of Socrates as depicted in Plato’s dialogue The Crito (47a), where Socrates finds himself obliged to follow the arguments where they lead, and hence offers the prototype of the unity of the practice and theory well known in Marxist thought.  

To revitalize this in our era, to orient themselves towards such a change as the response to the second and third questions above, the philosophers have to familiarize themselves with political economy, and scientists have to be acquainted with philosophy, and go beyond their own narrow disciplines.

Detail of Rodin's La porte de l'enfer (The Gates of Hell) at The National Museum of Western Art (2011) (2011) [Creative Commons]

Conclusion:

I would like to finish this article with a reference to a scene from the famous movie, Zorba the Greek, made in 1964 and based on a book with the same title by Nikos Kazantzakis, the progressive Greek writer.

First, a few words on what goes on in the film. Basil, a young British writer, returns to Crete to manage a mine left to him by his father. He meets Zorba, an exuberant Greek who insists on serving as his guide and assistant. The two are different on all counts: Zorba loves to drink, laugh loud, sing, and dance; he follows his own unique lifestyle. Basil, on the other hand, is too polite, timid, and reserved, obsessed by his reading. Nonetheless, they make friends, and collaborate in developing the mine. Zorba agrees to construct a cable-car to develop the mine. Basil trusts him; the project fails in the end.

The particular scene related to the discussion here is the following. Seeing his inability to save a widow killed by the villagers for having sexual relations with the Englishman (Basil) instead of marrying one of the men in the village, Zorba asks Basil:

Why do people die? Why? Tell me!  

Basil says: I don’t know.

Zorba: What is the use of all this crap that you read, if they do not respond to such questions? What do those books tell you?        

Basil: They tell me about the torture of the ones who cannot respond to such questions.

Zorba: I don’t like torture.  

We as philosophers have to contribute in responding to the questions of the Zorbas of our time, including ourselves. Their questions are more horrendous. Here is an example: Why is it that, according to UNICEF, “every 3.6 seconds one person dies of starvation. Usually it is a child under the age of 5.”?18

A philosophical approach aiming at questions of this type does not leave philosophers calm, as Russell suggests, or leave philosophy as a discipline with its own particular function in contrast to science, as Deleuze suggests. Contrary to what is suggested by Deleuze, the aim of this philosophy is still truth, and not just getting a sense of things, as he says.

Nonetheless, in proceeding as philosophers, as Deleuze does suggest, we will be able to “write for the illiterate” where the word “for” in this sentence will not mean “intended for”, or “instead of”, but before, that is, in front of.19 Like Russell, we can be engaged in our life philosophically with the questions posed by our time. Personally, this engagement led to Russell’s loss of his academic position and six months of imprisonment. Deleuze famously says that in philosophy we formulate the problems of our era and create new concepts in response to those problems. In doing so, we can have “a constitutive relationship between philosophy and non-philosophy.”20 Without confronting the intertwined problems of our era, our philosophy remains abstruse and isolated from social life; that is the death of philosophy.

1 Hawking, Stephen; Mlodinow, Leonard, The Grand Design (New York 2010), p. 10.

2 Plato, The Theaetetus, 155 d.

3 Russell, Bertrand, Problems of Philosophy (New York 1997) p. 156

4 Russell, p. 155

5 «La science n’a pas pour objets des concepts, mais des fonctions qui se présentent comme des propositions dans des systèmes discursifs. Les éléments des fonctions s’appellent des fonctifs. Une notion scientifique est déterminée non pas des concepts, mais par fonctions.» Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie? (Paris 2005), p. 117.

6 The greatest thinker of the second millennium according to the BBC (BBC October 1, 1999) (After Marx come Einstein, Newton, Darwin, Aquinas, Hawking – the greatest scientist ever according to Nature, November 6, 2013).

7 Karl, Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, in Karl Marx Frederick Engels Collected Works, Volume 5 (Moscow 1976), p. 5.

8 Marx, Karl (1976) Capital I, Ben Fowkes translator (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England 1976), p. 284.

9 Pearce, Trevor (2011) “Ecosystem engineering, experiment, and evolution”, Biol Philos, Volume 26 (2011) 793–812, p. 800

10 Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, Paris 1844, Marx Engels Collected Works, Volume 3 (Moscow 1975), p. 143.

11 Karl, Marx (1845), Theses on Feuerbach, in Marx Engels Collected Works, Volume 5, p. 4.

11 a Here, I use the modified version of what is proposed by Richard C. Lewontin in “The Organism as Subject and Object of Evolution”, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftzoa2dw3CQ

12 Pearce, Trevor “Ecosystem engineering, experiment, and evolution”, Biol.Philos, Vol. 26 (2011): 793-812, p. 799.

13 Karl, Marx (1851) The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, in Marx Engels Collected Works, Volume 11, (Moscow 1979), p. 103.

14 Turner, Scott (2004) Biology and Philosophy, Volume 19 (2004): 327–352, pp. 328-329.

14 Turner, Scott (2004) Biology and Philosophy, Volume 19 (2004): 327–352, pp. 328-329.

15 Bloch, Ernst, The Principle of Hope, translated by Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice and Paul Knight, Volume 1

(Cambridge, Massachusetts 1976), p. 283.

16 I think this can also be seen in the conception of truth as introduced by Marx in the Second Thesis: reality [Wirklichkeit] is introduced as a characteristic of truth besides this sided-ness [Disseitigkeit] and along with power [Macht]. Marx, Karl, Theses on Feuerbach, Marx Engels Collected Works, Volume 5, p. 3.

