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greyias · 4 years

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FIC: Smoke and Mirrors - Chapter 5

Title: Smoke and Mirrors Fandom: SWTOR Pairing: Theron Shan/f!Jedi Knight Rating: T Genre: Pre-Relationship, Slow Burn Synopsis: Something’s rotten on Carrick Station, and Theron won’t rest until he finds out what. But picking at the frayed threads of suspicion quickly unravels a conspiracy much larger than even the Republic’s top spy can handle on his own. (A mostly canon-compliant retelling of the Forged Alliances storyline, as seen through the eyes of Theron Shan.) Author’s Notes and Spoilers: See Chapter 1.

So while on the side of annoying, apparently Darok’s habit of repeating a battle plan until everyone could recite it in their sleep worked. Or maybe the strategy that the colonel and Jace had come up with was just that solid, because everything went off exactly as outlined. As much as Theron hated to admit it, it was a refreshing change of pace. The way things tended to go in the intelligence world, he tended to have to fall back on Plan Forn, or more probably more accurately, Plan “Frak”, since that word seemed to be uttered a lot under his breath.

The first wave of the attack caught the Imperials completely off guard, and the strike team was able to establish a landing zone with almost no casualties.

A holographic image of Korriban shimmered into life on part of the table as the holocam on the other end came online. The distance between the Core Worlds and Imperial Space meant the connection was weaker, and combined with interference from scrambling signals on the ground caused the image to flicker more than usual. Theron had seen holos of the Sith homeworld before, but it was somehow different watching from a live feed. Not quite like being there, but close enough. Their view from the holocam caught the wide desert expanse, the silhouettes of immense statues looming in the distance. The drop zone was situated perfectly on a high edge overlooking the Wilds, giving him and Darok a wide view of the stretch that the strike team would have to traverse to reach the Sith Academy.

Theron glanced over to another projection on the table, mapping out the approximate position of Wave Two. They were about to come out of hyperspace. He keyed his comm to the frequency he’d set for his communications with Highwind. It was showtime.

“—I’m aware how this could be difficult.” The transmission cut in in the middle of the Highwind’s sentence. Her voice was pitched low, probably in an attempt to keep her conversation quiet. “If you want to stay here, I understand.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Another female voice volleyed back. “I’m not letting you go into that place alone.”

“Kira,” Highwind’s concerned tone lightened with a trace of amusement, “how can I be alone with the rest of our crew and these soldiers?”

Ah, Kira Carsen. Jedi Knight and Highwind’s former Padawan and longtime partner. Her name had threaded through the dossier nearly as much as her master’s. Theron had found it a little odd that she was still part of the Defender’s crew this many years after her knighting, but he supposed that saving the galaxy from annihilation on a semi-regular basis formed tight bonds.

“You know what I mean,” Kira continued. “This place… it’s worse than Dromund Kaas. You can feel the Dark Side in every step you take here.”

“We’ll be fine,” Highwind assured her companion. “After all, I have everyone here, as well as eyes and ears on Carrick Station to guide me through.”

“How reassuring.”

“I’ve been told that they have a map.”

“Oh good, a map. That will keep a Sith from stabbing you in the back with a lightsaber.”

Despite himself, Theron found himself having to purse his lips together to keep from smirking. Apparently this Kira had a bit of a mouth on her. This was probably a good moment for him to speak up, to keep from listening in on what was becoming clear had been meant to be a private conversation, but he was curious to see where this was going.

“I highly doubt anyone will get that close,” came the serene reply, and Theron was pretty sure he heard a snort on the other end of the line.

“That’s some map you’ve got there.”

“I would think you’d know the difference between directions and the Force at this point, Kira.”

“Oh, so you’re not going to use the Force to magically guide you to the Dark Council chambers? Which, lovely vacation spot by the way, Boss. You should always plan our team building exercises. You keep things so exciting.”

“I didn’t plan this particular excursion,” the reply came out only the slightest edge of consternation. “You can thank the military and SIS for this trip.”

“Oh, the SIS, they always take us to the most fun places. Think we’ll have to fight off any Rakata-tech zombies this time?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“Well, what kind of briefing doesn’t mention zombies?”

“Perhaps I should check, if it’s that important.” If Theron’s ears didn’t deceive him, he thought he heard the slightest trace of impatience lacing through that deceptively serene tone. There was a soft beep in his ear as she attempted to establish connection on her side. “Theron, are you there?”

“Yes,” he said, miraculously managing to keep his tone neutral.

“Do you think we’ll encounter any zombies during our stay here?”

“No, I think you’ll be fine,” he said, pursing his lips together to keep from laughing. “You’ll probably just have to deal with an endless horde of angry Sith. No zombies though.”

“I’m sure everyone will rest easier knowing that.”

Darok shot him a look. “I hope you’re taking this seriously, Agent Shan.”

“Bite me,” was what Theron almost said. Instead he just shot the colonel the most sarcasticly polite smile he could muster. “I’m always serious, Darok.”

The colonel narrowed his eyes, face set in a deep frown. For a moment, it almost seemed like he was going to say something, before he turned back to the holodisplay of Korriban.

“I apologize if I caused you any problems,” Highwind said. Her tone was so placid, he honestly couldn’t tell if she was being sincere or sarcastic.

“Nothing to worry about,” he said smoothly, watching as the ship exited hyperspace, and made for a fast and rough landing on the planet’s surface.

“Who’s Theron?” Kira asked.

The ship shuddered and came to a hard stop on the ground, the echoes of the rough landing sounding over the earpiece. He would have turned the volume on his side down, but he was waiting to hear if the reply contained any mention of the Grand Master, or if Highwind had more discretion than that.

“He’s with the SIS.”

“Oh, really? Is he sure about the zombie thing, because Fauler conveniently left that out on our grand adventure on Tatooine too.”

This time he did hear an exhalation of breath, and it was definitely on the annoyed side. “Have I mentioned that you can stay on the shuttle if you want to?”

On the holocam feed, Highwind’s small figure emerged from the pod, the desert breeze kicking up her cape into the face of the man behind her. He batted it away as she continued to survey the area.

“Hey, gorgeous, you ever think about dressing for the climate?” Ah, that must have been Kimble, the medic.

“I see nothing wrong with the way I’m dressed, Doc,” she said primly, “especially considering what we’re up against.”

“Yeah, about that… are you really serious? Wasn’t that fun trip on Dromund Kaas enough?”

“I’m not forcing anyone to come along. You can all stay on the shuttle if you prefer.”

“Please tell me she’s joking.” Kimble—or rather Doc apparently—seemed to be directing that comment to the rest of the crew emerging from the shuttle.

“Apparently not,” Kira’s voice drifted back.

“You all talk too much.” The imposing figure of a Pureblood Sith strode out from the shuttle, not seeming to notice that Doc had to dodge out of the way. “If you did not wish to come you should have not left Carrick Station.”

“Thank you, Scourge,” Highwind said airily.

“You’re taking his side?”

“No,” her tone sounded a little strained, “but I was the one who agreed to this mission in the middle of our rest time. It’s understandable if you’d rather relax rather than—”

“You are impossible,” Doc’s voice sounded aggrieved. “Please back me up on this, Kira.”

“Okay, I’ll give you that.”

“Master Jedi, if we leave these two here we should achieve a 3.07% increase in efficiency by lack of complaining.”

“No one asked you, Rusk!”

“Welcome to Korriban,” Theron said loudly, feeling a slight thrill of satisfaction when he saw Highwind jump ever so slightly on the holocam feed. “Enjoying the view?”

“Ready to get started,” she said, and he was pretty sure by the way she looked at each member of her crew that she was giving them some sort of silent rebuke. “What’s the situation?”

“Well,” he said casually, “Wave One managed to soften the Imps up some, but there’s still a lot of ground to cover.”

“How far is the Sith Academy?”

“See that big structure off in the distance?”

“You mean the giant pyramid dominating the horizon—yes. It’s a bit hard to miss.”

“That’s where you’re headed. Just… a bit of a walk to get there. You’ll have to cross the Wilds before you enter the Valley of the Dark Lords. And probably a few of said dark lords on the way.”

Theron heard an intake of breath as Kira stepped in closer to her Master. “Those are some unhappy Sith. This isn’t going to be easy.”

“No,” Highwind agreed quietly, “but that hasn’t stopped us before.”

“Good luck,” Theron intoned. “I’ll be in touch.”

He muted his mic, and toned down the volume on her feed so that he could monitor the chatter on this end a little better. Darok watched as Highwind, her crew, as well as their backup squad began to make their way down the cliffside towards the long expanse separating them from the Academy.

The static view from the holocam wasn’t perfect, but it was the best they could do until the strike team could reach a data node and Theron could get some hooks into the Academy’s systems. Another wave of fighters raced overhead, dropping another round of bombs that kicked up debris and so much dirt into the air the visual was obscured for several long seconds. He heard the hiss of a lightsaber being activated over his auditory feed, and turned it down as it quickly descended into a deafening cacophony as the strike team engaged with resistance on the ground.

The dust began to clear on their visual feed, revealing the battle raging in the valley below. Their teams were hardly distinguishable specks from the distance, and from the hazy image it was almost impossible to tell their people apart from the enemy. Except for one caped figure, whirling around faster than humanly possible.

She leapt to and fro, twin violet blades twirling almost as if she were in a dance. She cut through the swathes of enemies as if she were parting water, cape whipping behind her. The rest of her team moved around her in sync, filling in the gaps in each other’s defenses like it had been choreographed beforehand. They quickly gained ground, the commanders of the Imperial ground resistance falling one-by-one. It was almost mesmerizing in its own way.

He didn’t realize he’d been watching quite so intently, or quite so long, until he heard Darok mutter next to him. “You ever seen anything like that?”

Theron had seen Jedi fight, he himself had gone toe-to-toe with members of the Dark Council and lived to tell the tale. But even from a distance, he could tell that what they were witnessing was in a class all of its own. “No.”

“There’s more to that one than first glance.”

For probably the first time since they met, Darok and Theron could agree wholeheartedly on something.

The strike team passed out of view as they ducked through a canyon, and Theron resumed monitoring their progress from one of the GPS on the sketchy Korriban map. A quick visual report from one of Darok’s pilots confirmed more resistance ahead that they were going to have to cut through. Without a visual to back them up, Darok and Theron were both left to monitoring their other various feeds.

He paced the room, listening to the distant echoes of blaster fire and lightsabers clashing over the comm. There was the occasional bit of chatter from her team that drifted through, but Highwind remained quiet other than directing the way or a quick order sent to her crew or Darok’s men that were trailing behind in the path they were forging.

Theron kept an eye on the chrono, the ever-present countdown to their closing window lurking in the back of his mind. They were making good progress, honestly, faster than he had expected. Although, he wasn’t sure exactly what he had been expecting from all of this, but after witnessing the impressive display of combat skills earlier, it hadn’t been that.

The distinctive hum of her lightsaber disappeared with a swish as she deactivated it, and for a moment, there was almost silence on the other end. The lack of noise itself was almost deafening in its own way. Then there was something soft, like a voice in the distance. Next to him he saw Darok’s normal stony expression descend into a frown, and he dialed up the volume on his feed to listen in.

“We need to keep moving—”

“Your armor—you’re with the Republic aren’t you? Please, you must help us!”

The desperate cry barely registered over the sound of boots crunching on the rocky gravel. It was hard to believe that such a small woman could make so much noise as she was walking.

“Look, I’m sorry, okay? That’s not why we’re here.” It was the voice of one of Darok’s men, the lieutenant. “We’re not here to hurt you, I promise. Just… try to keep your heads down, all right?”

The heavy footfalls stopped, and he heard Highwind speak. Although it wasn’t with the quiet exasperation she had used with her crew earlier, but the same tone that she had used when she was sizing up Darok earlier. “What’s going on?”

“That’s what I’d like to know,” Darok muttered, clearly irritated with the delay. “Why have you stopped, Bickell?”

“Got a whole mess of slaves here.” The conflict in the lieutenant’s tone was audible even through the earpiece. “As much as I wish we could do something for them, we can’t. There’s no time.”

“There’s always time,” Highwind said without hesitation, conviction ringing clear in her tone.

“But this op is strictly smash-and-grab. We could risk the whole mission if we pull them out!”

“We can’t leave them behind, Lieutenant.”

“But our orders—”

“Are to secure my retreat, which you have done admirably.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Do whatever it takes—just get them out of here.”

“Shan,” Darok practically snarled, “get a handle on your Jedi! Now.”

Theron glowered at the taller man, for a few long moments thinking of a few ways to knock a little air out of the windbag standing next to him. He managed to wrangle his irritation, as he always did, and shove it deep down as he unmuted his mic.

“Hey there,” he said, the annoyance still simmering just beneath the surface, and possibly leaking into his tone.

“Theron,” she returned, “what’s going on?”

“I was about to ask the same thing. You do remember that this is an extraction mission, not a rescue operation, don’t you?”

“It can be both.”

“And if you send Bickell and the others back, who’s going to secure your retreat?”

“I’ll figure something out,” she said confidently.

He pressed his lips into a thin line as Darok let out a loud snort. Apparently Bickell’s mic was picking up her reply well enough for him to hear. He shut his eyes briefly, gathering the fraying threads of his patience together.

“No one deserves this, Theron,” she said. Although her mic still picked up her voice clearly, from softness in her tone, she had dropped it as if she was trying to talk to just him. “You know how the Empire treats slaves—especially the Sith. Tell me you wouldn’t do the same thing if you were here.”

He wanted to tell her just that, and get her to focus back on the entire point of this mission, on the larger picture. Except that would be a bit hypocritical, considering that he’d nearly gotten his entire career sidelined after accidentally trashing an SIS operation on Nar Shadaa a few years back as he’d refused to let several soldiers be sold into slavery. It had all worked out in the end, but that was beside the point.

“You don’t know me,” he said tersely.

“Tell her that we don’t have time to be rescuing every slave on Korriban,” Darok spat.

Before Theron could even open his mouth to relay the message, her voice filled his ear again, backed with that same steely resolve he was starting to recognize. “I don’t particularly care for the Colonel’s tone.”

Apparently Theron’s mic was more sensitive than he gave it credit for. Perhaps it was possible to tweak equipment a little too well.

“Uh oh,” Doc’s voice drifted through the earpiece, “she’s got that look in her eye.”

“Something tells me I’m glad I’m not hearing what’s going on back on Carrick Station,” Kira agreed.

“You know we can’t spare the men,” Theron finally said.

“Fine.” Her Jedi calm didn’t break, but he could hear the repressed emotion beginning leak into her voice. “We’ll split the difference. My crew will lead them back.”

“Yeah, we’ll—wait, come again?” That was Doc.

“Doc and Rusk will escort them back to the shuttle safely. They’re fully capable.”

“You know it is foolish to split our forces this way, Jedi. Especially over slaves.” The deep tone of Lord Scourge picked up. “There are still many Sith crawling in this valley.”

“These people need our help, Scourge.”

“One day you are going to get us all killed with your pointless compassion.”

“Today will not be that day for you, thankfully, since you’ll be helping them. In case they encounter any of those Sith that you mentioned.”

There was a long silence on the other end, and Theron really wished he had a visual to see exactly what was going down, but even he could feel the tension crackling over the distance. He crossed his arms, and was contemplating breaking the silence when he finally heard a grunt of acknowledgement.

“Hey, gorgeous,” Doc’s voice dropped into Highwind’s, and therefore Theron’s ear, barely a whisper, “do you really think this is wise? Scourge is likely to spear one of them with his lightsaber if they annoy him.”

“That’s why I’m sending you,” she whispered back, “I know you’ll take care of them.”

“I’m always the dashing hero.”

“That’s what I’m counting on.”

“Watch your back in there,” Doc said, the trailing quality of his voice indicating that he was moving away.

“That’s what I’m here for,” Kira called back.

“This distraction has wasted enough of our time.” Darok didn’t exactly snarl, but there was an unrestrained annoyance coloring his tone. “Is she on the way to the Academy, or has she forgotten the reason they’re there?”

“If Colonel Darok wishes to board a shuttle to Korriban and take over this mission personally, he is welcome to,” Highwind said airily. “Otherwise I would suggest that he calm down before he gives himself a stroke.”

Theron felt his lips twitch, and managed to cover the grin with his hand before the burly man next to him saw. It took him an extra moment to smother his mirth completely, and more diplomatically than he ever thought possibly he told Darok, “She’s headed that way now.”

That earned a tight nod before the colonel turned back to his battle plans on the holotable. Theron continued to pace, the only thing he could do to expend his nervous energy. Usually in a situation like this he’d be out there doing his part, not playing games of holophone between Jedi and the military. Stars, he missed field work.

“Now, Theron, that’s not what I said.” If he didn’t know better, he would have thought that he heard a faint trace of amusement.

He wandered over to the section of the holotable that had the reconstructed plans leading to the temple. He pitched his voice low as he replied, not really wanting Darok to overhear. “I’m trying out some of that famous Jedi diplomacy.”

“There’s a difference between diplomacy and lying.”

“It’s diplomacy if you’re headed that way,” he tossed back. “So don’t make a liar out of me now.”

He was pretty sure he was imagining the sound of a resigned sigh over his earpiece. “Diplomacy it is.”

“Good.”

Theron enlarged the holographic view of the map, studying the path they would have to weave before even reaching the Academy’s front doors. They still had a long way to go, the numbers on their strike team had just been halved by the impromptu rescue mission, and their window to escape was shrinking by the minute. Hopefully Darok had been right in his assessment earlier and there was more to this Jedi than met the eye. Theron had a feeling she was going to need more than just some very fancy lightsaber skills before all of this was said and done.

Next Chapter

#swtor fanfiction #theron shan x jedi knight #Theron Shan #Female Jedi Knight/Hero of Tython #oc: greyias highwind #otp: adorkable #smoke and mirrors #SoR Fic O Doom #fanfic #greyfic #i battled a storm to bring you this chapter on thursday #literally it knocked out my power right as i was putting this together

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youngboy-oldmind · 4 years

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DISCOGRAPHY REVIEW: 1) THE INCREDIBLE TRUE STORY ft. My Girlfriend

“Tell me what I wouldn't wanna give for a life like this, arm and a leg quite like this/ Fuck around wanna fight like this, take a hike like this/ I might just, might just, I don't know/ Reinvention, that's my intention/ Want so much more than this third-dimension/ That's not to mention my true ascension is a bigger picture/ No metaphor, I’m being real with ya”

Overall Thoughts

After the success and impressive display Under Pressure, Logic follows up with his sophomore album The Incredible True Story: A perfect embodiment of Logic as a person, rapper, and artist. Here, he is at his most creative, telling an entire story through the lens of a futuristic fictional sci-fi story. Filled with narratives, skits that give insight to the crew’s personalities, and an overall message that resonates even after the album concludes, The Incredible True Story is the perfect reflection of Logic as an artist.

If someone asked me to introduce them to Logic, I’d start with this album. If you start with a deeper, more experimental album like Everybody or a project not quite as unique like Under Pressure, they may be left unsatisfied or unimpressed. But it’s near impossible to dislike his most rounded and well-constructed project.

I’ve said this with every project of his, but the production was excellent. The techy, spacey instrumentals perfectly parallel the theme and tone of the project. The vocal inflections on “Fade Away”, “Young Jesus”, “Run It” and the choir in the first half of “City of Stars” were all brilliantly executed. Also, Logic allowed collaborations on some tracks and they were some of the highlights on the album: Big Lenbo on “Young Jesus”, Lucy Rose on “Innermission”, and Jesse Boykins III on “Paradise”. Overall, the construction of each song on this album was near perfect. It can’t be overstated.

Logic branched out stylistically on this project. On Under Pressure, each song had a relatively similar tone, which made that project very consistent yet unspectacular. The fixed tone was good for the purpose of that project but restricted him from reaching a high peak. Here, his delivery, instrumentals, and lyrical style varied and was less consistent, allowing him to reach highs like “Fade Away” and “City of Stars” while also allowing him to reach lows like “I Am The Greatest”. Despite that flaw, the unique style of the album improves its overall ranking and separates him from the issue of his last project; the issue of being indistinct and being a carbon copy of his influences.

