#i mean it's unthinkable to a modern audience

[whoiskt]

"And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" Genesis 22:7

"The Story of Isaac" by Leonard Cohen | "The Little Prince" directed by Mark Osborne | "Poor Isaac" by The Airborne Toxic Event | "Castlevania: Nocturne" by Clive Bradley | "We are Gods! We are Wolves!" by LE LOUP | "The Last of Us" by Naughty Dog

[tiannasfanfic]

The One I Love

Tianyou Zhao x Reader (Fluff)

| Main Masterlist | AO3 Link |

Summary: When the Geomijul headquarters burns to the ground, the only life you've ever known is ash. Left with nothing to your name, you're given refuge at a bar called Survive and you find youself thinking back on how you met the man you love.

Rating: General Audiences

Author Notes: Gender neutral Reader, they/them pronouns (if any). Tianyou Zhao x Geomijul!Reader. No physical description, race or cultural heritage mentioned for Reader.

CW: Mentions of canon violence and canon typical violence; non-graphic mentions of injuries; suggestive non-graphic mentions of sex.

Word Count: 6,676

The unthinkable had happened.

Ijincho’s Great Wall of Muscle was close to falling down all thanks to an unexpected invasion by the Omi Alliance.

There was a surge of infighting within the Seiryu Clan. Chairman Hoshino had done his best to quell it, but many of his men had defected to the Omi and left them severely weakened.

A coup had occurred within The Liumang, resulting in the leader, Tianyou Zhou, getting captured and tortured by his second in command, who had also defected to the Omi.

Geomijul’s headquarters had nearly burnt to the ground when the Omi stormed in, including the computer systems that made up their vast information network, which had severely crippled all three factions in the process.

Granted, it wasn’t the Omi who set the fires, but they may as well have. The leader of Geomijul, Seonhee, had her hand forced to protect their biggest secret. A secret so big that even you, an officer and trusted member of her inner circle, had not been aware of until the very end when you were briefed and ordered to help evacuate the nearby residents.

Being a part of the rear guard didn’t mean you were completely out of the action though. A handful of Omi officers had come around in an ambush from behind to stop the retreat. You and the others leading the evacuation were far from sitting ducks though. All of you had varying degrees of combat training, both with and without weapons.

While a few lives were lost in the fight, none of those were the civilians you’d been sent to protect. It was a small victory, at least, yet you couldn’t be happy about it. Not when the only life you ever knew was nothing but ash.

And that was how you found yourself sitting in a bar called Survive with a swollen jaw, a black eye, a sore body, no home, and no job.

You didn’t understand how it all came to this. None of it made any sense. How could you start out the day with a decent life and now end it with absolutely nothing? It was aggravating, to say the very least.

And the more you thought over your last conversation with Seonhee, the more aggravated you got.

“What do you mean my services are no longer required?” you’d asked in dismay. “Aren’t you going to rebuild?”

She had just returned from meeting with Geomijul’s new allies, with whom she had sent Joongi Han to help. Good people she could trust were now in short supply, so to send you away made little to no sense.

“That is the plan,” Seonhee replied. “But our information network is our top priority, not our other services. This is your best chance to get out. I know this was never the life you wanted.”

She had you there. The two of you were old childhood friends, having grown up and raised through the ranks of Geomijul together, so she was aware of your thoughts on the matter. Being an only child, you had inherited your position as the chief accountant for the Geomijul from your father, just as he had inherited it from your grandfather. Your family had a natural talent for numbers, and that paired with your formal training and modern technology, you were one of the best in Ijincho.

Well. Calling yourself an accountant was a bit of a stretch. While you were the first in your family to have any official certifications in that line of work, what you did was far less legitimate.

Your actual job was keeping all the financial records for the whole district. All the businesses, both real and front, reported their finances directly to you. You did regular audits, kept the accounting tidy, and manufactured fake books that would easily pass inspection by government officials.

Back in your father’s youth, Seonhee’s predecessor realized they could make extra money off your family’s expertise with numbers and expanded the Geomijul’s offerings of information to include financial advising. What that meant was, when the Seiryu Clan or the Liumang needed accounting assistance or comprehensive financial audits beyond what their own people could accomplish, they contracted you out for a hefty fee.

It was decent work, and you liked what you did, but you would’ve been much happier with a regular job at a legitimate accounting firm in the city. While the pay wouldn’t be as good, sometimes you wanted more simplicity and less paranoia. You always had to be on your guard, always looking over your shoulder for people lurking in the shadows. As one of the select few faces of the Geomijul that were known to the other two factions, just going about your daily life carried a large amount of risk.

To say it was exhausting was putting it mildly, but, at the same time, it was all you ever knew. You would have to start over, begin your life fresh. Outside of your certifications, you had nothing you could put down on a resume. You had no work history, no references, and no good explanation as to why you had neither. A background check would come up empty, your credit report too. The chances anyone would give you a chance were slim to none. A blank life history like that for someone your age usually screamed “I was a criminal” to prospective employers.

You relayed all this to Seonhee and begged her to reconsider, but she stood firm.

“We will provide you with as much as we can in that regard,” she replied, her tone indicating her mind was made up. “I know it isn’t much, but this is a chance hardly any of us get. Now you can lead a normal life, settle down with a good man. It’s what you’ve always wanted.”

A bark of laughter left your throat at her words. You couldn’t stop it, nor did you try.

“A good man,” you repeated, shaking your head. “Like that will ever happen.”

Seonhee stepped forward and patted you on the shoulder reassuringly.

“You never know what the future may bring,” she said, smiling at you as if she knew something you didn’t.

You raised an eyebrow at her questioningly, but she offered no explanation. She simply gave your shoulder one last squeeze, then walked away.

At times, you couldn’t help but wonder if she knew.

You did have a good man, but settling down together and living a normal life would be impossible.

Presently, you were brought out of your thoughts by the bartender of Survive setting a glass of water and a bottle of ibuprofen on the bar in front of you.

“I’ve got herbs marinating that will ease your wounds,” he said. “It needs a bit more time to meld together, but this should help in the meantime. I sent Iroha out to pick up supplies for you. Once she’s back, we can get the extra room ready for you. It’s not as big as the one Kasuga and his friends share, but it should do until you get on your feet.”

“Thank you,” you said. “I really am sorry for all the trouble.”

“Don’t mention it,” he said, waving off your thanks as he walked away. “Any friend of Kasuga’s is a friend of mine.”

Calling you Kasuga’s friend was a bit of a stretch. You’d only met the man twice, once after the attack on Geomijul and the second not even a half hour ago when you walked through the door to the bar. But he’d taken a liking to you, it seemed, and vouched for you when you asked if you could stay there as if you’d known each other for years.

You chuckled softly to yourself and shook your head. Kasuga was something else, that was for sure.

As he was leaving the bar to meet with Chairman Hoshino, he’d thanked you for all your help despite the fact you’d done little to aid him in his cause. In all reality, you were the one who should’ve been thanking him.

If it weren’t for Ichiban Kasuga, Tianyou Zhao, the love of your life, would be nothing but a corpse rotting in an unmarked grave right now.

But had no way of knowing this, of course. No one knew about the two of you. That’s just how it had to be for both your protection and Zhao’s.

It wouldn’t have looked good for the leader of the Liumang and a high-ranking officer of the Geomijul to be in a relationship together. The balance would appear skewed, as if your love would tip the scales in favor of one faction or the other. And none of the factions could risk you spilling the confidential information you’d learned over the years by working for all three.

It had been a huge gamble you both had taken by entering a secret relationship, but one you couldn’t say you ever regretted. Your time with Zhao had been the happiest of your life.

The whole thing started a little over three years ago when the Liumang had thieves within their ranks.

Normally, thievery was taken care of in-house, same as with the Geomijul, but these thieves were cleverer than most. Despite massive sums of money disappearing, sometimes even overnight, no one could find their trail. They had combed over the financial records repeatedly, interrogated anyone with access to these records, and always came up empty handed.

Finally, with no other options, a representative contacted Geomijul for help and you were contracted out for a modest fee.

The contract was initially for thirty days with the option to renew it in thirty-day blocks if finding them proved complicated even for you. Considering the magnitude of the theft, you felt thirty days was an overly optimistic timeframe. You were going to be combing over all the financial records for the Liumang from the last year, including all businesses operating within their area, as well as for the organization itself. This was going to take a long time and a lot of patience.

Anytime a contract took you into Liumang or Seiryu territory for more than a day’s work, they wanted you on site until the job was finished. It was too much of a risk having you come and go freely, but you didn’t mind. Both factions always treated you as a welcome guest, even if your freedom was a bit restricted during that time.

You were set up with a modest apartment in the district, all your daily living necessities provided at no cost to you. All you brought with you was a few changes of clothes and your regular toiletries. Your workspace was set up in an unused office on the ground floor of Qing Jin, the high-end restaurant that served as Liumang’s headquarters. They gave you a day to get unpacked and settled in, then after that, you went right to work.

Every morning, a guard escorted you from your apartment to the restaurant, then escorted you back that night when you were done for the day. You had a habit of losing track of time while working, so you always ended up falling into bed close to the wee hours of the morning. You didn’t mind though. The one day a week you had off was more than enough to catch up on sleep, send out your laundry and write up your progress report for the higher ups.

Unfortunately, your progress reports during the first few weeks didn’t have much to report. These thieves, whoever they were, were good. Outside of standard accounting errors where someone forgot to carry a number or subtracted an expense wrong, you didn’t find any major discrepancies.

No one bothered you while you were working, at least until you were going into your fourth week. It was at that point, someone decided to check in on you. But you were so focused on your work that you didn’t hear anyone enter the office, nor did you hear your name being called. You didn’t become aware that you weren’t alone anymore until you felt a hand on your shoulder.

It scared the hell out of you.

You jumped so hard you nearly turned over your chair, a loud shriek leaving your mouth that also startled the man in question. The man jumped back from your chair, startled himself by your scream. You stared at each other for a few seconds before you both started laughing.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare ya,” he said through his laughter and held up his hands.

“It’s alright,” you said, pressing one palm to your chest and taking a deep breath to calm yourself. “It happens. I get a little too focused on what I’m doing sometimes.”

“That ain’t a bad thing,” the man said, a good-natured grin coming to his face as he looked at you over his glasses. “You’re a hard worker, that’s a rare thing to find sometimes.”

While you’d never spoken to this man before, you had noticed he was there at the restaurant nearly every day. It was hard not to; his leather jacket and relaxed way of dressing made him stick out like a sore thumb among the flashy suits all the other men wore.

At that point, you’d never met the leader of the Liumang before and, thus, had no idea who it was you were talking to. You just assumed he worked at the restaurant.

“Speaking of hard work, have you taken any breaks?’ he asked. “Have you eaten today?”

