#angry fig is practically impossible

[uselessalexis165]

Quick things I made with the comic creator (162/?)

[spiritgriffon]

Rachael’s Favorite FE Characters

Well, since I posted my favorite Pokemon... everything a while ago, I figured I’d post my favorite FE characters class-by-class as well! I’ll also post my least favorites.

The games I own are Sacred Stones, Path of Radiance, Radiant Dawn, Shadow Dragon, New Mystery on an emulator, Awakening, Heroes, all 3 Fates & Echoes. I’ve played a bit of FE4 too but I’m not far enough into it to pick favorite characters.

Favorite Lord:

Male- Chrom (He’s pretty vanilla but I still love me my Blueberry Dorklord)

Female- Erika (Who is not NEARLY as foolish as recent entries would have you believe. She’s quite a bit better than Celica at any rate- there’s no way she’d fall for fkn JEDAH)

Least Favorite- Ephraim (He’s such a... warmonger. There is no point in the entirety of SS where I go “Yes, he’ll make a good king!”)

Favorite Avatar

Robin! Robin’s the best. Robin has the best coat. Do I need to say more?

Well, I guess I’ll say too that Robin’s personality is quite a bit like my own, which is why I prefer Fem!Robin. I too, would relentlessly pelt Lon’qu with figs and, when faced with unwinnable odds would, just resort to a Big Fire™

Least favorite goes to... IDK, I want to say Kiran but Kiran can marry Navarre so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Favorite Cavalier/Paladin/Great Knight

Seth wins, but Xander and Berkut are close seconds. Seth/Erika is my ultimate FE OTP- they’re the only ones in the whole series I can’t even bear to pair with anyone else for a playthrough to get their supports. I like Xander/Corrin and Xander/Sakura quite a bit, but neither come anywhere close honestly. And Berkut is my angry garbage son~

Least favorite goes to Jagan. You honestly think I’m going to kill Frey who arguably has better stat growths than both Cain and Abel and keep you? Screw canon, off you go, old man!

Favorite Myrmidon/Swordsmaster/Trueblade

Joushua, obviously!

...

I mean, Navarre doesn’t really count because he’s my favorite FE character PERIOD. Besides Navarre, I like Joshua.

Least favorite is Marissa. Not that crazy about Mia either, but Marissa is just so inferior to Josh stats wise and while he’s tons of fun, she’s no fun at all. If she were in another game it’d different but Joshua makes her look really bad in comparison. Plus she took his spot in Awakening AND I’M STILL SALTY 4 YEARS LATER

Favorite Mercenary/Hero/Dreadfighter

Navarre in FE1

Ike!... Yes, I’m counting him here... Oh fine, Ogma then. They’re both big gay softies that are 40% pure iron muscle and 60% heart. I bet they give the best hugs!

(And no, I don’t believe Ogma’s “feelings” for Caeda are in any way romantic bc he met her when she was like 5 and he was probably 20. He probably feels like her big brother or father- which is equally impossible for him to express due to his lot in life. Plus, Marth never gets jealous around him, while he practically turns green around any of the other characters interested in her.)

(Oh, and I consider Soren to be the more canon partner for Ike over Sothe and Ranulf bc Priam is a thing and I’m like 70% sure Soren is supposed to be trans. And yes, there is a canon lesbian whose name is currently escaping me & Sothe is canonically bi, they just went with the “heavy implied to the point of being basically irrefutable” route instead of outright stating it, so it is VERY possible Soren is trans. I like all 3 ships tho)

Least favorite is... The dude from SS. I can’t even remember his name. He’s the only freaking mercenary in SS and his personality doesn’t do anything for me.

Favorite Knight/General/Baron

The Black Knight of course! His writing is bit... a lot of a mess, but you can’t deny how badass he is.

On a less villainous note, Forsythe is pretty cool too.

Least favorite is... IDK, was there one in Awakening? I thought there was one on the cover but he’s so forgettable...

Favorite Archer/Sniper/Ballistician/Bow Knight/Hunter

Tacomeme :)

Leon is also pretty cool, but he’s not nearly as useful in-game. I like Niles too! But I’d be lying if I said a good part of that wasn’t bc of Takehito Koyasu and his sexy voice rip

Least favorite is Faye in Heroes Python’s inability to hit the broad side of a barn Zero’s stupid name change to Niles Innes. His stats are nice but his personality rubs me the wrong way.

Favorite Pegasus/Falcon Knight/Sky/Kinshi Knight

Probably Claire! I didn’t expect to like her much (I got Maribelle vibes at first), but she really grew on me throughout the game and her supports. I love the way her friendship with Alm was written- if it had evolved into a romance I would have found it believable, but it’s one of the VERY, VERY few times I think IntSys has handled a one sided crush on the main character well.

Least favorite is... Probably Cordelia. Like I said, VERY few times. (Vanessa, Sumia, Syrene, Palla, Catria, Est, Hinoka, Subaki, Tanith and Sigrun all tie for second to last. This is... not my favorite class.)

Favorite Dracoknight/Wyvern Rider/Wyvern Lord

Hmmm... I would say Camilla, but my headcanon version of her is quite a bit different from the way she actually is in canon lol. So... Probably promoted Caeda. Minerva is utterly useless on the battlefield, unfortunately, and I like Caeda about the same as Clare so I put her here.

I guess I like Haar, Jill, Cormag, Gwin, and Valter (As a villain, not as a person) somewhat too.

Least favorite has to go to Beruka. I find her... bland.

Favorite Villager/Recruit

AMELIA THE GENERAL IS COMING THROUGH! MAKE WAY, MORTALS

Do I need to say who my least favorite is? Do I really need to?

It’s Faye. Because... she’s Faye.

Favorite Thief/Trickster/Assassin/Rogue/Ninja

That has to go to Julian! He’s very similar to Gaius, but instead of candy, his thing is puns. Fun fact: I have a blood sugar condition similar to diabetes IRL that makes me unable to eat sugar, so Gaius just made me crave sweets I can’t have most of the time :/

Second place goes to Gangrel or Rennac. Gangrel is actually my second favorite character to romance in Awakening due to his great redemption arc in his supports with both Robins & his talks with Em in the DLC, and IMO he makes the second best dad to Morgan (And yes, I have ALL of male Morgan’s supports with his fathers, yes, it was boring, repetitive, and took hours, and yes, the only one I like better is Chrom), and Rennac is just... so hilariously cranky. They also both go in the “They deserved better in their endings” bin- Rennac can’t marry L’rachel despite their great chemistry and Gangrel flat-out dies if you don’t marry him.

