#i had to learn all about home networking so i could fully understand my choice

[audhd-musings]

I hate that I require two dozen plus hours of research to make any purchase, so I end up with a massive To Buy list

Off the top of my head: washi stickers, parts to build a new pc, shikibuton and frame, sheer curtains for a room, a mop to replace my broken one, a carpet shampooer, wool base layers and skirt, Wildlings (2 pairs), glass food storage containers, interchangeable circular needles, tarot deck (on the fence)

I start browsing and then get overwhelmed, so I've spent between one and eight hours on each of the above items already, and eventually I'll rack up enough categorical knowledge to make a decision comfortably

And ofc I've spent the past month comparing and contrasting planners in my head every day because I'm tired of mine even though mine doesn't end until July (thx @ adhd)

[goodlucktai]

Could I request some good bro Natori and Natsume stuff for prompts 1,2,3, or 5? Either separately or merged into one frankenfic?

PROMPTS LIST

1. “I apologise in advance for the inconvenience my murder is going to have on your life.” +2. “I hate you.” “Why? I’m lovely.” +5. “This is my life now. I have climbed this hill and now I will die upon it.” “Shut up. We’ve only been hiking for twenty minutes.”

x

When Shuuichi called the Fujiwara house to invite Natsume to the upcoming wrap party, he was braced for the type of dogged, exacting negotiations better suited a hostage situation. 

Instead, after a pleasant fifteen-minute conversation with Touko, he was painlessly gifted custody of his friend for the weekend. 

“Shigeru-san and I need to meet with one of his relatives about some of Takashi-kun’s missing belongings,” she says, a sliver of steel in her sunny voice that promises, in no uncertain terms, that these relatives will almost certainly have a fight on their hands. “I’d hate to have to bring Takashi-kun along, but I don’t like to leave him here alone, so this is quite the neat solution!”

Natsume is grim and resigned when they meet at the train station, an overnight bag slung over his shoulder, his ugly cat tucked into his arms. Shuuichi can’t help but beam at him, having come out of this arrangement fully on top. 

“Shopping!” he announces gleefully. “You’ll need something fancy for the party. And then we’ll get lunch-- my treat, of course. And if you don’t listen to me, Touko-san will be sad!” 

If looks could kill, Shuuichi would almost certainly have met his unfortunate end right then and there. 

xx

Natsume has been uncomfortable all evening, in a fixed position at Shuuichi’s elbow and nursing the same flute of champagne that was foisted upon him at the door. 

He’s in dark-washed jeans and a smart blazer, his hair tucked out of his face with a few strategic hair clips. He toes the line between youthful and stylish well, and his quiet personality comes across as shy instead of standoffish. The cast and crew are all delighted to finally meet the kid Shuuichi talked so much about, and Natsume is doing his best to hold up under all the attention.

So it had taken a bit of blackmail and bribery to get him here-- was that so unusual? 

Networking is a necessary evil, and usually Shuuichi is stuck at these functions until the early hours of the morning. But it’s only a couple of hours before Natsume starts to flag. He’s edging into nonverbal territory, only mustering eye contact for a few seconds at a time, and Shuuichi doesn’t waste time in steering him away from the press of the party and into an out-of-the-way office. 

“Who’s office is this?” Natsume asks quietly. When Shuuichi presses lightly on his shoulders, he sinks into a leather armchair without fuss. 

“Doesn’t matter. I’m famous, I can do whatever I want,” Shuuichi says with a winning smile. 

Natsume is recovered enough by then to scowl at him, a knee-jerk reaction. 

“I hate you.”

“Why? I’m lovely.”

After that exchange, Shuuichi feels alright about leaving Natsume alone with Hiiragi while he sweeps off to make their excuses, and say his goodbyes, and steal some food for the road. 

And now they’re bundled in coats and scarves, making their way back to the hotel. Natsume looks much livelier now that they’re outside, working on the second half of an egg sandwich that Shuuichi smuggled out for him. 

“I can’t believe you do that for a living,” the boy murmurs after a moment. “It’s exhausting.”

“You get used to it,” Shuuichi says. “And I’m good at talking.”

Being charming and personable on cue is one of his greatest skills. No closed door, or VIP entrance, or members-only sign has ever kept him out. 

When they get back to the hotel, an ugly cat is waiting for them outside. Natsume smiles to see it, his pace quickening, and offers the yokai the last bite of his sandwich. 

Madara takes it with a scoff. “This is all you brought me? I want barbecue!” 

“What kind of party do you think we were at?” Shuuichi mutters. 

“Maybe tomorrow, sensei,” Natsume says agreeably, lifting the cat into his arms. 

“Hmph. In that case, I guess I’ll pass the message along.” Settling into a comfortable loaf in the crook of the boy’s arms, the cat squints at them with shining, dark eyes. “Someone came for their name while you were gone.”

Shuuichi stiffens in alarm. They’re hours away from Hitoyoshi, where Natsume’s reputation proceeds him at every turn. To have been tracked this far, despite the wards... 

Natsume only looks mildly surprised. “Are they still here?”

“No, they’re waiting for you in the woods,” Madara says. “Human settlements make them nervous.”

Nodding as if this is all perfectly reasonable, Natsume glances at Shuuichi. Shuuichi, waiting for his cue, says, “Absolutely not.”

“Natori,” his friend says, with the same tone of a tired mother attempting to wrangle an unreasonable toddler.

“In what universe would I allow you to wander off into the forest in the middle of the night?” He opts to ignore the rich orange dusk above and around them, and the fact that the streetlights haven’t kicked on yet. Natsume’s eyebrows are inching toward his hairline, so he decides to play his trump card. “Your parents said I’m in charge.”

Hiiragi sighs deeply. It’s only after Shuuichi says it that he realizes how juvenile it sounded, but by then it’s too late. He has to double down. 

“Let’s just go inside, and we’ll discuss it over a proper meal,” he says with a smile. He waves Natsume toward the door, but Natsume doesn’t budge.

Shuuichi realizes he used up all his authority earlier, in forcing Natsume to the department stores and restaurants and the wrap party. The boy has played along thus far but he’s clearly reached his quota for the evening. He doesn’t even entertain the idea of listening to Shuuichi this time. 

“I’ll be quick,” Natsume says plainly. He turns back the way they came without another word. 

Shuuichi struggles with it for a moment, but he really doesn’t have any choice but to follow. It doesn’t help that the ugly cat is laughing at him, or that Hiiragi is judging him silently with every step.  

xx

Honestly, if Shuuichi were feeling marginally more generous, he would admit that there was some sort of cosmic justice at work here. He had forced Natsume out of his comfort zone all night, and now the tables have turned entirely. 

The trees tower around them as they pick their way up a faint foot trail, stretching up into a dark, endless canopy. The wind combs through branches and leaves in eerie, hushed whispers. They only have the shiki’s night-eyes and the flashlight on Shuuichi’s phone to see by. 

“This is my life now,” Shuuichi complains, out of breath. “I climbed this hill and now I’m going to die on it.”

“Shut up,” Natsume replies mildly. “We’ve only been hiking for twenty minutes.”

He certainly seems comfortable here, for all that he’s never been in these particular woods before. With his green eyes and silvery hair and thousand-yard stare, Natsume might as well be a mountain spirit himself sometimes. 

The thought cinches painfully in Shuuichi’s stomach, and he speeds up a bit until they’re walking alongside one another. 

“How do you know you can trust this spirit?” he asks.

“I don’t,” Natsume says, sounding surprised by the question. “How do you know you can trust any of those humans you work with?”

“Because they’re human.”

For a moment, they just stare at each other. Shuuichi can see his own incomprehension reflected in Natsume’s expression. There’s a sudden chasm open between them, a lack of understanding that goes both ways.

Natsume looks away first. He doesn’t quite hang his head, but he isn’t standing as tall as he was before. Shuuichi remembers, belatedly, just how many humans have hurt Natsume up to this point. He realizes that what he just said was very stupid. And on top of being grossly inconsiderate, he managed to alienate his friend at the same time.

This is what he gets for being so smug all day. 

He puts a hand on Natsume’s shoulder, throwing a line across the chasm and hoping it will hold. He squeezes, waiting until Natsume has mustered the courage for eye contact once more, and only when he has the boy’s full attention does he say gravely, “I have a lot to learn from you. I’m only sorry I won’t have the chance. And I apologize for the inconvenience my murder is going to have on your life.”

Natsume splutters, and then laughs, and those sad, clinging shadows peel away from him as easily as a broken spiderweb. “You’re not going to get murdered!” 

"Hm,” Shuuichi says, deeply unconvinced (and deeply relieved to hear his friend laughing).

“Honestly, if you’re this worried, why not just wait at the hotel?” Natsume asks. He’s animated again, picking his way ahead confidently. Shuuichi is happy to follow, leaving that painful, aborted conversation behind them for another day. 

“Because Touko told me to look after you this weekend,” Shuuichi says mulishly. He’s still clinging to the thin veneer of being in charge, for all the good it’s doing him. “How could I look her in the eye if I let you go charging off into danger?”

“Easily,” Natsume mutters. “Charmingly. And with a bouquet of roses, probably. You said it yourself, you’re good at talking.”

Now it’s Shuuichi’s turn to laugh. He thinks of his conversation with Touko earlier that week-- he thinks of how, even now, she and Shigeru are off getting into a fight with their family for their foster son’s sake, with Natsume none the wiser. 

“You’ve sorely underestimated how protective she is of you,” Shuuichi says ruefully. “That’s fine. I’m sure you’ll get to see it firsthand when I take you home, since I’ve made an absolute mess of this weekend so far.” 

Natsume tips his head curiously, but whatever he might have said is interrupted as they come around a bend that opens up to a glade.

There’s lantern light up ahead. The glow is unnatural, slightly off-color, and the lights sway even though there isn’t a steady wind. Hiiragi goes tense and alert at Shuuichi’s shoulder, and Shuuichi himself feels a cold thrill of anticipation, his fight-or-flight reflexes primed. But Natsume lets out a little huff of relief, and Madara says, “Finally!” as a rabbit spirit steps onto the path to greet them. 

It’s about as tall as Shuuichi’s waist and dressed in a neat yellow yukata. It greets them politely, and apologizes for making them go out of their way, and invites them into the glade. Madara jumps out of Natsume’s arms to lead the way, and Hiiragi follows distrustfully, but Natsume lingers for a moment. 

“What if Touko hadn’t said anything?” he asks, in the tone of someone testing a theory. 

For all of about three seconds, Shuuichi considers lying to preserve his dignity, but he gives it up for a lost cause. He sighs, and musses his hair up even more, and admits, “I’d still be here.”

Natsume might as well be a mountain spirit himself sometimes. But then there are times like these, when his face lights up like a summer sky, and he smiles as though he’s never been hurt, and Shuuichi has never met anyone more human than him.

[arandompostarchive]

Inure - Ch. 2

SAVED WORK

Summary: To some, The Specter is a serial killer. To some, a hero. But to everyone, you were entirely a mystery. You had no history, just a list of victims a mile long. No matter how many people searched your name, they could find anything. If only they had the spelling right. Now, you’ve come across some unfortunate information that drives you out of your usual shadows and into the path of the Avengers. Including two of the more reclusive members of the team. And it’s hard to pick only one of them.

***

“Howard, I’m not sure this is a good idea. SPECTR isn’t ready to show the public yet, much less reporters who will make up a million theories on how we’ll use this.” You argued. You sat across from Howard as you looked over the machine’s blueprints. Howard had suggested that it was ready for a test run, which was completely wrong. It was far from perfect.

“I’m not saying we have to keep it running, but we’ve got to show people something!” He said, getting frustrated. You began to get frustrated too.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have bragged about it to every media outlet in the country, then. You told them about SPECTR, now you have to tell them it’s not ready. It’s that simple.” You didn’t look up at him.

“C’mon. One test, we don’t have to test all it’s features, let’s just turn on its most basic setting. Just show that it works!” He said. You stood, walking toward the control panel you had set up. The machine was behind glass in a testing room. If you turned it on right now, you weren’t sure what the reaction would be, so you insisted it be put safely away from you.

“But it doesn’t work.”

“They don’t have to know that! I just gotta show them something.” You were tempted to give in. To let him bring in his media crew and you would have if it weren’t for the dangers SPECTR presented.

“Turning it on right now could endanger lives. We need to stay safe about this.” He rolled his eyes. He hated your safety rules which you had only implemented because he would run around the lab doing stupid things otherwise. “Look, I get it. I’m excited about this too! We’re making life-changing stuff here! But let’s save it until we know it will actually change lives.” You bent down and unscrewed a panel on the control board. You had missed the upset look on Howard’s face, not that you couldn’t guess what it looked like.

You continued working while he made a call or two in the background. You jumped a bit when a spark came out of the panel. You stood up, opening the door to the test room to check the machine itself. You could feel Howard staring at the back of your head.

***

You jolted up, sweating a bit. Most of your dreams were memories now. At least, all the dreams you remembered were. At the time, that memory didn’t seem so bad. It just seemed like two friends arguing and that’s what you thought it was. You wished you could go back. Tell yourself to listen a little closer to his phone calls. Double check that he really wouldn’t get a dozen reporters. Instead, you trusted him. That had been a grave mistake.

You pushed yourself off of your bed. Your room was nice to say the least. Leave it to a Stark to make things look expensive. You had an apartment-like area. There was a bedroom and a small living room and kitchen hybrid. It had a tv, a couch and the bare essentials of a kitchen.

You walked into your kitchen area to make tea. “What time is it?” You wondered out loud, seeing the darkness outside your windows. “I need to tell that Captain more about what I know, maybe the team would stop talking about me. Or at least do it in a more private setting.” You grabbed an electric kettle and filled it with water, waiting for it to boil.

“It’s 3:44 am, and I can remind you, if you’d like,” A voice offered. The sound of another person in your space made you jump, but when you looked around you couldn’t spot anyone.

“Hello?” You said loudly, unsure of where the person came from.

“Hello.” The voice said again. You stepped closer to the couch and looked around, still, no one was in sight.

“Who are you?” You asked. Trying to locate the voice.

“I’m FRIDAY, Mr. Stark’s AI system.” You almost laughed. Of course.

You were still curious though. She was really AI? Had she passed the Turing Test? How had he made a completely functional system? How was she built in, is it just in certain rooms, or did he manage to put her everywhere? You had questions to ask Stark about his inventions, though you were dreading having to talk to Howard’s son. He couldn’t be that much better than his father and you weren’t ready to spend time with Howard 2.0. You’d seen Tony on the news and even spent your own time watching over him, but you’d never had a real conversation.

“FRIDAY, huh? And how do you work?” You asked. Admittedly, it felt weird talking to the air. There was no where to focus, so you really just ended up staring at the ceiling. It felt odd.

“I was implemented to help Mr. Stark after he lost his previous AI. I’m a network of different systems Mr. Stark has created. I’m not allowed to share all the details, but I’m sure Boss wouldn’t mind showing you.”

Of course she calls Tony “Boss”, seems just like a Stark to put themselves on a pedestal. “Well,” you began, “Thank you FRIDAY. I can remember to talk to Captain Rogers, though. I don’t really have much else to do.”

“Alright, Miss.”

“Just call me Spectr,” you told her, smiling at the ceiling.

“No problem, Spectr.” There was a soft whistling behind you and you stopped the kettle before it got too loud. You took the tea along with a bit of honey and sat down on the couch, slowly sipping it. It felt odd to have a ‘home’. A TV, couch, bed, kitchen, even the weird body-less AI felt comforting. Something you hadn’t felt in a long time.

***

Coming downstairs to get breakfast was one of the most awkward experiences of your rather long life. You had come down late, hoping the Avengers ate early. To your dismay, most of the team were in their kitchen, chatting about something or other, though it seemed like a few of them there only to talk to the group.

When you walked in, book in hand, their conversation immediately hushed and all eyes turned to you. The team was terrible at pretending not to stare, but you did your best to ignore them.

“Um, Spectr.” The Captain spoke up. His voice stayed steady, but you could tell he felt odd asking you anything. You turned around to face him, silently telling him to continue. “Join us, we’d like to get to know you.” The sentiment was nice, though you knew what he was doing. If they could befriend you, they’d have a permanent ally or maybe even stop your ‘crime spree’. Or maybe they wanted a reason to justify working with you. Maybe they felt guilty putting a serial killer on the team, even temporarily, and thought that maybe, just maybe, if you were a kind person they’d feel just a little bit better. But the much more likely option was that they wanted a way to take you down. They wanted to know exactly what made you tick just in case you got too hard to handle. You wished them luck, you had died decades ago.