That’s one of the biggest strengths of this album. While I can think of other artists that could do Under Pressure or No Pressure, I don’t think anyone can do The Incredible True Story. Logic has a niche combination of lyrical talent, production skills, and geekiness that shines profusely.

The main theme of this project is doing what you love and finding life. This theme paired the fictional nature of the album’s structure loosens the restraint on Logic. Before, he was limited by discussing his experiences and thoughts in an autobiographical way, whereas now he’s allowed to discuss things from an outside perspective and speak more prophetically.

Album Breakdown

Side Note: I will be adding comments and thoughts from my girlfriend who also loves this album. Her comments will be bolded.

1. Contact

This was extremely creative. I was instantly drawn into the music. Sounded like a soundtrack I'd hear in a movie. And the introductory conversation between the two men established a very interesting and compelling start to the album and makes it feel like I'm getting ready to start a story book. Solid start, can't wait to see what happens.

2. Fade Away

Off the rip, this track had me excited. As I mentioned earlier, the composition and instrumental is excellent. He also comes through with an intense flex of delivery and rhyming and syllable scheme construction. This is the first song I’ve ever heard from Logic and it still gets my hype every time I hear it.

The flow in this song just hit me like a truck. The lyrics were pretty good and not necessarily a brag, but more of a showcase of pride. The music was also very catchy and had my bobbing my head before he started rapping. But the flow! Absolutely loved it. Def a hype song for me.

3. Upgrade

This track transitions well from the previous song discussing kai upgrading his system. Logic discusses “upgrading” from his old life and mindset. The space background with a simple drum pattern is satisfying.

Loved how the intro music played off of the space theme established by the intro. The music was already banging, and the countdown had me anticipating what's to come. Liked how the lyrics also incorporated space elements. Somewhat simple song with somewhat basic lyrics, but overall still quite enjoyable.

4. White People (Scene)

This was super fun to listen to and I was laughing when the black guy made fun of the white-man-horror-movie stereotype. I was almost wishing for them to investigate. I am really liking this album so far. Who knew Logic was such a innovative storyteller.

5. Like Woah

Although this song doesn’t say much content wise, the vocals were pretty slick and the instrumental was constructed well. Verses were average and I found the chorus a little iffy. But overall, it’s one of the more mid tracks.

The others definitely fit the theme of the space, but this song felt more of a Top 100 hits song. The flow was not as stellar as the songs so far, definitely no Fade Away, but still steady and impressive nonetheless. Nerdy comment, but the music reminded me of something I'd hear in a video game with the female singing--maybe Zelda or Fire Emblem.

6. Young Jesus

Although this song isn’t in my top 3, it’s still one of my favorite on the album. The boom bap 90s throwback mixes well with the modern, techy sound of the album. Logic and Big Lenbo both flow perfectly; this some of the best chemistry Logic has had with another rapper, the only other contender being Big Sean. Instrumentally this song stands out the most because its composition derives so much from the rest of the track list.

This throwback to the 90s flow with a slight modern twist was fresh as hell and a very fun listen. I actually very much enjoyed Logic's flow in this song. "See I'm a self diagnosed hypochrondria/ Either at the crib, or on the tour bus, is where you'll find me at" was a fun, funky flow that had me smiling as I listened to it. Would have definitely enjoyed if he did this flow and slight drawl in words a bit more. Big Lenbo was perfect for this song. His voice has that 90s feel and his lyrics fit the bragging feel seen in old hip hop songs.

7. Innermission

Another top track on this project, “Innermission” features Logic discussing his life’s purpose and “inner mission”. Lucy Rose on the chorus is beautiful. The mellow beat allows Logic to truly dive into his thoughts without being overwhelmed by the instrumental. And I loved the skit at the end.

Not gonna lie, the music initially reminds me of elevator music, but the lyrics hit hard. Hearing his story of his home life and his friend in prison was...heartfelt? It made me introspective of my role in my friend's lives and my own background. This song has a nostalgia to it as Logic retrospects his life before reaching fame, yet an almost hopeful undertone as he contemplates why he wanted this lifestyle and how he managed to actually accomplish it. And, of course, ending the song with a child continuing the space them fully establishes the air of wistfulness as I hear the kid's innocent tone reminiscing about his home. Genius move.

8. I Am The Greatest

There are few songs that make me rush to the skip button. “I Am The Greatest” is one of them. I hate this song. The different voice clips have no rhythm or syncopation, seemingly haphazardly tossed together. The beat is underwhelming and the yelling is obnoxious. And logics lyrics and delivery are really bad. I strongly believe this should’ve been cut or put on a project like Bobby Tarantino.

9. The Cube (Scene)

As someone who can rap and solve a Rubiks cube, I found this very funny. But also ironic, since I pulled exactly 0 girls from solving it. But, Logic is a nerd and this skit fits his personality well.

So this didn't make much sense until I looked up "logic the cube" and saw some videos of him solving a Rubik’s cube. Cute that he inserted a past time into this.

10. Lord Willin’

Logic has a very distinct flow throughout this album. It's very similar in each song with similar rhythm--I find myself bobbing my head at the same speed as his other songs. Not a bad thing, but just an interesting note. I actually quite like it, though. It makes the songs in this album more harmonious and makes it feel like one long story, rather than several songs thrown together onto one album. The lyrics themselves were actually quite inspirational. I felt a sense of pride in myself swell as I listened to him overcoming and living a full life and encouraging me to do the same.

11. City of Stars

Arguably one of the best on the album, “City of Stars” features Logic discusses his negative/toxic relationship with the hip hop industry. The spacey beat and echoey chorus vocals area AWESOME. The echo on the snare paints a visual of singing in a wide open space. Logic’s singing is above average, his use of auto-tune isn’t bad either. The beat switch to an intense boom bap and going in sent shivers down my spine. Although this has been done before, its definitely an excellently put together concept.

Also, only hip hop fans will notice but Logic incorporates patterns and lyrics from other songs: Drake’s “Forever”, Kanye West’s “Last Call” & “Two Words” of The College Dropout, and Talib Kewli’s “Get By”. Logic isn’t one to shy away from nodding to his influences, but here it feels like paying homage instead of stealing. Top 3 track.

12. Stainless

This song is 100% dope. From the vocals on the chorus, complex background in the instrumental, Logic’s intense flow and delivery, along with the content. Another top 3 on the album.

Bruuuh, this song slapped from the moment it started. The music had a flow different from the other songs, and his energy from the first few lyrics was solid as hell. I was hype and smiling not even 20 seconds in. This is a riding-with-the-windows-down-with-the-volume-blarring-on-the-highway-as-you-flaunt-your-youth-and-just-jam-hard kind of song. I would have def played this before a basketball game to get myself hype.

13. Babel (Scene)

“Babel” was the best skit by far. I think this plays well into the theme of the album: The concept of doing what you love and finding life. This skit mentions how “paradise” may not be something you find, but something you make and maintain. And on the flip side, you can also turn paradise into “purgatory”. So this journey is about creating the best and making your own incredible life instead of trying to find it. It also transitions well into the next song both musically and thematically.

14. Paradise

This was an interesting song. When he described Paradise initially, he spoke of it as a land of racial equality. I had not expected race to play a major role in this story, but it makes sense, given his background, why he would consider this Paradise. As a fellow biracial person born without a silver spoon, I can relate to his struggle. So hearing him describe this planet called Paradise, I can see why it earned that name. But the beat change. I find it interesting that he switched the message behind his lyrics up. It changed to perseverance and strength to overcome haters and obstacles and doubt. It gives me this feeling of self-worth as I push through the negativity to achieve Paradise. Interesting that he decided to include this message after describing what Paradise looks like. Did he do this to highlight the struggle it would take to get there? The challenge? Saying how "Of those around me that down and pray on my demise/But it only makes it that much better when I rise" definitely encapsulates his ability to attain Paradise. I'm not sure, maybe he did so as proof that he finally reached the top.

15. Never Been

Years ago, I used to be a hater of Logic. I used to despise when people complimented or praised him. So this song about remaining positive and persevering while blocking out negative hits even harder. He battles with fears of being inadequate while projecting a message of not letting those fears control your life and potential success. Amazing message. Musically, the track is very solid. The sped up, high pitched vocals on the chorus and outro remind me of Kanye’s style, and the simple beat isn’t distracting emphasizes the introspective nature of the song.

"Talk all you want about me homie, I'mma let it live/Hater this, hater that, say I sound repetitive/ Hatin' in your blood, you was born to be negative" now THAT is how you diss someone. If someone said this to me, I'd just walk away because what do you say to that? I appreciate that he is able to both dis and praise in a song, yet not come off as cocky and arrogant and braggy. Listening to him, it truly sounds like he worked his ass off to achieve his fame, so hearing him brush off haters and telling me I can do it too actually makes me feel like he's right. This songs has an introspective vibe as he recounts his insecurities of failing, yet how he can't afford to "let the devil in."

16. Run It

“Run It” is another very good track on the album. The flow and beat were dope and simple yet effective and pleasing. I think this song’s placement was strange. After hard hitters like “Stainless”, “Paradise”, and “Never Been”, “Run it” feels underwhelming by comparison. I could see this after between “Like Woah” and the White People Skit. But this late into the album, this song’s tone sit right. Ultimately a great song though.

17. Lucidity

“Lucidity” gives good insight on the theme of the album. Thomas describes taking for granted people on Earth having dreams and wants instead of living to find paradise. I like the concept of one’s life and story being defined by pursuing what you want. Mostly a set up for the final song, it’s still a solid scene.

18. The Incredible True Story

This track can be defined by one word: epic. From the first half with Logic’s vocals and singing, encapsulating the whole question in this album “Who Am I?”. The instrumentation is beautiful. Then the second half with the crew landing on Paradise is so powerful and well constructed. As a listener, I feel like I’m there with the crew. You can feel everyone’s fear, nervousness, excitement, anticipation, and hope.

What. An. Ending. I had no idea how Logic was going to end this and he did not disappoint. His lyrics in the beginning. The sub-sequential inspirational message of following your desires. The 2 men as they get ready to land on Paradise. All of that was flawless. My favorite part was the music change as the female finished her countdown of the landing and it changed to this soft, exploring sound full of hope. Hearing the 2 men talk in wonder as the sounds of nature slowly encompassed the music before hearing the woman say "Life" literally made me so fucking emotional, I'm tearing up thinking about it.

Final Thoughts

The Incredible True Story is the embodiment of Logic as an artist. It is strengthened by being unsafe. Under Pressure felt like bowling with the rails up. You’re definitely gonna score, and you may hit a strike on your own, but it’s just not as good as bowling without safety rails. And yes, you may hit gutters (”I Am The Greatest”), but putting everything on the table and living/creating unrestrictedly allows you to reach highs in life/art you wouldn’t otherwise reach. And I think by allowing himself to create riskily and unhindered, he fulfilled his own theme.

As an avid bibliophile, I will tell you that most sequels are shit. But damn, this album was fucking amazing. I have been sleeping on Logic. Honestly, 12/10 ending. Logic wanted to leave a statement that he could still be one of the best even after his debut album and, trust me, he proved it. This ending alone proved that he knows how to do this shit. I feel like I just finished reading a great book. Who knew rap could be like this?

Top 3 Tracks:

1) City of Stars 1) Stainless

2) Paradise 2) Paradise

3) Innermission 3) Incredible True Story

Overall Grade: A+

Album Link:

https://open.spotify.com/album/5dOpbgAmJeyoakKQ0QLWkR?si=bAQ0FEA4RMupkUEspycH1Q

#music review #album review #hip hop review #hip hop #logic

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spaceorphan18 · 5 years

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Finding Kurt Hummel: The Rise and Fall of Sue Sylvester

Masterpost

6x10: The Rise and Fall of Sue Sylvester

And here we are at the infamous Sue episode panned by fans everywhere. Is it really that bad? Well I did have it as my least favorite episode of the series, (though after careful inspection, that title truly goes to the hot mess that is I Kissed a Girl). However, believe it or not, I don’t think this is the /worst/ Glee ever put out. I do, though, think the context is what makes it so frustrating.

Child Star and Other Missed Opportunities

Here’s the thing - when you write out season 6 on paper, I think the structure of what the writers were going for makes a lot more sense. The main story that they were telling was getting the Glee club back in order, to be, in a way, an echo of what season 1 was. And for the most part, I do think that structure works. You have Rachel in the ‘Will’ spot as teacher, trying to get her life together while trying to inspire these young kids to be awesome, and like the end of the Front 13 - the ending there is Sectionals.

All the other plot lines are secondary, including Rachel’s triumphant return to New York, which is the b-story of the entire season. Kurt (and Blaine)’s reunion arc might be, eh, a distant 3rd? Maybe 4th after Will’s. But that’s what makes these final three episodes (before the final two that make up, essentially, the series finale) so jarring. We’ve been used to strong focus on Kurt and Blaine as secondary characters, and the kids have been the main focus since season 3. Shifting everything back so that Will and Sue are the main characters, with Rachel as a secondary lead feels... off.

The thing is -- I see what they were trying to do here. After wrapping up the Klaine (and Brittana) arc - the last arcs that the ‘kid’ characters get (besides Rachel) we essentially have three extra episodes left. One will be the competition episode. One was the episode about the New Newbies which I don’t think was a bad thing - even if I think introducing a new character five episodes before the end was a dumb move. But like the original kids, I think these new kids rightfully deserved an episode of their own. And thus leaves one episode where they needed to do, well, something.

And hence - we get Sue.

Yeah - It would have been nice if they had spent an episode exploring Kurt and Blaine’s now married life, or what the hell are Mercedes, Artie, Tina, Brittany, Santana, Mike, etc, etc, etc, etc, doing with their lives. But - in the minds of the glee writers... they already did that in various capacities over the previous episodes.

But even more than that - for reasons I’ll never fully understand, unless it’s about how much they love Jane Lynch, they decided to focus an episode on Sue. And while the episode isn’t the utter worst thing Glee ever did (honestly, go back and watch IKAG again...), trying to make emotional sense of a character you’ve reduced to a cartoon character, who breaks the fourth wall just... doesn’t work. And on top of that, they don’t resolve anything, nor is it that interesting to watch. Sue remains, well, Sue and nothing remotely happens.

So yeah, this ‘filler’ episode was a way to stall time before the obligatory ending Sectionals episode - and they filled it up with a lot of what no one wanted, especially the precious few who were still watching. And thus, we have the most frustrating and least satisfying episode of the entire series. Thankfully, Kurt is barely in it.

Burn the House Down

So, we open with the New New New Directions in typical Glee fashion, doing the hot single of the moment - idk even know the name of the song, though - Rather Be? Idk. Anyway, Kurt and Blaine come sombering in, cause, plot dictates they be there for exposition.

And we find out that Dalton has burned to the ground.

So.

Here’s the thing - there could have been an interesting story here for Blaine -- matching Rachel’s story about having to grow up and move on. I mean, it’s kind of subtly and subtextually there. It is (another) reason Blaine is forced to move on and grow up.

But. Do you know why they burned Dalton to the ground (other than doing it probably out of spite)? Not for some kind of deeper level of symbolism. Nope. They did it so New Directions can meet their quota of having 12 members. That stupid, fucking rule. I realize that it’s now become a joke (as mentioned earlier in the Hurt Locker episodes). But c’mon Glee. It’s like you’re not even trying now.

But also, like after most big Klaine events - do Kurt and Blaine get a moment to reflect on their newly marriage life? Nope. Other than talking about a piano exploding in the next episode, Kurt and Blaine won’t share dialogue again until the series finale. On top of that -- instead of getting to be happy newlyweds, they have Blaine upset because his surrogate home has burned down. Thanks writers. Thanks.

However - there are two things I do like about this little moment. A) the fact that Kurt is being a very comforting husband. B) the fact that they are wearing their proposal colors. Nice touch costume dept. You get the gold star.

In the next scene - we get the indoctrination of the Warblers into the New Directions. And Kurt just nods his head along in all the appropriate places. Not a whole lot to talk about -- other than now that we’ve got Will back in charge, Rachel and Kurt have faded into the background. Is Kurt even teaching anything any more? No, not really - despite all the ‘conversations’ Kurt, Rachel, Will, and Blaine have off screen.

Anyway - you know another reason Dalton was burned to ground? To service the Sue plot. Yup. God. Luckily, though, I don’t really have to go into it.

The Way Too Long Geraldo Segment

So, long story short, Sue’s hurt locker was found out and then she’s exposed on Geraldo, which does go on way, way to long. Look, there are some funny moments and callbacks, like the finding of Sue’s Penthouse magazine and the quick return of Joe. But it just becomes stale as it continues after the commercial break. Also, though, Sue’s not going to actually face ramifications. I mean, she should really be in jail just on the hurt locker alone. But this is Glee, where Will, Sue, and Rachel never have to really deal with the actions they make.

So - Kurt’s bit is about the elevator. Which is... fine. It kind of feels hollow since they’re going to thank her in the finale, and she just sent them on a week long honeymoon. But yeah - don’t kidnap people, guys. Bad. The best part of this is the look on Blaine’s face.

Unity

This scene was almost impossible to get a good still. Oh well. Anyway, a good twenty minutes of the episode later...

So, I should mention in the previous scene, the gang is all trying to help Rachel through her issues and trying to get her back to New York (or whatever). It’s a little weird that Kurt is not here since he’s spent so much of his screen time playing emotional prop to Rachel Berry. but I guess I’m not complaining even if I think it’s weird? But we do get Sam calling NYADA a scam school, and info that Blaine was kicked out by Carmen herself - to which I say, why does anyone care about this school?? Whatever. It is a funny little scene though.

Anyway, back to this scene -- where the Warblers and the New Directions are arguing over costumes. And the only real thing I get out of it (Kurt-wise) is that Kurt really hated wearing that uniform when he went there, lol. (He did, though, it’s in season 2.)

And I know there was some grumbling of this scene - why is Kurt taking New Directions’s side? Why is he not supporting Blaine and the Warblers - to which I say... the writers didn’t give a shit about that. Seriously. This scene is a) about comedy and b) presenting this argument that will be compromised in about ten minutes anyway. It’s not at all any kind of reflection on Kurt or Blaine or their relationship. And actually, I’m of half mind that the writers completely forgot that Kurt even went to Dalton himself.

In the large scheme of Kurt related things - this scene barely registers, tbh. **shrugs**

Hey, but costumes wins again - Kurt and Blaine are wearing each other’s colors!

Final Countdown

So, Sue and Will duke it out through music - like it’s always done, and we get confirmation -- all those fantasy performances? Were just that -- fantasies. I kinda do like when the kids come in and are like - wtf??!? Kurt tells Rachel that he hopes that the’ll never become that. Oh y’all won’t, promise ;) Anyway - I love that the show comments that Will and Sue have lost it - like we haven’t known that since the end of season 1.

So, uh, the next day? Will apologizes for being an idiot. Okay, fine. And then Rachel says that now -- if the glee club doesn’t win, all fine arts will be cut. Because that makes a load of sense, c’mon writers, c’mon....

Anyway - the one redeeming thing for this otherwise ridiculous little scene, is that Kurt’s a ball of optimism -- he inwardly reflects on all the crap that’s happened in his life and he turns it around saying that they’ll never give up on anything (to which Blaine looks at him adoringly). And, I mean, it’s a subtle thing -- but I kinda love this. Because here’s a kid who has been through hell and back and a lot of shitty things (even recently) and you know what? He’s fine. He’s in a good place, he’s happy, he’s loved, he’s got a great support system, and a good attitude about life. And, he’s got a great motto to go along with it -- It’s Got Bette Midler. (lol)

But I mean, let’s take a second and think about the fact that Kurt started his journey being that kid who gets thrown in dumpsters for being weird and gay and now, you know what? He’s fine. He’s really, really, really fine. :)

Rise

So - here at the end, we see Blaine solving the absolute crisis of the episode and somehow he’s managed to make, like, twenty unity blazers overnight, combining the Dalton tradition with the McKinley colors. And did it without Kurt knowing what he was up to because Kurt was totally surprised. But it’s in a good way, Kurt’s incredibly proud that Blaine managed to solve this epic dilemma. (I joke, but really, it’s sweet that Kurt’s, again, proud of his new husband).