You blinked a few times, the question catching you off guard.

“Yeah, this morning,” you replied. “I had a sandwich before I came in.”

The man looked at his watch and tutted at you.

“You got here almost nine hours ago,” he said. “You seriously haven’t had anything since then?”

“No,” you said, shaking your head. “It’s fine though, I’ll eat after I’m done for the night. That’s what I normally do.”

The man tutted at you again, shook his head in disapproval and left the room without another word.

That was strange, you thought to yourself.

No one had ever bothered to check in on you before. You didn’t think more of it though, just shrugged and got back to work.

Sometime later, the man came back, knocking loudly on the doorframe this time to announce his presence.

“Who’s hungry?” he stated.

Looking up from your work, you blinked a few times in surprise.

“Huh?” you said.

“Dinner’s ready,” he replied. “Time to eat.”

“Oh, that’s really not necessary,” you said, then gestured to all the paperwork on the desk. “I haven’t had any luck finding what I’m looking for, and I don’t want to make your boss think I’m slacking off.”

The man blinked at you a few times, then a grin spread across his face.

“Actually, it was the boss who sent me down here,” he stated. “He noticed how hard you’ve been working and wanted me to make sure you’re taking care of yourself.”

Your mouth dropped open a little and you gawped at the man.

“Really?” you asked.

“Yup,” he said, nodding. “After all, it’s much easier to think when you have a full stomach.”

He took a few steps into the room and then bowed grandly, gesturing out the door with one arm.

“Now, come have dinner with me,” he said. “Bosses orders.”

You couldn’t argue that, so you left the desk to follow the man.

The restaurant was closed for a deep cleaning thar day, so there weren’t any customers or even many employees about. He led you up the stairs to the second floor, where you found yourself at a table loaded down with food.

“Once I got in the kitchen, I realized I didn’t know what you like, so I made a little bit of everything,” he stated as he pulled a chair out for you and gestured for you to sit.

You stared at him in shock for a moment before taking the offered seat. He pushed your chair back up to the table as you sat.

“Are you the chef here?” you asked.

“Something like that,” he said, walking around the table to take a seat across from you. “Now dig in, I can hear your stomach complaining from here.”

It was true. As soon as all the delicious smells hit your nose, you realized exactly how hungry you were.

Most evenings after that, you had dinner with him. It wasn’t always at the same time, but it always happened the same way. He’d come to ask if you’d eaten, you’d say no and then, next thing you knew, you were sitting at a table filled with enough to feed an army even though it was just the two of you.

The conversation was light the first few times you ate together, mainly basic topics like food and what you both liked to do outside of work. That’s how you found out cooking was a hobby of his rather than his job, but something he really enjoyed doing. Much like you with accounting, being a chef was something he would’ve loved to do had he not been in the Liumang.

After your contract was renewed for another thirty days, the two of you began opening to each other about more personal topics. As it turned out, you both had remarkably similar childhoods. Both of you were born into your factions and were expected to follow in your respective father’s footsteps. While he never told you exactly what his father did, and you never asked, it sounded as if he was higher up just as yours had been. It was clear that you’d both had big shoes to fill and, being the dutiful children you were, were still doing your best to live up to those lofty expectations.

While he didn’t outright say it, his tone and body language while talking about it gave away the same discontent with things that you felt. Life was good, yes. Neither of you could complain, nor did you have any right to, but you both knew there was more to life than what the factions provided.

In those weeks, you found yourselves growing closer with each conversation. He was easy to talk to, easy to open yourself up to. You felt a deep connection with him, a kinship you’d never felt with anyone outside of Seonhee, but in a way that was more than just friendship. Anytime you were with him, you felt a spark inside that had the potential to grow into an inferno should you both allow it.

It was a shame, really, since you knew nothing could come of it.

Halfway into your second month with the Liumang, you finally made a breakthrough in tracking down the theft. You began to pick up on their trail. It wasn’t much at first, just a small pattern in the numbers that was so subtle you almost didn’t notice it. But once you did, you began to get an idea of how they got away with it for so long without being noticed and how far back it went.

Rather than making your job easier, finding the evidence made it even more complicated. The Liumang had to pull more financial records for you dating back to the last three years and you had to go back over some of the records you had already done to re-examine the accounting errors you’d found. A lot of them ended up tying it in with the theft, but without knowing the pattern, they had looked kosher your first time over them.

These thieves were good. Some of the best you’d seen, in fact, if not the best. Whoever this mastermind was, they were just as good at numbers as you were.

Your contract was extended again by another thirty days as you became absorbed in your work. With your workload increased, you found yourself staying even later than before, sometimes working through the night, and only getting a short nap on the small couch there in the office. The fancy dinners came to a stop for a while, but your new friend always made sure you took a break to eat. Even on the days you didn’t see him, someone always brought up a takeout container of food for you to graze on while you worked.

But pushing yourself like that had a major drawback. I quickly wore you out. Soon you were exhausted, not only physically but mentally as well. You weren’t taking days off anymore and it was catching up to you. This job was far more in-depth and rigorous than anything you’d encountered.

The boss eventually noticed that your work had slowed, but rather than crack the whip like you would have expected, the opposite happened.

One night when your friend grabbed you for dinner, rather than the normal selection of water and tea to drink, there was a bottle of wine at the table.

At first you protested, insisting you couldn’t drink since you had more work to do, but he waved them off.

“One drink with dinner won’t kill ya,” he stated as he filled up a glass and set it in front of you. “You’re way too stressed out; you need to unwind and relax. Boss’s orders.”

As much as he used the boss as an excuse to get you to do things you normally wouldn’t do while on a job, you had to wonder if they really were orders from his boss, but you gave in since you weren’t in any position to question it.

As the two of you ate and the conversation flowed, one glass turned into two. The conversation turned flirty and two turned into three. With that second refill, he took the seat next to you rather than returning to his own. And then, the next thing you knew, you were sitting in his lap sharing a slow, deep kiss.

There was no denying the spark anymore, and it was clear he felt it too. While there was lust in the way his lips moved against yours, there was no sense of urgency, no rush to do anything more. He was taking his time just as you were, holding you close but loose enough you could easily pull away if you wanted.

You weren’t sure how long you were like that before his lips parted from yours. At first, you felt some disappointment, but that didn’t last for more than a second before he shifted downwards towards your neck. Your breath caught in your throat as you let your head fall back a little, giving him better access.

“You know what?” he muttered against your skin, waiting for you to hum in acknowledgement before continuing. “You should take the rest of the night off.”

His words made your heartbeat faster, but you couldn’t help a small chuckle.

“Now that I’m pretty sure the boss would frown on,” you said, softly tracing the tips of your fingers over the back of his neck.

“Trust me, he really won’t give two shits about that,” he muttered quickly, then nipped at your collarbone. “Let me take care of you tonight, baby. Please.”

It was tempting, so very tempting. He was making you feel things you hadn’t felt in a long time, if ever.

Before you could answer though, a thought occurred to you. It is something you always meant to ask him, but it always slipped your mind when you were together. Now seemed as good of a time as any since you were seriously considering taking him back to your room.

“You know what?” you said, then waited for him to hum in acknowledgment before continuing. “You’ve never told me your name.”

His lips were beginning to trail down to your chest when he suddenly froze at your words, then slowly pulled back to look at you. For the first time since you met him, he looked nervous.

“I’ll tell you my name,” he said, swallowing heavily. “But promise you won’t freak out?”

You tilted your head at him curiously.

“Why would your name freak me out?” you asked, then smiled as your voice took on a teasing tone. “Are you a famous celebrity living in hiding?”

Rather than get a laugh like you expected, he looked away from you. He was quiet for a moment, his brow furrowed as if thinking hard.

It was only then that you finally realized he had been hiding something from you.

“Something like that, yeah,” he said finally then sighed. “All right. My name is- “

Before he could finish his sentence, from downstairs you heard the front door of the restaurant burst open and several pairs of feet urgently running towards the stairs.

“Boss!” a loud voice called. “Boss, where are you?”

Quite suddenly, you found yourself deposited back in your seat as your friend jumped to his feet. He grabbed his glasses off the table then and quickly moved around the table to his original chair across from you.

“Act natural,” he said quietly, putting his glasses back on.

His entire demeanor changed at that moment. Gone was the relaxed pose and easy-going attitude you were accustomed to seeing, replaced by an authoritative energy and piercing gaze.

By the time four gruff looking men made it up the stairs, you both had gotten yourselves back to the appearance of having dinner together.

The men looked around frantically, saw you two at the table and hurried over.

“Boss,” the man in the lead said and you recognized it as the one who called out from downstairs. “We’ve got trouble over on Ijin Street. It’s those shit sucking bikers again.”

“Little fuckers don’t know when to give up, do they?” he replied, shaking his head. “Get Mabuchi down there, he’ll take care of it.”

“That’s just it boss, they’ve got him and some of his boys cornered.”

You took a bite of your food and kept your face neutral as you watched your friend jump out of his chair so fast it nearly tipped over. His demeanor changed again, his calm facade slipping into one of anger.

“Then why the fuck didn’t you lead with that?” he snarled, quickly jumping to his feet, and grabbing his jacket off the back of his chair. “Round up as many of the guys as you can. This shit’s gonna end tonight!”

Now that they had their orders, the men scrambled back downstairs to carry them out. Your friend started to follow, putting on his jacket as he went, but stopped just before he left the room, and turned back towards you.

“I meant what I said before,” he stated, his voice still authoritative but softer now as he addressed you. “Take the rest of the night off. You deserve it.”

Speechless, you simply nodded. Then flashed you a grin and a wink and followed his men.

Even if he hadn’t given you the go ahead to take the night off, there wouldn’t have been any way for you to focus after that. Realizing you had fallen for none other than the leader of the Yokohama Liumang, Tianyou Zhou himself, had shocked you to your core.

Presently, a commotion in Survive startled you out of your thoughts and you looked over towards the door. Iroha had returned from her shopping trip. You watched as the bartender went over to help her lug a new sleeping mat upstairs. That meant your room would be ready soon and you would be able to get cleaned up, changed, and finally get some rest. Just that alone thought made you aware of just how exhausted you were. It had been a very long night, and you couldn’t wait to fall into bed. Honestly, if given enough time alone, you could’ve easily fallen asleep right there at the bar. To keep that from happening though, you returned to your thoughts and remembered the remainder of your time spent with the Liumang.

You didn’t see Zhao again until your job was done. After the night you learned of his real identity, it only took two more weeks for you to figure out who was responsible for the theft. There were six men total that were behind it all and they were quickly taken care of. With that done, all you had left was to complete a final audit and make sure the books could pass a government inspection, which only took a couple of days.

