#entropy and was very wrong about what entropy was and made me very mad

[cirrem]

also since I'm posting, nobody knows what entropy is and whenever I see anyone (non-physicists) talk about it they're wrong

entropy is a measure of the possible ways a system can be in its state. for example, if you're flipping 4 coins, there is 1 way to get 4 heads, 1 way to get 4 tails, 4 ways to get 1 head, 4 ways to get 1 tail, and 6 ways (I think) to get 2 heads and 2 tails. the state of 2 heads and 2 tails has the highest entropy, because it has the most ways to exist.

Chaos is a completely separate concept, its how sensitive a system is to initial conditions -- the classical example is the double pendulum. if you have two double pendulums and only slightly change the angle of one, they are going to act completely different. As compared to a normal pendulum, where slightly changing the angle will be very similar to not changing it.

Chaos and entropy can be related, but that very much depends on the system. the most likely state a double pendulum will be in after a certain amount of time is straight down -- that is to say as time increases the entropy of the straight down pendulum increases, even though it is the least "chaotic" double pendulum system. (I may be butchering stuff I'm only an undergrad and I took thermo/statistical in the fall)

I kind of understand why people associate them so much, if I were to roll a bazillion dice and recorded their number, it'd tend to an even amount of 1,2,3,4,5, and 6, in a random order. the sequence of numbers would seem to be pretty chaotic, and we will have a high entropy system. But associating entropy with that instead of the fact that there is an even distribution of numbers, that we can predict the total sum of the roll, or the average of all the rolls, completely misses the point of what makes entropy useful and why we talk about it.

Entropy isn't a measure of chaos, its a measure of probability, and helps us know what we can from a systems most likely state.

[johaerys-writes]

Dorian Pavus/Trevelyan

A World With You, Chapter 37: A Trevelyan’s Word

Tristan and Dorian spend some much needed quiet time together. Some fluff, a tiiiiny bit of angst (blink and you’ll miss it), and some important conversations.

Read on AO3 | Read from the beginning

Libraries had always been one of Dorian’s favourite places to be, ever since he could remember himself.

After having lived in so many different Circles, and having worked and studied in many more, gravitating towards the nearest library wherever he happened to be was something like second nature to him. He remembered the layout of every one he’d visited in startling detail: the neat rows of bookcases of the Carastes Circle; the circular library tower of the Circle of Trevis, with its tinted glass windows that had been specifically designed to protect the priceless tomes from the scorching sun and the dust; the vast Library of Minrathous, where one could easily lose themselves in unless they had a chart, a compass, a detailed floor plan and perhaps said a prayer or two. Regardless of the size, layout or method of archiving, finding what he was looking for had always been a swift matter, each library’s secrets revealing themselves to him readily after one brief sweep of the many rooms and shelves.

Never once had he encountered a library as reticent as the one in Skyhold.

After several months there, he still could not figure out the organisational system that the books had once been stored in. He’d assumed it was because of all the different kinds of people that had once resided there, but even in the oldest and most dilapidated libraries he had visited there was some method to the madness. In Skyhold, however, there was just madness.

Books on Pyromancy, which he had personally moved to the top floor - where they belonged, alongside the treatises on Primal magic- would magically appear on the lower floor shelves, alongside the tomes on Entropy magic. The scrolls of ancient Tevinter glyphs and spells, which he had found after sorting through the multitude of Chantry books that seemed to be practically sprouting out of the soil in that place, and that he had painstakingly cleaned from dust and arranged in alphabetical order in the booth next to his own, had now disappeared into thin air. The apprentice archivists, when he’d asked them, had simply stared at him with the sparkling gazes of well-fed heifers. One of them had had the audacity to look him straight in the eye and unironically say:

“If it’s Spirit glyphs you’re interested in, why don’t you read Former Second Enchanter Muriel’s research? Those scrolls you're looking for are outdated, anyway.”

Outdated? Outdated! The very notion had had Dorian grinding his teeth. As if seeing Former Second Enchanter Muriel’s sour visage every day, and listening to her endless tirades about Tevinter and anything else that displeased her wasn’t enough. He wouldn’t touch that tiresome crone’s research with a ten foot pole— no, make it twenty feet. One could never be too safe.

He clicked his tongue in annoyance as he shoved the book on Alchemy he’d found lying forgotten by the side of the wrong bookcase back in its proper shelf. If he’d known the level of ignorance and buffoonery he would be met with in the South, he would have seriously reconsidered ever leaving Minrathous. Oh, certainly, his homeland was a nest of vipers, but at least Tevinters knew how to organise a dratted library.

Now, if only he could find who in the Maker’s dratted name had gone through his dratted scrolls—

A glance at the research table across the rotunda promptly answered his question.

“Helisma,” he grumbled through clenched teeth as he stomped towards her. Priceless scrolls and documents were gathered willy-nilly in her arms, as well as the arms of the two apprentices that trailed her. The Tranquil looked up at him calmly when he barred her way.

“May I ask what on earth you have been doing with all the scrolls? You are the one who snatched them away, and don’t you even try to deny it.”

“I moved them to the underground storage rooms.”

That she could deliver those lines without an ounce of emotion was entirely bewildering, despite the fact that she was, indeed, a Tranquil. He forced his lips into a tight, sarcastic smile. “Why would you do that, pray tell? What have the poor things done to offend you so? Surely whatever it was could have been resolved over some tea and crumpets, instead of banishment to the nearest dungeon.”

She simply blinked at him, her tone completely flat as she informed him, “The upper levels of the library are reserved for leather bound tomes and codexes. The underground storage rooms are where scrolls, manuscripts and loose documents should be kept.”

“Helisma, my dear,” Dorian uttered tightly, trying his best not to lose his composure and start yelling in the middle of the library where everybody and their aunts could hear, “we have been over this. There is no reason for the scrolls to be there. They are needed here, where they can be used. The storage rooms are as damp as it gets, certainly you must be able to see that keeping ancient and fragile scrolls there is not the wisest course of action?”

“The humidity in the storage rooms is less than forty percent. That is lower than the Circle of Amaranthine’s storage rooms by five point two degrees.”

“And you’re saying it as if it’s a good thing? If the humidity in the Minrathous library was half as high, the master archivist would be having an apoplexy!” Dorian pinched the bridge of his nose, taking in a deep breath. There clearly wasn’t any way of making sense of this, and he would sooner teach a mule to dance than talk Helisma out of her ways. “Very well. Have it your way. I’ll see what I’ll be able to salvage from this mess.” He sniffed and tossed his head back in defiance as he turned around and stomped back the way he’d come, leaving a blank-eyed Helisma behind.

The chill in the lower vaults was unmistakable, cutting through his many layers of clothing and piercing him right to the bone. Dorian resisted the urge to frown as he gathered his cloak around his shoulders. Any more of that, and he would getting wrinkles before his time, and he had enough as it was. Ever since coming to the South, he had noticed a few more around his eyes that he was sure had not been there a few months before. If this went on any longer, he would be looking like a shrivelled up prune by the time this entire Inquisition business was done.

The stray thought made him stop short, there, in the half dark and quiet of the vaults. Part of him wasn’t sure if he wished the Inquisition business to be done, he realised. Of course, he wanted Corypheus and his Venatori to be defeated, more than anyone. If this were done, the world would have a chance to recover, and with it his country’s reputation. Still… the thought of the future brought with it a certain amount of trepidation. Trevelyan would ultimately be the one to face all those dangers, and no one knew how he would be affected. His life was on the line, day after day, and Dorian more than anyone could see how it was stretching him thin. Even if everything went according to plan though, even if they both survived this ordeal, no one knew what the future held for the two of them. For the time being, they were bound by this common cause. Beyond this… only time could tell.

The worry and unease that he so often tried to brush away slithered to the surface. Dorian took a deep breath to quell it. There was no point thinking of the future, when everything about the present was so uncertain. Trevelyan was alive and well now, as much as he could be, and that was all that mattered.

Brushing the thoughts aside, Dorian turned right as soon as he’d reached the storage room he was looking for. It was the farthest down the corridor, with only a lone torch burning.

Torches. Amidst all this paper. The horror.

The sounds beyond the door of the storage room quickly revealed that there was someone else there, shifting through the many scrolls and documents in the cramped space. At least she had the sense to conjure a small ball of light, which was now hovering above her as she searched, its halo glossing her cropped black hair. She gave a small start when she heard him entering, her large blue eye widening.

“Lord Pavus,” Grand Enchanter Fiona breathed, pressing her palm to her chest. Or was it just Fiona, now? “You frightened me.”

“My apologies,” he said. He clasped his hands behind his back and glanced at the scrolls she had been shifting through. “I see I wasn’t the only one who has found the scrolls Helisma has banished down here useful.”

“Ah, yes. She does have some strong opinions about where everything should be stored. I’m not entirely certain I agree.”

She gave Dorian the barest hints of a smile. Their interactions had always been kept serious and professional, both of them taking care not to linger in each other’s presence too long, despite them practically sharing the same workspace. At first, it was because Dorian wasn’t quite sure what to make of her, and he had the suspicion that his presence made her just as uneasy. However, he had soon found out that she didn’t particularly invite any interaction beyond the typical. The former Grand Enchanter and Grey Warden had kept a low profile ever since joining the Inquisition, more so after they had taken permanent residence in Skyhold, and Dorian didn’t blame her for that. There had been enough talk about her, even without her stirring any sort of trouble or gossip.

Even so, the fact that the former leader of the mage rebellion, who had —unknowingly, allegedly— struck a deal with the Venatori and had been banished from Ferelden because of it, could go by largely unnoticed at all was an impressive feat. Still, she managed to do just that. Most days.

“Is there something in particular you’re looking for? Can I be of any help?”

“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble. You’re much better versed with those scrolls than I assume I am.” A compliment? That was promising. “I’m searching for Magister Domitius’ research on reanimated undead. I do remember seeing a copy a while ago, in loose papers, but it disappeared before I had time to properly bind it. Have you perhaps seen it?”

Dorian narrowed his eyes in thought as he looked around the stacks. It didn’t take long for him to spot a few sheets of paper hastily rolled and bound with a leather cord. “That seems to be it,” he said as he dragged it out carefully and handed it to her. Fiona inclined her head in gratitude, unwrapping the document with slow, careful motions.

“Thank you. That was most helpful.”

“Anytime.” Dorian took a step back, giving the mage some time and space to inspect the discovery. Her brow furrowed ever so slightly as she read, her lips pursing in thought. She was short in stature, and could easily be overlooked if she wished it to be so. Yet there was something about her, a commanding presence and a stubborn streak that was hard to define, and to hide.

“I studied this one many years ago," he mused, crossing his arms before his chest. "It’s a rather interesting treatise, although some of the glyphs for releasing the spells that bind the undead are quite crude.”

“Crude, but effective. That is just what is needed right now. I hear the undead have claimed many lives all over Thedas, and will likely claim many more.”

“So grim, so early in the day? Grand Enchanter, I expected more from you.”

The elf glanced up at him, her lips quirked in amusement. “Former Grand Enchanter, if you please. Or you can just call me Fiona, as everyone else does these days.” The smile faded away as she looked down at the scroll once more. “One does learn to be grim after seeing as many deaths as I have. It is a hard thing to shake off.”

The silence that followed between them was somewhat awkward, with her carefully studying the writing on the yellowed and musty pages. Still, if there was something Dorian was good at, that was filling the silence. “So how come you’re studying the undead? I wasn’t aware that necromancy was your field of study.”

“It is not. The Inquisitor reported a large number of demons and undead in Crestwood, and some of the Inquisition mages were assigned with coming up with strategies to defend the villages until the Inquisitor is able to close the rift. I have experience battling the creatures, so I volunteered to investigate the matter further and to train the new recruits.”

Dorian’s stomach tightened ever so slightly. There were so many issues that demanded Trevelyan’s attention, he often wondered how the man found time to eat or sleep. He certainly seemed to be doing much less of both these days. That he found time to spend with Dorian at all when they were in Skyhold was a marvel in and of itself. Even before leaving for Crestwood, before the ordeal they’d both been through with the demon, he'd seemed so gaunt and pale, wrung out. The Inquisition was stretching him thin. Dorian wondered if ever the time would come that it would break him.

He took a deep breath, trying to swallow past the knot in his throat. He wouldn’t let it come to this, not if he could help it. He would stand by him, help him as much as he could. That was what a partner did, after all, wasn’t it?

“It is very noble of you, to offer to help with the matter,” he told her, in an effort to distract himself from his thoughts.

“Not at all. It is the least I can do to aid the Inquisition’s efforts.” She let out a soft sigh as she rolled the scroll back up carefully. “The way things ended in Redcliffe, the Inquisitor could have demanded anything he wished. Instead, he offered us a full alliance, and our dignities back. That is not something I am about to forget.”

“Ah, yes. I suppose he could have ordered you to become the Inquisition court jesters, as I hear the Orlesians seem to be doing with their mages.”

Fiona stared at him for a brief moment, until she realised he was jesting. She let out a chuckle then, shaking her head lightly. “I am glad he did not.”

Dorian joined her in laughter, the awkwardness between them dissipating somewhat. Affection and a strange sort of pride blossomed within him when he remembered Trevelyan in the hall of Redcliffe castle, only the bearer of the mark back then, with no real authority to his name, standing tall and proud before the King of Ferelden himself and declaring the mages equal partners of the Inquisition. Everyone had thought him mad, Dorian included. Looking back, perhaps it was around then that Dorian had fallen in love with him in earnest. A fool he certainly was, but a brave, beautiful, extraordinary fool at that.

“He has been known to make some interesting choices,” Dorian said, not quite able to hide the tenderness in his voice. “Some of them correct.”

“I dare hope it’s more than some.” She glanced up at him, and the pale light of her spell danced in her eyes. “The world has taken much from all of us, I suspect most of all from him. Still, I have faith that if anyone can see us through it all, it’s him. Not many would have done what he did. To declare an alliance with the mages, to shun the Chantry, to forge a new path, a new way of doing things... that takes courage. Or madness.”

“He has a fair bit of both.”

She huffed a quiet laugh. “He is… an odd character. His ideas are odder still. Quite unlike anyone I’ve ever met.” She tilted her head to the side ever so slightly, and Dorian thought he saw something in her eyes, something akin to sadness, even more akin to sympathy as she regarded him. “I suppose it’s the same for you, yes?”

Dorian straightened, preparing himself to deflect the comment, to deny it, but something stopped him. He let out a soft breath instead, gazing at her levelly. “Yes. I suppose it is.”

A brief silence stretched between them. Fiona smiled fleetingly before looking down at the scrolls in her hands once more. “Thank you for your help in finding these. It is much appreciated.”

Dorian stepped to the side to let her pass. She left, her footsteps barely making a sound.

He let out a sigh into the quiet of the small storage room. Fiona’s words about Trevelyan had been kind, almost fond, and certainly much nicer than what many others he’d heard, yet even she couldn’t hide the depth of her expectations, her hopes. Dorian didn’t envy Trevelyan the power of his position much. The world expected so much of him, sometimes it did feel like it was perched upon his shoulders.

The scrolls stared at him sullenly from their shelves. Dorian pushed his shirtsleeves up and summoned a bright ball of light above his head. There was plenty of work for him to do. If everyone was doing their part to help the Inquisition, Dorian would do twice— no, three times as much.

When he lifted his head from his desk and looked out the window of the small nook in the library he called his office, it was already dark.

Dorian frowned back down at his own notes, sprawled before him messily like a blanket of autumn leaves freshly fallen from the bough. He had been poring over them for the better part of the day, after finding the scrolls he had been looking for. He was sure the copies he had made from the Venatori ritual in the Emerald Grave were correct, but they made no sense. Surely whoever had come up with those glyphs knew what they were doing, to some extent, but Dorian just couldn’t make out what they were trying to do exactly. The ritual itself was eerily similar to the one he had remembered finding years ago in the Minrathous library, but there were some fundamental differences. The Venatori had tried to control the power of the spell by tweaking central parts of the glyphs, but those they’d used for the binding clashed with the glyph right across from them, which was a bastardised version of a well-known affliction hex to weaken the subject’s mental defences. No wonder the poor people the Venatori had used the ritual on were turned to drooling, unresponsive vegetables; their mind was turned to jelly long before the actual mind-control spell was cast.

And it would be quite fortunate if that was the only problem he’d encountered. Trying to figure out the logic behind it was giving him headaches. There was something here, something that eluded him, Dorian was sure of it. That certainty only made him more intent on finding exactly how the ritual worked, and for that he needed resources that were not available to him at present. Tilani’s answer to the letter he had sent her regarding the original scroll was yet to arrive. It probably hadn’t even reached her yet.

Dorian suppressed the urge to curse the South and their terrible postal system, and reached for one of the dusty tomes he had managed to find in a forgotten part of the library instead. There was a glyph amongst those he had managed to copy that reminded suspiciously of Disthenes’ version of a glyph of paralysis. Now this, this he could work with. He had studied the Tevinter’s work extensively while he’d been holed up in the Circle of Marothius, and his memory was still fresh. If he used Disthenes’ theorems and altered the glyphs enough to make them work, in combination with Enchanter Hallesis’ equations in order to fix those horrible spirit-manipulating spells he’d seen the Venatori using...