Least favorite... I guess Nina. I never found her very funny.

Favorite Cleric/Troubadour/Valkyrie/Bishop/War monk

Elise! She is... one of two healers I like. In the entire series.

The other is L’rachel.

And Sakura, Lissa, Natasha, and Rena I... don’t particularly dislike.

I don’t like any others. Tat/iana is the worst of the bunch. Tat/iana is actually my least favorite character in the series

Favorite Fighter/Pirate/Warrior/Barbarian

Maybe... Vaike or Ross? Or Boyd? Basilio? Wow, there aren’t any I really like a lot. Guess this is my least favorite class.

My least favorite of all HAS to be Arthur though.

Favorite Mage/Monk/Dark Knight/Sage

Soren! He’s really well written. At first he comes off as a racist asshole, but as the game goes on & you get his supports, he proves himself to be a really great, three-dimensional character. And he’s so gay for Ike. Like, so, so gay.

Least favorite is all of the little red-headed boys that are clones of each other. Except maybe Ewan, because he’s actually useful in-game. Most of the others aren’t.

Favorite Dark Mage/Sorcerer/Summoner/Necromancer/Druid/Witch/Cantor

LYON!!!! Oh man, I don’t want to spoil exactly what happens but suffice to say that he is my FAVORITE antagonist in the series.

My least favorite is either Validar or Iago... I don’t know which to pick. They are how NOT to do a decent sorcerer villain in FE. But all of the Cantors in Echoes also get a special mention for being FREAKING ANNOYING.

Favorite Manakete/Dragon Laguz

Tiki- particularly young Tiki! She’s so sweet... and badass!

Least favorite... ugh, I have to say Myrrh. I do like her, but her uses of Dragonstone are so limited that you can barely use her and while she’s just as cute as Tiki, she’s not nearly as tough. She also has a lot sadder story than Tiki- she’s a really good character, but she just doesn’t make me feel bubbly and happy when I see her the way Tiki does.

Favorite Beast Laguz/Bird Laguz/Taguel/Wolfskin/Kitsune

All hail King Naesala! He’s another character that brings a smile to my face when I see him-and that’s saying quite a bit, since he has a pretty serious story. This man oozes personality- He shows up on screen and you know he’s there to kick the world and rule the ass. And no, that’s not backwards.

Honorable mention to Reyson- every time these two are on screen together you know that Reyson is about three seconds from punching Naesala right in the nose, never mind the fact he’d probably break every bone in his tiny, fragile fist. The fact that Naesala’s only paired ending is with Reyson’s sister is just hilarious to me.

I guess my least favorite is Lyre... She sort of feels like she’s just there to have one more playable character to me, since she has so little bearing on the story.

Favorite Dancer/Singer

In terms of personality, supports, and gameplay, Feena is far and away my favorite. However... I’m honestly not a huge fan of her design, so in terms of appearance, Azura, who I personally think has one of the best designs in the series, takes the cake. The fact she has such a catchy theme song is a huge bonus too!

Tethys gets the last spot because she’s completely useless in battle. I’ve heard Ninian can’t fight either but she boosts your stats- why did they give Tethys the shaft so badly?

Favorite Lancer/Soldier

And finally... ending this on a weird one. See, neither Nephenee nor Oboro do anything for me- I don’t dislike them, but I don’t particularly like them either. So, I guess this one goes to Azura!

[figmentforms]

Fig chatter! (Q/A)

First off, i just wanna say thank you so much to everyone for all the super nice and encouraging notes! It always makes me to happy to see that my work is making people happy and your notes really help to motivate me to do my best at this comic!

Yep!!! That manga is one of my favorite things in the whole world so it really really influenced my comic.

All is well! Thanks for asking! I just renamed it “Figmentforms-the-human” because I plan to do more with it than just reblog now. It’s gonna be where I post random stuff about my life and other ramblings as well! https://figmentforms-the-human.tumblr.com/

I really should but I mostly just look back to previous comic pages to keep the designs consistent. Don’t be like me. Be better and more organized. XD

I did! I hate to revise big stuff like that, but after the script re-write i realized that I needed to be able to give Skull Kid more expressions since he now plays such a bigger role in the story, so i decided to go with something more rendered out.

LOOOOL XD *feels proud*

They may be in flashbacks or something, but at this point i don’t think they’re gonna really be a part of the story! Too bad too because I really adore Midna especially. And thanks so much! :D

LOL not sure if that would count as a prank or as cold-blooded MURDER. XD Those birds are NOT to be messed with! 

Aw! Thank you so much! Sadly I don’t think I will be doing too many more conventions. I hope to go to ShutoCon again next year, but that’s really it! I always get super sick after every single convention I go to, so for the sake of my health, I’m gonna do much much less of them. 

Lol, thanks! As for time, i wouldn’t put much value on that! I’ve been drawing since I was a little kid, but I’ve seen people go from struggling to draw a stick figure to making beautiful illustrations that are much Much better than i currently can do after about two years of hard training. It all depends on your drive and focus. If you put in the time and effort you can be a master in no time. If anyone wants to get good at drawing, it’s never ever too late! Take some lessons and practice every day and you will be AMAZING in no time!

I love this idea! XD

Indeed! How many people think he should keep it? I’m on the fence!

The first chance i get i’m totally gonna put the bird people in the comic. I adore bird people.

I love supportive shark boyfriend Prince Sidon so much! I will totally draw him later! :D I did a couple drawings of him while i was at my booth for Shutocon but i forgot to take photos before they went off to their new homes! 

Thanks so much! :D I will have to put a part in the comic where Zelda explains this later, but how it works is that Zelda can sense the triforce pieces super accurately. Even before they awaken inside the bearer. She knew her daughter was Link the moment that she was born. The others can’t do that. Rinku not at all, and Ganondorf can only sense the pieces when they’ve awoken and are in the same room as him. 

0_0′ LOL OH MY!!! You are correct!!!! XD Behold me and my total inability to do basic math! XD But omg thank you so much for pointing this out!!! I really appreciate it! And please, if anyone else notices stuff like this, or spelling errors, or like, i messed up drawing something, please don’t hesitate to tell me because it’s a huge help!!!