While you were waiting for the car that was coming to take you home, Zhao came downstairs and dismissed the guard who had been waiting with you.

“I’ll take it from here,” he said. “I have one last thing to discuss with them before they’re off.”

He waited until it was just the two of you before speaking again.

And this time when he spoke, it was as the man you shared dinner with all those times, not the leader of the Liumang.

“I’m sorry about lying to you,” he said, then chuckled nervously. “But when I figured out you didn’t know who I was, I thought not knowing might make it easier for you to relax.”

You waved off his apology with a smile.

“It’s okay,” you said. “You were right, I would have had my guard up the whole time.”

He nodded, chuckled, then started rubbing the back of his neck.

“Would it be okay with you if I asked for your phone number?” he asked.

You raised an eyebrow.

“Is that even allowed?” you said. “I mean, we’re technically not even on the same side here.”

“What people don’t know won’t kill ‘em,” he said, then winked at you with a grin. “Or us.”

You couldn’t help but grin back at him and slipped him one of your fake business cards with your very real personal cell number written on the back.

Since you had to keep the whole thing a secret, it was like a long-distance relationship in the sense that most of it occurred through text messages and late-night phone calls. Occasionally, Zhao was able to slip away from his bodyguards to sneak off to your apartment, but those times were very few and far between. It was extremely dangerous for him to enter Geomijul territory, yet he always managed to slip in and out without being noticed. He never could stay the night though, just a few hours at most. You’d fall asleep in his arms, then wake up alone the next morning. While it made you sad, you wouldn’t have traded those few hours with him for anything.

Another commotion in the bar roused you from your thoughts again, this time from Adachi and Nanba enthusiastically greeting someone. You assumed it was Kasuga returning from his meeting and turned to greet the man as well. Instead, you saw it was Joongi Han who had arrived.

Sliding carefully off the barstool, you got to your feet to greet your old friend, but you froze in place as you watched another man limp into the bar behind him.

It was Zhao. And your heart broke at the sight of him.

The Liumang traitors had put him through hell, the results of the beating they had given were obvious. He moved slowly, a slight wince on his swollen lips as he walked, one arm hugged tight across his abdomen in an indication of broken ribs. His face was battered and bruised, scabs and dried blood caking areas of his skin.

It was obvious he was in a lot of pain, but little showed on his face. The man was an expert on hiding how he truly felt unless you knew how to read him.

Your first instinct was to rush over to him, to take him in your arms and comfort him, to take care of him in his time of need. It took everything you had, a willpower you didn’t even know you possessed, but you managed to stay rooted in place.

Zhao nodded a greeting to the others, then his gaze quickly swept the room, as if searching for something. When his eyes landed on you, they widened in shock, his expression looking as taken back as you felt. You hadn’t looked in a mirror yet, but you assumed you probably looked about as bad as you felt.

The reservations you had about rushing over to him he clearly didn’t share. He strode right over to you as quickly as his injuries would allow and, in full view of everyone, pulled you into a tight hug. It made you both gasp in pain, but you didn’t care about the pain. All you cared about was the man holding you in his arms.

“Should we be doing this here?” you muttered against his jacket, holding it tightly in your fists as if afraid he’d disappear.

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” he said, then pulled back slightly to look at you. “I’ve stepped down from the Liumang. Seonhee oversees both factions now.”

That surprised you and your mouth dropped open.

“Seonhee?” you repeated, and he nodded in acknowledgement.

It took a moment, but things finally started clicking in your head.

“Then that means…we’re both civilians now?”

Zhao smiled a little and brought one hand up to caress your uninjured cheek.

“Yeah, we are,” he said softly. “We don’t have to hide anymore, baby.”

The effect of his words was immediate. Suddenly the mask you always wore around others was gone and the walls you’d built around yourself to protect yourself from outsiders came crashing down.

You couldn’t stop yourself from kissing him, tears of happiness and relief streaming down your face. The force of the kiss made you both wince, but he only pulled you closer, returning it with just as much passion.

You were so engrossed in one another that neither of you heard Han grumble to Namba about how he now owed Seonhee a thousand yen thanks to you two.

It wasn’t long before Kasuga returned from his meeting. By the time he’d filled you all in on what happened, your room had long since been ready, so you and Zhao retired upstairs for the night. While there wasn’t much room, the space was only a little bigger than your average walk-in closet, it was more than enough for the two of you.

Between the broken ribs and the lingering effects of a dislocated shoulder, getting his jacket and shirt off was slow going, but you managed. After filling a small basin with warm water from the sink in the other room, you helped clean him up. Once the dried blood and dirt was washed away, you applied the herbal poultice the bartender made to his wounds and bruises, then wrapped them in bandages.

While you insisted that he rest, Zhao insisted it was his turn now, wanting to take care of you as you did him. You changed the water in the basin since you could move around a little easier than he could, but once that was done, he took over as caregiver. He helped you undress and gently cleaned your wounds, softly kissing your neck and shoulders as he went, and dressed your injuries just as you did for him.

By the time he finished, your body felt electrified, and you couldn’t help but find his lips with yours. The kiss was softer than the one you shared downstairs, soft enough it didn’t hurt. He was more than eager to return your affection, his hands trailing gently along your body, caressing all the places you loved to be touched.

Considering the state you were both in, physical activity should have been the last thing on your mind. But at that moment, the need for physical touch and comfort overrode all common sense and logic. Soon you were under him on the bed. He held most of his weight off you with his good arm, your bodies close but not crushed together. His thrusts were slow to keep from hurting either of you, even slower than the times he’d teased you and taken his time with you. But, despite that, neither of you were able to last long. The fact it had been weeks since you’d last seen each other combined with the fear you’d lost one another to build a foundation for quick, earth-shattering orgasms. Afterwards, you passed out in each other’s arms, exhausted and hurting like hell, but happy.

When the next morning came, you were lulled up from sleep by a severe pounding in your head. You made the mistake of cracking your eyes open and then immediately shut them again with a groan. The tiny window in the room had no curtain, allowing bright sunlight to beam directly into your eyes. The sharp pain it sent into your brain caused your eyes and nose to water. It took a little while but eventually the pain began to recede back down to a throb. As it did, you became more aware of your body, and you wished you were still asleep.

You felt like total, absolute garbage.

From the top of your head to bottom of your feet, every single part of your body hurt horribly.

But then you became aware of a different sensation, one that was a contrast to all the pain. It was soft, a very gentle stroking feeling on your upper arm that was soothing.

You risked cracking your eyes open again. While it still hurt, you were prepared for the light this time, so it wasn’t quite as bad. Carefully, you tilted your head up and found yourself looking at Zhao’s smiling face. You were still laying in his arms, your head against his chest.

“Morning baby,” he said softly.

“Morning,” you whispered, then you smiled. “You’ve never stayed the night before.”

“First time for everything,” he replied with a chuckle, then he softly kissed you on the forehead. “Now I can always be by your side.”

While your heart swelled at his words, a thought occurred to you that made your smile falter and you looked away from him.

Now that you were both normal, everyday civilians, your lives were about the drastically change. Things were about to become much, much harder for the both of you. While The Geomijul had never been the wealthiest of factions, The Liumang, however, were a different story. They easily rivaled The Seiryu Clan in terms of finances, even if it didn’t appear that way on the surface. From birth until now, anything Zhao desired could be his. From the everyday necessities of life to fancy cars, dinners, and women, all he had to do was snap his fingers and it would be his.

Sensing your sudden turn of mood, Zhao lifted his free hand to gently take ahold of your chin and tilt your head up, so you were meeting his gaze once again.

“Hey now,” he said softly. “What’s going on in that pretty head of yours?”

You started to nervously chew on your bottom lip but stopped when you accidentally bit down on the scab that was running right down the middle. It made you wince, and Zhao tutted at you with a chuckle.

“It’s just…won’t you get bored?” you finally asked. “We’re not going to have much of anything. My whole life burnt to the ground, everything I own is now in this room.”

He shook his head.

“I’ve never cared about any of that,” he said, stroking your arm again, but this time in a gesture of comfort. “But getting to wake up with you in my arms…now that’s something grand. I want to be here with you. I want to be by your side, now and forever. You’re the one that I love, and now I have the chance to love you the way I want to. The way you deserve.”

There were no more words needed at that point, neither from him nor from you.

The kiss that followed said anything that remained unsaid.

[anhed-nia]

HANDLING OF THE UNDEAD (Hanteringen av odöda)

There's a certain common experience of comic awkwardness--actually there's even a Mr. Show sketch about it, if I remember correctly--where, after bidding a sincere farewell to someone at the end of an enjoyable night out, you make the unfortunate realization that you're both walking the same way home. Emotionally you are both somewhere else now, "the night" is conceptually over, and now you're trapped together without a script. Although Thea Hvistendahl's feature debut HANDLING THE UNDEAD probably has nothing else in common with Mr. Show, they both ask this same basic question about closure and the persistence of the past. The film concerns three families of the recently re-animated; there's a sort of will they/won't they tension regarding the obvious question of whether these zombies will behave in the traditional manner, but the focus is more strongly on the emotional problem of accepting that things will never again be as they once were.

I think this film is really going to do it for modern horror fans who have come to expect direct explorations of tough topics like grief and trauma. For me personally, I found it highly competent, but a little flat; yes, it is sad, it is VERY sad, it is VERY, VERY SAD, and what more can one really expect? At my screening director Hvistendahl was available for questions, and she candidly confessed that she didn't have any personal experiences with grief to which she could refer--a fact that had no impact on the amount of sniffling in the audience. She inherited the project from others, after a few false starts over the last decade; it is adapted from a novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, better known for LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, and the writer really did have a powerful reference point for grief. According to Hvistendahl his father was literally defaced in a hideous boating accident and, despite the warnings of morgue workers, he insisted on viewing the body. The filmmaker says that her own reference points lay outside her life; that she drew inspiration from others who'd had closer encounters with death.

Personally, I started thinking about people I've known who died early in the film, and then I just couldn't stop. I wondered what would happen if various people came back. The basic assumption might be that it's usually desirable to have somebody back, if you missed them. But I feel like things are likely to be more complicated, especially if the living have already gone some distance through the grieving process--potentially accessing feelings that were too hard to face during the deceased's lifetime.

I thought about a much-admired friend, somebody who was kind of my hero and who was adored by everyone who knew her, who killed herself. The main initial reaction among her closest loved ones was rage. People were so, SO angry with her for leaving them, or not allowing them to save her, or maybe for forcing them to feel as sad and lonely as she felt, or for whatever other things seem to piss people off so much about suicide. I don't know what would happen if she came back to life. I mean probably a lot of people would lay down their arms and try to be grateful, but who knows. That kind of really personal anger can be hard to come back from.