Meanwhile, we get the song Rise, written by Darren Criss -- and I’m kind of impressed with this song -- it manages to reference birds, Dalton burning down, the kids rising to the top, and the fall of Sue Sylvester all in one go. Color me impressed, too. (Btw, this is such a Darren-esque song, I can hear this in his voice even if I’ve never heard him actually sing it.)

I’ll leave you with the some lyrics, which I’m sure you can work out their meaning on your own ;)

Have you ever felt like you woke up (On the wrong side of your heart) Has it ever felt like it's broken (Like the world tore it apart) Have you felt so weak, You could hardly stand Like if you ever fell You could never tell If you'd ever get back up again I know it's hard to do, But I think you can make it, Cause I know we can take it Baby we will... Rise We are young we are the dreamers we will fly When the world will not believe us, We will rise above the ashes Before this whole life passes us by You and I, we will rise

#finding kh #kurt hummel

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tentativi-vani · 4 years

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Brenda Ridgewell and the Contemporariness of Moveable Space

Presentation

"Gems has its very own significance. Regardless of whether it is inborn adornments made of bones and shells or flawlessly made gem encrusted crown, gems portrays stories and rises above messages. The maker extravagantly places huge implications in all gems pieces including its detail and extensive idea. The implications are as though otherworldly measurements which the network can without much of a stretch and significantly perceive...like quiet however resounding sound," expressed Brenda Ridgewell, Australian prestigious gems craftsman whose work in adornments workmanship is perceived in the universal stage.

In July 2007, Brenda Ridgewell acknowledged the greeting of the Department of Jewelry Design, Faculty of Decorative Arts, Silpakorn University to be a trade visitor speaker and hold a joint show with the fourth year understudies (Graduates-to-be this year), empowering us as workmanship fans to see the association of time from an earlier time, present and future, just as spots of various social starting points through a tasteful part of a material connected on human body. This material echoes the voice of character, speaking to its starting point.

Remodelling jewellery During the discussion with the essayist, Ridgewell shared her perspective to contemporary gem dealers as well as understudies who were going to graduate and serve the network that it is the obligation of craftsmen or adornments originators to try material possibilities, plan forms, creation strategies, workmanship segments, and so forth so as to ace instruments which will mirror the general public of their occasions. Plus, they need to take into their thought different components which can offer motivation to individuals of the new century through this stylish methods and with genuine duty.

Her work: Moveable Space

Brenda Ridgewell's work depicts ideal blend of ideas and related workmanship segments appeared through the interchange of shapes that move intuitively. Ridgewell is keen on space and the pursuit on human body to discover space which epitomizes and grasps the relationship like cozy space. For instance, a portion of her gems pieces investigate the space commonly held for a sweetheart or youth since this day this kind of room is hard to be put aside to stay discreet. Along these lines, we should secure and keep up this space.

Gems is consequently the best medium to explain these thoughts since it reaches out past the body surface and must be seen from the nearby separation inside the private space. It is like we should enter the wearer' individual space with the goal that this individual space perspective made will unveil stories. The space resembles the wearer's enclosure affirming her goal. Despite the fact that this space: organized gems is solid, the shape can change to help the curve following the weight. We can hear the sound of this adaptable space when it moves. The delicate sound helps us to remember the significance of this space in our lives. Regardless of whether the development course of action can inspire disorderly trembling of the shape since every component can move openly from the others, the associated structure can take the piece back to arrange by shaking, curving or renovating it.

The complicated neckpiece including curled silver and spotless causes movement feeling. Every one of the wearer's development makes new open doors opening up new space inside the first geometric structure. In like manner, the associated organized piece resembles skyscraper towers continually bumping around each other, realizing new relationship and discharging itself from fixed geometric shape.

These adornments pieces are made to be worn and speak to space which grandstands aspectual prospects and relationship when they move and associate on the body. The square shape arm band connected around the wrist makes different jewel spaces both in open and close habits, such as attracting pictures an unfilled space. Its expanding conceal make the item stick out, making bigger visual and real space.

Despite the fact that the space made may appear to be vacant, it contains recollections since it is intended to gather closeness, extending the demeanor of potential outcomes which are fit to be gotten a handle on or kept through the open wire. Similarly, educational encounters are kept and associated in cozy space. They influence human considerations, recollections and dreams which we review in the types of creative mind and dream through stylish methods. In this way, Ridgewell's space is a recognizability framework, a memory update, and serves to ensure and keep the center of people.

For Ridgewell, another basic component of individuals is our capacity as a race of style objects. We look for materials to satisfy the delight of creation and appreciate the planned items just as the gems creation procedures, for example, metal compound systems, softening, throwing crude materials and different methods. Crude materials must be painstakingly chosen. Ridgewell for the most part utilizes authentic silver and pure in light of the hues and quality. Another material utilized is cubic zirconia, which is done at the wire end and can be mystically observed just when one looks cautiously. Amazing gold joined in numerous pieces upgrades warm delicate gleam. The accuracy and subtleties of each joint, the adornments shape produced using motivation, these components affirm the noteworthiness of the general structure. These new structures rise up out of muddled musings, aptitudes and encounters as prior referenced, imagining the craftsman's theoretical thoughts.

Her creation advancement, for example the presentation of specialized parts and such inventive ideas, has put Ridgewell and her partners in the universal spotlight. Ridgewell advised the essayist that her choice to work outside city metropolitans like Melbourne and Sydney or London and New York has brought about her autonomy. She needed to scan for the adaptability of way of life which formed into qualities of special dreams in spite of living in a less deft spot as far as introducing herself and her work. Hopefully, deciding to live in a distant territory is less confined and gives more prospects of things. Then the craftsman is as yet ready to find new stuffs that occur on the planet. With this and her critical thinking has impacted the individuals who bolster her work and numerous neighborhood craftsmen who have less chances to develop at the bleeding edge of the universal contemporary adornments stage.

Ridgewell's work is generally perceived in the global level, significantly more eminent in London than West Australia. Notwithstanding, the Artist and the author chiefly concurred that any adornments pieces ought to be introduced and first acknowledged among neighborhood crowd who share a similar culture. It is an incredible confirmation that we and nearby crowd who share similar roots comprehend, accept, regard and can associate with this social component of interchanges altogether. This is the hardest part but then it is more pleased than being upheld in terrains of various characters since to act in a better place, the work is as of now increasingly intriguing.

End

The essayist decided to introduce and investigate crafted by Brenda Ridgewell, of all due regard, with the expectation that this article can fill in as masterful givings to all understudies who are going to graduate, not just understudies in the Department of Jewelry Design since craftsmanship is indistinguishable to westerners or easterners. We all can comprehend the pith of manifestations significantly, regardless of what structures or capacities, since they all originate from similar roots. Moreover, the order of conceptualization which requires tireless examination, investigation, combination and critical thinking will be the total proclamation in its own and this beam of unadulterated information will be spread and stretched out to other people. By this issue, the otherworldly improvement through aggregate aestheticism will emerge adequately.

Consequently, we, agents of today and the future can't disregard to mitigate agonies of Thai individuals who experience the ill effects of physical emergency, feeble personalities or forsaken spirits when they experience dejection. Despite the fact that individuals guarantee that the world has decreased, the digital society has made us lose this human collaboration. The globalization, the legislative issues whether it is the false majority rule government or free enterprise have reduced space of poor people, and so on. Through the continuation of aesthetic substance or the proficiency of plan, with solid innovative creation and the consistency in introducing reasonable characters, we can support and fortify Thai lifestyles, viewpoints and attention to the people to come. At last, masterful items have the incentive to inspire truly and profoundly, past being just wearables, particularly in Thailand, which has its foundations in religions, expressions and societies since the days of yore.

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thedefinitionofbts · 7 years

Text

A Story that we paint (Ch. 1)

Ch. 1 | Ch. 2 | Ch. 3 | Epilogue

Pairings: Jeon Jungkook x Reader | Kim Taehyung x Reader

Genre: College Au, Future, Scifi, Slight Fluff and Angst

Words: 9K

Description: Butterfly Dream: In which the lines between virtual and reality are blurred.

You think you can remember his touch, the sound of his voice, the scent of his freshly washed hair against the cotton pillowcase. In your dreams he is real, he is everything you knew and everything you didn’t need to know. You could always find him in the crevices of your mind no matter how elaborately your thoughts are tested or how convoluted the maze of your consciousness is intertwined.

“But if you happen to get lost, you had faith that he would find you”

“Welcome to Virtual Universe 101. My name is Professor Kim Namjoon, and I will be your primary instructor this semester. ” Your eyes follow the tall and surprisingly youthful looking man as he walks to the front of the lecture hall. He smiles kindly at the crowd of students and proceeds to look down and expertly types some commands into his hand held tablet device. The screen behind him immediately opens to display the introductory slide of his presentation.

Virtual Universe 101 was one of the first classes added to the new university curriculum that aimed to combine the traditional liberal arts and the engineering sciences, two major fields of study that had always been divided by a wide gulf due to their contrastingly different ways of thought. Virtual Universe, or VU, is a technology developed sometime after the discovery of true artificial intelligence (machines with consciousness) and slightly before the invention of brain downloading (the process of downloading yourself into a virtual world where you could live and do things as you would in the real world). Now it’s officially a class students can take as an elective in college, and its especially appealing to those who have a knack for both the arts and the STEM subjects, in other words, the overachievers who pride themselves in being equally creative and logical.

“I assume most of you have a general idea of what VU is, so I’m going to go over the introduction rather quickly.” The screen flips to the next slide, giving a brief description of the history of VU and its real world applications. “As you all know, VU is an interdisciplinary area that essentially combines every subject you’ve studied in your educational careers up until now. It’s as thought-provoking as it is rewarding, so if you’re up for a challenge, you’ve come to the right place.” He smiles again, an action that causes his lips to stretch from ear to ear, and a pair of deep set dimples to appear at the corner of both his cheeks.

Professor Kim Namjoon was right. VU was as interdisciplinary as it gets, as it involves the design and implementation of an alternate world, which meant it wasn’t a standalone class. Signing up for VU 101 meant you had to simultaneously take Storyboarding (a literature class taught by the quirky Professor Kim Seokjin, who apparently jokes around more than he is serious), Design Engineering (and art and structural design class taught by the lively Professor Jung Hoseok who you’ve heard is literally the manifestation of the sun), and Mental Environment Homeostasis (a course intended to aid in the maintenance of psychological wellbeing taught by the mysterious Professor Min Yoongi who no one really knew much about).

“This semester you will be assigned a semester long project which requires you to build a virtual world.” He begins to go over the syllabus. “VU has various applications in the real world, ranging from video game design to medical research simulation.” He flips to the next slide. “For this course, you will be randomly assigned a genre for the virtual story you create.” He continues to go over all the due dates of homework assignments and midterms, which didn’t look too bad, since most if not all were just parts of the project divided into different stages to prevent students who had a habit of procrastinating from leaving everything until the day before it was due. “Lastly, at the end of the semester, you will have the option of deciding whether you want to live the life you create.” There’s a glint in his eyes, fleeting, but you were able to catch it before the crowd of students began to stir.

His last statement earned him his first audible reaction from the crowd who had been silently listening and taking notes up until that moment. Gasps erupted through the lecture hall as the students began whispering to each other in hushed yet alarmed voices. You didn’t know what the professor meant by that last sentence, but it sounded like he was implying you could download yourself into the system, which was something you had heard of being previously done, but still uncommon in real world society.

The whispering dies down as Namjoon begins to speak once again; his lips are still curved upward into a smile. “I know it sounds confusing now, but it will become more clear as we proceed into the semester.” He reaches the last slide, which contained all the usual contact information, office hours, and miscellaneous information. “The TAs will be available to help if you can’t make it to any of my office hours.” He says. “Oh, and don’t forget you also have your other professors who I am positive will be more than happy to answer any question you may have.” And with that Professor Namjoon dismisses the class.

You gather your belongings and make your way out of the lecture hall. Many of the students where still chattering amongst themselves, all this project talk had gotten everyone overly excited, which seemed a bit excessive and naive in your opinion. Little did they know of the challenges that lie on the road ahead, as the design and implementation of VU was very complex to say the least. You briefly glance at your phone, taking note that it was almost noon. You had agreed to have lunch with your best friend Park Jimin today, something that had basically become a tradition ever since you met him freshman year.

As he had promised, he was waiting for you outside the engineering building. You could recognize that smile of his from a mile away.

“Y/N!” He shouts as he spots you walking through the large group of students that had just gotten out of class. He stands on his tippy toes and waves his hands in the air as if you hadn’t already seen him.

“You can put your hands down, Chim. You’re kind of hard to miss.” You joke as you approach him.

He laughs, eyes disappearing into half moons. “So how was class?” He asks as you walk across campus to the noodle shop a block down.

You sigh, and proceed to explain the whole project thing to him. Jimin wasn’t exactly up to date with VU technology, so you gave him some background info on that too, sparing him the confusing he would otherwise be met with later on. As the two of you stroll along the oak tree lined sidewalk, and across the autumn leave covered lawn, you tell him about the things Professor Namjoon had mentioned, VU applications, designing a virtual world…

“You can choose to live in your self-constructed universe?” Jimin’s eyes widen in surprise after you mention that little teaser Namjoon had hinted at during lecture. “Isn’t that still taboo???” He huffs, eye open wide as they go. He was listening so intently, he didn’t even notice the waiter place his steaming bowl of noodles in front of him.

“Yeah, I mean, that’s what I thought, but I guess this professor is more open about these things than society is” You shrug, pulling your hair back and leaning in to eat some of your noodles that were still piping hot.

…

“VR2000 is an artificially intelligent operating system that will act as the canvas of your virtual world. It is located in the Human Computer Interaction Lab, the place where I assume most of you will be spending many sleepless nights over the course of the semester.” Namjoon’s voice echoes through the lecture hall once again. There were sounds of students typing notes on their laptop and the occasional cough of some kid four rows over. Namjoon was going over the logistics on how to get started with the project and the resources available to get started. “It provides a human-machine interface where you will be able to enter the world you are building and experience it for each test run. This allows you to make adjustments as necessary, fix problems as they occur, or just optimize user experience.” He explains, while simultaneously showing a demonstration on the big screen.

“Wow” You hear Jimin voice directly into your right ear. He had decided to tag along and sit in on your lecture, even though he isn’t in your class.

“Calm your ass, you’re not the one doing this project” You roll your eyes. “I still don’t understand why you’re even here.”

“What?” Jimin responds clearly offended. “I don’t have class in the mornings, and I just wanted to see what this class is like. You were the one who made it sound cool.” He blames. “Besides, I may or may no want to take this class next year.” He grins, eyes narrowing into half crescents.

You shake your head defeated. “Again, I don’t understand why a psych major like you would ever want to take this class. Aren’t you afraid it’s going to mess up your psychological wellbeing or whatever? Especially with the whole ‘you will have the option of deciding whether you want to live the life you create’”. You mumble, imitating Professor Namjoon’s voice when he had voiced that particular sentence.

“Isn’t that what ‘Mental Environment Homeostasis’ is for?” Jimin smirks, knowing he had just won the argument with one rhetorical question.

You mentally facepalm, completely forgetting that, that is exactly what ‘Mental Environment Homeostasis’ was for, and realizing that your own argument was now invalid.

“You have all the tools you need to successfully complete the project at your disposal. I advise you all to use the university’s resources wisely.” Professor Kim Namjoon’s voice pulls your attention back to lecture. “Each of you will be paired up with another student in the class, and each group will be assigned a genre.” He pauses, as the students begin whispering and partnering up before he was finished. “As I was saying” He raises his voice and a hush falls through the crowd. “The genre each group will be assigned will be dependent on random draw, so I don’t want to hear any complaints about unfairness or requests to switch topics.”

“What do you think he means by ‘genre’?” Jimin whispers to you.

“Shhhh” You hush him before the professor gets annoyed again.

“You may come up to the front after class, with your partner, to receive the your project packet which will contain the genre and all the requirements listed.” Namjoon says. “But the one warning I will continue to reiterate throughout the semester is that you must take responsibility for what you create.” He pauses once again, but this time, not because he was waiting for the students to quiet down because the lecture hall was so quiet that you could hear him sigh into the microphone attached to his collar. “Any form of artificial consciousness deserves to be treated as a human.” He slowly looks around at the students in the crowd with deep philosophical eyes. You didn’t fully understand what he meant, but there was no doubt in your mind that he had just shared with the class the most important piece of information about the project.

A student in the crowd raises his hand.

“Yes?” Namjoon looks over at the dark haired boy in an oversized white t-shirt and beanie.

“How are you defining artificial consciousness?” the boy asks.

Namjoon smiles and looks down at the floor for a millisecond before raising his head and answering the boy’s question. “To put it simply, any person you create in your artificial world who has his or her own thoughts and is an independent agent.” He claps his hands together. “I hope that answers your question, and with that, I will give you guys time to partner up.”

“Wooow, this class is awesome” Jimin comments as the other students begin standing up and finding partners.

“God Jimin, your not even in this class. Do you know how hard this project sounds?” You groan, thinking about all the work that’s coming ahead, long sleepless nights trying to get programs to work and who know what other frustrating endeavors.

“But hey, at least you get a partner” He pats you on the shoulder with a wide grin.

Shit. You think to yourself before frantically looking around. You had totally forgotten you were supposed to be finding a partner right now. Half the class was already in line getting their packets, while you were here screwing around with Jimin.

Jimin notices you biting your lower lip and nervously looking around the room. “How about that guy over there?” He suggests, knowing exactly what you were thinking at that moment

Your eyes trail over to the person Jimin was pointing at and low and behold, it was the guy who had asked the question earlier, the one in the white shirt and beanie. He hadn’t even stood up and was just staring at the dark screen in front of the lecture hall like he was waiting for his partner to just magically appear.

“B-but, I don’t even know him” You stutter, weighing out your options.

“Do you know anyone in this class?” Jimin retorts.

You tsk and glance at him annoyed. “Fine, I’ll ask” You mutter while making your way over to the boy who was seated three rows in front of you.

As you approach, you notice that he was kind of zoning out, so you had to wave your hand in front of him to grab his attention.

“Hey, ummm, sorry to bother you…but I was-“

He looks up and interrupts you before you could finish your sentence.

“Partner?” He says with an anticipating smile.

You somehow get lost in his innocent doe eyes for a fraction of a second longer than you had intended before managing to nod your head slowly.

“Cool” He says, as he stands up and proceeds to get in line behind the rest of the students. You stand rooted in the spot, not quiet registering what had happened and wondering if this was all real. Ironic because this was happening before the project even started. “You coming?” He turns and asks after realizing you were still in a trance of some sorts.

“Oh, uh, y-yeah” You shake your head in an attempt to clear your mind and quickly hop over to his side.

“The name’s Jungkook by the way” He comments as the two of you wait in line patiently. There were shouts from students in the front who had opened their packets and got assigned genres that they were probably hoping to get.

“Y/N” You respond with a smile.

…

Given the choice, what kind of story would you choose to live out with the love of your life?

“Think of it as a choose your own adventure game, and try to have some fun with it.” Professor Kim Namjoon’s voice echoes in your head as your eyes attempt to focus on the words printed on the first page of the packet.

This was insane. You had expected to be tasked with making some sort of video game, adventure simulation, or something more practical, but a love story? Unbelievable! At this day and age? But the words on the page were concrete and undeniable. That was the genre you and Jungkook were given. The objective that would inevitably dictate all the hard work you would sacrifice for the entire semester. A love story.

