#for anyone curious: the draft is currently nam

[snickerdoodlles]

🐰

(Alternatively 🍞 🍞 is the closest I could get you to ‘bunbun’ that wasn’t an actual rabbit)

hi u ILU, here is the first full scene of the living dead rewrite 

They’re resting at a little wayside tea shop on their way back from Qishan when they first hear the whispers.

“So sad, it used to be such a lively town…”

“After the clan going all at once, what else could they have expected?”

“Don’t be so disrespectful! Children died last night--”

Wen Ning’s head jerks up and around sharply at that, for once heedless of the black veins snaking up his neck. He’s too busy frowning at the large group huddled close around their table to care that his robe’s tucks fall away, or that the brim of his hat or the fall of his bangs is no longer hiding what his robes cannot.

Sizhui’s not surprised. Uncle Ning has a soft spot for children.

This tea shop isn’t a part of any town. It can barely be called a village. It’s more road and dust than establishments and it collects rumors more than it does people. Sizhui knows them well—his father dislikes gossip, but tucked away villages could know more about the area than the watchtowers if you were looking for trouble. After all, they have nothing better to entertain themselves, while the guards for the other are often too prone to naps.

The gossipers have yet to notice Wen Ning’s unblinking stare. One of the women, her whispering entirely uneffective, says, “I hear Fu Feng threw out all their candles and lanterns on the side of the road. A wandering traveller tried to pick one up for his journey and the villagers beat him to death out of fear.”

“Yan Liling, do not spread false rumors,” snaps another, her voice like a switch. “They can’t get rid of all the lights. I hear they daren’t even light their stoves though.”

A man winces beside her. “Not even through the winter, when the grounds were hard with ice…”

An old man one table over, blatantly listening in, shakes his head sadly. “Such a shame, such a shame. It used to be such a bright town.”

The group, finally realizing most of the dining room’s been listening in, wince and huddle closer, and do not continue their conversation. A few of the patrons shoot the old man dirty looks, but all return to their own conversations quick enough. 

Wen Ning turns back to his and Sizhui’s table, frustrated. Despite being dead, his face has little trouble settling into dark expressions. He lightens when he realizes Sizhui’s already flagging down a nearby server.

“How can I help you, young master?”

Sizhui looks across the table and is greeted by the top of Wen Ning’s strong hat. The way his shoulders shuffle tells he’s tugging up his robes too before the server can notice his marks, which is...good. Sometimes Sizhui forgets not everyone is okay with his gentle giant uncle.

“Sir?”

Sizhui shakes himself aware and turns to the server with a sweet smile. The server doesn’t seem to find anything amiss (after all, he stares at Sizhui’s ribbon with a knowing, greedy eye--what Lan would travel with a corpse? What could a Lan travel with that could cause more concern than what their wallets could pay?)

“Good sir, do you know which town they were discussing?” Sizhui asks in a quiet murmur, eyes flicking discreetly to the large group.

The server stares at them blatantly and hums, lips pursed in a thoughtful expression. Sizhui swallows down a sigh. He has no interest in continuing to drink this establishment’s bland, over-brewed tea for several hours as he wheedles out the information the server might have to provide for such a meager fare. Such thing would put Wen Ning at risk for discovery, no matter Sizhui’s presence and ribbon, and if children are going missing... 

“If you have no information to offer, I’ll have three bottles of your finest liquor.”

The server and Wen Ning both snap to attention at that--the server with an easy grin and a gleam in his eyes, Wen Ning with as much astonishment as his expression could hold (the faintest rise of his eyebrows, jaw unlocked to allow the smallest gap between his lips).

“Let me get that right for you, sir.” The server licks his lips eagerly. “I won’t be but a moment.”

Sizhui nods politely and lets the server run off with little fuss. Father had taught him that trick--Sizhui never understood how Father of all people had come up with such a notion until Senior Wei had returned to their lives. The first time he’d been present for Father’s trick, he positively gaped at Father, slumped like someone had cut his strings, and then he’d thrown himself into Father’s side with a delighted laugh and a loud cry of, “Lan Zhan, you do remember the things I say!”

The warmth of the memory fills him better than his next sip of tea. Wen Ning is still staring at him, dumbstruck, and Sizhui hides his smile behind the rim of his cup and sips carefully. 

“Do you think Senior Wei will appreciate such a gift?” Sizhui asks after a few more moments of fun. He taps his lip thoughtfully. “I do not know of anyone else that might like such things. I am, after all, a Lan.”

Wen Ning’s astonishment softens into the warmest look. His lips, briefly, like the flicker of a candle, quirk up just slightly at the corners. Corpses’ facial muscles are some of the most affected by death--Sizhui returns his uncle’s beaming smile with his own.