I‘ve been too busy and broke, so sadly no. But after the wedding i think I’ll have the necessary time/money! I was so pleasantly surprised that the game turned out to be good! I was honestly expecting a train wreck after all the delays Nintendo had for putting it out! 

Gan will totally mellow and turn out ok, but he will always be at least a bit cranky. If nothing else than to keep up his “style”. As for writing, ooooomg. a very long time. I have the major outline that took me a few weeks to decide on everything, then i have specific events, another couple weeks, then revisions, a few more MONTHS, then for each individual comic i often stare at the screen for like 3 hours trying to decide on the specific dialogue. I’m really not a strong writer, so it’s never easy! XD I’m just glad that people seem pleased with what I’ve managed to do so far! 

Totally will! You’re safe! XD

He still has all that to deal with, but he’s also been through such an emotionally devastating time in his early life in this incarnation that it’s given him a bit more reflection and empathy this time around. Juuust enough to make him give this marriage thing a legit honest try.

I love Ghirahim with all my heart but I still find myself genuinely considering this >.>

YES. I love theme parks and things, Especially roller coasters and those impossible games! (but what I really really wanna do is awkwardly walk up to a Ganondorf actor and buy him a cookie. Hopefully they won’t be creeped out.)

 This is a really cool idea!!!

I totally didn’t know that!!!! Thank you so much for telling me! I’ll fix that later!! :D

When I first wrote the story I planned to explore it better, but with the re-write there isn’t proper room for it. I may do an epilogue bonus comic where this is given the attention it deserves. (I grew up in a home that was completely destroyed by alcoholism, so yeah, this is close to my heart and I want to do more with it.)

LOOOOL OMG I can just imagine her getting so mad every time someone brings up this pun. “I’M NOT A NURSE, DAMN IT! I’M A DOCTOR! AND THE BEST ONE IN THE WORLD!!” *angry shark teeth are showin’*

OMG *suddenly starts to imagine the cuteness of Rinku’s wedding and how much Ganondorf would be just a SUPER picky father-in-law-Zilla about all the details of the ceremony.*

Sadly I just don’t have the time to take on commissions right now! I’m going to be finishing up my current commitments with a couple game companies and then putting 100% focus on my comics (A Tale of Two Rulers and another relatively soon-to-be released original comic about the romance between a sweet-natured orc and a little power-crazy pixie) later this fall. Noooo idea when I’ll open up commissions again.

LOOOL poor Ghirahim! He’s honestly doing what he thinks he has to to save Ganondorf! But... well... it’s not working out. XD

[spectaculardistractions]