“No, Captain, you don’t want to talk to me. I’m a possible threat in your house. You want to learn whatever you can about me. That’s fine, I understand.” Everyone at the table was avoiding meeting both your eyes and Steve’s. You didn’t really have anything against Rogers, but you weren’t here to become best friends, you were here to stop a threat. Then you could leave and go back to your old life with no record of your crimes. Not that the city papers wouldn’t have a field day.“But you don’t want to talk to me. Don’t pretend you do, it’s rude.” You didn’t get a response, so you assumed you guessed right.

The team went back to your hushed conversation and you scanned the room. You grabbed a cup of coffee from the fresh brewed pot and sat yourself on a couch in their living room area. A man was sitting across from you also buried in a book. You didn’t mind the lack of conversation, though his book choice was interesting. Shakespeare’s The Tempest, certainly a good read.

You looked down at your book, staring at the page but still focused on the man in front of you. You recognized him, though you weren’t certain from where.

“The team seems to have deemed you a villain as well.” He said, barely glancing up from the pages. Usually, you’d be angry. You’d leave and find somewhere else so you could be alone. But for some reason, you didn’t.

“You’re getting the same treatment?” You asked, somewhat skeptical. From the outside, he looked like just another team member.

“It is to be expected after what I did. They still do not trust me.” This time he looked up at you, fully meeting your eyes. Then, you recognized him. Loki. The guy who wrecked New York.

It wasn’t your style, but it did end up taking out one of your targets for you and he seemed nice enough.

“I see. Well, can’t exactly blame them for not liking me either, then.” You said. He kept a straight face. It looked practiced, like he knew exactly how to keep his emotions hidden. But you knew that look in his eyes. The very silent desperation that maybe, maybe you could relate to him. Maybe you could be outcasts together. You weren’t sure you liked that idea. Being alone in your new ‘room’ seemed much more favorable.

“I’m not exactly clear on what you did.” He closed his book, keeping his thumb between the pages and setting it on his lap. You did the same.

“Well, I kill for a living. Sort of. It’s not the most high paying gig out there, but ‘heroes’ don’t tend to appreciate serial killers.” You tried to state that in the most lighthearted way possible, though there wasn’t really a nice way to phrase it.

“Do you simply kill anyone?” He asked, clearly trying to piece together why a murderer is currently trying to help save the world. You smirked a bit.

“Not exactly. All my victims are the people who’ve escaped justice. Maybe they got away with murder maybe the court just isn’t moving fast enough. Or they’ve got connections and keep walking free. I never miss a target.” You said, proud of your work.

The Avengers didn’t see it how you did. You were correcting the world. Bringing back hope, even if no one would cheer for you out loud.

“And the Avengers feel you are doing the world a disservice by ridding it of evil?” He seemed confused by the concept. As far as he was concerned, it sounded fair. Harsh, but fair.

“They don’t like the whole ‘murder’ part. Well, torture and murder part. They think we should let the system handle it. But the system isn’t working, so here I am.” You said, taking a large sip of your coffee.

“And if authorities catch you? Will they put you to death over such a thing?” You shrugged in response. In all honesty, you hadn’t really looked up what consequences you’d face. You didn’t care. “You do not seem scared.” He noted.

You laughed a bit. “Death is an old friend.” You took another sip of your coffee and he seemed to acknowledge that he wasn’t going to get any more than that. You spent a little while longer in a comfortable silence, both reading your respective books.

Soon, you finished yours and stood up. Loki nodded to you and you nodded back. You wouldn’t call him a friend, but he certainly wasn’t an enemy and that’s the closest thing you had to a friend right now.

You walked back to the kitchen, dropping your now empty coffee cup into the sink and washing it, placing it on the small drying rack they had there. Some of the team was still in the kitchen and you heard their conversation quiet. You had better hearing than average, but it wasn’t anything to brag about. And since the team was mostly super-soldiers, you could hear their extremely quiet whispers. Whatever they were talking about, they were being careful about it.

You grabbed a few granola bars from the cabinet when you spotted a bottle of whiskey that had been left on the counter, probably by mistake. You suspected Stark, Howard would leave your bottles on your table when he went to your house, why would Tony be different? You grabbed a glass and filled it, not bothering to look at the brand of whiskey.

“I like a good drink myself, but, uh, that’s a full size glass and it’s 10 in the morning?” Tony said, looking slightly concerned. You scoffed a bit.

“I’m starting that late, huh?” You asked, drinking a bit of the glass and walking toward their training room. The drink  wouldn’t do much, your heart had stopped, well, working after you died. Everything had. As far as you knew, you were essentially a walking, talking corpse. The only reason you had to breathe was so you could talk, so when you lived alone you didn’t find it necessary. Your alcohol limit was high to say the least, you were almost certain you could out drink Thor. And now that you lived in the same house as the guy, you were kinda tempted to try it.

Since all of the loud members of the team were at breakfast, including Thor and Tony, you settled for getting exercise. Their training rooms were huge. Starks always went big. You could hear someone else and you groaned at the thought of human interaction. Like living with a bunch of do-good superheroes wasn’t enough, now you had to actually talk to them.

You walked in anyway, hoping it was one of the quieter members, like Vision. Though you didn’t see why a floating android would need to work out. Instead, it was Steve’s friend, Bucky Barnes. Although Steve and Bucky didn’t know you, you knew of them. Peggy had talked about Steve a bit, so you knew a little bit about their life in the army. You had even comforted Peggy once Steve crashed into the ocean.

The closest you had ever been to actually talking to them was consulting when Howard was designing possible shields for Steve. Bucky on the other hand, you had only heard about once or twice. Mainly about how he had gone missing.

You tried not to make eye contact with him while you went over to the weights. He was practicing what looked like knife throwing, so he wasn’t really focused on you.

“You created that machine, right?” You hadn’t even crossed the room before he addressed you. You internally groaned, not liking the idea of a conversation right now. Especially with someone who would quiz you on all your weaknesses.

He looked at you and offered a knife out of the small chest full of them. You took it and resigned yourself to questioning. It would be easier to manage if it was only one of them.

“Me and a friend. We thought it could do good, but it was never finished.” You said, throwing the knife at the target. Knife throwing wasn’t your specialty, but you weren’t terrible, so it landed off-center. Bucky still looked impressed though.

“Not bad. That machine was made to heal people, right?” You nodded and he threw his own knife, landing dead center. It looked like he was making a ‘X’ shaped pattern out of them. “So how’s he going to use it to hurt anyone?”

You had considered that before. But, considering the… malfunctions the machine was capable of, you didn’t doubt it could harm people as well as heal. “Trust me, it can kill without a problem.” You said, not liking the topic he had chosen. You tossed another knife at the target, this time landing further off-center than the one before. You internally sighed at your lack of focus.

He considered what you said and nodded, seemingly understanding that there was more to your statement.

“I don’t think you’re a threat, if that’s what you’re worried about.” He said, pausing in his knife throwing. You scoffed.

“You don’t, huh? Then why exactly are you talking to me?”

He shrugged a bit. “You seemed lonely.”

You continued throwing knives discussing members of the team. It seemed you had two not-enemies in the tower.

[the-blue-fairie]

Why Elsa’s arc in F2 doesn’t work for me (and why it does.)

Yesterday, I got into a conversation with a friend where I tried to articulate why I disagreed with certain writing decisions made in Frozen 2 pertaining to Elsa’s arc. It was tricky for me to articulate because, on paper, Elsa’s arc is pretty solid. There are many good ideas and compelling aspects to Elsa’s arc and I can see why a portion of the fandom likes it so much. Elsa coming into a better understanding of herself is a great concept. Elsa being able to broaden her horizons and create a larger support network is a great concept. Elsa and Anna both coming to terms with Arendelle’s colonialist past is a really great concept. While I might personally have issues with the ending and Elsa staying in the Forest based on the material we were presented in the film, I can’t deny that conceptually, that is compelling.

Conceptually, Elsa’s arc works. My issue is in the finished film’s execution.

Personally, I feel that the plot device of the Voice unnecessarily distances us from Elsa’s emotions. By making the catalyst for Elsa’s emotional journey the Voice, the film distracts audiences from Elsa’s internal journey. Instead of having a song that fully explores Elsa’s conflicting feelings and own personal sense of denial and yearning, we focus on an argument between Elsa and an External Force. 

Yes, the film tries to make connection between the Voice and “a little voice in the back of your own mind,” but it isn’t from Elsa’s own mind. The writers could have written a less convoluted conflict for Elsa by making “the Voice” Elsa’s own personal internal conflict, but they didn’t. Instead of seeing Elsa simply making a decision for herself, we have to watch her be acted upon by an outside force first.

Now, defenders of the Voice plotline will likely say to me, “But, Liza, Elsa wants to follow the Voice. The Voice gives comfort to Elsa, allows her to realize that it’s okay to express feelings that she has already been having!”

And that’s where my frustration with the film’s execution comes into play again. Because the film never gives us a time of self-reflection for Elsa before she starts hearing the Voice. We are told in Into the Unknown that she wants to come into a better understanding of herself independently of the Voice, but we are not shown it. 

What makes this even more frustrating is the deleted moment from the prologue where Elsa asks Iduna about her powers. This little moment (which was already fully animated apparently?) does show that Elsa has this yearning even from childhood, long before the Voice. It actually sets up that Elsa wants to know the source of her powers, which is a major motivation for her actions as the film proceeds. BUT IT’S NOT IN THE MOVIE. THEY CUT IT. It’s like the filmmakers just assumed, well, audiences want to know where Elsa’s powers come from, so obviously audiences will accept that Elsa wants to know too, even though that was never a plot element of the first film, so we don’t have to clearly establish that motivation until Show Yourself an hour into the film.  

The finished film, intentionally or not, distances us from Elsa’s emotional journey. It has an amazing conceptual arc for Elsa that could provide great insight into Elsa’s internality, but, in my opinion, it fails to live up to the potential of that concept. 

Moreover, there are lyrics from Elsa’s songs in F2 that I feel put the focus on Elsa’s “destiny” and her abilities rather than on Elsa herself and her inner feelings: 

“Or are you someone out there who's a little bit like me? / Who knows deep down I'm not where I'm meant to be?”

“Every day's a little harder as I feel my power grow...”

Now, partly, I acknowledge that I am speaking from personal preference. I don’t like destiny narratives. I don’t like narratives that hinge on “the reason I was born,” as Elsa puts it in Show Yourself. I don’t like narratives that focus on a character’s birth and make so much about them rooted in their birth instead of who they are as a person - and I feel like Frozen 2 ind of falls victim to that. The film handles itself better than, say, Star Wars - but the awkwardness of certain implications leaves a bad taste in my mouth. And the funny thing is, I think those implications could have been cleared up with just a little bit more time.

I think the film wants to establish that Elsa’s powers were a “gift” from the spirits because it counters Elsa’s desperate line in the first film about them being a “curse.” The film wants to validate Elsa emotionally and I value that.

But at the same time, by going beyond that and stressing the whole “fifth spirit destiny angle” (and again, I love than Jen Lee has gone on record to say that Elsa and Anna are both the fifth spirit, but considering the amount of people I’ve seen who didn’t pick up on that, I’m kinda holding it against the film that it wasn’t made clearer), it takes the focus away from Elsa’s own agency.

Again, I’m not saying that Elsa doesn’t have agency in the film, but that the film’s choices obscure and distract from that agency.

Making Elsa a gift of the spirits as a reward for her mother’s action and as a peace offering for her grandfather’s action takes the focus away from Elsa as a person, as an individual, as a human being. It puts her on a path in life before she is even born, before she even has the capacity to choose.

Now, you might say, “But it all works out in the end! Elsa chooses to take up her destiny.” But that’s the thing. It just happens to work out in the end because the narrative was written that way. What if Elsa wanted to reject her destiny? She had no choice in the matter while she was still in the womb.

But I’m supposed to think it’s all okay because Elsa makes the choice to follow her destiny and the film doesn’t even take the time to explore the ramifications of the destiny angle it establishes.

And that’s frustrating because, as a concept, that might be a really cool and unique take on destiny. We’ve seen heroes and protagonists who have felt burdened by their destiny before, but exploring Elsa’s feelings of validation that come from learning about her destiny after Elsa spending years feeling inferior could be an amazingly fresh take!

But instead, the destiny angle is just sort of... there... Brought up in a couple lines and a couple song lyrics, seeming to have some positive implications and some really negative implications I don’t think the filmmakers were really aware they were imparting... and we don’t get that exploration - even when further exploration of that angle would only enhance the depth of Elsa’s personal journey.

Now, on a conceptual level, there are two distinct and really rewarding questions that emerge from the adventure Elsa goes on in F2. Those questions are, “What can you do for others?” and, “What can you do for yourself?” The film wants to interrogate Arendelle’s colonialist history AND give Elsa a fulfilling arc of self-affirmation - and that’s great! Both of those concepts are great! But, in execution, I feel like the finished film falters by trying to intertwine those two concepts in Elsa’s arc.

I bring this up because what if someone says to me, “But Liza, if Elsa were to hypothetically reject her destiny then the Northuldra and Arendellians would be still be trapped in the Enchanted Forest and then Runeard’s wrong would not be righted, are you arguing for extreme individualism and selfishness?” Which... No. I’m not. Elsa absolutely needs to right the wrongs perpetrated by her grandfather. Elsa absolutely needs to reflect on the ways her grandfather’s actions reverberate into the present day. That’s an amazing message for young audiences. 

But Elsa’s taking responsibility for her grandfather’s actions and finding personal fulfillment are two completely different aspects of her character arc.  

And I feel both concepts are done a disservice by the interpolation of the “destiny” elements and the “focus on magical abilities at the expense of character” elements into the greater plot.

If the film wants to be about coming to terms with the colonialist past and about Elsa finding a greater sense of fulfillment in a new place, why not give the Northuldra more screentime? Why not show more scenes of Elsa bonding more with her mother’s people? Again, there are a few such scenes - but after Elsa and Anna and Olaf head out, the Northuldra barely appear until the end of the film. Why not have them actively take part in their own deliverance? Maybe have Honeymaren and Ryder join the quest, which would allow them to develop further as characters and give Elsa characters to play off of as she makes important decisions about her life. That would make everything more personal - and on top of that, it is ALWAYS a good thing to allow characters of color more screentime and depth. 

Instead, the film focuses more on Elsa’s connection to the spirits - her friendship with Bruni (which is the most developed bond), her fascination with the giants (with whom she also barely interacts) and her respect for the nokk (which is illustrated really well by her graceful bow.) All that is decent, but it ties more into the “mythic” aspects of Elsa’s character than her humanity... and, to be honest, Elsa’s relationship with the spirits comes off as pretty underdeveloped too.

I’ve harped on this before, but what does Elsa have in common with the giants beyond the fact they are both magical? Why does Elsa say, “I feel like I am home,” when arriving at Ahtohallan? Yes, Ahtohallan has a connection to her mother and the Northuldra, but again, I’m frustrated that the film doesn’t explore Elsa’s connection to the Northuldra more through her interactions with the Northuldra.

The filmmakers had the outline of a  deeply personal, internal story for Elsa - but I feel like they didn’t capitalize on the most personal and compelling aspects of their story.

And it just doesn’t work for me. 

But at the same time, I respect and value the ambition of Frozen 2. I respect its thought-provoking concepts. And I can understand why so many people do connect to Elsa’s arc in F2 - because again, Elsa still has agency, it’s just agency that’s obfuscated by the unnecessary convolutedness of the plot and a destiny angle that isn’t really needed for the story the writers are trying to tell and (I would argue) actively hampers it. I don’t want to take anything away from those friends of mine that love Elsa’s arc in F2. Your perspective is beautiful and valid and wonderful. 

But at the same time, I also feel that people who argue something is “off” about Elsa’s arc in F2 come from a valid place as well (at least, the arguments of people who are arguing in good faith - not the people arguing in bad faith).

Everyone’s perspectives on a piece of media are valid. Everyone’s perspectives emerge from their own experiences in life. I’m simply trying to give voice to mine - based on my particular emotional connection to Elsa as a character, my interpretation of Elsa, and my personal distrust of destiny narratives. 

[chicgeekgirl89]

Mercy is Out of Your Reach: Chapter 1

Fandom: SEAL Team

Characters: Sonny Quinn, Clay Spenser, Lisa Davis, Jason Hayes, and the rest of the team

Summary: Sonny Quinn isn't sick. And he's definitely not too sick to escape the cell he and Clay are trapped in. At least, not yet. Contains Clay whump, Sonny whump, a little torture, and a bit of Savis. Shoutout to @bluenet13 for helping with the title! 

                                         XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Sonny Quinn absolutely, positively did not have a cold. Colds were for sissies and kids, not Tier One Operators. What he had was allergies. Or at least that’s what he told Jason when he arrived at the base, coughing and hacking. Because the hell he was being left behind when his brothers were taking off for a mission halfway across the world. He was not staying out of the action for a little cough and runny nose.

“Could you please cough literally anywhere else?” Clay griped, wrinkling his nose as Sonny covered his mouth with his elbow and hacked away.