Dorian let out a soft sigh. He probably should leave the matter alone, he knew that. There was little chance of figuring out how the ritual worked, or rather, didn’t work, without the original scroll he had asked Tilani to find. Yet, he’d already been working on this too long to let it go like this. If he was able to make some modicum of progress on his own, or better yet, find a way to work out some of the kink and errors in the glyphs he’d copied from the ritual, then he might be able to find a way to reverse it as well. The Inquisition needed knowledge like this, if they happened to chance upon a Venatori ritual like that again. Knowing what weapons and spells the Venatori had in their arsenal was half the battle, wasn’t it?

He half jolted out of his seat when he felt warm lips brushing the shell of his ear, a hand skimming his waist. “Four hundred and twenty two.”

Dorian leaned back in his chair, smiling at the sound of Trevelyan’s voice. How that man could walk up to him without making a sound, he could never understand. “Four hundred and twenty two, what?”

“Minutes. I’ve been counting.” He leaned forward, catching Dorian’s lips in a gentle kiss. The library was empty at that hour— Dorian thanked the Maker for that. He sighed as he turned around in his chair, his hand finding its way to the back of Trevelyan’s neck to deepen their kiss. He tasted of spiced, honeyed wine, with a mild undertone of the sweet and tart dried apples he always kept on him.

“Have you, now?” he murmured teasingly.

“Yes. I told you I would, didn’t I?” Trevelyan’s smile widened. “My word is my bond.”

A flush crept up Dorian’s cheeks with the warmth in Trevelyan’s gaze. He was peering at him with so much tenderness, and with their proximity Dorian could smell the warmth of his body, the faint smell of his soap. He realised then, that although they’d only been apart since that morning, he had missed him. And the fact that Trevelyan had come straight to him after finishing with his duties, with the black ink from signing his reports still staining his fingers, made him feel warmer still. He suddenly couldn’t wait to be alone with him again, to touch and kiss him freely without worrying about who was to see, to avail himself of the body that hid beneath that snugly fitting dark blue coat.

With his heart beating with a strange sort of giddiness, Dorian turned around and gathered his papers, placed them in the drawer of his desk and locked it securely. “So,” he said, standing up, “shall we retire to your quarters? I’d rather not spend another minute here, thank you very much.”

Trevelyan took his hand, threading his fingers through his. “There’s something I want us to do first.”

Read the rest on AO3!

[melonsmessymusings]

Preventing ‘Dark Willow’

This essay is based off an argument with my brother a long time ago. The question is if Giles staying in Sunnydale in S6 would have prevented Darth Rosenberg. There are many thoughts on this, but I’ve probably put my foot in my mouth as per usual and made a mess. 

No. Giles staying in S6 would not have prevented Willow from being a magic junkie. 

Throughout the show, magic is used as a metaphor for drugs and sex, albeit ham-handedly. In this case, it’s about drugs. With this in mind, let’s focus firstly on Willow. From as early as S1, Willow expressed an interest in learning magic. Her relationship with Jenny Calendar and her Technopagan badassery led to her forming what seemed at first to be a harmless interest in magic and Paganism. Towards the end of S2 in I Only Have Eyes For You, Willow admits to Giles: “I found loads of websites and stuff on paganism and magic... it’s really interesting.” which demonstrates her interest may be a little more than purely ‘educational fun’.

Her first taste of powerful magicks was restoring Angel’s soul at the end of S2. In Becoming Part 1, Giles warns Willow of the consequences of such mystical forces: “Channelling such potent magicks through yourself… it may open a door you won’t be able to close.” The Passion of the Nerd touched upon it briefly and explained the choice of phrasing is especially key here. It’s not as simple as a one-off spell that has no ramifications, the nature of the Soul Restoration uses a kind of magic that will stay with the caster forever. It leaves a mark. As we know, Willow does the spell anyway after waking up from a coma (don’t even go there) and successfully restores Angel’s soul. This is how her addiction started and it is the ONLY explicitly direct warning of the impact caused by using magicks that Giles gives her.

In Faith, Hope and Trick, Willow tries to persuade Giles to let her help him with the ‘spell’ to bind Acathla and lets slip that she knows more about the black arts than she’d originally led him to believe. There’s an interesting bit of dialogue between the two:

WILLOW: Are you mad at me?

GILES: No, of course not, no.

It’s obvious that Giles is anxious about this but because of his well-established role and priorities at this point, he’s not going to dwell on it too much, despite it being a genuine concern. Later in the episode, Willow also says, “Giles, I know you don’t like me messing with mystical forces…” so it has evidently been the topic of discussion previously. In Gingerbread, Willow is messing with magic again trying to make a protection spell for Buffy. The symbol used by Willow, Amy and that other kid is one commonly associated with human sacrifices according to Giles. The Black Arts. Even if that isn’t the spell they were casting, the symbol had other less pleasant implications. And so, it continues. By S4, Willow is doing much more than floating a pencil, progressing alarmingly quickly and becoming highly proficient by the end of the season. Giles reminds her of the dangers of magic subtly, “I don’t think it’s wise for you to be attempting spells, your energy is too unfocused” and Willow is still doing magic that is both powerful and harmful enough to have caught the attention of D’Hoffryn, Lord of the Vengeance Demons despite his apprehensions.

In S5 we get a first look at ‘Dark Willow’, when Tara gets brain sucked by Glory. There’s no way the whole gang didn’t know about that. Not a chance. Yet oddly, it’s never mentioned? Obviously, the writers had other priorities with the main plot and Glory etc. but it was criminally neglected. Willow used extremely dangerous dark magicks to go after Glory for hurting Tara at incredible risk to herself and the others who ended up having to rescue her. Justifiable or not, her actions were a reckless abuse of power that very nearly had fatal consequences. How any of them just let it slide without so much as a comment is infuriating. In The Weight of The World, Giles says to Xander, “It’s extraordinarily advanced” when he learns that Willow is trying to enter Buffy’s mind yet again, concerned. Also, we start to see the black eyes when Willow attempts more advanced spells, like teleporting Glory away in Blood Ties, or casting the protective wards in Spiral so it can be theorised that the magicks Willow evokes are steadily darkening.

Roll on S6. Set after Buffy’s death, a huge trauma for all the characters. Willow raising Buffy is evidently a massive achievement from her perspective. She considers herself to be a God. In Flooded, she gets the gut-punch from Giles that he is not in fact pleased with her at all. She’d expected him to be “impressed or something” which he was, but in the wrong ways.

GILES: The magicks you channelled are more ferocious and primal than anything you can hope to understand, and you are lucky to be alive you rank, arrogant amateur!

He blames himself for not stopping her, and rightfully so... to an extent. He failed to provide her with proper guidance or even show an interest in the types of magic that she was engaging with. If he had done so at an earlier stage, then perhaps Willow would not have taken things as far as she did. One interpretation of the argument in Flooded is that Giles is lashing out at Willow because he’s frightened. Most likely for Willow instead of Willow herself. He makes a point of saying that she was “the one [I] trusted most to respect the forces of nature” and bringing Buffy back defies the laws of nature. She had no respect for these forces, bending them to her will which is a scary concept. The argument that the Scoobies were selfish for bringing Buffy back notwithstanding, Willow was the one that actually performed the spell, hell bent in succeeding. That horrifies Giles and if anything, is a wakeup call for him to pull his head out of the sand and deal with this seriously. Willow meanwhile doesn’t want to hear a word of it, pacifying him instead of actually understanding the implications of her actions and listening to anything beyond his anger. There’s a lot that could be dissected in this scene but that’s unnecessary at this moment.

Magic is also the primary factor that caused Willow and Tara to split up at the end of Tabula Rasa. Tara had brought her concerns to Willow as early as Tough Love, saying that she was ‘scared’ about how powerful Willow was getting. When Tara tried to explain why she felt this way, Willow refused to listen. Every single time that Tara raised a concern about Willow’s use of magic, Willow either ignored it or reassured her that it was fine, and she was totally in control. But Willow has a history of altering people and their actions to suit her. She attempted to do so in Lover’s Walk by casting a spell on Xander to stop them having feelings for each other. Again, in Something Blue, while unaware of the effects of the spell, she still made the conscious choice to use magic to ‘have her will be done’. She ended up hurting her friends, however unintentionally. Then in S6 when Tara and Willow are arguing about magic, instead of having a proper conversation, Willow uses the Lethe’s Bramble to make Tara forget they were even arguing. A direct invasion of her mind. And Willow didn’t show any indication that she thought it was wrong. Barely two episodes later, Willow then used a spell which caused everyone to forget who they are after promising Tara that she would go a week without using magic. It’s no surprise that Tara wanted to break up.

Willow does get ‘clean’ by Entropy. Subsequently Tara comes back, and it all seems to go well until the brutal, vicious, non-sensical murder that causes Willow to launch herself back into the dark magicks stating, “I’m not coming back.” Only then does Giles do something about it. Only then does he take it upon himself to step up and realise that he has failed her, by which point it was far too late and resulted in her very nearly killing him, a price he deemed a suitable penance for his neglect.

But NOT ONCE prior to this did Giles intervene. He had the resources and was capable of it, and not once did he sit her down properly and say, “Willow, I think we need to talk about your use of magic because I’m a tad concerned.” Even after resurrecting Buffy, he only chastises her for her recklessness, he doesn’t actively do anything beyond this except a few powerful glares. He is watching her make all the mistakes he made as a young rapscallion and doing nothing about it. Then in S7, he fulfils the mentor role to her and helps keep on track of her recovery, an older addict helping the younger. It just highlights that he could have helped her sooner before it was out of control.

This comes back to Giles’ basic structure as a character. He’s a Watcher, the mentor to the Slayer. His purpose is to be in Sunnydale for Buffy. His whole life is revolved around Buffy, she is factored into every single one of his decisions. He never signed up to be the ‘father-figure’, despite appearing to adopt that role very quickly. He never signed up to care for Xander and Willow, he isn’t the Watcher of them. He has never given any indication that he wants that responsibility, and it shouldn’t fall to him to care for a group of random teenagers. It’s this fundamental construction of Giles’ character that means that he’s borderline dependant on Buffy, which isn’t her fault at all. He sacrifices everything, even parts of himself for her and most of the time gets nothing in return. The point is that Giles is so busy being a Watcher that he can’t think of anything else. It’s not necessarily his fault, that’s exactly how he was trained, and arguably after the whole Eyghon debacle, it’s unlikely that he ever truly had faith in his judgement again. Remember when Giles put Buffy before Jenny, the woman he loves? Buffy comes first, always because the mission is what matters.

On a more speculative note, Giles was aware of Willow’s obsession with magic and didn’t know what to do, instead choosing to believe that he wanted to help her, but he didn’t trust himself to teach her the control she needed. It does narratively fit for Giles to be reluctant to help Willow learn the magicks given his past. However, he neglected her and is at least partially to blame for Willow becoming a magic junkie. He had every opportunity over YEARS to step in and offer her a proper education. He had the skills and if he were hesitant, certainly had the connections to find someone who would teach Willow properly, e.g., the Coven in Devon. The audience is acutely aware after The Dark Age that Giles has a history of abusing dark magic. Note that throughout the series, he does not actually use that much magic himself. This abuse led to Giles having to murder one of his friends among whatever else he and his ‘friends’ got up to, which means he knows full well the ramifications of messing with that kind of power and doesn’t want to go down that rabbit hole again. Magic is an addiction and he’s a recovering addict.

Equally, Willow never asked Giles for help. It’s all very well blaming him for being negligent and grossly irresponsible, but she didn’t ask him to teach her. She didn’t ask him for guidance or whatever, at least not memorably. Assume that he did help her. That he trained her and gave her a proper education in the magicks. There’s no guarantee that any of that would have prevented Willow from taking it too far. Willow has an addictive personality and therefore it makes logical sense for her to become addicted to magic. Ultimately, Giles could have spent years training her, but he can’t make decisions for her, nor does he wish to. Willow is her own person, a bright, capable young woman who is an adult. He cannot push her to do anything and it’s not in his nature to do so. Dark Willow is an inevitability in a sense.

Essentially while Giles staying in Sunnydale would’ve been preferable on a personal level, it would have made very little difference as to whether Willow would abuse the magicks. She’d already done so on countless occasions with no intervention therefore he likely wouldn’t have interfered until it was too little too late. It’s not that he doesn’t care for Willow, but he had other priorities, right or wrong. Should he have helped her? Absolutely. But it takes two to Tango...

[borisbubbles]

Eurovision 2010s: 30 - 26

30. Nika Kocharov & Young Georgian Lolitaz - “Midnight Gold” Georgia 2016

When rating Eurovision entrants, it’s important to also take note of the journey, and Nika Kocharov had one of the best ever? Similarly to The Shin, everyone was just about:blank towards “Midnight gold”, not understanding the concept and ranking it last in unison. Like Shin & Mariko, I was mostly intrigued and willing to give it a chance. Unlike the Shin though, I thought “Midnight Gold” was a good song for its genre, just not one I was that entheused by. The revamp, which provided the setting of a mad scientist’s laboratory, was a step in the right direction, providing a hint of entropy, a dash of absurdity, a spark of insanity.  And then, at long last, the dénouement:

STAINS OF MUD

ON UR SKIN

THE NIGHT WILL COME

AND SO WILL SIN

Winning LIFE *and* everyone over with that <3 I don’t think ANYONE could have anticipated that “Midnight gold” would deliver a non-stop absynthe-minded ACID TRIP in Stockholm. 😍   The visuals were so ICONIC they are still setting the special effects bar in the present day. This is Sacha Jean-Baptiste’s best staging. Period. Not “Euphoria”. Not “Alter ego”. Not “Fuego”. "Midnight gold”. BY FAR. Would it be even considered a stretch to go as far as saying that “Midnight Gold” has the best staging of any Eurovision entrant to date? I don’t think it does, but it is definitely a contender. 

Who would have thought that THIS song would become one of the more memorable, epic entries of a great year such as 2016? Of course the flawless staging also made me retroactively appreciate “Midnight gold” as a song as well and I regularly give it play time whenever I can. 😍 STAINS OF MUD. 

ps: I don’t care about fashion much, but I want his hat.

________________________________________________________________

29. Naviband - “Story of my life” Belarus 2017

[2017 Review here]

HEY HEY! HAYAYAYA HO!

What superlatives can I still use for describe the pure, unshattering LIGHT that is “Historija majho zyccia”? It leaks mirth from every pore, infecting everyone around it with the irresistable urge to tap their feet along to the HEY HEY HA JA JA HO’s!

At the center of this wonderful hovercraftian masterpiece lie Artiom and Ksenia, two of the most adorable humans ever to exist, who are also a couple irl and it shows. The two have chemistry and charisma in spades, especially Ksenia who is the living embodiment of the “^__^” emoji. I am ALWAYS happy when I listen to this song and I am thrilled we got to hear it twice. 

Eurosnob contempt for happiness is a well-documented feature in this ranking, but it reached its nadir with Naviband: You see, in addition to being ‘A Happy Song’ (a term used with contempt, imagine that O_O), Naviband are also folk singers from Belarus, who -shocker- sing in Belarusian.  However, don’t be harsh on the Eurosnobs because the area of the dopamine receptors in the brain of a Naviband hater are always attached to a person who isn’t living happily ever after. Naviband is life at its best. EMBRACE IT. Like this Lithuanian frump did:

________________________________________________________________

28. Måns Zelmerlöw - “Heroes” Sweden 2015

lol I JUST spoke about “Midnight gold” having one of the best, but not the best staging. Well, that’s because “Heroes” is, in my opinion, the most visually impressive Eurovision entry of all times. 🤗  I don’t think it’s even a stretch to call it that? “Heroes” as a song is widely regarded as pretty whatever, winning due to its act. However, while I don’t necessarily disagree this is why Måns won, I feel this take very much undersells Måns. Using it at an excuse to dismiss his goodness is ridiculous.

First of all; “Heroes” IS a really, really good song. Infectuous, upbeat, irresistably positive with highly quotable lyrics (”now go sing it like a hummingbird the greatest anthem ever heard” 😍) and an earnest anti-bullying message (<3). It may not be *as* original as some of the entries ranked around it on this list, but it definitely handles its own, with and without an act.

Another defining factor in making “Heroes” a great entry is Måns himself. Måns Zelmerlöw is arguably the most attractive human to ever set a foot on a Eurovision stage. The man is irresistable even on a platonic level. He puts every other charismatic performer to shame and does it effortlessly. 

However, even with these two trump cards, the staging is indeed the best part of “Heroes”. It bears repeating that I think this is the best Eurovision act to date. Impressive visual effects, flawless choreography and impeccable camerawork elevate “Heroes” to a much higher level. It tells it story with more clarity and efficacity than any other entry I can think of. 

Ultimately, Måns staging is a testament of his goodness, and an acceptable reason for winning Eurovision. Because of “Heroes”, many countries have upped their staging game, resulting in more visually impressive entries (specifically the Sabotage Baptiste ones in 2016, and Sergey I guess), which is a positive development. Live music isn’t so much about which song you perform, but about how you perform it, and “Heroes” is the best example of that.

