#but hey. interesting thought exercise. and i do miss doing analysis it's been a bit since i've had a german class

[echotunes]

just wrote like 1k+ in a rambly reply to an ao3 comment ayúdame

[msephy]

Upbringing chap 13/13

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 - Chapter 9 - Chapter 10 - Chapter 11 - Chapter 12

Cross-posted to AO3

And here is the last chapter! I hope you enjoyed the story. If so, please let me know ;) Any comments are welcome!

###

Earth 53 - Jason Todd

Of fucking course Bruce would like this Jason Wayne. Weren’t they palls, smiling to each other and hugging each other? Bruce. Hugging someone. Who wasn’t Dick.

And Jason was not jealous. He didn’t need Bruce’s approval, he didn’t need anything from him. He was a grown man.

It was just… unfair.

He thought about hiding in the shadows, but too late. The Doppelganger noticed him on the top of the stairs and nodded at him, indicating his presence to Bruce as well. Jason smirked. They could both go to hell.

“We will stay the night and head back home in the morning,” Bruce announced suddenly.

Jason felt himself tense all over. His smirk widened. “What, already? And here I thought you loved it here!”

Bruce seemed taken aback by the comment, but the Doppelganger understood what he meant by it, and rolled his eyes.

“If you want to hug your father, go ahead. I mean, it’s not like he’d fight you.”

“I don’t need…!”

“Sure, I can see how much you don’t need his attention. Provoking him has nothing to do with it, either. Jesus, how old are you? You still communicate like a teenager which,” he added, turning to Bruce, “by the way, you do, too.”

Bruce frowned. The attack to the Big Bad Bat softened the one to Jason himself only so much, though. Communicating like a teenager? Seriously? As if Bruce ever listened!

“It’s not because he does it that you have to do it too,” the Doppelganger concluded, still aiming his words at Bruce but echoing Jason’s a bit too well. Damnit. And damn him, too, and his perfect life, his perfect personality, his perfect Gotham!

The Doppelganger and Bruce both turned to Jason, making him realized he’d shouted that last part out loud. The Doppelganger smirked, a smirk that Jason knew only too well for seeing it in the mirror every morning.

“Ooooh, poor little Jay whose life was hard,” he jeered in Jason’s own vicious tone. “That’s why he became a bad guy, because he had a hard life.”

“Shut up,” Jason warned.

“Yes, that’s right,” the Doppelganger kept going. “A hard life, like his old da’.”

“He wasn’t even your father!” Jason exploded. “What would you know about it?”

“So? Catherine wasn’t your mother yet you loved her, didn’t you? Our paths only diverged when Alfred found out about me, back when my biological father died, and by then, I was thirteen. You know how it was, being us at thirteen.”

Jason froze. The Doppelganger smirked. “Yeah, I thought so. And yeah, apparently, for you, it only became better later. And then you died. Buhu.”

“Jason,” Bruce tried to interrupt, but the Doppelganger didn’t take any of his shit.

“No, Bruce. He’s excusing his own behavior in ways he doesn’t the behavior of others.”

“I know alright?” Jason exploded. “I fucking know that what I do doesn’t get a pass, but someone has to do it.”

“Has to? Really? Because look by the fucking window, you unbelievable moron. Look at that perfect Gotham of mine, and take a good, hard look at yours. Do you really still think that you took a better path than Batman?”

Jason felt the words like a blow. Fuck him. Fuck him. He was taking the hard decisions, someone had to help the people who didn’t have anybody, the ones Batman wouldn’t help, wouldn’t avenge, someone who would stop those who would never, otherwise, be stopped.

“Some people don’t deserve help,” Jason finally managed.

The Doppelganger shrugged. “Obviously. Take the Joker, for example. Ah, is it him who killed you?” The fucking jerk nodded, as if understanding. Jason felt livid. “Of course. He tried to push Bruce toward his most extreme, and it worked rather well, too. So I broke both his knees.”

Bruce gasped at that. He hadn’t been looking too well, either, while the Doppelganger was talking about his way of doing things, now that Jason thought about it. Did he think he’d been wrong, too? To create Batman?

“His knees? But…”

“Bruce, I like you very much, but the Bruce from this world is my brother and no one hurts my brother. Considering the life he’s living, I consider myself rather restrained. Also, don’t worry, the Joker still manages to cause havoc all the same.”

But he wouldn’t be killing any Robin. Jason’s eyes went up to the empty wall of the cave, where the card would be hanging, back in his world. Maybe that would be an acceptable solution. He craved the clown’s death but… Justice, not revenge. Or maybe a balance between both. Batman already played that game, after all, ignoring the law where it suited him.

Jason didn’t quite relax. It was too late for him, for the Red Hood to be a good guy. He’d never be Saint Jason Wayne. And their Gotham would never be this Perfect Gotham, either.

Or would it? The Doppelganger had had to start somewhere. He’d had to face the Joker, and Ra’s, and all the other fucking lunatics who were attracted by the city and, even more, by Batman. Could there still be hope on their own Earth?

Yeah, no. It wasn’t Jason’s way.

He might still like to work at the Martha Wayne Foundation, though. He’d trusted those people, back when he lived in the streets, at thirteen. Would he manage to find a compromise with Bruce? Without the two of them going at each other’s throats?

“I don’t think I can stop,” Bruce admitted out loud, in a matter-of-fact tone that sounded like defeat.

“You don’t have to,” the Doppelganger said. “Just, you know, also invest in people? I’m sure you do. You have a huge family. All of you put together…”

“We could do it,” Jason heard himself say.

Bruce looked up at him, an indefinable expression on his face. Jason glared back. “We could do it. The replacement already works for Wayne Enterprises. The demon brat and I can take care of the streets.”

Bruce frowned. Of fucking course. He wouldn’t trust them. He…

“I’ll think about it.”

What? No, wait. He was going to come up with an entirely different plan, for sure. Or Jason would do something he didn’t approve of, and they would be back to square one.

And yet. If it had even a remote chance to ever work, if Gotham could even become a better place… Fuck. That would be so worth it.

He looked at his doppelganger, and nodded. Then back at Bruce. “Tomorrow? We can go back, like, now.”

“Bruce will be sorry to miss you,” the local Jason said, but he was smiling. “I’ll pass your excuses along.”

“Yeah, right.” Jason hesitated. “Tell him that, you know. The visit wasn’t too bad. I’m glad the kid is alright.”

“Thank you, by the way,” the Doppelganger said. “You know. For saving my nephew’s life.”

Jason shrugged. “Hey. He’s family.”

He doubted he’d even manage to produce a grin as wide as Jason Wayne’s while meaning it. However, that might be a goal worth aiming for.

###

Earth 53 – Jason Wayne

The next day was quiet. Jason stayed home, spent time with the kids. He asked them both to stay home, despite it being a Friday, pretending it was because he’d missed them. He had, of course, but he mostly thought Damian could use the break.

He did miss the other Bruce, though. The jackass of other Jason… He hoped he’d do well, but he wasn’t in a hurry to see him again.

Once the kids were suitably distracted, Jason grabbed the week’s newspapers and started reading. He wasn’t supposed to work but nobody back at Wayne Enterprise would believe it if he wasn’t up to date with everything that had happened during the week.

There were a lot of different newspapers, from The Economist to the Gotham Gazette, all showing vastly different levels of analysis and opinions. It was always interesting to compare, especially putting the points of views in perspective with the average reader of each. A nice exercise.

Then his eyes stopped at the small ads, specifically at the renting section. He didn’t need a flat in Gotham center, of course; they owned several. Until now, he’d never thought about moving there. Bruce needed him at the manor.

Except he didn’t, not really. Bruce was an adult. His choice of becoming Batman – well, if he needed help, he could call. He knew Jason would always come, if he needed him. Hell, Batman spent more time in central Gotham than at the Cave.

As for Bruce, as an entity apart from Batman… He was an adult. He had his kids here. He didn’t need Jason around. Besides, if he did, going out of the manor for visiting would do him good.

And there was also another point they should discuss.

Jason put the newspaper away and got up, heading for the library. Bruce was, of course, down in the Cave. From the look of it, samples of soil needed to be analyzed, maybe in order to determine where someone had been killed before their cadaver being transported elsewhere – or maybe to determine the amount of fertility, who knew.

“Hey. Everything alright?” Jason asked.

“Mh.”

“I distracted the kids this morning, you can take the afternoon.”

“I’m busy.” Bruce winced. “But I’ll come upstairs as soon as I’m done.”

“Good.” Jason hesitated. It was uncharacteristic enough for Bruce to actually look up from his Erlenmeyer.

“Yes?” he prompted.

“I thought about something.” Jason sighed. “Don’t be upset?”

“I can’t be if you don’t tell me anything.”

“I want to take over Wayne Ent.”

That got a reaction out of Bruce. He put away the pipet he was using to pour chemicals on the soil, and straightened.

“Explain.”

“Bruce, you’re the CEO, but we both know you don’t invest yourself as much as you should. Part of that is my fault. I took over most of your responsibilities when I became COO. More than I should have.”

“Mhn.”

“But you let me. You are not interested in Wayne Ent., not the way you should be. And that’s alright. I can take care of it. I actually like it, too. But the company deserve better from its CEO.”

“I could invest myself more.”

Jason snorted. “You could. Or you could spend more time with your kids.”

“I do…!”

“I’m moving to Gotham proper,” Jason announced. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while.”

Bruce carefully didn’t say anything. Jason sighed.

“You know I love you. You’re my brother. And I love Dick, and Damian, and Alfred, and the manor will always be home. But I need some room for myself, too.” He hesitated again. “Maybe adopting my own children, someday.”

Jason didn’t talk about a relationship. He wasn’t ready to let someone close enough to him to contemplate it. Not even thinking about all the secrets and baggage.

Damnit. Jason really meant what he said, yet he couldn’t help but to feel guilty.

“Would it be alright?”

“Yes,” Bruce said abruptly. “You deserve some place. Something to yourself.”

He looked like he wanted to say more, but he’d never been good with words. It didn’t matter; Jason understood what he meant. That Jason had worked hard to get where he was and should keep going. That he’d taken care of Bruce until now, and still would, but that he had the right to have his own life.

Bruce hadn’t wanted Jason to follow him, back when he’d went training. Back then, Jason had followed only for Bruce, even though he’d loved their trip, and learning how to move, how to fight, how to think like a warrior. He’d loved meeting Talia, and other men and women as dangerous as she was. It was part of him, now.

But he wouldn’t have gone, by himself. To be a vigilante was not his path. It was part of him, he’d always relish in flying over Gotham at night, and there was no fucking way he wouldn’t have done everything to be able to protect his little brother, even though Bruce didn’t need much protecting.

Yet he should, too, follow also his own path.

“You already have some things in one of the flats, I’ll have to put to your name,” Bruce decided.

“Maybe I can come back on week-ends?” Jason snorted. “Like a student, I guess.”

“That would be nice.”