“It’s so lame” You sigh as you toss the packet on the table and burry your face in your arms.

“I thought girls liked these things,” Jungkook comments. He picks up the packet to flip through it one more time. He re-reads the guidelines as he twirls his pen in his free hand.

You guys had met up to discuss the first steps after Design Engineering class with Professor Jung Hoseok, who you soon found out, was indeed the embodiment of the sun itself. That guy literally never stops smiling and he walks as if he’s dancing ballet or something.

“Don’t tell me you actually believe we could make anything interesting with a topic as boring as romance.” You remark, as you sat across from Jungkook in the large library study area. Since it was the beginning of the semester, it was relatively empty. If this were finals week, you’d be lucky to even find an open table.

“Love stories aren’t always centered around romance” Jungkook replies as he lifts his pupils from the pages to glance at you. “They can be…tragic.”

“What? You mean like Romeo and Juliet?” You finally lift your head to look at him. He looked really young, fetus-like almost. His baby face made you question if he was maybe younger than you, but at the same time, his body was quite developed…not that you were directly taking note of that in particular. “We just met and you’re already trying to kill me off?”

“No, no, that’s not what I meant” He defends, shaking his hands. “Besides, they both die in that story don’t they?” He voices after remembering the actually ending of the age-old classic tale.

“Oh yeah, never mind then” You mutter.

“We could just base our project off of some really famous romance novel. They’re all pretty cookie-cutter anyways.” He says.

“We could…” You pause to think, realizing that you didn’t want to just settle for something generic. You had an entire semester and the world’s most advanced tools to make something amazing and novel. Why waste that just because you didn’t get an “interesting topic”? There was a limitless amount of room to be creative, the possibilities were endless. “But, I want something unique, something never written before. Something that could be deemed the greatest love story in the history of love stories.” You state in a resolute tone while looking up at the stain glass ceiling of the library, sunlight was pouring in and changing all sorts of colors due to the painted glass.

“Wow, your mindset changes in a hurry” Jungkook says with a side grin. “Good thing we have Storyboarding class next.” He says as he stands up from his chair. “Let’s hope Professor Kim Seokjin has some good advice about coming up with a plot.”

…

“Good afternoon, class” Professor Kim Seokjin greets the students who all looked very enthusiastic and eager to get started, to your minor annoyance. “I heard you’ve all received your project genres this morning. I hope you all have some amazing ideas swimming in your minds because in this class we will be doing a lot of creative exercises and brainstorming.”

Storyboarding was a new Lib-Ed class adapted specifically for students enrolled in Virtual Universe 101. It had been adapted from the more traditional literature classes such as Creative Writing and the like, and as unnecessary as it sounded before getting your project genre, you appreciated how it managed to help get you reoriented with the project goals after the disappointment you were met with this morning in regards to the project genre you received. Professor Kim Seokjin had said something along the lines of figuring out the main characters of the story before you start planning each stage of the story in separate steps.

“Aren’t our main characters just….us….?” You voice cautiously, after the professor had called for discussion time with your partners.

Jungkook sits up from slumping back in his seat and clears his throat before replying. “Not necessarily” He says. “According to the packet, our story is from the perspective of one of us, not both.”

“Oh right” You murmur, turning to look the other way before Jungkook can notice the flush in your cheeks. You bite the inside of your lip, scolding yourself for being so direct and inaccurate about the words escaping your lips. Of course, how could you forget? The packet specifically stated for you, the participant, to choose the love story you would live out with the love of your life. Not ‘come up with a love story between two people’.

“Y/N?” Jungkook’s voice snaps you from your thoughts. You jump a little in your seat, startled by the clarity in his voice. “I was thinking that we just have to decide which one of us goes into the simulation as the perspective side, and then we can decide whether we want to create a second main character or just have the simulation work its magic.”

You’re lips part as you try to register what Jungkook had said. “You mean, like the concept of soulmates?” At this point, you didn’t even know what you were saying anymore. You didn’t even believe in soulmates, in fact, the idea had always made you want to scoff.

Jungkook pauses and furrows his brows ever so slightly. “Sure, I guess if that’s what you call it.”

“That’s probably easier anyways.” You cut in, while laughing nervously. “I can’t imagine trying to create an AI.”

“Yeah, an AI….” Jungkook whispers to himself at a barely audible volume.

“I guess I can volunteer as tribute.” You shrug. “Unless you want to.” You look up and notice Jungkook had that blank look in his eyes again, just like the way he was the first day you “asked” him to be your partner.

“Huh?” Jungkook hums, snapping out of his thoughts.

“The perspective roll. I can be the one going into the simulation.” You repeat, waiting for him to either agree or suggest he go in instead.

“Oh, yeah. You do it.” Jungkook says, nodding his head in agreement. “I’ll monitor the stats while you’re in the simulation.”

…

The weekend hits you like a breath of fresh air after being locked up in a dusty attic for days. You needed a break from the project, even though the hard part had barely even begun. The creative process was harder than you thought, and you blame it on the lame topic you were stuck with. It was obvious you still weren’t over the “unfairness” of random draw because you had spend a full half an hour complaining about it to Jimin on Saturday while the two of you were grabbing a late lunch at the café near campus.

He had tried to make you feel better, insisting that love stories could be overwhelmingly emotional and there were a lot of elements you could play with, but it hardly changes your opinion because Jimin was into that stuff, as opposed to you, who brushed it off like it was all generic and uninteresting. Despite the futility, you still appreciated his well-fought effort.

It wasn’t until two days later, on Monday, that things started to get interesting. Because two days later, you receive a call from Jungkook telling you to meet him in the Human-Computer Interaction lab, aka the place where the project simulation was supposed to take place and the place you would be spending most of your time in the next coming months. He hadn’t contacted you since Storyboarding class on Friday, and you thought he was just out drinking with his friends or hungover the whole weekend, but as it turns out, he had actually been cooking up a surprise. A real one (figuratively, or so you think…).

“Wow, I’m impressed. He’s…he’s… fucking hot.” You comment, as you stare at the sharp features of the man on the screen. He had large sultry eyes, a tall perfectly shaped nose, and full lips. His skin was smooth and sun-kissed, hair a dark shade of golden brown.

“Well, I figured you’d want someone physically attractive, since you know, he’s going to be the male lead of your love story.” Jungkook says as he places his hands on his hips, proud that his past 48 hours of non-stop work had paid off.

“You mean, our love story,” You correct with a smirk. “I’m just playing lab rat here. He’s not real.”

“Oh, but he will be.”

You freeze in place at Jungkook’s last comment. “What do you mean?”

“Artificial consciousness.” He states. “I made him fully conscious. True AI.”

“W-wait, what?”

Jungkook chuckles. “It won’t make for an interesting story if I’m just controlling him the whole time, especially since you and I aren’t actually lovers. It should be as real as possible, right?”

You feel your face heat up at the mention of being lovers with Jungkook. “Yeah, of course. What was I thinking? We could never be lovers. Not even close.” You lie, hiding the fact that you hadn’t felt what you did the past few days when you were with him, and pretending that it was the farthest thing from your mind.

“It’s less work for me, and it’s more natural for the story.” He says, eyes still looking at the young male on the screen. “He’s so good looking, I’m almost jealous.” He’s still admiring his work of art.

“H-how did you do it though?” You question, remembering that this was not an easy feat, in fact, not long ago, it was literally impossible to make truly conscious AI.

“Hours of coding, help from the awesome resources the university provides, and a small part of my own brain.” Jungkook grins, looking at you and waiting for your praise.

You feel your lower jaw drop. “You downloaded you brain into the machine?”

“Yup” Jungkook nods. “Do you know how long it would take to make him fully from scratch? Probably couldn’t even finish it if I spent the whole semester fully on that.”

“So doesn’t that mean he’s basically….you?” You raise your eyebrow.

“He’s 50% similar to me, the other 50% he’ll evolve into as the simulation goes.” Jungkook explains. “In a sense, I’m part of him. Or more accurately, part of him is me. The difference is subtle, but it’s there.”

A moment of silence passes, and the only sound that can be heard is the loud rumbling of the lab machines.

“I shouldn’t have made him so hot” Jungkook finally blurts out after the sort of awkwardly long pause where neither of you spoke. “It’s hurting my pride a little.”

“I’m lucky you’re only realizing that now that you’ve finishing making him” You grin, throwing the joke back at him.

“Ouch” Jungkook says, pretending to grip his chest.

The two of you burst into laughter, and you get a glimpse of the way his nose and eyes scrunches up until they disappear. It was a heartwarming sight, even though your own laughter prevented you from seeing him as clearly as you wished at that moment. You had only known the guy for a week, and it already felt like you had been friends with him for years.

After the laughter dies down, you glance back at the virtual image on the screen, taking in the idea of the pending adventure ahead.

...

“So how are your projects coming along?” Professor Kim Seokjin had been checking in with all of the groups on Monday, making sure everyone was progressing at a good pace, when he finally made it to you and Jungkook.

“Oh, it’s going” You reply, startled by his near silent approach.

“You two are partners I’m assuming?” Seokjin questions, eyeing you and Jungkook back and forth.

“Yeah” Jungkook replies, nodding his head so that his bangs bobbled up and down.

“May I take a look at your topic?” Seokjin requests. You turn to dig through you backpack for the project packet and finally find it hidden amongst your other papers fully of sketches from Design Engineering.

Seokjin takes the packet from you and glances at the front page. “Love story?” Seokjin voices as his eyes glide across the words written in bold. “Interesting.” He looks up and glances at you and Jungkook with a mischievous expression.

Jungkook clears his throat and averts his eyes.

“We’ve already decided on the main characters.” You quickly announce, hoping that Professor Kim Seokjin’s mind wasn’t traveling to a place you didn’t want to deal with right now.

“Oh?” Seokjin raises his eyebrow.

“Umm, yeah, it’s going to be from the perspective of me and an AI that we, or Jungkook, built over the weekend” You explain, hoping that he wasn’t going to point out some major problem with what you guys had planned so far. It didn’t occur to you until now, but it probably would’ve been better to get the plan checked out by Professor Namjoon before going ahead and creating a being who was artificially conscious, as Jungkook had claimed it or he was.

“AI?” Seokjin repeats. “Simplistic model or conscious?”

“He’s –“ You begin, before Jungkook cuts you off.

“He’s conscious” Jungkook says.

Seokjin nods slowly, expression on his face very difficult to read from what you could tell. He doesn’t speak for a good minute, clearly taking his time to register what Jungkook had said. “Have the two of you spoken with Professor Min Yoongi in Mental Environment Homeostasis yet?” He suddenly asks.

“We’ve been going to class, but we haven’t spoken to him directly.” You respond, recalling the black haired professor who always looked tired yet retained an unexplainable type of sharpness in his eyes. You wonder why Professor Kim Seokjin would suddenly bring that class up, after all, the simulation stage had yet to begin. Surely people weren’t having mental breakdowns yet were they?

“I’m assuming you cloned part of your own brain circuitry into the Connectome?” Seokjin says, turning to Jungkook.

“Y-yeah” Jungkook nods, eyes widening and body stiffening up. He looked like a deer caught in the headlights, and you weren’t sure why he seemed so nervous. You had no idea what cloning brain circuitry entailed, but it must’ve been what Jungkook meant when he said part of the AI was him.

Seokjin nods again, and finally smiles. “Impressive.”

You faintly hear Jungkook breathe a sigh of relief at the sight of the professor’s warm smile.

…

That evening, Jimin invites you to study with him at his dorm. He was one of the more well off students who could afford to have his own room in one of the more “luxurious” residential halls. Luxurious as in, he didn’t have to share his bathroom and his room came with a little kitchenette so he could prepare simple meals on a stovetop rather than be limited to using the classic microwave. Since, you had already agreed to work on the project with Jungkook that day, you decide that it couldn’t hurt to bring him along to Jimin’s place. Jimin practically already knew who he was anyways.

“Come in! Come in!” You hear Jimin’s high-pitched voice vibrate through the wooden door that you had just knocked on. You turn to look at Jungkook who just shrugs, waiting to follow after your steps.

“I brought Jungkook” You announce as you open the door, in case Jimin wasn’t prepared (as in dressed) to receive extra company. Even though, he should be dressed somewhat decently knowing you were going over anyways, but since Jungkook was still a stranger to Jimin, it was only respectful to give him a heads up regardless.

“Oh, great!” Jimin chirps, poking his head out of his opened bathroom door. “The more the merrier.”

You roll your eyes at his optimism and invite Jungkook to sit on the couch under Jimin’s lofted bed.

“So I heard you two made a real person,” Jimin says as he walks over to the two of you, completely unaware of how he conveniently arranged his words into a sentence that could be taken the wrong way.

“Yeah, well” Jungkook scratches the back of his neck. “He’s not real per say. He’s just conscious in the virtual world.”

“Ohhh” Jimin says, pretending he understands the weight of Jungkook’s words, which he doesn’t. “So he’s fake real”

“Uh, no…he’s real real” Jungkook furrows his eyebrows. “He’s me but not me”

“R-right…” Jimin says, nodding as if it would help him understand if he kept telling himself he understood.

“Ok, can we just get to work?” You cut in, barely able to handle another minute of this nonsense. “We still have to plan our plot and begin putting our designs in the code,” You sternly remind Jungkook, who nods and quickly pulls out his laptop.

“So does this person look like you too?” Jimin asks Jungkook as he scoots closer to the chocolate haired boy. He was evidently not yet finished with the previous conversation.

“Ummm, heee’s…” Jungkook stretches out the pronoun to buy time to think of a response. “…better looking“ Jungkook finishes.

Jimin bursts out laughing. “Is that even possible?” He says in between his giggling.

Jungkook’s cheeks flush a light shade of pale rose. “Yeah, ask Y/N…she can confirm it.”

You feel both of their eyes rest on you, tentatively waiting for a response.

“Yeah, like he’s super attractive, but he’s not human, so….” You trail off, trying to figure out exactly what you were trying to say, because at this point, you didn’t even know yourself.

“Wouldn’t it have been easier if you two were the main characters of this whole story thing?” Jimin blurts out. “I mean, I can totally see you two as a couple.”

You’re eyes widen in horror and you hear Jungkook choke on the water he was drinking.

“Shit.” He mutters, trying to dry the water that made his white shirt half see through. “You mind if I use your bathroom to dry off?”

“Sure, go ahead” Jimin answers, pointing in the direction of the bathroom.

When Jungkook had closed the door and was out of sight, you punch Jimin in the arm. “What was that?” You whisper angrily.

“Ow” Jimin yelps, while rubbing the spot you had probably left a light bruise on. He’s not in pain for long because he starts giggling at your angry expression. “Stop pretending like you don’t find him attractive. I’ve known you long enough to tell when you like someone.”

“We’re just project partners.” You sternly remind him.

“You like him” Jimin repeats, still looking at you with that knowing smile of his.

You bite your bottom lip, and turn away. “It doesn’t matter”

“There’s nothing holding you back”

“He clearly doesn’t feel the same way.” You huff a laugh. “I mean, he created a virtual person just so he didn’t have to play the role of my lover.” You say. Although it might not completely be true, that’s how you decided to interpret it as.

Jungkook comes back from the bathroom before Jimin could come up with another “unreasonable” response about how you should still go for it anyways, or you shouldn’t come to conclusions so soon.

“Sorry about that.” Jungkook apologizes, as he sits back down.

“It’s fine.” You and Jimin reply simultaneously. You turn to him, making a threatening face to prevent him from saying another sentence that would throw you back into the inescapable depths of embarrassment.

“So how about we start planning the first meeting?” Jungkook says, completely avoiding the topic you guys were discussing before.

“Sounds good.” You quickly reply before Jimin could interrupt in any way.

Jungkook sits back down next to you on the couch, while Jimin pulls out his labtop and begins doing his own homework, finally getting the hint that the two of you needed to work things out on your own.

“So there’s the classic, meet accidentally, destiny type stuff.” He begins. “Then there’s the love at first sight ‘soulmate’ scenario.” He continues, emphasizing the word “soulmate” like the concept was absurd, which you would agree, was. As he’s talking, you just stare into space, listening to his slightly husky voice, iterating all the options he was probably just pulling out of his ass on the spot. “fairytale meet in the magical woods, male lead saves your life, or just the plain old classmates, new neighbors...” He trails off, probably realizing that it all sounded very scripted.

A long moment of silence passes between the two of you, in which only Jimin’s typing on his laptop can be heard. Jungkook finally sighs and turns to face you, giving up on his brainstorming part.

You casually turn to face him. “Surprise me” You say.

“What?”

“You decide. I mean, you did design the dude. Why don’t you also decide how he navigates the world, responds to stimuli, and ultimately behaves in the simulation? I’ll take care of my half of the work, and you take care of his or yours or however you want to refer to the you/him dynamic as.” You reply, nonchalantly, reasoning that it’ll all work out more naturally if you don’t purposefully try to make this story all lovey dovey. “I mean, of course we’ll work together designing the world, but I’d rather not know everything he’s going to do before witnessing it.”

Jungkook pauses again. “I-I guess, that works too…” He says, trailing off again. “It’s just….”

“What?” It was your turn to ask the question he had previously shot at you.

Jungkook jumps a little on the couch. “Uh…nevermind” He answers quickly.

…

The day of the simulation came quicker than you expected, or even wanted it to. This was it, test run number 1 out of who knows how many to come. The past week had been hell, and that was putting it nicely. Long hours of coding, taking all those sketches and blueprints you and Jungkook had conjured up during Design Engineering and making it a virtual reality. The initial design process was still fresh in your mind, long and confusing, reminiscent of all project beginnings where you didn’t even know where to begin.

Thankfully, Professor Jung Hoseok was more than willing to help at the time. He wasn’t one of those kinds of professors who were more focused on their own research than genuinely helping their students succeed. He was extremely compassionate and had given you and Jungkook an array of starting ideas about the physical world that you were constructing.

“Normally your story genre dictates the setting of the physical world that you’re aiming to build, but in your case, you can really make it any way you want.” Hoseok had explained when you told him you and Jungkook were building a world for the setting of your self-designed love story. “ You can start by considering time periods. Figuring out if your story is set in the past, present, or future. Or you can make the setting ambiguous, and design a world which combines things from the real world and fantastical elements.”

After speaking with Professor Jung Hoseok, both you and Jungkook agreed that it would be more interesting to make the setting ambiguous. A completely innovative design would be more fascinating, and in your opinion, a love story would need all the help it can get to be even remotely intriguing.

The outline of your virtual world was built by taking inspiration from nature, the real world, and fictional worlds from classic books and movies. Since you were the main character, much of the features included in the design would be tailored to you, and you didn’t want to be thrown in completely unfamiliar territory, while at the same time, you wanted there to be enough room for creative engineering. And so you both agreed that your story would take place on Earth, in an alternate universe, and the time period would be in the present. Jungkook thinks that it’s better to focus on the visual effects of the simulation rather than coming up with a bunch of random things that don’t exist in the real world. “You can’t fall in love with a person if you’re too focused on other things” He had said. Meaning that if you felt lost and uncomfortable, it’d be hard to enjoy yourself in the simulation, which surprisingly made sense when you thought about it.

“Like we should focus on making the colors of plants more vibrant, and the structure of natural landforms more… grandiose ” Jungkook suggests, while the two of you were sketching in Design Engineering.

“Just sounds like more work,” You mumble, hoping he isn’t able to detect the lack of motivation in your voice.

…

Simulation Test # 1 “The First Meeting”

The rays of the distant sun were beating down on your face, causing beads of sweat to form on your exposed forehead. Fluffy clouds drifted across the smooth bluish gradient that was the canvas for the sky, occasionally blocking the solar glare and casting your surroundings under a cooling shadow.

As the physical world comes into view, you notice the giant arbors of forest green trees, planted behind park benches. A man was selling large oval shaped balloons, their colors captivatingly vivid and their movement jumbled and light as the breeze swept them against each other.