_______________________________________________________________

27. ZiBBZ - “Stones” Switzerland 2018

[2018 Review Here]

WILD JOKAH ON A GOLD THRONE

Here we are again, our annual appointment with everyone’s favourite sibling alliance. 😍 “Stones” is powerful kick-ass diamond of indie-rock and a serious contender for my favourite Swiss entry of all time. 

The song is a masterclass in mental health awareness and  self-empowerment, dismantling bullying and depression with perfectly timed percussion and AHUMs, truth-bombing lyrics and an insanely charismatic lead who sounds like Joss Stone on five packs a day. 😍 It’s catchier than ebola, more addictive than sugar and soars higher than a kite. 

In addition to all of that jazz, “Stones” is also responsible for some of the most iconic visuals in 2018:

God the shot of Coco with the flare still sends shivers down my spine. WHAT A CRUSADER OF THE DOWNTRODDEN. 😍 Whenever I’m feeling down, this is the song that lifts me back up again. 

Really, the only thing not good about ZiBBZ was the camerawork and that wasn’t their fault. FY Hans Pancake. 🙄 If ever there were a robbed NQ who deserves a Genovaesque return, it’s the Zibblings. BRING THEM BACK!!! 

________________________________________________________________

26. Paula Seling & Ovi - “Playing with fire” Romania 2010

Speaking of highly addictive songs, holy cow Ovi I need rehab for that beat alone because I CANNOT get it out of my head.

Anyway, who else would be the #1 for Romania if not for Paula Seling and Ovi? “Miracle” was a beautiful example of tacky taste, but “Playing with fire”, man, :takes a sip of gin:, now that is the real stuff. 

I’ll start, I guess, where I’ve begun my write-up which is the composition: “Playing with fire” has one of the best underlying beats in this decade, which gives it infinite replayability. Layered on top of that is some delightfully aggressive piano (😍), on top of THAT some amazingly playful lyrics (”BOY BOY BOY If we’re mean, i would start a fight tonight” songs about playfighting <3) and on top of THAT, Paula Seling. Paula is the STAR of this performance, stealing the show every time she’s shown with deliciously flirtatious facial expressions

and some vocal masturbation in the guise of a dolphin impersonation.

 She and Ovi and ignite the place with both insane pyrotechnics and spontaneous chemistry. So fun, SO GOOD, so dynamic especially for an act where the main singers sit down in front of a double-headed plexiglass piano (😍). Duncan Laurence DEAD in a motherfucking DITCH. 

And with this update we have eliminated FIVE countries. Check their reviews below:

GEORGIA

Georgia is such a bizarre Eurovision country, often churning out absolutely BONKERS entries that leave Europe stunned in silence. <3 It may not be reflected in their vital statistics but I always look forward for what they have on offer because even in the rare case of them being boring, they are always interesting. 

BELARUS

Belarus was one of the worst countries in the 00s, but in the 2010s they’ve evolved into a bargain bin Moldova, which makes them solidly good. It’s really astounding that a country SO GOOD at being entertaining gets dismissed so easily because of their flag (and dictatorship (and gay rights)). They’re mostly good and 100% worthy of our time, tyvm!!

SWEDEN

The worst part of Sweden’s success streak is that it made them conceited and lazy. They no longer need to be innovative, creative or entertaining in order to get a top five position and worse, they are fully aware of it. This resulted in a marked drop in quality and if they don’t curb their hubris quickly, I predict it will soon come back to bite them. (ie: another NQ)

SWITZERLAND

B A S  I C. Zibbz and Luca did a lot of the heavy lifting here, which caused Switz to mathematically outrank Sweden, and while that’s hilarious it also feels absurd and wrong. Don’t be fooled by all that green though. Switzerland are basic bitches and have no idea what to do in order to be cool. 

ROMANIA

Romania are one of the better hit-or-miss countries in Eurovision, imo even if the chart doesn’t fully reflect it. The problem I have with them is that their entries don’t have a long shelf life. Like, the Cezars and Ilincae of this world grow stale very quickly because they’re exhausting and shallow. Having said that, this is by far preferable over being consistently boring (UK) or violently oscillating between great and demonic entries (Germany, Demark). 

[nurseydexunsolved]

My first ever nurseydex fic! Please go on ao3 and leave comments and reblog & all that jazz, I’ll love you forever. Also! If you have a prompt you desperately want someone to fill, just send it my way! Okay enjoy :)

//

William Poindexter was wheeling someone, but for the life of them, no one in the haus could get him to confess who.

Nursey noticed it first, entirely on accident. Dex had walked into the kitchen, shoulders at least two inches lower than they usually were, expression calm, and when Nursey knocked over his water, Dex just laughed and said, "Don't worry, I'll clean it up."

Nursey stared at him, shocked. The shock had to be the reason he said something as stupid as what he said next: "Whoa, bro, who took the stick out of your ass? You're acting... weird."

Unfortunately for Dex, Ransom, Holster, AND Shitty were all in the kitchen (preparing for the kegster that night) when Nursey said this, and the way they all immediately stopped their conversation and zeroed in on him was truly frightening. Dex barely had time to give Nurse the stink eye before he was being devoured by their well-meaning but invasive friends. Nursey wanted to join in on the chirping, but he realized he was feeling a little bit sick to his stomach, so he escaped upstairs.

Despite this, or maybe because of it, Nursey was the first person Dex told.

A couple days later he still hadn't cracked, to the endless irritation of Ransom's spreadsheets. They were hanging out in the library with Chow, but when Chris went to the snack shack downstairs, Dex tapped Nursey's foot with his.

"Hey," he said, which made Nurse's heart start thumping a little bit harder, because what could he possibly have to say that Chowder couldn't hear? And Dex's expression didn't help. He looked... nervous. And a bit vulnerable, like he was made of glass, which of course was never a good combination with Derek's clumsy ass.

"Yeah?" he said, trying to be delicate.

"I kind of have a question."

"What's it about?"

"Well, it's about... poetry," he said, looking anywhere but Nursey's eyes."Poetry? Bro, have you been holding out on me?? Do you need me to critique your couplets? I'll do it, I promise, there is nothing I want more than to read poetry written by Mr. Grumpy—"

"Shut up," Dex laughed, the tension eased a little bit. "No, it's not my poetry. It was written... well. It's kind of, um, about me. And I want you to tell me if it's good."

Nursey's heart plunged into a cold lake. "Oh, for real? Well, I mean, there isn't really such a thing as bad poetry, you know. I'm not elitist about that sort of thing." The look on Dex's face told him that was the wrong answer. "But, I mean, I'll take a look. Do you have it with you?"

Dex wordlessly handed it over, and Derek read.

 "I've never been very religious I believe in entropy and science, experiments and evidence, gravity and stars But then I look and I swear, there is something in the glow of your golden eyes and well that is an unexplained phenomena if I've ever seen one And perhaps you were always meant to disprove my hypothesis Because I swear I found Virgo in the constellations on your collarbones And there must be a gravity around you because I feel it like a tug on my sternum when you leave And if there is a God, he must be a sadist Because I am sure he made you and thought, "Here is a smile they will start wars for.""

 There was a lot going through Derek Nurse's head.

First, his English major brain started critiquing it: too short, not a very smooth flow, some odd sentence structures.

Then he thought, God, who could describe Dex in cliches. Gravity? Constellations? I would have said—

Then he stopped himself. And started to panic. And realized this person was really in love with Dex, because duh. They weren't wrong about the smile.

He glanced down and saw he'd been gripping the page tight enough to crinkle, and smoothed it onto the table.

"So?" Dex said, searching Nursey's face almost desperately. "Is it good? Do—do you like it?"

Nurse almost laughed at that. Was it good? Yeah, maybe. Did he like it?

Fuck no.

He focused on the first question.

"Um, well, I really liked the way she tied the subject to her questioning religion and science, almost making him a messiah-like figure, and the continuity of that metaphor—"

"Nurse. This isn't workshop. I asked you if you liked it."

Derek tried to imagine that he'd been presented this piece in workshop, and not by his d-partner, who was currently giving him the most unbearably eager expression. Nursey couldn't imagine why his opinion mattered to Dex, but he glared down at the paper and said, "Yeah, overall, I liked it."

Dex stared at him for another really long moment, and Nursey didn't know what to do with his hands, and then Dex grabbed the paper and shuffled it around.

"So. I mean, not to pry, but obviously—"

"His name's Evan," Dex said. "I met him at that Sunday kegster, the day party. He told me he wanted me to 'look' at his poem, but it's obviously about me, and I don't know. He's really nice and cute and it's just." Dex sighed, avoiding Nurse's eyes. "It's nice to know someone looks at me like that. That someone could, in any fucking universe, describe my eyes as 'unexplainable phenomena.' But I didn't know if it was just bullshit or what, so I wanted to show it to—to you."

Dex finally looked him in the eye again, and—oh. Nursey had been so fucking stupid, he was so mad he hadn't thought of writing poetry about Dex's eyes first. They were so raw, so expressive. He was a tad dumbstuck, until he managed to sputter out, "Well, do you—do you like him too?"

"I think I could," he said, like it was a confession. He looked away, toward the window, and Nursey really wished he was a photographer in that moment, so he could capture that look. "I really think I could."

//

In the end, Evan gave himself away.

Dex and Nursey were sitting alone at the kitchen table, with Bitty humming happily at the counter, when Derek saw it.

Before he could help himself, he whispered to his phone, "Oh, you know not what you do."

This earned him a very confused look from Dex. He simply handed over his phone, watching Dex's eyes bug out, as he raced to unlock his own phone and delete the incriminating evidence.

It was too late. They heard the loud, "Dude!" followed by Holster's booming "DUDE!!!" before Dex had even pulled up instagram. Ransom was on insta almost as much as Bitty was on twitter.

Dex's fate was sealed.

"Ummmmm DEX?" came Holster's voice down the stairs before he thundered into the kitchen. "Who is this HOTTIE commenting WINKY FACE EMOJIS on your selfies??"

"It's not a selfie—"

"Actually Holtz, I believe the comment in question was, 'looking good dex,' then the winky face emoji."

"Oh, of course, how could I be so foolish."

"Did y'all already send the screenshot to the gc?" Bitty asked, looking down at his continuously vibrating phone. "Oh, give Dex a break, will ya?"

"Yeah, I would love to, Bitty," Rans said, grinning at his phone with what could only be called malicious glee, "but it turns out Dex's new boo-thang has been posting delightful candids of our boy here along with captions written in—wait for it—free verse poetry."

"How the fuck did you find--? He's on private!" Dex objected, the confusion momentarily distracting him from hiding his very red face.

"Dude, this kid can write," Holster said. "Are you sure he's not only dating you for an excuse to write autumnal prose?"

"YES!" Rans yelled. "The poetry drew her in! Lardo joined the flaming!"

"GOD," Dex groaned, muffled into his sleeves since he was facedown on the table. "LET ME DIE HERE.”

"Now, of course we all support you and your sexuality, but in the interest of equal opportunity chirping—"

"SHUT UP HOLSTER!"

//

The real problem began when Nursey went to his poetry writing seminar on Wednesday, because now he knew what Evan looked like. He’d put a face to the poem, and discovered the proof confirming Evan’s sadist theory that God was personally TiVo-ing Derek’s Actual Life and laughing his ass off, because Evan?

Evan was in Derek’s poetry writing seminar.

Even better, when the prof counted them off into groups for mini-workshop sessions, Evan was in his group.

Guess which poem he brought to workshop?

Derek would have been the first to admit that he maybe didn’t handle the situation as maturely as possible. He had a reputation in their class of being opinionated, but even he knew as the words were coming out of his mouth that he was going overboard. He talked about this metaphor not hitting just right, that line maybe wasn’t totally accurate? (After all, he did know who the poem was about. He could judge accuracy.) By the end of class, he had practically rewritten the whole thing for him, but to his credit, Evan took the whole thing like a champ, taking notes on everything Derek said.

“By the way, are you married to the whole second-person thing?” Derek said, hating the words even as they came out of his own mouth.

“Um, well, I kind of conceptualized it as a literal love letter. Like, I wanted to evoke the feeling in the reader of like, the person who I love is pouring out their soul to me in an ode, and all that’s missing is some cursive and a postage stamp in the corner,” he said.

“That’s a really cool idea,” Derek gritted out, mostly because he meant it. “Is that why it’s so vague?” he asked, because maybe there was hope. Maybe he really just wanted Dex to read his poem.

“What?” Evan replied, looking surprised.

“Well, I mean, you don’t have any particular details in it: this could be about anyone. Did you do that intentionally so the reader could envision it being addressed to them?” And, honestly. His prying was getting a little pathetically obvious now.

“Oh. Um, I guess you’re right, but that wasn’t intentional. Actually, it is about a really specific person. Ha, guess it’s just the closeted queer kid in me, avoiding any obvious markers of gender or whatever. You’re totally right, I’ll work on that.”

Derek sunk back into his seat, real guilt settling on his chest as their groupmates sent Evan sympathetic looks.

It would have been much easier to hate Evan if Derek didn’t like him so much.

//

He didn’t mean to write the poem.

Honest. It just spilled out of his fingers, typed into a shame-note on his phone, not even titled.

Well, until the third draft. Then he titled the note, “Freckles.” And then he had to transfer it to google docs, where all his poetry went, just to be safe.

And somehow, some way, Derek ended up in the library printing out 20 copies for his entire workshop to read.

It wasn’t that he hated himself; nor even that he was convinced that it was that great of a poem. The whole “having feelings for Dex” thing was too confusing and intense and new for him to be able to be objective at all. It was just, he’d procrastinated the hell out of the assignment, since he'd had two essays due the same week and thought, “It’s a poetry prompt. I have notebooks stuffed with poetry. I’m sure I have something.”

Except, then it was the night before Wednesday, and he realized he didn’t have anything that fit the prompt.

Well. Except one poem.

Which was how he printed out and handed his own ode to Dex right into his boyfriend’s fucking arms.

Oh yeah, because that was a thing.

A couple weeks ago, half the team had “accidentally” run into Dex and Evan on a date, where Dex had introduced Evan as his boyfriend and Evan had tried to chat with Nursey about their seminar and Nursey had excused himself to the bathroom, to quiet his shaking hands.

Since then, whenever Dex went to kegsters and the bars and even a house party at one of Rans's Weird Sciencey Friends's place, Evan was with him. Which like. If you didn't know they were together, you probably wouldn't even guess it. Nursey had never seen them kiss, and the most PDA he'd spotted was Dex dragging Evan out of a kegster by his hand. Technically. But the thing was, Dex was so...different when he was with Evan. Evan made him laugh, like belly laugh, all the time. Dex was constantly smiling or laughing or joking whenever Evan was in the room, and Nursey really just could not deal. If he'd thought he had it bad before, that was literally a joke compared to the sight of Dex animatedly telling a funny story, swinging his arms everywhere, barely able to finish for laughing so hard.

The problem was that he wasn't telling the story to Nursey.

All this, maybe, possibly, Nursey could handle. He could move on. If Dex hadn't walked into their room looking extremely distraught less than a week ago.

Well. Extremely distraught on Dex looked like mildly perturbed on most other people but Nursey could read Dex pretty well at this point.

"Dex?" he said, "Are you alright?"

He expected a brush-off, like every other time Nursey inquired after his emotional state. What he got was, "I don't know."

Nurse swiveled away from his laptop, full attention to Dex. "What's up?"

Dex gave a frustrated huff. "It's just...ugh. It's gonna sound shitty."

Nursey raised an unimpressed eyebrow.

Dex huffed again. "Okay. But I might not say it right. Um, so Evan has some... mental health issues. Which is fine! That isn't the problem. I like all of who he is, not just... ugh. The problem is... I don't think he's really... dealing with it?"

Nursey kept his face impassive. Dex knew about Nursey's mental health struggles as well, and yet he chose to come to him for this. He would withhold judgement until Dex said what he had to say.

"Like he... he makes me happy, and he makes me laugh, and he makes me feel good about myself. But he puts himself down all the time. And I don't think he's fishing for compliments or reassurance or anything, but it feels like, if I don't reassure him every time, I'm just feeding into it and reaffirming those thoughts and making everything worse. And that's like, a lot of pressure? And he has some really concerning symptoms. Like, he'll just casually drop that he had a panic attack in class or that he dissociated for hours this morning and I don't know what to do. I don't know how to help. I can't, I am so not qualified for that. So I'll be like, 'maybe you should see a therapist or get a diagnosis or like...talk to someone'? And he'll just be like 'I probably should' and then do nothing. And I try to tell him nothing will change or get better if he doesn't do anything, and I'm just starting to feel like if I don't make his mental health a priority then no one will, and because I care about him, I want to see him, I don't know, be okay. But that means taking it all on, and I just, I don't, I've been monologuing about this for long enough and please help."

Nursey nodded, face still carefully composed. He'd been in a similar situation with a cousin, and told Dex he was on the right track and had to take care of himself first, and to talk to Evan about it first, and if after that he couldn't prove he was making an effort to improve his health then Dex should end the relationship. All in all, Nurse was quite proud with his maturity in handling the situation, and could sleep well knowing he gave Dex the advice he would give anyone.