Jason smiled. Bruce did the same, offering him one of his rare smiles, faint on his lips, shining in his eyes. Jason hugged him and felt his brother’s arm close around him, keeping him close. Bruce was a great hugger.

They separated only after several minutes, both smiling still. Well, Jason, at least, was grinning. Bruce was back to looking mostly serious.

“I’ll announce the change next week, to Wayne Ent. I mean,” Jason said. “The moving can wait a couple of weeks after that.”

“Good. You only just came back.”

Jason bumped into Bruce’s side, just to feel his brother close again. “I’ve been reading the newspapers. What about you tell me what happened in the more underground parts of the city? I’ve started reading your reports while waiting for you to come back with Damian, but a summary would help.”

“Sure.”

They sat at the Batcomputer, side by side, their faces reflected in the dark screen. The Wayne brothers. Jason knew, suddenly without doubt, that if he saw them now, their father would be proud of them both

The End

[3laxx]

Confession training

Older Oneshot I wrote about 2 years ago and never uploaded because... Don't ask me. Have fun reading!

After a long and cold analysis, Alya comes to terms with having a crush on her best friend Marinette. And as the right moment comes, Alya acts as we know her - not hesitating to take actions into her hand.

Ao3 / FF.net

Alya didn’t know what hit her when she stared after her best friend.

It had been a normal school day, Marinette had talked normally to her, Alya had been doing the exercises – everything had been normal.

But then her best friend, her bluenette, had waved her goodbye and walked down the stairs in front of the school. She knew the bakery was right over the street, as was, of course, Marinette’s home.

Alya’s way back home was always in the opposite direction and normally they would have said goodbye at the end of the stairs, but today Marinette was in a hurry.

Mumbling something about a big order in the bakery and she had to help her parents, softly hugging Alya and waving, then storming off.

Something had caught Alya’s interest.

Was it her deep-night-blue hair? Her adorable pigtails?

Alya honestly didn’t know. She shook her head and headed home without a second look after her best friend.

The next day she was even more confused.

Something about Marinette had kept her restless the night before and she couldn’t, she couldn’t figure out what it was. It drove her insane.

She was a reporter, kept the Ladyblog updated with news only minutes after an akuma attack shook the city once again. Holy, she even made a live blog of literally every. Single. Akuma. Attack.

It was her job to figure things out.

It was her freaking job to know what’s going on.

But her own behavior was a mystery to her. Her own feelings made her question her talent of reporting. She was confused.

Coming to school, being near to Marinette, talking like everything was normal, this day it was a mess. Just sitting next to the bluenette made her hands act weird, sweating and trembling. She was constantly adjusting her glasses, tensed up when the girl turned to her, stuttered when her best friend talked, breathed heavier when the bluenette laughed and felt her stomach flutter when Marinette touched her.

At lunchbreak, Alya was a mess. Not visibly, she was quite capable of holding her poker face, but on the inside, everything screamed at her in high alert. Something kept her being tense at any minute and she didn’t know, what it was, she didn’t. Freaking. KNOW!

As Marinette and she walked to the bakery of her parents to eat there, Alya thought of everything she could to explain her sudden jumpiness around Marinette.

Maybe she had forgotten a bet? Maybe she still had debts to pay off? Maybe she was pissed at her best friend but had forgotten why? Or maybe she was going through a weird phase in puberty?

No, there had to be something else… Maybe she was jealous of Adrien for spending more time with Marinette?

In an instant, Alya shook her head, denying her thoughts.

Her? Jealous?

The brunette almost laughed.

Jealous at Adrien? Yeah, right. Nobody spent as much time with Marinette as she did, because obviously they were best friends! Adrien had Nino, after all, and a pretty packed schedule because of his father. He kept him busy with fencing, Chinese and piano lessons and on top of that modelling. After all, his father was a famous designer and so his son had to model for him.

Poor Adrien, Alya thought.

Marinette and she walked through the side door, climbing up the stairs to the flat of the Dupain-Cheng Household right after greeting the parents of the bluenette.

Upstairs they prepared a few sandwiches which they would eat in Marinette’s room while discussing the homework for their lessons after lunch.

After being alone in Marinette’s room for almost an hour now, Alya felt like a nervous wreck.

Finally, finally she had been able to understand what has been going on with her.

She had a crush.

A totally awkward crush on her best friend.

And being alone with her that long did nothing to make Alya feel better because her stomach gave her a hard time. Even eating was stressful, because oh holy shit Marinette looked so damn cute as she nibbled at her sandwich looking at her notes taken in class.

Alya looked away, almost throwing up because of the many, _many_ butterflies in her stomach.

A distraction, a distraction… Quickly!

She pulled out her phone, laughed at a cute kitten Nino had sent her and checked their classes for the afternoon. She raised her eyebrows at the surprise the internet held for her.

“Hey, did you know our afternoon classes were canceled?”

Marinette looked up, pretty surprised herself, and went to sit directly next to Alya and holy mother of god her scent-

“No, I didn’t!”

“Hold on, I’ll text someone and ask if they knew.”

She quickly got an answer of Nino who was with Adrien and Kim at a café at that time. They apparently knew.

“Huh, weird. How could we miss this?”

“Hm, dunno…”, Alya shrugged, “But they’re cancelled and we got free time, that’s for sure.”

They smiled at each other and Alya thought she might go crazy because oh my freaking god Marinette looked at her and holy she had butterflies in her throat by now-

“Alya, you alright?”, Marinette, naive and young Marinette asked her.

“Uh-… Huh-… Yeah. No worries.”, she grinned.

The bluenette repeated her grin and then looked down to her sketchbook. There was a short silence between them but Alya made sure she soon broke it.

“Hey, Marinette?”

Her best friend looked up and Alya grimaced on the inside, praying not to fall unconscious.

“Yeah, Alya?”

“I-… Uh-… You like Adrien.”, she could’ve slapped herself. Way to go, Alya…

Marinette thought about that for a while. Alya almost died as the bluenette spoke again.

“Uh, yeah. I mean, he’s a great friend and all… But I’m over the crush I had on him. Why would you ask?”

“Haha, uh… Nothing. I mean-… I noticed…”, the brunette suddenly found a great interest in her fingernails.

“What?”

“No, it’s nothing. I just-… I think you still like Adrien.”

“As a friend, Alya.”, Marinette slightly touched her hand, making her jump, “You seem weird lately. Haven’t seen you that strained before…”

Alya laughed too loudly at that, too hysterical, too long. But as she shook her head, Marinette was beside her once again.

“You sure? ‘Cuz I’m worried…”

“Ah, no need to be worried. I just-… I noticed I like somebody.”

Marinette’s shoulders slumped a bit at that but Alya hadn’t seen it.

“Oh, okay then… Who is it?”

Suddenly, Alya had an idea. Quickly she straightened her back and found the gaze of her best friend, even though she totally died while doing so!

“I wanna tell her that I love her, Marinette.”

“Well, then… Just tell her.”

“Just like that? No, I’m too unsure of how to tell her. I need practice first.”

Marinette laughed at that, being a bit uncertain at what Alya wanted to do.

“Well then…”

“Can I practice with you?”

“Uh-… Yeah? Of course…”

“I love you!”

“Good god, you’re just gonna blurt it out like this? Heck no. Do it a little softer.”

Alya tried again.

And again.

And again.

Until Marinette looked satisfied.

“Now you got it. I think that’s perfect.”, she laughed, “So now, go on and tell her!”

Alya leaned in.

Now was the time and even though she was nervous as hell, she had to do it now.

Carefully she took Marinette’s hand from her knee, interlocking their fingers, just as her best friend had instructed her to do while practicing.

“Marinette…”, she began, her eyes as wide of excitement as the eyes of the girl in front of her of surprise.

“Marinette, I love you.”

She slowly leaned forwards and brought her other hand to Marinette’s chin to guide her to where she wanted her to be. The bluenette’s eyes fluttered lightly before they closed, giving Alya the permission to continue to lean in.

Their lips lightly touched, as if it were only a little blow of summer wind, but soon Alya claimed her best friend’s half open mouth as hers, with newfound confidence in Marinette’ silent agreement.

The bluenette’s lips were soft as a pillow and tasted like her strawberry lipstick that Alya had bought her just the week before. Breathless, they parted, but held their gaze as they gasped for air.

“I just did.”

“What?”

“I just told her.”

Marinette seemed to need a little moment before she realized what Alya was aiming at.

“Oh you-…”, she threw a light punch at Alyas arm, before grinning like crazy.

“You planned that!”

Alya laughed but shook her head.

“I’m sorry to pop your bubble but no, that was 100% spontaneous.”

Her best friend, no, girlfriend, laughed and kissed her once more.

“You are unbelievable!”

“And you are unbelievably cute.”

Marinette blushed but laid her hand over Alyas.

“Glad you think so.”

Alya smiled as they shared another kiss.

Without her noticing, between sweet kisses, Marinette winked at a little Kwami hiding at her desk, with one thumb held high up.

And the Kwami cheered in silence as she watched the girls enjoying their free time.

Let me know if you liked it?

[zrtranscripts]

Season 8, Mission 21: I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

Hanged Man

~

SAM YAO: Five, Jody, you've reached the town. We don't know who was working with Jones, or who has the Edda, or who drew all those super creepy pictures of people they wanted to kill, or if they're all the same person. It's dark, but try and stay out of sight. I've got some cams on the island, but yeah, [sighs] a lot of them don't seem to work well in the dark, so I might not see anyone following you. Have you got the map?

[paper rustles]

JODY MARSH: This is from Jones' papers, right? It marks out a route in symbols and says "Follow in the footsteps of the father of the slain," which isn't at all sinister.

SAM YAO: Yeah. Amelia and her people have been going through everything we found in Jones' stash. They've correlated what they've got with Ellie's notes, and the only thing they're sure comes directly from the Edda is that map.

AMELIA SPENS: Which is why you and Five are going to follow the route for me.

SAM YAO: Amelia! Sam, why didn't you say she was with you?

AMELIA SPENS: I'm not. I'm in my stateroom aboard the Undaunted. Since Team Janine has proven a complete liability, I'm overseeing this mission.

JODY MARSH: Hey, Janine's not well. Paula says she's permanently lost vision in one eye. And we still managed to make a successful alliance with Dearg labs, and we discovered that the red fungus comes from Mor Island like the Edda.

AMELIA SPENS: You also discovered several caves bursting with red fungus, which might have been useful to know about earlier. I've sent marines to scour them with flame throwers. All traces of silver mud will be delivered to Dearg for analysis.

SAM YAO: The laird is doing a good impression of an irritated landowner rather than a sinister skincoat. He complained to Janine about damage to a historic sight.

AMELIA SPENS: And the UK is losing more land to the red fungus. Everything we've learned about the Edda suggests that it contains an account of a way to stop it. That's why my marines are searching house to house for the Edda, but so far, they've turned up nothing. All we have is that map. Jones scrawled something on it about the source of the red fungus, and he wrote "skincoats" next to it.