“You should have stayed home,” Brock grunted.

“Let me look at you.” Trent pulled out a penlight and Sonny swatted him away with a frown. “Get that thing outta my face.”

“I thought you said you were fine,” Jason said, cracking open one eye from in his hammock.

“I am. It’s allergies.”

“To what? Behaving yourself?” Ray asked with a snicker.

Sonny kicked at him. “It’s ragweed. And pollen.”

“Right. Sure it is,” Full Metal grunted.

Sonny stood up and glared at all of them. “If ya’ll are going to be assholes I’m just going to take my charming personality to another part of this transport.”

“Good.”

“Go.”

“Yes please.”

Sonny shot them all a final scowl before trundling himself off to the back of the plane. He honestly felt a little bit like garbage; his head was full, he couldn’t breathe through his nose, and his lungs felt tight. He settled himself against a crate, letting his head drop back as he tried to take a deep breath.

The op was taking them to Morocco to gather intel for Mandy and possibly get to blow things up depending on the results. It wasn’t a Gucci mission by any means, but it was lower risk than some of the other ones they’d been on lately and that was probably good because he was already exhausted and they hadn’t even started yet.

“What are you doing?” 

He cracked open an eye to find Lisa looking down at him. “Sleeping?”

“You should be home.”

“I’m fine,” he told her, even as he felt his breath catch again and tried to unsuccessfully stifle yet another cough.

“You’re sick.”

“Quinns don’t get sick,” he said automatically. 

“Stop saying that!” she snapped at him. “Just because that’s the line your father lived by, it doesn’t mean you have to do it too.”

“It’s not a line. It’s a fact,” he said, sniffing as some snot tried to trickle out of his nose.

“You’re an idiot.”

“You know you keep on saying that to me, it might just hurt my feelings,” he told her with a grin.

She walked away and returned moments later with a bottle of water and an orange packet, both of which she tossed into his lap. “Drink this.”

He wrinkled his nose. “It tastes like piss.”

“Drink it anyway. Might help.”

He grumbled but she just crossed her arms and stared at him so he dumped the powdered Vitamin C into the bottle and chugged it down. “Happy?” he asked when he was finished.

“You should let Trent check you out.”

“You know, last I knew I was a fully grown adult who could make his own damn choices.”

“And last I knew you were a stubborn ass idiot.”

“Agree to disagree then.”

“If you die, it is not on me.”

“Absolutely.”

She was obviously still mad at him as she stalked away, probably to go huff at Mandy about stupid men and their lack of care for themselves. But he was fine. He just needed a couple hours of shuteye and he’d be good to go again.

He didn’t exactly feel worse by the time they landed, but he definitely didn’t feel better either. He sniffed and snorted as they gathered up their gear and headed out for whatever abandoned warehouse/hotel/house they were setting up the TOC in today. 

“Ray and Metal are going high on overwatch,” Jason said as they briefed. “Clay and Sonny will be at the café. Brock, Trent and I will be in the truck. Remember this is surveillance only. As much as a it sucks,” he glanced at Eric who had the good grace not to roll his eyes at his trigger happy team, “do not engage for any reason.”

“Not even if they say something mean?” Sonny asked, then rasped out another cough.

“You’re really going to make me take Typhoid Mary over here on a stakeout?” Clay asked.

“You know, none of you are being very supportive of my decision to come and watch all your asses,” Sonny grumbled.

“All right that’s enough,” Blackburn said. “Everybody has their assignments. You roll out in twenty.”

Jason caught Sonny’s arm on the way out of the room. “You sure you’re good for this?” 

“Yeah Jase. I’m fine.”

“We can do the op without you. Trent can take your spot.”

“I told you I’m fine. Ya’ll need to stop mothering me.”

Jason nodded. “Don’t screw it up.”

“Have I ever?” Sonny grinned and pointed finger guns at him. “Don’t answer that.”

“Drink this,” Clay said later when they were in position. The two of them had taken a corner table in the cafe, backs to the wall so they could keep an eye out for trouble. Both of them were in civvies, caps pulled down low over their faces, backpacks resting on the floor to keep their cover as “American tourists.”

“Why do you all keep trying to make me drink stuff today?” Sonny grumbled, sniffing at the cup Clay had put in front of him.

“It’s tea. It’ll help your throat,” Clay said.

“My throat doesn’t need any help.”

“Sonny shut up and drink the damn tea,” Jason said over the comms.

He did as he was told, sipping the bitter brew and wishing it was coffee or a beer instead. Or better yet NyQuil. 

“Okay those are our guys,” Ray said, static crackling in the background. “Keep it cool and make sure you get that device right.”

Sonny shifted in his seat, angling so that the camera button on his shirt would pick up more of the room, while Clay adjusted the listening device masquerading as a pen, right on the edge of the table.

“Bravo Two we are in position,” Clay muttered.

“Read you loud and clear Bravo Six. Hold steady.”

They got about ten, good minutes before it all went to hell. One second Sonny was sitting with Clay the next he was on the floor, ears ringing and then completely blind as someone threw a bag over his head.

He struggled and kicked his feet, making contact with someone who yelled and the next thing he felt was extreme pain in his skull, likely from the butt of a rifle.

He lost time after that, coming in and out. He was being carried, or rather dragged, and whoever was doing it clearly didn’t care about his health and wellbeing. He was vaguely aware of being put into a vehicle with no idea how long the ride lasted. And when he finally came around for real he wished he’d stayed out, because there was a man spraying him with a hose.

He gasped and struggled to get into a seated position, wincing as he touched the knot on the back of his skull.

Something moved next to him. “You all right?” Clay asked, wiping water from his face. His lip was split and there was a lot of dirt on the front of his shirt.

Sonny nodded as he took a good look at their surroundings. Cement walls and floor. Barred door. No window. A prison cell. Shit.

The man who’d sprayed them growled something in a language Sonny didn’t understand and then walked away. “D’you get that?” he asked Clay.

“His equivalent of ‘Fucking Americans’ I think,” Clay said. “My Tamazight’s rough.”

“What the hell man?” Sonny asked. “Did you see anything?”

Clay shook his head, testing the strength of the bars on the door. “Nah it was all smoke and light and then they hit me in the head. You still got your comm?”

Sonny shook his head. “They must have searched us, knife in my boot’s gone. And that water took out the button cam if it wasn’t damaged already.”

His lungs constricted painfully and he coughed wetly into his hand. “All right listen,” Clay said coming to stand close to him, back to the hall in case anyone was watching. “You’re sick. You need to let me run point on this. I’ll get us out of here.”

Sonny glared at him. “I am perfectly capable of helping us escape this hellhole.”

“I know. I’m just saying let me take point. Let me take the heat.”

“I am not letting you take the heat for anything!”

With a rattling clang the cell door slid open and four men entered. Two of them pointed automatic weapons at their captives, while the other two shoved them out of the cell and down the hall.

“Let me handle it,” Clay muttered to him.

Sonny shot him a dirty look but didn’t have time to respond as they were pushed into a new room. Sonny immediately spotted a tub of water in the corner and several more men, all holding weapons. Double shit.

He and Clay were both forced onto their knees and Sonny felt the barrel of a rifle press into the back of his still aching skull. He gritted his teeth. This was the kind of thing SERE school was made for. But that didn’t mean it was going to be easy.

The man who stepped in front of them looked familiar and Sonny had to work to conceal his surprise. Farhad Mahmoudi wasn’t supposed to be in country. In fact all their intelligence said he was hundreds of miles away at his home in Iran. This whole scouting trip had been about checking into his network and planning his assassination upon arrival. And here he was, six weeks ahead of the supposed schedule. 

“I am so curious,” Farhad said, “as to why two Americans were sitting in a café in a part of town they certainly shouldn’t be visiting.” 

With his neatly trimmed beard, glasses, and Ramones t-shirt he didn’t look like your typical baddie, but Sonny had learned they took all shapes and sizes. It wasn’t fair. Scum of the earth shouldn’t be allowed to like the same things as regular folks.

His English was excellent, slightly accented, and Sonny seemed to remember that he’d schooled somewhere Western, maybe London or Oxford. “Well me and my buddy here, we’re just on a bit of a vacation,” Sonny said quickly, and could feel Clay’s glare without looking. He was the senior team member. If anybody was taking heat, it was him.

“A vacation? To this country? An interesting choice. Some might even say dangerous.” Farhad’s face said he wasn’t fooled.

“Well we like a little danger.” Sonny grinned at him. “Good for a man. Keeps him strong. Ladies love that.”

“I see. This is interesting because all of the American men I have met who look like you, act like you, they are not tourists.” He fixed Sonny with a look of steel. “They are American military.”

Something slammed into Sonny’s back and he choked as he fell face-first into the floor, already sore lungs clenching in his chest as he gasped for air. He heard Clay’s surprised grunt as he hit the floor beside him. 

“So which is it? Air Force? No.” Sonny felt a boot grind into his back, pinning him to the ground and he coughed painfully as his lungs were further constricted. “You are not pretty enough for the Air Force. That one is. But not you. Maybe Army?”

Sonny gasped for air as the boot moved and caught him the ribs, not hard enough to break anything, but enough to make a point. “No, not Army either. Too tough for the Army. Which leaves…” Farhad’s sneakers, black Converse, stopped directly in front of his face. “Navy. Are you Navy?”

“We’re just tourists,” Sonny ground out.

“Not regular Navy then. Regular Navy cracks under pressure. But you, you are trained for this. You are SEAL’s.”

Someone grabbed Sonny’s hair and dragged him painfully off the floor toward the tub in the corner of the room, Farhad’s voice following him as he went. “I hear SEAL’s like the water. Let’s see if this is true.”

Before Sonny could even think his head was shoved under the surface.

There were tricks to water torture. You had to turn off just enough to not really feel it, but stay with it enough to hold your breath. None of that took into account the fact that Sonny’s brush with death in a torpedo tube made water of any kind an instant panic situation. He felt his body start to thrash, tried to lift his head and gulped water instead, burning inside this throat until he thought he couldn’t take it anymore and then he was yanked from the tub, gasping, dripping, and shaking.

“Hmmm, you really can hold your breath quite a long time can’t you? Let’s see for how long.”

Sonny lost count of how many times he went under. Every time he came up he could hear Clay yelling something fierce and he could only hope that they weren’t doing anything nearly as terrible to his buddy. 

His lungs grew tired and it became harder and harder not to inhale water. He was close to blacking out and if that happened he was going to drown. Every ounce of adrenaline he had in him seemed to seep away as water came up his nose and down his throat. And then, mercifully, he was pulled out and dropped onto the floor, gasping and hacking away like a dying fish.

Someone pulled him to his feet and dragged him back to the cell. Clay was tossed in beside him and the door slammed shut. “Sonny!” Clay grabbed his arm and rolled him onto his side. “Sonny talk to me.”

Sonny’s chest felt like it was on fire so it took him a second to gasp out an answer. “I’m…okay,” he finally managed.

“God could you be any more stupid?” Clay asked, his voice shaky. “Next time let me take it.”

“What’d,” Sonny hacked, trying to clear mucus from his throat, “what’d you tell them?”

“Stuck with your story. We’re backpacking. Always wanted to see Morocco. Asked if they knew the best place to get some girls.”

Sonny tried to bark out a laugh but it came out as a cough instead. “Your storytelling is always something.” He managed to heave himself up and back against the wall so he could look at his friend. “They hurt you? You were yelling pretty loud.”

Clay shook his head. “Not really. Couple kicks here and there. I’m fine. I was yelling to try and get them to stop, not that they were listening. Farhad made it pretty clear they only need one of us. And I don’t think he’s particular about which one it is. He’s ready to pit us against each other, see who cracks first.”

Triple shit.

[damienthepious]

also. also because. i am a gremlin. and i shall die of Emotions and take you with me apparently. ["From yourself?" Amaryllis says, her brow furrowed with worry. "Look, I- I know this is uncomfortable, Arum, but- but I know that you've tried to get Damien to- to-"] to ["If you had managed to convince Damien to do it, it'd be cruel, first of all. He doesn't deserve that kind of guilt weighing on him. And second, again, you would be dead, Arum.] please thank i am lov u

[Pick a short passage from any fanfic I’ve written and send it to me, and I’ll give you the equivalent of a DVD commentary on that snippet]

you’re not a gremlin you are valid and i love you. that is a LONG PASSAGE THO, so BUCKLE UP. Also cw for discussion of depression, suicide, and suicidal thoughts below the cut. fun times with soft fic! or somethingggg

fun fact before we begin! Originally, this conversation was supposed to happen... before the i-love-you confessions. This was supposed to be broken down before they admitted that they cared for each other romantically, but i was having a shitton of trouble working out the trajectory and the ending of the scene, like, what the actual resolution was, and I couldn’t figure out how to make it work in time when all the other stuff in the chapter was good to go. And THEN it was supposed to happen right after the i-love-yous, but that felt SO busy and SO sloppy, so it kept getting shifted backward-

which wound up being kind of a blessing, i think? because here’s the thing- this scene is TENSE, here, and Rilla pushes pretty hard- but the older version was... kind of a FIGHT. Arum was much more aggressive about it, and there was a line in there for a long time- something like You will be gone this time tomorrow ANYWAY, Amaryllis. What does it matter? And then Rilla had this fucking heartbreaking- Missing you and MOURNING you are not the SAME THING, are you even LISTENING to yourself? and there was just... a lot more harshness to the whole thing. I’m glad it got to settle out, and I’m glad they were in a place to be softer with each other for this. It was too important to me that they addressed this, and i didn’t want it to get waysided.

obviously depression and suicidality aren’t things that have easy fixes, and love is not a Cure for mental illness, but i wanted it to be clear that a) rilla and damien are aware of arum’s non-physical hurts and care about them, too, and b) they are an expansion of Arum’s support network, which is SUPER important when coping with mental illness!

The Keep did the best it could, I think, but when it was just the two of them it was harder for the Keep to know what to do when Arum was deep in a depressive episode, and... well, they have a mental link, right? so I kind of assumed... they might share at least shades of this as well. Arum’s depression gets bad, the Keep is probably not having a good time just then either. Harder to take care of each other while you don’t even know how to take care of yourself. But! the initial point! expanding their collective support system is SO important to learning how to better cope with Arum’s mental illness, which has been running him pretty ragged while his physical injuries had him in traction.

Anyway. ANYWAY. the actual section you requested.

["From yourself?" Amaryllis says, her brow furrowed with worry. "Look, I- I know this is uncomfortable, Arum, but- but I know that you've tried to get Damien to- to-"] The reason why Rilla is leading this conversation is partially because Damien hasn’t fully discussed this with her, mostly out of a concern for... like... not betraying Arum’s trust? What happened between Damien and Arum was between them, and Damien wasn’t comfortable outright blurting that to Rilla. This was one of the ones that doesn’t get told. Not directly at least. Another reason why Damien takes a verbal backseat here is that... well.. he’s already said his piece to Arum on this front. The waters brought you here to live is a pretty definitive statement, yeah?

["What? Wh-what did you tell her?" Arum says, turning towards Damien, and he means to snap but his tone sounds more hurt than furious. Damien only sits, his hands clasped in his lap, his lips pressed tight together. "What did you say, knight?"] And, clearly, Damien’s instincts on that front were right. Arum is mortified by the idea that Damien would have aired his (as Arum thinks of it) weakness, and hopelessness. He’s hurt, that Damien might tell on him when it doesn’t matter because it didn’t happen, and he doesn’t feel that way now so clearly it doesn’t matter-

["He didn't tell me anything, Arum." She shakes her head, angling her body a bit more between them, leaning closer.] Rilla knows him too well by now. Tries to head off that hurt/anger and get them on track.

["Nothing specific, at least, but I'm not stupid. I heard you goading him plenty of times, and he said you told him about your- your work before we left, and he said that if he killed you then, it wouldn't have been a slaying and really there's only one way to interpret that evidence-" she pauses, cringes, bites her lip. "You tried to get Damien to kill you."] “it wouldn’t have been a slaying” was always a particular... phrasing that hurt me, i guess you could say.

[Arum freezes, his mouth going dry.] Arum does not like being confronted with his own weaknesses, as he sees them. He especially doesn’t want Amaryllis of all people to know about this- bad enough that Damien had to know.

["I don't know if it was because of guilt or- or depression or panic about the trip or what, but- but I already told you, Arum. I didn't put in all this hard work just for you to die. Just for you to throw all of it away-"] It was, in all honestly, a combination of these factors. Which is part of why Arum continues to panic. he’s still not really used to being seen, especially not in such a vulnerable way.

["I am home, Amaryllis," he manages in a whisper. "You brought me home. There will certainly be no reason for me to- to endanger myself now."] When you’re suicidal, it’s kind of hard to imagine what it’s like to not be suicidal. When you’re out of one of those valleys, it’s kind of hard to remember how deep they can feel. he doesn’t want to think about it. he’s happy right now. he has more than he could have ever dreamed possible, so it’s really hard for him to conceptualize that moment, right now. It’s hard, and it hurts.