Except.

Knowing this was so detrimental to Nursey's dumbass feelings-for-Dex heart balloon, which expanded with shallow, selfish hope with the knowledge that Dex wasn't totally happy and that Evan had, like, at least one flaw.

It was the stupid balloon that had made him write the poem in the first place. He just had to let some of the air out before it popped. How could he have known it would end up like this?

He reread the poem nervously while class was winding down, tuning out the prof's droning about atmosphere.

 i bet you heard that your freckles were constellations, stars scattered across shoulders but i have never heard something so wrong stars are dead things, explosions of heat and gas, and what we see are the remnants of light, hanging on only to the echo but your skin is a living masterpiece a splattered miracle of pigment and sundrops and pointilism you might be the water droplets that bead up on the car ride home, as i watch two drops race each other to avoid looking at your hair or your eyes or your freckled fists on the wheel, because i know if i look i will do something stupid like fall in love— but it's too late. i didn't see it coming because i always thought it would be gradual, but all it takes is for me to see the fireworks of freckles on your sternum, permanently burned onto your skin like the imprint of the sun on the back of my eyes and it explodes in my chest, this thing that i let happen so no, dear, you are not like the constellations so fickle, disappearing every morning, hiding behind the clouds your freckles are like freckles because i have tried and tried, but i cannot for the life of me think of a more beautiful word

 An elbow in his side jolted him back to class. It was Evan's.

"Can't wait to read your poem!" he said.

"Haha, thanks," he said.

Haha, fuck, he thought.

//

"Nurse. I read your poem."

Nursey's eyes tracked slowly up from his reading to the puppy-dog eyed boy in front of him. Evan. Shit.

"I can explain," he said.

Evan slid into the booth next to him at Annie's. "I need your advice."

Nursey repeated Evan's word in his brain once, and then twice, and then a third time, really breaking down each word, and he was still confused. "What?"

"With Dex. I have eyes. You obviously really care about him. Like, you're in love with him, I mean. And maybe that makes me stupid for asking you, but I don't really have anyone else I know who'll hear what I have to say and have Dex's best interests at heart, and so I'm trusting you to be honest with me, because I don't really think I'm capable of being honest with myself right now."

"I'm sorry, are you asking me for relationship advice?" The words left his own mouth but they still didn't make sense.

"Kind of. It's just. Has Dex told you anything about me?"

He knew what Evan was asking. "He told me you had some mental health issues, yeah. And that it's been... well. A support system can't be one person."

Evan nodded, like this was what he had been wanting to hear, which only succeeded in confusing Nursey more.

"Yes. Exactly. So. I wanted to ask someone who actually knew Dex about it, because I don't think he's being honest with me. I mean, I think he's trying to hide his feelings because he's afraid it will like, break me, or make me feel worse, or whatever. I guess my question is... am I hurting him?"

And, fuck. All of Nursey's irrational dislike of Evan flew out the window when he heard that soft little question, Evan's voice almost too raw to bear.

Which was why Nursey knew he was being honest when he whispered, "Yes." He rushed on to amend, "Well, it's not actually your mental illness, whatever that is, Dex never specified. It's that Dex feels like the responsibility for your mental well-being is entirely on his shoulders, which is not healthy for anyone to feel, ever. He really cares about you, Evan. But from what I gather, you're putting a lot of weight on him. You need to have someone else besides Dex: your family, other friends, maybe a therapist. Okay, no, as someone with bipolar, you actually should definitely have a therapist. But it's gonna take a while, dude. And until then... yeah. You are hurting him."

The fucking look in his eyes, man. "I need him," he said.

"I know," Nursey replied. "Which is probably why you have to let him go."

Evan sighed, a release of understanding, of learning something you already knew. "Thank you. I just needed someone to say it out loud to me." He looked down at his hands, picking the skin off the side of the nail. "Um. Do you know how... where would I find a good therapist? Do you think?"

//

Things after that were harder. But also better.

Dex was devastated, he was. But Nursey could also see the relief in the set of his shoulders. That Evan would be okay, or he was on his way to being okay, and it wasn't Dex's job to fix him. Or anyone's job but Evan's, honestly. Nursey had almost forgotten the whole ode to Dex thing.

Almost.

Until Dex burst into their room, paper in hand, yelling, "Hey, Nurse? What the fuck is this?"

Nursey froze at his desk. He didn't have to look. He could feel the words on the paper in the room with them, haunting him. Why did he have to be so melo-fucking-dramatic all the time?

"What's what?" he said instead of all that, swiveling around calmly, thinking maybe if he acted chill his blood pressure would be fooled and decrease.

(Or maybe it would increase just enough that he could have a heart attack and be in the ER and not this room?)

"Nursey. Please don't insult my intelligence."

He risked a glance up to Dex's face, which didn't look mad or embarrassed or any of the emotions Nursey would immediately associate with an unwanted love confession.

"Look, you were never supposed to see it, okay—"

Dex let out a laugh, one of those laughs when there's some sort of emotion in you and you don't really know where to put it and it just bursts out into a laugh. Nursey thought of volcanoes and pillow fights and popped balloons. His fingers itched for a pencil.

"Oh, so you were just gonna let me be ignorant forever? You were really never gonna tell me this is how you feel?"

"I—" Nursey watched Dex's face, but he really couldn't reconcile Dex's tone with his words with his face. They were all criss-crossed, like Dex's eyelashes when he woke up from a nap.

His hand actually made it all the way to the pen on his desk, screaming to write it all down, before he forced it to return back to his lap just to fiddle with. It wasn't his fault Dex looked so beautiful like this. So alive.

"I don't know what you want me to say."

This was clearly not the right thing, because he saw the irritation settle into Dex's face, like tinder on a campfire, before he closed his eyes, leaning back, and breathing in deep.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to come in here picking a fight. I want you to be honest with me. Please."

"I—" Three seconds ago, he'd been composing poetry, prose, metaphors about his feelings. And yet somehow in this moment, he couldn't think of one single thing to say.

"I'm obsessed with you," he blurted. "It's kind of embarrassing, actually. I think about you literally all the time. And I always write what I'm thinking about. So I wrote that."

Dex shook his head, his lips turned up faintly in disbelief, like he was laughing at a joke no one had told yet. "I'm sorry, when did you write this?"

"Um...like... a month ago? I think? Maybe."

Dex's eyes closed, like he was having trouble with the math. Dex was really excellent at math.

"So you're telling me you've liked me about as long as I've been with Evan."

Nursey mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like "maybe."

"What about his poem?"

Nurse blinked. "What about it?"

This time Dex really did laugh. It sounded a bit delirious. "When I showed you his poem! Did you really think I wanted your opinion on his prose?"

Nursey said nothing, but the look on his face probably betrayed that yes, that was what he'd thought.

"For someone who can write such brilliant shit—" he waved the paper around, "—you really are dense sometimes. I was giving you a chance! To say something, to stop me, I don't know. But then you said you liked it, so I thought, 'well, that settles it, he's not into me. Time to move on.' And then I did. And then you have the audacity to write this motherfucking—"

Dex looked like he was edging into full on rant mode, so Derek stood up quickly and interrupted with, "Hey Dex?"

Dex hit the brakes, looking up at Nursey like he very much wanted to finish. "What?"

"Can I kiss you?"

And, man. Dex was so beautiful like this, arms askew in the middle of the point he'd been making, hair mussed, face confused, like his words had stopped but his brain was veering off course. He kind of looked like a mess. Derek's heart swelled.

"Okay," he said.

Derek rushed in, worried if he waited any longer Dex would keep talking.

He didn't.

Dex's hands found Nurse's waist, paper still in hand, gripping at his back and grabbing him, pulling him closer. Nursey framed his hands around Dex's face, dragging him into the kiss. One of his hands gripped at the back of Dex's neck, sliding up over his short hair, like he'd wanted to do for months.

His mouth was so warm, just like the rest of him, but more, somehow. Nursey opened his mouth, sucking on Dex's lip. Dex's hand reflexively squeezed Nursey's waist. Before he could get too cocky about that, Dex caught Nursey's bottom lip in his teeth, scraping slow over it, sending chills down his scalp over his whole body.

"Wait, wait, wait," Dex said, pulling away, kinda, in the sense that his mouth was no longer attached to Nursey's, but he was still pretty entwined all up in Derek. He leaned his head down to catch his breath, his panting blowing over Derek's neck, giving Derek the mental image of Dex kissing him there, which, fuck—

"I was gonna say something," Dex said, eyes still looking kind of scrambled.

"Mm-hmm," Derek hummed, leaning in close again. One of Dex's hands left Nursey's waist and brushed his own lips, and yeah, Nursey knew the feeling. His mouth was literally humming, floating away from the rest of him.

"I can't remember," Dex said, grinning, already leaning back into Derek.

"That's okay," Derek murmured against Dex's pulse, which he could actually feel thrumming rapidly against his lips. "We have time."

And he kissed and kissed and kissed him, until there wasn't a single freckle left untouched.

[withastolenlantern]

“Detective, is that you?” Santomas groaned, trying to sit up but failing and falling back into the hospital bed. He’d been unconscious for nearly ten hours.

“Oh, you’re awake. Good. Less paperwork,” Chatham chided.

“Where am I?” he asked, looking around at the unfamiliar setting. “What the fuck happened?”

“Chandelier exploded. Most of it landed on you,” the inspector explained.

He lifted his hand to his head, feeling the bandages covering the stitchwork at his forehead.

“Cuts and bruises. You’ll survive” she said, reassuring.

“Well, it’s not like I could get any uglier,” he snorted. “So back to the part about the chandelier exploding…”

“Technically several of them exploded. Then there was a lot of gunfire, and a lot of yelling, and a lot of very rich, very scared partygoers.”

“Jesus,” Santomas said with a low whistle. He tried again to sit upright, straining the IV lines before making into a somewhat hunched position. “Who…?

“Still working on it. Forensics are running facial scans on the bodies.” The engineer gave as best a quizzical look as he could manage through the bandages, and in response Chatham smiled wanly and patted the Webley, now nestled in a holster slung under her shoulder. “No doubt about where the guns came from, though.”

“Fuuuuuuuuuck,” he moaned, half in despair and half in pain, flopping back down onto the oversized pillow. He was silent, then, for a good several minutes, the gravity of the situation slowly weighing on him. She thought perhaps he’d fallen back asleep, the painkillers taking their hold, but after a moment he sighed quietly. “Tell me something good,” he asked.

“When I was a girl, my family would holiday on this thin strip of beach in a sleepy resort town called Sedgefield,” she said. “My dad would load up the Volkswagen the night before and rouse mum and I before the sun came up to beat the morning traffic out of town. Took the better part of a day to make the drive, and we’d arrive just sundown. Mom would pack a picnic dinner of cheeses and biltong and Stellenbosch wine. Sometimes you’d see dolphins playing just offshore in the waning afternoon light, darting in and out amongst the waves. The water was warm and clear, and we’d leave the windows open at night and drift off to the gentle sounds of the surf. It was peaceful there. Hours from anything of consequence.”

“Sounds nice,” Santomas replied.

“It was. It’s gone, now; swallowed by the sea,” Chatham explained. Her voice carried no malice or regret, just a frankness that belied the current state of the world. Time moved on, things changed, people died. She’d taken a physics class once, in university; she couldn’t recall most of it, and the math had been mostly over her head, but one single lecture had always stuck with her. The proctor had explained the laws of thermodynamics, that they stated the total energy of a system could never increase, but the total entropy could never decrease. At the time it had been a simple statement of theory, a checkmark on the syllabus of basic physical concepts, but to Eloise Chatham it had been a revelation.

It was as if someone had ripped a musty dust-cover from a window to the world. Suddenly the feeling she’d had since that day in Bloem, that suspicion and fear and unease, had been proven true; indelible, physical fact, written into the fabric of the universe as it was in her heart. It didn’t matter to her that it implied her suffering and sadness and sleepless nights were only the start of some slower downward spiral. Not then anyway.

It just mattered that it made sense. That it allowed for some logic in an illogical world, that it gave some method to the madness. Her father had been taken in a senseless and random way, but that was the way things were. And matched against the disorder of the world, with its rising seas and failing crops and rattling sabers, it felt right, if small. Time moved on, buildings crumbled, people died. There was no morality to it, no right or wrong, just decline.

Beside her, Santomas coughed, deep and wet. He had drifted back off to sleep, the holo showing his heart rate had breathing slowed. She patted his hand gently and stood from the chair, quietly walking to the hallway so as not to disturb him. She looked back one last time at the slumbering form and sighed at the sight.

It had been years later, after two tours of violence under a hot desert sun and more time walking the beat in her father’s footsteps, that she decided there was justice, but only where we will it. Disorder may be the way of the world but that didn’t mean she couldn’t delay it. That the chaos that took her father was just as much man’s making as the universe’s, and that entropy could be reduced. You can’t hold the tide with a broom, but there’s virtue in the sweeping.

[yespoetry]

Lisa Marie Basile: 33 Confessions

33 confessions

I grow a new body in summer; one wave and I am clean. I am sub rosa. I am every summer tumbling forever.  I never asked for this, but November gave me a summer hunger. I must tumble again until I find the light. 

I am trying so hard to inhabit the thing people see of me, but I am a girl with rotten teeth; I was born in new jersey where the trains connect to everywhere and nowhere and I wasn’t made for wings.

I was once champagne and grass; but now I’m behaving. 

I used to have a friend who knew my name. She only ever called me by another. I spent years wondering who that was supposed to be.

When I was very young, the whole precipice collapsed and I woke up with the insects in the underbelly. We lived in the woods for a few years, between the green and the blue. I remember sap. I remember fireflies. I counted stars. It was too expensive to heat the house in winter, so we left. But I remember the faces we made in the candlelit dark. There is a room inside me made of that place. 

I watched him from the back of the police car. I didn’t dare touch the door handle, in case we were locked in. My brother turned to me with a soft face and said it’s okay. I replay replay replay until my cuticles are bleeding. 

When I say I want to live, what I mean is I want to go deeper. Take me there; that’s when I stop wanting to be alive.

The man who came out of the cell is different. There’s a valley and we can’t hike it. There’s a man who doesn’t realize his own earth. 

I signed my name to 50,000 invisible dollars so that I could prove my ancestors wrong. They want poetry of the sea. They want poetry of body. They can’t understand the Institution. I thought I summoned something grand, but I only signed my name onto another rotation of a broken cycle. 

I threw my windows open and called for La Bella 'Mbriana — the air, give me the air, per favore. The air. It was meant to cleanse this space but I’m still sick.

At night I get into my skin and play music in the dark. I don’t tell anyone or wake anyone but then when I finally crawl back into bed I am a transformed thing. No one goes to the same church. 

I stood at the same water’s edge and spoke to the same sea. In three years I begged to heal three bodies. Sometimes I wonder if I’m casting spells or shackling myself to the impossible.

When you died there was black blood everywhere and my mother came to me by cab to weep. She turned back around because she thought you’d be in the living room, waiting. She couldn’t bear to leave your ghost. I asked her what she felt and then I wrote about it. Now you’re alive forever because I’m a thief of wounds.

There is a small part of my body that wilts at your name. You are the altar of my madness. The glass and garden in opera shatters. What they don’t know is how you worshipped me. It was supposed to distract me from your cruelty. 

As a child I purposefully got on the wrong bus. I wanted to get lost. My mother had auburn hair then, and it made no sense, and when she saw me in the summer sun, finally found, she wept. I have never known that love. I still want to get lost.

I watch you as you speak about her, and I lie. Oh how I have become liar. How I become the lie. 

You can’t know me until you know what it feels like to wait for insurance to approve the medicine that comes between my father’s life and death. Until you know what the inside of that black tulip looks like don’t say my name. 

On the beach I traced your name in the sand. And then the fever dream. 

When I love you I see your smallness. I can smell your lack. It’s this or nothing. 

The truth is I start to panic; in me a hundred Venetian masks running in the rain. Who moves between the rain drops? Which body is real? 

I cast spells that don’t always work because I am too feral. I can’t call on the elements because I am the elements.

I punish myself with simplicity and pink. 

In Andalucía I found myself at the top of a hill at noon. The white houses were a song I knew before birth. 

They always tell you that it gets easier. It never does; it changes shape and melody. But eventually it becomes the sort of nightfall you can sleep through.

I sprawled out on the couch next to my cat and watched the light fall from the sky onto his face. The peace. The little particles coming for my heart. Everything so slow and realized.

The night before my grandmother left forever she drank at the bar built by the man whose hands touched me. 

When you know poverty you live forever in a wind tunnel. That noise, that pull. It stretches on even when the windows are open and the room is allowed to breath.

I know what you said about me in Italy. The problem is that Italy knows it too. Watch your back at night. My ancestors prefer blood to pearls.

My mother is a Leo underneath the hunger. Slowly the lion emerges, renamed. It is not about bravery. It’s about the cowardice not killing you. 

I am behind a scrim; I am the scrim. I am the beyond. 

When I saw my spine for the first time I saw ivy. I felt the wound but I saw only god. 