SAM YAO: Right. So following this map might help us understand what's in the Edda. Or guess at it, anyway.

AMELIA SPENS: It's a faint hope that ancient history might save us, but we must follow every lead. Chop chop! Run!

~

SAM YAO: Okay, you're at the first location marked on Jones' map. It's the street in town we, um, destroyed.

JODY MARSH: The houses are burned-out shells.

AMELIA SPENS: Honestly, I send one envoy out as Prime Minister and you set fire to a town! It's just as well no one has the vote.

[paper rustles]

SAM YAO: The route runs between the uh, the squiggle we think is the church and the um, blob we're pretty sure is the pub.

[paper rustles]

AMELIA SPENS: Isn't the smiley face the pub?

[paper rustles]

JODY MARSH: That's a Celtic symbol. It represents the graveyard.

AMELIA SPENS: [sighs] Are you sure this map is to scale?

JODY MARSH: It was drawn by an unstable murderer and is based on a book that's a thousand years old. Of course it's not to scale! I've done the best I could, but -

[cough]

SAM YAO: Someone's coming.

AMELIA SPENS: Probably a displaced islander coming to recover the remains of their treasured possessions from the ruins of their family home.

JODY MARSH: Aw, shut up.

SAM YAO: Right, time for you to get out of there. The next mark on the map is up that hill to the north. Run!

~

JODY MARSH: We got away from that person, Sam. Did they see us?

SAM YAO: Don't think so. It's Hamish McDougall, the grocer. Amelia was right about recovering possessions. He came out of a burned-out house with a charred box labeled "king of the rocks - costumes."

AMELIA SPENS: This is the same king of the rocks ceremony that Jones kept raving about? The one in the rhyme Chief Macallan told us? Moons and pools and stones and fruit? Isn't it a bit of a coincidence that he should pop up on the map's exact route?

SAM YAO: Nah. No, not really. The full moon isn't far off, so everyone's preparing for the ceremony.

JODY MARSH: Besides, the king of the rocks parade doesn't go anywhere near the route on Jones' map.

AMELIA SPENS: All right, then. The next location's marked by a crown?

SAM YAO: That's the laird's manor.

AMELIA SPENS: Ah, yes. The man who not only shot Jones, but had a secret tunnel filled with red fungus in his back garden.

SAM YAO: Yeah, just have a quick look and then get out as fast as you can. It's at the top of the hill. Run!

~

JODY MARSH: Five and I have scaled the back wall. We're in the laird's garden. It feels a bit cheeky, being here on the sly. He's always been dead nice to us.

SAM YAO: I know, but well, the truth is we have to suspect everyone, don't we?

JODY MARSH: So what are we looking for, exactly?

SAM YAO: Anything that looks like it might be connected to the red fungus.

AMELIA SPENS: Other than the tunnel full of red fungus beneath the place, you mean? You could sneak through a window and see if the laird has the Edda. He's been... resistant to the idea of my marines searching his home.

JODY MARSH: We can't just break in!

SAM YAO: Jody, shhh! Keep your voice down!

[door opens]

LAIRD REID: Who's there? If that's another lackey from that blasted Prime Minister – [cocks gun]

JODY MARSH: [whispers] It's the laird! He's got a shotgun!

LAIRD REID: Who is that? Oh, Five, Jody! What on earth are you doing?

JODY MARSH: Um - !

AMELIA SPENS: Oh, for goodness sake, lie!

JODY MARSH: Actually, we're following the route of this map. It's from Jones' notes on the Edda.

LAIRD REID: Interesting. May I have a look?

AMELIA SPENS: I despair.

[paper rustles]

JODY MARSH: See? Your manor's marked with a crown.

LAIRD REID: Hmm. I think you might have made a mistake. Why don't you and Five come with me, and I'll offer an alternative theory.

SAM YAO: Uh... I don't think that's a good idea.

LAIRD REID: Come along. It's not far.

SAM YAO: Five, don't – [sighs] Okay. Do follow him, but be careful, guys. There's lots of reasons not to trust him.

~

LAIRD REID: We'll have a good view from up here. Do you have a spare headset?

JODY MARSH: Yeah. Here you go.

LAIRD REID: Sam, hello.

SAM YAO: Hi.

AMELIA SPENS: Laird Reid.

LAIRD REID: Oh! And Prime Minister. A delight, as always.

AMELIA SPENS: I should very much like to know why you've kidnapped my people in the middle of a crucial mission.

LAIRD REID: [laughs] I'd hardly call it kidnapping. I wanted to show them something. Look, up on that hill there.

JODY MARSH: It's an ancient stone circle. I've been up there. There's a carving of the sun in the middle.

LAIRD REID: Aye. During the king of the rocks, there's a parade over it waving yellow streamers. Does the shape of it remind you of anything?

SAM YAO: Uh, well, stone circles sort of, um... It looks like a crown?

JODY MARSH: Oh, you're right! Wait. Have we been reading the map upside down?

AMELIA SPENS: So this exercise has been a complete waste of time?

LAIRD REID: [laughs] It's not their fault. There's a clue on the map, but you'd have to know a lot of Norse mythology to spot it.

JODY MARSH: Ellie would have known.

LAIRD REID: Aye. Your Ellie, or my wife. Those words on the map there, follow the footsteps of the father of the slain? That's another name for Odin. In his quest for knowledge, Odin hung himself upside down.

AMELIA SPENS: Ah, that does make sense. An ancient code for those in the know. 

JODY MARSH: Just a sec. Jones drew this map from the Edda, we're sure of that?

AMELIA SPENS: That's what the Norse history boffins tell me. We're as sure as we can be that that map is in the Edda.

JODY MARSH: But look, Five. Turned upside down, it does follow the king of the rocks parade. The ceremony isn't just some folk tradition, it's from the Edda! Laird Reid, we'd never have figured it out without you.

SAM YAO: You've got the follow the rest of the route.

LAIRD REID: Tell me what you find.

JODY MARSH: We will.

SAM YAO: Hey, wait. What - what's over to your left?

JODY MARSH: I don't see anything.

SAM YAO: No, I thought... [sighs] No, you're right. There's nothing there now.

JODY MARSH: What was it?

SAM YAO: Well, it looked like a person in one of those gray coats. You know, the skincoats. I'm sure they were there!

JODY MARSH: Probably just shadows playing tricks with your eyes.

SAM YAO: Yeah, maybe. Look, just finish following the map and get home safe as soon as you can. Uh, the next marker's by the shore. Go, run!

~

JODY MARSH: There's a snake marked on the map here. Looks like the footpath leading into that cave. The parade starts outside it. Let's see if there's anything hidden in there, Five.

SAM YAO: Um, now if Jones had the missing pages of the Edda, do you think he knew the ceremony came from it?

JODY MARSH: Hard to say. His notes weren't exactly coherent. Mostly ramblings about what he'd do when he was made king of the rocks.

[zombie moans]

SAM YAO: Zombie!

JODY MARSH: Worse, a creepy child zombie! It's walked in through the cave entrance. It's blocking our exit.

AMELIA SPENS: Shoot it!

JODY MARSH: We didn't bring weapons!

AMELIA SPENS: Oh, for pity's sake!

SAM YAO: Uh, doesn't the king of the rocks cave have another opening?

JODY MARSH: Yeah. The parade used to start there, lighting bonfires deep into the cave. I heard the laird say the town council stopped it because of health and safety.

SAM YAO: Then you need to get to that entrance. Go!

~

[zombie moans]

JODY MARSH: There's a breeze up ahead.

SAM YAO: The cave opens out over the sea. If you let the zombie follow you out, then knock it off the ledge -

JODY MARSH: Way ahead of you. I'll lead it towards the opening. Five, grab some rocks. Aim for its knees.

[rocks clatter]

SAM YAO: It's slipping. Just one more!

[zombie croaks, water splashes]

JODY MARSH: Amazing shot, Five!

SAM YAO: Uh, guys, have a look at the cave ceiling.

JODY MARSH: Oh God. Amelia? The ceiling in this place, it's covered in those big bulging alien egg-looking things. Like the ones we found in Jones' camp, the things that coconut pomegranate-y seedpods hatch from.

AMELIA SPENS: The pods that brought red fungus to the mainland.

JODY MARSH: Yeah. And there's hundreds of the egg things in here, over our heads. 

SAM YAO: Hold on. So the king of the rocks used to start with the islanders lighting fires in this cave?

AMELIA SPENS: And we think Jones lighting a campfire is what caused seedpods in his cave to hatch out.

JODY MARSH: So we're saying the king of the rocks is from the Edda, and part of the ceremony is causing fungus seedpods to hatch? And they used to do it on purpose for some reason?

SAM YAO: Um, but shouldn't Mor Island be overrun with V-types, in that case?

AMELIA SPENS: And certainly hatching more pods won't help us fight the red fungus. [sighs] The ceiling. It's not what I'm used to. In general, I've found when I want something, there's someone I can bargain with, some deal to be struck. But this... we're looking for knowledge no one has anymore about the meaning of a ritual whose origins are forgotten.

JODY MARSH: Jones' notes kept mentioning Edda verses 321 to 327. If we could read them, they might explain it all.

AMELIA SPENS: Yes, but we can't. I've just heard from my marines. Their house to house searches have yielded nothing. [sighs] I won't allow those seedpods to further devastate the mainland. The Edda is the key! We must get that book back! [sighs] So I'm going to need to find someone to negotiate with, aren't I?