["No?" she says weakly. "There wasn't any reason for you to try to goad Damien into killing you back in the hut, either, Arum, but you did it anyway."] no reasons that make sense outside of Depression Brain, at least.

["I-" Arum glances away again, his hand flexing, but she reaches out and takes one of his hands, squeezing tight. His eyes flick to Sir Damien, sitting quiet though his worried eyes are fixed on the pair of them. "I- that was- different-"] He has SUCH a hard time articulating this. Combine that with the fact that he really HATES talking about it. Lizard is having a panic.

["Different how, Arum?"] Rilla is pushing really hard, here, for good reason. She’s terrified that he might pull something after they leave. she hasn’t been away from him barely at ALL in MONTHS, and now she knows he’s suicidal, which is compounding the terror she already has about leaving him. She wants to protect him, from other monsters, from knights, from himself if she needs to. She loves him and she wants him to be safe and happy and if she needs to gently bully him through an uncomfortable conversation then by the fucking saints-

["I did not want you to endanger yourself for me, Amaryllis," he hisses, turning towards her with his tail thrashing. "You- you make the world less cruel, by your actions, your choices, your existence. The both of you. You try, if nothing else, and for you to leap to action and danger for my sake is- was-"] And he breaks. That was the real kicker of it, y’know? She found out that he needed to go home for his Keep and she buckled down, for him, after he had just been confronted with evidence of his former work and the ways it had directly harmed a human he loves. How could he possibly feel like he deserved that sort of care, that sort of consideration? How could he allow her to risk her own safety to get him home? He failed the Keep, he failed her, he failed himself-

in that moment, he was utterly certain that it was better for him to simply set them ALL back in their places. Amaryllis might be unhappy that he was gone, but it would be precisely the same hurt that she would have when she left him at home anyway, wouldn’t it? (pro-tip: No It Wouldn’t) Damien would simply return to being the knight he was always meant to be, and the Keep could grow a new familiar, unburdened by his distant, useless weight (pro-tip: No They Wouldn’t). And there would be no more risk to any of them for his sake. 

[She stares up into his eyes, her hand clasped tight around his wrist, and he clenches his teeth and pretends that his throat is not aching.] It is so hard to explain this to her. Especially while he is... currently fairly distant from the feeling. He’s keyed up, emotionally, because of his renewed proximity to the keep, and because of the giddiness of newly-admitted love. Literally everything feels like A Lot, right now. but this? next level distress.

["If helping me destroyed you, it would be the worst of cruelties I have inflicted upon this world. And I, Amaryllis, have inflicted more than my share of cruelties already."] ouch. I feel like i’ve already unpacked this so just. ouch.

["So you try to take yourself out of the picture instead? Arum-"] She’s horrified. She understands the particularities of Damien’s anxiety by now, how bad that can get, but Arum’s been pretty internal with his own mental health stuff and whatever hints she’s been catching have been somewhat obscured as possibly just... responses to the physical trauma? Him being actively suicidal when he was basically out of the woods physically is... hard for her to cope with.

["The little knight did not bite when provoked regardless, so I hardly see how it matters," Arum growls, and in his periphery he sees Damien flinch, his head ducking.] oh poor Damien. Thinking about how close he actually did come, to ‘biting’

[Amaryllis' grip on his wrist tightens. "You do know that's not comforting, right?] It’s really not. Putting the onus on Damien like that- god, fuck. [It matters because I- because we love you, and because if you die, Arum, you'll be dead. Even if you were trying to protect us in some roundabout way-"] back when this scene was placed before the i-love-yous, that line was “It matters because I- because I care about you,” for... obvious reasons. Rilla, unsurprisingly, is about as bad as Damien is, at hiding her feelings once she admits to them the first time.

[Arum flinches, and she pauses, pressing her lips together for a moment as she visibly chooses a different phrasing.] She knows him well enough by now to understand that he’s flinching because saying that it was altruistic to want to protect him... she knows she shouldn’t push against that.

["If you had managed to convince Damien to do it, it'd be cruel, first of all. He doesn't deserve that kind of guilt weighing on him. And second, again, you would be dead, Arum.] It would be cruel. I think about Rilla’s assessment of Damien from Treacherous Heart sometimes, about the potential deadliness of real guilt for Damien... if he really broke in that moment and loosed that arrow- it would have destroyed him. Especially at that point, when he cared about Arum, even if he didn’t have any proper context to fit that care into, and when he knows how much this creature means to Rilla- RILLA’S heartbreak if she had to come back to that- to that? when she thinks she’s coming back to pack him up for home? when she knows that she loves Arum but is forcing herself to ignore it and push it down and away? Arum killing himself by Damien’s hand in that moment would have destroyed all of them, in a way. but! hey, that’s not the kind of fic i write, yeah? oof. I just think about what-if’s a lot and make myself sad.

Rilla’s emphasis on the kind of hyper-obvious here is... deliberate, also. if you died you’d be dead is something of a redundant statement, duh, but also like... the permanent consequences of a temporary state of mind are fucking important, and Rilla needs to make sure that he understands what he nearly did, and why it matters, and why she’s SCARED for him.

anyway this was a whole fuck of a lot. i hope any of this is interesting or enjoyable and not just. heavy. whoops.

[ninamontagutbordas]

HOW CAN I KNOW WHO I AM IF SOCIAL MEDIA DICTATES WHO I SHOULD BE?

The first time I joined Facebook, I was thirteen years old. It was 2008 at the time and none of the existing social media platforms were a big thing in Spain yet. I had a total of seven facebook friends and I only used it to talk to my sister, who introduced me to the social network, while she was away during the summer. Actually, facebook was just a great solution to connect with people traveling or living abroad.

I didn’t understand the power of social media then and, to be honest, it’s still difficult for me to have an accurate understanding of how its power can affect people. It sure has affected me countless times to the point where social media was controlling the way I felt and, it still controls me sometimes.

I am about to turn twenty-five and I am very happy with who I’ve become this past decade. Obviously, I had to go through all the faces the majority of kids go through between the ages of fifteen and the mid-twenties (hopefully I’m not the only one!): I was a stupid teenager at times (to be fair, sometimes still am), there were moments were I behaved as a bad daughter, a bad sister, a bad friend, a bad girlfriend and as a bad “all the roles that a human being can possibly be”, but, still, I am very happy with who I am today and I have forgiven myself for all the damage I may have made.

During this past decade, I’ve managed to create different abilities that helped me understand a bit more how to navigate the awkward early twenties, such as pushing away toxicity, standing up for myself, accepting constructive criticism, and facing mistakes as soon as possible.

BUT, what if social media is dictating what’s toxic and what’s not, when do I need to stand up for myself and when I don’t, which criticism is constructive and which is not and which are the things I should see as mistakes and which are not?

It got me thinking.

I feel like the power of this digital “era” we are living in (is it even an era anymore or at this point is just our reality?) has brought us a lot of good, but also a lot of bad. There have been moments in my life where I found social media was actually very dangerous for me and reflecting on it now, I think my experience may be helpful to some of you as well.  

At the beginning of this crazy 2020, I was in a very bad place. I had just quitted a job that was very damaging for me, I wasn’t comfortable with the way I looked, and I felt very isolated from the important things in life. I have suffered from severe anxiety since I was twelve and had to learn to manage that at a very early stage in my life, but it had never been as bad as it was in January. First world problems? Indeed. I totally agree, but it was a very dark period of time for myself and there was nothing I could do to feel better -or at least I thought so-.

I have the most amazing parents and the most amazing family, a great group of friends who have always supported me no matter what and I had a great loving boyfriend who not once made me feel non-deserving of a happiness that seemed impossible to reach at the time. My support system wasn’t the problem.

SO, why wasn’t I happy?

I knew I had to stop complaining and start doing things that would make me feel better, which would make me heel. Had I known at the time social media was a key element to get there, it would have been a lot easier.  

My body had changed a lot during the past few years, I wasn’t exercising, and I handled my anxiety by eating literally my feelings. My pants didn’t fit, my body was way different than my friend’s bodies (yeah, I know, “don’t compare yourself to others” and “all bodies are beautiful” but still, we all know how it works) and I felt very insecure in general. I never have had the patience or the strength before to beat my laziness and it’s safe to say I had zero trust in myself then, but again, it was time. I had to do something.

I decided to start a severe diet.

If you know me, you know I have had a terrible habit in the past where I start things and never finish them, so of course, I didn’t think I was going to go through with an entire diet. I didn’t see myself capable.

It took me six months and nine days to finally feel healthy and good again, but I did it. (Two out of six months I was quarantined at home, which was not great neither mentally nor physically for the process I was going through). I discovered a lot of myself during that time though.

However, not everything I discovered was actually good, believe it or not. I discovered a lot of bad stuff and not necessarily was I aware of all the negative inputs I was receiving from the internet. One of those things was the social media strategies to engage with users in the wrong way and how that can control a person’s feelings. I was a victim of social media.

During the lockdown, I had to beat my anxiety in different ways so that none of them lead me up to interrupting the diet-plan my doctor had provided me. I had a commitment to myself and the more I proved myself wrong, the better I felt. I’m not a quitter and I wasn’t a quitter back then, but I just didn’t know it yet.

One of the ways to beat my anxiety, strangely enough, was sitting home to my computer and lose myself on social media, as many of us did during the quarantine. Without even noticing it, I ended up falling into a rabbit hole: Instagram food accounts.

Isn’t it so paradoxical? I was doing a diet but still, I was spending my hours looking at thousands of videos of people baking cakes, cooking pasta, and reading recipes I know I couldn’t have as long as I wanted to keep doing this.

Some said I should be proud of myself - being able to look at these videos and not once cheat or interrupt my diet is a great way “to train my strength”. I fully disagree. To me, this was not about strength, to me this was about how the channels in my brain had been educated to think this was normal behavior. It was not. Social media was tempting me.

What I’ve realized through this process is that, it wasn’t actually my choice whether to stop looking at them or not. The less I wanted to see, the more videos I had access to because of the complexity of the social media algorithms. They decided I needed to see that kind of content.

Social media was proving myself and it became an interesting yet dangerous dynamic for me, which is why I find myself writing down this essay. For months, I’ve been having conversations with my parents and my friends about the danger of social media.

BUT, where is the real danger?

In the months that followed, I was starting to feel better. Actually, I was feeling pretty good. Not just physically, but also mentally. I was better than ever and people around me started noticing the inside glow I was feeling.

The problem is that feeling good and being in charge of your own life are two very different things. I was happy but my life was not under control, quite the opposite. I wasn’t in control. Social media algorithms were controlling me.

That’s when it got tricky for me – How could I be the happiest I’ve ever been but feel so frustrated? Was I really happy? Was I pretending to be happy because everyone else seemed so happy? Was I really being myself or was I just pretending to be somebody who I wasn’t? Was social media training myself to think I was happy? Was social media LYING to me?

All of these questions were hunting me, and I just did not know what to do. I was back in shape yet all the pictures I saw on Instagram of these beautiful women in their amazing bikinis during their amazing vacations made me feel self-conscious about myself.

Why did I do this diet? Did I do it for myself or for the benefit of a social network that had thousands of pictures of myself where I could prove to people graphically I had lost a lot of weight?

Social media has an interesting way to make people feel bad and create this interesting millennial feeling of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) – the problem is, we only share 10% of what’s really going on with us. That’s why it was important to me to share this story – I wanted to use social media in a different way. Maybe I’m oversharing, but at least I’m oversharing in a true and authentic way, not in an unrealistic scenario.

A while ago, I decided I would delete all the pictures on my Instagram page and I was only going to leave there the ones that captured the moments where I was really happy and really present. From around 600 pictures I had posted over the years, I chose around 20. They could stay. Twenty-something pictures that reminded me of the important things in life, at least the important things to me. But then I said to myself: “Did I just chose when I felt happy because I deleted some Instagram pictures? This makes me so sad”.

Going through these old pictures, I could clearly tell how my body has changed “for the better” this past nine months but I realized very quickly something very unexpected - I was really happy back then. For sure I had that puffy face and a bigger body, but I was really happy and really secure. And that’s when I realized, social media was dictating what should I do and who I should be. Not because I decided to, but because I allowed it to. 

The thing is that I don’t feel threatened by social media itself. I feel threatened by the way we consume digital content without even thinking of the impact this can have not only on ourselves but on others. 

We get carried away because we don’t use social media in a smart way. We use it to compare ourselves and our life with others, directly or indirectly, whether we like it or not. We don’t consume media to complete ourselves with information and use it for our own profits. We consume media to fill the blanks we are missing in our journeys. 

I’m scared of how fast the world is evolving and how fast digital progress is happening. Let’s see where my relationship with the internet stands in five years when my twenties are over. Until then, I’ll try to use social media for the benefit of the people around me. I feel like we all have a responsibility and, I’m going to commit to it.  

The question is, are you?

[crazy-loca-blog]

Personal thoughts on… 2019 releases (Part III)

Note: As the title says, these are just personal opinions on Choices books and chapters. Of course, you may agree or disagree with them, I only use this platform to express my thoughts on what I read every week.

I’m so sorry! Not only I wasn’t at home during New Year, but I also noticed that I hadn’t finished one of the books I had to write about, so I was kind of stuck! Welcome to the final part of my review of 2019 books. As I said before, I will include current releases and books that were released on 2018 but finished in 2019. The list is organized in alphabetical order and it doesn’t include the VIP Books (as I don’t have access to the feature) or the seasonal books (as I’ll talk about them in another post, after all of them have been fully released). You may see Part I here and Part II here.

Red Carpet Diaries, Book 3 (June 7, 2019 - September 27, 2019): I still wonder “what were they thinking”. Personally, I have no complaints on the first book, it was a nice story, but I already had problems reading the second book (blame Teja and Seth for it), but dealing with the third one was just a nightmare. And I hate to admit it, but I only finished it because I hate to see incomplete books in my feed. As I said plenty of times in the past, we didn’t need a wedding book. Ninradell (did anyone figure out what Ninradell was about?) and the stalker plots were enough (we could have seen our MC winning some awards as well). The wedding left me speechless… and not in a good way. It was simply painful to read at times. We basically planned it by ourselves, and we had so many LIs and so many storylines (one per each LI) that I ended up feeling like they were the worst.  

Ride or Die: A Bad Boy Romance, Book 1 (January 25, 2019 - May 3, 2019): I don’t remember people complaining so much about a book before its release as they did with ROD. People were destroying it even before we knew what the plot was about! Based on those comments, the book was destined to be a failure. And then, Chapter 10 came. You may have seen it coming or not, but the plot twist of the book was brilliant, despite of being somehow predictable. It made so many people change their minds about the book and it attracted so many new readers, that this story ended up getting a second book at the very last minute (that’s the power of reading a book and buying diamond scenes, people!). Luckily, I’m part of the people who decided to give it a chance and I enjoyed it since the very first moment; however, I feel the story came to full circle at the end of the book, so I’m not that convinced about the idea of getting a second book.

Save The Date (September 29, 2019 – December 29, 2019): I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say everything about this book screams “toxicity”. At some point, I ended up feeling like half of the characters in the story had to go to therapy to control their anger issues, and the other half needed therapy to improve their self-esteem. Poor Ali, the only “real adult” character in this book, who had to deal with this bunch of crazy people. Despite having too many weddings this year, I liked the premise behind the story before its release: I saw it as an awesome space to meet different types of couples and celebrate different types of weddings (as all our wedding books at that point felt quite similar). And certainly each wedding was different and cute in its own way. However, the fact that the weddings were not the center of the story was disappointing. Instead, they focused on showing us the worst of each character: they were dull or too shy (hi Simon! hi Lindsay!) or they were too explosive and controlling (hi everyone else!). Too bad, PB… too bad.

Sunkissed (June 26, 2019 - October 9, 2019): I have some mixed emotions on this book. On one side, we have the grieving processes of this book’s characters. I just loved how the writers addressed it. They showed so many different reactions, points of view and feelings (they even addressed the grieving process after a breakup through Samson’s story), and they did it with so much respect… they did a brilliant job. On the other side, we had our family. Everything was OK at first, but as the book moved on, we ended up dealing with a mother that was quite toxic and manipulative (I’m still surprised that any of the girls suggested her to go to therapy because she was seriously damaging the family) and a sister who was a bitch with the guy who loved her. At the end of the book, I couldn’t believe that it took our mom like two chapters to move on from our dad and start dating “the artist”, and that our sister ended up in a relationship with the “not so hot” boy. Those guys deserved better than those women.  