In the early 1960s, Andy Warhol declared war on the academy by promulgating pop art--the idea that comics, commercial labels, and industrial logos were as worthy of being considered art as any painting or sculpture. This new "art movement" was applauded by a philistine culture that had long felt insulted and browbeaten by the sort of cultural elites who summered in Paris and embraced difficult European abstraction and radical avant-gardism. Warhol's announcement had strong repercussions in the halls of power, where the bohemian affection for European modernism was already a hot topic in the intelligence community. Art was considered to represent one of the main ideological battlefronts in the capitalist war against social equity. Postwar emancipation movements, inspired by the work of Alexander Rodchenko and bankrolled by the Soviets, simmered in Africa, the Caribbean, and Asia. Therefore avant-art--seen as a highly influential area dominated by the left and possessing a potential to wreak international havoc on willingness to cooperate with imperialist world domination--was aggressively co-opted by the ruling class. Cultural institutions in war-torn Western Europe were infiltrated, and soon most of the region's art magazines were CIA fronts, with many art critics and artists enjoying the largesse of the agency's payroll--whether they knew it or not (the money was often diverted through "legitimate" art-world sources). In their attempt to counter the USSR's influence over the leftist artist class, the "company" fostered abstract expressionism, which was USA's apolitical, "spiritual" version of Euro-style nonrepresentational sculpture and painting. Still, it was just a New World version of Slavic modernism. It was not a game changer. Pop art, however, was. Once announced, pop was a huge relief to the spooks in government who had been assigned to fixing the fine-art game. Since pop had distinctly American roots, no longer was the US artist a pretender, a stepchild, or an also-ran. And with pop, Warhol cemented New York City's claim to being the center of the postwar art world. As opposed to modernism's perceived difficulties and abstract expressionism's supposed mysticism, pop art was immediately understandable, witty, and inclusive. Snobby Europeans had long thought of the USA as a cultural trash heap, and pop art declared that, yes, it was true--and that the trash was in fact beautiful. Pop art was really a renamed, high-priced institutionalization of the gay world's camp aesthetic, the send-up of mundane vulgarity that was popular with the homosexual subculture. Camp was a vague and esoteric ideology that guffawed at emotional involvement or any sort of seriousness and that prized the garish and naive. Camp was infatuated with comic-strip villains, artifice, and all the ridiculous vestiges of an idiot culture. And comics, originally the newspaper industry's snare for illiterates and morons, were at the forefront of pop. Pop art was a massive success, inspiring fashion trends and TV series such as Batman and The Green Hornet. The theme to Batman even became a monster hit in the mid-'60s, with several charting versions. Brigitte Bardot had her own pop art anthem with Serge Gainsbourg. It was called "Comic Strip," and it featured a chorus of spoken comic-book sound effects. The effeminate mod movement's premier rock 'n' roll band, The Who, declared themselves a pop-art group, saying, "We're not just pop art on stage, but pop art all the time." Fellow mod group Creation penned a song entitled "Biff, Bang, Pow" and soul singer Gate Wesley recorded a song called "(Zap! Pow!) Do the Batman." Pop art could be said to be the most enduring visual aesthetic of the 1960s. The new movement permeated graphic design and fashion as well as music and TV. It was via pop art--and then broader pop culture--that comics evolved from their larval, Neanderthal origins and were thrust into the world of middlebrow tastes, high powered rock 'n' roll, and sophisticated sexuality. It was no longer an embarrassment for a self-respecting aesthete to be seen reading Brenda Starr. Instead, it became a signifier of a modern sensibility. Marshall McLuhan championed the comic as a "cool" medium. But let us not forget that at the roots of modern comics lie pop, and at the roots of pop lie camp, which is the little-discussed ancestor of comics as we know them today. As readers of contemporary comics, we owe much to the camp movement. It gave us license to consume comics. It moved the comic out of the closet. But how did camp come about? To answer that question, we must briefly trace the history of homosexuality. And to do that, we must travel back to the time just immediately after prehistory. This era, before the ascent of Christianity, is known today as antiquity. The people of antiquity--both those who were ignorant of Christ and those who lived before his time--were pagans. In their world, antiques were everywhere. So was sex. There was no TV, no rock groups, no internet. People would spend their time mashing grapes, picking figs and olives, weaving, staring at the stars, telling stories, and fornicating. The last was the easiest of all these endeavors. Therefore, people did it a lot, not only with one another but also with any available animal or object. Men, women, goats, sheep, chickens, children, cats, vegetables, great white mares--anything at all was considered fair game. Since ancient man lived with beasts, he witnessed the brutality and caprice of the animal world's sex play, and so the pagan's fantasy life was lousy with centaurs, satyrs, and were-things--the imagined offspring of the everyday carnal encounters between man, mammal, fish, and fowl. And since humans implicated every living creature within their polymorphously perverse web of nonstop coitus, they imagined that all creatures were spending their time similarly, and so they theorized hybrids like the sea-goat, the unicorn, Pegasus, and the hippogriff. The gods themselves were said to have the heads of beasts on human bodies, as evidenced in Anubis, Bast, Ganesha, and more. It was a violent, erotically charged landscape. Few records exist of this time, as people were too tired to write anything down, and what was written down was later destroyed by sex-loathing Christians who feared its power to tantalize the masses. Pagans engaged in sex with one another as well, regardless of the similarity of their genitals or the dissimilarity of their ages. Their morality was of an order now lost to us because in a pantheistic culture such as theirs, there are several gods, who were thought to live in a society that paralleled that of the people. Each god had distinguishing strengths and foibles, and since the pagan's gods were of varied proclivities, humans' diverse inclinations were tolerated by other humans. There was also no central religious authority, but instead many diverse temples consecrated to different deities, each one with a particular perversion. The ancient world eventually came to feature a handful of monotheistic religions, but they were wildly unpopular and notorious for their self-righteous making of rules. Instead of several gods with different personalities and myths, monotheism featured one god who was a fearful, faceless abstraction. There was the Persian cult of Zoroaster, the ancient Egyptian cult of Aten, and the Jewish cult of Jehovah, which had deviant offshoot sects of its own. One of these was called Christianity. Religion was central to the lives of the ancients just as television and comics and the internet are to us now. The emperors and kings of the time therefore tended to rule in tandem, or at least at the pleasure of the various deities. Egyptian pharaohs were divine themselves, as was Alexander the Great. But Roman emperors were merely semi-divine, enjoying divinity for a few ceremonial hours at a time. Rome was, of course, the great power for several centuries preceding what we call the "Dark" or "Middle" Ages. After extraordinary expansion, the Roman Empire was thinned and weakened by its many foreign occupations. Conquest was easily accomplished, but maintaining rule over the wilder tribes--the Germanic people and the various Goths--was difficult. As Rome incorporated various and sundry cultures, its leadership recognized monotheistic religion for what it is: a useful tool in teaching fealty to a central authority. Christians, unlike religious pagans, were absolutely intolerant of difference in belief and ideology. Their morality was unequivocal and emanated from a central source. They had only one god, who was humorless and had no face, name, characteristics, or identity. He was simply a force who punished those unwilling to submit to his will. Not only would the institutionalization of such a religion yoke new subjects to a foreign imperial dictatorship, but next to such a horrible master as God, the emperor would appear sympathetic--the good cop in a fearsome power-sharing duo. The plan worked for a time. The Romans couldn't have imagined just how thorough the Christians would be in their despotism. The Roman Empire, known for such practices as decimation, seemed milquetoast next to the barbarity, repression, and lunatic perversions of the Christian church. The Christians outlawed everyday behavior, pathologized it, classified it, and criminalized it. Eventually everyone was labeled a pervert or a scoundrel of some sort. Kinks were the major source of revenue for the Catholic Church, as each acolyte was compelled to compensate an angry God with alms and penance for their acts of sodomy, their wet dreams, or their erect nipples. Sex, the original universal pastime, was recast as an outlaw affair. Which brings us relatively close to the present day. Due to centuries of Christian socializing, sex in the Western world is now impossible to conceive of without some imagined transgression involved. The population invents intricate systems and obstacles to facilitate hard-to-get erections. Affairs, ogling, pornography, and prudishness are a few. Homosexuality is another. In the past, homosexuals, being an illegal minority, had to go underground. There they developed a highly sophisticated system of codes through which to speak to one another--not unlike Freemasons or needle freaks. One of these codes, particularly prevalent in theater productions and musicals, was the camp aesthetic. Camp made fun of cheap morality and emotions and was a survival tactic for the gay people who had to endure stultifying Christian hegemony. When Warhol announced camp, under the new banner of pop, as a new art movement and fashion trend, its die-hard adherents must have winced privately, though their camp ideology would have prohibited them from expressing anything more than a bon mot, perfectly delivered with blasé contempt. A keystone of camp is that nothing is to be taken seriously. It prohibits intellectual--and, even more so, political--thought. Susan Sontag followed up Warhol's dissemination with an essay, "Notes on Camp," which let the intellectuals know that camp was it, trash was fun, and high culture wasn't cool anymore. With this pronouncement, the USSR's Schroeder-esque (Schroeder as in Charlie Brown's aggressively classicist piano-playing pal) "high art for the masses" program, which had appeared extremely progressive in the '50s, suddenly seemed hopelessly fuddy-duddy. When Warhol declared the ascendancy of pop art he probably didn't realize that he would contribute to the decloseting of millions of adult goons who had been reading comics in secret. Now they read them proudly in public, the way people once read Dostoyevsky, and they eventually would be allowed to pin them to the walls of the Whitney and Guggenheim museums in NYC. Most films produced by Hollywood are now adaptations of comics--either traditional superhero fables or so-called underground misanthropy. Ironically, the genesis of the comic was the sort of drawing featured on the walls and stained glass of Christian churches, which used pictures to instruct the illiterate on moral and pious behavior. And when capitalism displaced Christianity as the West's religion, comics were utilized in a similar way to instruct the peasants in gender roles, patriotism, and justice, all through characters such as Superman. When the middle class was signaled by Warhol to consume--and then eventually produce--comics unabashedly, camp's pop deconstruction of the comic informed its new life, as did a camp sensibility of subcultural esoteric elitism. Thus began the era of underground comics. Underground comics, rather than being lessons in ideology for poor people, reflected a new morality--that of the privileged "creative class." Louche degeneracy, contempt for humanity, self-centred navel-gazing, and existentialism were the characteristics of the generation of comic artists spawned by the camp revolution. The new comics were individualist in the extreme: often autobiographical bouts of narcissism disguised as self-loathing confessionals. But central to camp ideology was anti-seriousness, and therefore an anti-art attitude. Similarly, Art School Confidential by superstar comic artist Daniel Clowes neatly sums up the attitude of the cartoonist toward the perceived idiocy and pretentiousness of the art world. The new cartoonist-identity was that of an outsider, ignored or actively persecuted, victim of the art establishment and the mores of bourgeois culture. This was a profound re-assignation--since the denizens of the high-art world had historically laid claim to a similar self-image, and since comics were of course the ultimate populist mass-media art form. Underground comics have grown from their sordid and combative camp-inspired origins into a respectable industry. They have shed many of their initial gay-inherited affectations such as outrageousness, vulgarity, and hatred for all mankind. Now they typically resemble something more akin to the gentle post-hippie craft-ism of the middle-class do-gooder. The paper is archival and the drawings tend toward Zen inksmanship. The stories are often about relationships. Form trumps content. The comic, instead of being a campy launchpad from which to lacerate humanity, is held in high regard as a sacred institution, with the forebears of comicdom being revered as heroic themselves (just look at Crumb and his Bible stories). But we know that burning within this serene, highly personal, self-referential, and contented exterior is the contemptuous, reactionary bitchiness of pop, the movement that--by rehabilitating American capitalism for the world via art--not only liberated us from straining our brains but also helped vanquish human movements for social justice forever. ZAP! BLAM! POW!