~

[goldenscript]

badboy!wooseok

meet jung wooseok, apparently music major extraordinaire with hella tats and a rep for being a badboy

but you personally know him at that lowkey annoying kid who’s Always falling asleep n coming in late in ur creative writing class

y’all met that first day when he wandered in and he just tapped ur shoulder mid-exercise to ask what was goin’ on n although u could’ve been a jerk n not said anything u threw the kid a bone n somehow his piece still surpassed everyone else’s a few days afterwards

ofc you get it. it’s college so being tired from classes and prolly work is what’s getting him but the little green monster on ur shoulder doesn’t relent bc this is where u learn time management and well

you see you love creative writing - you live, breathe, and think it a lot and it’s ur major so why wouldn’t u enjoy the one class that actually specializes in ur own interest???? and you work rlly gosh diddly darn to do it too bc writing really isn’t that easy

you’re one of those people that takes ages to get a piece out but bc this is a creative writing class you have weekly assignments and some pieces are hits n some are misses but u deal with it bc part of it is for the grade and another part of it is trying to get more experience in the field

anyway, unlike u, wooseok doesn’t seem to rlly try,,, that hard,,, or rlly,,, at,, all n that’s what ticks u off

ur the the kind of person who not just hates slackers, u abhor them n u suppose he tries rlly hard with his major since who wouldn’t??? but he doesn’t w/ urs n when ur teacher an english TA named Hui was talking to him abt writing before class he said it was soOoOOOo easy n u were p resolved to disliking the kid immediately

u just find ur seat near the back with the 30+ students n out of all the ppl to sit by,,,, he sits by u n u jst don’t try to think abt how much u dislike him n his dumb face tht’s starting to fall asleep AGAIN

but ok u sneak a small peek n u have to admit,,,, he’s actually pretty cute like u kno that he seemed p intimidating when u first saw him bc at first glance he’s this flippin’ hulking giant at like 6′2″ with tats up to his neck and sleeve u only get a peek of bc he’s enveloped in a huge jacket 99.9% of the time n he usually has furrowed brows n his lips pulled into a straight line unless he’s talking to hui or some other dude in his large ass group of friends bUT

the peaceful look on his face is different than those times n u kinda make a mental note of it even tho u most certainly are Not comparing his eyelashes to fluttering dark angel wings or his peaceful face to something akin to a statue in a museum

nope

no u r not

n- ok fine maybe a little 

bUT it was part of the warm up assignment to write a snippet of literally anything n he struck ur mind in that split moment n now ur back to aiming a well needed elbow to his side bc hui scanning the aisles for a potential victim to share their piece as he usually does n although u dislike wooseok ur not that spiteful

and right as hui picks on someone right beside u two, wooseok wakes up n looks at you with this really grateful n apologetic look tht u whisper the instructions to him bc gdi ur a good person

he may fall asleep n sometimes comes in late or not at all but u won’t let him fall behind so long as u can help it bc green monster aside ur conscience would hate u

anywayyyyy this particular day is only a little different bc it’s become one of those days where 6 PM is when the sun goes down and it’s pretty dark n not many students are on campus bc hello no one likes being on campus at night,,,,, save for the few kids who have like bio or math discussion then that’s a blessing bc campus rush hour is no joke n u once almost saw ur life flash before ur eyes bc of a bicyclist

u prepared for the coming of night bc ur residence hall isn’t that far off n most of ur friends are at their dorms or beelining across campus so it’s a solo job, n so u’ve estimated abt 20 minutes walking n 15 minutes speedwalking,,, 10 if u jog but ur plan is to speedwalk bc ur bag is heavy with books from ur other classes so no thnx

the moment ur released from class u start making a beeline out of there bc once ur out it’s a hell of a lot darker than u thought and apparently the streetlamps aren’t as bright as u hoped but regardless u try to trek thru the campus as best as u can n preferably near the convenience store since it’s usually open 24 hours and u’d have a place to run into in case someone tried attacking u

but well things kinda go according to plan but not really

u make it prolly halfway before u see this dude just loitering around by the benches near the dark buildings n u try to walk a little faster bc u r Not trying to deal with that tonight 

“hey where you goin’!” he says outta nowhere n u feel urself tense up just a bit

but ofc u look around hoping there’s someone else around n it isn’t just u but it is so u just nervously laugh, “oh yeah haha! just goin’ to the store y’know” bc the bright lights are just up ahead n if he lets u go then u can stay there n hopefully nag one of ur friends to come pick u up if he just doesn’t leave

n he’s just looking at u with feigned disappointment n goes “aw how ‘bout u just stay with me?” n he even dares coming closer

ofc ur ready to peel out of there but another part of u is pretty freakin’ scared bc oFC something just had to happen the first night n ur literal worst fear no less

you just shake ur head like “o no! my roommate’s waiting for me up ahead, y’know so i better get going,,,,,” n you’re already walking a little past him when he just takes a few steps and starts walking alongside u

“aw c’mon!!!! i can show u a real fun time hun. forget ur roommate”

“but-”

“i’m asking nicely, babe don’t make me repeat myself”

the nickname sets u off ur sure n ur just abt ready to tell him off with a glare and everything bc Who Does He Think He Is????? “look dude, i’m not ur babe-”

and then another voice joins right as he’s abt to step towards u n u recognize that husky, just woken up voice anywhere as he says, “take a hint. leave”

you actually look up at surprise bc wooseok gently tugs on ur wrist and puts himself between u and the creepy dude

u suppose the sight of wooseok is enough to scare him off bc right as the creep is abt to tell him off he catches one sight of wooseok and his eyes go so wide he just peels outs bc the look on his face is just screaming: “nope no way noooooooooooooo heck n o“

wooseok's so sweet like "are u ok???" bc unbeknownst to u, u’ve actually been shaking since that guy got so close and u can only manage a small nod but his features are a devoid of that furrowed brows and deep scowl with that dude

in fact his eyes are so soft under the orange lighting and he actually looks really worried bc ur fists are balled n u can’t seem to stop shaking so he goes “c’mon i’ll get u something to warm u up” n u just nod bc as scared as u were u actually feel a lot safer with wooseok there

like he even places his really large black denim jacket over ur shoulders n u feel urself shiver a lot less

so he takes u to the convenience store u were trying to make it to n it turns out his friend yanan works there

yanan’s a really handsome boy with a cast on his arm and his eyes seem to light up at the sight of u and wooseok but he doesn’t say a word bc of the look on ur face n the one on woo’s but he does flash u a friendly smile bc u look like u need it

wooseok gets the two of free hot cocoa n he tells yanan that he’ll pay him back for the drinks n that he’ll be back after he takes u to ur dorm n yanan says something like “i’ll add it onto ur tab” before u two go n wooseok’s reaction is a lil’ stiff n that has u like ??? but u don’t press bc u just want to go to ur dorm and shower and just not think abt what happened

although u aren’t talking, wooseok’s actually trying to make an effort and talk to u. mostly abt little things n he even gives u an analysis of the rlly rlly confusing piece u guys had to do n when he started mentioning what the blue curtains meant u couldn’t help but laugh bc it was silly n it didn’t really mean anything but u can tell he’s trying to make the mood much lighter n he breaks out into this shy smile n goes

“so that what it took to get u to smile huh?” 

n u don’t say anything but a thank u bc the half-empty hot cocoa in hand n the walk back to ur dorm makes u feel better times infinity

he kinda just nods n says “yeah,,,, anytime u need someone to walk home with, i gotchu” n u want to tell him that it’s ok but he looks really serious as he says it so decide to nod

“really, thank you wooseok” you tell him right as ur in front of ur building n he just nods a little awkwardly which is still pretty endearing on him even tho it’s not quite what u expected of this supposed badboy

n he’s like “o well, um,, here.” and just grabs a pen from his bag n grabs a hold of ur free hand n scrawl his number on it n says “the next time y’know u need an escort,,, u can,,, erm,,, call or,, text me,,,” before he’s kinda really red in the face and stumbles his way back to the convenience store

when u get inside n the hot cocoa all’s done n gone n ur scrubbed clean of the day’s grime, u just kinda reflect to urself n decide that wooseok really isn’t that bad after all like u don’t see him as that annoying kid quite so much

now u see that he’s more or less tired from helping at that store n his analysis of the reading was pretty spot on n u just,,, well,, u feel warm and safe at the thought of him

even as u stare at his number still kinda decorated on ur skin, u can’t help but smile at his rosy cheeks

the following day u,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,do not text wooseok

mostly of out fear bc u have no flipping clue what to say so when u see him in class on thursday he actually looks a little pouty w/ hui until he sees u walk in n u actually take a seat by his bag (tho u reason that it’s bc u usually sit there anyway)

as promised he walks u to ur dorm after class n u two actually talk together this time n it becomes a tradition to do that every tuesday and thursday

u begin to see more to him than he lets on in all that time like how he really adores his jacket bc his grandma bought it for him or how he actually plays the guitar and the drums bc at first he thought they were just cool but then he saw his fave band live n wanted to be like them (fun fact: it was cnblue) and the violin like he was good enough to win a prize and everything!

u also see how horribly misrepresented he is bc u hear from a few ppl how he’s no good, he’s a liar, n he’s eaten a live duck once n all that ridiculous stuff but u kno the truth bc he’s actually very truthful n bright n it actually makes u a lil mad that people would talk abt him like that

even more so when u hear some people talk abt how reckless he is n u tell him abt it bc you think he deserves to kno that there are bad things going on abt him but he kinda,,, just,,, brushes it off which leave u very ?? bc that is not the boy you’ve gotten to know n it’s certainly not the one that saved u either n u say so

n he actually looks like he wants to say something but he hesistates so u say “look whatever u did or do, you can tell me wooseok. i’m not gonna think differently of u. i know you’re a good guy”

he just sighs and says “but i’m really not,,, like i’m reckless and no good like that said,,,,”

but you’re absolutely certain that he is dead wrong n so are they so you just tell him to tell u why they’re saying those things n he admits to u that the reason why his friend yanan has an arm cast is bc of him

they had been sneaking into old abandoned buildings as hang out spots just cuz there were tons of unused places in the city n this particular one was near a construction place tht had patrols come by from time to time n this wasn’t any different but the boys didn’t know esp wooseok since he was the one who chose the spot and reassured everyone that it would be fine so when patrols came n they had to peel out everyone mostly made it except yanan who slipped and fell by the nearby construction 

woo ran back over to help him out n they were mostly safe from the cops but the fall yanan made his arm bend funny so they had to take a hospital trip and ever since then wooseok has felt like crap and has been doing his best to make it up to his friend thru helping at the store n getting him to class even if it means he misses a few of his own bc it’s his fault n everyone else knows it

ofc u feel bad bc wooseok looks so dejected abt it n the only comfort u can offer him as his friend is ur support and ur reassurance that even tho he caused that to happen it doesn’t make him a bad person at all so u feel really frustrated n he notices,,, even looks at u in surprise like ???