Lighten your hair, they said. Convert. Come home for dinner. And the tulips and the tulips and the tulips. They were my only language. I lightened my hair and still spoke my damage. I spoke my name until my hair grew so black night fell. 

I keep a crucifix and a vial of sand. I keep my body. I keep everything from the day I was born. Who knows what I will carry tomorrow. Who knows who.

Lisa Marie Basile is most recently the author of Nympholepsy, a poetry collection, and Light Magic for Dark Times, a collection of practices and rituals for self-care. She is the founder and editor of Luna Luna Magazine, and her work can be found in The New York Times, Catapult, Entropy, Bustle, Bust, Best American Poetry, Best American Experimental Writing, The Atlas Review, and more. She received an MFA in Writing from the New School and is working on her forthcoming book, Wordcraft, which explores writing as ritual act.

[frickengreenfrickyeah]

An Irreverent Intro to the Iliad

A/N:I’ve taken the introduction to the Lombardo translation and condensed it. Any time I says something to the effect of “don’t quote me on this” that means I’ve added my own analysis or thoughts that I cannot back up in any way, so don’t, like, put it in an essay if you don’t plan on doing your own research.

Anyway, you don’t care about that stuff, you came here to read about the Iliad.

It’s really fricken long, so, for the sake of mobile users, everything’s under the cut except for this:

“Rage. Bitch, lemme tell you about the time that Achilles fucked over the entire Greek army by Rage-quitting.”

Timeline for the Noobs 

Ten years ago:

Aphrodite bribes Paris so she can win a beauty contest between herself, Athena, and Hera. Paris’ reward for his ‘heroics’ is Helen

(There’s probably an essay’s worth of symbolism you could dig into here, what with the goddesses all representing different priorities: erotic love, wisdom/justice, and familial duty. I wonder what Paris’ choice reveals about his character?)

There’s some disagreement about whether or not Helen when with Paris willingly

Seeing as literally no other woman in the Iliad (and maybe the entire Cycle? Don’t quote me on that) willingly went with her kidnapper, I’m calling bull on that. Do with that what you will.

Menelaus gets really mad that Paris stole his wife, so he rounds up the Greek army, and they go to war. (It’s worth noting that Athena and Hera are both on his side here.)

Present day:

Agamemnon(Boo), Menelaus’ brother kidnaps a girl. Then he has the balls to get upset that the girl’s father called Apollo’s plague down upon the Greeks until she’s returned

Achilles points out that Agamemnon’s being a dick and people are literally dying because he won’t let go of one girl. Agamemnon says, “Fine. If I have to give up my lady-war-prize, I’m taking yours as recompense.”

Achilles allows Agamemnon to take his girl, then Rage-quits. As consequence, people die.

Hypocrites. Hypocrites everywhere. If you wanna analyze that for an essay, I think there’s plenty to talk about. 

The Theme Worth Giving a Shit About (Because it Drives the Narrative)

Heroes risk their lives on the battlefield in exchange for Prizes

Ie. riches, bitches, and clout

Honor <--> Shame is how they judge the value of others and themselves. Honor wins Prizes, Shame loses Prizes

3 Characters Worth Giving a Shit About (Because They Explore the Aforementioned Theme)

Achilles: Main character. Rage is his thing. Also, pouting. 

His honor is insulted by Agamemnon(Boo) taking away Briseis, his lady war prize. Since war prizes are how their society rewards heroes for risking their lives, Agamemnon is basically saying he doesn’t care of Achilles dies or not.

And that hurts Achilles’ feelings because he knows he’s gonna die. There’s a prophecy about it. 

The only reason he’s fighting is because society conditioned him to believe that Prizes and eternal glory were worth dying for.

Now that he doubts everything he knows, he refuses to fight for the Greeks.

The entire poem is the consequences of his Rage-quit

Agamemnon: fuck this guy

He loses his lady war prize, so he takes Achilles’. Because short-sighted spite is the best motivator.

He and Achilles start the poem in the same place, believing that material goods should equally compensate a loss. Achilles is the one who learns that that’s not how that works.

Agamemnon starts as a dick and ends as a dick. Google Iphigenia if you want to learn more. And that shit he pulls with Cassandra? Major dickbag. Fuck this guy. 

Hector: The Trojan hero, and honestly the only likable guy here. 

He is Achilles’ foil. 

Just like Achilles, he’s separated from society - but, unlike Achilles, it’s not because he rejects their values. It’s because he never questions them.

He’s basically the perfect hero, and he suffers for it:

His son is scared of his war helmet

He can’t stay closer to home to fight defensively because that’s ‘shameful’

And he can’t even stay in the city that long on his breaks because wine and women are too tempting. 

Side Characters to Maybe Give a Fuck About

Patroclus: The most important of the supporting cast, and he’s only in it for, like, maybe a book

Achilles’ BFF and probably more

(Read: Definitely more. If you listen carefully, you can hear me chanting OTP OTP OTP every time you open your book.)

He is Achilles’ double

He never doubts society but supports his bestie’s midlife crisis anyway

His death at the hands of Hector symbolizes Achilles’ death because he was wearing Achilles’ armor at the time

Achilles causes Patroclus’ death btw

When he Rage-quits, he asks Zeus to help the Trojans (because short-sighted spite is the best motivator). Patroclus goes to help the Greeks wearing Achilles’ very recognizable armor, causing Hector to target and kill him

His death redirects Achilles’ Rage at the Trojans instead of the Greeks

Diomedes: a badass fighter

Greater Ajax: a badass fighter

and (I think) the guy who talks sense into Achilles at some point

Ajax the Lesser: a badass fighter (are you sensing a theme in these characters?)

Odysseus: the only smart guy here

The Odyssey is about him btw

The Trojan horse was his idea, according to the Aeneid (and maybe other places? But definitely the Aeneid.)

WTF is an Epic Poem Anyway?

Epic Poem: recounts events with far-reaching historical consequences, sums up the values and achievements of an entire culture, and documents the full variety of the war

Basically, if “’Murica, Fuck Yeah” sums up America, then the Iliad sums up Ancient Greece

(Actually, Hamilton is a better comparison, but I needed to make a joke. Fite me.)

That “full variety” thing is why Book 2 and a couple other places just list off a bunch of ships or leaders and their dads. That shit is boring. Skip it. 

But also, that ‘full variety’ thing is what makes other parts of the story so interesting. Homer will sum up a dude’s life story right before he kills them or some shit. It magnifies the scale of the narrative by showing how insignificant one person’s experience is - no one person can stop the war.

That’s what makes Achilles’ story even more powerful --> because his impact on the war is significant. His Rage controls the ebb and flow of it. 

He can’t stop the war though. No one can. 

The Gods are Petty as Fuck

Homeric gods look/act like humans, but they’re different mainly because of two things:

1. They can’t die.

That means they treat the events of the war less seriously than the mortals do.

2. The gods know about fate

To the modern reader, it seems like the humans have no agency, but that’s not really the case

Knowing fate is a bit like knowing the plot of a movie. It gives insight into a character’s actions that would otherwise seem random.

By reading this poem, you’re basically a god. Don’t let it go to your head. (But, hey, there’s a reason I’m majoring in this shit)

Bards like Homer would more directly be gods because they changed and adapted the story as they told it, just like the gods influence human actions in the story.

Don't quote me on that tho

Character choices are usually doubly motivated - by the human, and by the gods

Ex: Achilles chooses not to kill Agamemnon because Athena tells him not to.

This is personifying the literal thought process he had so that the reader understands what’s going through his head.

Fate doesn’t force anyone to act out of character --> fate is the consequence of their life choices

The gods not caring about death and his own lack of foresight is what Achilles messes up on

He asks Zeus to help him get revenge on the Greeks because he assumes Zeus cares about that sort of thing, but Zeus is bigger than that.

That leads Patroclus’ death, btw.

The “Enduring Heart” Shit

Achilles is really butthurt that Agamemnon wronged him

The lesson he has to learn is that even if material goods can’t make up for losses, there’s no other option --> you can’t bring people back from the dead, so you have to move on

That’s the Enduring Heart shit

also, if you abstract that concept it sounds kinda like entropy to me (Don’t quote me on that tho)

He learns that lesson by feeling pity for Priam (Hector’s dad) instead of perpetuating the Rage Train

And, hey, that Enduring Heart shit is a lesson that all of us could take to heart. None of us want to die, but it’s gonna happen. Maybe that’s not fair, but throwing a temper tantrum isn’t going to change anything. Really, the only way to avoid being miserable is to embrace our mortality so we can appreciate life while we have it

don’t quote me on that tho

In a nutshell, Achilles has to accept his mortal-ness. Otherwise there’s a lot of unnecessary suffering. 

That’s why we don’t need to see him die in the Iliad even though everyone makes such a big deal about the prophecy about his death. His journey was completed as soon as he found pity in himself instead of Rage - essentially rejecting the godly side of himself (oh yeah, I forgot to mention. His mom is a goddess) and embracing his mortality. 

because gods don’t have to deal with death, they can Rage all they want, remember?

Also, if he never dies, he can’t be reunited with Patroclus. 

OTP OTP OTP

You could probably write an essay about how Achilles died as soon as Patroclus did.

Honestly Boring Historical Context (That might be interesting if you’re a nerd like me?

The poem was basically historical fantasy even when it was first written. There are gods and super strength and shit

Greek History Over-Simplified: The Mycanaean Period was prosperous but ended suddenly. The Dark Ages of Greece followed, and we don’t know much about what happened during that because they forgot the written word was a thin. 

The events of the poem probably take place during the Mycanaean Period because they use bronze weapons. 

But warfare is described from more of a Dark Ages perspective. Like, they don’t use chariots the right way

Which suggests that chariots were part of the source material, then the Dark Ages made people forget how they were supposed to be sued, so the bards just kinda made shit up to explain their presence. (Don’t quote me on that tho)

The Oral Tradition of the poem means that this story was told thousands of times over hundreds (thousands?) of years. So the narrative is hones at shit.

it has the sculpted body of an Olympic athlete. Each muscle toned to do a specific job and everything works perfectly together to accomplish the sporty feat of interest. Every verse is packed with character, setting, plot, and cultural significance

Except for that Catologue of Ships shit. Boooo boring ships.

There were probably lots of other versions of the poem, but Homer told it best. His version was written down as soon as the written word was (re)invented

Side Note that wasn’t in Lombardo’s Intro

The Iliad and Odyssey are both parts of a larger body of work known as the Epic Cycle 

(The Aeneid is basically Caesar Augustus-insert fanfiction at that, btw. Virgil was a satirical fanboy and I’m living for it.)

Characters and events are introduced with the assumptions that the reader already knows their importance

But we only have fragments of the rest of the Cycle today because it was either never written down or the manuscripts were lost

I’m looking at you, Burned Library of Alexandria

*sad fiddle music plays in the background

Videos That I Learned Shit From (Only, like, the first two links are relevant to the topic at hand, btw)

Basic Plot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faSrRHw6eZ8

More about the Epic Cycle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3bn0eKt4Rw 

Iphigenia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifFsKCrH3GM 

Oresteia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kpGhivh05k             

The Odyssey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-3rHQ70Pag&index=4&list=PLDb22nlVXGgfwG1qbOtNgu897E_ky_8To (Also, this story is my favorite of the Epic Cycle)

The Aeneid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRruBVFXjnY&list=PLDb22nlVXGgfwG1qbOtNgu897E_ky_8To&index=5  

Ancient Greek History: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzGVpkYiJ9w&index=2&list=PLDb22nlVXGgexsbafIwirG6Tk9uww9dSW    

And, yeah, these videos are all from the same channel. I’m a basic bitch and a ho for not leaving my comfort zone. Fite me. 

Honestly, if anyone has other sources, let me know. Youtube history/video essays are my shit.

I hope this was helpful.

[scriptstructure]

Tips for writing tragedy/stories where the hero loses? Also, somewhat relatedly, for writing stories where the overall theme or question driving the narrative isn't one where you, the author, have an answer so you'd rather just... ask? It's made it difficult for me to know how to end things but I'm still stuck with the fact I don't know the answer to the dilemma my characters are facing. Other than it feels like it has to end badly either for just one character or for all characters involved.

I’m not sure that these things are quite as intrinsically related as you think; you can have a tragedy where the driving question of the story is absolutely answered in the text, and you can have non-tragic stories where the central question is left ambiguous. I don’t think it’s necessary to have a definitive ‘answer’ to the central questions of a story because I don’t think that the function of a story is to provide answers. If anything, it’s to open up the space to consider all options, or to explore things that we are uncertain of, etc.

I think that if stories were only written where the author was setting out a definitive answer to the question the story poses, then there would be a lot more boring books in the world.

In large part, this is because stories deal with many of the same problems that we face in life, and much of life has no easy answers, and while in some cases easy answers can be comforting, that is not what all of literature is there to do, many stories there are no easy answers, or just more questions, sometimes the fact that the question is being asked is enough to drive the story and looking for an answer would be a whole ‘nother deal entirely.

The other other thing, is that you don’t need to have solid answers to start writing. It’s enough to ask. You don’t have to understand the meaning of your own work perfectly before you start on it, you’ll likely develop an understanding of what you’re doing as you do it, and often there will be things that you won’t see in your own work until much later, when you re-read it with new life experiences, or when someone else points things out to you that you hadn’t realised you put there.

Uncertainty and ambiguity aren’t inherently tragic, they’re just a part of life. Difficult to deal with, a lot of times sure, but also funny, interesting, puzzling, entertaining, there’s no tragedy in not being absolutely certain.

So, writing tragedies is pretty difficult, you’ve got the fact that it’s going to be a downer in some way at the end, along with that you’ve got to carry a whole story until that ending, and make it compelling enough that people won’t sit back after reading it and go ‘wow if I wanted to feel that depressed I’d just watch the six-o-clock news’. It’s a challenge, but it’s doable, and when done well it can make for a wrenching, fascinating story.

It’s important to consider why the tragedy occurs, there are many themes that can drive a tragic plot, such as corruption as in Hamlet, personal evil as with Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, natural entropy as in The Lord of the Rings, and as you figure out why the tragedy occurs, it will influence and be influenced by the nature of the world of the story.

Another vital element is character agency, this is the sense that the choices characters make and the actions they take in the story have real impact on the course of the plot, whether for good or for ill. Character agency is important in making the story feel less like ‘a lot of stuff just happens to this person’ and more like ‘this is the story of this person’s role in these events’.

Hamlet is an example that probably most people have read and studied at some point, the tragedy of the story is the decay of Denmark’s royal family, and Hamlet’s agency shows in the play as he makes many decisions that have consequences that change the flow of the story. You’ve probably done this part in school, where we learn that tragic heroes have what is called a ‘fatal flaw’ which means that they will be doomed to tragedy. Hamlet’s is often called his indecision, his unwillingness to kill his uncle. 

In this set-up, the narrative see-saws back and forth as Hamlet wrestles with this decision, and it exposes ‘something rotten in the state of Denmark’ which brings the story down to the final moment where the slate has to be wiped clean and a new player steps in to take over. All the Danish royals are dead, and Fortinbras steps in to do a little speech about how there’s a bright future ahead now that he’s in charge.

So in Hamlet, the fuel of the tragedy is corruption of the institution of the monarchy, and Hamlet’s agency is the decisions that he makes during the course of the play (when he refrains from killing his uncle, when he accidentally kills Polonius, when he drives Ophelia mad, etc). There are very few parts of the story which aren’t directly linked to the choices that Hamlet makes, even if he makes bad decisions, is careless, cruel, or shortsighted, he has immense influence over his own story.

In Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, there is a similar thing happening, but instead of the corruption of a system of government, it is the nuclear family. Also, the story is narrated by the villain, and we know from the beginning that he will be dead very soon after the end of the story. The real tragedy is the evil he does along the way, most notably to the title character Lolita, the step-daughter he abuses and who eventually dies. The tragedy here is the gleeful destruction of innocence by a man driven by his own grotesque desires.

But both of these are very people-focussed tragedies. In each of these cases, these tragedies occur even though there are multiple opportunities for something to have been done differently and so change the outcome. The tragedy is in the missed opportunity, or in the decision to do the wrong thing.

The tragic narrative of The Lord of the Rings and the accompanying texts, most notably The Silmarillion is one which stems out of a basic reality of the world of the story. The wold was created imperfect, and is subject to entropic change over time. Even though there is a heroic narrative taking place where many characters will do their best, do the right thing, work for good, stick together, and they will manage to make a significant difference in the course of the story, there are massive, historical underlying forces which mean that the world can never go back or regain the former glory and goodness.

The scourge of Sauron is defeated, but the age of Elves ends, the ring is destroyed, but Frodo never recovers from his injuries, Saruman is defeated, but the Shire is never going to be the same as before the battle. In many ways, The Lord of the Rings is about dealing with the fallout of tragedy, informed by Tolkien’s experiences during and after World War 1, (HERE is an article that touches on that, written by his grandson Simon Tolkien). But it also deals with the premise of a flawed universe.