The Elementalists, Book 1 (October 24, 2018 - February 22, 2019): Spells, magick, and a whole new life. I wish we all face the same destiny as our MC when we feel out of place! I read this book a little later because it was hard for me to catch some things, such as making spells or knowing when to attack or defend myself (thanks for existing, dear wiki), so it was kind of inevitable to see some spoilers, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it. I actually liked it a lot! Where do I begin with? The attunements. You can tell there was research and that the writers really took care about the elements to be used as attunements (I got metal, by the way). Then, the evolution of the MC, in a process that lasted a whole book. From thinking that everything was a mistake to defeating Raife, the way our MC grew during the story was beautiful. Also… we had a twin who protected us without us knowing of his/her existence! That’s just true love. And finally, some of the most loyal friends. They made mistakes, sometimes they screwed things (hi Beckett!) but in the end, it’s cool to see them learning from their own mistakes. There is only one thing I still don’t understand. Why did a lot of people think that Zeph would be the one to “betray” us? I mean, at some point everyone was convinced of it, but I never understand why. Was it because he wasn’t a LI? He never gave any clues for us to think that! Anyway… you can tell that I really liked this book, and as a person who doesn’t understand a thing about magick, this is huge!

The Elementalists, Book 2 (March 15, 2019 - August 2, 2019): The reason why it took me forever to finish this post was this book (oops, sorry!). I hadn’t finished it until a few days ago because I’m the worst when it comes to making spells, so I had to replay certain chapter (ahem, Chapter 10) like three times to make things right. What I like about this book (it’s definitely my favorite in the series) is how the writers link certain events from the first book, but at the same time they make us feel like this is a completely different story. We got new characters, new villains and a whole new story about sources. Also, our MC is more mature, he/she deals much better with his/her new powers and he/she found a whole new support network in Evelyn and Alma. However, I think the biggest mistake was the insane amount of diamond scenes with Beckett. I can totally understand how uncomfortable it was if you’re not dating him. The book was already fine, it wasn’t necessary to add so many diamond scenes with him just to get more money from us! Anyway… I can’t believe they finished this series after book 2. The ending was so open that I can’t imagine they won’t revisit this story in the future. What about our mom? What about Gemma trying to bring Alma back to life? Was Alma a good or a bad character? Are there other sources? Have we truly seen the full power of the twins? I need answers!

The Heist: Monaco (December 10, 2018 - March 18, 2019): I completely understand why people love this book. It definitely has a lot of things to love: we had a chance to choose our MC’s gender, our crew was customizable, and it’s not focused in romance. The plot is pretty solid as well, but (and here is where my only complaint about this book comes) I felt like some of the chapters in the middle of the book were just fillers to make the story longer. I don’t know if you noticed it, but in every chapter one member of the crew had a problem and we had to help them. After three or four chapters of it, I was bored and I just wanted them to talk more about the heist and less about their personal problems. But overall I enjoyed it, and just like most people, I still can’t understand why this story is not having a second book.  

The Royal Heir (June 22, 2019 to October 26, 2019): One of the things I like the most about The Royal Romance series is the sense of friendship and loyalty in our gang. But when The Royal Heir was announced I had some doubts. I liked the idea of seeing these people again, but after seeing our MC physically fighting the bad guys, it was weird to imagine her with a belly and trying to keep calm. The biggest mistake in this book was not changing the story. When they decided to take the short book about Bertrand and Savannah’s wedding and turn it into a pregnancy/motherhood series, they should have realized that no one expected to spend most of the book at the Walker ranch planning a wedding. They should have kept it simple: no more than four chapters at the ranch, and then back to Cordonia, maybe deepening Olivia’s plot. However, and even though I’m hoping to have a better plot in Book 2, I do have a favorite moment in this book. Playing as Bertrand was a non-sense, but I don’t remember laughing out so hard in a long time. Making the choices that he would make and seeing him doing stuff like riding a motorcycle, serenading Savannah or dealing with a bear was just priceless.

The Royal Masquerade (October 18, 2019 - Present): Even though I think this book helps us to understand some things about politics in Cordonia, I don’t think it’s actually working as I thought it would be. I assumed this would be like a link between The Crown & The Flame and The Royal Romance, but so far, I still can’t see the connections clearly. Hunter is the example of an assigned king/queen (just like in TRH if you didn’t marry Liam), we also know that Percival and Annalisa are Bertrand and Maxwell’s ancestors, and if you read chapter 13 (spoiler alert!) you got to know the link between the Nevrakis family and the monarchy in times of queen Kenna, but that’s all. There is something about this story that I like (I’m still trying to find out what it is) but at the same time, I think the book still lacks of that “wow” moment to blow our minds. I also feel like choosing a LI at the beginning of the book was not the best idea (damn, they both are so good!). And I still have so many questions! Why is there no mention to houses Fierro and Vescovi in TRR? Where does our magic come from? Why do I feel our MC could be related to Dom? Is Vasco a friend or an enemy? Too many questions, only a few chapters left.  

Wishful Thinking (April 15, 2019 - July 8, 2019): This book had so much potential that I can’t believe they messed it up so badly. You may have liked it or not, but you can’t deny the overall idea of the book was attractive. You had this shy character who suddenly goes from unknown to superstardom because she gets some powers and reads people minds. I’m still not convinced that this story deserved a second book, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t deserve the rushed ending it had. If they didn’t want to release a second book, the least they should have done was to give WT the same treatment as Across The Void and A Courtesan of Rome, that is, a single book, but longer, so that the writers could explain everything properly, because there were too many unanswered questions (mostly everything about her powers!).

[palmerasenfuego]

ANTIRECOMMENDATION: Surveys (2016), Natasha Stagg

A few weeks ago, before my latest Twitter break, I read an article by Natasha Stagg shared on my timeline, written in response to an edition of Rob Horning's newsletter, itself a response to a somewhat optimistic article about the recently-dubbed "hustle economy." The ideas and problems discussed are of great interest to me, as an artist and writer grappling with shifts in the means of distribution resulting from the commercialization of the internet. After finding myself confused by some of the points Stagg seemed to be making, I half-attentively read a few of the other articles she's written for the website, looked at her Twitter, and still felt unconvinced either way about Stagg's status as an Apparatchik of Cool. I guess that meant it was time I read Stagg's 2016 novel Surveys, which had existed in my mind for a few years as a novel "about" internet fame that I ought to read.

It's a little hard to criticize Stagg's novel, since it is so prescient about the nature of internet fame and the then-nascent influencer boom. The edition I checked out from my library features a blurb from Hari Nef, for everyone not already won over by the little semiotext(e) <e> on the cover. Conventionally, in a book review or whatever you want to call this, here is where descriptions of the novel's elements would appear: Colleen is a 23-year-old marketing functionary who performs customer surveys at a mall in Tuscon. She does typically 23-year-old things, such as feel unenthusiastic about her job, have unfulfilling sex, log on to the Internet, do drugs and drink. After some time with the survey participants and her co-workers, Colleen is suddenly afforded a shot at fame on the back of a whirlwind romance with fellow figure of vague internet fame Jim. Road novel as tour movie ensues, complete with barely legal companions, a coked-out manager, infidelity and, like, so many famous people. Then Colleen goes home again, of course, and, of course, home isn’t quite like she remembered it, and in the end I can't tell if she learned anything or if I did or what all the fuss is about.

I wanted to like this novel. Stagg's writing is often charming and evocative, and she is clearly intelligent. My frustration always only stems from feeling like I'm missing something, or from a sense that the writer hasn't committed fully to a project I think worth interrogating. The first chapters of Surveys were frustrating the way I want the opening of a novel to be—Colleen is not always 'likeable,' nor is her freeze-dried late modernist ennui, but something seems to be at work in the space between her coworkers, the survey participants, and her self. Passages dwell at delightful length on scenes in the mall, or on Colleen's reflections, the language enjoying space to feel out the ideas the novel is ostensibly interested in: "fame, jealousy, and statistics," by the author's account. Foolishly, I thought this meant that Stagg enjoys writing literary narrative. But once Colleen falls in love with Jim, and the A-plot gathers momentum, almost everything that seemed rewarding faded, with Stagg apparently content to let her story of fame won and sort of maybe lost present a series of cliches. As Colleen and Jim's relationship unravels, so too does Stagg's interest in writing a novel. Many ideas that could be fleshed out and explored narratively are reduced to passing asides, expressed by characters in a thought experiment committed to only halfway, its designer too eager to demonstrate how clever or astute her perception is. Which is not to say that Stagg isn’t perceptive and insightful; she just seems more concerned with Making Her Point than with writing a novel.

The closest thing to a consistent aesthetic choice is the decision to exclude any mention or explanation of what it is Colleen posts about online exactly, surely as an ironic comment on how online avatars depend as much on what’s omitted as what’s included, but this choice leaves the plot maddeningly opaque. Not because it’s hard to follow (on the contrary, I think it's too straightforward--personal taste), but it’s difficult to see (or care) why Jim and Colleen like each other, or why everyone in the world recognizes them. They’re famous because Stagg needs the story to be about fame, and in love because Stagg needs fame to parallel love, but almost none of the novel bears on this. Stagg actually doesn’t seem all that interested in what fame is or how it affects a person’s sense of self, because Colleen arrives precompromised, perfectly suited to seize a shot at unearned fame, always already a social climber. She may be unambitious at her IRL mall job, but only because by the beginning of the novel she’s ‘already rejected’ any ‘addiction to mediocrity.’ (That she's the sole survivor of conjoined twins is similarly incidental, and too easy to overlook—I didn't catch this detail on first reading, and realizing that this was the reason Colleen only has one good eye did absolutely nothing to change my understanding of the themes Stagg purports to be interested in.) It’s possible to read all this as a comment on like, entrepreneurial neoliberal ideology in the networked social media environment, but that’s something Semiotext(e) readers are liable to think anyway in 2016, not something Stagg does a particularly good job of elucidating. "Statistics" and market research are obviously something she wants the novel to deal with, but these aren't explored in any meaningful way either; aside from a facile kind of pointing at, the implications of Colleen administering surveys for the Corporation at the start of the novel are completely left behind. Those passages alone would make for an interesting 30-40 page short story I think, but they're grafted onto a novel of parroted ideas that commits the grievous sin (to my thinking) of conflating cinematic narrative with literary narrative: page after page relaying scenes, images, actions, speech, and tight protagonist narration devoid of any stylistic flourishes or even interesting plot points. The back half is like reading the novelization of Almost Famous, a movie similarly too enamored with itself to be insightful.

Rather than run myself ragged ranting, I will reiterate, I'm only so frustrated because I want to like Stagg. But Surveys is what I'd imagine if someone undertook the insane task of writing a much better, more seriously engaged and longer novel, destroyed it, and then wrote a second novel as a trailer for the original novel.

Or worse, if someone wrote a novel to put on their resume.

[ispywithmythirdeyeofficialbct]

Welcome all, and Goodbye Sun! Spent all day on uni today. So here's a reeeeeally long post. A lot to reflect on. My writing style may seem odd to some, but its how I retain a good memory of it all, by putting a lot of words on paper. So here's my paper of reflections on my first day back in #ctec502 with Roy and our korero.

Also my paint arrived. Hell YES. MORE PAINTING.

Carol Dweck on The Power of Yet,

I like that there is this method of teaching, how we think at a very young age, the power of critical and developing thought. It is innately in built into us from a time perhaps before birth, since it is consciousness that we are transforming and interpreting here, using our capacity to think, but CONSCIOUSLY.

There has been a book available in a well voice acted audio version on YouTube called The Tao of Pooh. This insightful little story teaches us the way of the Tao, as in the perspective of Lao Tzu, a particularly old and equanimous monk.

In the famous Winnie the Pooh by A.A.Milne, the archetypal too-busy-working, close/fixed-mindset, is played by the character Rabbit, a woodland creature that is so caught up in their mind they don't actually interpret what they experience or can learn from others or themselves.

In relevance to Carol Dweck's studies into 'the power of yet', it really is all about culture, ethics, opportunities and social conditioning. Childrens minds are like sponges were told, and we see it everyday, even in ourselves. We understand that yes, there is a need for workers and people who can do repetitive tasks, as how it is taught in a modern conventional schooling system, BUT THE ACTUALITY IS to any student where they are given the opportunity to choose what they want to learn, are made aware of how they can learn and evolve when given a certain challenge, in a non judgemental and constructive environment, we can drastically enhance the collective intellect of our whole interlinked social network within the short span of a year as claimed by Carol Dweck.

Here is some art that was created by myself during a 4 day Stay at Home MURAL Festival that had the theme of bringing light to issues of the world but in a positive and beautiful way.

With over 700 artists in 50 or more countries... even this simple idea to bring intelligent and simple, beautiful, artistic, childish action, that's bold for its first year running!! All from Covid-19.

Casey Reas on Digital Algorithm Art

In the first online lecture given by Roy, I was surprised we would be using algorithms so quickly in our physical work, and it took me back to my day of using procedure based processing to create scenes in a program made to generate 3D environments, this program was called Terragen 2.

Using the software called Context Free to render simple shapes and sophisticated 'real' clouds in a 2D representation even if it is generated in 3 dimensions if programmed, (and 4 dimensions if animated) it was interesting to understand why my PC I used up to 10 years ago clogged with animal fur, would die on me when I left it to render a scene in ridiculously high quality over a period of multiple hours. It was because of the amount of shapes I'd set my PC to fully render without understanding that the picture is more sophisticated than a simple blink and reality is made, it is GROWN AS A SERIES OF INTERCONNECTED OBJECTS and it adapts to or from the environment with the interconnectedness that is afforded by their state of consciousness (programming) and the matrix of energy they take form as in this sedimentary moment in reality.

The past affects the future render layer in a moment of rendering. Also the future affects the past layer by building or deleting or transforming itself, this seed from moment to moment. This Animation. To give an object a code or seed to existence, even if you can't control all of its inputs, simplicity can create diversity and complexity and vice versa.

The amount of revelation I can place in rendering in procedural matrix or lattice realities...I would love to see that in my work on mixed media and mixed reality assignments or projects I endeavour to entertain or seek out.

But this in itself is a paradox. Am I pulled to this future by my simple minded flow toward this source, as is entropy, as is the movement of all things. ..There is more than black and white to all situations. Usually it's black and white or white and black. Lighter darks or darker lights.

I wouldn't be at university because I didn't have a revelation to attend it last year. I wouldn't be at university if I felt so depressed I needed to leave. I wouldn't be at university if I wasn't allowed to attend. Nevertheless I know. I know that I am pulled forward to where I'm meant to be, as much as I am falling into old habits, they're not old, they're new, but its my consciousness that calls them old and tries to outdo the habit one moment, while another moment were relieved we didn't listen to the critical mind saying we shouldn't do what we don't want to do. Everything has a cause and effect like the render in window. Like my life on pen and paper. Like my mind engaged in its word spinning and weaving.

I digress back to my art in context of the Casey Rea's YouTube video.

A fun aspect of my art is it would look amazing even in a quick render with plenty of visual noise, but I love the simplicity of procedural based virtual world and object creation and the layers it can develop or devolve into.

Another thing is using Photoshop to apply visual post production enhancements was also something I really enjoyed as a part of the iterative process, and this has been reaffirmed in a book I have just picked up called Photoshop for 3D artists V1 by 3dtotal Publishing.

I watched all the videos recommended by Roy in his pdf today from the lecture and I can summarise my views on them:

Carol Dweck: This type of learning should be more widespread in our culture. Only way it will change is if we change, and teach others the same way. It begins with us. I enjoy the way Roy engages with us in our lectures like we're human beings and not students. I think this is the most important thing about his teaching that enthuses me, and the themes of his classes are quite informative.

Casey Reas: I like his work, I'm not new to this idea of art, but I did like to see his process. I wouldn't certainly seek out a video like that one given but it definitely was insightful into his particular environment and methods of producing ideas.

John Maeda: Wow this guy really looks like he's on the guide for dummies, and he definitely could write a few of them. Was a great insight into his perception of reality and how he expressed his ideas and himself was also simplified complex ideas and that they are readily available to see or interact with including his book. Simple. It's right there in front of you. All it takes is a shift in perception to discover what was currently scanned over as unimportant details by our consciousness. It's all right there in front of us, or if we feel something, from within us.

Warren Berger: Well to be honest, he didn't excite me as many of the other videos because his idea was so simple and not really that much of a paradigm shift within myself. It always can come down to refinement of an unwanted edge. Does one see a wave as something that can be answered? Can you answer that question? How about the question preceding this one? Can a bird fly as well as a fly can bird? Why is a raven like a writing desk? Why do we play 20 questions? We are always in an iterative process of rendering our existence and our legacy in this reality by the choice we have when faced with a question. Depending on its complexity or cryptically contrived hindrances, we will always be faced making a choice, or answer the question of our existence, with our consciousness in this moment. And can we use that moment to ask something we have never thought we had an idea about before...like why isn't my skin purple? Where did my consciousness come from and why is it specifically in belief that I am me, every time I get up at 8 am, but not while I am in the throes of a dream?