“w-what’s wrong? why are you upset?”

so u quickly say like “!!! bc ur so kind wooseok! i know u keep saying ur a bad guy n those rumors ppl say r tru but u are so so so so unbelievably kind and sweet and even if no one else likes u then just know that i do ok????????” 

while he’s just in shock, you continue with reddened cheeks and a resolve not to stop, “p-plus, there’s no need to be so harsh on yourself! so what if u skip class -actually not a so what you should definitely go to class pls ur paying to be here- but what i mean is that things like skipping or looking scary doesn’t mean ur a bad guy n no matter what people say i think you’re a good guy and and and your friends do too and i wish u could see that! i wish i could show u somehow and god i don’t know i just--”

and ok you look so adorable mid-spiel and flustered and even though ur attempts to articulate are beginning to fall short, wooseok can’t help but go thru with his impulses like always and just,,, kiss u before he pulls back ready to apologize but you pull him back in and u just kiss him ok 

bc in all that time u spent together and in ur own upset, u realized u really really really flippin’ liked this boy and there was no other way you’d be this worked up over just anybody n with his lips against urs u just feel ur heart going even !!!!!!!!!! louder than ever 

you pull back n say with a small smile “if u ever need reassurance then y’know,,,, i’m happy to give that to u ok?” 

and he just has this goofy grin on his lips like “is this how you’ll reassure me?” and u nod and he just,,, pulls u into his arms n u both fall back onto ur bed just kinda looking at each other in this really soft light bc tbh he’s always had a crush on u since the start of ur class n some of those things like falling asleep and saying writing was easy was just his way of trying to get ur attention n to think he really did in the way he did makes him very happy esp knowing that u feel safe with him

and with you, finally coming to terms with the cold, hard truth that u indeed liked him too is nice bc the warmth and safety of his arms and being able to offer support and some sort of protection to him is all u ever really wanted to do - it happened so slowly and gradually but u have no regrets at all

also, lemme just say that the nine other boys in wooseok’s life absolutely adore u as they all kinda race to meet u bc you’re really all he ever talks abt next to yongwa n they find the two of u super adorable!!! 

it’s actually an easy transition for the two of u to go from friends to s/o’s too bc you two have always been pretty touchy-feely in a really casual way and now you both have even more excuses to hang out and work on stories together or sometimes u go to his dorm just to hear him play his guitar even as yuto’s trying to study for his compsci test or how jinho n hongseok invite u to dinner with the group just so everyone else can watch u and wooseok be really adorable n really just being together is just,,, so nice?? 

like as friends u always had urges to reach out and hold his hand or kiss his cheek or even hug him really tight and now u can do those things! and even he would have moments where he just wanted to give u lots of back hugs and spinning hugs and just hugs and forehead kisses but he couldn’t so moving on from friendship and being able to do intimate gestures became a rlly fun pastime for you two!

and now whenever u hear anyone whispering abt wooseok or giving you funny looks, you actually throw a few responses at them in his defense and sometimes he has to drag u away bc u can get awfully scary when you’re mad and he just calms you with his tight hugs and he’ll get hot cocoa with u and you two will just walk beneath the stars n it’s just,,, 

it’s nice being able to feel safe with your s/o and that’s what makes the two of you very content bc no matter what you’re each other’s rocks <3

[iinventedthepotato-blog]

A brief encounter with my musical (and moral) acquaintances.

I am approaching the end of my two weeks’ annual leave. Last week I was in Athens. I was hot, tired, bitten to bits, with mixed emotions but for the most part, pretty content. This week I have felt anxious and depressed. Perhaps not depressed, I don’t like to use that term, it feels too ‘final’. Displaced, disappointed, lost even. These words are probably more apt for my current state of mind.

My mind is causing me some serious harm at the moment (well, on and off since teenhood really, overwhelmingly so since February 2019 and that strange, melancholy drive to work, listening to Girl in Amber and realising that I was so open and yet so closed, filled with emotion to the point that I felt empty, feeling so much that I began to feel nothing. A strange electricity seeping from my pores that made my being feel numb, useless, to the point that I relaxed a little too much when I saw a huge truck nearing my lane, closing in on my car, myself, and then this total, I’ll call it ‘empty-fullness’, hit me and I cried. Yes, there I was at 08:45, driving along, trying to draw my tears back in, starting to feel a little amused at the way I must have looked to other drivers. And then I stopped crying, imagined straightening myself out, thought about the day ahead, continued listening to the CD, and all this before 09:00. Thanks, Nick).

I keep revisiting this episode, partly because I have convinced myself that that was normal, acceptable Tuesday morning behaviour and deep down I know it was far from acceptable, but moreover it got me to thinking about music, more so my response to music. Had I have listened to something else, would I have had a different experience that day and from that day on? Would the ensuing problematic emotions, that have, let’s face it, continued to burden me since that day have stayed buried deep within? Perhaps they would not have appeared at all and by now I would have been doing cartwheels out of bed?

I am trying to understand this jigsaw of emotions that was in me, around me, not to mention coming out of my speakers. Music is sometimes so caught up with being in the background of our existence, that we can forget how important and how emotionally draining (in a positive way!) it can be. Less sound and more a conversation with ourselves, our surroundings, ourselves in our surroundings, and our mind (and spirit, if you like) forcing that connection, our physical selves do not really stand a chance. It is a gorgeous feeling really, that moment when you almost wake up from a somewhat catatonic state and hear something and realise it entered your entire being before you even acknowledged it was a song, a composition, some silly chords and words put together, that suddenly speaks for you when you can’t find the words, becomes a sort of medication for the spirit, a friend-foe (if something can make you feel so alive and yet so bitterly sore, can we truly call it a friend? If all your musical choices feel like friends then you are probably listening to too much glee). It would be trite to refer to music as an extension of the self, a missing part of our character, but surely it must be something more than mere background noise?

There must be a reason why we listen to what we choose to listen to; does it choose us, does it fit our social climate, our customised image, is there something deep in that complicated landscape, or that shitty ditty that we, to a point, take for granted? Have you ever had a day wherein you do not listen to anything at all? I have had weeks in which I will listen to the radio on my daily commute. I share this because to me, this feels like listening to ‘nothing’. It is blah. Now and again you may come across a decent song and the incessant retuning and skipping will feel worthwhile, but for the most part, it is a pointless task, in which white noise would be preferable. And I worry that time is too precious to listen to inanity. A day wasted when I could have had Lou or Nick. I say ‘day’ because as an adult, with a job, a house, relationships to maintain etc., you quickly lose track of spare time.

When I was younger I had so much time to discover new (and old) music, I could easily dedicate my day to listening to Radiohead’s complete back catalogue, from start to finish. That would be a worthwhile day’s work right there. Now there is less time for music, and it really boils down to the daily commute. Even if the radio is on at work, it must be communal, accessible to all, sadly no one wants jazz fusion or industrial, it has to be something light-hearted, easy-going, and to a point, blah. Then home time comes and there are always other things to do. It almost feels odd to sit and listen to music in the evening, like something is wrong. Should someone walk into the room, and find me sitting alone, listening to something deep, dark and wonderful, they will almost definitely assume that some of my wires are out of place, that I am planning something morbid, or I have had a bad day (when it would probably be the complete opposite!). So why is it perfectly and socially acceptable to watch TV alone but not to listen to music? I fear that reading is escaping down that same path, hence I fit my reading into bath time, otherwise I struggle (but that is for another time).

I guess the point I’m making, or querying, is it is hard, when you’re in a relationship, to find time to do things like read, or listen to music (the latter because for me, unless it is accompanied by alcohol, chitchat and dancing, is an all too personal experience to share with someone, unless that exploration is equally valued and on par with watching The Price is Right. It quickly becomes too awkward and deep, like something intense has to happen and then there is the problem of too much silence, if silence falls, it feels irregular, but if conversation ensues, the music becomes meagre background noise, UNLESS it is a deep analysis of the music, but that is probably too tiring after a day’s work, in which all we really want is to stare at a wall, notice some new markings, think about things, the marking, the music, the markings in relation to the music, the day in relation to the music, the markings starting to become words and images and then you have yourself a chance artwork! OR as previously highlighted, something to fill the empty space of things, and connect us, that music that resonates and creates and just kind of happens around us, in us, and does not really need to impress us or do anything at all, but simply exist, in that moment and create a barrier, or blanket, or friend, or punchbag or maybe just something lovely that will perish within the next three minutes. You can try and listen to something again the following day, week, year, but it will not feel the same, simply because you will not feel the same and therefore that connection, or friendship will feel different. You may have a greater understanding of it, or your feelings have changed completely, and it no longer affects you, perhaps it has joined the blah pile?).

To return to my original point, and to the present. When I think about Monday I shudder, feel tension in my chest, feel guilt over my lack of productivity, feel disjointed and irritable, feel I have not seen enough people, done enough activities. When I think about returning to work, I want to hurt myself in some way (and what would my body have possibly done to deserve that?). However, I know deep down that it is not work’s fault, it is me; it is in me.

The problem lies in connection with adulthood, my awareness of what is expected versus what I expect of myself. When I was at work a couple of weeks ago, I talked fondly of this post-holiday week, in which I would make clothes, paint, write, do all of the things I used to enjoy but tell myself I no longer have time to do, I’d embrace this week of nothingness, no plans, just Kelly time and really throw myself into making myself feel something, not happy, but alive. Now it is Thursday and I have not really done anything of note. I have exercised, sent off some poems (I really had to force that one as the frame of mind I am in will not permit rejection of any kind), been to the pub and for tea (my social side needs some stimulation, and it involved live music) and I have watched films, bought some music, skincare etc., little things really. However, the guilt is there; I should have done more with my time, I will not get this back, I will go to work on Monday and regret not enjoying my freedom… but why the guilt? Maybe I can just be and not have to do all the time. Maybe reading that book or watching that film or eating those biscuits meant something to me at that time, and just because my mind is somewhere else, trying to sew a dress or draw some lemurs, it should not have the right to make me feel lifeless and sad for doing something else.

There are things we do, things we think we want to do, things we think we should do and then there is the stuff in between, the things we call pointless, a waste of time etc. My fear is that the things I think I want to do now are actually the interests of the old me, and I do not want to do them anymore, that part of me is dead and I am holding on because there is nothing else going on in my life that I get pleasure from, like real day-to-day pleasure. It is bullshit, and I know it. That part of me is there, whether it pops up in the next hour or in the next decade, who cares, putting pressure on myself to be something that really, my current state is not ready to be, is actually killing any kind of spirit I have. Nothing can be forced. With the exception of Monday morning and that dreaded return to vocational life. But hey, we all have to do it, much like trips to the bathroom and eating healthily. So, perhaps nothing is pointless after all. It is all pulling and pushing, plotting and plodding, and time for nothingness has to fit in somewhere. If only for a chance to expel the negativity, or positivity, if you please. And I actually really enjoyed Mona Lisa Smile.

[ecotone99]

[RF] The passenger

“.. in these unprecedented times, the little things shouldn’t be taken lightly. these are the things that makes our lives happier...” the radio’s voice is interrupted by a loud static, as I drive through a long tunnel on the expressway. The static annoyed me a little, so I turn off the radio. I think to myself, Unprecedented-a fancy new word for the media to toy around with. As the tunnel ends, my view is engulfed with dense dusky clouds. The color of the sky is pitch dark grey & through the window I see a dark blue glow all around. Its about 7 in the evening, I put the car into cruise control as the next stop would be after 25-30kms. When I relax for a bit and look across the dark countryside fields have grown out to be into dark dense forest of old massive tress. Nature has a free pass on doing whatever it likes to ever since we humans stop interfering with it. It has been the longest 5 years since the virus broke out. Sure there have been vaccines and multiple variants of it for multiple type of patients. The cure did work, and thing stabilized a lot. Only after a whole year of economic despair for the masses. So much so that the people infected wouldn’t afford the vaccine, even at the subsidized rate. Government being government took too long to offer it for free to masses. They had their fat paycheck and used it as an essential tool for the elections. Then, gave it to the masses. However, it was too late by then… the psychological impact it took on the young generation was just too much. From forming cult’s that believed to virus was a cure for the nature’s freedom to resisting the vaccine and living a depleted life quality only as a protest against the world organization for making the vaccine too expensive. Sure, the people who remain sane through it all were the artistic people singing the best form of music they knew, painting the best portraits they ever could… It was irony as its finest form, as world went from needing lawyers, politicians, health origination to more self-focused institutions of living, exercise & art culture. Now, the Fields like IT, Security boomed only in terms of volume but not quality. They soon become the sheep’s herd where people did task of humongous data collection, aggregation and analysis to sell ads. Technology, cars & travel soon become the basic food & clothing standard, they were just an expense now rather than a field of profession and innovation. Times have changed a lot.