I also thought about a couple I know well, the wife was extremely well-loved by many people, all of whom were devastated when she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The painful, protracted illness made the loss all the more awful, and it fell to her surviving family members to preserve and sort of reenact her memory for everyone else. But the reality was that things were not so perfect at home--not to suggest anything really dark, but the couple would have been divorced had she survived. So then she died and her widower was left holding the proverbial bag; he could never have the personal satisfaction of separating from someone who was not right for him, and criticizing her would be unthinkable. If she came back to life...sure, they might divorce, but it's just as likely that he would suffer public pressure to honor and keep her in a more extreme way than usual for the rest of his life.

Finally I thought about a friend of mine who was murdered. I watch a lot of slasher movies, and whenever I hear the criticism that horror lovers must all be desensitized or delusional about real violence, I think about this person who was senselessly killed by a random psychopath at her sister's wedding. It shattered our circle of friends and I cannot imagine what it did to her family, especially her sister. I mean even if they were to do another wedding, it would be impossible not to think of the murder the second time. It would be permanently associated with the new couple. It's hard to even wrap your mind around all the effects of this event. In this case--setting aside the problems of zombies, which I have left out of my meditation--I can only think that having my friend back really would fix things for everyone.

So maybe ultimately I'm saying that HANDLING THE UNDEAD would be a more interesting movie if the losses in it were a bit more complicated in some way. However, I can't ask one film to be all things to all people, and surprise is a particularly difficult thing to achieve. But if you like John Ajvide Lindqvist and you want to be surprised, I strongly advise you to watch BORDER. You will see some stuff in there that you will never see anywhere else in your life, and it probably won't bum you out too much.

[afpwestcoast]

Aladdin Theater, Portland, OR, 12/28/23

A flawless show. Or should I say aNOTHER flawless show because, as you’ll recall, I declared the previous show in San Diego to be perfect. If I had one note it would be “Too perfect.”

Let me explain.

A little over a year ago we entered the venue to find Amanda’s young son Ash on stage in a cardboard box that had been transformed into a television by the magic of childhood. It was goofy and adorable and delightful.

Right now Ash is a bundle of manic unpredictable chaos. But over the next decade or so he will slowly mature, figure out who he is, find his way in the world, and become an amazing man. Amanda will love and cherish every step along the way and when he is finally released into the wild she will be filled with admiration for who he has become and giddy anticipation for what he will achieve.

And that will be beautiful, but in the back of her mind she will think, ‘I kind of miss the kid in the cardboard box.’ A parent’s pride and joy over the development and accomplishments of their grown children is always tinged with a wistful nostalgia for the little kid that they will never be again. It is the inevitable gift / curse of parenthood.

At those first Colony shows in November ‘22 the Dresden Dolls were a kid in a cardboard box. Over the ensuing 13 months they have played an almost continual string of shows, often in three-night stands. Over that run of shows they have developed new material, yes, (the new songs become crisper and cleaner by the show) but their connection has also become stronger and their musicianship is approaching virtuoso levels.

It has been my pleasure and privilege to witness this transformation firsthand. I have been following this band since 2004 and I can honestly say that the band is better right now than it has ever been. We are living through peak Dresden Dolls, and I am totally here for it. The tour for the new record is going to unmissable and amazing.

And yet.

I still sort of miss the kid in the cardboard box.

Those early shows were more intimate not just in the sense of smaller venues. They felt like the band was rehearsing in their living room and had invited a few friends over to hang out while they did. The flubs and gaffes were all okay because it was just us friends.

These new shows are “better” by almost any objective metric, but they feel different; more polished, more professional. That is by no means a complaint; at the end of this show I needed help lifting my jaw off the floor. It was a thing of beauty and absolutely wonderful to behold.

But we’re still here and we’re still friends(ish), and any flubs or gaffes will still be not just excused but embraced and enjoyed. There will soon come a day when it will become unthinkable to imagine Ash in a cardboard box, pretending it’s a television. I am truly in awe of what the Dresden Dolls are accomplishing right now, but I hope that they never lose their penchant for crawling into cardboard boxes, at least occasionally.

Annotated Set List:

Sex Changes - There is a superstition amongst avid fans that any show that doesn’t begin with Good Day is going to be a little off. Tonight that was fairly well put to rest.

Good Day - And so the Music Gods are appeased!

Gravity

Modern Moonlight

My Alcoholic Friends

Welcome to the Internet (Bo Burnham cover)

Astronaut (A Brief History of Nearly Nothing) (Amanda Palmer cover)

Mrs. O

At this, the first break in the set, Amanda proclaimed that this was the best audience they had had all year. “And I’m not just saying that … Just come with us everywhere. We’ll take you to New Zealand!” And then went on to explain that they are fundamentally a live band who tours and workshops material before recording an album. “We just played all of those songs to convince you that we’re good. And now we’re going to do what you’re not supposed to do when you’re a band, which is we’re just gonna play you a fuckton of new songs.” And the crowd went wild.

Mister God - Still my favorite of the new songs, I think, but there are others making ground on the outside.

Houdini - As a for instance.

Whakenewha - “This one I brought to Brian when we started playing together again a year ago or whatever and I was like, ‘I don’t think this is a Dresden Dolls song, it’s like a boring Amanda Palmer solo piano song.’ And then Brian did The Thing.” It’s quite a thing.

Boyfriend in a Coma

Amsterdam (Jacques Brel cover) - Though the venue did have a balcony Amanda stayed on stage with Brian for this one tonight, probably for a smoother transition to the next song that also featured the two of them out front.

Another Christmas - “I feel like it’s time that the goths had a Christmas song.”

The Runner - Amanda declared this to be her current favorite of the new songs (subject to change without notice). It’s hard to argue; it’s very good.

The Nail

Backstabber

War Pigs (Black Sabbath cover)

——

Merch commercial

(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!) (Beastie Boys cover featuring Tilley Komorny on bass, Brian on guitar, and Amanda on drums) - We last saw Tilley in Orlando, but in the intervening months she moved to Portland!

Girl Anachronism

Sing (featuring Tilley on bass and Brian on guitar to start) - A perfect end to a perfect evening.

Photo Gallery:

(All photos by me, but edited by Melissa Smith)

Amanda came out fully dressed … but not for long!

Best goddamned drummer in the motherfucking world. Fight me.

Amsterdam!

Another Christmas

Fight for your right!

The gods must be appeased … WITH BLOOD SACRIFICE!

Good night Portland!

But wait! The show might have been over but the magic was not. Amanda came out for the (now traditional) Patreon photo and afterwards she got down on her hands and knees and appeared to be talking to one of the patrons. The remaining crowd was coming down off a show high and there was general hubbub. Then a beautiful voice could be barely heard through the commotion. Quickly a hush fell over the crowd and we were treated to a beautiful song from Colette the Bard. She had seen Amanda in 2018 after surgery that called into question her ability to ever sing again, and she asked Amanda if she could sing for her the next time she saw her. Tonight was the night, and she crushed it! A truly beautiful and inspiring moment.

[fantasyinvader]

@meanwhileinaditch

“It's absolutely fascinating to see how much CF's interpretations have poisoned the meta well. People speak with such certainty and authority about things that provably never happened, it feels like I'm getting gaslit by a videogame fandom.”

I don’t even think it’s the interpretations of CF specifically. It’s people wanting Three Houses to be one thing then reacting badly when it’s another thing entirely. One of the main points I’ve seen come up since launch was the idea that all the routes are simply based on differing points of view, and it’s up to the player to decide what is right and wrong...therefore the poster says Edelgard is right and that anyone who says differently can not read. Usually moral ambiguity is brought up while defending Edelgard as having done nothing wrong while everyone else is literally a certain Mr. Schicklgruber .

This is all based on people online, god only knows how many being adults above the age of majority, being unwilling to accept what a game created for middle-schoolers (CERO Rating B: Ages 12 and up) is trying to say. One of the most infamous pieces of meta, the teacher theory, was created when someone noticed how canon, specifically one of the two things Edelgard did that they initially conceded was evil, went against how he read the character and attempted to create an explanation to accommodate themselves (he also walked back the other thing as well). People actually say that Edelgard is out of character in every route but CF, and even talk about how they don’t like hearing information from the rest of the game. I have literally seen people try to argue the game lies in the non-CF infodumps, or that what’s revealed in those are not canon to the world of CF.

A big part of this is the fact players have to choose to join Edelgard, as Byleth defaults to the Silver Snow route. To many, because they didn’t choose to fight Edelgard this means that Byleth is an unthinking, moron who blindly follows orders. Not, you know, Byleth has seen the events of Part 1 for themselves, came to their own conclusions and follows what they believe is right. The player has to unlock the ability to make a decision in order to join Edelgard and her merry band, causing people to say the route is about free will and therefore good. These players don’t want to admit they decided to help the villains achieve their goals in the game, that they willingly followed a lying hypocrite. They want to believe that they are the good guys, if only to save face. Again, I have seen people argue stuff like “if you have to unlock the route, that means it’s better” and “the game wouldn’t allow us to join Edelgard if it was a bad thing.”

People want this game to be about Free Will when siding with Edelgard. They want it to be about toppling a tyrant, not propping up one. They want to claim the story is a matter of perspective, that what’s true and what’s right is up for the player to decide. And when the game’s creators have debunked this, they have resorted to trying to discredit them and declaring Death of the Author.

I personally can’t help but wonder if this is because people, I dunno, they crave post-modernism in their media. That they want characters to acknowledge tropes, snark and quip like they’re not taking things seriously, and for things to be left up to the audience’s interpretation. That they want to be seen as smart for enjoying such media, that they get it. They don’t want to take things at face value and instead to make things more complicated than they actually are. Throw in how people try to reduce Edelgard down to progressive, lesbian lord and Claude to PoC Lord, disregarding their entire characters in order to focus on aspects of their character that might not even be there. Just feels like people are using the game to make themselves look good, rather than just enjoying it for what it is.

I mean, I get that the game is so fragmented that to get a real understanding of it you need to find all sorts of pieces of info, some of which were damaged by the translation. But you’d think that as time went on and people dissected the text misconceptions would die out, at least within the fandom. Instead people champion fanfic over the actual text, the creators’ voices being shouted down by players who don’t want to be challenged, and people within the fandom are harassed and insulted for the crime of actually following the script.

Even if Three Hopes does spell out that Edelgard is wrong and she repents, it’s not going to fix anything. If anything, it’ll just increase the claims that “they didn’t understand Edelgard or the story, and they’re pandering to Dimitri/Rhea/Claude stans.” Three Houses’ original creators have said that she’s the villain, but that’s not enough for some people. I’d say it’s absolutely bizarre...but we’ve all heard fandom horror stories before. Hell, there were people who thought stories about MLP characters forcefully converting humans into ponies, waging a war to do so, was in line with the show’s messages.