Riddle me that and I'll ask you why

Cottleston, cottleston, cottleston pie.

I have seen my lives

In my eye

Simply put, I never die

It's not a riddle, it's who am i

Cottleston, cottleston, cottleston pie.

[welcometophu]

Into the Split: Into the Dream 1

Twinned Book 3: Into the Split

Into the Dream 1

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Nikolai sits beneath a lemon tree, his eyes closed as he focuses on breathing soft and slow. The ground is hard and cold, the trunk narrow and rough against his back. The sharp scent of citrus in the crisp spring air is a comfort. This is the first grove. It’s warded. It’s stable. It should be safe.

No thanks to him.

“Nikita, he wants—” Seth’s voice cuts off abruptly.

“I know, but this is important.” Nikita barges between two trees, drops into a crouch in front of Nikolai as he opens his eyes. “I need to talk to both of you. About coming back to our world with us.”

Nikolai meets Seth’s gaze. Seth is slowly sinking to sit next to Nikolai, his hand stealing out to hold on. His lips are pressed thin, and he shakes his head. “You know what I think about this idea,” Seth mutters. “I think it’s a bad idea.”

“I swear I will get you home after.” Nikita shifts from crouch to kneeling, inching closer to Nikolai. “We’re twinned. Our worlds are twinned. I think the only way we can actually deal with this is to work together. And maybe there are other twinned people here. There probably are! Look at Alia! But I can’t see getting Alia to come with us, and besides, Mattie says she’s bedrock and an anchor point so she shouldn’t leave because it’d make things worse. But you and me—if we’re together, we’re a small representation of the worlds as a whole. It’ll make a difference.”

“We need to stay here,” Seth says firmly. Nikolai unwinds their fingers, drops an arm across Seth’s shoulders instead and tugs him closer as Seth keeps speaking. “If we’re going to build a network of Dreamwalkers, someone has to be here to help create that.”

“And if you come with us, you’ll be able to help bridge the way back here,” Nikita counters. She’s close now, so close that Nikolai can feel every huff of her breath as speaks quickly. “My way into my world and your way into your world are different. They’re close. I think Del can find them both. But if we’re together physically when we start, won’t it be easier than trying to somehow reach out and contact each other after I leave? We need to be able to—”

“It’s dangerous.” Nikolai pushes the words out, interrupting her rushed explanation. He looks up at her, blinks because she does look like him, if the mirror were slightly cracked and off-center. “It’s dangerous, Nikita. If we go, we might never get back here. Our family’s here. This is our home.”

She leans back, sitting on her heels, and a small smile lifts one corner of her mouth. “But you see why I’m asking you to come.”

His heart aches, like a physical twist in his chest. He nods once. “Yeah. I think I do.” He can see it, even if he doesn’t fully understand it. “We need to set up a network of Dreamwalkers—here and in your world. We need all of them to be able to reach the Dreamscape, so we can work together, join the network across worlds. And you and I are the only Dreamwalkers who are going to know how to go through that Dreamscape from one place to another. And I will only truly know that if I actually go in the first place.” He looks at Seth. “I need you to come with me. They need to learn the importance of bonding Dreamwalkers and Empaths.”

“Do you think that’s how the Split started spilling into my world in the first place?” Nikita asks.

“I can’t think why it wouldn’t have happened sooner, if that’s all it is,” Nikolai says. “And it doesn’t explain here, either. Somehow those cracks happened, and it’s worse. We have more Shadows, and we’re actively losing ground.”

“The Emergence and the Split happened around the same time. If you come with us, maybe we can figure out why.” Nikita leans forward and gives him a quick hug before bouncing to her feet. “I need to go talk to everyone, and we need to figure out exactly how this is going to work.”

“Since you don’t know how you got here in the first place?” Seth says dryly.

Nikita makes a face, but doesn’t deny it. “Be here, at the house, tomorrow morning,” she says. “We’re going then.”

“It’s not like Alia left them any choice,” Seth says.

Nikolai feels as if Alia’s words were more than that. He kisses the top of Seth’s head. “Did you feel like she was talking to us, too, when she ordered them to leave?” Tension steals into Seth’s body, leaving him tilted stiffly against Nikolai’s shoulder. Nikolai touches his face, slides a thumb along his cheek. “Leaving might be the best idea,” he says softly. “And I don’t want to go. I just found a home. I just found a place that we could just be ourselves, and we could live without looking over our shoulders. And my brothers—they’re all the family we have left besides us, right? I don’t want to leave them behind.”

“They could come with us.” Seth doesn’t sound like he believes they will, and neither does Nikolai.

Mikhail and Josef would also mean Amaranth, and they haven’t even spent time figuring out what other ties they have to the community.

Nikolai knows that when the newcomers leave, the only ones going with them will be Nikolai and Seth. Other than his brothers, he’s not sure anyone will really miss them.

“We need to go find Mikhail and Josef.” Nikolai thinks he heard the rumble of the Jeep leaving. He’s impressed it still runs; he felt as if he stripped the gears just trying to get home, and the way the engine roared hadn’t filled him with confidence. But the Jeep had rumbled to life when it was started, and the sound faded when it left. Nikolai just assumes both his brothers were in it at the time.

Hands clasped, he and Seth walk back to the main Benford house. It’s funny how in the last week, no one’s stopped calling it by the name of the family that disappeared, and that will probably never change now that they won’t be staying.

Nikolai wonders if they’ll keep the smaller house for him and Seth, for when they return.

If Alia will let them return.

He exhales in a soft rush, and Seth stops walking before they head up the steps. “Are you sure?” Seth asks.

“Just going into the house isn’t going to make us disappear,” Nikolai replies. “Not yet, anyway. Let’s just start by seeing if anyone knows where Mikhail and Josef went.”

The door opens before they get there, Ethan pushing through with a radio in his hand. It crackles as Marybelle’s sweet, high voice comes through. “…at the house. Now. Aunt Val is in a mood.”

“Yeah, I saw, believe me.” Ethan stops, one hand pushing his hair back, the other holding the radio in front of his face as he looks at Nikolai and Seth. “Did you say someone was looking for Nikolai?”

“Mikhail’s here. They drove over to talk more with Alia.”

Ethan nods. “Okay.” He touches something on the side of the radio and the crackling stops. He slides it into a pocket in his light jacket, then crosses his arms. “You up for a trip to the main house? Apparently my mom and Alia are holding court.”

“Depends. Are they going to yell at us again?” Seth edges closer to Nikolai as he speaks.

Ethan winces. “Maybe. They’re just worried about Havenhill. I’m pretty sure any one of us would’ve done the same thing if we were chased by Shadows. In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s happened. They’ve just never gotten through the wards before.”

And maybe it was just because Pawel was in the car, or maybe it was Nikolai and Seth. Nikolai has no idea, and neither does Alia, which is why everyone’s so pissed off about it.

Not to mention scared.

“Yeah,” Nikolai mumbles. He could go past Ethan and go into the house to continue his conversation with Nikita about going with them, and maybe find out from Pawel more about the how and when. Or he could follow Ethan and talk to his brothers, even if it means dealing with Alia.

“We should talk to her about what’ll happen when we come back?” Seth murmurs, and damn it, he has a point.

“We’re going with you.” Nikolai moves away from the bottom of the steps, making room for Ethan to descend. It’s time to deal with goodbyes and promises.

The path they follow is familiar from the sugaring weekend, winding through the trees on a path that leads parallel to the main road and more directly to the big house. Nikolai spots the Jeep parked outside when they arrive, near Jefferson’s truck and Sakura’s sedan. Everyone’s here. This is going to be great.

Marybelle meets them at the entrance, and they all head into the center space, a large open room with tables around the edges and scattered chairs. “We have meetings here, and dances, and all our holidays.”

And right now, there’s a meeting of some kind of going on at the opposite end. Val sits in a large comfortable chair near the table, her feet bare and drawn up, tucked in next to one hip. She tilts to one side, eyes closed and her head pillowed against the back of the chair. Alia’s hand rests on her head, fingers idly combing through her hair.

Alia has claimed one end of the table, and others are scattered around it, chairs angled to face her more easily. There’s food out, but only snacks—a heavy loaf of bread, already cut, with meats and cheese and jams, a bowl of nuts with a nutcracker lying nearby.

Nikolai’s stomach rumbles, and Alia stops speaking.

Her lips press together thinly and she motions for them to approach.

Nikolai wonders if this is how peasants felt approaching a king, begging for some kind breadcrumb. Alia’s been reserved since they arrived, but she has been welcoming at the very least. Until now. In  this moment, Nikolai doesn’t feel welcome. He feels like an intruder.

Ethan starts talking before he pulls out a chair and drops into a seat next to Sakura. “Pawel’s working on a ritual. Alaric’s whining but he won’t leave the house because he’s afraid of being left behind. Carolyn’s drawing something and muttering how it isn’t the same as Kit. Heather’s trying to keep everyone calm, and so’s Mac. I don’t know where Mattie is.” He slides a glance at his mother when he says that. “Pawel promises that she’ll be leaving with them.”

“What about that other Shadow who clung to him?” Alia asks stiffly.

“She’s gone.” Ethan’s words have a sense of finality to them, and Nikolai wonders how Pawel feels about that.

He knew her, after all. He knew that Shadow somehow.

Mikhail nudges a chair out with his foot, and Nikolai leans on the back of it without sitting. Seth presses in close, and they create a united front there, awkwardly shifting from foot to foot.

“We’re going with them,” Nikolai says. He looks straight at Alia, waiting for her to look at him. She never looked at him when telling Pawel to leave, but he remembers how she responded to his words. When he said they had no place to go, Alia had said they could leave. She’d implied he was a part of them, and he supposes that in her eyes, he is. She turns now, her gaze calm and her jaw set as Nikolai continues speaking. “Seth and I are going with them to their world, and we are going to work with the Dreamwalker network that you’ll set up here, and we will work with your Technopaths, and we will find a way to stop the Shadows from spilling through the cracks. We’ll find a way to seal this world—our home—off from the Split, and then we’ll come back. And we hope that when we get back that there will be a place for us here, in Havenhill.”

His throat is dry, his lungs empty as he blurts it all out in one breath, rushing before someone could interrupt him, or he could lose his nerve. He rocks to one side as Amaranth stands and throws her arms around them both, pulling them in for a rough hug.

“Of course you’re coming back,” she says. She lets go long enough to reach back for Josef, pulling him with her into the hug. “We’re here.”

As Mikhail joins the group hug, Nikolai is all too aware that Alia has yet to answer.

They all draw away, and Josef sinks back into a chair, the corners of his mouth white with pain. Nikolai wonders how much he strained himself while they were rushing to fix the wards.

“Amerika and Shamir are working on the Technopath network,” Val says, her voice rough and husky. Her eyes don’t open when she speaks, and Alia’s fingers go still on her head. “I think it will be valuable for many reasons, but most importantly, we need to know what’s coming toward us. We need to know if the Shadows are coming here. And we need to let others know what has happened, see if we can pool our resources and understand why those Shadows were able to break through. It might be because our visitors are here, or it might be something else entirely. It could also be the rise in the number of Talent here, and that our wards weren’t strong enough to hide us anymore. We don’t know, and the Technopaths can help us learn.”

“And the Dreamwalkers?” Seth asks.

Val huffs slightly. “A little harder, but I think we’ll find a way. It might take time. We want to be cautious, and we don’t want to create more breaks in our wards. Talk to Ethan about that thing you two do together to scare off the Shadows. We might need that.”

“Shadows can’t exist where there’s that much light,” Nikolai says. “I just bring that part of the Dreamscape here, and Seth….” He glances over because he can’t really explain how they amplify it. “He keeps me from losing control, at the exact point when I let myself almost lose control.” It’s hard to explain that joy of reaching into the Dreamscape and pulling it out, letting it slip into reality, but at the same time knowing that it won’t become real, that it won’t break the walls down. He can create dreams in the middle of reality.

“That almost makes sense,” Ethan says slowly.

“It feels awful after,” Nikolai admits, touching his head automatically. “If I didn’t have Seth, I would lose control. I’d go into the Dreaming, or bring it here. Or my head would explode afterward. We don’t do it lightly.”

Seth huffs at the pun. “Lightly,” he mutters. “It’s all light, Nikolai.”

“I’ll help them figure it out,” Ethan promises. “We have Dreamwalkers. Anya already agreed to reach out. She and Damon know it isn’t going to be easy, but they’re stable, like you two.”

“We’re going to need that network to get back, I think,” Seth says. “If we want to come back safely, without breaking anything down between here and there—”

“You think it will make things worse when you leave?” Alia asks, halfway to standing, both hands on the table.

Nikolai blinks as Seth looks at her. Seth licks his lips, pushes his glasses up his nose. “I think that what Nikita and her friends are about to do requires a great deal of raw power, and by having Nikolai and me help, we will be able to give them some finesse. We know more about working with Dreams than they do, but it’s still risky, yes. Sending all of them home is probably going to leave some damage in its wake. But if we create a network on both sides, we’ll be able to do it more easily. You could wait to send them back until the network is established,” he suggests.

The gears are almost visible as they turn in Alia’s mind, twisting her way through the options. The risk of Shadows that hangs over them now, versus the possibility that the transfer could be smoother and not create new risks. She shakes her head. “They go now,” she says firmly.

Val reaches out blindly, pats Alia’s side, then her hip.

Alia looks to Val and her expression softens. She reaches out to touch her hair again, and slowly sits. “And you’ll be welcome back,” she says quietly, not looking at them. “Your home will be waiting for you if you can return.”

Not when, if. Because that’s the bigger question.

If they can even manage to leave at all.

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[hoyatype]

Attended this talk on Tuesday. I’m trying to be better about not just reading books, going to talks, &c but fully incorporating the ideas I’m encountering into my mind, and wrestling with them. The first step feels like taking notes and spending some time in reflection. So. Here’s what I wrote down and remembered from a very warm and thought-provoking talk: 

A discussion on how LSD and psychedelics have been co-opted and absorbed into Silicon Valley’s work culture (e.g. microdosing on LSD to enhance your creative output at work) and how it produces an ‘intensification of the mind and subjugation to ruthless neoliberalism’ 

The popularity of nootropics as a way to increase inequality, by using them to compete with others and get ahead of them; ‘to outsmart the competition, to become obedient to the logic of neoliberalism’

Collaborating with machine learning engineers in his work, ‘The Doors’, to have generative adversarial networks (GANs) using Blas’s chosen imagery, poetry, and music to generate delicately shifting videos and an audio track for the installation. He noted that he deliberately chose images from earlier on in the GAN training period, so they had an abstract quality instead of being more representational (as the GANs train longer, they are able to mimic, with greater fidelity, the images in the training set). In the Q&A, he noted that his artistic input here takes the form of selecting the training set for the GANs to use and respond to. [Hearing Zach talk about this helped me clarify another idea I’ve been thinking of: In ML/AI, the choice of data is a deliberate form of authorship. I use the term ‘authorship’ here because it forcefully articulates that deciding what data to use is not an objective decision, but a subjective one. It’s when data is disguised as an objective truth that we lose the ability to effectively critique its characterization of the world.] [Zach Blas also shared the GAN-produced videos and music, and I was really struck by how they produce too much of a pattern, and have a fairly monotonous quality to them—it reminded me of the overstimulating/understimulating dullness and malaise that comes from hour 3 of scrolling through some feed—maybe it’s Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, tumblr—the algorithm knows you too well, it’s produced an over-optimistic stream of content that all feels too much the same to energize your mind, even though it ensnares it. I was talking to a friend afterwards and suggested that, perhaps, it’s still only human creativity that retains the ability to surprise—to produce dynamism, contrast, texture. A non-AI-generated song might have less of a uniform texture, there might be more pauses and quiet moments, there might be a crescendo to a sharp sound and then a fall away into a lull.]

Looking at Nam Junk Paik’s ‘TV Garden’ work [this was so immediately compelling to me, visually and conceptually] and then expanding out to looking at fake plants that hide home surveillance systems — the way Apple’s campus contains a seemingly unspoiled garden within it — tech campuses and their integration with nature — later on, in the Q&A, he also mentioned how Silicon Valley campuses often orient around glass, around visual transparency

In the Q&A, the curator asked Blas about the use of ‘boomer’ motifs in ‘The Doors’, and his response opened with ‘I’m American, I do have a pop sensibility’ which I found very warm and funny.