The toll arrives, I skim through the left lane as I take control of the car. As I drive past go ahead to make a stop at a nearby coffee store for refreshment. The clouds burst into a thundering rain. It hits the ground like a storm. Rain made sure the sun set earlier than it usually does. I wait for a while for it to stop so I could have some tea/coffee, but it only got worse …

The strong air wind current made the raindrops hit the car with such a intensity that the only sound I could hear was of intense drizzling. I decide to drive along before the conditions made it impossible to drive. I turn on the wiper, but it wasn’t enough. I barely moved a couple of meters before someone literally jumped into my car by opening the rear door. He dripped all over the seats and wore a black raincoat that went well along with its dark grey mask. I scream “hey!!! What the…” and my car brakes screeches loudly.

“Look man, I just need to reach the next toll, I have to work at night... its my shift if I don’t would lose my jobs… Please help me out!”

I put on my mask kept in my dash, I see around 7 messages notification before I could check it … I realized that I was stuck in middle of nowhere with a stranger. He continues

“I can pay you 500 bucks! Could you please hurry?”

“The next toll stop is of Satara around 167 Km away… I hope that works for you.”

I then drive away into the rains for next couple of minutes until a conversation break out: -

“So are you going on another workcation?” I ask him and feeling utterly foolish using the word workcation…

“Well yes and no, I believe no form of vacation involves any form of work. But this shitty corona virus has made the world a remote hub for working from anywhere…”

“I remember when I use to work for one of the corporations like you do…”

I continue “I absolutely hated from the start. It was my first job and I hated it since the pre-covid phase. As the pandemic hit us, my optimistic soul decided to free-lance…”

“We are all just free lancers of living life… we distracted our minds from living it into things like a good salary, a lot of work so we have an excuse for our poor morale and discipline…” he interrupts me...

“Hmm, that’s what I thought when I tried to clean, cook and work with a mouse and tablet in my other hand… until I tripped over the broomstick... dipped my machine in puddle of utensils and soap...”

“I thought nothing can be shittier than a 12-hr. shift and living all by yourself… until I eliminated the former and lived with the latter…” I conclude as I put my car in cruise control again…

“trust me if you don’t leave, you keep doing this life of work and personal work takes a backseat with no time for yourself. You end up running, your mind jogs but you don’t….” he replies

Our conversation is what the thousands of young adult’s face today. The saturated menial work but secure till retirement vs the life of exploring yourself. I choose the life of exploring myself and quit my job a year after the virus. My promotion was just due, but I hated every second of it. The first few days were peaceful. Then it was those slog days of life has no meaning to the days of hyper productivity machine. Reading novels every hour to exercising in the evening to the home chores. This cycle of enjoying then lying on the edge of my couch as the end of the world to living healthier … it continued for years and years…

I had exhausted all my savings, I tried to pursue singing in between those years but these days... singing was limited to online videos and pay to listen apps. I couldn’t make it any of them…

The rain didn’t slow down at all, it rained with same intensity. We cross a milestone which says 78km to satara.

Now, here I was after 5 years, giving an ride to just another employee of just another corporation. While I yearned to ace my interview tomorrow for another role to live for other few more years at some company called DSB….

My phone rings, as I reach for it, the passengers got scared to death. I looked at him as he shivers with fear like one would in this heavy rain. I ask him “What’s wrong?”

“Don’t pick it up, please!”

“It’s not a bomb!” I joked.

But instead of laughs,his faltered words and a bit softer voice starts explaining “ I didn’t got enough time… its not fair.. I should have the chance…”

“for what?”

The phone rings again…

This time I ignore the passenger’s warning and pick it up.

“Stop your car right now!” a girl screams through the tiny speakers of my phone

While my car sails on 80 km/hr. via cruise control, I ask “Why? What the fuck is wrong?”

The passenger now becomes totally uneasy and starts uneasy rolling rom left seat to right and back…

“trust me, it’s your Uniform Disorder”

“What?”

My head suddenly starts hurting as I see the passenger hitting his head repeated across the windowpane and repeating “You must not take the job ... you must not…”

“hello? Hello? Stop it !” the girl over phones repeats it

My head bursts into pain and anixety with so much chaos …

I scream “STOPPPP!” with all the energy I had in my voice.

The passenger stops but now he’s crying profusely and removes his mask. He looks an awfully lot similar to someone I have seen… until I realize he somewhat looks a lot like me... in my past life... in the younger years...

I just had to stop now…

I hit the brakes but it’s a little too much and little too late as the car skids to off road and crashes itself into a huge tree…

The airbags pounce in my face and the car crashes & breaks down…

I lie sub conscious for few hours with my face dug into the puffy air bag…

When I wake up, I see a scar on my forehead which bleeds and looks as if I tried to hit the window with my head.

I see the passenger standing out calmly deep into the woods surrounded by dark trees… the rain had slowed down too...

Strangely, despite the accident and all the mess I didn’t feel angry for a bit.

It was as if whatever he felt , would translate to how I would end up feeling. Uneasy backin the car during the school but calm now post the accident in these dense woods.

I Stepped out to talk to him, to understand why he did what he did…

He tells me “I hate my job, and I could stand a single second of it, I wanted to leave just like you… after I left the condition only got worse... I couldn’t find where my interest aligned… I smoked up all my savings on this car… then I had nothing to do or anything to pursue that interested me...

I felt like nothing…or no one in this world mattered. The loneliness made me lose my grip. I took therapy with my parents’ money... things got better I changed myself from a couch potato to a productive machine.

It still felt like a job to us ... you know? Reading , singing, writing , doing the same old chores again and again…

It just felt like doing what’s right... eventually they convinced us to become normal… and tried getting a job for us...”

“US? US? Who the fuck are you, why do u look like me?” I ask him puzzled as he sounded like me narrating my own life story….

“I told you it’s never enough time!”

A car rushes into the forest from behind, I look behind… it’s my therapist. She jumps out of my car. I look back out again to find the passenger missing… he was gone in a split second. It was like he wasn’t even here. I found myself in his black raincoat.

She panicked and started crying... as she sobbed while trying to patch my forehead wound with her handkerchief. She finally started speaking “the Schizophreniform Disorder is making you live your worst day again. Usually, I have stopped you when you enter the car but this is by far the most far you have gotten. The job that rejected you is of so many years back , when you visited Bangalore for an interview and drove for a whole day… Its okay you will get another job ... another interview will be aligned… we will toe your car then repair it and I will not inform anybody about this mishap”

She continues to cry “No one needs to know “

My phone rings again...I try to find it in the mess of my crashed car… it felled at the front co passengers’ seat with a cracked screen…

It’s an unknown number, I pick it up “hello? Who’s this?” I enquire

“Yea, its PLC technologies, we have an interview scheduled for tomorrow. It would be an telephonic interview. What time would be comfortable for you?”

I get a chill down my spine and my phone slips through my hand. I am shell shocked and all I could think about was the panicking passenger who said on loop “You must not take the job! Job!” Should I trust him? or this genuine therapist who has been trying to make me feel better ever since. Is this the new normal? or just the same old normal?

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Link: https://notyoureverydayblog258255348.wordpress.com/2020/08/22/the-passenger/

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[mathematicianadda]

Read Euclid backwards: history and purpose of Pythagorean Theorem https://ift.tt/3erY1je

The Pythagorean Theorem might have been used in antiquity to build the pyramids, dig tunnels through mountains, and predict eclipse durations, it has been said. But maybe the main interest in the theorem was always more theoretical. Euclid’s proof of the Pythagorean Theorem is perhaps best thought of not as establishing the truth of the theorem but as breaking the truth of the theorem apart into its constituent parts to analyse what makes it tick. Euclid’s Elements as a whole can be read in this way, as a project of epistemological analysis.

Transcript

Let’s read Euclid together. Euclid’s Elements, one of the most important and influential works in human history, who wouldn’t want to read that? “Euclid alone has looked on beauty bare,” as the poets say.

Let’s do some episodes on this where we go through Euclid’s Elements Book I. And here’s the first twist: Let’s read it backwards. Well, not quite. But it’s a good idea to start at the end. Book I of the Elements ends with the Pythagorean Theorem and its converse. It’s not a murder mystery, it won’t spoil the fun to know the ending.

I will explain why I think this is a good idea. This has to do with appreciating the refined goals of the Elements. It’s a very subtle work, in ways that are easy to miss. So I will use this idea of starting at the end as a way of highlighting some things to keep in mind in that regard, so that we approach the text with appreciation of these subtleties.

It might be a bit dry to do only that, so I will also mix it up with some lighter things. Some stories related to the Pythagorean Theorem. Did the Egyptians use the Pythagorean Theorem to build the pyraminds, for example? Is that how they got the angles just right? We will discuss that soon. And I will also play a clip of RoboCop.

I will try to do this for the Elements as a whole: a serious discussion of its finer points, as well as some entertaining tangents exploring the many cultural links of the various parts of the Elements.

So here we go. My first goal is to outline the mindset with which we must approach Euclid’s text.

If you’re a young person, you may look at Euclid’s Elements and say: yeah yeah, triangles and stuff, I saw all of that in high school too; our textbook had proofs just like this thing by Euclid; it’s pretty much the same thing. No, no, no. That’s like listening to Mozart and saying: yeah yeah, big deal, music is music.

Forget it. There’s a world of difference. Euclid is on a whole other level of sophistication than some crappy high school textbook. You wouldn’t know it just by looking at the text though. The text looks the same as any other geometry text. Triangle ABC blah blah blah. It’s the same with musical scores, isn’t it? They all look the same when you just glance at the pages. You can’t tell Mozart from some hack.

We must look deeper to appreciate the subtlety and genius of Euclid. The text itself doesn’t spell that out, just as a Mozart quartet doesn’t have a narrator telling you what’s great about it. But great works reward reflection. The more you study Euclid, the more you interrogate the text, the more you puzzle over its oddities, the more you come to appreciate the mastery that went into crafting everything just right. Euclid knew exactly what he was doing. His work is orders of magnitude more sophisticated than other superficially similar works in the same genre.

The exercise of reading backwards is one angle we can use to start getting a handle on this. If we read Euclid from cover to cover, in the order it’s written, we get a strictly “bottom-up” perspective: we start with the most basic things and gradually get to higher and higher levels of sophistication. That’s how mathematics is typically written down. And with good reason. But the way mathematics comes into being is much more bidirectional. Mathematics grows like a tree: as the branches extend, so do the roots. Starting our Euclid adventure with the Pythagorean Theorem is a way of making us think about this.