Seriously, wth!?

[sorrelchestnut]

oh you're definitely right about Astarion being a twink. i cant believe I didn't consider it. however, he is a bit dumb if he thinks we won't figure out his secret in ten seconds. poor boy has red eyes and fangs.

You know, I thought the same thing when I was first playing, but honestly, the more I think about it... it really doesn’t make sense from an in-world perspective for someone to look at him and think ‘vampire.’  I think we-the-audience are kind of primed to think that way because of modern vampire fiction (also his fucking loading screen image is... not subtle) but in-universe the idea of a vampire being out during daylight is literally unthinkable.  To the best of my knowledge it’s never happened before.  Even a dedicated scholar like Gale wouldn’t even consider it, because it’s impossible.  They sort of lampshade it a bit with the Gur monster-hunter, who is literally looking for Astarion and presumably has a description to go with the name, and looks straight at him and is like “welp you’re out in the daylight so it’s none of you, haha!”

And I mean, this is a fantasy world with what sometimes seems like five thousand different races and sub-races, not to mention all sorts of weird and wacky spell effects.  What’s more plausible: he’s somehow the literally first-ever vampire to ever be walking around in daylight, or someone in his recent ancestral history fucked a drow?  Or he got cursed, or he underpaid a wizard, or there’s some new bonkers fashion trend among bored rich folk in the Gate?  Even if you saw the scars on his neck - and it’s not an accident that his starting outfit has a ruff that covers his throat - it’d be more like “man how’d you get bit by a vampire and survive?”  I can’t think of a single quirk he displays - yes even that loltastic monologue about ‘dripping’ steak that’s right up there with ‘I don’t drink... wine’ - that can’t be better explained by something else.  When you hear hoofbeats, you think horses, not zebras, y’know?   Like, he’s a ridiculous person, obviously, but hell, sometimes rich folk are just like that.

[siriusbunbryist]

In defence of Abed x Annie.

Thanks to the magic of Netflix, I’ve rewatched Community at age 24, and still found Abed and Annie to have hit the heartstrings as much as I did when I was in high school watching the show for the first time.

But watching the series in its entirety just reinforces my thought that Abed and Annie had so much potential that was wasted, and it’s a shame that the writers planted all these seeds to only decide that perhaps this direction was not worth it / too risky / unfavoured by the audience. But I mean, Alison Brie herself (and I’m assuming Danny Pudi as well) endorsed them! Find here and here.

This was a pairing that with all the crumbs scattered throughout the show (I think we are all aware of these crumbs I speak of), could’ve easily played the “oh we’ve been secretly dating this whole time” trope during the last episode and it would’ve still made sense.

Naturally I did some scoping, and of course unsurprisingly the J.eff x Annie pairing takes the cake, while not a lot of love for Abed x Annie. So here are common points of contentions I see surrounding Abed and Annie, and my rationale on them.

Before I start, a note - I fully respect the J.eff x Annie ship and I don’t intend on starting a ship w.ar/debate. I understand where their support comes from! I just needed to vent because no one else in my social circle watches this show. No hate please.

1. Abed doesn’t see Annie romantically

I think on the contrary it’s been set up rather long ago that Abed at the very least is attracted to Annie.

Exhibit A: “What are you making” in Beginner Pottery

Exhibit B: “Flat B.utt and the one Abed wants to nail” in The Art of Discourse

This video basically explains it! The summary: Annie is Pierce’s favourite, Pierce constantly insults Britta, therefore Britta is flat b.utt.

Exhibit C: Not even trying to hide it in Accounting for Lawyers

But, a romantic interest has to be further built upon finding someone attractive right? There has to be intrigue to their character, such as

Exhibit D: “I can only connect to people through... movies” in English as a Second Language

It is pretty obvious here that Annie is a rare someone who has successfully broken the impartial screen that Abed filters everything through. Jeff saw it too which is why he said Annie was the ark of the covenant before Abed fell for her disney face. I can only imagine Abed to be quite struck with Annie’s infiltration.

A romantic interest should also share common interests, such as

Exhibit E: “Which makes Annie is my third favourite show” in Paranormal Parentage

I’ve said before that for Abed, a guy who lives life and communicates through comparing it with television and movies, it’s not unthinkable for him to be attracted to someone who genuinely watches his favourite shows and commits to roles during cosplay. And who, besides Troy, would fit this profile? Annie. 

And finally, the biggest indicator of it all, we also see how Abed views the Jeff and Annie pairing in everyone’s favourite episode Remedial Chaos Theory. Keeping in mind that the timelines are rendered by Abed, out of all the timelines, J.eff and Annie only kis.sed when Abed left the room for pizza. As well, as conjured in Abed’s head, Evil Jeff and Evil Annie only existed as a couple in the Darkest Timeline. To me at least, it’s arguable that this alludes to Abed’s omniscient “director” standpoint that he may be the obstacle in the Jeff and Annie relationship - pointing towards him perhaps harbouring feelings for Annie.

2. Annie doesn’t see Abed romantically The general consensus on this point is that Annie is only attracted to Abed when he’s playing a character. I rather think that being attracted to someone, and being attracted to someone during role play, aren’t mutually exclusive. Let’s take a look at the different characters that Abed played.

Don Draper: serious, sophisticated, and smooth.

Han Solo: immature, flirty and a smarta.ss.

Batman: mysterious, complex, and brave.

Three different personas, yet Annie responded to all of them. Since the common denominator to all three is that they are played by Abed, I would like to offer a counterpoint that perhaps the attraction to Abed has always been there, it’s just emphasized when Abed plays a character. Who knows, role playing might even be Annie’s ki.nk. After all, during For a Few Paintballs More, it is shown that Annie is disappointed when Abed dropped the Han Solo persona after the battle ended.

Annie also loves big romantic gestures. Who’s better than doing that than Abed? Since the beginning, Abed has already been doing big romantic gestures of varying degrees for Annie. With this, it’s not ridiculous for Annie to see Abed as a romantic potential.

Exhibit F: Staying in a room for 26 hours in Social Psychology

Annie: You sat in a room for twenty-six straight hours. Didn’t that bother you?  Abed: Yeah I was livid.  Annie: Then why didn’t you leave?  Abed: Because you asked me to stay and you said we were friends.

Exhibit G: Rescuing her from “captivity” and inviting her to move in in Remedial Chaos Theory and Studies in Modern Movement (even Troy was surprised at Abed’s invitation)

Exhibit H: Tearing down the Dreamatorium in Studies in Modern Movement

Annie: What about the Dreamatorium? Abed: Oh it's staying. The Dreamatorium is more important than any of us. But you're more important than our bedroom so we put the bunk bed in the blanket fort.

Bonus: Confirmed by Alison Brie

3. The show was about Jeff and Annie

Dan Harmon said that Community’s approach is that anything and any pairing is possible. We see this is as the series started with the classic “player vs smart snarky girl” trope with setting up Jeff and Britta as the main pairing. We also see Troy and Annie as the potential B couple in the show. The writers also threw Pierce and Shirley, Annie and Britta, Dean and Jeff, and even Chang and Britta in for a laugh.

And then the show subverted this all by introducing Jeff and Annie, and made Troy and Britta a couple, showing us that Community is a show that intends on breaking these classic sitcom stereotypes by experimenting with different pairings. Abed and Annie was no exception to this, as the writers often pair them up in different shenanigans and hint at possible grounds to explore*.

A few examples: Han and Leia in For a Few Paintballs More, Hector the Well Endowed and the Elf Maiden in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, spy partners in Modern Espionage.

No doubt that the show dabbled in and out of Jeff and Annie throughout the series. However, to say that Jeff and Annie was the primary pairing in the series would mean overlooking Jeff and Britta. Especially when Jeff and Britta have the whole love-hate dynamic, three(?) marriage close-calls, and emotional snippets such as helping Jeff reunite with his father in Cooperative Escapism in Familial Relations.

Anyway, not to discredit Jeff and Annie, but knowing that the show explores the possibility of different pairings**, why write off Abed and Annie?

* Not to mention that the cop pairing in The Science of Illusion was originally written with Abed and Annie in mind! ** We also see a stray Abed and Britta during Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps.

4. Annie is in love with Jeff To keep this short and shipper-goggle free, Annie has said on numerous occasions that she’s in love with the idea of Jeff, not Jeff himself. Specifically this scene in Virtual Systems Analysis:

Abed as Annie: "…We love Jeff…" Annie: "No we don’t, we’re just in love with the idea of being loved. And if we can teach a guy like Jeff to do it, we’ll never be unloved, so we keep running the same scenario over and over hoping for a different result."

And this scene in Conventions of Space and Time:

Annie: All right, I may have been play-acting that we were married, and then the staff thought you were cheating, and I had to save face. Jeff: Do I have to worry about this? Annie: No, I was just daydreaming. I mean, I've married you at least a half a dozen times. And Troy. And Zac Efron.

Not to mention that their conversation in the finale says it all.

Jeff: I don't wanna be fine. I wanna be 25 and heading out into the world. I wanna fall asleep on a beach and be able to walk the next day, or stay up all night on accident. I wanna wear a white t-shirt without looking like I forgot to get dressed.* I want to be terrified of AIDS, I want to have an opinion about those, boring a.ss Marvel movies. And I want those opinions to be of any concern to the people making them. Annie: Well I want to live in the same home for more than a year, order wine without feeling nervous, have a resume full of crazy mistakes instead of crazy lies. I want stories and wisdom, perspective. I wanna have so much behind me I'm not a sl.ave to what's in front of me, especially those flavourless unremarkable Marvel movies.

*Shipper-goggle on: Part of me thinks this is a reference to Abed, whose iconic style almost exclusively comprises T-shirts. What Jeff is saying is that he wishes he is 25 again with his future open before him, someone who compatible with Annie, but here he acknowledges that he isn’t, and lets her go in the end.

5. Abed and Annie wouldn’t work as a couple Another point I see is that Abed and Annie are strictly platonic and are more like brother and sister. On the basis that they have made out a couple times and are attracted to each other, I would disagree with the sibling statement.  

Troy, in contrast to Abed, I think actually resembles a more sibling-like relationship with Annie. Although Troy and Annie have the strong friendship of Abed and Annie, when disregarding the high school crush stage of season 1, their storylines never dwelled further down an attraction path, nor was there any specific episode that was dedicated to a deep dive of vulnerabilities and confrontation between them. As a comparison, Troy and Britta had opportunities to explore these setups (Troy admitted to lying about his b.utt stuff story and Troy helped Britta face Blade) - an indication that Troy and Britta were heading into non-platonic territory. Jeff and Britta too, had several opportunities to confront their feelings (up till the very last season), a clear indication of a non-platonic relationship.