I was quite intrigued about a comment Blas made about how he’ll talk to his Goldsmiths students about surveillance and find that they’ve all given up and find its existence inevitable. So I asked a question comparing this, perhaps, to Mark Fisher’s idea of ‘capitalist realism’—are we in an era where we experience a kind of ‘technological realism’, where we believe technology must have, and could only have, manifested in the way we currently experience it? And why do we hold this defeatism? In response, Blas mentioned how he finds the need to clarify the terms we use—’surveillance’ is so non-specific as a term, but perhaps delving specifically into certain systems (e.g. facial recognition) lets us analyze them more, lets us understand that in some ways they’re really primitive and ineffective in certain contexts. He also brought up Mark Fisher’s unfinished Acid Communism work, and how Fisher saw it as politically valuable to shift our consciousness. Psychedelics dissolve individuality, unlike how nootropics are branded now, and that dissolution of individuality also stands in contrast to neoliberal ideology. He also referenced Phil Agre’s 1994 paper on ‘Surveillance and capture: Two models of privacy’ [hoping to read this as soon as I can get a grad student friend to send it to me] and how Agre criticized the term surveillance as outdated, proposing the phrase ‘capture’ to shift the focus of conversation.

Near the end of the Q&A, Blas described how his goal is to ‘loosen the conceptual knot’ through his work—I can’t remember how he phrased it, but my takeaway was that the goal wasn’t to lay flat and expose all the concepts he was playing with, but rather to use art to untangle some of the concepts and make them a bit more comprehensible, a bit easier to understand, e.g. how the collision of nature—psychedelics—nootropics—neoliberalism is constructed.

He spoke a few times about the necessity of articulating and building alternatives to our present model. ‘For me, there needs to be the critique, and then the constructive move towards [an? my notes are unclear] alternative’, and he emphasized a few times, ‘I think the future’s up for grabs’.

[phoenix-angel-suyari]

This got long...

Spent three hours in the car with my sister yesterday while she alternated between being intentionally, ignorantly Queerphobic as fuck and yelling at me over my life choices. First thing you should know is that my sister is aware that I am bisexual. So let’s just start with that. She claims she understands my queerness. She understands being gay. She says she “can even understand pansexuality”. But apparently, those are her hard limits. She has some seriously black and white issues with the Trans community. And any other sexuality is not valid as far as she’s concerned. 

As usual, thinking of my Nephews’ health, safety and stability (new baby’s cicsmale so, yeah looks like another Nephew for now - and I say for now because one’s 15 months old and the other is in the womb, there’s literally no knowing at this stage if they’ll both identify as cismale in the future) I tried explaining them all to her as she ticked them off. I tried getting her to understand. But, she’s not willing to understand. She doesn’t think she needs to understand. And every time I try to have the conversation with her that her children could be literally any kind of queer at all in the future and she should learn to be positive and accepting now for their sakes, her response is always, “Why would you say something like that! Don’t curse me!” 

The irony of her yelling at me for my life choices comes from a place of pure entitlement. See, I did not get the chance to choose my college. I was told I would go to the college that offered me the most money and was in the city so I could commute because room and board was too expensive; because my mother was a single mom raising two kids and I was the oldest (and accustomed to sacrifice) I obeyed. I took out substantial loans - to which my mother co-signed - so I could afford college. When I wanted to change colleges, I was told that I had to first finish one college before I could go to another. My mother would no longer co-sign my loans if I didn’t graduate from one college before attending another. I was not allowed to do any semesters abroad because we “couldn’t afford it” and there was no way my mother was allowing me to go to some foreign country - not even for school. When I got very sick and had to take medical absence so I could be treated, my mother told me we would “figure it out”. Unfortunately, taking medical leave invalidated me from my father’s insurance. Then I got my first loan repayment letter. I showed it to my mother who responded, “You’re an adult. Figure it out.” So I got a job. 

I have been in an out of work since. I eventually paid off my loans and I am loathe to get into that kind of debt again (we won’t even discuss the debt I’m actually in) without a guarantee. Now, while all this was going on my sister graduated HS and it was time for her to go to college. She decided she wanted something easy and far away from home so she went to a culinary school six states away, studying pastry for two years. My parents paid for all of it. She even took up sailing. My parents paid for it. She came home two years later with a degree and got ONE job, decided she “wasn’t made for work” and told our parents she wanted to get a better degree then fucked off for another two years. 

Now, I had a job and she was in college. So I was paying a lot of her bills and sending her care packages and all the sorts of things your siblings do for you so your parents don’t find out what they’re really up to. I helped her out of financial jams and basically supported her in the places where my parents just literally could not give her any more money. 

And then one day she wanted a new tattoo and called me so I could pay for it. I didn’t have the money when she called me and I told her that and told her I could help her the following week. Let’s just say that was when I realized that I was part of the problem as far as her attitude was concerned. But, she was my little sister and I loved her and so even though I was more careful about it, I still paid for her own success and fulfillment for years. (A lot of this I fully admit stems from wanting her to have a better life than me; and there is literally no accounting for selfish egocentrism, but I digress.)  

The point is, my sister went from our parents paying everything, to me paying everything, to her significant others paying everything, to her husband now paying everything. So her view on responsibility and financial strife is admittedly stunted. She told me that I need to go back to school and get a degree so I can get a job. And while I agree that part of the sticking point for my employment is very likely that, I also am not financially capable of that and not sure I ever will be again. Besides the fact that I am not putting myself in that position again when I have literally no support network and am facing imminent homelessness. My sister argued that I was “being ridiculous” and then says, “Mommy can pay for it.” 

Our mother can pay for it. The woman who has only helped me ever pay ONE bill in my entire adult life. And then made me feel like shit about it. Our mother who’s response to every single financial conundrum I have ever found myself in has been, “You’re an adult; figure it out” and who then nitpicks the ways I do go about it. Our mother who is retiring early, because my sister - who was specifically told NOT to get pregnant by her health care team and has done it not once, but twice now - is “sick” and “overwhelmed” and needs her. Our mother who plans to move in with my sister to care for her home and children (and her) - who is very much capable as of this moment, but extremely spoiled - and who’s planning to leave me high and dry because I’m an adult and can figure it out, can pay for me going back to school. 

Sure. Let me just go do that. Let me ask a woman who has never trusted me with her credit card like I’m some thief who will rob her blind, to pay for school I don’t even want to attend. 

My cousin - one of the one’s whose more like a sister to me than my own sister and whom I had a conversation with many years ago and whom agreed to take in any children I had in the event that I died or became incapacitated - when I told her of the car ride up, said of my worry for my nephews potentially queer future in my sister’s household, “They’ll always have a home with us.” (Us being herself and her husband & children.) And like...THAT, that is what family is, right there. That’s what it’s supposed to be. I can’t even tell you how fucking relieved I was to hear that. 

I haven’t had any children of my own - not because I can’t - but because I’m not financially stable enough to support them on my own and I love them too much to expose them to the kinds of people and abusive toxicity I have been living with my entire life. And it just fucks me up so much that so many people who HAVE children can’t even love them enough to accept them for who they are, for things they CAN’T HELP. 

And all I want is to be able to BE that. To be there, to be capable, so that I can take in my nephews if they get tossed out on their asses for being queer. So they can know they can come to me and be safe and loved and supported and not have to live through the shit I have lived through because they don’t want to be a BURDEN. 

And I am just so very fucking frustrated, I can’t even put it into proper words. 

[mr-entj]

Do you have any entries on your blog that covers student loans and how to approach them for someone who is nervous about debt? Thank you!

Combined with the following asks:

I am an avid reader and impressed your journey. I read that you came from a lower income family but I noticed that you also went to top universities which is impressive. I am in the same situation and I am, going to take out thousands of dollars loans to pay for my dream college, is it something you would advise? What is the alternative for people in our situation?

If it is not too much to ask, how did you pay for college if your family was poor? As someone who is of similar background as yours. Thank you for the time you take to write to your readers and answer their questions

Between going to a european top college, staying far from my family and going into debt for it or attending a local college, staying home, but no debt, what is your opinion? What could be the best decision?

Higher ranked college + debt or lower ranked college + no debt?

Related:

Hi Mr-entj. Do you have any advice for becoming more financially literate?

General money management advice

Mr. ENTJ can you break down how to interpret the compensation from an offer letter such as salary and bonuses for someone with multiple offers trying to weigh options? What to look for?

Student Loans 101

I don’t give personalized financial advice but 5 things to know before you take out a student loan (applicable mainly to American students):

1. Understand the financial impact of student loans on your life after graduation

This is the absolute #1 priority and where students really get screwed over. Most people see the loan numbers on paper but don’t fully comprehend the day to day burden repaying that debt will have on their lives. Here’s an easy way to ballpark impact: for every $10,000 you borrow, you’ll need to pay back $100 per month … for 10 years (The average federal loan is at a 6% interest rate with a 10 year or 120 month repayment schedule).

This means:

$20,000 in student loans = $200 monthly payment

$40,000 in student loans = $400 monthly payment

$60,000 in student loans = $600 monthly payment

$80,000 in student loans = $800 monthly payment

$100,000 in student loans = $1,000 monthly payment

$250,000 in student loans = $2,500 monthly payment

These are very rough estimates because loans have varied interest rates. Use student loan calculators for more accuracy: BankRate Student Loan Calculator, FinAid Loan Calculator, and the Federal Student Loan Repayment Calculator.

Understand what you’ll make vs. what you’ll pay. For salary, remember that, roughly:

$20,000 annual salary = $500 per paycheck or $1,000 per month

$40,000 annual salary = $1,000 per paycheck or $2,000 per month

$60,000 annual salary = $1,500 per paycheck or $3,000 per month

$80,000 annual salary = $2,000 per paycheck or $4,000 per month

$100,000 annual salary = $2,500 per paycheck or $5,000 per month

For perspective, let’s put the student loan and salary data together. This means that if you graduate with a job that pays $40,000 per year but you have a $40,000 student loan you’ll bring home approximately $1,600 every month($2,000 salary - $400 monthly loan payment). For added perspective, the average cost of a 1-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles is $2400– and that’s just for housing– that doesn’t take into account other things you need to survive as a living and breathing human being like, say, food and water, clothing, utilities, health insurance, car insurance, car payment, gas, etc.

A general rule is not to take out student loans greater than your salary after graduation. I knew my salary after graduation would exceed $130,000 so I took out the loan and I’ve been able to pay it back with relative ease but it was a long and painful process that required many sacrifices. With my $1,100 monthly loan payment over 10 years, I could have bought 2 Corvette Stingrays but I also know that I couldn’t have the career I have today without taking on that debt.

2. Research universities, potential careers, job placement, and salary before you take out a loan

Don’t be that clueless ocarina major with $100,000 in student loans and no job post-graduation.

Some people say that college is a place to learn– and it is– but it’s also a financial investment in your future. If you want to attend college just to study your passion with no regard for post-graduation salary then consider going to a library, joining a hobby group, or surfing Google for hours instead because at least those options are free and they won’t bury you in decades of debt. College is a financial commitment amounting to tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars– don’t wander into it lightly.

Research:

Tuition and financial aid statistics by university. How much does it cost to attend each school? How much is housing? What other hidden fees are there? How much financial aid does the school give? What scholarships and grants are available to accepted students? What % of students receive aid? What is the average debt carried by graduates?

Reputation, rankings, and strength of programs by university. How is this school regarded in the industry, the state, the country, the world? What is the strength of the program you’re interested in? What companies recruit at your school? What is your university and program of choice ranked? Your college degree is your passport into the professional world and the more prestigious and well-regarded it is, the easier your journey will be. (Mr. ENTJ, do things like rankings, reputation, and prestige for which school you attend matter when it comes to your career?)

Career services and alumni network by university. What career services does the school provide? What companies recruit at your school? How active are the alumni of this school? How successful are the alumni of this school? Top companies recruit at top schools, it’s a very simple concept, so if you want to break into a very difficult industry this is a question to ask. Alumni are important because they’re the club you join post-graduation. The more successful and helpful alumni are, the more plentiful the opportunities throughout your journey.

Prospective careers by major. What can you do with your degree? What are the careers this major leads into? How much do those careers pay? What is the demand for those careers? How difficult is it to get a job in those fields?

Job placement and salary statistics by major. What is the average % of graduates who get jobs after graduation? What’s the average salary of those graduates? Look for salaries by major because schools often average salaries across the entire university and that’s misleading. An interpretive dancing major and a chemical engineering major will not make the same amount of money post-graduation.

I don’t give advice on what schools people should or shouldn’t attend or if they’re worth the debt but do thorough research and if the university has a prestigious reputation, strong program in a particular field, active alumni network, high job placement, generous financial aid, high salaries post-graduation, and good career support then that trends towards a worthwhile investment.

3. If you need to pay for college, remember this hierarchy: free money > federal loans >>>>> private loans

Free money includes grants, scholarships and other options that don’t require repayment. As a general rule, the better student you are (grades, GPA, test scores), the more money universities will throw at you because you’re a more attractive candidate and they know other universities are fighting for you to attend their schools. Students with bad grades and bad test scores get crappier financial aid packages because universities view you as someone who should feel lucky to have been accepted at all.

Federal loans are low-interest, fixed-rate loans funded by the government. These are preferred because they have flexible repayment methods like income based repayment (the less or more you money you make, the less or more money you pay back) or loan forgiveness (PSLF program). Still, free money is preferable to any type of loan.

Private loans are a last resort and only if grants/scholarships and federal loans don’t provide enough money to cover expenses of your first-choice school. Private loans are given by banks and banks are ran by businessmen who want to make money. They typically have high interest rates, high fees, and inflexible repayment plans. Remember that their primary goal is to make money, they are not here to help you achieve your academic dreams.

4. Never go into debt attending a for-profit school

(*People triggered by absolutes*: “Never?”) Never. Their degrees are worthless in the job market, attend accredited universities only.

The Lifelong Cost of Getting a For-Profit Education

5 Reasons You Should Avoid For-Profit Colleges at All Costs

For-Profit Colleges’ Teachable Moment: ‘Terrible Outcomes Are Very Profitable’

4 ways to avoid for-profit college abuses

My college degree is worthless

Why low-income borrowers should avoid for-profit colleges

Will a for-profit degree get you a job?

5. Above all, prepare ahead of time before you start applying to colleges

Get top grades and top test scores in high school because this will result in more generous financial aid packages.

Take as many AP courses and tests as possible because these can count for college credit and save hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, in the long run. I took so many AP courses in high school I entered college with sophomore standing.

Save money for college throughout your life from summer jobs, side jobs, allowances, etc. I didn’t have rich parents so I set aside a few dollars from each paycheck into a savings account.

Apply early for multiple grants and scholarships to accumulate as much free money as possible. This is a numbers game; the more you apply, the better chance you have of winning so search far and wide and blanket applications and essays to anything you remotely qualify for. I had so much scholarship money in undergrad that I made money going to college.

Consider community colleges. Attending community college for 2 years and then transferring to a university can save thousands of dollars in tuition and get you the same degree someone who paid 4 years of university tuition has. I did 2 years of community college then transferred to a top public university and saved $50,000 in the process (university is approximately $25,000 per year).

Resources

Grants and Scholarships

Finding scholarships

FastWeb Scholarships

U.S. Department of Labor Scholarships

Google any university’s name and the word “scholarships” for school-specific scholarships

Student Loan Calculators

Student Loan Term Comparison Calculator

Student Loan Payment Calculator

BankRate Student Loan Calculator

FinAid Loan Calculator

Federal Student Loan Repayment Calculator

Paycheck Calculators

Paycheck City Salary Calculator

Smart Asset Paycheck Calculator

ADP Paycheck Calculator

Career Salary Data

Glassdoor

Indeed

LinkedIn

Paysa

The Economic Value of College Majors by Georgetown University

2017-2018 College Salary Report by Payscale

Field of Study in College and Lifetime Earnings in the United States

There are countless statistics, stories, and articles that capture the impact of student loans:

r/studentloans

Student loans have become our modern-day debtors prisons

10 Ways Student Debt Can Destroy Your Life

The Mental Toll of Student Debt: What Our Survey Shows

Google News: “student loan crisis”

[shellyscribbles]

Stream of consciousness

Thinking about marriage and my values.  I read an argument on twitter about abortion this morning.  There was a woman who is married, pregnant with a wanted child but a difficult pregnancy.  She said it made her understand that no woman should be forced to undergo that against her will.  

How is it possible that someone could think that?

I have migraines with auras. I can’t take combination birth control that mimics pregnancy because I would have a migraine for weeks on end.  So, while I have not been pregnant, I do not really expect it to be the best time of my life.  I still want children.  I would never terminate a pregnancy if I could help it.  I don’t think my comfort is the goal of life.  I tried it.  I would rather struggle and suffer and do something worth while than waste all my time chasing down comfort.  

I feel like that is missing from society, the notion of suffering.  We want to eradicate it at all costs.  We must give people free stuff because they are poor; they are suffering.

We all make choices in life and while I believe in compassion, I don’t think hand-outs do the soul of a person good.  I think that’s why people get stuck on welfare.  People need opportunity and maybe guidance to make better decisions.  Just giving someone something because they don’t have it doesn’t take into account whether or not they are responsible for having nothing.