Of course when we read Euclid’s proof of the Pythagorean Theorem we find that it is based on earlier results. So you might say: Obviously you have to read those first before you can understand this proof. But that’s a bit simplistic. You could also say: Actually you need to look at the Pythagorean Theorem first because only then can you understand what the purpose is of those earlier propositions. From a purely logical perspective you have to read it linearly from start to finish, but to understand the meaning and purpose of these logical constructions you have to take a step back and interrogate the text from other angles as well. For a dogmatic understanding, it is enough to read it linearly, and parse the logical steps like a machine. But for a critical, independent understanding you want to not only verify the logic but also see how one could arrive at such logical constructions organically.

That goes for any formal mathematics text, still to this day. Or maybe even more so today than ever. The definitions and axioms are the starting points of the way mathematics is written, but often they are almost the end product of the actual creative thought process. Only after you have figured out the hard parts of your theory do you know what the starting points need to be. Or at least there’s an interaction, a back-and-forth negotiation between the top and the bottom of the theory. Each is adapted to the other.

So that’s one reason to read Euclid backwards. It’s a reason that applies to any formal mathematical theory, because they all have this element of bidirectionality.

Actually geometry might be among the more unidirectional formal mathematical theories in how it was conceived, because the results of geometry were known in great detail, long before they were formalised. The tree came before the roots, so to speak.

Here’s another way of visualising it. Think of the Pythagorean Theorem as the apex of a pyramid. The proof reveals which lower, more foundational stones it rests on. Those stones in turn rest on other stones, and so on. Something has to be the bedrock that is considered solid enough not to need any further support beneath it. Euclid’s Elements can be read in two directions: as a way of building up a more and more elaborate structure on top of solid foundations, or as a way of reducing advanced results to their basic components. So when we read the proof of the Pythagorean Theorem, one of the perspectives we should use is to think of it as “boiling down” this somewhat advanced result to more basic ones. This will help us appreciate the purpose and achievement of the more fundamental parts of the Elements when we get to those.

Indeed, by the time Euclid wrote the Elements, the theorems themselves—such as the Pythagorean Theorem—had been known for hundreds or even thousands of years. Even proving the theorem wasn’t all that new. There were plenty of proofs. I bet Euclid knew two dozen proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem.

We shouldn’t think of Euclid as saying: Hey guys, I discovered some things about triangles and stuff; check out this book where I explain how I came up with these theorems.

No, no, no. That’s not at all what Euclid is doing. We must understand, when we read the Elements, that we’re way beyond that.

If you just wanted to convince a random person that the Pythagorean Theorem is true, then there are much better proofs than Euclid’s. Simpler ones. More intuitive, based on simple diagrams. If all you want is a psychologically compelling argument that the Pythagorean Theorem is true then there are better options than Euclid.

Euclid knew all of that, and he chose his proof very deliberately. Because it’s the best proof for his purposes. Namely the purpose of carefully analysing how the truth of the Pythagorean Theorem can be broken down into smaller truths. And more generally to do the same thing for all the truths of geometry in a comprehensive and systematic manner.

So the proof of the Pythagorean Theorem isn’t so much about showing that the theorem is true. It’s more about showing what its ultimate foundations are.

Here’s another metaphor for this. Think of a mathematical theorem as a dish that you cook. The Pythagorean Theorem is like a soup, let’s say. You can whip it up very quickly with store-bought ingredients like stock cubes or just microwaving something from a can. But Euclid doesn’t do store-bought. He’s going to do everything from scratch. And I mean really from scratch. If there’s going to be carrots in there, then Euclid is going to grow his own carrots.

In fact you might say that Euclid is not so interested in cooking at all, even though a proof is like a recipe. Euclid is like a cookbook author who doesn’t like cooking and has no interest in feeding anyone.

Instead he’s more like a chemist who is analyzing the molecular composition of foods. His recipes are not meant as a practical cooking guide but as an analysis of what the core ingredients of the dish are if you deconstruct the recipe as far as you possibly can.

Here we have the idea of reading backwards again: Euclid isn’t really interested in making Pythagorean Theorem soup, but in starting with Pythagorean Theorem soup and taking it apart in the lab. Put it on the Bunsen burner. Different ingredients have different boiling points and so on, so you can carefully separate them out again.

There was already plenty of geometry before Euclid. If theorems are food, everyone was already well fed, so to speak. Everyone already had their favourite dishes and neither they nor Euclid were looking to replace the traditional menus. What Euclid is bringing to the table is not new food but a refined theoretical perspective that stands apart from actual cooking.

The idea of reading Euclid backwards is also related to a famous anecdote recorded about Thomas Hobbes, the 17th-century philosopher. Here’s what it says about Hobbes:

“He was 40 years old before he looked on geometry; which happened accidentally. Being in a gentleman’s library, Euclid’s Elements lay open, and ‘twas the [47th Proposition of Elements Book I, the Pythagorean Theorem]. He read the proposition. By God, sayd he, this is impossible! So he reads the Demonstration of it, which referred him back to such a Proposition; which proposition he read. That referred him back to another, which he also read. [And so on], that at last he was demonstratively convinced of that trueth. This made him in love with geometry.”

It is interesting that Hobbes ended up reading Euclid backwards by accident like this. Precisely what I recommended as a deliberate strategy. But he doesn’t seem to have appreciated the point of doing so the way I have described it. Maybe he could just as well have read the book forwards and had the same experience, as far as this anecdote goes.

Hobbes fell “in love with geometry” by reading it backwards, but others had the same experience reading it forwards. Bertrand Russell, another famous philosopher, read Euclid the conventional way, starting at the beginning, and he still found it, as he later said, “as dazzling as first love”: “I had not imagined there was anything so delicious in the world.” Bertrand Russell was eleven at the time, while Hobbes was 40 when he stumbled upon Euclid. They lived almost three centuries apart. So these anecdotes speak to the universality of Euclid’s text: young or old, forwards or backwards, conservative or socialist, in a society of cars or one of horses—the one thing they have in common is the love that Euclid stirred up in them.

That’s all very nice, but it kind of misses the point in terms of what I have tried to argue was the goal of Euclid’s Elements. What Hobbes and Russell fell in love with was the idea of geometrical proof, it seems. Historically, those epiphanies are better associated with a pre-Euclidean period. We discussed Thales before, and there were plenty of others in the centuries between him and Euclid.

So when you read Euclid, by all means, do fall in love. Be seduced like so many others have been. But also keep in mind that these charms are only part of the greatness of Euclid. Euclid’s Elements can be as good a vehicle as any to have that epiphany of the beauty of mathematics. But to Euclid and many of his readers that was old news.

Euclid wanted to do more than that. He didn’t want to just show how cool it is to prove stuff, although that is lovely. More than that, he wanted to explore the very essence of geometrical knowledge. What are its preconditions, and the source of its certainty? Just as a chemist seeks to decompose any substance into the elements of the periodic table, so Euclid sought to find the “periodic table” of geometry, so to speak: he wanted to uncover the ultimate building blocks of this entire branch of knowledge.

Ok, so that’s my lesson one in how to read Euclid. Start at the back and keep in mind this theme of distillation into ultimate foundations.

So I urge you to go read Euclid that way. I’m not going to go through the proof here; you’ll have to follow along in your own copy of the Elements. I recommend my own edition, for which I added illustrations for each step of the proofs. It’s a joy to read, in my opinion. But it’s too visual to translate into this medium, so I’ll leave that to you to pursue.

Now I wanted to take this opportunity to think about the origin of the Pythagorean Theorem. Part of the appeal of reading Euclid’s Elements is how embedded it is many aspects of human culture and history. So in parallel with our reading of Euclid I wanted to bring up such themes as well.

The Pythagorean Theorem has little to do with Pythagoras. It was discovered independently in several cultures, some of them long before Pythagoras. But never mind the name. The more interesting question is: Why were people interested in this theorem? Why would anybody want to calculate a bunch of hypothenuses?

If you look in a modern geometry textbook, you won’t find any good answers. The book will give you the formula and ask you to apply it in all kinds supposedly real-world cases, but they are all fake and transparently ridiculous. How to calculate the diagonal of a field when you know the lengths of the sides: When would you ever use this? Why wouldn’t you just measure the diagonal then if that’s what you want to know?

Ladder problems is another one of those fake classics. The foot of the ladder is so-and-so far from the wall, and the ladder is so-and-so long, will it reach to such-and-such a height, maybe for instance the ladder of a fire truck to save someone from a burning building? Not a very realistic scenario. Wouldn’t you just try it and see if it worked? Wouldn’t that be just as easy as sitting around making calculations? And why would the distance from the wall to the foot of the ladder be some exact given number? And so on.

It doesn’t make sense that people discovered the Pythagorean Theorem because they were wrestling with practical problems like those. They would not have needed mathematics for that. If they wanted to solve those problems they would have used trial and error and direct measurements.

Unfortunately, ancient textbooks are as ridiculous as modern ones in this regard. Here’s an example from a Chinese text from about the time of Euclid. A 10-feet-high stem of bamboo broke in the wind. It broke into two straight prices. One part remains upright, perpendicular to the ground. But the other part, that broke off but is still attached, tipped over and is now touching the ground, 3 feet away from the base of the stem. How high up the stem did the break occur?

You can calculate this with the Pythagorean Theorem, sure enough, but of course there is no way anyone would ever do something so absurd in the real world. Just measure it, if you want to know. You apparently already measure the distance along the ground and the full height somehow, so why couldn’t you just as well measure this thing? Doesn’t make any sense.

Here’s another scenario some have claimed involves the Pythagorean Theorem. On the Greek island of Samos, there’s an ancient tunnel, which was dug in fact right in the lifetime of Pythagoras.

This tunnel is a marvelous thing, a tribute to the engineering skills of the Greeks. It’s still there today. The tunnel is over one kilometer in length through a big mountain. It was dug to supply the capital with fresh water.

Digging the tunnel was certainly a geometrical project. In fact, the walls still have letters on them, like the lettering of a geometrical diagram. Evidently there was a plan of the tunnel in the form of a drawn diagram, with points makes by letters, and then as it was dug these letters were inscribed on the wall to keep track of how the actual tunnel corresponded to the geometrical plan.

This was all the more essential since the tunnel had to be dug from both ends, in order to complete it in half the time. So the diggers had to be coordinated to ensure they met in the middle. A highly non-trivial problem, which the Greek geometers solved flawlessly.

In fact, at some point the plan even had to change because the rock was becoming to porous. So there was a risk that tunnel would collapse. Therefore it was necessary to make a bend in the tunnel that took it more toward the core of the mountain, which had harder rock. The geometers dealt with this flawlessly as well. They added a shallow isosceles triangle to the diagram. So each digging team had started out along straight lines that would have met in the middle, but halfway through both teams were instructed to make a slight turn which was specified with geometrical precision. So the whole tunnel has a kind of V-shaped bend in the middle. But it still worked. The two digging teams met just as the geometers had calculated.