You hear sounds of children laughing, a girl giggling as her boyfriend whispers something into her ear, the voices of people you didn’t know, and….screams?

Your eyes dart around in search of the source, there were fences, colorful machinery-like contraptions, a booth selling pink and blue cotton candy, some fake horses attached to poles, decorated, and arranged in a perfect circle.

“Real funny, Jungkook. This is exactly what you should refrain your boyish mind from letting you do.” You say out loud as if he could hear you while you were in the simulation. You roll your eyes as you realize you were standing in the middle of an amusement park, and the scream you had hear seconds ago was from a group of people on a roller coaster.

“Jungkook?” You hear someone say as they approach you. Turning to identify the person, you instantly recognize him as the hot guy that Jungkook had designed, aka the male lead of your story. He was even hotter in person.

“Are you looking for someone?” The brown-haired male asks, confusion evident in his baritone voice.

You have no idea what is going on, but you’re desperate to get answers. “Ok, can you just stop pretending for a second and tell me where it is you’re going with this story. I’m not about to fail this class because you wanted to play games, fyi I didn’t give you a pass to do whatever you want with this project, you know.” You shout into the surrounding, unsure if Jungkook can hear you from the other side. There is no response, and you can feel the mild annoyance bubbling up, which you address by placing a hand on your temple and begin rubbing to relieve the irritation.

Hot dude’s lips part slightly, and his tongue peeks out to wet his bottom lip. He’s still staring at you, but you’re looking around the park to see if there’s someway to contact the real world in this made up reality. After a good five minutes of fruitless attempt, you sigh and decide that the only thing you can do is play along until the simulation ends.

“So what’s your name?” You ask, turning back to Mr. I’m-too-hot-to-be-real, like literally.

He blinks a few times, and you almost being to question if Jungkook even gave this guy a name. “M-my name is Kim Taehyung.” He finally blurts out. “and yours?”

“Y/N” You reply, narrowing your eyes and wondering if Jungkook is working some controller on the other side of the virtual world you see in front of you.

“Uhh, you want to go on one of those rides?” You ask, thinking what the heck, might as well do something while you’re stuck in this simulation.

Taehyung turns his head and looks at the roller coaster you were pointing at, trying to take in the new piece of information you had presented and calculating how to respond to such a novel type of stimuli. Seconds later, he turns back to you and nods his head eagerly. There’s a familiar spark in his eyes that you swear you’ve seen before somewhere else, but the fraction of it that is foreign prevents you from recalling where exactly you’ve seen such stars.

The two of you get in line. People look normal, in fact, so normal that it almost feels like you’re in the real world. None of them were acting out of the ordinary or as robot-like as you had imagined before entering the simulation.

The two of you were sitting side-by-side, waiting for the cart to begin sliding down the path outlined by the tracks. Glancing over at Taehyung, you notice he looks a bit stiff, like he was really nervous and anxious.

“Are you ok?” You question, looking at his face intently.

“Uh-y-yeah” He swallows, causing his Adam’s apple to bobble up and down. Then his pink tongue pokes out again and wets his bottom lip. “I’ve just never been on one of these.” He adds.

Oh right. You think to yourself. All of this was new to him. He was literally “born” two weeks ago.

“But I’m somehow able to recall being in love with thrill rides like these.” He continues to explain, making you take back your previous conclusion, and throwing you into a state of confusion.

“What do you mean?” You question.

“My older brother took me to amusement parks all the time when I was little, and I’ve never stopped loving roller coasters.” He says will a silly smile plastered on his face.

What the hell was this dude talking about? Older brother? The fuck? You think to yourself as the cart finally begins to move. “But you just said you’ve never been on one” You shout, as the speed of the cart picks up and the wind is blowing loudly in your ears.

“Yeah, I haven’t” Taehyung shouts in between loud giggles. “Ahh, this is so great!” He laughs happily as the cart makes its speedy descent down the steep slope.

You squeeze your eyes shut as you feel the approaching thrill of the pending first drop.

After the ride ends, you make a mental note, reminding yourself to tell Jungkook to change Taehyung script or something because a lot of what he was saying was evidently contradictory. You think it might be some bug in the code or some mistake in writing up his dialogue.

In just a half an hour of walking through the park, you learn that Taehyung really like animals. Dogs in particular. He can’t stop cooing and petting them, hopping around like a little kid who just received his long awaited birthday present, and in return they seem to be unable to stop jumping all over and licking him. Taehyung is also quite the foodie. Literally requesting to eat something from every other food stand you guys strolled past, and still complaining about being hungry afterwards.

“You want some?” He says, turning to you and holding out his icecream cone, offering you a lick of the half scoop of frozen confectionary placed atop a perfectly shaped waffle cone.

“Umm, no that’s ok” You reply, politely rejecting his offer. You watch as he smiles and takes another lick of the creamy concoction. “So…Taehyung, why did you come here today?” You question, wondering how omniscient his AI was. Was he aware that he was part of a simulation? Did he know he was a product of this project? He didn’t seem to know about Jungkook, at least, judging by his confused response when you had shouted the latter’s name upon meeting.

“I…I don’t really know” He responds, mid swallow. “I just came because the rides looked fun, and when I saw you, I thought you were really pretty, so I approached.” He looks at you and flashes you another one of his boxy smiles.

You feel you face heat up ever so slightly, but before you could get caught up in feeling flattered that you just received a compliment, you shake your head and remind yourself that this wasn’t real.

“Is that all?” You poke, wanting to make sure you could collect every last bit of information about him, so you could make adjustments as needed.

Taehyung takes a bite out of his waffle cone before replying. “Yup” He chirps.

The two of you continue to walk in silence, with on the sound of other people at the park. The sky was growing dark and you wonder if this was also part of Jungkook’s plan of meeting your “lover” for the first time at the amusement park. The wind picks up, and you feel cold water pellets hit your exposed forehead. It wasn’t long before they became more frequent, and you and Taehyung were rushing to find cover.

“What luck” You huff as you attempt to dry off your hair that had quickly become soaked from the rain. Just as you had voiced that last sentence, you vision gradually blurs.

“Y/N….?”

You hear Taehyung whisper you name one last time before you find yourself back in the pod with wires connected to your skull.

………….......................

“Jeon fucking Jungkook!” You shout when your eyes flutter open.

His eyes widen when he sees you charging towards him angrily right after you hopped out of the pod. He raises both of his hands in the air in surrender.

“I-I can explain”

“Oh, you better think you can” You spat with an annoyed huff. If this was some kind of joke on his part, you were going to threaten to switch partners.

“He looked bored, and I couldn’t think of a better place to give him his first adventure.” Jungkook explains. He points at the scene displayed on the computer screen. “He just looked so lonely, and I felt bad for the guy, so I thought an amusement park would be a fun first meeting spot.”

You peer over at the man who appeared on the large projector screen in front of Jungkook. It was Taehyung, and he was sitting on what you presumed to be his bed, in a small apartment in some city that didn’t quite exist. His hair disheveled from towel drying it after getting soaked in the rain, and he had changed into his striped pajamas.

“We can watch him from here?” You question in astonishment. “Wait, he’s actually real? Like he does things when I’m not in the simulation???”

“Yeah…about that…..” Jungkook begins cautiously. “Didn’t you hear what Professor Kim Namjoon said? The part about us having to take responsibility for any form of consciousness we create. He may be ‘artificial’ but he’s…alive”

You’re mouth drops at the realization. Jungkook hadn’t exactly explained this to you fully, in a way that you could understand correctly, prior to creating Taehyung, or maybe you hadn’t taken this artificial consciousness thing serious enough because this is starting to sound like something you did not sign up for.

…

“I’ve heard that all of you have begun the simulation phase.” Professor Min Yoongi’s voice rings through the classroom. The students confirm unanimously. “Good. Now this class can really begin.”

You ears perk up at his statement. Mental Environment Homeostasis had gone on for over two weeks, and you’ve even received homework assignments. What was this talk about really beginning? You pray that he doesn’t mean there will just be more work because that was the last thing you needed after the first round of VU testing.

“Those of you who went into the simulation. How did it feel?” Yoongi questions the students in the crowd. He waits patiently for a student to raise their hand and offer feedback.

“I was fully aware that I was in a simulation, although, I did reach a point where I was confused as to what I was doing and began to question the main objective.”

“How long were you in there?” Yoongi asks.

“Two days.” The student replies. Some of the students in the crowd gasp.

The professor only nods his head before proceeding. “You got lucky then.” He says. “I wouldn’t go over the 6 hour mark on your first test.” He pauses. “You see, the longer you are in the simulation, the more your brain becomes accustomed to its environmental stimulations.” He walks over to his computer at the front of the room and pulls up a few graphs from past studies on human-computer interaction onto the big screen. “Studies have shown that a person’s psychological state can be altered in a way which makes them think the simulation is not virtual.”

“But isn’t there a way to bring a person back even if they’ve been confused by the simulation?” Another student in the crowd blurts out.

“Only if their conscious mind is still rooted in reality.” Yoongi replies. He looks down at ground, seemingly recalling something for a brief moment. “If their minds have consciously fully merged with the virtual world, they are said to have reached the point of no return.” He changes the slide on the screen. “In such a scenario, said person will believe that the virtual world is the real world and vice versa.”

…

“Butterfly Dream” Jungkook says, startling you as you were just about to drag the scene you had designed into your virtual universe.

“What?” You turn your head to see Jungkook look up from his laptop.

“You know, the phenomenon coined by a famous philosopher some thousand years ago.” He explains. “When you lose your point of reference and you wake up from a dream not knowing if you’re awake or dreaming?”

“Wow, that was the worse explanation of said phenomenon I’ve ever heard.” You reply sarcastically.

“It’s like what Professor Min Yoongi said, when you lose your grip of reality and start to believe the virtual world is actually the real world and the real world is virtual.” Jungkook explains.

“What, you afraid I’m going to go in and not come out?” You smirk, saving the work you just completed and preparing to go in for round two.

“Uhh…” Jungkook pauses, and you can literally feel the hesitation in his voice.

“Calm yourself, I’m not planning on staying in that simulation for longer than 6 hours.” You retort. “You don’t have to worry about losing me to the void.”

….

#bts fanfic #bangtan bookclub #btswriters #armiesnet #taeguknetwork #bts scenarios #jungkook fanfic #jungkook x reader #taehyung fanfic #taehyung x reader #bts angst #bts fluff #scifi #college au #future

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tout-est-normal-be · 4 years

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The system cannot survive it we can #outsidedoors

There are no precedents for what is happening to us now, there just aren’t. Of course, we’re looking back at the great calamities that happened during our recent history. We compare this pandemic to the Spanish Flu, causing more deaths in 1918 – 1919 than the four years of war that came just before, or we compare the worldwide mobilisation that is happening now to the mass mobilisations of World War II. Although some things might seem similar, none of these comparisons fully hold true. During the four years of Nazi-occupation in Paris the cafés, theatres, and cabarets stayed open to the public. The show did go on. Now the grand avenues are deserted, and chairs are piling up behind the windows, unused.

But when history cannot provide us with answers, there is always still fiction. We recognise what we are seeing now, before our very own eyes, from the dystopian disaster movies we were flooded with during the past decenniums. The hefty speeches of the world’s political leaders, the rows of military vehicles rolling into our urban landscape, theempty streets where every sounds gets amplified by echos, the panic-buying of groceries, and the leading role of toilet paper that no scifi author could’ve imagined.

We should realise how most of us don’t even have the possibility right now to reflect and think about our past, present, and future. Having the time and space for philosophy is a luxury when survival is at stake. We are more than busy enough. Worrying about our sudden loss of income. Trying to keep some structure in the disrupted upbringing of our children, dealing with the relentless barrage of emails sent by a supervisor now measuring his or her efficiency in transmitted megabytes. Being stuck between the walls of a way too small apartment. Or worse.

Having no roof above your head at all. Being forgotten by a government that doesn’t consider you worthy of humane attention. Being brutally evicted from your living space. Being moved from your cell in a closed center to the empty wilderness of a city you have never seen before.

“Es ist wahr: ich verdiene noch meinen Unterhalt Aber glaubt mir: das ist nur ein Zufall. Nichts Von dem, was ich tue, berechtigt mich dazu, mich satt zu essen. Zufällig bin ich verschont. (Wenn mein Glück aussetzt Bin ich verloren.) – Bertolt Brecht

During the first weeks of this crisis we keep our hearts and spirits up thanks to the solidarity that is here. From our balconies we applaud the heros risking their lives every day in the hallways of hospitals. We can’t imagine the scenes taking place there. We learn, once more, how taking care of each other forms a fundamental part of our nature. In each and every hell, bits of paradise are being built by people we don’t know. Every disaster provides proof for the defeat of social Darwinism, that nefarious theory that dares to claim that we, human beings, are always monsters to each other. Surely there are some monsters in this society, but those are still exactly the same as before this viral outbreak.

Force of habit

During times of shock we tend to try and maintain our habits, our routine, our habitual modes of thinking as best as possible. By giving us something to hold on to, habits help us deal with the fear of these uncertain times. But force of habit is a bad advisor when everything is changing.

This changes everything. Six years ago, these three words were on the cover of Naomi Klein’s book on the climate crisis. During these past weeks we’ve been repeating them as a mantra. Nothing will ever again be the way it was before. From now on even the same shit will be a thousand times worse. What was unimaginable to us just some weeks ago is happening now, before our own eyes.

Remember how we commented on the measurements China took, just a couple of weeks ago? In Februari, Belgian newspaper Le Soir reported on how drones were sent out in Wuhan, to warn people to stay inside their homes: a ‘disturbing’ precedent in a country where civil liberty and privacy is already under constant threat. One month later this very same newspaper is applauding similar usage of drones like this in the city of Brussels.

Of course, we are all hoping this will blow over soon. China and some other countries have proven the epidemic can be brought under (temporary) control. But scientists have warned us this crisis might last for 18 months too. Since that is the time it takes to develop a vaccine and bring it to market. This doesn’t necessarily mean those18 months will look like the of lockdown measures we’re experiencing at the moment, but it does mean, without any doubt, that our lives and societies will continue to be disrupted for the foreseeable future.

We can’t predict exactly how this will impact our lives. We only know for sure that there will be long-lasting shocks to the global capitalist system. According to us, three possible outcomes are likely. We base these scenarios on crises that have happened in the past, not because historical circumstances are comparable (as explained in the introduction), but because it can teach us something about how this world’s elite, the 1%, reacts to these kind of shocks.

The way governments and central banks around the globe are reacting to the economic effects caused by the corona-outbreak inevitably recalls their reaction to the financial crisis of 2008. Both the EU and the USA then spent billions of money to placate the stock markets and bail out the banks. Since whole branches of our economies are struggling now, because of disrupted supply lines and in some cases temporary closure, an economic recession is inescapable in most countries (recession occurs when the growth of the GDP is negative during two or more consecutive quarters). The risk of a depression, a long period of economic decline, is increasing by the day.

The crisis that never left us

The corona-pandemic isn’t hitting a stable, booming, and fair economy. The economical system that gave us the financial crash of 2008 has been patched up, but not reformed. Within this system a next crisis is always lurking behind the corner. We’re still recovering from one exploded bubble while a new one is already seducing speculators. The same recipe is being used now as in 2008. Bail out the companies. (A bail out is when a government uses tax-money to save private interests).

Money is being pumped into the economy in massive amounts. Shareholders are being handed billions directly by our governments. CEO’s line up for an appointed at the White House to get their cheque. Airlines are asking for 50 billion. Aircraft manufacturer Boeing alone wants 60 billion. Casino’s are hoping for a cheque of 18 billion. The hotel-sector – where Trump has a stake himself – would be entitled to 150 billion.

One of those companies, American Airlines, made billions of profit during recent years. That profit wasn’t invested to create a buffer for difficult times (‘I don’t think we’ll ever record financial losses again’, their lunatic CEO said in 2017). What the company did instead was use those billions to buy back a lot of their own shares, so stock prices would skyrocket, dividends would rise, and the remaining big shareholders could rake in the profit. In Belgium, Brussels Airlines, though they are owned by the German company Lufthansa, already asked the government for 200 million.

Austerity, austerity, austerity

Anyone depending on government benefits at some point during the past 10 years, anyone working for a government service, or working in the social or cultural sector knows what the price was we paid for those bailouts. 10 years of austerity, 10 years of deep cuts that made those sectors we need most right now ill-fully unprepared. One example says it all. For a long time, Belgium had a strategic supply of surgical face masks. In 2009, one year after the financial crisis, the government stopped replenishing this supply out of budgetary reasons. In 2019 whatever remained of the supply was destroyed because the expiry date had passed. This wasn’t reported in the media, it was just a tiny detail in the auterity-budgets, a way of hiding many small and larger dramas. Think of that next time you’re out on your balcony cheering and applauding.

The Dutch government announced that it will allow the budget deficit to go up to 65 billion in order to save companies in need. As a first measure… because this number is also based on the hope that everything will blow over soon. 65 billion euro, that is an amount as big as all the budget cuts of the past 10 years combined. The dramatic budget cut of 200 million the Dutch cultural sector had to suffer in 2011, nothing more than breadcrumbs that are swept clean off the table now. And when this health crisis is over, austerity will start all over again. Another ten years of severe cuts for those sectors that are already struggling to survive now?

Here in Belgium we are heading straight towards budget cuts so extreme we will soon become nostalgic for the retro-austerity of the 2010s. Whilst only some months ago Wouter Beke, our minister of welfare, public health, family, and poverty reduction, declared it was impossible to find the extra 5000 euro needed to keep operating our suicide prevention hotline, now billions are made available for private companies like it is nothing. Flemish prime minister Jambon and his colleagues are already rubbing their hands togethers, eager for the ax they’ll soon get to grab to further chop apart our welfare state. If we let them act unchecked, all that awaits us will be a social massacre.

This is the scenario they are hoping for. They expect the old recipes to continue to work and they expect that we, the people, to be still numbed and paralysed enough by the pandemic to submit to this peacefully. A return to business as usual, as quickly as possible. But a couple of things aren’t taken into account by this reasoning. First of, it is almost certain that the coming economical crisis will be much more severe than the one of 2008. More importantly, today’s world population isn’t the same as it was twelve years ago. A wave of protests has taken the world by storm, and across all continents mass movements are gathering.

In October the government of Chile was forced to declare a state of emergency, out of fear that a growing protest movement might topple those in power. One of the protestors held up a sign: ‘Neoliberalism was born in Chile, in Chile neoliberalism will die’. We saw the yellow vest movement in France. Algeria and Sudan saw the forced resignation of their so-thought presidents-for-life. On one specific day, up to 20% of the total population of Lebanon was out protesting in the streets, with revolutionairy DJ’s encouraging them with music pouring down from the balconies. In the USA we see the mass movement that is reinforcing itself around Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, growing from roots planted in movements such as Occupy, Black Lives Matter, and the Women’s movement.

There is no alternative

Secondly, this is a fundamentally different crisis than the one of 2008. Governments are being forced to take much more radical measures than they did then. The newly elected Spanish government had to renationalise private hospitals. In Paris hotels are being seized by the local government to provide shelter and self-isolation to the homeless. Even Boris Johnson had to renationalise the railways, because the private companies that were operating them were about to collapse. Belgian minister of internal affairs Pieter De Crem sent the police to a company in Charleroi to confiscate the 180000 coronatests they had in storage. The company’s plan was to withhold the test-kits until they had found the highest bidder worldwide. Pieter De Crem, ex-minister of military, seizing private goods according to definitions written by Karl Marx on the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. This changes everything.

In the USA the discussion about paid-sick leave (unavailable to millions of USA workers) has exploded. Numerous countries have announce emergency measures to compensate loss of income. In Flanders, those who are temporarily unemployed get a 200 Euro bank transfer from the government to cover their water- and energy-bills. Christian-Democrat party CD&V already proposed the idea to give 1500 Euro as compensation to each family. In the USA Bernie Sanders is proposing a similar compensation of 2000 dollar.