I made choices when I was young that resulted in me being a bit delayed in self-sufficiency.  Granted, I was never fully comfortable with the notion of being some career woman who made a bunch of money and lived in a big house alone.  While I did desire to run my own business at one point, maybe I will in the future, I understood I would be in debt for a long time before succeeding at it.  When I got married the notion of doing anything to put us into debt pushed that idea back.  

But back to being young, I worked a dead-end job for years.  I lived with my parents going to a junior college with no real aim and working this job.  For years. Seven of them.  It wasn’t until one of my teachers whom I had for four different classes finally noticed I wasn’t going away and pulled me aside and asked what my plans were.  I realized I didn’t really have any.  I wanted to be a worship leader, so I was taking music classes, but I hadn’t really thought of getting a degree.  So, we looked at my transcript and found the first degree I could get.  Music History. 

I became a full-time student after years of taking two classes at a time, and realized that I didn’t want to study music.  I love music. I love singing and I still plan on leading worship, but I have learned worship isn’t about musical skill.  A good worship leader has a strong relationship with God, not a fancy degree.  Plus, I hated those two years of grueling work to get that degree.  

With music ruled out I then found myself without a path to follow.  What would I do if I wasn’t studying music?  I remembered being young and all the little businesses I tried to start and so I registered for some business classes.  I love accounting.  I fell in love with business.  I wanted to study accounting, but I ended up really behind in an application and got rejected to the closest school with an accounting program so I looked at the other close university and picked the closest thing, management.  

I have doubled my income from my dead-end job and I now have promotion options available to me if I say the word.  But now I am married and hoping to start a family soon and I have zero desire to be working full time while trying to be a wife and mother.  My boss does it and she is amazing, but she also lives with extended family and has a massive support network as well as a different mindset than I have.

As I look back on my life to this point, I have always wanted to be married.  That has always been priority one.  It took me 28 years to find my husband.  Well, I met him when I was 17, but I was 26 before we began dating. But even when I discovered accounting and toyed with the idea of being a big wig accountant, I had a check in my heart. How would a family fit into that? Would I be okay with paying someone else to take care of my kids?  Would I be okay with delaying it?  Would my future husband be okay with that choice?  Would I want to marry someone who was okay with that?

I think ultimately the accounting path was not truly what I wanted.  I think I meandered through school because none of it was really what I wanted.  I wanted a family.  No one really expresses that as an option for women.  We are supposed to pick a career path, no a life path.  Would I have made different choices if I had thought of what I really wanted when I was young?

I think the one time I was on the right track with regards to school was in high school.  I was looking around for schools with good English programs because I wanted to be a writer.  Not really sure why I didn’t take that route.  I guess I am glad I didn’t, I do like the skills I have acquired throughout the years, but sometimes I just wonder why I made that choice. Now that I think of it, I started the junior college meaning to study computer networking and then I learned that I would have to run wires and that sounded like no fun at all.  

I think I started really seeking to be comfortable while I was caring for my grandmother.  She had a heart attack and we discovered she had pretty advanced Alzheimer’s as well.  We knew when we went to the hospital to see her that she could not live alone anymore.  My sister was just newly divorced with a plethora of obstacles of her own to deal with.  My parents both have pretty hefty health constraints, plus they have their own home that isn’t quite designed for an elderly person to live in.  Grans house was specifically designed with convalescence in mind because of her husband who often used a wheelchair due to his health issues and experimental surgeries to correct it with no success.  Given the fact that I was 26 and still living with the parents, plus I went to school where my grandmother lived, I was the perfect option.  

When I moved in with my grandmother, I was terrified.  The first night I remember getting there, gran was settled into the din on the couch where she loved to lay and I sat in the living room on the green chair and my dad started to head out.  He gave me his friend’s number that lived around the corner so I would have someone closer than twenty-five minutes away.  Then he left.  I sat there thinking of the vest the hospital had given grandma which was supposed to shock her heart back into rhythm if it stopped.  It felt like her life was in my hands and I wanted to cry thinking of how I hadn’t even taken care of myself on my own, now I had another person to care for.

I think I took to it fairly well.  It was difficult to not be alone in the way that one is not alone when they live with someone with dementia.  She was afraid and always needed to know where I was.  I had to prepare all of the food, keep the house up, keep the bills paid (granted not with my money, its different doing that with your own money haha), keep gran clean and entertained.  My sister would tell me it was like having a child and I would get so frustrated because I was watching her die not grow.  She knew less at the end of each week.  It was getting increasingly difficult, not better.  The only reward was knowing that I got to show her that she was loved which is something I always wanted for my grandma.  She lived as a widow for thirty years and I wanted her to know she was a treasure.  I got to show her that.  

But it was so hard.  I experienced depression for the first time in those two years.  It’s ridiculous how all day all I wanted to do was sleep and as soon as it was time to sleep, I would become incapable of it.  I would be up until 2 or 3 in the morning watching Netflix, mostly because it was better than laying there thinking about everything.  I wanted anything to make the weight of it lighter, the pain of it less.  I was relieved when it was agreed in my family upon my engagement that I could not bring that stress into my new marriage (there is that instinct I had again, the marriage was priority and I needed to protect it). Gran was moved into a care home on the first day of the month my husband and I were married.  For twenty days I had the house to myself with the exception of my family getting an estate sale together.  The property is in a trust and it was agreed it would be best if my husband and I could move in and keep up the house rather than sell it or rent it to strangers.  

So, then I was married. I had everything I wanted.  It was amazing.  Now I was running the house with my own money and it was so real.  It was nice having the advantage of I knew this house; I knew these bills.  It was nice. It was kind of too nice.  I suddenly felt aimless again.  What now?  I even felt like a bad Christian.  I struggled to read and pray.  I still just wanted to be comfortable, I took no risks.  

I think the struggle and my realization that I have a selfish streak, exacerbated by that period of depression, came when my husband began to mention his interest in going into law enforcement as well as our discussions of beginning a family.  I slowly began to realize that I don’t get everything I want when I get everything I want.  Supporting my husband as he goes through the academy is difficult.  I work over thirty hours a week while keeping up the house and yard on my own as well as the meals.  I don’t always want to, it isn’t always fun, it isn’t always appreciated as I wish it were, but its right.  Its good.  It’s working to get us through to when he gets his full job and we become able to support a family with me not working over thirty hours a week.  

I got on this train of thought because of a pregnant woman saying women should get the option of abortion because pregnancy is uncomfortable.  What good thing comes from comfort?  There is a cost to everything.  You can’t have everything for nothing.  That isn’t how the world works.  And looking back, it was that season of seeking comfort as my priority that was the least fulfilling of all of it.  I am happier now that something has forced my own comfort to play second fiddle to something with some meat to it.  

[redorblue]

The ministry of utmost happiness, by Arundhati Roy

I’ve talked about this book with my book club, and I’ve heard from a lot of people that this book is hard to get into. On the one hand, I understand - if you’re not familiar with the setting and the Urdu vocabulary (like me) it can get confusing, and the amount of names and places and people doesn’t help. But as I’ve been emphatically telling all those people: it is so, so worth it. Yes, it can feel overwhelming sometimes, but you’ll be rewarded with stories (intentional plural) that are as beautiful as they’re heartbreaking, with characters that feel alive and enigmatic at the same time, and (probably) with a whole new picture of modern day India. You obviously can’t expect to learn everything there is to know about a country and a people as big as that from one book - and a fictional one at that - but it provided me with a whole lot of starting points to do my own research. Plus, it’s one of those rare books that leave me with wide eyes and more emotions than my shriveled heart can deal with, so excuse my enthusiasm - both intellectual and emotional.

One of the complaints I’ve heard about this book from people who have actually made it through the first ten pages is that the narrative structure is confusing. Again, yes, I see your point, but I think there’s a reason why the story is so episodic, with narrators appearing out of the blue and mentioning people and events that only get explained much later. Somewhere towards the end of the book (in my paperback version it’s on page 436) Tilo writes a poem that in my opinion is the key to understanding the fractured nature of the book:

“How to tell a shattered story? By slowly becoming everybody. No. By slowly becoming everything.”

The book isn’t coherent in the conventional, easily detectable sense of the word because the story isn’t. It can’t be, what with all the different conflicts and catastrophes and bigotry that it sometimes barely touches upon and sometimes elaborates a bit more. In fiction, we’re used to the characters having smaller social circles than we do: less family, less friends, rarely colleagues, barely any of the everyday acquaintances that most of us just have, without knowing where exactly they came from or any intention of deepening them. One of the three focal characters in this book is a bit like that (although that’s intentional and meant to make a point about her personality), but the other two, to whom belong the most confusing parts of the book have the huge social circle that comes with living in one place for a long time, especially when one of them has a rather colorful personality. Point is, it’s normal that seen from the outside, people’s lives aren’t coherent or easily understandable because they’re suffused with context that doesn’t always get an explanation when it’s handy because sometimes there isn’t one, or it leads to another story that leads to another that leads to yet another... Because in the end, no one is an island, we’re just not used to seeing it in fiction.

The same goes for the conflicts that are touched upon here. There’s rarely an easy explanation or black-and-white sides to be taken (which is not to say that the book doesn’t take sides, because it clearly does, but it shines a light on different views on an issue), and if real-life conflicts don’t work that way, why should a literary representation of one be any different? If you give it enough time to affect enough people, it automatically becomes a “shattered story”, and the only way to make any sense of it at all is by allowing the narrative to adapt to that - to become fractured and messy and told from the eyes of people who come with their own lifestory and everything that entails. Long story short, I think the structure of the book makes a necessary point about the story it tells, adds to its lifelikeness and doesn’t even need to be that confusing - you just have to let it unfold in front of your eyes without getting hung up on every single name you don’t recognize.

Another complaint I’ve heard is that the characters are not relatable, or that they don’t feel like fully developed human beings, and here’s where my sympathy stops. It’s true that there’s rarely any interior monologue or other kind of explanation that explicitly tells you why has done this or said that, but I don’t think it needs to. Through pretty neutral accounts of events and backstory it gives you enough clues to at least make educated guesses (otherwise known as interpretation) about a character’s choices, and to deduct important tenets of their personality. It might not be as satisfying sometimes because you never get the ultimate proof that you guessed right, but where’s the fun in having it all served to you on a silver platter? I think that’s exactly the reason why so many people don’t like main characters - you’re too deep inside their heads, too aware of their logical flaws and mental loops and repetitive insecurities. It’s much more fun if the author leaves a bit of space for the readers to fill in thought processes, and Arundhati Roy leaves a lot of space for that. There’s a lot to unpack here, and I’d love to write about so many of the characters in there, but this has already gotten longer than I thought, so I’ll only talk about my two favourites, Musa and Tilo.

I feel like I have a better grasp on Musa’s character (and also, I fell for him. Hard.), so I’ll start with him. On the surface, his life appears to be nothing but a  string of tragedies, with him as a simple vehicle that the author uses to tell us about how fucked up the situation in Kashmir is. After all, he was pretty much forced into the underground after Amrik Singh made him his newest source of entertainment, and “underground” in this context means that he’ll have to join the rebellion. But I think that is a very superficial view on his character. For me, the two defining aspects of his personality are his sense of justice and his bond to the people and the valley of Kashmir. Sure, he could have fled to some faraway place in India, or elsewhere, kept his head down and hoped that Amrik Singh’s network doesn’t stretch that far. That wouldn’t have been easy, but theoretically doable. In reality, however, going someplace else wasn’t really an option. He’s tried that already with studying in Delhi, and even though he obviously knew how bad the situation was back home, he still chose to return after he graduated because he doesn’t want to live anywhere else. He loves Kashmir and his people with all his heart. So the underground it is - because he can’t bear the injustices done to them, because he owes it to his daughter to be brave, because he can’t run away from his grief and this might be the only way to work through it.

And it takes a toll on him, of course it does. It’s heartbreaking how both he and Tilo remark on how he has become less substantial (smudged, as Tilo calls it) than he used to be, which is such an on-point metaphor for what being in a war (and a pretty hopeless guerilla war at that) does to a person. But in his thought processes and his interactions with Tilo (and briefly with Garson Hobart - I can’t remember his real name for the life of me) show that he’s - maybe not the same person as before, but a person, a complete human being, which is a lot more that what you usually get. I mean, let’s face it: he’s a Muslim in a rebel organisation, which is more than enough to get you labels such as terrorist, fanatic, extremist etc. I was a bit afraid that someone in my book club would call him that, because my reaction would have probably got me banned from the book shop. There are so many instances where you can see how kind a heart he has, how intelligent he is, how caring - and yes, also how much he suffers from seeing his people suffer and how he puts everything he has into make it right, but what’s important here is that it’s not his only defining feature.

(This is the point where I realised that this post was definitely going to be too long. So I split it, with more in-depth analysis of Musa - or rather getting my feelings for him off my chest - here.)

Tilo, on the other hand, is not as easy to grasp because she is presented to the reader as she presents herself to the world - stoic, not exactly talkative, very hard to reach. A lot of that has got to do with how she grew up, in an environment heavily influenced by racism, classism and prudery where her mother felt like the only way she could raise her daughter was to pretend they weren’t biologically related and then adopting her. I guess you could say that such an arrangement is better than growing up in an orphanage, and it could have been a lot less damaging if her mother wasn’t so very concerned about her public image, or so demanding, controlling and condescending. But she was, and the effect that had on Tilo is obvious - she’s someone who “lives in a country of her own skin”, the borders (seemingly) closed off. It’s not that she can’t care for people; it’s obvious that she’s loved Musa for a long time, and that she came to care deeply for Naga and Dr. Azad Bhartiya, even before she adopts Miss Jebeen the Second and moves in with Anjum. Rather, her issue seems to be that she has trouble accepting other people’s feelings towards her and getting attached to anyone. It’s why, for example, her marriage to Naga didn’t work (who, on a sidenote, really got treated unfairly in Garson Hobart’s POV), why she didn’t want to go through with the pregnancy when she came back from Kashmir, or why she didn’t even break things off properly with Naga and just... floated out of his life. To be fair, his family’s racism towards her didn’t help either because I’m pretty sure it stung her more than she let on, but her behaviour fits her overall pattern in interacting with people, so I don’t think that was the main issue.

It’s probably also why her post-university relationship with Musa works so well. They’re both aren’t controlling people, they trust that the other would never hurt them intentionally and they know that their communication works well enough that long-time separation doesn’t shake the foundations of their relationship. It’s a very unique bond they share, one that doesn’t go away from one of them marrying someone else and sleeping with them, even loving them, as Musa did with his wive Arifa. They know what they have, wherever they live and whatever they do. That’s another aspect I loved about the book: it never pits the two women in Musa’s life, Arifa and Tilo, against each other. Not even Tilo is jealous when she learns of Arifa’s existence, she simply trusts that if Musa loved Arifa, Arifa must have been a remarkable person. This is a testament to Tilo’s magnanimity - just because you have attachment issues yourself doesn’t mean that you’d automatically be okay with the person you love starting a family with someone else.

But Tilo knows that she’s not that person (at least not at that point), and although she worries a lot about Musa, she knows that a conventional happily ever after wouldn’t work for them. On the one hand because Musa is so tied up in Kashmir’s struggle for independence - which Tilo wholeheartedly supports - that she would never ask him to give it all up to live a life of safety with her (another thing about Tilo I deeply appreciate). But on the other hand I’m pretty sure it also wouldn’t work for Tilo herself. She’s too aimless, too far away to go through with the whole getting married, settling down, having kids etc. shtick. She needs this kind of open relationship that leaves her her space, that gives her a kind of attachment she can bear. It’s mainly emotional, and the few times a year it gets physical, as in being in the same room, it happens mostly because she decided to come back to Kashmir, with the exception of the few times Musa comes to Delhi. I do think that from her side, things might have been different if Musa had lived longer (after Tilo adopts the baby and moves in with Anjum), but on his side things would still have been the same, and I firmly believe that she’d have stayed true to herself and not asked him to walk away from his cause for her.

Which leads me to the question that has made me reread almost the entire book as soon as I was done the first time: Why did Tilo and Musa break up after university? It’s never said explicitly, but I’m pretty sure that he asked her to marry him, in all probability also to come back to Kashmir with him, and she said no and that was that. I still haven’t found an answer in the text (see, this is what I mean by interpretation being both fun and frustrating), but I have a theory. I think that his belonging, his rootedness in a family, a people and a region, was too much for her, who has never been made to feel like she belonged anywhere, was accepted and appreciated anywhere. In that situation, it wasn’t enough that she loved him and he loved and accepted and appreciated her, because in real life, the love of one man doesn’t magically fix every single one of your issues, even if it is the love of your life. So she refused him. And he, honorable person that he is, didn’t press the issue, stayed true to himself and went back to Kashmir. Where they met again years later, under unimaginably sad circumstances, to rekindle, in their own way, one of my all time favourite fictional romantic relationships.