In the creation myth of Middle-earth, the world is sung into being, but as it forms a ‘discordant note’ enters the song, and the ripples of that fan out through the history of the world, it is linked directly to Morgoth, whose main drive is to corrupt elements of creation and sow discord, and later Sauron, Morgoth’s servant. This represents a sense that there is a force for decay built into the world of the story, and that if it weren’t for the heroes who stand up to face it, then it would be able to spread corruption and decay unchecked. The nature of an entropic universe is to fall into chaos, but that chaos can be mitigated, the form it takes altered.

The tragedy is that all things must end eventually, but the agency of the characters is that they can make a stand and say ‘not today’. They win, but at great cost, they return home and see how it is marked by what has occurred.

So some things to keep in mind when you’re writing a tragedy:

Figure out what kind of tragedy it is, what is the cause of the tragedy?

Ensure that your characters have agency, they must be able to take an active role in the events of the story.

Work out the scale of the tragedy, is this a personal, intimate story, or is it a metaphysical story? (could be both, most likely somewhere in the middle)

It could help to think of what the ‘happy’ version of the story might be, and that can help you visualise the tragedy as ‘what went wrong’--what made Hamlet go from a teen comedy about a couple of bros at college into the gorefest it ends up being?

I hope that helps, this is a pretty broad question though, so if I’ve missed the mark here, please do send a more specific question.

[luckychrm]

Gabriel Appreciation Week: hero/villain

day 1,

once again, thank you to @wearemiraculous to put this together <3

About 15 years ago Papillon was Paris’ hero. An idol, an icon, a role model you blindly looked up to.

Now, he was back to active but with a completely different game. Instead of being the city’s saviour, Papillon was the one who spread horror, hatred and chaos all over the place. 

In his eyes, he was still doing the right thing, though. But not to the others.

“No one will understand” He whispered in the emptiness of his lair, the statement looking a way to comfort him about his actions.

The ones who were once his fans now are poor souls who despise him the most, feeling bad about all the time and love they wasted over him, their empty hearts crushed by all the destruction that he caused. The young ones lived terrified of being caught on this manipulation net of his but had to learn how to mask it well in order to survive. He could sense it all but only the strongest among the weakest would be caught.

Paris was under this never-ending emotional dictatorship and if not the fantastic work of Ladybug and Chat Noir, things would be so much worse.

In fact, he used to have a partner to help him fight evil when his days were glorious ones. But that was a thing of the past and the past stays in the past. He prefers to work solo now because he has more freedom, more control over his plans.

“Partners are foolish.” He thinks to himself, every word sounding more bittersweet than the last one.

But what made him change so suddenly? What made a man from good turn to evil? What kind of thing made him cross the boundaries of good and bad, right and wrong, correct and incorrect?

What was it?

Of course the public doesn't know the reason. Not the public, not the guardian, not his own son, hell! Not even Ladybug and Chat knew and they were confined to fight him, to prevent this ruthless entropy like a kind of prophecy that you avoid at all costs and want to badly believe it's a lie but no matter what it always becomes real.

Some even believed that he changed his game out of pure fun, but a villain doesn't do nothing for pure fun. He always has a reason, a motive strong enough to make him go mad and blind; Papillon’s was love.

(What a clichê! But as they say, you do the craziest things for love)

Love made him restless, sleepless, insane, truly logical (more than what he used to be), trying to come up with the maddest plans to bring his love back. Love made him ecstatic but it also hurt him, made him desperate, broke him like a toy in the same way he was breaking every single Paris’ hopes and dreams.

“One day my love, I’ll bring you back.” He cried over an enormous painting, his tears gently washing away some hints of gold but only bringing more grief to him.

He was blindly sure he would bring her back, but at what cost? A cost higher than anything possible, a cost than in fact he couldn't even pay: another innocent life. But he didn't know it and he didn't care to get informed about it because all that mattered was that she would be back. Everything seemed so simple, why making it harder?

During the next 4 years, Papillon was defeated by his enemies over and over; revised his plans countless times, did everything to primate his powers to an unthinkable level and most importantly, never gave up on chasing what once belonged to him.

One day, he did it. He got the so desired miraculouses and made his wish real. He got his love back, Paris got its emotions back, but unknowingly something would never be back.

“Marinette? Marinette! No, no, no, no! Please don't give up on me!” A very familiar voice screamed inside his head, panic and hatred spreading more and more like a virus and becoming stronger that one thousand men. He knew those feelings too well and felt this nostalgic empathy for the unfortunate voice. Now he also knows the price to pay for his reckless attitude. But surprisingly he still thinks it was worth it. (Of course he thinks.)

Today, neither Papillon the hero and Papillon the villain are on duty, their opposite legacies being the only thing that keeps them alive. But somewhere in the centre of Paris, the man behind that mask carries the weight an innocent death as a price for his love.

[sunnydaleherald]

The Sunnydale Herald Newsletter, Thursday, February 4

Cordy: "Hey." Angel: "Hey." Cordy after a while: "Why are you looking at me like that?" Angel: "Ah, no reason." After a moment Cordy gets up and walks past Angel to pour a cup of coffee. Cordy: "Okay. It's getting creepy now." Angel: "I was just thinking about things. - People. You know. How they relate. Take you and me for instance. We're very different. *Very* different. Obviously (points at Cordy) human (points at himself) vampire. (points at Cordy) Woman (points at himself) man...pire."

~~Offspring~~

The Sunnydale Herald is still looking for a couple of new editors! For more information, drop us an ask on Tumblr or contact Rahirah on LJ or DW!

[Drabbles & Short Fiction]

In Search of Ashes (Spike/Drusilla, T) by Coldest_Fire

The Slayer and the Twice-Blessed Child (crossover with Charmed, Buffy, G) by Bl4ckHunter

Still better than Riley (Angel & Spike, T) by Bl4ckHunter

Weirded out but all good (Faith/Buffy, Angel&Buffy, Angel&Faith, T) by Aragorn_II_Elessar

when is a monster not a monster? (Dawn/Janice, M) by clytemnestras

your lips, my lips, apocalypse (Buffy/Cordelia, T) by lockheartss

So wrong it's right (Angel/vamp!reader) by prose-for-hire

What Kind Of Party Hats Are We Talking Here? (surprise crossover, Scoobies, FR13) by Manchester

[Chaptered Fiction]

Klaus and the Dark Slayer, Chapter 1 (crossover with "The Vampire Diaries" and "The Originals", Faith/Klaus Mikaelson, Faith&Xander, T) by Buffyworldbuilder

Reordering the Universe, Chapter 16 (Spike/Buffy, Adult Only) by Touchstoneaf

Mortal Allies Series, Episode 3: Postcards From the Edge, Chapter 11 (Spike/Buffy, NC-17) by Passion4Spike

[Images, Audio & Video]

Artwork: Variant cover for BtVS #22 from BOOM! Studios (Buffy, worksafe) by naomifranq

Gif edit: Mika – "Heroes" (Buffy, worksafe) by dykejaskiers

Vid: Mad World (Buffy) by Madsnessa X Edits

Vid: Prepare Me (Buffy) by ZNellyZ

Music: Buffy and Angel Theme by Cristophe Beck - piano and glockenspiel cover by Vonelle Allocco

Artwork process video: Painting Willow Rosenberg | Paint With Me (worksafe) by Tressa Humbird

Animation: Buffy opening - animatic (Scoobies) by Snarky Rag

Artwork: S1 banners of the main cast (Giles, Cordelia, Buffy, Willow, Xander, worksafe) by Puppet

[Reviews & Recaps]

Welcome to the Hellmouth by ourworldofwonders

Thoughts from my Buffy rewatch 4x22 by yesitsterriblysimple

The Harvest and Witch by Charlotte Torkel

Date Night: The Witch by Drive Home Reviews

Never Kill a Boy on the First Date by Reverse Angle

Never Kill a Boy on the First Date by My Girlfriend Made Me Watch

Slayer Talk: I Robot, You Jane by Hellbound Horror Festival

Surprise by LexChats

Go Fish by Flunking the Written

Becoming part 1 by JustDaggers

Faith, Hope, and Trick by Once More, with Ling-Ling

Discussion of AtS 1.16 "The Ring", 1.17 "Eternity", 1.18 "Five By Five", 1.19 "Sanctuary" by RDHWesley

What's your favourite Season 2 Episode? by idiotic_memer and others

PODCAST: Still Pretty 144. Entropy (S6.18)

[Recs]

Tough Audience by badly_knitted recced by petzipellepingo

Xander fic recs and discussion of sparkage/chemistry, lack thereof by darkspook, AstridDante, DeepBlueJoy

[Fandom Discussions]

[Comparing/contrasting Spike with Castiel from "Supernatural"] by angelinthefire, yesitsterriblysimple

Season 4 is underrated by yesitsterriblysimple

[1750s fashion on AtS] by amazighbuffy

I’ve seen a lot of criticism of “Innocence” for essentially punishing Buffy for having sex. by yesitsterriblysimple

Post death a second time around [Why would the Scoobies think Buffy would just come back okay?] by Crober45 and others

Kendra deserved better by Grebnesorwolliw and others

Am I the only person who finds Angel wholesome as Hell? [on r/ANGEL...] [...and on r/buffy] hosted by Sayed64

best episode about friendship? hosted by kingtychrist

What would you expect to happen after Not Fade Away? by TypicalPsychology6, purplemackem

Confusing moments with Angelus (BtVS season 2) by R S Hunter

Celebrity Appearances on BtVS by Girly Gore

Angel vs. Spike by Girly Gore, Those Horror Pals

Most emotional episodes on BtVS by Girly Gore

Man Crush Monday Episode 1 Spike by Jason Rev

The Secret Genius of BtVS Season 1 by Twisted View

Submit a link to be included in the newsletter!

[emordnilap-fr]

Age of Darkness

(1. Age of Prosperity) (2. Age of Fracturing) (3. Age of Turmoil)

Mmmm yeah kids it’s the fourth age now, an Even More Interesting™ (imo) age. And, it’s the age right before the current age, so it’s very very new stuff! **tiny warning: small nsfw reference, not much but i might as well mention it?

The Keepers - Vrensai The effects of the unseen magic around the clan began slowly at first. Tiny changes in behavior, some dragons becoming colder, or snappish, or gradually isolating themselves from others emotionally. Quiet manipulation of those close to them, nearly-unnoticeable changes in some dragons’ appearances, bouts of violence and anger. Most dragons brushed this off as stress from adjusting to the City, but eventually the events of the previous age couldn’t be to blame. Something was wrong, but it was too late to change anything.

Suddenly, the magic revealed itself in the form of possessing Zenturio and driving him mad, causing him to viciously attack fellow dragons (killing Geode in the process). He was imprisoned in the sewers under the City as had been done with Oceana, where he’d be left to descend further into madness. With this development, the clan realised that the “magic” in the clan was, in fact, the Shade. It didn’t take long for deep divides to form after this realisation, as the Shade started taking further control of the dragons affected by Its presence.

Sunset, a highly-affected dragon, drastically changed the clan’s government. The Sects were disbanded and Eiszapfen was removed as Sunset’s advisor, as she made herself the monarch of the clan. She very quickly lost the support of the unaffected dragons, while those Shade-touched dragons now held her in the highest regard. Feuerstern, previously a priest for the clan, became the Shade’s voice, allowing It to use the imperial to preach to the Shade-touched dragons and intensify It’s influence. Eventually, he would take Eiszapfen’s place as Sunset’s advisor. Tension between Sunset and Flechte escalates to the point of violence at times, the two no longer being mates. Sunset and Feuerstern become mates soon after.

Oceana, trapped under the City, becomes Shade-touched herself. Her broken mind is easily controlled by It, and It begins to mutate her body, but her imprisonment restricts her. All she can do is wordlessly call and roar and cry out from her cell. Zenturio had always been Shade-touched, but managed to stay out of Its control until now. It mutates his body as well, though far more drastically than Oceana.

Wren has been living in the shrouded ruins around the clan, where she has indeed be touched by the Shade. However, she can avoid Its influence and instead channels It for her own use. She begins to act as a guardian angel of sorts to the clan, guiding dragons back to the clan and killing the Shade-mutated creatures out hidden in the shadows. Her use of the Shade heavily changes her appearance, and she continues to mutate the more she uses It. 

Fizz tries to find an old friend who’d gone missing, but ended up being caught by a Shade-mutated skydancer. Wren managed to kill the creature and took Fizz under her wing, teaching the fae how to use the Shade without corruption. Fizz undergoes an accidental breed change, while the Shade alters her colors and mutates her. The two continue to act as guardian angels.

The clan’s market area is bustling, and the clan’s wealth grows immensely. The merchants keep a larger portion for themselves than before, while Sunset keeps the rest of the wealth for her own use (”for the clan”). Food is only slightly less scarce. While outsiders are around, the division between dragons are hidden, but outside of the market, tension an hatred grows. Many times, it leads to outright violence. No nests are laid during this age.

Sunset breaks all alliances with other clans, dragon and Beastclan alike. While enemies within the clan are everywhere, outside of the clan, the only enemies are the mutated creatures around their area of settlement. The name of the clan is changed to Vrensai, and the clan’s official symbol is altered.

As time progresses, there becomes a clear divide between “factions”. The corrupted clan members are loyal to Sunset and Feuerstern, while those not corrupted have either become loners (such as Mangrove) or have secretly begun to support Eiszapfen. Uncorrupted dragons plan a coup d’etat of sorts, and some pretend to be corrupted to avoid suspicion. Maelstrom is among these dragons.

Near the end of this age, Flechte, Spiegel, Chance, Feuer, Lehrer, and Soleil are imprisoned in the large communal workshop building, largely out of Sunset’s contempt for Flechte but unwillingness to kill him or allow him any chance to leave the clan. Most of the other industrial workers were imprisoned simply due to the fact that, well, they were in the building. They can still be of use, however, in the form of being made to build things. Maelstrom guards the building. Seven is kept inside as well by Maelstrom, though this is meant to keep her safe.

The Shade is not content; It wants full control over the clan. Sunset’s faction support this. Eiszapfen’s faction plans to revolt. Tension and violence rules. Now, this can’t end well, can it... 

The Enclave

During this age is when the Enclave earns most of its infamy. They carry out operations all around Sornieth, though they remain based in the Shadowbinder’s Forum. What started as a drug ring has grown to include mercenary work, prostitution, mass gambling, organised thieving, and extortion, among things. Allies can be assured safety, while enemies of the Enclave will surely have Hell to pay.

During the previous age, several members of the Enclave left the organisation. This age brings a few new faces to the ring: Stolz, Sucht, and Thebain. The arrival of dragons unaffiliated with the Keepers/Vrensai encouraged the old members, so sure of themselves that they were indeed the best illicit organisation on the continent.

They grow stronger.

The Gravewatchers

Theta is less a leader or ruler, and more simply a kind source of unity. He helps the dragons who’ve come with him deal with their problems, and keeps them all together. The hope that the Keepers would eventually return was a uniting thought among them.

The local Talonok are still a severe problem for the Gravewatchers. Luckily, Bast, Shadow, and a few other fighters could manage to keep them at bay. It was difficult work... but they managed. Void is... occasionally an issue, though she tends to keep herself in the area on the other side of the old lair. Run-ins are relatively rare.

Small-scale trade with other nearby clans helps this clan hold a small amount of wealth. They remain allied with the Secrets. Food is not an issue, though despite a surplus, no new dragons have joined the clan. (Although there have been sightings of, seemingly, a ghost...) Overall, they’re doing well to sustain themselves.

Geheimnisvoll

Nothing much happens with the clan aside from the joining of Entropy and Manganate. They’re all bitches engaging in illicit activities and doing research. They do a small amount of specialised trade.

Loners

Well... nothing much happens with these guys. There’s a few notable dragons who have or eventually will cross paths with other loners or clans: Valkyrie and Kriegsflotte (two pirates in rival ships), Relay and Jetta (time-travelling Shade-hunters), Heilig (paladin of the Arcanist), and Glory (a lone assassin). 

Side notes!  - i was/am listening to history of the entire world i guess on loop while writing this. it will haunt my dreams. it looped at least 15 times. help.  - ehehEHEHEHE NEXT AGE IS THE CURRENT AGE  - i edited the previous post but i’ll put it as a note here too: the clans are nocturnal! (aside from some loners and Geheimnisvoll) aside from some “daybirds” (like “night owls”), guards, and merchants, the dragons sleep during the day.  - i don’t think i explained something else about the previous post: the toolti for Dayglo Thresh say: “this plant flares to a brilliant glow when magics are worked in its vicinity.” this alludes to the Shade!  - this thing’s like... 1.3k words. end me.   - let me know if something doesn’t make sense or if you have a question! i don’t proofread these, and i’m not usually the best at explaining things ;o;

[village-skeptic]

There are just so many damn things to pull out of this image, and some subsequent Googling to legitimate my initial knee-jerk reaction of "oh hello, William Faulkner" just seemed to bring into sharp relief a lot of interesting connections. These ended more as scattered remarks than as a full proper essay, but it still got long, ‘cause I don’t know any other way to be! 

So: thoughts about the symbolic aesthetics of this image; class, trash, and “timelessness”; a constellation of classic literature, film, TV, and pop music connections; and ideas about Jughead Jones in S2, below the cut. 