“Master Wei will love anything from his beloved A-Yuan,” Wen Ning says softly. Sizhui’s smile loses to his blush, and he can almost swear Wen Ning’s eyes crinkle fondly in turn. “You know, once, when you were little--”

“Here’s your liquor sir,” the server says happily as he sets down three heavy, rough ceramic jars on the table. Sizhui frowns sharply and wants to snap at the server to go away, but if he does, he’ll have to buy the entire liquor stock just to soothe the wounded ego and he still might not learn everything he needs. Children are dying.

Wen Ning retreats back under his hat. Sizhui smoothes his expression into a faint smile and pulls out his wallet. “You said you knew which town those kind people were talking about?”

The server’s eyes never leave Sizhui’s wallet, though his smile grows. “Mn. It’s called Fu Feng. It’s half a day’s walk south from here. You’ll know when you reach it--they have a bell tower on the tallest hill and they ring every morning, midday, and night so people don’ forget.”

Wen Ning frowns under his hat again, head blatantly tipped to the side to catch the words. Sizhui wants to ask what he knows so badly. Instead, he rummages through his wallet and lets the coins clink together faintly. 

The server licks his lips again. “Fu Feng used to be some big deal ‘round here. Festivals all the time, with all them floating lights, and people would come ‘round from all parts to visit. Then, last year, during the cursed ghost month, a fire wiped out the entire village.”

Sizhui frowns. “A fire? An entire village?” he asks, wracking his brain for a corresponding incident report. Even so far away in Gusu, they would’ve heard of an event that bad. Should have heard, even despite few watchtowers in this area. During his time as Chief Cultivator, Jin Guangyao had reached out to all nobles across the nation to reassure them that they could report incidents to the towers, and then clan cultivators would go out to assist any cultivation matters. The nobles love having someone else clean up the messes, and the cultivation world benefits by preventing any resentful energy from building into larger problems. It’s a very efficient system; Jin Guangyao’s designs always were. 

So why has Sizhui never heard of Fu Feng until now?

The server shrugs. “The sky was dark overhead for two whole days. You don’t get that from a small fire.”

“If the entire village burned,” Wen Ning says softly, hand tugging his collar tighter across his throat, “then why are people still dying in it?”

“I--” The server opens his mouth, but doesn’t reply. Sizhui frowns thoughtfully--no survivors would explain why the watchtowers never received a missive about the destruction. They could perhaps be forgiven for not investigating the matter themself. But Uncle Ning is right--if the entire village burned, why are there tales of haunting ghosts now?

“Well, people must’ve moved back in!” snaps the server. He’s flushed a dark red and his eyes flicker between Wen Ning and Sizhui’s wallet nervously. Sizhui does not roll his eyes at the server’s suggestion--Sizhui is polite and the server must not be familiar with the ways of cultivation. The last thing he wants to do is drive off an informant--even an awful one.

Sizhui places the exact amount of coin for the drink on the table. He barely moves his hand away before the money disappears in a quick snatch, the server visibly calmer. He eyes the large coin peeking through Sizhui’s fingers hungrily. “They say it’s the work of a single spirit. A vengeful demon. It finds the people by following the lights, then it sucks the flesh from their bones.”

Wen Ning and Sizhui share a glance, then Sizhui hands the coin and a twin to the server. “Thank you for your information.”

The server smiles and looks Sizhui in the eye for the first time that night. “You’re welcome sir, thank you sir,” he says, and then he’s gone into the bustle of the crowd.

Sizhui pouts. “It’s not good information, but at least we know now there is something afoot in the town of Fu Feng.”

Wen Ning shakes his head. He still clutches his robes tight around his neck. “It’s more telling than he realized.”

“Really?” Sizhui leans forward eagerly, but Wen Ning’s eyes skitter to their side. Sizhui follows the look discreetly and sees a fellow squinting suspiciously in their direction. Sizhui leans back, disappointed.

“Shall we begin our journey to Fu Feng?”

Wen Ning nods gently, ducking under his hat’s brim. “Let’s.”

[auskultu]

The Weekend Revolution

uncredited writer, Time, 3 May 1968

THE ARMIES OF THE NIGHT by Norman Mailer. 288 pages. New American Library. $5.95.

Early in this book, the author reports that Poet Robert Lowell remarked to him: "Norman, I really think you are the best journalist in America." Mailer refused to take it as a compliment. "Well, Cal," he replied, "there are days when I think of myself as being the best writer in America."

Lowell was offering up the current intellectuals' line on Mailer, and Norman was mouthing the perennial Mailer line on himself ("Me Mailer. Me champ"). But The Armies of the Night suggests that Lowell is wrong, and that Mailer may be closer to the truth. He is a rather lazy and often sloppy journalist, but he can still write like a streak. Whether that makes him the best writer in America is open to question, but this book, which Mailer labels "History as a Novel" and "The Novel as History," is a bravura performance.