Ian Svenonius, Notes on Camp, Part 2

[riverdamien]

Taming the Tongue

Session 6: Taming the Tongue: James 3:1-18 3 Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. 2 For we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body. 3 If we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well. 4 Look at the ships also: though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. 5 So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! 6 And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life,[a] and set on fire by hell.[b] 7 For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, 8 but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 9 With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. 10 From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers,[c] these things ought not to be so. 11 Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? 12 Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water. Wisdom from Above 13 Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. 14 But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. 15 This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. 16 For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. 17 But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. 18 And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. I am often asked about my early life. In thinking about those first eighteen years the key moments had to do with my three pastors (teachers): David, Claude, and Bill. All three were pastors who nourished and supported me through the trials of adolescence. I learned how to be a pastor through their example--to listen, to care, and to support. None of them pretended to be perfect, they showed their faults, their weaknesses, but each one continued to love, and show an example of the face of Jesus. All three are in that Great Cloud of Witnesses now, and I hear their voices, see their smiles, and feel their love. For each one loved me in season and out of season. Each one taught me that when someone you trust says one or two sentences, doors to new worlds can be opened. OPENING How have one or two teachers had a significant impact on you, perhaps even affecting directions you have taken? STUDY 1. Read James 3:1-12. Having begun with a somber warning about how difficult it is to come up to the mark as a teacher, James expands the point of taming the tongue in general: taming the tongue in general, for anyone, is so difficult as to be almost impossible. Get that right and you've obviously got your entire self under control. The tongue, it seems, is the last bit of a human being to learn its lesson. How does James say in verses 3-4 that the tongue is like a bit and a rudder? Each time I read this passage I feel guilty, for the times I let stuff slip, the items written on social media when I was sick, depressed, or angry, and the reality we will continue to slip, and the tongue will burn like a fire. In my dealings with others and with myself I am reminded of Matthew 18:21-22: "Then Peter came to Jesus. "Master," he said, "how many times must I forgive my brother and sister, when he or she sins against me? As many as seven times" "I wouldn't say seven times", replied Jesus. "Why not seventy times seven?' 2. We know only too well how the tongue is a fire (v. 5), ready to set things a blaze, from the way the media, social media, fake mail, eagerly trips up people in public life. We know that one word out of place can ruin a career, or bring down a government. One unwise remark, reported and circulated on the internet and through social media can cause riots on the other side of the world. So, says James, the tongue is like a little world all of its own, a country within a country: the larger area, the person as a whole, may well be governed, but in this smaller region corruption and wickedness reign unchecked. When have you seen or experienced significant damage by words? 3. How does James explain the outrageousness of the inconsistencies of the tongue? (vv. 9-12). 4. What James is after, then, is consistency. He wants people to follow Jesus through and through, to be a blessing- -only people rather than blessing--and--cursing people. It is a high standard, we should expect no less if the gospel is indeed the message of salvation. The danger, as always, is that people will take the bits of the message they want, and quietly leave the real challenges to one side. But it can't be done. The spring must be cleansed so that only fresh, sweet water comes out. For this we need help. That, fortunately, is what the gospel offers. In what specific ways could you bless friends, enemies, family, coworkers, fellow Christians, those of other faiths, and those who do not believe more consistently? 5. How does this passage motivate you to be more careful about how you use your tongue? 6. Read James 3:13-18. Why does James connect humility and wisdom? 7. How does James distinguish the wisdom that is earthly and the wisdom that comes from demons? 8. When have you experienced the results of bitter jealously and contention with your community? Within yourself? 9. It is no accident that James follows his teaching on the tongue with a teaching on true and false wisdom. When he talks about "bitter jealously and contention", a spirit which is always carping and criticizing, he speaks of one which cannot let a nice word go by without adding a nasty one. This problem goes deeper. He has already said that the tongue is a fire set aflame by hell; now he says that a mindset like that comes from the world of demons. How might such an attitude of cynicism give the appearance of wisdom? 10. The challenge for God's people that James lays out in verse 17 is to be able to tell the truth about the way the world is, and about the way wicked people are behaving, without turning into a perpetual grumble, and in particular without becoming someone whose appearance of "wisdom" consists in being able to find a cutting word to say about everyone and everything. Offer some examples of speaking in a way that lights a candle rather than curses the darkness. 11. Why would this wisdom that comes from above produce the fruit of righteousness that is sown in peace? 12. What needs to happen for this fruit of righteousness that is sown in peace to thrive in your community? What is necessary in this time of distancing for this fruit of righteousness to thrive? What in particular can we do to nurture this fruit of righteousness at this time? PRAY: James paints a picture of the tongue and the evil that comes from it. He takes the tongue seriously and says that it is impossible for us to tame our tongue. He also describes the horror of false wisdom and the beauty of true wisdom. Ask the Holy Spirit to impress upon you the sin and damage that comes from the tongue. Now confess the sins to God that the Holy Spirit has brought to mind. Talk to him about "false wisdom" that is in you. Take time now to work slowly, one by one, through the characteristics of true wisdom that James mentions. Review your life in light of them. Humbly ask the Holy Spirit to grow in you true wisdom. Finally, praise God for his love and forgiveness and for the fact that you are always invited to turn to him to be forgiven. ------------------------------------------------------ Father River Damien Sims, sfw, D.Min., D.S.W. P.O. Box 642656 San Francisco, CA 94164 www.temenos.org 415-305-2124 "Keep alert, stand firm in the faith, be brave, be strong! Whatever you do, do it with love." I Corinthians 13: 16