@lessoleilscouchants knows her Faulkner much better than I do, and so encapsulated brilliantly a lot of what I was going to say in her own observations about this aesthetic: “a semi-tragic narrative of class warfare, dead yellow grass, weighty history, bare feet on broken steps, useless resistance against the paths set out for them, and a general sense of doom.” I want to also add a theme from Faulkner's short story "Barn Burning": a son agonizing over whether he should remain loyal to his father in the face of that man's repeated crimes. The choice is complicated by the fact that his father's acts of destruction are clearly a form of protest against the family's place in the profoundly inequitable structure of their society. Hellllooooo FP, Jughead, and South Side Serpent feels! (Although I certainly hope that FP does not suffer Ab Snopes’ fate.)

I got to "Barn Burning" from this really great essay about the material culture of trash and waste in Faulkner's work. Jumping back to the campy elements of Riverdale, it certainly made me think about the ways in which we are all “trash” for this “trash show” - but it also made me move more broadly from the materiality of "trash" to remember that Faulkner's Snopeses are generally considered one of the most famous examples of "white trash" in American literature. (I am scare-quoting this term to be clear that I’m not just throwing it out there, but rather am bringing it up to analyze it.) Despite Jughead calling himself "a damaged loner outsider from the wrong side of the tracks" and Cheryl calling him "a hobo," I'm pretty sure that up to this point, no one on Riverdale has actually used a term that would seem to present itself very naturally: "trailer trash." (Again, not just throwing this term out there!)

This absence is interesting, especially considering the (seemingly increasing) importance of FP's trailer as a physical location where important plot points happen (*ahem*), and as a general shorthand for characterizing conflicts between FP and Jughead, the South Side and the North Side, and the issue of class within Riverdale generally.

And so now we get this beautifully composed image, which is just full of elements of entropy and decay and trash, in all the varied and loaded meanings of that term. I’m going to repost for scrolling convenience - many thanks to @musingmola for the original image of the tweet, and @jandjsalmon‘s close-ups.

There's the trailer itself, with discoloration of the siding - the old and tilting antenna - the bars on one set of windows (but not both) - the blue tarp on the roof at top left. As we know, this is a decaying and neglected home, both literally and metaphorically.

We have the selection of objects outside the trailer, which seem to have just accumulated there over time - there's that breakdown of order, the rejection of social rules about keeping a neat house. The objects SEEM random - an old hand mower, a washtub, the various scrap metal parts behind Jughead, the garden gnome - and there, too, we have that postmodern fascination with evocative fragmentation, with the potential in trash and pieces.

A quick note on "trailer trash," considered now as an identity category rather than as the actual physical objects surrounding the trailer. Although obviously non-white people can and do live in trailers, "trailer trash" is pretty much interchangeable with "white trash." And "white trash" is first and foremost a distancing term that lays down boundaries to try to contain problematic whiteness - whiteness that is poor, disorderly, violent, ungovernable; whiteness that threatens to disrupt and undermine the typical racialized social hierarchies. (This is not my insight - people like Annalee Newitz and John Hartigan, Jr., and most recently Nancy Isenberg have written much more thoroughly about the history, connotations and function of the term.)

Let’s go for the loudest detail first: that white tank top is such a loaded symbol in this context, you guys. It's SO loaded. We all know what the awful colloquial term for a shirt like that is. I don't totally buy the full explanation for the origins of the term here, but the observation that classic films (like Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire) cemented its symbolic association with violent, unstable, and I would add a sexualized working-class masculinity, is apt. 

(So: RAS commenting on the "timelessness" of this shot? Check. Possibly Jughead reaching into his own store of classic film symbology? Also check. I can’t find the promo image of Jughead in that weird jacket right now, but I want to point out that this isn’t the first Brando aesthetic nod we've gotten for S2. I STILL need to know who the fuck Stefano is!) 

That bandaged hand is straight-up evidence of previous violence; that wary look and the tense posture implies the promise of more to come, as needed. I am NOT, of course, suggesting the connotations of the shirt as an explanation for that injured hand in this case! Just observing on the general aura of trouble. 

Furthermore. This kid normally lives in layers of clothing, and now we've got him down to that ever-so-symbolic sleeveless top, sitting resignedly outside his family home? Way to underscore the idea that the circumstances of Season 2 are going to strip down all those layers, and make Jughead grapple with who he is, where he comes from, where his loyalties lie, what he's afraid of being underneath it all, etc. 

Jughead's fascination with writing and film, particularly auteur film - I'm now thinking about that as a layer of cultural armor against being called "white trash." Like, I don't think it's feigned or anything - but it certainly has the happy side-effect of being a way to forestall those accusations of a lack of culture. He's not TRASH; he's a WEIRDO. He's on the fringes, but that gives him the power of insight that you lack. (I should also point out here that @foresightfromforsythe has been doing this Jughead-as-trash-king analysis piece by piece for months now. Whoever runs that account is brilliant.)

The idea of concealing or revealing your fears about who you are and what you've inherited from your parents, got me thinking about another one of my beloved TV shows, in which the main character creates a new identity that allows him to escape the childhood wounds inflicted by poverty, a troubled, alcoholic father/son relationship, and repeated maternal rejection. And I realized that nearly any time that Don Draper is getting touch with his inner Dick Whitman, white sleeveless undershirts come into play in EXACTLY the same ways I've been talking about above.

Dick Whitman and his “Uncle” Mack:

Dick Whitman in the moments leading up to the creation of Don Draper:

And then I got lost in considering the fact that Don Draper's father's name is ACTUALLY ARCHIE; the whole Betty connection; and that in one memorable episode, Don Draper hallucinates about sleeping with a character played by Madchen Amick and then strangling her to death. I don't think that any of that is actually all that useful in reading this image or the direction of Season 2 - I'm not arguing that Jughead is Don Draper - but it sure was fun to think about.  

Of course, the connection to Mad Men also gets us to some of the criticism leveled at that show - that it was more in love with its own aesthetic than with exploring the historical issues of the period, and particularly the racial tensions of the 1960s. I'm not going to rehash that debate here, but I *will* observe that Riverdale also loves its aesthetic and has also received some criticism about needing to make its non-white characters more fully realized. There's always the possibility that Season 2 is going to do the "Civil War" storyline in a way that centers mood and aesthetic, which, like, clearly I HOPE IT DOES, but there are ways to do that with more and less heft, you know? I know I'm going to love it one way or the other - for me, it's honestly enough for this show to be Teen Peaks/Maple Syrup Murder Hour, without necessarily saying that it must also be Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. But it's going to be interesting to see just how seriously the showrunners decide to engage with this theme.  

Because of course, a predilection for surface-level engagement is another interpretation of the image. For everything that I've just said about trailer trash above, God knows that there is also a certain type of undeniable (and undeniably comfortable) cultural capital in the melancholy aesthetic of rusty metal and decaying trailers and lithe young white men showing off their defined biceps in sleeveless T-shirts. (CS himself also seems to love to play with and remix this aesthetic in his photography and personal aesthetic.) It's the minor-key version of Americana. We might call it, as Everlast does, "White Trash Beautiful."  

(Please note: this is the potential departure point for a whole other Current Events meta on the cultural politics of nostalgia and the romanticization of an idealized version of the white working class, which - in short: please make smart and savvy choices, RAS!)

Anyway, now that I've gone and broken the seal on musical connections here, it's time to say that I probably could have just copy/pasted the lyrics to Modest Mouse's "Trailer Trash" here and been done with it. (Here's a great little essay on this song at Pop Matters.) 

The ephemeral "trash" of plastic forks and paper plates; the "short love and a long divorce"; calling the people you love "fakes" when they try to compare their trauma with yours, and then realizing that you need them anyway and apologizing as best you can: is there anything more 1x10 Jughead than this? It'll be interesting to see whether it turns out to be S2 Jughead as well. 

[bambamramfan]

Responsiblity and Failure

RatAdjFriend: I don't understand your argument with @leviathan-supersystem RatAdjFriend: Are you saying "social mores/socially defined morality is (can be?) a bad thing"? RatAdjFriend: Are you saying 'morality is a terrible guide to ethical choices"? RatAdjFriend: Are you saying "morality as a form of social pressure does not arise from a dialectic within the society"? RatAdjFriend: (Also, I'd argue "mechanism X will fail you" is not an argument against mechanism X) RatAdjFriend: (all mechanisms fail) RatAdjFriend: (it's the nature of limited knowledge and entropy) RatAdjFriend: (internally constructing your ethics from first principles and reasoning through them will fail you) RatAdjFriend: (accepting an ethical system from a superbeing who knows everything and can tell you the correct thing to do will fail you)

(This is ignoring the specifics of why “social forces” will fail you as a source of moral knowledge, and answering the abstract question of “where should we get our knowledge of right and wrong from.)

So as the nihilist objection points out, any ethical drive we “independently” come up with, will still come from somewhere. So this is more about taking responsibility. The easiest answer to any moral question is because someone else told me to. Because that’s the law, or because God said so, or because this is the direction of the dialectic. And so anyone who wishes to sway us, we simply direct them to some external source. It’s not our fault, we respond to them, my morality is just in service of some other cause.

The flaws of this approach are obvious. We must instead identify with our reasons. We choose this course (not to kill, to keep our money instead of sharing it, to stand by a loved one as they are accused of a crime) and own it. If someone objects, then they object with us, and not the Big Other who we have outsourced our ethical decisions to.

Consider the Batman, who has an iron clad Code of Honor not to kill, which he supposes he must follow or else “he would go mad” and become some sort of bloody tyrant. When the fact is because of his riches and his intelligence he is above the law and can do or kill anything he judges right, and that responsibility terrifies him. So he boxes it in with arbitrary rules that don’t really make sense. He is failing to take responsibility for what should be done with the Joker.

Contra, I consider myself an atheist Christian who’s fundamental ethical drive is from compassionate humanism. I take a lot of comfort and direction from the reported teachings of Jesus Christ 2000 years ago - but I defend them as my own, and if scholars proved that everyone about Christ was made up in 500 AD, I would simply not care. Those tenets are simply true to me, and I will defend them as I defend myself.

By “any outside source will fail you” I do not just mean “it will have some errors you need to correct for.” There are many things we can derive some knowledge from while being cautiously skeptical. That’s just normal risk management.

When your moral order is from something else - such as a loving God, or your family unit, or the liberal-geek order of the 90′s - you are not just looking at it as “one source of advice.” It is your bedrock, without which you can not find meaning. So when LS, an avowed Communist, writes that moral truth comes from the social technology that is neither moral realism nor moral nihilism, that means they are unreservedly drawing meaning from seeing society as an upward ladder towards some leftist ideal. (Hint, it’s not a constant ladder, and Cthulhu probably drifts more libertarian than leftist.)

And then at some point, this source of meaning, will endorse something you find unequivocally cruel or stupid. There are two responses when this hits you.

1. It destroys you. Nothing makes sense anymore. This is Darth Vader after Padme died. In the play the Crucible, we see this with the characters Reverend Hale and John Proctor, each of whom slowly realize the horror of the situation then are in, and eventually explode when they realize the Church/Law/God that was supposed to keep society good and sane does not actually guarantee anything. Hale denounces the proceedings, and Proctor declares “God is dead!” They reach a place of spiritual destitution.

(This is contrasted with Rebecca Nurse, who’s faith in goodness never lay with any human actions, so even as the worst is done to her, she remains calm and loving. The mortal Church and Law simply can not disappoint her.)

Both characters go through that annihilation, and come out of it stronger and harder for it. So there is eventual redemption.

But if you really care about something, as the source of goodness you put all your moral weight on (instead of carrying it yourself), you are setting yourself up for this destruction. I experienced this. Many rationalist geeks fleeing the collapsing liberal-geek-utopia of the 90′s experienced it. An awful lot of mid-century Communists experienced it, as the horrors of Stalinist Russia became more and more evident. It will destroy you, and all I can do is try to warn people before it happens to them, or offer some path out of the despair aftewards.

It’s not very comforting, I know. But the other option is worse.

2. Denial. You can dismiss the evidence that tells you the source of your meaning is flawed. You can really believe the most pious woman in the village was a witch. Or you can say “well my side’s flaws don’t count because we really ought to be worried about the other guys.” Or you can warp your morality to fit around whatever the thing you support is doing now.

Doing this a lot is ideology. It’s how Republicans bring themselves to support Donald Trump. It’s how many of those mid-century leftists could not see what Stalin was doing. “Communism can never fail, it can only be failed” as the old cynicism went.

It’s obvious why being blind is the least ethical path.

Now, I suppose “your first principles you have fully chosen” can also fail you in some sense. But so long as you fully own them, the moment you feel they are wrong is the moment you have different principles. You can not abandon yourself after all.

[sanctferum]

SU reactions: Storm in the Room

OK, computer crashed but I’m back!

And the episode starts out with Steven talking to Connie! Yeaaaaaah boiiiii

I was wondering what Steven was gonna think of Connie sleeping in his bed...pffffffffff

Also, get those fucking earrings out of your ears this instant young man, they prolly have homeworld tracking devices in them, you should have removed them the second you left the zoo base

Ah, yeah, Connie’s mom. It’s been a while since we’ve seen her. Wonder what’s holding her up?

Mad libs. I’d like an entropy muffin.

Gee Connie you sure are freaking out...I did not think this episode was gonna be about Connie’s mom, huh

That sounds like her, alright!

Oh it was mundane stuff

Yeah, it must be nice having a mom, even one who’s an aggressive worrywart. Steven...must regret not knowing what that’s like. But...he’s got Garnet and Pearl, who are like moms! (Amethyst, not so much haha)

Thanks for finally taking out the earrings Steven

Yeah, regular Steven outfit acquired!

The specter of Rose really haunts Steven...

That sure is a Storm Outside the Room...

“I...just want to know the truth.” You are probably going to regret saying that very much

Here’s betting the pink whale appears instead of a cloud version of Rose

OK I lose that bet

This...this is just a cloud Rose, right? Or...could Steven have triggered something else imbedded in the room, that Rose left behind, to imbue a cloud Rose with her real personality?

The contrast of Steven’s pink skin and cloud Rose’s #ffffff is so weird. (I can’t believe Rose is actually a Homestuck human)

No, Steven, ask cloud!Rose about the actual questions you have!

or video games????

RIP Lonelybladesamurai version of Terezi. That game didn’t last long

You won against a cloud illusion, Steven, that’s nothing to be particularly proud of?

The way Rose says that Steven won definitely feels like a reminder that this is just a cloud illusion...

I see a football and immediately start quoting that one Moonbase alpha video haha (John MADDEN)

This does seem fun for Steven, but...this is Rose’s room we are talking about. This is gonna go horribly wrong SOMEHOW...

Cloud Rose really is being uh...just a reflection of Steven’s impressions from the Crystal Gems, isn’t she. I bet the pink whale would be a more accurate Rose, though.

CHORLIE BROWN, IS WHAT, THE REFRANCE!!!

Yeah...it’s hard to remove someone from a pedestal...

what no I can’t even imagine Steven with pink hair

Cloud Rose speaks truth, Steven, your hair should be your hair, not your mom’s hair.

Wait...what? Are you talking about his gem? Are you...somehow a reflection of the REAL Rose Quartz????

Oh, no, you aren’t, I guess. You’re just what I thought you were - what Steven thought Rose was. Rose’s room showed you what you want to see, not what you need to see. Is it time for things to go south in a hurry?

Oh fuck Bismuth being bought up again...and Pink Diamond...and...Steven thinks that PD’s shattering happened AFTER Bismuth was bubbled. He might be right, but I thought for sure that it happened the other way around. I never for a moment considered that the chronology of events might’ve been the other way around. But how does the events being switched make sense? Wasn’t Rose against shattering because she HAD shattered, and had to live with the consequences? Didn’t Bismuth think Rose would accept the Breaking Point because she had shattered PD earlier in the rebellion?

Yeah...Homeworld is going to come down a lot harder than 1 soldier, 1 technician, 1 unwilling informant, and a squad of Rubies next time they come. And they will come - That Will Be All implied as much. But...if the alternative was to have let Earth be destroyed 5000 years ago, then can you really say Rose was wrong? Didn’t we go over that in It Could Have Been Great?

Or is it not that you think Rose didn’t think about the consequences, but that she did and then fucked off - essentially, committed suicide through childbirth - and left the consequences on YOUR shoulders? Cause there’s no denying it, she DID do that.

“You put us all in danger, and you just...disappeared!!” Yeah, that’s exactly what I thought. I really hope Rose’s Room doesn’t use your anger against Rose to make cloud Rose evil. That would be bad.

Also can I just say that the music for this part is superb?

Here’s the titular storm! And Rose’s eyes aren’t showing now. Just like they weren’t shown for quite a while in season 1.

Oh shit...here’s Steven’s real beef with Rose. She lied. She lied to everyone. She even lied to herself...and she might’ve believed herself, too, for a while, but...

Yes, she hurt everyone...But, what could she have done differently in her position, Steven? What could she have done that would have saved the planet and humanity, if not what she did?