That’s great stuff, but is it the Pythagorean Theorem? Let me play to you a clip from the History Channel documentary series Engineering an Empire, which claims that it is.

“Eupalinos dug tunnels from each side of the mountain, until they met in the middle. To succeed, Eupalinos had to make sure that each tunnel started at the same vertical height., on opposite sides of the mountain. The tunnels also had to match up on a horizontal plane. Otherwise, they would pass each other like ships in the night.”

“By forging a path from the spring to the city, in short perpendicular lines, Eupalinos could measure each small length in order to calculate two sides of a right triangle. With two known sides of the triangle, the hypothenuse became the path of the tunnel through the mountain.”

So according to the History Channel, the plan for the tunnel was based on the Pythagorean Theorem. The History Channel are not even taking into account the alterations of the plans midway through, by the way. They just discuss the problem of making a straight tunnel.

The presenter of this documentary is Peter Weller, who is also the actor who played RoboCop in the 1987 movie. Turns out he’s also a historian.

I must say though that I disagree with RoboCop’s analysis. The tunnel of Samos was great geometry but it wasn’t the Pythagorean Theorem. The way RoboCop puts it in the documentary, it sounds as if the point was to calculate the length of the tunnel. That’s the hypothenuse that RoboCop is talking about in that clip. But of course the real problem is the coordination of the two digging teams, so they won’t miss each other “like ships in the night,” as RoboCop himself said. How is the length of the hypothenuse supposed to be useful for this? Knowing how long the tunnel is supposed to be doesn’t help you determine the direction of digging.

So I don’t think this tunnel stuff is a great example of real-world motivation for the Pythagorean Theorem. We have to keep looking for where ancient man could have had reason to discover or apply this theorem.

Here’s another such scenario. Did the Egyptians use the Pythagorean Theorem to build the pyramids? I’ll play another clip from another documentary series that claims: yes. This is from The Story of Maths, a BBC documentary presented by Marcus du Sautoy.

“The most impressing thing about the pyramids in the mathematical brilliance that went into making them. Including the first inkling of one of the great theorems of the ancient world: Pythagoras’s Theorem. In order to get perfect right-angled corners on their buildings and pyramids, the Egyptians would have used a rope with knots tied in it. At some point, the Egyptians realised that if they took a triangle with sides marked with 3 knots, 4 knots, and 5 knots, it guaranteed them a perfect right angle.”

The theorem involved here is not the Pythagorean Theorem itself, but the converse of it, which is Proposition 48 in Euclid.

In terms of historical evidence, we really don’t know if the Egyptians did this or not. It’s plausible that they knew this but there’s very little documentary evidence from way back then.

Obviously you can’t believe anything just because Marcus du Sautoy said it in a BBC documentary. Marcus du Sautoy is not a historian, he’s just clowning around. But let’s see, if we’re serious about it, does it make any sense?

I used to be skeptical about this, but I have come to think maybe it’s not so bad. I think the standard formulation about a rope with 3+4+5 equally spaced knots on it is a bit silly. Seems very complicated to get the knots just right.

But you don’t really need one triangular rope. Instead you can just use three separate ropes, of lengths 3, 4, and 5. That’s easy to make. Then when you need to make a right triangle you stretch the 3 and 4 ropes along the intended sides, and you check if the 5 rope fits between their endpoints. Then you have the guy holding the end of the 4 rope move a bit this way or that until it lines up perfectly.

I have to admit, if I was building a pyramid I would probably go with this method. Especially because of the scale of the project. The base of the pyramid is enormous. You would use ropes with lengths 3, 4, 5, but not in feet or meters but some bigger unit. Maybe 30 meters, 40 meters, 50 meters. The ratio is all that matters of course. The longer the ropes, the less significant the measurement error becomes. So it’s a pretty good method I think.

Let me read you a quote here from the book Euclid’s Window by Leonard Mlodinow. I thought it was quite funny.

“Picture a windswept, desolate desert, the date, 2580 B.C. The architect had laid out a papyrus with the plans for your structure. His job was easy—square base, triangular faces—and, oh yeah, it has to be 480 feet high and made of solid stone blocks weighing over 2 tons each. You were charged with overseeing completion of structure. Sorry, no laser sight, no fancy surveyor’s instruments at your disposal, just some wood and rope. As many homeowners know, marking the foundation of a building or the perimeter of even a simple patio using only a carpenter’s square and measuring tape is a difficult task. In building this pyramid, just a degree off from true, and thousands of tons of rocks, thousands of person-years later, hundreds of feet in the air, the triangular faces of your pyramid miss, forming not an apex but a sloppy four-pointed spike. The Pharaohs, worshipped as gods, with armies who cut the phalluses off enemy dead just to help them keep count, were not the kind of all-powerful deities you would want to present with a crooked pyramid. Applied Egyptian geometry became a well-developed subject.”

So that’s a quite comical way of putting it, but the point is well taken, I think. Indeed it does make some sense, this whole thing. The historical and societal context, the mathematics available at that time, the need to make exact right angles, the method for doing so using strings and a Pythagorean triple: that is all quite plausible, I would say.

It’s hardly plausible that they would have discovered the Pythagorean Theorem this way, by starting with the problem of making right angles. But it is plausible that may have used knowledge of the 3-4-5 special case of the converse of the Pythagorean Theorem to make right angles.

Here’s another proposal for the possible origins of the Pythagorean Theorem. This proposal is from van der Waerden’s book Geometry and Algebra in Ancient Civilizations. He proposes that the original motivation for the discovery of the Pythagorean Theorem might have been related to eclipses. Namely, calculating the duration of a lunar eclipse.

Indeed, astronomy was important to many ancient peoples. You know the Stonehenge, Maya temples aligned with solstices and so on. People cared a lot about the sky back then.

Eclipses were a big deal. Probably they were often seen as having some kind of theological significance, some sort of omen, and so on. They were also scientifically important, for instance for exact calendar keeping.

So what do eclipses have to do with the Pythagorean Theorem? Mathematically, this is a neat example. Fun to use in a geometry class.

A lunar eclipse occurs when the moon passes through the shadow cast by the earth. The earth’s shadow is about twice the size of the moon, at that distance. So the moon is approaching this dark spot, it enters it, and keeps moving through it, and comes out at the other side. The whole thing takes maybe an hour or two, it differs.

We can predict in advance how long a particular lunar eclipse is going to last. The determining factor is whether the path of the moon goes right through the middle of the earth’s shadow, or cuts across it off center. The moon’s orbit is complicated and it’s different each time. Sometimes it’s coming in a bit high and sometimes a bit low. We can see this by comparing its position to the stars.

So this means that the problem of calculating the duration of an eclipse comes down to calculating the length of a line cutting through a circle, not necessarily through the middle. We assume that the moon’s speed is constant throughout the eclipse. So the duration of the eclipse is determined by how big of a segment of the moon’s path is in the circular shadow cast by the earth.

This indeed becomes a Pythagorean Theorem problem. You can picture it like this. Draw a circle. That’s the shadow cast by the earth. Now draw a line cutting through the circle, but not through the midpoint. That’s the path the moon is moving along. We want to know the length of the segment inside the circle. This is what determines the duration of the eclipse.

Find the midpoint of this segment. Connect it to the center of the circle. This is a known length, because it corresponds to how far off-center the moon was in its approach, which we can determine by comparing its position to the stars. So the distance from the midpoint of the segment to the center of the circle was known before the eclipse began.

Let’s add one more line to the diagram: the line from the center of the circle to the point where the moon’s path entered the circle. That’s of course a radius of the circle, which is known because the size of the earth’s shadow is known.

So now you see why it’s a Pythagorean Theorem problem. The two knowns are two sides of a right-angle triangle, and the sought length is the remaining side.

Could this be how ancient man discovered the Pythagorean Theorem? This hypothesis has one thing going for it, namely that the sought quantity cannot be measured directly in advance of the eclipse. You genuinely need the Pythagorean Theorem to do this. It’s not one of those fake ones where you could just as easily have measured the side you are looking for, instead of measuring the sides you don’t want and then calculating the you do want, as in those fake textbook problems.

Mathematically, that’s all very satisfying. Unfortunately this hypothesis is not very plausible historically. In the Babylonian tradition, mathematics came long before mathematical astronomy. Serious mathematical astronomy such as this, with detailed eclipse calculations and so on, was a preoccupation of the second flowering of ancient Babylonian mathematics. That’s about a thousand years after the first golden age of Babylonian mathematics.

Already the older period had excellent mathematics, including something like the Pythagorean Theorem. One of the most famous old Babylonian clay tablets states the ratio between the side and the diagonal of a square. So it’s essentially a numerical approximation of the square root of 2, in other words. The numerical value the tablet states is very nearly accurate to six decimal places. That’s very accurate indeed. Suppose you used it to compute the diagonal of a square field with a side of a hundred meters. So a football field, basically. Then the Babylonian approximation is off from the exact answer by less than one millimeter.

That’s more than a thousand years before Babylonian priests became obsessed with eclipses for the sake of ensuring the calendric accuracy of their rituals. So the mathematically pleasing hypothesis about the Pythagorean Theorem being discovered to calculate eclipse durations doesn’t really fit the historical record unfortunately.

So what can we conclude from all this? I think it’s safe to say that practical need was never the main driver of mathematics that goes even a bit beyond the basics. The Pythagorean Theorem was discovered because people were fascinated by mathematics for its own sake, not because they needed to calculate stuff. The Chinese didn’t need to know the breaking points of bamboos, the Babylonians didn’t need to know the diagonal of a football field with millimeter accuracy. They were fascinated by the power of mathematical reasoning to discover hidden relationships, and that’s why they explored these things.

This is also how we should read Euclid. The proof of the Pythagorean Theorem is not so much about proving that the theorem is true. It’s more about exploring the basis for this knowledge. Mathematics was always explored for this reason.

Discovering mathematics was like discovering magic. It impresses us as a powerful force that can do incredible things. We want to understand it: How is this possible? What makes this magic tick? It is so unlike anything else we are familiar with, it’s like a portal to a divine realm. We feel a spiritual imperative to understand it.

Already ancient civilisations started along this path, and Euclid does the same. If mathematics is magic, Euclid’s Elements is not a book of spells, but a scientific investigation of how there can be such a thing as magic at all.

Or to use another metaphor, we have to dissect mathematics like an alien corpse to discover the secrets of it mysterious inner workings. The Pythagorean Theorem is the alien: a weird thing that seems to have superhuman powers. Euclid’s proof is not a recipe to give you alien abilities; rather, it is the result of his through dissection of an alien he found in the wild.

So let’s read Euclid this way, as an exploration into the inner mechanisms—the heartbeat—of these strange entities, these superhuman theorems, that have impressed mankind with their seemingly magical and divine aura for many thousands of years.

from Intellectual Mathematics from Blogger https://ift.tt/2BI03NM

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