[theletterunread]

The Best of the Best

I was commissioned to write this piece several months ago, but I so badly missed the magazine’s wishes for this profile that it was never published. The editors didn’t even bother to write back when I sent it in. I knew it didn't work when I finished it and only submitted it because I deserved to be seen being bad. Which is the same reason I’m now printing it here: after what’s happened to Leah, I feel like I need to be shamed on a public scale.

“I’ve had plenty of time to catch up on reality TV,” says Leah. On screen, a redheaded woman is throwing a sheaf of papers at a younger man and screaming, “You’re a user, Mohamed! You used me!”

“It’s about marriages and engagements between Americans and their foreign partners,” Leah explains. “There are some couples who really love each other, and others, there’s some kind of fraud or attempted fraud happening…either the American is looking for, basically, a mail-order spouse. Or the other person is planning to ditch as soon as they get a green card.” We watch the redheaded woman read her husband a list of his sins (“You have not been an active partner or spouse to me since we’ve been married”) while Mohamed gives the quintessential thousand-yard stare.

“This is the best couple,” says Leah, “because this guy thought he could do a quick marriage to this woman and leave smoothly once he got his green card…he had some idea in his head that this would be a small con to help himself get set up in the US. But Danielle will not let him go. Even now that they’re separated and living in different states, she won’t relinquish his life. She keeps calling him and stalking his Facebook and harassing anybody she sees him talking to online. So every close-up of Mohamed, you can see his terrible comprehension that he doomed himself to an eternity of…this.”

Leah Craig has time to devote to 90 Day Fiancé because she is under house arrest, far from where she had expected she would be this spring. Six months ago, she was handling millions of dollars, with the promise of a substantial cut going to her. She was a head organizer for the 4Most Festival, a promised weekend of elite entertainment and networking in Antigua. Ticket holders were promised a chance to mingle with leaders (or, in the brochure’s parlance, “influencers”) in the financial, business, entertainment, and fashion industries, enjoy performances by The Chainsmokers, and “partake in unparalleled culinary experiences.”

In the end, The Chainsmokers cancelled their performance the day before, the only food available was chili from dehydrated packets, and the guests who dared come out of their disaster tents into the inclement weather learned that the most prominent influencer at the festival was Ron Burnell, the founder of the internet’s 350th most visited video streaming website, TheBestFreakingVideos.com. “He kept bragging about the time the co-founder of YouTube retweeted him,” Leah tells me. “That one anecdote was the backbone of all his speeches.”

News of the festival’s disastrous rollout blew up online, with most people delighted that obnoxious youths who could afford to spend $12,000 to $100,000 on a ticket were suffering. But rich kids don’t need sympathy, because they can afford justice. Not only have there been six class action suits filed, but the US Attorney for the Central District of California has brought charges of wire fraud against the organizers of the festival. And due to a battlefield promotion, Leah falls under that category.

“I don’t think that we would have been charged with wire fraud if the kids who bought the tickets hadn’t been so wealthy. Their parents all know the judges and prosecutors. They’re well-connected, it’s a big lovefest, of course they’re going to get justice.” Leah speaks authoritatively, yet academically, without any apparent acknowledgement that “justice” in this case could lead to her spending ten years in jail.

“Of course, if I hadn’t been an attorney myself, the judge probably would have set the terms of my release much higher. Maybe impossibly higher. So it all balances out. House arrest isn’t so bad, compared to what they could have slapped me with. It just gets a little boring up here. Which I guess is why I was so happy to invite you over.” (I’m the first person not involved with the lawsuits whom Leah has talked to since the festival fell apart.) “I figured I won’t have to be embarrassed in front of you. Remember when we all went to that citywide freshman mixer ten years ago? And we pregamed and I fell down the front steps of the Met in front of every 18-year-old in the city? You’ve seen that, so what’s a little house arrest?”

(Full disclosure: Leah and I met ten years ago as freshmen in college. We weren’t friends exactly, but for four years, we ran in the same group of Friday night club-crawlers. We kept up to date on the broad contours of each other’s lives, and even slept together periodically, on some nights when neither of us paired up with anybody else. She left for Berkeley immediately after graduation and we didn’t see or speak to each other until I asked to come to L.A. to interview her.)

“I would have picked you up from the airport,” says Leah, when I come trembling out of my rental car into her house (neither the freeways from LAX nor the blind turns of the hilly roads up to her place suited me), “but I’m not allowed to leave here without accompaniment.” She shows me her pantries. “See, I have to stock up on canned goods and non-perishables because I never know when I’m going to get to the grocery store again. So I hope you like dried figs, because that’s what you’re getting for a snack.”

She walks me into her living room and after 90 Day Fiancé breaks for commercial, I turn on my recorder and ask her to explain to me how she got from New York and the future limitless to the Hollywood Hills and federal charges.

Leah points to the TV, at a battery commercial. “One second. Did you know that the Energizer Bunny is actually a parody of the Duracell Bunny? Most people don’t know that, but originally, Duracell had a bunny mascot, and this was meant to show it up: Duracell runs down, but Energizer keeps going and going. But it was so successful that it took on its own life. It’s like Weird Al recording ‘White and Nerdy.’ That stuck with people way more than ‘Ridin’’ did.”

I offer to take her Weird Al reference off the record. “No, leave it on,” she says. “That’s not even what I wanted to get to. So the Energizer Bunny is dominating the airwaves, Duracell stops using its bunny. But sales of Duracell still go up. Because people still associate any bunny with Duracell batteries. Isn’t it weird how things work out?”