For Abed and Annie, what I think pulls their friendship towards actual love interest potential is best pinpointed to Virtual Systems Analysis. Annie’s participation in the Dreamatorium prompted her to not only fully submerge into the way Abed thinks and comprehends his surroundings, but she also got to understand and address Abed’s stubbornness and flaws in a vulnerable way, confronting some of her own flaws as well.

Abed as Shirley: Your hospital school, young lady, is a simulation being run through a filter of other people's needs. Abed's been filtered out because nobody needs him. Annie: I need him!

And to point out this little tidbit in VCR Maintenance and Educational Publishing,

Annie: That's why Abed is like a brother to me. You guys are so alike. Abed: I can't accept that based on one time machine story.

This whole episode, instead of establishing Abed is like Annie’s brother, I would argue is rather doing the opposite. Abed and Annie’s hyper antics in the episode were basically matched by Anthony and Rachel’s blatant indifference and confusion. For lots of Abed and Annie supporters, this episode was a major setback. But I think it instead highlights how in-sync they are with each other, which is a good thing.

Another point, despite Annie trying to prove otherwise, Abed and Anthony had different vibes, and each shared different dynamics with Annie. And as Anthony pointed out in the end, who were Abed and Annie trying to replace in the apartment? Troy. The person who they are trying to fill is Troy - their roommate, their brother, their best friend. Troy was the brother role that neither Abed and Annie can fill for each other.

In Basic Sandwich, we get this exchange:

Abed: The point is, this show, Annie, it isn't just their show. This is our show, and it's not over. And the sooner we find that treasure, the faster the Jeff-Britta pilot falls apart. Annie: Got it. Thank you, Abed. Abed: You're welcome. I have a girlfriend. Annie: What? Abed: You were about to start a kiss lean. Annie: I was not.

Not only did Abed saw right through Annie’s anxiety and comforted her in his own uniquely Abed way, but he also felt the need to remind her of his girlfriend. The fact that he broke the fourth wall here is likely the writers’ way to be meta, but simply acknowledging the tension and bond there says a lot in between the lines. If tension does not exist, there would be no need for this line.

Besides, instead of thinking that they’re strictly platonic (which of course is also okay), they would rather work great as a couple. In terms of opposites attract, Annie grounds Abed with just the right amount, while Abed clearly encourages Annie to be her true self and be immature. Such as this scene in Foosball and Nocturnal Vigilantism,

Annie: I’m following him.  Troy: You moving in here was supposed to tone us down!

Annie also doesn’t just tolerate Abed’s idiosyncrasies, she actually likes them and fully participates as multiple paintball games and cosplays would tell us. Special shoutout to the missing lovers footage in Wedding Videography, which through Britta, actually shows us that Annie is the only one who would go along with Abed’s projects - while Britta found the project extremely weird and unhealthy, Annie thought it was fun and commits well to her role.

And while others may tiptoe around Abed, Annie isn’t afraid to call Abed out when he’s out of line and makes a point to teach him about empathy in Virtual Systems Analysis. Remember that Britta tried teaching him this but it didn’t work as well.

I am Abed Nadir... And I don't know a lot of things everyone else knows. I wander the universe with my friend, Troy, doing whatever I want. Sometimes accidentally hurting innocent unremarkables. This week, however, Troy went to lunch and I adapted. I now have the ability to enter the minds of others using an elusive new technique known as "empathy".

As well as in the entire episode of Cooperative Polygraphy.

They also know each other best. Abed knew her cushion preferences, was the one who spelled out her true pas.sion for forensics, and after living together, Annie knew how to navigate Abed’s peculiarities and to soothe him whenever he had a nervous breakdown. 

Annie also knows him so well that she can predict his reaction.

They are also each other’s exception. Annie was always the one who manages to pull Abed out of a trance and back to reality, usually with touch.

Abed is also very forgiving with her. An example is when Annie seemingly lost all common sense because she broke Abed’s special edition dvd in Foosball and Nocturnal Vigilantism.

Annie: Well, Batman, on behalf of all of us that aren't perfect, can I just say I'm sorry I broke your DVD? Abed: Apology accepted. But I wouldn't mention it to Abed. That guy's pretty ruthless. And that's coming from Batman.

And in Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas, Annie was the only claymation doll that didn’t have a weird form (except Troy as toy soldier of course). Annie was a ballerina because Abed sees her as a creature of grace. Abed was also the first one who got her “brighter tomorrow” diorama and responded with enthusiasm.

They are also in the same stage in life. As Dan Harmon explains the choice of Abed and Annie being the ones who leave the group, with Troy gone, Abed and Annie symbolize the many possibilities of the future - a possibility that makes them viable. I like to think Annie transfers to the LA FBI office after her internship and they reunite.

And as the Spice Girls said, “if you wanna be my love.r, you gotta get with my friends”. In Paleyfest, Dan Harmon says this about whoever Troy and Abed ends up dating, “I mean a woman that comes into either of their lives is either going to drive them apart or she's going to have to be really accepting of a very special relationship”.

Britta tolerated their friendship but to a point of asking Annie to distract Abed for alone time with Troy, Troy dumped the librarian as she called Abed weird, Robin disappeared, Rachel we never got to see much of, but was pretty quiet and separated from the group. From this, logically speaking, Annie would actually be the perfect match for Abed, as we all know they’re the ultimate trio within the study group and a transition from friends to more will be natural. 

Oh, and, Abed is wrong. They’re not Chandler and Phoebe with little storylines together, they’re Chandler and Monica. 

Anyway, that’s it for my super long rant/analysis. Community the series is done and over, so there isn’t a need for any ship war. All I want to say is, if #andamovie happens, hopefully, the writers will actually take a leap.

[twentiethcenturymoviesandtv]

Star Trek: A Product of the Times

Miniskirts, beehives and bowlcuts, goodness gracious, is there any time that Star Trek could have been made but the 1960s?

The short answer?  Not really.

Star Trek was made at quite an interesting time.  The Civil Rights Movement, the space race, Vietnam, the Cold War, the hippie movement, and the new wave of feminism was all coming in a wave that swept the nation, turning the country on its head and plunging its people into turmoil.  The 1960s were an uncertain time: President John F. Kennedy was assassinated at the beginning of the decade after dealing with the Cuban Missile Crisis, Martin Luthor King Jr. was assassinated near the end, just in time to see the Civil Rights and Voting Act of the mid-’60s come to pass, ensuring equal rights for all.  In 1969, America put a man on the moon, Nixon won the election of 1968, and Woodstock closed out the summer of ‘69 with a bang.

This was the world Star Trek was born into: a world full of hope and fear.

You may be wondering why I’m telling you all this, why this all matters.

The answer is extremely simple: to help contextualize, and therefore understand, Star Trek, we have to understand the 1960s.

See, no piece of media is an island.  Every movie, every book, tv show and song, is a product of people living in the times, therefore, a product of the times itself.  Everything, no matter how much of a ‘classic’, exists as a product of those who created it, people whose thoughts and actions are influenced very heavily by the world they live in, and the culture around them, ‘dating’ them to future viewers.

That’s to be expected.

It makes sense that our culture shapes who we are and what we think, and therefore the kinds of things we create.  This, in and of itself, is far from a problem.  However, it does leave those of us who enjoy older films with a rather interesting question:

How dated is too dated?

Can we as an audience still enjoy a film that is discernibly made in a time before our own?  Is it possible to relate to the content created in a time of different technology, clothes, and, most importantly, a different political and social climate than the one we currently live in?

The fact is, there is nobody and nothing in existence that can stop any piece of media from being ‘dated’ in the sense that, no matter what, whatever is being made will have the impact of the culture it is made in.  It simply can’t be avoided.  Even films set in the future will feature the hairstyles of the decade it was created in, or use the special effects of the time.  This, although sometimes a little odd, does not negatively impact the films that we watch.  These things are mere trimming, the external demonstration of the culture of the times.  We can watch The Breakfast Club or The Terminator and notice the ‘80s clothes, slang, trends and references, but it does not hurt the core essence of the movie.

So what does?

Ideas.

In my opinion, it is not the styles of a film, but the ideas, the themes, how the world is viewed, that dates a film, more than any beehive or mullet ever could.  It is these elements that cause modern viewers to cringe at offensive lines or words, to wince at blatant displays of sexism or prejudice, and sometimes, turn away from older movies forever.

However, ignoring it, and refusing to watch it, doesn’t make anything better.  After all, those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it, and although movies and television aren’t quite history, they’re a picture of it.

Looking at the context in which a film was created can help us figure out why decisions were made, and understand how the culture has changed.  By looking at where we’ve been, we can better appreciate where we are now, and look to where we are going to be.  We can, and indeed, we should look back at older films, and recognize what doesn’t hold up and what is considerably Not Okay, without ignoring what does hold up.

That’s what we’re doing now.  Today, we’re answering the question:

How dated is Star Trek?

Let’s take a look.

To be honest, at first glance, it seems like it is.  Very much so.

Between very on-the-nose storylines facing off against hippies, racism and the Vietnam war, Uhura’s miniskirt, Yeoman Rand’s beehive, and Chekov’s bowl cut, it seems utterly impossible that this show can exist and hold up in a time period past the 1960s.  The special effects are sometimes cheesy, the acting can be hammy, and the moments of ‘progressiveness’ that are so often praised seem rather small.

Uhura was a black woman on the bridge, sure, but she was horrendously underutilized.  Female characters regularly wore skimpy outfits and threw themselves at male members of the crew, serving as props, seducers, innocents, and rarely holding any real power.  The final episode of the series is about an insane woman who swaps bodies with Captain Kirk because she claimed women weren’t allowed to be starship captains.  Evil Kirk’s assault of Janice Rand is brushed off.  The main characters are all white, and every minority character is in a supporting role.

It’s easy to look back from the twenty-first century with uncomfortably raised eyebrows and ask: “This was progress?”

All in all, it seems impossible to modern audiences that this show could possibly be as revolutionary as it is often said to be.  How can this show be a television game changer, the show that inspired so many and so much good?  How can Star Trek be considered so progressive?

Honestly, it’s all dependent on the time.

Looking back, it’s very easy to judge, to turn our backs on a show that is, in a lot of ways, clearly dated.  There’s no saving the reputation of the bowl cuts, the campy acting, or the tinfoil bikinis, but, if you will, allow me to contextualize, not just the show, but the culture as well.

The year is 1966, and Star Trek’s first pilot has failed, accused of being ‘too cerebral’, (among other things) and having a woman as the second in command on the ship.  The new show, considerably retooled with a whole new crew except for a mixed-race half extra-terrestrial, is set to air, and your crew includes two white American men, the aforementioned half alien, a Scotsman, an Asian man, and a black woman, all in positions of authority on a military ship designed for exploration in deep space.