Sometimes...you gotta make hard choices. Sometimes...you might not want to hurt anyone, but you end up having to. You know that now, from experiences - Bismuth, Jasper, Eyeball. So who is it you’re really angry at, Steven? Is it Rose? Or is it yourself? Or have you lost sight of the difference?

But I do agree with you about your own birth. Rose...wanted to escape. She wanted to stop being herself, and therefore not have to deal with the problems and regrets. But that just means that you have to deal with them instead, as your own problems - Rose Quartz, without the things that made her Rose, without the context of why she had to do what she had to do. That’s what Steven feels like.

Wow...Steven outright went and said it. I’ve seen some liveblogs (Loreweaver, especially) guess that this was why Rose gave birth to Steven, but...I never truly believed that was it. I guess I didn’t want to. But...that’s exactly what it is. Rose wanted to die and be free of her mistakes and regrets, rather than face them. And so she used Steven as the pretext to commit suicide, hurting all her friends and loved ones in the process, down to Steven himself.

...I never thought that Rose would be such a coward. But I guess, with 5000 years of bitter regret and awful memories and a daily life revolving around rounding up and bubbling corrupted gems, gems whose corruption she must have felt personally responsible for (even though it was the Diamonds who were ultimately at fault)...I guess I shouldn’t judge her. But I don’t judge Steven for judging her, either.

...Cloud Rose, don’t take it personally, but I dunno if you’re the person he wants to hear that it isn’t true from right now. The other gems, his dad...the real Rose...but you, you’re just an illusion.

Then again, you’re a reflection of his own thought process...maybe you SHOULD be the one to be able to tell him something he knows deep inside.

Right, Lion 3. Forgot about that.

“I’m sure you meant it.” And she probably believed it when she said it, too. Again, she lied to everyone - why wouldn’t she lie to herself?

And when he realized that the true Rose was the one within him, part of him, the cloud Rose disappeared back into clouds.

Yeah, that was cathartic to some extent, I guess...but it leaves Steven in the same position as before.

Greg and the gems!

“It was meeeee!” YOU THOUGHT IT WAS THE PIZZA DELIVERY MAN BUT IT WAS ME, GREG!

“and Pearl too?” this...IS her house too.

Yeah, he might not have his own mom as a mother figure, but he has a family. And that’s all that he needs right now.

Uh, that credit music...it’s almost as creepy as the diamond music. Were those birds screeching or...?

So. No pink whale with Rose’s voice. Hmmm. OK then.

Anyways, that’s all! I believe next week is a Ronaldo episode, so I don’t have especially high hopes for it, but I’ll be there to watch it anyways.

[braindamageforbeginners]

On the nature of evil

Cycle 5, Day 9 I’m in the grips of an infusion hangover; it’s not the worst I’ve ever had, and I predict be back up to full-speed in a few hours, with the help of a lot of coffee and aspirin. However, recent events - combined with my fatigue (fhe coffee has’t kicked in yet) inspired me to go dig this out of the “Drafts” bin and finish rather than start from scratch. This will be long - my apologies - and have more than few typos and problems in it (for starters, I stitched it out of three or four other ideas/observations/proto-essays, and I’m all chemo hung-over now).

I’ve thought an awful lot lately about the nature of good and evil - as you do, when you face an existential threat that originates in your own body (and, because it’s me, I’m not going to get there in a straight-line path). I’m a reductionist (that’s shocking, I know), and, as a child, I wanted to know what made us us (DNA, I know, but I was hoping for more details). I once asked my high school biology teacher whether it would be more accurate to describe us as multicellular critters, or as walking colonies of specialized cells. She said the latter. Later in life, I put the same question to my biochemistry professor; his learned opinion was that we’re just walking, talking biochemical reactions that existed to provide the carbon molecules within us the best, most-stable shot in a hostile universe (that might seem dehumanizing until you realize that all life, in all its myriad forms, and all human progress and endeavors - from laying cement to composing an adagio - stem from a few basic rules of chemistry and physics, which is almost miraculous if you think about it). Which means that my tumor is the result of one or two brain cells getting very specific mutations (six or seven I think: I have the exact list of mutations written in my personal notebook, but I’m not sure it’s that interesting), and then growing, spreading, and recruiting other rogue cells. That’s not particularly evil; it’s just the horrible result of a few cells being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s just some rogue, reprogrammed bits of me; but, unlike the harmless bacteria in my gut or the fungus on my feet, it will grow and spread without constraint... until it kills me (hopefully that won’t happen, but it��s important to keep that in mind throughout the essay)..

One accusation I’ve occasionally heard leveled at atheists, agnostics, humanists, and other non-religious folk like myself is that by not having some grand villain to creation, we refuse to acknowledge the existence of evil. As a pragmatist, has always been, “Well, you have to. The bar has to be set somewhere.” Even though human morality may not exist in the vacuum of space beyond Pluto, humans have to have it - or at least pretend to (we’ll get to that very shortly). The best, most-useful definition comes from an obscure short story written by M. Shayne Bell, “Evil exists; it is intelligence in the service of entropy.”

To further pad this essay, and make it all about me; I have not mentioned my psychiatrist much (this isn’t Shrink; they’re two different people). This is both to protect her privacy, and because, despite what you might think from these writings, I do have aspects of my life I don’t spill out to the general public. But, she is - like everyone else on my health team - not above using any and all tools available to her. Which means that she’ll prescribe any medication she feels is indicated (I am indebted to her for her reviewing my meds and recommending the exotic antidepressant I’m on)(and the rather more-common anti-anxiety meds I’m on). However, despite being up-to-date on all psych meds (as far as I know, she specializes in cancer patients, so that one’s important)(she’s the doctor who noted my previous antidepressant lowers seizure threshold, so it might not be ideal for me), she’s still what I would call old-fashioned. Which she’ll listen for a few minutes, then say something deeply wounding. Or, worse, means she’ll say something innocuous that you’ll wake up at three am to think about. She was the person who told me to look at my current situation (namely, I have stay within easy driving distance of my oncology teams in SoCal and NoCal for a year) as a form of probation, rather than a sentence. I know my father hated that metaphor when I discussed it with him, but it was what I needed to hear (and, more importantly, she knows me well enough to know I despise and mistrust people who sugar-coat things) to start changing my thinking. A few months ago, when she asked how I spent most of my day, I told I wrote, went to the gym... and spent most of my time dealing with the unfortunate, bureaucratic paperwork and bills (well, as many as I can deal with) that tend to stack up when you get sick. Her response was, “That’s depressing” and it felt good initially, to hear a real grown-up say that, because it reassured me that I wasn’t just going insane. However, as I thought about it, I got angry, because she’s right - it is depressing - it should not be a full-time job to be a sick person, but that is exactly what it takes. I have access to some of the best doctors and medicine, and there is a still dangerous amount of luck involved in this project. There’s been a lot of skill on my part at gaming the insurance companies, when I can (which is rare), and I’ve had a tremendous amount of financial support from my family, but there are sick people who die by the boatload from very, very treatable diseases (yes, hospitals do throw you out; it actually happened to me). And even though there are resources available, there are not enough, and anyone who claims that we don’t have the money is clearly not familiar with the bloated military industrial complex, which even most hard-core conservatives I know admit is bloated.

If the theme of Day 47 was “How much have we, as a species, lost because we all went out of our way to stomp someone,” the theme of today is, “how many people have we unwittingly killed - how much blood is on our hands - because we never said “No” to the few dozen psychopaths who maintain a system that is addicted to death and misery. And, let’s be honest, there is a massive difference between considering how much potential we destroyed when we chased the neighbor kids off our lawn, and nobody giving Jeffrey Dahmer a damned good thrashing when he set the cat on fire (for starters, we can actually quantify Jeff’s evil based on how many people we found in the freezer; the mountains those kids never climbed are completely imaginary).

Returning to mathematics and statistics (it comforts me); just as I am a medical rarity (I’ve done the math, the word “freak” might be cruel, but it’s not inaccurate), but the vast majority of you, readers, are healthy and able-bodied - in other words, if the law of averages works, if you spread it across a population - then, just as I’m becoming aware that almost all of us are filled with madness and wonder and magic; then a few of us contain black holes from which light can not escape. Bipedal nightmares, if you will.

The point of this piece is not to frighten you, although some of you might be frightened. It’s merely to recognize that psychopaths and people with psychopathic tendencies (we’ll get there shortly) exist, and, in order to triumph, you don’t have to do much. Just don’t let them walk over you. That’s it.

Now, this is one area where I definitely am largely uneducated (I like writing, because, as long as I flash that warning up front, I feel I’ve done my duty), and I’m not going to discuss psychopaths (well, not yet, we’ll get there very shortly) inasmuch as I am going to discuss anti-social personality problems. Despite the name, it doesn’t describe people like myself who’d much rather sit at home with my dog, a beer, and the latest sci-fi series from Netflix rather than go out or meet new people (which I would, thanks). It describes people whose actions describe a lack of empathy or caring about other people; which includes psychopaths.

Here’s the thing; according to Ron Jonson’s “The Psychopath Test,” people with anti-social traits make up 1-3% of the general population, however, 30-40% of politicians, CEOs, financiers, etc. - the people at the helm of society, if you will - have anti-social personality traits. I’m sure that number is entirely inaccurate, and the wealthiest, most-powerful class of Western society is quite normal and compassionate, and we serfs are entirely responsible for the harmful, dangerous policies that govern us. I’m sure there’s some sort of long-term wisdom in the medico-legal policies governing my access to medicine I’m not aware of, and me dying or going bankrupt in the process is a minor price to pay for everyone else to benefit (and it might be, using that Law of Averages idea).

Of course, that might be a little extreme; however, law and morality are miles apart, and you confuse the two at your peril (as any racial minority who’s received an unnecessary traffic citation can attest). In my own case, at age 17, after an MRI confirmed that I had a brain tumor; my insurance company literally pulled the plug as I was being wheeled into the OR - entirely legally, I might add, using a loophole in the law in my coverage (I think it’s the hall-mark of morality to let a teen die of a preventable disease)(yes, hospitals do throw people out into the street). Thankfully, my parents were calmer and faster on their feet than I, and they were able to get things back on track - two days later.

The point is, we live in a society seemingly created by, and for, people who are unhindered by any sense of morality. Of course, I’ll admit that I’m an exceedingly small minority, and a self-solving problem, as far as society at large is concerned (literally, all it takes is stopping funding to a few programs at the FDA and NIH and I’ll be finding out if Pascalor or Marcus Aurelius was right. It’s quite possible the rules have changed (I’m sure they have, because I’ve successfully taken advantage of those changes)(and paid a lot of money for that privilege), and the faceless companies that were so eager to see me dead at various points are now fully-invested in my survival (good news, if I’m reading the FDA testing info right, I’m one of 80 people in this drug trial, and my gruesome end would represent a failure rate of 1.25%. I doubt that’s enough for them to step in and dramatically intervene on my behalf, but I’ll settle for CVS being a little more competent and generous about the Temodar).

As someone who is occasionally (okay, so more than occasionally) thoughtless or insensitive, but also horrified at the depths of human cruelty, I also feel like pointing out that we have an unhealthy fascination with anti-social personalities and anti-social personality problems. We marry them. We vote for them. We work for them. When, quite frankly, all it would take would be us - or someone else along the line - refusing to let these idiots get away with it. If we made them pay their taxes and stand at the back of the line. Now, that wouldn’t rid of us John Wayne Gacy or Ted Kaczynski, but they aren’t the problem. Adolf Eichmann is. Those of you familiar with recent history will probably have recoiled from the screen - probably rightfully; to the rest of you; Eichmann was a Colonel in the SS, and one of Hitler’s lieutenants; if there is one single person responsible for the planning and execution of the “Final Solution,” it is this man. Yes, I just broke Godwin’s Law, because the problem with Nazi Germany wasn’t actually the Nazis. Don’t get me wrong; they had to go; my point is, the relatively few Nazi zealots in power would have been completely incapacitated if their clerks and underlings had simply refused orders. Or if someone had dragged them off and told them that wasn’t cool.

Of course, this is being played in real-time with US detention of immigrant children. Again, I’ll bring up Nazis, but in this terrifying context: they didn’t have first, or even the biggest genocide; they were just the first to keep records that allowed the prosecution to build a case. So when you hear a hospital administrator say, “We’ll get back to you about that,” or a border bureaucrat say “We don’t know where the girls and toddlers are,” it should raise the hackles on the back of your neck. Once you get lost in the paperwork - in medical administration or the actual administration - that’s the first, quiet sign that someone doesn’t want to be held accountable if something bad happens (to counteract that, I’ve had good luck demanding to speak to supervisors or get employee ID numbers)(we will ignore the irony - in a few cases - that I was way too tired or in pain to really back up any threats).

At each step in this thing from July 5, 2002 until now, I’ve been lucky enough to find great doctors, surgeons, nurses, etc. who cared about their patients. Sadly, we live in a society that views Gregory House as a realistic character (there’s a fun med student drinking game where you sip whenever he inadvertently kills a patient). And the common thread throughout is that no one thinks it’s just a job or a paycheck or a way to get rich (if you want that, get MBA and become a hospital administrator - they’re usually paid way more than doctors). I think Mad Scientist and Senior Warlock would show up at the hospital tomorrow if they won the Powerball today (I could see them quitting work after finding some definitive cause of brain tumors and/or winning a Nobel Prize). In other words, the trick to finding great medical groups - is the same trick as finding someone who loves their job and would keep working even if all their financial obligations were met. In other words, you find someone who loves their job or their patients, and they’ll focus on being a better doctor. Which means fewer mistakes and/or dead patients.

To tie this all together - or attempt to, this is a Frankenstein’s Monster of writing combined with a morning head - I met, a med student a number of years ago (two neurosurgeries), who said, about my near-disastrous first-surgery (that’s the one where I was thrown out of the hospital while being wheeled into the OR, thanks to an insurance screw-up) that the medical system - such as it is, was more or less fine, dismissing me with “I’m sorry things didn’t work out for you.“ Telling someone they deserve to die due to profit margins and bureaucracy is right up with “Have you gained weight” as far as ways to promptly alienate and piss off other people. He also boasted about how many women hit on him, even though he wore a wedding ring (to be fair, I’d give it a 50-50 chance his wife was actually his mother’s corpse in a wedding dress), and how you have to be careful when providing free service because “poor people will tell their friends” - that man was not very smart (although I have no doubt he’d pass an IQ test)(BTW, there are a lot of studies showing that IQ tests are only slightly better than the MBTI or mood rings when judging intelligence; and it’s telling that whenever one of my crazy, brilliant physicians wants to assess my intelligence, they don’t use an IQ test), but, as far as I know, there are no set systems in place to ensure he didn’t graduate and go into practice (I mean, it’s possible he passed through med school and never got into a residency; I really hope some interview board looked at each afterward and said, “This is the creepiest motherfucker I’ve ever met; do we need another cadaver?”) . And, if he is practicing, I promise you - I’d bet my new lease on life on that statement (you need to understand, though, you’re betting your life on that statement if you’re one of his patients) - that he has, probably unintentionally, killed people because of his complete lack of interest in anything apart from money, sex, and self-aggrandizement - he has absolutely no interest or incentive to improve himself, or save more people, or take anything, other than his bank account to the next level. It’s possible the fear and/or wrongful death suits got to him (again, that’s assuming  a lot). It’s a single case, but it’s demonstrative that our society has no real check against human evil or one person getting a dangerous amount of power. You can read into that whatever political statements you like, I’m just noting as a chronic patient a few observations about the importance of compassion (or curiosity) as a quick indicator of physician quality.

The other important lesson here regarding medical sociopathy - and I might’ve written about this previously, forgive me - is that talent attracts talent. I write a lot about the nurses and physicians, but in the chemo ward, I have never seen the orderlies not take out the trash and/or replace linens (and they recently went on strike - and I really hope they got all their demands met, because they’re making it possible to be in a hospital and not feel under a microbial threat). My point is, even the orderlies - a group no one ever thinks of, are top-level. And when that’s just the cleaning staff, everyone else is of a similar competence. I don’t know why they (the orderlies) work there - it might just be a paycheck - but they’re good, and the nurses and doctors aren’t going to outshone by the facilities. Meanwhile, think of that one great doctor in an otherwise lousy practice or hospital. Go ahead and do some research if necessary; I’ll wait. I’m guessing there aren’t a whole lot.out there.

To bring all of this back to the current medico-political situation, the White House has something of a staffing problem, to say the least. At this point, I believe we have a series of rubber stamps in office at this point (everyone familiar with my “Fall Risk” story will know how I feel about that issue), and not particularly competent ones. That’s disturbing in and of itself, but the greater problem is that it’s an endorsement of psychopathy as policy, and, as noted, psychopaths aren’t even particularly intelligent or efficient. But, more importantly, the way you’re betting - if you’re a majority member - is that you will be, personally as wealthy, healthy, and powerful as you are now, and that you will never need the help of someone else. If you don’t feel comfortable with that, then maybe just slap the bullies when you see them. I’m more-serious than you might think; they’re not all going to stand down and behave, but it’s a safer bet than that Immortan Joe will overlook you and behave charitably.