Her point is that life is unpredictable, which leads her into the autobiography I’d asked for in the first place. “I moved to Berkeley, turned off my brain, and sleepwalked through law school. Honestly, I can’t remember a single moment from those three years. Except feeling an awful itchiness about the Bay Area. It’s so soft up there. I’m sure it’s fine for some people…if you’re happy to spend your life wearing cozy sweaters and drinking lukewarm cocoa. But I’m much more comfortable among the rats and the filth and garbage, so as soon as I graduated, I came down to L.A. Got a job as the lowliest associate at this dumb, nothing civil practice law firm. I was expected to take the bar and move up, but I just couldn’t. I was at entry level for a few years. My whole life was Bates stamping document productions. What about you?”

It takes me a moment to realize she’s asking for my biography. I stop recording.

“Wait, wait, leave it on. My life is on the record, but yours isn’t?” I remind her that she’s the one charged with a federal offense. “It’s not my fault you have a boring life.”

“Okay,” I say. “After graduation, I started freelancing.”

“Did you have a day job?”

“For a year or so, yeah. At a physical therapy office. Until I started making enough money writing. I had a few things published in little pop-up internet magazines, and then I parlayed that into…”

“Staff writing?”

“No, but into regularly publishing things in more enduring internet magazines. And eventually real magazines.”

“Anything you’re especially proud of?” I take a moment to respond and she says, “Yeah, go ahead. Be falsely modest.”

“I wrote a novel.”

“Published?”

“No.”

“You wrote a novel…let me guess…The Great Gatsby from the mechanic’s perspective? Or a physical therapist who sees an illuminating cross-section of the world pass through his office? Oh, I’m sorry. I’m not making fun of you.”

I tell her I’m not angry, but that I think she’s attempting to dodge my questions. An insouciance has marked Leah during her entire legal ordeal. Her co-defendants turned on her in their initial statements, accusing her of being flippant towards their legal predicament, and therefore probably flippant towards the suffering of their ticket-holders.

“No dodging. I’m just trying to be friendly,” she says, defensively. “I like hearing what you’ve been up to…freelancing…so maybe you have a better ability to handle being out of work. But when I was fired…oh, and I don’t think it was anything personal. The firm was contracting and there wasn’t anything I did that couldn’t be absorbed by another attorney. So I started looking for other firms, but my heart wasn’t in it. And even if I could have dragged myself to apply, I didn’t want to get turned down. Have you ever been rejected from something you didn’t even want to begin with?”

Leah leans back in her chair and closes her eyes. I start to ask another question, but she cuts me off. “No, no, I’m still with it. I just needed a second. So: out of work, feeling depressed about…I started going out drinking. Like we do. Hey, remember that time at the 12th Avenue Pub?” She sits up. “We told those guys from Long Island that I was an exchange student from London? And we got them to pay for our drinks by saying I was only carrying pound notes? I don’t even know if they call them ‘pounds’ in England anymore.”

Leah still talks about that con with pride. “I got so drunk I stopped using an accent, and even then they didn’t catch on. I told them I knew one of the Spice Girls.” I ask her if she’s always enjoyed fooling people. She sinks back in her chair.

“No, I don’t enjoy fooling people. It’s just a story I thought you might like to remember. Well, anyway…I was out at a bar when Adam came up, and we started talking, and, uh…he goes right into talking about how he’s planning this festival, and I tell him that I’m an out-of-work attorney…” I interrupt to ask if she really volunteered that information so quickly. “It was the truth. Why wouldn’t I tell him? Oh, because I enjoy fooling people?”

Adam Foley, the son of a Silicon Valley power couple was five months out of Harvard with $1,000,000 in graduation money burning a hole in his pocket. His father presented him with list of aspiring start-ups he could invest in and shepherd to success, but Foley wanted to use his money for a project entirely his own. “I didn’t want to just fuel somebody else’s creativity: I wanted to be the fuel of creativity,” he has explained in a deposition that doubles as one of the all-time great megalomaniacal monologues in human history. (Foley declined to comment for this article.) He hit upon the idea of organizing and hosting the music festival to end all music festivals: rarified and extravagant, and with a heavy emphasis on networking, an activity that only the very wealthy seem to consider pleasurable.

But in his own words, he was a big picture guy, not the right person to bother with a million little details. (That he was assembling a staff by going to bars suggests that he was not even the right person to bother with any single detail.) Leah was the last person to be hired for his staff of five.

“He wasn’t looking for a lawyer, per se. Just for a grown-up. Somebody to oversee the project. There hadn’t been any…” Any planning? Any organization? “Any sense at all. They hadn’t kept a record of the ticket-holders’ info. Instead, they had just put up a big map of the US with pins where the buyers lived. So I had to retroscript the whole thing. I did such a good job with that that the week before the festival, when things started going awry…I got promoted to Head of Client Satisfaction Services – I mean, what a title! – which meant that I was authorized to make decisions by myself.”

And which meant that she was on the hook when the lawsuits came. “That was going to happen anyway,” she says, waving her hands. “They needed multiple defendants. It makes it harder for Adam to plead ignorance if this was a team effort. Looks more like conspiracy. And they’re hoping one of us will flip on another. I would have done the same thing if I was a lawyer on the other side.”

Leah is very equanimous about the whole situation, refusing to speak ill of the prosecutors, the ticket-holders, or her co-defendants. You can imagine her being advised to this by her attorney, but she doesn’t have one. This is entirely her decision.

Does she feel like she was set up by Adam as his fall guy? “No, that suggests a kind of conspiratorial thinking that isn’t him.” Does she think the prosecutor is taking them on because they’re easy villains? “Prosecutors aren’t in the business of wasting resources. Of course they’re going to pursue cases they think they can win.” What about the kids who bought the tickets? Does she really have sympathy for the entitled children of the 1%? “Look, this isn’t a festival I would have gone to. And, no, these aren’t people I would probably choose to be friends with. But I don’t see any problem with them paying whatever they can afford for the chance to travel and meet some people they think they’d like to meet. And if I paid a lot of money for a concert and accommodations that fell through, I’d be upset too.”

If she doesn’t feel angry at anyone else, does she feel guilty? “Of course. All the time. About this and about a million other things. I let the mess of my life spill into other people’s. I hurt people. And yes, they were rich assholes who ‘deserved’ to get hurt…but they didn’t deserve to get hurt by me.” Meaning what? “Meaning I’m not righteous enough to be doling out punishments.”