An Asian man with no stereotypically Asian accent, hobbies, or background was the helmsman for the Enterprise.  A black woman was a lieutenant commander, the chief communications officer.  They were positioned in such a way that they were unmissable for viewers, and regularly took part in landing parties and missions.  They were very smart and very capable.

Now, that’s nothing.  Then?

In 1966, that was huge.

While to modern eyes, the show’s claim to progressiveness seemed like the bare minimum, in the time that the show was produced, it was a big deal.  The equality on the bridge of the Enterprise, (unquestioned, undiscussed equality) changed television, and subtly forced viewers to question their own prejudices.  The idea of a perfect future was one with no prejudice, no distinction among humans.

To quote Kirk himself:

“Leave any bigotry in your quarters; there’s no room for it on the bridge.”

On Star Trek, especially in the Federation, everyone was an equal.  No member of the crew was worth more, or treated differently, than any other.  Multiple characters (non male, non white) characters are portrayed as high ranking, deserving of equal respect.  Sure, now it doesn’t look like a big deal, but in the end, that’s a good thing.

It means that times have changed, and that even in the 1960s, people knew they should change.

In the end, Star Trek remains a good look at a utopian future where everyone is deserving of equal respect and care.  Is it perfect?  No.

But it was about as good as we can expect: Fair For Its Day.

To quote the TVTropes definition of this specific phrase:

“Something from the past that seems like a huge load of Values Dissonance. It seems laden with, say, a Rose-Tinted Narrative or a Historical Hero or Villain Upgrade.

Only… it turns out it was comparatively Fair for Its Day. Maybe the Historical Hero Upgrade or Historical Villain Upgrade wasn’t that unfair a reflection on the person’s views. Maybe the Rose-Tinted Narrative just wasn’t rose-tinted enough for its original audience. Maybe it was even ripped apart in its own time for being downright insurrectionist, and was brave to go as far as it did. It might even completely agree with modern attitudes, but not do so Anviliciously enough for today’s audiences.”

Such is Star Trek.

The miniskirts?  A demonstration of freedom and fashion in the late 1960s.  Uhura’s job?  As a black woman in the ‘60s in a position of authority, it was groundbreaking.  A non-stereotyped Asian man and a non-evil Russian?  Unthinkable.  Khan, one of the show’s most memorable and well-loved villains?  Played by Ricardo Montalbán, a Mexican.  Kirk reported to higher-ranking non-white officers.

Does that fix the fact that Janice Rand’s assault was largely brushed off?

No.

But it’s a start.

Star Trek’s legacy is, not in its perfection, but in the fact that it was a product of the times that saw the need for change.  It’s impact, it’s importance lies in its guts to push the boundaries of what was acceptable at the time, to be a product of the times that was looking for a better future.

Yes, times have changed, and Star Trek no longer looks as groundbreaking as it did at the time.  That’s good.  It shouldn’t.  But that does not mean that it loses its importance.

Star Trek remains a titan among game-changers in the history of pop-culture, and rightfully so.  Very few franchises have the scope of influence and inspiration that Star Trek lays claim to having, and in a true test of its values, continued to expand on them and grow and change with the culture with each version, continuing to strive for the best.

All that leads us to our final question.

Is Star Trek dated?

In some ways, yes.  Some of those stories could only have been created in the 1960s.  Some interactions were only possible in a bygone era.

In others?

Star Trek’s general concept, and indeed, a lot of its execution, actually does hold up very well.  The stories are often just as interesting and compelling as they were when they were first released, and the characters remain as gripping and entertaining, over fifty years later.  In terms of storytelling and characters, for the most part, Star Trek is not dated.

After all, the idea of equality, and a better future, is never dated.

Yes, Star Trek is a product of its times.  Very much so.  However, that fact makes the series no less enjoyable.  It was influenced by its culture and its times just as much as it would go on to influence, and even today, it still casts a long shadow on television, and the culture at large. Star Trek stands the test of time, serving as a reminder of times past, while at the same time looking to the future.

In 1966, Star Trek was a visionary concept that ended up changing the world.  Just because we’ve seen progress since then doesn’t take away any of its punch, it just shows us that it was on the right track.

Fifty years later, Star Trek is still boldly going, and it will continue to do so as long as people still look for a better, brighter future.

Thanks so much for reading!  Don’t forget to use that ask box if you have your own ideas or thoughts that you’d like to share.  I hope to see you in the next article.

[processandenquirysophielindsay]

Sarah Lucas

Two Fried Egg and a Kebab - 1992

Functioning as a critique on sexist attitudes, this sculpture features two fried eggs and a kebab placed on a wooden table below a photograph of the same arrangement as if in a photo frame. The eggs, freshly cooked each day, are located alongside each other, and the kebab, with its open pitta bread encasing kebab folds, is placed below. These food items depict the breasts and vagina by representing the well-known pun on words. Equally, the image becomes a reclining female nude, reducing the woman to what might be seen as her "essential" parts.

Au Naturel - 1994

Predating Tracy Emin's more famous (and more personal) My Bed by some three years, Au Naturel (the title of the work is the brand name printed on the mattress label) is a sculpture in which a yellowing, stained mattress sits slumped against a gallery wall. On the upper left hand side two melons have been inserted into cuts made in the mattress. They are placed above a water bucket, that opens outwards towards the viewer. On the right, two oranges and a courgette protrude from the mattress. The symbolism is, like Two Fried Eggs and a Kebab, crude and unambiguous. Presented at the controversial Sensation exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1997, however, Au Naturel brought Lucas's fascination with crude sexual metaphors to a whole new global audience, and thereby confirmed her ability to confront (and quite likely offend) her audience through a flagrant play on base connotative associations.

Nud 2 - 2009

Part of a series of Nud sculptures - in an interview with Aida Edemariam, Lucas explained that "the word Nud [came] from a phrase of her mother's, 'in the nuddy', meaning naked" - Nud 2 is made of fluff stuffed into tights stiffened and shaped with wire. The visual effect is of limbs endlessly entwined. The limbs are not smooth but mottled, while the texture and color of the flesh is pallid and stony.

It is thought that Lucas first used tights in her art in 1992 when she stuffed them with newspaper while running The Shop with Tracy Emin. But the first of the Nud series came about, as Christine Patterson describes it, when her partner, the artist Julian Simmonds, presented her with a pair of old tights he had found in the garden shed: "Once she'd stuffed them with kapok and twisted them into shape [Lucas] had a 'eureka moment'". With this work the use of tights, whose everyday function is to regulate or conceal skin, becomes the skin itself. The contrast between the twisted limbs and the dark grey breeze blocks that they rest on, both situates these forms in the real-world as well isolating them to be displayed as artworks. Once again inviting sexual connotations, Nuds failed to shy away from bodily imperfections, and in so doing, she presented an afront to the airbrushed images that are presented through the popular media.

Maradona - 2015

I Scream Daddio was Lucas's British Pavilion exhibition at the Venice Biennial in 2015. It took the form of a display of different sculptural works set against a yellow painted pavilion split across multiple rooms. The bold Maradona works, one Deep Cream the other Gold Cup, were located one in front of the entrance of the pavilion and the other in an interior room. Turning the tradition of the reclining female nude on its head, the sculptures are cartoonish balloon-like displays of splayed limbs with a 14 foot erect penis in bright yellow hues made of resin. Blending with the yellow walls, Lucas wanted to create an upbeat piece of work; one that seems almost to celebrate the sensuality of human bodies. In an article by Adrian Searle of The Guardian, Lucas suggested that "The sculptures are set in a sea of custard, Crème Anglais in other words" and she chose that color because she wanted to "put us all in a good mood". Searle added that the sculptures and their surroundings had reminded Lucas "of meringues in a dessert, with [the famous British chef] Fergus Henderson providing a recipe for iles flottantes [in which a meringue floats of a yellow sauce base]".

The Legacy of Sarah Lucas

Even though many in the art world would regard the rise of the YBAs with mixed blessings - reprioritizing contemporary art as commerce, through artworks that more often than not functioned as in jokes and one-liners did not meet with universal approval - the commercial fortunes of Lucas and her peers caused seismic industry-wide waves that have yet to be repeated. Writer and Journalist Charlotte Higgins described how "The YBAs brought great change to the British art world. Tate Modern, Frieze art fair, the mushrooming of contemporary art galleries around the country, the massive expansion of the UK art market - all [of which] were unthinkable when Lucas, Hirst, Tracey Emin, Gavin Turk et al graduated in the late 1980s".

Journalist Christina Patterson has added that, unlike many of the YBAs, Lucas "probably has had the most enduring influence of her 'Freeze' and YBA generation, moving beyond those associations to develop an ambitious and enduring contemporary sculptural practice". Damien Hirst, who has bought all of Lucas's early pieces from Charles Saatchi, and is probably her biggest collector, described Lucas as "the greatest artist I know [and] out there stripped to the mast like Turner in the storm, making excellent pieces over and over again". Indeed, while many of her YBA colleagues have suffered a downturn in their artistic fortunes, Lucas seems to have gone from strength-to-strength following her acclaimed solo exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in 2013 and her triumphant pavilion showing at the 2015 Venice Biennale. Journalist Deborah Orr summed up her current output thus: "it is easy to see that Sarah's work has the very qualities that people crave currently, post [financial] crash, the most simple authenticity [and] sheer talent for expression".

[derbysilkmill]

HEGEL’S TROWEL: working on the thing

Making changes everything. Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality

Soul is extra-scientific, outside of science, we will allow no scientific disproof of it. Maulana Karenga, Practice: Documents of Contemporary Art  

Locked down by government guidelines designed to increase social distancing, the  gap between oneself and the other, a space that can stop cross infection between us all, meant spending time watching the television. The daily BBC update reported how many more bodies have been, are still being, destroyed or attacked from the deadly Covid-19 virus.  It might not be surprising then with so much biological and existential demolition on the go that I found myself watching TV programming to do with restoration and making things: Salvage Hunters, Escape to the Chateau DIY, Secrets of the Museum, The Restoration of Notre- Dame Cathedral. Kirsty Alsop reckons these days we should Keep Crafting and Carry on; making things as a form of therapy. The Repair Shop is a phenomena with craft experts restoring material stuff to how it was. Grayson Perry promoted art, and artisan making – he is a potter - as a great healer: ‘we are all wounded’ he said on channel four. Before the outbreak of this new threat to life I was working up this small general piece about the transformational potential of creative activity, in the main, making.  