A new society

There is another scenario to consider. When the horror of World War II ended in 1945, Europe and the USA didn’t simply return to the chaotic state of the 1930s. When business-owners and labour-unions formed a social pact in 1944, it became the basis of Belgium’s system of social security. Recipes used by the union’s local sick-leave and unemployments funds were now implemented nationwide. Afro-american soldiers returning home from the European front refused to ‘re-accept’ segregation and Jim Crow-laws (a story told by the movie Mudbound). Women who had spent four years working in factories while the men were fighting at the front, refused to re-accept their roles as stay-at-home mothers. It is in these immediate post-war years that the seeds for the civil rights and the women’s rights movement were sown.

In 1945 radical structural change was occurring throughout the societies of Europe and the USA. And this time as well, new recipes are ready, available, and waiting to be picked up. There is the Green New Deal proposed by Ocasio-Cortez. Europe too is teeming with already elaborated ideas of how to achieve ‘climate justice’ through a transition towards a more ecological, caring, and fair society. Why should the UK hand back the railways it is now nationalising to a new highest bidder or the same incompetent hands? If, in a few months, governments around the globe are the owners of airline companies they saved, why then not use this as the most efficient moment to radically restructure these services and facilities, and adapt them to a world where ecological impact is taken into account?

The share prices of the USA’s four biggest oil companies are right now at such a low that the government could buy them all for 300 million dollar. Instead of leaving the future of these companies and the 1,6 million people they employ in the hands of dividend-hungry shareholders that will continue to compete until every last drop of oil is squeezed out of each and every fracking bed, the government could ensure crisis-free transition both towards a more sustainable energy sector, and a professional future for those now employed in the oil-industry. If governments can find the means to guarantee a source of income for (certain parts of) the population during a time of crisis, then why shouldn’t it be possible to do this for the whole population during times of ‘peace’? If suddenly we can differentiate between essential jobs that we need to keep things going and the bullshit jobs that go on lockdown, then how could we possibly forget this once the crisis is over? In Vermont and Minnesota grocery store-workers are now recognised as ‘emergency workers’, and receiving added social benefits. Why on earth would they return to their old status in 18 months, a status that was underpaid and vastly under-appreciated within our society. Why on earth would we ever again allow a politician to propose budget cuts in our healthcare systems?

My sister, From one island to another I give to you these rocks as a reminder that our lives matter more than their power that life in all forms demands the same respect we all give to money that these issues affect each and everyone of us None of us is immune And that each and everyone of us has to decide if we will rise –Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner and Aka Niviâna

Most of the measures governments are taking now, come straight out of the manuals of the political left. This should not surprise us as these measures are meant to prepare us for the much larger crisis heading our way. What we are experiencing now will be nothing compared to what awaits us if we don’t succeed in structurally reducing our CO2-emissions. This is the time to push forwards and demand the maximum of what is possible. Or as climate-journalist David Roberts puts it: “This crisis is a tragedy, but the bigger tragedy would be not to learn anything from it.” Naomi Klein has been warning us for years about the shock doctrine employed by the political right during times of crisis. The time is now for a shock doctrine of the left.

Fragile states

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. – William Butler Yeats

The danger of a third scenario looms. The existing system collapsed in several countries between 1917 and 1933. There is a risk that that might happen again. In a number of countries, authoritarian leaders are abusing the crisis to finally put an end to the last remnants of the rule of law. In Hungary, a law is on the table that would give Orban unlimited powers. Parliament would be set aside indefinitely. The new law also provides for prison terms of up to five years for anyone who publishes information that hinders or is considered ‘false’ by the government.

In many African or Latin-American countries there is almost no welfare system or social security at all. A prolonged lockdown in these countries would for most automatically lead to hunger, as all forms of income would disappear. A new debt-crisis would very likely push some countries into default and disaster. And as the European Union is bickering amongst each other, it’s Cuba and China that are sending out their medical teams to the world. The Czech Republic recently confiscated 100.000 face masks that were on their way from China to Italy. Within the EU, it’s each for their own, and all against the immigrants that are living under appalling conditions in the many camps on the continent’s border. The USA intensifies it’s economic sanctions against Iran, at a time when the country’s 81 million inhabitants are suffering under the same global pandemic. These shameless acts of inhuman cruelty are in stark contrast with the remarks made by Yanet Platero, coordinator of the organisation of Cuban Italians, when a medical team from her country of birth arrived at the airport of Milan. ‘Doesn’t Cuba need these doctors at home’, a journalist asked. ‘Our land does not offer what it has left over, our nation shares what it has’, Platero replied.

There are many beautiful things we can learn from this crisis, let Platero’s remark be one of them. Let it also sink in – here in the west – that living in fear of diseases and disruption is the ‘normal’ situation for half of the world’s population. The fact that we didn’t live with this awareness meant that the corona virus did not bother us as long as it stayed in China. So let’s make crystal clear the difference between what is good and what is bad for us now. Let’s give the monsters no chance this time. 2008 – bail out the system. 2020 – bail out the people.

Rachida Aziz and Christophe Callewaert

(translation Maarten VDB)

#outsidedoors #submission

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archekoeln · 7 years

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what if i pretend to love you?

disclaimer: uHM!!!!!!! purely self-indulgent. for bellow diamond week. also has, uh, blink but uHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhh

slender fingers push against supple lips, between hushed laughter and muted whispers. they're both fluttering from one shadow to another, passing through blind spots and crevices, sprinting from guard after guard with the intention of leaving them all in the dust. slipping through bars, hanging on pipes with blood pumping against their veins, skin throbbing with the sensation of evading their pursuers.

not that the two women have ever been captured before, honestly speaking. oh no, it's never happened and it never will happen, not if Pink has anything to say about that.

the topaz guards hunting them have long since stopped trying, for the day at least, and it's another victory for the duo to brag with fervor, a point to add to their list of achievements. White and Yellow would be amazed, and Pink can see their reaction now— two diamonds escaping from the combined forces of their own guard, leaving all of them behind in a trail of dust, glimmering pink and blue and purple.

newly birthed diamonds who still find it in them to lounge around, duties forgotten in the wake an enticing time together, feeding their urge for rebellious adventure.

the chase had taken almost half of their day, and while it lasted longer than the usual, it's still an impressive feat for them to accomplish— to find more and more places to hide within the sprawling metropolis of Homeworld; leaving even veteran guards scratching their heads in confusion.

they could even escape if they wanted to, leave Homeworld for much more out in the stars.

but, well, where would be the fun in that?

despite the fatigue raked across her body, Pink turned to her partner-in-crime, mischievous grin in place.

Blue. she cooed, needlelike fingers brushing against Blue's softer, silken skin. it's an electrifying touch for the blue matriarch, an itch satisfied only by Pink pressing herself against Blue's form. the other diamond yelps with a start, as arms wrap themselves around her. it's almost like i'm your blanket aren't i. well, we would have gotten caught with that veil of yours. Pink started, laughter filling her the silent room they’ve holed themselves in, catching respite while they can. the sound is an orchestral symphony in Blue's mind, and she hums in response, letting nails dig deeper into skin made of light and affection, sinew beneath shattered and oozing nothing.

they stay like that ( while Blue would wish it were forever, the fates have something else planned for them ) until a booming voice from the outside interrupts their time together. Pink sighed, Blue looked at her, and then they both laughed, rising as the doors burst open, flung to the other side of the room.

this is the fifth door this week, Yellow. Blue chided, brushing away strands of nothing on her dress. the aforementioned diamond let out a guttural sound, brows furrowed and Blue doesn’t stop to stare, instead takes her leave out of the room. Pink followed suit, a finger sliding on Yellow’s cheek as she passed the diamond, deliberate and precise.

you’re pretty late. and a giggle escaped Pink as she sauntered towards the exit. it should’ve been you with her, you know.

—

when White gave Pink the planet Earth, Yellow wasn’t surprised.

it’s a small planet filled with organic life, filled with structures that couldn’t beat even Homeworld’s scrawniest buildings, filled with humans that wandered aimlessly for their purpose. it’s a gift for one of the two youngest diamonds— because the last one in that same system shriveled and died with her emergence. a planet with the same sun will sure to put a fire in Pink, make her into an unstoppable force that will surely colonize all other planets ( and the pun doesn’t go unnoticed, what with both Blue and Pink sharing thinly veiled giggling from behind the oldest empress ).

but as a gift, it’s alright. it’ll work. Pink needs to learn.

meanwhile, Blue got a different planet in another star system, and while that somehow saddened her— the thought of being separated with Pink, maybe, she accepted the responsibility all the same. it was Yellow who’d done the giving this time, handpicking the best planet that she knew the other diamond would enjoy having.

she was rewarded a smile then. Yellow replied in kind, albeit tighter.

you should smile more often, Yellow. Blue had voiced once, when they’d visited one of Yellow’s newer colonies. there’s a fleeting moment where Yellow would have loved to tell the younger diamond off, mind her own business. but she doesn’t, not when Blue’s staring at her with such rapture in her eyes, lips pouting at her for taking a while to answer. somehow, this doesn’t agitate her as much as she thought.

unless if it were directed to Pink, probably.

fine, fine. i’ll try. is this alright? her attempt ends with Blue’s giggling, and the matriarch crossed the distance between them to stand in front of Yellow. oh, something like this, maybe. she uttered, fingers brushing against Yellow’s cheeks. with Blue’s hand on her face, holding up the edge of her lips, Yellow could feel her gem almost jut from her chest. it struggled for a moment, whipping and trashing and convulsing with each second Blue held onto her.

it didn’t end even as Blue removed her hands.

—

Pink came out of the ground with the fate of conquering the planet Earth, but then, some years into her colonization, she suddenly wanted to set it free.

they’re sweet things. she’d mutter to Blue and Yellow, tracing hearts around their gems, nails long and elongated and a brighter pink than her skin. oh! this is called nail polish, she’d say when Yellow pointed at them, brows questioning. Pink raised her fingers for the two to see. a rose quartz tell me human females did this to hide their nails or something?

she giggled, just as Blue raised her own hands, observing them. what do you think, Yellow? should we ask them to do it to ours too?

a hard nudge on her side, Pink’s doing ( and she’s grinning again, pushing the older diamond into a decision ). Yellow let out a sigh, taking off one of her gloves to inspect her own nails. sure, i suppose there’s no harm in it.

Blue Diamond smiled, small and sweet, and Yellow looked away.

—

my diamonds... you have to know... Pink Diamond... she...

—

Yellow doesn’t know why Blue insisted on going to Earth. doesn’t understand why she needed to go to Earth when it’s filled to the brim with corrupted gems, left behind by their own leaders. but she wanted to and as a show of good faith ( or some other nonsense like that ), Yellow accompanied her, bringing her own small fleet.

as a precaution. she had stated, counting down the topazes and jaspers entering her ship. Blue merely shook her head, whispering, i know what we did, Yellow, all the while looking afflicted ( as though the mere thought of that necessary course of action personally hurt her ). Yellow didn’t understand why Blue would think so— White seems to think it’s better for Blue to fall onto herself, mourning well into weeks without end. but Yellow wants to snap Blue from her current disposition— to bring back the Blue that acted with power and a presence fearful enough for her gems to cower at the mere mention of her name. a Blue that smiled with her bouts of rage ( against most pieces of furniture, unfortunately ), sharing secret stories with Pink, running her and White ragged with her silly acts of rebellion.

with Pink.

well.

when they arrive at the feet of Pink’s palanquin, Blue kneels and sends torrents of rain upon the denizens of Earth. she cries and cries and cries, fingers running through the steps covered in flora, pink hollyhocks littering the scenery. Yellow tries to step away, eyes awash with tears not entirely her own. but she relents from leaving, and instead comes closer and closer to the grieving diamond, touching a shoulder with a hint of trepidation. there is nothing soothing about the way Yellow’s hand graze on Blue’s skin, nothing to indicate to the yellow matriarch that her touch is helping her fellow diamond. this is more Pink’s forte— tingling affection with every grip as opposed to Yellow’s awkward pat. she tried anyway, conveying some sort of sympathy for the weeping matriarch.

i loved her, you know. Blue finally lets out, hiccuping away the last of her tears ( for now ), almost relishing on her sort of confession ( that Yellow already knew ). the whole of Homeworld probably also knew about Pink and Blue, honestly, what with the most gems spreading whispers within the palaces of the diamonds.

the blue matriarch paused, glancing at Yellow. there’s a sad look in her eyes, and even with the tear tracks adorning her cheeks, Yellow never thinks to divert her gaze, attention taken by her sheer presence. i loved her so much. i think, i loved her too much. if they consumed air like humans did, Blue would’ve expelled it all now, a shuddering moment. but she kept on telling me, oh, what if i pretend to love you? it’s the same as loving, isn’t it?

and she closes her eyes, enveloped in her memories, as Yellow watches her, astounded. it’s at this moment that she squeezes harder on her hold on Blue. there’s something burning in the pits of her core, squeezing her gem into spite for the fallen diamond. Yellow can’t help as her fingers crackle with electricity, swallowing before she could let go and shock the other. and Yellow doesn’t even begin to understand the writhing that she felt, a pulsating echo deep in her belly, in her gem, in her head, as she looks at Blue, still immersed in her fantasies.

if you don’t mind, Yellow began— Blue lifts herself to stare at Yellow, but the older diamond’s eyes pointedly avoided her, you could pretend to love me. it won’t be the same. self-deprecating laughter followed, nothing could ever be the same with what Pink and Blue shared, despite how it really was, but it’ll be something.

—

Yellow can't help but let her anger simmer beneath a claim of indifference, watching the once formidable Blue Diamond subject herself into this demented self-punishment, morose and and terrified and a little dead inside.

thunder rolled within her, and she quakes in her boots. if Blue pretends, then it’s almost like it’s real.

—

Blue’s heart is as thin as a gossamer veil, and she wears it on her chest, now forever broken and robbed of the euphoric existence that was Pink Diamond. beside her sat Yellow Diamond, holding her hand, voice full of reassurances ( once alien to the yellow matriarch ), rustling lullabies into her ears.

—

it won’t be the same. Blue had said to Yellow, repeating her words, as she wiped away the excess tears that fell after the older diamond’s declaration. but if i pretend, i’ll let you pretend to love me too.

#bellowdiamondweek #bellow diamond #blink diamond #YELLS AT THE TOP OF MY LUNGS #this is so self-indulgetna nd sappy i cannot im sorry #self-indulgent and doesn't make sense but hEY!!#how to write not referencing body parts that the diamonds do not have #¯\_(ツ)_/¯#**fic

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webbygraphic001 · 5 years

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What’s New For Designers, April 2019

We’re all about learning tools this month in our round of up new resources and tools for designers. From games to books to tutorials, there’s something new for everyone to learn and enjoy.

If we’ve missed something that you think should have been on the list, let us know in the comments. And if you know of a new app or resource that should be featured next month, tweet it to @carriecousins to be considered!

CSSBattle

Jump to the top of the CSSBattle leaderboard by using CSS skills to replicate targets with the smallest possible code. Put your skills to the test in this fun way to test your knowledge. New targets being added as well so you can keep going and moving up in the rankings.

UX Agenda

UX Agenda is a compilation of conferences, meetups and workshops in a single, searchable location. Look for events near you or add your own UX events for free.

Codetalks.tv

Codetalks.tv is a collection of the best talks about coding around the world in one place. Watching any of the videos is free. Look for talks from specific conferences or by topic.

Static Pages

Static Pages allows you to publish any static page on a WordPress website with any URL in a matter of seconds. It also includes SEO optimization for ease of use.

Static Pages – Upload Static HTML Pages to WordPress

Javascript Grammar

Javascript Grammar is an educational e-book offering from Greg Sidelnikov, also known as @js_tut or JavaScript teacher on twitter. You can get it on Amazon, with a tweet or direct from the author.

Illustration Gallery

Illustration Gallery is a collection of royalty-free illustrations for projects. It’s updates weekly with plenty of options for personal or business use in a clean, modern style.

Neort

Neort (which is still in beta) is a digital art gallery where you can share artwork and how it was created. Upload work with a short description and gather feedback on it from a community of artists. Think of it as the artist version of Dribbble.

Geenes

Geenes is a color scale tool to help you generate color palettes for user interface elements and then export the hues for Sketch or other programing tools.

Color Review

Color Review is a tool to help you test contrast between color elements in a design. This can help you ensure that foreground and background elements have enough contrast to be read with ease by all users and is a great accessibility tool. Use it online or download the app.

Spider

Spider is a tool that helps you turn websites into organized data without coding. Add the extension to Google Chrome to start scraping data; just point and click to collect the data you need.

Code2Flow

Code2Flow is a tool to describe workflows and patterns in an easy (and visual) format. Create and build flowcharts in seconds and don’t worry about needing more complicated drag and drop tools. And it’s all interactive.

Mosaic

Mosaic is a front-end JavaScript library for building user interfaces. It uses a component-based system and has an extremely small library size.

Humane by Design

Humane by Design is a project by Jon Yablonski to provide information about designing ethically humane digital products. From the site: “The exponential growth of mobile technology has ushered in an age where time and attention is an increasingly scarce resource. Instead of technology enhancing our abilities as humans, we’ve seen it become a vehicle for extracting our attention, monetizing our personal information, and exploiting our psychological vulnerabilities. As designers, we play a key role in the creation of such technology, and it’s time we take responsibility for the impact that these products and services we build are having on people it should serve.”

Outdoor Icon Pack

The Ultimate Outdoor Icon Pack includes 64 editable vector icons and a checklist for adventure designs. The flat line styles are trendy and easy to use.

Friendly Faces

Friendly Faces is an inclusive avatar generator. Pick random options or adjust specifics to find an avatar that looks more like you. Then download and share.

Remix Icon

Remix Icon is a set of open source line-style icons in a variety of categories. Use them as part of a consistent design system or as stand-alone elements.

Asian Adventure Icons

Asian Adventure is a colorful set of 76 flat icons that represent Asian culture and elements. Icons comes in AI, SVG and PNG formats.

Tutorial: How to Make a Speech Synthesis Editor

This great – and detailed – tutorial from Smashing Magazine helps you understand the logic behind the technology powering all the voice assistants in our homes. This guide helps you create a “What You Get is What You Hear editor for digital speech synthesis.

Tutorial: How to Create Clipped, Blurred Background Images in CSS

This tutorial takes you through creating seamless blur effects using CSS filters for a trending photo look. The tutorial includes written and video instructions and is easy to follow.

Tutorial: All You Need to Know About Hyphenation in CSS

How do you feel about hyphenation on the web? It can be a somewhat touchy subject. This tutorial by Richard Rutter explains hyphenation dictionaries for the web and related CSS guidelines.

Tutorial: How to Organize Files in a Design Agency

It’s an age-old question: How to you best organize design files? The team at Clay digital agency go behind the curtain on their process, and you can definitely learn from their workflows and file structures.

Generative Poster

Generative Poster is a fun pen that will allow you to adjust parameters and create an abstract poster design quickly. Just adjust the controls to see changes as they happen and keep tweaking until you find the right design.

Lovely Puppy

Lovely Puppy is a light and cheerful display font for children’s or whimsical purposes. The download includes a font duo with the sans serif and script versions as well as a set of doodles and patterns.

Melvick

Melvick is a strong, display sans serif. It has a distinct style with upright letterforms with some disconnected strokes. This typeface includes uppercase characters and numerals.

Public Sans

Public Sans is a strong neutral typeface for various uses. The family includes thin, extra light, light, regular, medium, semibold, bold, extra bold and black variations. Plus, you can join the development on GitHub. The typeface is a variation of Libre Franklin.