Because of the million other things? “I know we haven’t seen each other in six years,” she says, “but even on the basis of what you saw when we were in school, I owe a lot of people a lot of apologies. I haven’t got any better since then. Don’t you feel guilty?”

I’m jotting down a note, so I don’t answer. She repeats herself. “Do you ever feel guilty?”

“About what?”

“Unless you became a saint in the last six years…I’ve seen you lie to people, and steal their coke, and…remember when you threw up in the cab?”

It was senior year. I was in a cab from the Upper East Side to the East Village. Only five minutes into the ride, I threw up. And not just straight down, into a neat puddle: onto the cushions, the seat back, the ashtrays and cup holders…I told the driver to pull up to an ATM, where I could get cash to pay the damages. But instead, I hopped out of the cab, rounded the corner, and rushed down into a subway station to ride the trains home.

“I don’t feel guilty, no,” I explain. “I wouldn’t encourage anyone to throw up in a cab, but it was part of the process. The same way I didn’t like the headaches or having to drag myself back from some unknown neighborhood the next morning, but I wouldn’t give them up. I liked going out and getting drunk, I liked having sex with strangers, I liked stealing coke from…other drunk kids. If they could afford to buy their own coke, they could afford to lose it.”

“Yeah, but you weren’t Robin Hood. You weren’t giving bumps to the poor. You were just snorting it yourself. And you’re still smiling about it!”

“Everyone needs a reckless youth.”

“Needs?” asks Leah.

“What’s the alternative? You don’t have any fun and you wind up bitter and regretful and angry at young people for the rest of your life.”

Leah doesn’t reply for a moment, then says that’s she’s forgotten my original question, and I admit I have too. We decide to go get lunch. “Let’s go to the store, as long as you’re here,” suggests Leah. “I don’t know the next time I’ll be able to leave.”

Leah guides me down the mountain and tells me again how house arrest has changed her diet. “I’m on all non-perishables. Frozen fruit, frozen vegetables, dried…everything. Lots of soup cans. I’m like Ted Cruz. Except I’m not going to get away with it all.”

I joke that at least she’s not yet reached the point of eating Spam. “You know,” she says brightly, “here, Spam is a joke, but in Hawaii, it’s considered totally legitimate.” I ask her what that means. “One of the attorneys I used to work for is Hawaiian. She told me that it got big over there during World War II. Servicemen had it, it found its way into the stores, and it stuck.”

World War II was 75 years ago, I remind her. “And? Lots of things were 75 years ago. It doesn’t mean they’re not still today. It’s used in…sushi variations, for one. Turn here,” she adds, throwing her arm in front of my face.

I tell her that I’ve interviewed a lot of people and done a lot of diverse research in my career, and I’ve never heard anything like this about Spam. When I suggest that perhaps this was just a taste her coworker had, not a Hawaiian trend, she snaps at me. “You had never heard of this concept before I brought it up, and you think you understand it better than I do? Where do you get this reflexive sense that you know more than me?” I say that I don’t have any such sense, and Leah cuts me off. “That’s why you’re here for the interview at all.”

I think back to when I first heard about the 4Most Festival and what it felt like to see Leah’s name in the news stories. I think of the disconnect between the person I had in my memory, and the person being dragged by a US Attorney as “a criminal whose greed is only surpassed – thankfully for those who wish to see justice done swiftly – by her incompetence.”

“I’m here because I wanted to hear your explanation.”

“So you could write a little schadenfreude piece? You went up and up, while I let all the air go out of my life and sank into the swamp?”

“No. I wanted to be impressed by you. You always impress me…I mean…I couldn’t live in L.A., driving like this all the time.”

“What? Who cares about L.A.? You live in New York.”

“But so did you. You can do them both.”

“Yeah, wow. I’m equally at home in either elite coastal bubble. You’re not impressed by me, except maybe for the colossal scale of my fucking up.”

“Do you remember why you started telling those Long Island guys that you were from London? It’s because they were hassling Winnie and touching her on the dance floor. And you got them away from her and got them distracted and so drunk that they just passed out in the booth.”

I look over at her and she rolls her eyes. “That was like a million years ago. And how impressive is it when the reckless youth never grows up and stops acting like an idiot? You could write about anything. Why would you fly all the way out here to disrespect me?”

“I do respect you. I always knew you could handle everything that life dropped on you. That’s why I wanted to see what you had planned for this festival situation.”

“I don’t have a…” She’s cut off by a loud horn. I look back to the road and see that I’ve drifted into oncoming traffic. As an inexperienced driver, my only response to any danger is to slam on the brakes, which lock and send us skidding into a huge truck. Leah grabs the steering wheel with one hand and the parking brake with her other. She yanks the brake and pulls the wheel hard to one side, which spins the car around 180 degrees and drifts us in a semicircle out of the truck’s path. We wind up in the shoulder, alive and uninjured.

We forget the grocery store and drive back to Leah’s place in silence. Once we get inside, she dials for pizza. While we wait for it to arrive, and while we eat it, and while we finish off all the bottles of wine I had bought at the airport and left in my trunk (miraculously not shattered by my awful driving), we watch 90 Day Fiancé. Mohamed is describing the challenges of living with Danielle: “She was like…be like…sitting on the floor crying, screaming: ‘I want my sex tonight!’” It’s that second-language phrasing that’s so much more impactful than “proper” English.

The next morning, I leave and drive back to my hotel. By the time I arrive, Leah has already sent me an email.

I don’t know what you were thinking, but to make things easy, I’ll just say that everything from yesterday can be on the record. I hope it’s enough for your piece because I don’t feel up to another day of interviewing. Maybe we can see each other again in another six years, provided I’m not locked up, which, not that you asked, seems pretty unlikely, in my best legal evaluation. By the way, do you know what happened to Winnie after I saved her that night?

Winnie wound up going home with me, but I can’t bear to admit that to Leah. I step out onto my balcony and look out towards the ocean and try to imagine the anticipation people felt about the 4Most Festival. (Then I remember that the event was in Antigua, that Adam Foley and the hundreds of ticket-holders would have been staring in anticipation towards the Caribbean Sea. All that’s out my way is Hawaii.) It’s hard for me to imagine their excitement because I’ve always hated the ocean. I hate the crowds and the sunburns and the sand getting everywhere, but mostly I hate the water’s darkness and the water’s silence. I hate the thought of the tides endlessly rising and falling, for all history, for all time, no matter how sick anybody gets of it, no matter how much anybody wishes the world could change. It keeps going and going…