17 Thus we underline the reverse of the slogan Hegel wrongly attributes to Spinoza, “Omnis determinatio est negatio”. (“Every determination – any definite way that something is – is a negation [of alternatives]”.)

18 https://www.unicef.org/mdg/poverty.html

19 “Écrire pour les analphabètes”, Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie? (Paris 2005), p. 111.

20 “Un rapport constitutif de la philosophie avec la non-philosophie”, Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie? (Paris 2005), p. 111.

The location of René Simard's philosophical inquiries is Montreal.

[leanstooneside]

Cut off one's nose to spite one's face

◊ it is a story

◊ ribose is only a minor product

◊ it was not part of nasa's early plans

◊ it is just this relationship

◊ neo darwinians with whom the vitriolic public conflict occurred will ever openly credit the term gaia even if they accept most of what is now

◊ origin of life business seemingly good ideas are plentiful

◊ nasa's first publicly expressed interest

◊ other hand the idea is still

◊ schopf group wanted cech to come down to ucla and give a talk on the ribozymes as the catalytic rna molecules had been dubbed because of the discovery's extremely suggestive implications

◊ complete it is clear

◊ harold morowitz wrote for instance that origin of life researchers now needed to understand that in [lovelock's] sense life is a property

◊ it is widely believed now

◊ miller/bada points of view such as their profound skepticism about ventists having anything relevant to say about origin of life are staked out clearly in the book

◊ years previously that is that the chicken egg paradox

◊ modifications of the theory as presented in lovelock's second book in 1988 more researchers in the exobiology community

◊ leslie orgel in a more recent review concluded there are still

◊ i think rich muller is still confident

◊ a great deal of the fuss over gaia is because i

◊ principal investigators in the exobiology nscort group are stanley miller

◊ time and effort is to show that a good idea

◊ planet with abundant life will have an atmosphere shifted into extreme thermodynamic disequilibrium and that earth is habitable

◊ the gaia hypothesis in particular could be investigated by seeking to identify evolutionary mechanisms if any such exist that are capable

◊ consensus is yes

◊ arguments on both sides are good ones

◊ i hadn't thought any farther back than a primordial organism is the work important

◊ its creation it has continued to be funded in the one million dollar per year ballpark under the aegis of michael meyer rummel's 1992 replacement

◊ lovelock acknowledges that the early versions of the theory up through his 1 979 book gaia a new look at life on earth suffered from an inadequate consideration of this question.*^ he developed the daisyworld mathematical model in collaboration with andrew watson of reading university to answer these objections.'*^ the 19811982 nasa echo workshop participants who found the hypothesis intriguing said although many of us are skeptical we

◊ statistical support for periodicity in the extinction record is weak

◊ processes which are believed to have occurred

◊ gaia mechanism approaches one extreme of a spectrum of possibilities ranging from total control of a planet's environment by its organisms to total lack of control and that much further study is needed to determine the causes

◊ its most central functioning institutions has been a biweekly journal club for the twenty students to which the senior pis specifically are disinvited

◊ whereas this line of research is far

◊ primitive earth with those that are occurring today

◊ truth is we

◊ raup and sepkoski launched a statistical analysis of data bearing on a proposition made earlier by another of the participants fischer to the effect that biologic extinctions on earth have had a periodic distribution in geologic time and that the periodicity is driven by extraterrestrial forces.* the analysis

◊ another possible pre rna that the nscort researchers have been studying is peptide nucleic acid.^^ woese's

◊ it should be noted however that by 1990 the consensus of the scientific community leaned against periodicity being real though the idea is still kicking around.^^ as raup

◊ j william schopf at ucla is a supportive reviewer

◊ degree not supported as enthusiastically anywhere outside san diego.^'the nscort group is fairly negative

◊ james lovelock's penetrating insights

◊ phosphate is possible

◊ earth's biota is in effect

◊ modest suggestion that clays may act as catalysts upon which the first organic polymers may have been built up from their monomers.^^ although bada allows more credit for these approaches than miller he says some kind of genetic takeover scenario was probably likely even if not from clay genes essentially they are still

◊ lovelock however tenaciously defends gaia and insists that names are important.'* describing

◊ ribose is not very stable

◊ it is hard to appreciate the work

◊ his summary of nasa exobiology's goals devincenzi seemed to have internalized quite a bit of the logic of the gaia theory stating for example that there is a clear relation

◊ planets rather than of individual organisms this view was complementary rather than contradictory with the traditional biology view that sought to define life by comparing what all living organisms have in common.^ indeed under the name earth system science the core of the modified gaia theory is now mainstream science

◊ cronin the skepticism about an rna world is not skepticism

◊ my motives for using nasa rather than nsf or other funding sources are obscure

◊ even frank drake's first radio

◊ paradox in ribozymes considerable chain length is required for replicative fidelity

◊ grandees over here are ready to admit even

◊ current efforts are also being focused on examining the relationship

◊ positionally specific phosphorylation of nucleosides is difficult

◊ none of the other proposed mechanisms is viable

◊ there are apparently no good prebiotic routes

◊ there is now

◊ work is the now famous nuclear winter paper

◊ its attitude toward cairns smith's clay genes origin scenario however its members think plausible j d bemal's earlier

◊ conceptual shifts are profound fundamental underpinnings

◊ john lawton's acknowledgment of lovelock and gaia is certainly more than many scientists

◊ it is the clarification

◊ story of seti in nasa is a story