Pulpo

Pulpo is a Clarendon style typeface with the skeleton of Century Schoolbook. Longer extenders give text a bit more air to breathe and improve legibility in small text sizes. Despite the strength and sturdiness of the design, each letter shape carries warmth and an echo of the human hand. The familiarity of the letterforms also conceals some nostalgia. The family has 10 styles, ranging from light to black (including italics) and is ideally suited for editorial, advertising and packaging as well as web and app design. A massive body combined with low stroke contrast, emphasizing the horizontal elements, make it very suitable on screen and for small text sizes on newsprint paper.

Add Realistic Chalk and Sketch Lettering Effects with Sketch’it – only $5!

Source from Webdesigner Depot http://bit.ly/2Pe9Ldm from Blogger http://bit.ly/2Xdf3sa

#Blogger

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iyarpage · 5 years

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What’s New For Designers, April 2019

We’re all about learning tools this month in our round of up new resources and tools for designers. From games to books to tutorials, there’s something new for everyone to learn and enjoy.

CSSBattle

UX Agenda

UX Agenda is a compilation of conferences, meetups and workshops in a single, searchable location. Look for events near you or add your own UX events for free.

Codetalks.tv

Codetalks.tv is a collection of the best talks about coding around the world in one place. Watching any of the videos is free. Look for talks from specific conferences or by topic.

Static Pages

Static Pages allows you to publish any static page on a WordPress website with any URL in a matter of seconds. It also includes SEO optimization for ease of use.

Static Pages – Upload Static HTML Pages to WordPress

Javascript Grammar

Javascript Grammar is an educational e-book offering from Greg Sidelnikov, also known as @js_tut or JavaScript teacher on twitter. You can get it on Amazon, with a tweet or direct from the author.

Illustration Gallery

Illustration Gallery is a collection of royalty-free illustrations for projects. It’s updates weekly with plenty of options for personal or business use in a clean, modern style.

Neort

Geenes

Geenes is a color scale tool to help you generate color palettes for user interface elements and then export the hues for Sketch or other programing tools.

Color Review

Spider

Spider is a tool that helps you turn websites into organized data without coding. Add the extension to Google Chrome to start scraping data; just point and click to collect the data you need.

Code2Flow

Mosaic

Mosaic is a front-end JavaScript library for building user interfaces. It uses a component-based system and has an extremely small library size.

Humane by Design

Outdoor Icon Pack

The Ultimate Outdoor Icon Pack includes 64 editable vector icons and a checklist for adventure designs. The flat line styles are trendy and easy to use.

Friendly Faces

Friendly Faces is an inclusive avatar generator. Pick random options or adjust specifics to find an avatar that looks more like you. Then download and share.

Remix Icon

Remix Icon is a set of open source line-style icons in a variety of categories. Use them as part of a consistent design system or as stand-alone elements.

Asian Adventure Icons

Asian Adventure is a colorful set of 76 flat icons that represent Asian culture and elements. Icons comes in AI, SVG and PNG formats.

Tutorial: How to Make a Speech Synthesis Editor

Tutorial: How to Create Clipped, Blurred Background Images in CSS

This tutorial takes you through creating seamless blur effects using CSS filters for a trending photo look. The tutorial includes written and video instructions and is easy to follow.

Tutorial: All You Need to Know About Hyphenation in CSS

How do you feel about hyphenation on the web? It can be a somewhat touchy subject. This tutorial by Richard Rutter explains hyphenation dictionaries for the web and related CSS guidelines.

Tutorial: How to Organize Files in a Design Agency

Generative Poster

Lovely Puppy

Melvick

Melvick is a strong, display sans serif. It has a distinct style with upright letterforms with some disconnected strokes. This typeface includes uppercase characters and numerals.

Public Sans

Pulpo

Add Realistic Chalk and Sketch Lettering Effects with Sketch’it – only $5!

Source p img {display:inline-block; margin-right:10px;} .alignleft {float:left;} p.showcase {clear:both;} body#browserfriendly p, body#podcast p, div#emailbody p{margin:0;} What’s New For Designers, April 2019 published first on https://medium.com/@koresol

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dorothydelgadillo · 5 years

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Starting a Career as a Web Developer: Nearly Everything You Need to Know

If you want to make a career pivot into tech (especially because of the high starting salaries and flexibility that come with it) becoming a web developer is one of the savviest ways to get there.

There’s a clear list of web development skills you’ll need to learn, and once you have those it’s one of the easiest entry-level tech roles to land, since the industry often hires developers based on their portfolio and code, not previous job experience.

But what IS web development? And how exactly do you get started in the field?

We’ve put together this ultimate guide to break down everything you need to know about starting out as a web developer. From what exactly a web developer is, to what skills web developers need, to how to find an entry-level developer, we’re covering it all.

And don’t feel pressured to take in all this information at once! Bookmark this page and come back as often as you need while starting on your own path to web development.

Table of Contents

1. What is a Web Developer? 2. Key Web Developer Skills 3. How to Learn Web Developer Skills 4. Web Developer Salaries 5. How to Land a Web Developer Job 6. Freelancing as a Web Developer 7. Final Thoughts

Chapter 1: What is a Web Developer?

Web Developer: The Basic Definition

Web development is the process of taking the plans and layouts created by web designers, then coding them into live, functioning websites. Web developers, also called programmers, are the people who do it.

In terms of what this actually looks like, web development can be broken down into three general categories:

Front End Web Developers—Front end developers use languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to build the visible parts of websites (think “front-facing”) you see when you visit with a web browser. Front end development is an effective and flexible way to break into tech, since front end web developers do everything from work for established companies to freelancing on their own and building up their skills while working for individual clients.

Back End Web Developers—While the front end of a website includes everything the user interacts with directly, think of the back end as the“under the hood” parts of a site. Users don’t see this work, but back end web development makes the parts they DO see run smoothly. For example, back end developers use “server side” programming languages to request data from a site’s web server, which then appears as HTML output on a user’s screen.

Full Stack Web Developers—Combine the skill sets of a front end and back end web developer, and you get “full stack.” Full stack developers are simply programmers who have experience with front end web development and back end development (and keep in mind that “web” can be substituted for “mobile app” or “app” development in this description, too, hence why you’ll see job postings for full stack app developers).

It’s up to your personal career goals and interests which of these developer paths you choose, but wherever you want to end up, we recommend starting by learning solid front end fundamentals. Even basic HTML and CSS skills (which can be learned within a month or so), will qualify you to do entry level freelance work for clients. After that, it’s up to you to decide what you want to specialize in and how far you want to go (whether it’s sticking with front end, branching out into back end, or tying it all together as a full stack engineer).

Bonus Reads:

Tech 101: What is the Difference Between a Web Designer and Web Developer?

How to Become a Website Developer in Three Basic Steps

Front End, Back End, Full Stack—What Does it All Mean?

Tech 101: What is a Full Stack Developer (and Does it Even Matter?)

(back to top)

Chapter 2: Web Developer Skills You’ll Need to Know

Now that you have an idea of what web developers do, let’s look at the core skills they use to do it.

Front End Programming Languages

These are some of the most common programming languages used for front end web development.

HTML

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) defines the parts of web pages to the web browsers that visit them. When you access a site through your phone, tablet, or computer’s browser (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, etc.) those browsers are able to read HTML content and translate it into what you see on the screen. HTML is the language that defines which part of the page is a header, which is a footer, where paragraphs belong, where images, graphics, and videos are placed, etc.

CSS

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a sister language to HTML. It’s used after the parts of a page are defined, and specifies the page’s style. Page layouts, colors, and fonts are all selected and implemented through CSS. In other words, if HTML is the foundation of a house, CSS is the interior and exterior decorating decisions.

JavaScript

While HTML and CSS are used to build static web pages, JavaScript is the coding language that brings sites to life with dynamic content. When you visit a website or web app with features like animated graphics, forms that offer autocomplete suggestions as you type, photo slideshows, and just about anything that involves web page content changing without a user manually reloading the page, those features were likely built using JavaScript.

JavaScript Libraries and Frameworks

JavaScript libraries like jQuery are collections of pre-written JavaScript code that can be plugged into web projects. This allows developers to save time on re-creating basic JavaScript functions, like interactive forms and image galleries.

Meanwhile, JavaScript frameworks like Vue.js and React.js are collections of libraries that can be used as templates for web projects. JS frameworks not only provide pre-written code (similar to jQuery), but they also provide a structure for where your JS code should go, helping projects become more efficiently and uniformly arranged.

Back End Programming Languages

These are some of the go-to coding languages used for back end web development.

PHP

PHP (which stands for—get this—PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a scripting language used in “server-side” (back end) web development. Server-side activity involves a web browser sending requests to a web server (the software or hardware that stores a websites pages, images, media, and other assets), which then responds to the request with HTML code that is turned into content on the user’s screen.

PHP is a language used to request server content—for example, a PHP script can make your three most recent blog posts appear automatically on your site’s front page. Meanwhile, PHP scripts can also involve conditional (if/else/endif) statements that direct your site to change its display and add content from your web server as needed, based on user behavior.

Ruby and Ruby on Rails

Ruby is a “a dynamic, open source programming language with a focus on simplicity and productivity.” In other words, it’s free to use and its users are allowed to study, change, and distribute the language to anyone and for any purpose (that’s the open source part), while its syntax is designed to mimic non-machine language as much as possible (the part about being focused on simplicity and productivity.

In order to instruct a software program to print “hahaha” on the screen, standard programming languages might require you to code something like this:

($i = 0; $i < 3; $i++) { echo “ha”; }

With Ruby, “hahaha” looks like this:

3.times do print “ha” end

Simple AND productive, right?

When it comes to web development, Ruby becomes even more simple and productive with a software framework called Ruby on Rails. Like JavaScript frameworks, Rails is a collection of pre-written Ruby code and templates used to build and control the back end of websites and web apps.

Python

Python is an “object oriented” programming language that can be used for front end and back end scripting in web development (with a majority of its use coming on the back end). Object oriented languages (like Python) allow programmers to create virtual objects in their code and give each of these objects unique attributes and abilities. All of the objects a developer creates are then able to interact with each other or perform actions on their own.

Through this object model, object oriented programming languages like Python reduce complexity for developers by mimicking real world building dynamics and giving programmers a clear structure to work with. Objects can be isolated and maintained separately from the rest of their code (making it easier to locate and repair bugs), and—once created—they can be easily reused in future programs.

WordPress

WordPress is the industry leading CMS (Content Management System), a type of software program that lets web developers create, publish, and manage digital content online. By using a CMS like WordPress, they’re able to do all of this through a user interface where changes are reflected immediately after pressing a “Publish” button (as opposed to the less streamlined experience of coding sites from scratch).

While complete tech newcomers can use WordPress out of the box by following menu cues in the user interface and selecting pre-existing site templates, one you build up skills like HTML, CSS, and PHP you’ll be able to create your own WordPress page templates and site features, giving you the same kind of options for customization you’d have when coding from scratch.

Because of this versatility, the WordPress CMS is a widely-used tool for building sites that will appeal to side hustle clients as well as full-time employers. (Web technology survey site W3Techs cites WordPress CMS as owning 60 percent of worldwide CMS usage.) Simply knowing how to build basic websites with WordPress is enough to open up work as a WordPress developer, and WordPress’ sliding skill scale will allow you to learn gradually as you go—all qualities that speak to the wisdom of WordPress specialization.

Web Design, a Clarification

Although web design is its own field (and it’s possible to work as a web developer without having an active hand in the design process and vice versa), it only adds to your hireability and job flexibility as a developer if you have at least a basic understanding of web design. Web design fundamentals include:

Layout & Navigation Principles

It’s always important to remember that the layout of a website is as important as the content it presents. You need to arrange the website’s images, text, video, and menu options in a way that allows for efficient navigation by users.

Familiarizing yourself with best layout and navigation principles, like those illustrated in this UX Booth article, is a good way to get a design overview.

Color & Typography

In addition to layout and navigation, color and typography play a deciding role in effective web design. Even the world’s most brilliant layout can vanish courtesy of clashing colors and unreadable text.

Certain color and typography choices are a subjective part of the design process, but there’s a whole science of color choice that can (and should) inform web design. The same goes for typography—in addition to making web pages easier to read and more appealing to users, the right font size and style choices can directly affect the ability of search engines to index and rank your website.

Mobile First Design

In the early days of web design, most of us were looking at sites from our desktop computers. Fast forward to 2018, and 52 percent of all website traffic is now served to mobile phones, making “mobile first design” the web design standard. This means creating your website designs with the smallest display screens in mind, and working outward to bigger screens from there.

Our curriculum team uses water in a glass as an example. When you pour water into a glass, the liquid conforms itself to the size and shape of the glass being used—which is the whole aim of mobile first design. A website that looks spectacular on your phone’s screen should seamlessly expand into a spectacular experience on your desktop, and vice versa.

This UX Pin article gives a look at the kind of specifics that go into mobile first design—something you should be familiar with even as a web developer.

Version Control/Git

After all the hard work of marking up with HTML, styling with CSS, and programming with JavaScript, web developers will go through a number of revisions. If something goes wrong along the way, the last thing a developer wants to do is start over from the beginning. Version control is the process of tracking and controlling changes to a website or web application’s source code so this won’t happen.

Version control software—like open source stalwart Git—is a tool developers use to track those changes so they can go back to a previous version of their work and find out what went wrong without tearing the whole thing down.

If you’re planning on becoming a developer, you can see why this is a skill that you (and your prospective clients and employers) will be very happy to have.

Bonus Reads:

The 10 Skills You Need to Land Your First Front End Developer Job

Everything You Need to Know About HTML

Tech 101: What is JavaScript?

Should You Learn JavaScript? The answer is YES

Tech 101: The Ultimate Guide to CSS

Tech 101: What is jQuery, and What is it Used For?

Tech 101: What Is a JavaScript Framework? Here’s Everything You Need to Know

Learning JavaScript Frameworks Will Boost Your Job Prospects—But Which One Should You Learn First?

5 of the Best JavaScript Frameworks to Learn

What’s the Difference Between Scripting and Coding?

Everything You Need to Know About PHP

Tech 101: Ruby on Rails

4 Key Things You Need to Know About Ruby on Rails

Tech 101: Python vs JavaScript—What’s the Difference?

99 of the Best Free Tools for Web Designers and Web Developers

(back to top)

Chapter 3: How to Learn Those Web Developer Skills

Now that you have an idea of the kind of skills it takes to work as a web developer, you’re probably wondering HOW to actually start learning these skills. And, based on the kind of questions we get from prospective students, you might be letting some preconceived notions give you unnecessary anxiety on the topic. In addition to simply wanting to know where and how to learn tech skills, newcomers to tech are often worried that learning these skills will:

Take too long

Require high level math skills

Require a college degree

So let’s tackle those three common fears first.

Conquering Three Common Tech Fears: a Quickstart Guide

1. Learning Basic Coding Will Take You Months (Not Years)

Yes, you read that correctly. It is totally possible to learn tech basics in a matter of months. We’ve written in more detail here about general “learn to code” timeframes and timeframes specific to languages like HTML/CSS and JavaScript, but here’s the general summary:

The absolute first step toward web development is to start learning two coding languages ASAP—HTML and CSS. These two skills will allow you to start building basic websites, and they’ll even qualify you to start doing paid HTML and CSS jobs (think freelance web development gigs for friends, family, or local businesses). And here’s the thing—learning to code with HTML and CSS can take as little as weeks or even days depending on your pace and approach.

After getting experience with HTML and CSS, you can expand your development repertoire further with programming languages like JavaScript. Learning JavaScript will add a few more months to your learning process, but knowing JavaScript will open up even more development jobs.

Once you’ve nailed the basics of these front-end development skills the learning process will continue over the course of your development career, and there are always more skills to learn in order to stay professionally flexible and relevant—for instance if you’re interested in exploring back-end web development you’ll need to learn server side languages like Ruby on Rails—but the process of becoming a professionally viable front-end developer can realistically be achieved in a matter of months.

2. High Level Math Isn’t as Important as You Might Think

The high starting pay and job flexibility associated with web development sounds great…but unless you have doctorate level math skills it’s probably not for you, right?

Wrong!

While tech careers are often stereotypically associated with hardcore computation, it’s the computer you’re using that does most of the intense number crunching. According to web developer Charlotte O’Hara (who I interviewed on the subject previously), critical thinking skills and an eye for design are a much bigger part of the job than advanced calculations. You can read more about the facts on math and coding (and how insecurity around math is often just a matter of perception) in our How Much Math Do I Need to Know to Code article.

3. College Degree Not Necessarily Required

But even if you won’t need as much math as you think (or you know more math than you think you do), you still need a degree in computer science to work as a web developer, right?

Wrong again!

Yes, having a CS degree can certainly be a good thing if you’re trying to work as a web professional, but—since web development is largely a skills-based field—if you know how to do the work, there’s absolutely no reason you can’t get hired.

If you’re ready to start working as a web developer, the best thing to do is start upskilling your way to the languages (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc.) you’ll need for doing the work—it might sound like a long haul, but it’s considerably shorter and less expensive than going back to school for two-to-four years.

Even better, the degree-less success stories are out there (and we’ve covered quite a few of them).

Where to Learn Web Developer Skills

Fears and misconceptions aside, the next question to answer is WHERE to start learning web developer skills. The good news is, whatever your situation, there’s a learning format that will work for you. Some of the most common places to learn coding skills are:

Coding Bootcamps

Bootcamps are traditionally 8-12 week, in-person intensive programs where students code all day, every day for the duration of the course. While the bootcamp format can be a great way to get immersively hands-on with coding languages and learn at an accelerated rate, there are some pitfalls to this approach as well. As our CEO Adda Birnir says:

“Bootcamps are great options for some people, but—like most things in life—they’re not perfect for everyone. In order to do one of those bootcamps you have to be in a set location, commit to attending full time, and it’ll cost you. That might work if you’re not working, live in a major city, and have money saved up, but not if you’re caring for children, live outside of a big city, or can’t afford in-person bootcamp tuition (currently an average of nearly $12,000 according to Coursereport).”

Online Coding Tutorials

Fortunately, if the barrier of entry to bootcamps doesn’t fit your personal circumstances, there are other options. One of those options (on the other end of the spectrum from coding bootcamps) is learning through online tutorials. Unlike the bootcamp model, learning through tutorials online can be done entirely at your own pace, and in many cases for free. Sites like Coursera and Lynda offer low cost and free tutorials, while some languages like Python have their own official online beginners guides and documentation. You can get even more ideas for free coding resources by checking out our article, 64 Ways to Learn to Code For Free.

The downside to this approach is in the lack of structure. If you’re someone who’s extremely self disciplined and has a good amount of spare time, you CAN cobble together coding basics through tutorials alone. But when you hit a wall, it’s all on you to get past it. And there’s no recognition or certification at the end of the tunnel. Yes, all that matters when it’s time to build a website is whether you know how to do it or not, but the kind of certification that comes from completing an established course makes it a lot easier to convince clients and employers that you’re the person for the job.

Online Coding Courses

A third way to learn web developer skills is to take a paid, instructor-led course online. This approach mixes the structure of a bootcamp (though a lot less intense and considerably less expensive) with the flexibility of learning from home. Online courses like our Skillcrush Front End Developer and Web Developer Blueprints can be completed in just three months by spending only an hour a day on the materials.

Paid online courses like Skillcrush Blueprints also include access to instructor assistance and feedback, an online community where you can share questions and accomplishments, and a certification at the end of the process. You can read more about Skillcrush’s online courses here.

Bonus Reads:

How Long Will It Take Me to Learn How to Code?

How Long Does it Take to Become a Web Developer?

How Long Does It Take to Learn HTML? Not as Long as You Might Think

Is JavaScript a Hard Programming Language to Learn?

How Much Math Do I Need to Know to Code?

3 Successful Tech Pros Who Didn’t Go to College

Skillcrush ‘Who Codes?’ Series

Thinking About Enrolling in a Coding Bootcamp? Ask Yourself These Four Questions First

Why Skillcrush Is Different Than Coding Bootcamps: A Q&A With Skillcrush CEO Adda Birnir

64 Ways to Learn to Code for Free

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Chapter 4: Web Developer Salaries

So, if you take the time and spend the money to learn web developer skills, what kind of financial return on your investment can you expect to see from entry level web developer jobs?