Buoyant Bending. Since the work had ample exposure in Harper's magazine and Commentary, it is widely known by now that this is Mailer's attempt to build a Washington monument by providing a step-by-step account of what in the present perspective seems like a decidedly minor news event: the peace march and militant demonstration in Washington last October. Mailer does indeed cover all the accepted journalistic steps, from the ceremonial handing-in of draft cards at the Department of Justice to the activists' vain roughhouse attempts to storm the Pentagon.

But more important is the omnipresent hand of a born novelist, buoyantly bending and shaping each scene to his literary way, and successfully creating a single, superb, comic figure of the author himself. With a courageous measure of self-mockery, Mailer casts himself in the role of a black-humor antihero: a hard-drinking, self-important and snobbish dandy who, believing himself the star, is forever stumbling toward the camera, when all the time he is really only an extra, a bit player who will inevitably be cut out of the film.

Bark & Bite. Mailer indulges his hero with a splendid deadpan pomposity, reinforced by the fact that he refers to himself throughout in the third person. The reader first meets him in his Brook lyn Heights apartment, picking up a ringing telephone as if it were a pistol loaded for Russian Roulette. "On impulse, thereby sharpening his instinct as a gambler, he took spot plunges: once in a while he would pick up his own phone. On this morning in September, 1967, he lost his bet." The caller is a militant antiwar organizer and old Harvard classmate, who extracts from Mailer a promise to participate in the Washington protests and thus give up a valuable weekend. The lost weekend really starts off when Norman, very much in his bourbon cups at a fund-raising evening in a theater, urinates on the floor of a darkened men's room. He then goes on to bully his fellow speakers with arrogant bluster and to bawdy his audience with testy obscenity—for which he offers a spirited defense. He uses it to wake up people, he claims. Besides, he discovered in the Army that it is the common man's humor and, in a way, the voice of his history ("the truth of the way it really felt over the years passed on a river of obscenity").

Mailer evokes some marvelously mordant closeups of his fellow "weekend revolutionaries" as they try to do their ritualistic protest thing quickly, so that they can get back to New York for a dinner party. "Lowell's shoulders had a slump," writes Mailer. "One did not achieve the languid grandeurs of that slouch in one generation—the grandsons of the first sons had best go through the best troughs in the best eating clubs at Harvard before anyone in the family could try for such elegant note." Ideologue Paul Goodman "looked like the sort of old con who had first gotten into trouble in the Y.M.C.A. and hadn't spoken to anyone since."

But Mailer always returns to himself. With an "egotism of curious disproportions," he catalogues his breakfast menus, his cures for the common cancers, even the virtues of each of his four wives. Sometimes he is the little boy full of comic-strip fantasies about riding around in a red helicopter, taking on the whole might of the U.S. Air Force and of "corporation-land" by shooting paint at the enemy choppers. At other times he fancies himself an exiled princeling (though from what country defies the imagination).

Often, he reveals himself as an archconservative who dislikes mass man and the whole modern era with its shoddy workmanship—one can almost see him in an English county seat decrying the servant problem and denouncing Labour amid outraged pipe smoke. He accurately describes himself as neo-Victorian in regard to sex; he speaks ill of homosexuality and masturbation, and proclaims that "without guilt, sex was meaningless." In fact, one sometimes wonders whether Mailer is not really an undercover agent of the old order, trying to undermine the Left from within.

Bellicose Charm. The Armies of the Night occasionally suffers from the languor that inevitably descends upon any one-character work. And it is not with out Mailer's usual excesses. He enjoys his own jokes too inordinately; he protests his right to protest too much, with some of the purplest prose apotheosizing America written since the rhetorical mauve of Thomas Wolfe ("Brood on that country who expresses our will. She is America, once a beauty of magnificence unparalleled . . . tender mysterious bitch"). For the most part, his genuine wit and bellicose charm, and his fervent and intense sense of legitimately caring, render The Armies of the Night an artful document, worthy to be judged as literature.

However, as journalism—which is history's fief in time—the book is another matter. Mailer is pretentious about Marxism. When he suggests that it would not really matter if all Asia went Communist, because expansion only creates problems for Communism, he is, at best, playful or naive. He brilliantly employs the suggestive, evocative devices of the new journalists—or old novelists. But he suggests too much, and evokes too wildly. He looks into the faces of the U.S. marshals and reads in them the notion that Viet Nam is where the "American small town" gets its "kicks." And he fails to note as a sound journalist would, that there were U.S. marshals just like these who escorted James Meredith through crowds of rednecks at the University of Mississippi. He also has visions of future concentration camps in America (with Muzak)—a fantasy worthy of a propagandist or novelist, but hardly a reporter.

In the past dozen years, Mailer has developed cop-out infatuation with amateur journalism. During that time he wrote only two interesting but indifferent novels, An American Dream and Why Are We in Viet Nam? Ernest Hemingway, Mailer's onetime hero, also engaged in journalism but noted that "it blunts the instrument you write with." It may be time for Mailer to heed that warning.