According to Indeed.com, the average entry-level front end web developer makes $61,512 a year working full-time in the United States. After three years or more of experience this average climbs to $108,409 for mid-level and senior front end development jobs, while developers who learn back end skills average $128,148/year.

We’ve broken these numbers down further in our Web Developer Salary Series article, but keep in mind they’ll vary according to certain elements—location, experience, expertise, etc. To determine what you can reasonably expect to make, Glassdoor’s Know Your Worth tool is a great way to plug in specific details about your own circumstances to calculate a likely salary (and the right number to give when asked your salary requirements). You may also want to explore how to calculate your rate for freelance web developer work.

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Chapter 5: How to Land a Web Developer Job

You know the web developer skills you need, where and how to learn them, and the kind of return on investment you can expect, but there’s one important detail—how do you actually land a web developer job? Making that leap from learning to code to working as a junior web developer might seem daunting.

Of course, you should begin by staying on top of listings from general job sites like Glassdoor and Indeed and developer-focused sites like Github, Smashing Magazine, and Stack Overflow. But everyone seems to want experience, so how do you get that experience if you haven’t been hired yet? We have some tips and tricks to help you out.

1. Work on Mock Coding Projects

Working without being paid is generally NOT something we recommend—except when it comes to padding a body of work before you’ve actually started working. Don’t wait for that first paid job to put your coding skills to work. Do as many mock projects as you can while you’re trying to land your first paid gig, whether it’s a model website for a fictitious brand or a prospective redesign of a real site. Or show what you can do with JavaScript and tackle some test JavaScript projects.

And—while you’ll be using these projects as part of your resume and portfolio when you apply for jobs—don’t forget to publish your work publicly on sites like Codepen, Stack Overflow, and Github. Being an active member of the online developer community, even before you start your first day of work, is a good way of showing clients and employers your dedication and professional curiosity.

Finally, remember that this first step can actually bridge the gap between practice work and paid work. Reach out to friends, family, and acquaintances and see if anyone has website needs that you’re able and ready to tackle. Doing these starter projects either pro bono or for a beginner’s freelance rate will give you valuable work experience en route to your first “real” job.

2. Use Your Portfolio to Show Off Those Projects

Having a crisp, easily shareable digital portfolio is a must in order to win over clients and hiring managers. But what does that mean?

First, you need to find the right site to house your digital samples. This article on free design portfolio sites will lead you in the direction of stalwarts like Behance and Dribbble, both of which work just as well for web developer portfolios as they do for web design.

Second, you need to make sure you’re including the kind of web developer samples that will resonate with clients and employers. This article will give you 10 tips for building a stellar web developer portfolio, after which you can level up your portfolio game even further with this 4-step guide to making sure your work shines.

3. Make Sure Your Elevator Pitch is Good to Go

In between trolling job listings and compiling a knockout portfolio, life sometimes just happens. You never know when you might be in a situation where you’re suddenly face-to-face with someone who can hook you up with that dream web developer job. Which means you better have something to say when and if the time comes.

No problem, we’ve got that covered, too! If you need a little help explaining who you are, what sets you apart, and why (despite maybe not having the most on-paper experience) you’re the person to solve a company’s problems, go ahead and download our guide to writing the perfect personal pitch.

4. You’re Breaking Into Tech—But You Still Need a Conventional Resume and Cover Letter

The tech industry may have changed a lot of the ways we work and find jobs, but one institution remains the same—the venerable cover letter and resume. In order to really nail that web developer job, you’re going to need both.

Because you’re new to web development, it’s critical to write a custom cover letter when applying for jobs. Take the time to research the company or client you’re applying with, notice any trends in their projects or even problem areas (what could they be doing more of?), and make sure to include those observations in your letter. You can even mention a personal experience you’ve had with the company, too. The more original, the better.

Finally, when it comes to your resume, it needs to live up to the same high standards as the portfolio and website projects you’re showcasing. The good news is, there are plenty of free resume templates that will hit that standard for you, giving you one less thing to spend your creative energy on. Check out our list of free creative resume templates for 2019 here.

Bonus Reads:

12 Things You Must Do to Land a Junior Web Developer Job

10 Projects You Can Do With JavaScript

9 Jobs You Are Qualified for if You Only Know HTML and CSS

The Best Free Design Portfolio Sites For Getting Your Name Out There and Landing a Job

How to Craft a Stand-Out Web Developer Portfolio

How to Build an Impressive Portfolio Site

22 of the Best Free Creative Resume Templates for 2019

How to Go From Newbie to Web Developer Job Application-Ready

Web Developer Job Interviews Decoded: Exactly What Skills to Highlight, What to Expect, and

How to Leave a Positive Impression

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Chapter 6: Freelancing is a Flexible, Entry-Level Web Developer Option

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: tech jobs are flexible. And part of what makes them so flexible are the freelancing opportunities available in every tech field. Whether it’s web development, web design, or digital marketing, tech jobs run the gamut from full time jobs for a single company, to freelance careers, to part time side hustles you can do while caring for children or building your skills.

Web development is no different. If side hustling appeals to you, or if you’re looking for a way to do paid projects while building your skills AND your portfolio, don’t forget that freelance developer work is always an option.

Of course, if you’re going into business for yourself, you’ll need some support.

Here are some articles to get you started on the ins and outs of working as a freelance web developer:

The Apps, Tools, and Sites That Every Freelancer Needs

How to Get the Respect You Deserve as a Freelancer

How to Make Sure That Freelance Job Listing Isn’t a Scam

25 Top Sites for Finding the Freelance Jobs You Want

The 9-Step Guide to Making a GREAT First Impression on Your Freelance Client

Can You Balance a Side Hustle With a Full-Time Job? Yes—Here’s How

7 Tech Side Hustles That Seriously Pay

Meanwhile, you can check out our own guide to calculating a freelance web rate here, and you can download our calculator for freelance web design rates here.

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Chapter 7: Final Thoughts

Well, you’ve made it this far—which means you’re probably ready to get serious about learning to code and working as a web developer.

Making that first commitment is a big step, so congratulations! But now it’s time to take the next one: consider signing up for our Skillcrush Front End Developer Blueprint or Web Developer Blueprint today, and you’ll be well on your way to a high paying, flexible, creative career in web development.

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from Web Developers World https://skillcrush.com/2019/03/19/how-to-start-a-web-developer-career/

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spamzineglasgow · 7 years

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(REVIEW) Strange Appetites: The Seductive Contemplation of Supermarket Poetics in Max Parnell’s _And no more being outdoors, And no more rain_

Text and illustrations by Maria Rose Sledmere (Review first appeared in Gilded Dirt issue #2, ‘Supermarket Verse’)

>In Don DeLillo’s White Noise, Jack Gladney meets his friend Murray at the supermarket and takes note of the items in his basket. Murray describes the unbranded, plain-packaged items with typically extravagant grandeur as ‘the last avant-garde. Bold new forms. The power to shock’. There’s a sparsity to Max Parnell’s pamphlet, And no more being outdoors, And no more rain that echoes this call of bold new forms. The plainness of language as language; as both material semiotics and evocative form. There’s everyday discourse stripped to its purer roots; a tone of childlike, sweeping sincerity (‘She loved the Western World’), contrasting with the ‘inscrutable meagreness’ of its subject: the meal deal.

>If material culture is a term we want to use, then Parnell practises it quite literally. He bought a selection of favourite meal deal items from a local Tesco Express, opened the packaging and slipped fragments of his poetry inside among the foodstuff, little white strips of text resting like sleepy insects upon a pasta salad or slices of apple. By some clever feat, he sealed the packaging up again and surreptitiously replaced the products on the shelves of the same supermarket, garnering undoubtedly a few bemused looks for so directly flaunting the rules of consumption in restocking the shelves from his bag. The result is a beautiful pamphlet, each spread a sparse balance of image and text--a gallery of raw, unedited photographs accompanied almost whimsically by a poem on the opposite page. The whimsy, however, does not undercut the compelling freshness of the language, its deceptive simplicity resonant with hidden depths of meaning, an implicit critique and celebration of contemporary supermarket consumption.

>The new sincerity and austerity often go hand-in-hand in the poems of writers whose work might be described as metamodern. Sam Riviere’s 81 Austerities reworks the casual quotidian of a New York poet to engage with the affective facets of contemporary Britain: a world overloaded with information; a world of pornography, abandoned picnics, knitwear and unlit cigarettes. A world of welfare cuts, jump-cuts and startling contrasts. The semiotics of consumer capitalism are somehow melted as each Riviere poem makes surreal juxtapositions of images, tricks of irony or incongruous reference, leading us somewhere unexpectedly profound: ‘this will probably sound cheesy and weird / but maybe we’re a couple of cartoons’ (‘What Do You Think About That’). Perhaps there is something about a childlike paucity of text that feels more sincere than an epic screed. Nevertheless, the self-awareness of such poetics grounds them in a certain wary irony, the ubiquitous awareness of self-presentation instilled in anyone raised on the internet.

>We might think of the supermarket meal deal (even as its supposed cheapness deceives us of value), as the poor man’s lunch (recalling that nostalgic phrase, the Po’ Boy’s Lunch, which is making its round of the hipster bars right now, harking back to the labourer’s working day of yore, or baby yuppies navigating through a pre-Starbucks universe). It’s perhaps the most everyday of supermarket purchases for some, representing the relinquishment of creative choice for a narrow decision between coronation chicken, egg cress or ham and cheese. The rule of the meal deal, of course, is that you get to pick three items: a sandwich/salad, a snack and a drink. Like a slot machine, you hope for the perfect combination. Many people stick to what works and eat the same thing every day, bearing their triplet of joy to yesterday’s identikit self-service checkout. Perhaps only some play the meta-game, listening to a hypnagogic James Ferraro number in their head as suitable soundtrack. Only when something is missing--out of stock already--is one forced to confront the meal deal as thing, to weigh up the relative value of different products. Parnell’s pamphlet takes this a step further, deconstructing the semiotics of product even as his poems supplement the food stuff with the trace of an art object.

>Food and paper, mixed together. You can peel the label off an apple and eat it just fine, but would you do the same with a strip of poem? Does Parnell’s sly, perhaps Situationist intervention in everyday commodity culture make the meal deal products inedible? As with Heidegger’s broken hammer, it is the object, the system’s failure, that reminds us that consumer goods are things in themselves. We confront them, suddenly, as present-at-hand. Imagine someone opening that pack of McCoys and finding their crisps coated in white paint with words stuck to them. You are forced to situate their presence in a manner beyond the normal. Foodstuffs no longer coexist as simple fuel--the ordinary objects that mark the time of day, the regulation of appetite. Their mode of being flashes before us and demands to be repaired, to be re-transformed back into the seamless product we expected. The point about meal deals is they are supposed to be the same on a daily basis; you know what you are getting when you peel away the plastic on your pasta salad.

>Forcing our attention back on the products as objects in themselves is one thing, but what to do next? Parnell’s poetry teases out the affective experiences of daily life in the encountering of things. Sometimes he addresses the supermarket itself, as if in the temple of some deity: ‘You say that everything is very interesting / “New improved flavour” / Yet it makes me feel very simple / (I hate all that crap) / But I am terribly hungry!’. This is a gesture that refutes the ideological hailing performed daily by advertising and branding, the kind that fits us into certain camps (the organically concerned, the cool kids, the Healthy). It admits the seduction of the object, the brand, even as it places its slogans under cool, sardonic erasure. We allow our bodily desires, ultimately, to purchase the product which temporarily will sate the appetite. But of course, being ‘terribly hungry’ is the perpetual state of consumer capitalism, from its constant arousal of insatiable desire to the literal starvation caused by global inequalities, or more localised austerity measures.

>It’s not all negative, however. The beauty of this pamphlet is its metamodern attentiveness to the joyful, affective experience of consumerism at the same time as ironically expressing the shallowness of such common exchanges of capital--the short lifespan of pleasure offered by such goods. Parnell’s poems defamiliarise everyday conventions and ritualistic practices, admitting a certain mystical quality to the products with which we structure our day—or, more specifically, our lunchtimes. There is an emphasis on the things themselves, from the checkout machines to the packet of sushi; Parnell’s poetics evince a very much objected-oriented ontology. These are poems without titles, poems to drift through; their mode of enframing is the image rather than the contrived and anthropocentric literary artifice of a title. The tone is sometimes exuberant, often urgent: ‘Quick! / I have in my hands / Only pennies… / And it were as if / The machines / Heaved a sigh.’ The supermarket experience is suddenly re-orientated from the perspective of the machines themselves, rather than the shoppers. I cannot help but think of Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory here, as every item becomes its own actant in a complex system of relations. Yet often the relations taper away and the things themselves rise, shining, from darkness. Images deliberately obscure the thing itself: ‘I stare / Into the cauldron of hideousness’. Profundity mixes with certain emotional or bodily urges: ‘I wanna stay drunk’, ‘my tired red eyes’. These words aren’t just disembodied, clinical flarf collected from the dust of the empty shelves at the end of the day; they are lyric poems, whose vibrancy arises as much from the speaker’s voice as it does from the matter surrounding him.

>With subtle devastation, everyday encounters with objects become part of a broader emotional framework. ‘Secretly, I shall / go to drink / instant coffee / “Full Rich Taste!” / It’s drawing me in. / Is it the sole heat on earth? / I may freeze to death / Without her.’ Allured by the object, we are not sure if the ‘her’ refers to the coffee itself (anthropomorphism), or an actual woman--another lost ‘object’ in the speaker’s minimal stratosphere. The slippage from ‘it’ to ‘she’ casually equates love with the cheap physical comfort of an instant coffee, while allowing this equation to stand stark with the sadness of any impoverished supplement.

>Moreover, as Daniel Miller reminds us, shopping itself is a kind of ‘making love’. As he puts it, selecting the ingredients for something and choosing one’s food products involves negotiating various value-based implications: from the global resonance of ethical, organic and local to the more ambiguous questions of morality and sensibility; a ‘cosmology’ of daily actions in the public sphere. The ‘she’ of Parnell’s poems--who kookily thinks of ‘adding a little tomato paste’, whose presence is only a projection--is a ghostly thing, the rippling silhouette of desire that eludes the speaker. He is often standing alone, observing: ‘Everyone’s out eating’. We are reminded of our own individualised role as consumers, placed in the position of voyeur who gleans vague scraps of voyeuristic joy from the habits of others. Occasional bursts of frustrated statement--‘It’s so meaningless to eat!’--bring a generalised nihilism to the picture, comprising just one reaction to the sheer excess of signifiers on display when you start teasing apart meal deal semiotics.

>As a rearrangement of Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems, these poems bear the semblance of fleeting thoughts: the kind of fragmentary, stream-of-consciousness dialogue you might have with yourself while lingering over the meal deal counter on a daily basis. Like O’Hara, Parnell’s speaker is a casual observer whose lines are strewn with bursts of acute insight into the complex, affective relations that structure our everyday experience with material things. There’s an emphasis on time, on the compressed space of a lunch hour (if you are lucky enough to even get an hour; lunch breaks today aren’t quite the boozy extravagance they were in the days of Don Draper). The pamphlet ends with ‘One eats as one walks. / Back to work, I guess.’ The ‘I guess’ is not just the hipster idiom of conversational filler, but a genuine hesitation that leaves us pondering on the threshold of recreational and work time. Has the subject left work at all? Is our daily jaunt to the supermarket merely an offshoot of the work of daily capitalism, the implicit labour of consumer existence? Is the ‘I guess’ in fact a mournful hesitation, a longing for that brief jouissance of excessive choice that unfurled in the space of a moment? Parnell allows for both. Many of these items are reduced, discounted in price, thus implying the collection documents several moments of meal deal purchase across different times in the day. That sense of deferral, a riff on O’Hara’s idle browsing: ‘And the stores stayed open awful late…’.

> Sometimes reading And no more being outdoors, And no more rain feels a bit like looking over a series of old tweets made in the heat of a certain moment. Maybe they don’t make much sense anymore, but when you read them back in a sequence an emotional narrative unfolds. What does it mean to be ‘never […] mentally sober’? If the state we live in is one of constant arousal, wired to our screens and bleeps, flushed with sugar-fuelled brain fog, the supermarket perhaps offers the comforting stasis of quotidian repetition that the rhizomatically endless territory of the internet displaces. Often Parnell’s poetics feel meditative, even haiku-like; they are a deliberate, focused lingering on the object, the moment, the profound possibilities of relational connection both physical and symbolic in the exchange of capital. They restore a certain peace to our day, even as they preserve an unsettled sense of longing, of curiously surreal or impenetrable imagery, of desire misplaced in the webs of perception. Reality shifts. There is something of the Eliotic, confused flaneur in some of the poems; especially the first, with its anaphoric loop, ‘And no more rain’ drawing us endlessly to the supermarket as sheltering temple--the speaker’s ‘perilous steps’ uncannily erased even before we have settled inside. I’m reminded of T. S. Eliot’s ‘Rhapsody on a Windy Night’, where the street lamps address the speaker with strange nostalgic poetry. Parnell’s speaker treads the laminate floors of the Tesco Express, held in a strip-lit version of Eliot’s ‘lunar synthesis’ as he leaves his identity at the door, ready and open to the world of signs.

>These are poems with a shelf-life, products destined for the trash at the whim of a consumer, or the directive of an employee or use-by date. Like snowflakes, they’ll melt into the generalised excreta of capitalism’s cold waste pile. There is a deliberate beauty here, a rift prised open between subject and object, consciousness and product. Ephemerality, the sense of drifting; disappearing in the condensed rhythms of desire’s abyss, its stunting concatenations of excess, the ‘And / And / And’. Parnell’s artefacts aren’t so much grandly apostrophised as they are collected, pondered over and recirculated into the feedback loops of capitalist relations. They’re found objects, certainly, but not appropriated into art objects. The poems are supplements which draw out the gaps, the secrets of the things in themselves, the strangeness. Here’s Ben Lerner’s narrator from 10:04 , speaking of the minimalist art of Donald Judd’s 100 aluminium boxes:

‘I believed in the things [Judd] wanted to get rid of—the internal compositional relations of a painting, nuances of form. His interest in modularity and industrial fabrication and his desire to overcome the distinction between art and life, an insistence on literal objects in real space—I felt I could get all those things by walking through a Costco’

>The hypermarket, Costco, does all the affective job of an art installation. It’s all about how we perceive things. Lerner’s narrator is able to position himself as this flaneur, open to the impressions objects and their spaces make upon him. Parnell does this too, though in a more condensed and fleeting manner. He subtly unfurls the nuances of form through close-up photographs and fragmentary, sensual details: the ‘glistening peanuts’ and ‘old and dirty’ angels. I can’t help but think of memes when I read these poems: like a meme they are deliberately recirculated into the public sphere, in a very material way. Like many memes there is a re-appropriation of advertising discourse which unpicks the shallow veneer of its message, while exposing the often surprising or even tragic ideological fault-lines within. These poems are compressed, easily digested; written in the tone of pondering over explaining. There are gaps to be filled.

>To use a Barthesian term, the Mythemes of contemporary culture are to be found in the supermarket aisle. A whole mythology of capitalism, identity and weird ontology is to be found if you peel back the packaging and wait for the magic. Happily, Parnell’s pamphlet does that for you, although its surreal array of intransitive words and objects deserves its own space: a metamodern exhibit of a bewildered contemporary whose structure of feeling is as strangely spiritual and sincere as it is ironic or blasé—an art object whose aura flickers with the persistent light of those late-night Tescos. In White Noise, Murray declares that he likes being in the supermarket, because ‘It’s all much clearer here. I can think and see’. In the aisles, with the cool tones of the refrigerators and the bright lighting, the ideologies underpinning the structures of daily life are ripe for the picking.

And no more being outdoors, And no more rain can be bought here for 4GBP.

#review

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