Lisa Tarbuck, was talking on radio 2. She’s a media celebrity and a fan of making things. Super mentioning  a piece of weaving or needlework she’d completed that day, she told her Saturday night audience: ‘I just couldn’t stop bloomin’ looking at it…know wot I mean…? An old friend told me recently that I just had to get hold of a copy of Mathew Crawford’s The Case for Working with Your Hands (2011). He, the old friend, was the studio furniture designer-maker when I worked with him at Detail London; a young furniture makers.  Together, we made bespoke furniture (for a beautiful stylish wealthy cool consuming clientele). Nowadays he works in academia, writing and lecturing to students about craft and making. His research has interrogated how human well-being is affected by undertaking craft activities, particular recreational making done by amateur practitioners. Crawford writes about well-being, too. The subtitle of his study is: or why office work is bad for us and fixing things feels good. In a recent email exchange the furniture designer turned academic communicated that he looked back with fondness to his making days. Perhaps with ‘rose-tinted glasses’ he qualified.

There is a growing group of western intellectuals who today theorise and promote the idea that there is a definite connection between the processes undertaken when crafting things from raw materials and human well-being. Often slow and protracted, acts of physical making are, they generally posit, a valid source and resource to increase self-esteem. Existential events such as technically planning how to make something from scratch, the selecting of appropriate materials, development and deployment of hand skills, constructing structures to a set standard, finishing worked-on material, just being in a practical workshop in extended time and space, are inter alia physically, intellectually, emotionally good for human life. Teaching craft skills in adult education and community workshop settings I have witnessed diverse learner makers achieve remarkable personal satisfaction, and that allied well-being a craft cognoscenti rightly identify, in going through the technical and material processes when constructing any crafted object. Contra this supra ideal of process, quotidian workshop life reveals that, in reality, it is not only the extended making of the final object that is beneficent to the maker of this newly-present thing – the temporal spatial physical crafting and grafting - but the now-made self-styled object- the present thing in itself the maker has made.

At the currently closed-for-restoration Silk Mill (soon to be transformed/remade as The Museum of Making) interested visitors come to Derby for a look around the modern workshop housed in the ‘world’s-first-factory’. Generally, but not always, these people are museum professionals, culture workers, creative artists or social activists. Nearly all are interested in delivering well-being because it matters. I like talking to these folks, often desk-bound and definitively (unavoidably?) over-digitalised in their daily office lives, they take a genuine interest in the practical making a workshop allows  – the working we do with our hands - activities they see as critical to human holistic well-being.  Sometime ago our executive director at Derby Museums was in the workshop standing by our CNC, talking with me. Next to Tony stood one of the inquisitive visitors; an interested (and interesting to me) culture-industry professional. Inevitably, the conversation made its way to mentions of well-being. I told them both how I see people who often do symbolically distinguished, but atomised or abstract, work -- practices with often unquantifiable or subjective outcomes (the negative work Crawford describes) -- come to a fresh and solider understanding of themselves after constructing a materially tangible piece of furniture out of plywood or turning out a curvy bowl from a rough brute blank of oak.  Stood next to the idled CNC I remember saying something like this:

“In my working life I come across a lot of people who do highly complex engineering, but in a rather abstract or theoretical way, or others who live in a digital bubble I call ‘computer world’, modelling AutoCAD perfection but never getting to actually see or touch any material outcomes or be involved in making something from start to finish by their own hands… But when people make something here in the workshop they objectify themselves…….as they say “no one has ever taken a picture of the unconscious…or seen a picture of the self ”.

There followed a sort of embarrassed silence. Then inscrutable nods and smiles from the Executive Director and his guest. Then a “well thanks for that Steve….” --  as they left the workshop.  

Specifically, a proud plagiarist, I had, of course, synthesized the ideas of  literary critic Terry Eagleton and Arts and Craft sculptor Eric Gill. Generally speaking, I had just paraphrased a few ideas of the well-known German philosopher GWF Hegel (1770-1831) --  ideas lifted from the undecipherable, but well known, Phenomenology of Mind (1807).                                     

 Well, to be more honest, I was paraphrasing Alexandre Kojève’s partially more decipherable Introduction to the Reading of Hegel. Compiled from Kojève’s lecture notes, and first published in 1969, the cult text explains Hegel’s theory of the dialectical (constant changing) progress of human history, in particular his well-known concept of the ‘Master and Slave’ conflict – the transformative phylogenetic and ontogenetic dialectic. For me the key passage in Introduction is how the text unmakes and then reconstitutes Hegel’s brutal concept of The Thing – raw given objective nature as unshaped material object – and how non-human Things (slaves/workers/makers) become Human. i.e. transform their selfhood from a raw physiological primordial brute unthinking  thing by working on another thing (raw brute unshaped material reality – wood, stone, metal, wool, cotton, clay) and making it or, a key word,  transforming it (as of themselves) -  into something it wasn’t before, in its un-worked material given existence in the world,  for another: The Master.

This is the actual Hegelian (Kojèvian) paragraph that refers to the experience of the creating maker- slave who makes for, and in place of, the consumer master:

‘The slave can work for the Master – that is, for another other than himself…he does not destroy the thing as it is given. He postpones the destruction of the thing by first trans-forming it through work; he prepares it for consumption-that is to say, he “forms” it. In his work, he trans-forms things and trans-forms himself at the same time: he forms things and the World by transforming himself, by educating himself; and he educates himself, he forms himself, by transforming things and the World. Thus, the negative-or-negating relation to the object becomes a form of this object and gains permanence, precisely because, for the worker, the object has autonomy. At the same time, the negative-or-negating middle-term—i.e., the forming activity [of work] – is the isolated particularity or the pure Being-for-itself of the Consciousness. And this Being-for-itself, through work, now passes into what is outside of the Consciousness, into the element of permanence. The working Consciousness thereby attains a contemplation of autonomous given-being such that it contemplates itself in it. [The product of work is the worker’s production. It is the realisation of his project, of his idea; hence, it is he that is realised in and by this product, and consequently he contemplates himself when he contemplates it. Now, this artificial product is at the same time just as “autonomous,” just as objective, just as independent of man, as is the natural thing. Therefore, it is by work, and only by work, that man realises himself objectively as man. Only after producing an artificial object is man himself really and objectively more than and different from a natural being; and only in this real and objective product does he become truly conscious of his subjective human reality. Therefore, it is only by work that man is a supernatural being that is conscious of its reality; by working, he is “incarnated” Spirit, he is historical “World”, he is “objectivised” History.’

Kojève concludes in the Intro that the dead German idealist philosopher (Hegel) ‘may well know much more than we do about things we need to know’.

Interestingly, a former US academic/intellectual, Crawford (he worked in a Washington ‘think tank’ before quitting to run a motorcycle repair shop) uses the same quote in his book The Case For Working With Your Hands – but misleadingly attributes the quote to the Kojève. Folksy Crawford expresses Hegel’s idea in a more homespun pragmatic manner, as is the way of practical American philosophy:  ‘The satisfaction of manifesting oneself concretely in the world through manual competence has been known to make a man quiet and easy…he is proud of what has been made’

Crawford writes about a kind of ‘self-disclosing’ latent in creativity, work and making.Concurring with Crawford and Hegel the sociologist Richard Sennet in his study The Craftsman, rites about ‘the warm values of craft and creativity’ and a ‘zesty freedom crucial to well-being of society’.

_____________________________________

I worked for a time in a comprehensive school. The head of Design and Technology – a former skilled industrial toolmaker – had had the foresight not to sell off the capstan lathes, milling machines, welding kit, old-school woodwork benches and traditional hand tools bought and installed in the 1970s.                        

Painted out in dull lemon yellow, orthodox (vintage) wood-machinery apple green, the Design &Technology workshops  looked like the past and so still played their part in 21st century life. You could smell old machine oil in the cold metal machines, bashed-up blue vices fitted to weathered beech workstations exuded a residual making aura. When the lathes were set running, rasping files shaped steel, sharp planes flattened pine, the space sounded like a real live workshop in the (ontogenetic) now, yet echoing the making culture of a phylogenetic past. In America, Crawford tells us that technical making and design is simply called ‘shop class’, or more accurately was called shop class because he bleakly observes, akin to the collapse of technical skills education in Britain, since the early 90s educational institutions have instituted a ‘big push’ to close shop class to open up digital and computer literacy. Any revival of shop class today is hindered for Crawford by the lack of skilled people competent to revive technical crafts and making in general.

Frustrated by the British school drift to digital D&T practices, a virtual curriculum (there is now virtual welding), and driven on by a shared ‘it wasn’t all computers in our day’ narcissistic nostalgia (manifested in everyday miserableness), me and the old toolmaker got our heads together and came up with project which harked back to the days of secondary-modern craft lessons in wood and metalwork; the saved machines made the scene believable.

It was only a small pot-planting trowel. It was made out of aluminium and wood.  From tip to tip 200mm long. It had a curved blade and the cranked arm was cold-riveted to the blade in a traditional blacksmithing style; the students used ballpein hammers clanging metal on the workshop’s under-loved anvil. On the once-busy but no-longer-silent lathes we put a sharp point on the 6mm round bar that made the stem from handle to blade helping drive it into the softer wooden trowel handle. The serpentine bends were created on a small Groz metal folder designed for DIY artisan metalworkers. The hardwood handle was shaped with a selection of rough round and flat cutting rasps, before being sanded, with care, by glass-paper. The blade was formed with aero-industry tin snips before being worked into a symmetrical curve with metal files. To work the flat sheet aluminium into the required radius of the blade it was fed several passes through a small jewellery rolling machine – sort of a washing mangle meets pasta machine. The trowel looked impressive when made. Three hundred students made one. The test of success is always if young makers want to take what they make home to show to someone who they care cares; most did. They had worked on the thing, objectified themselves, could contemplate themselves in itself, the small trowel, a trowel designed to be used, a tool to work on the thing, transforming nature as soil to wit.

The now fired up ex-toolmaker pointed out to me that, before we could roll out the trowel project to the students, the NQTs (Newly Qualified Teachers) in the D&T department – the electronic, digital, laser engraving, 3D printing makers – and ESWs, (Educational Support Workers) who would assist students, had to be quickly trained up in the basic craft and hand skills required to create, then teach, the trowel. They would need teaching the basic historical making techniques for working on the thing.

We arranged an ‘after-school’ instruction session in the workshop classroom. Everyone arrived looking harassed with a mug of tea or coffee/mug of hot water; offered the usual banter; male teachers removed ties; everyone put on an apron.  Each participant got a set of stock blanks: a length of aluminium bar, 150mm x 6mm ø; a rectangle of sheet aluminium, 1mm x 75mm x 120mm; a section of hardwood (beech, oak, ash, reclaimed teak or mahogany), 100mm x 25mm▫. The first task was to make a two-dimensional template – using 5mm graph card folded in half along a continuous grid line – to mark out the tapering and curved profile of the trowel’s blade. Sketching freehand they used the graph-paper squares for visual guidance. The pencilled line was cut with scissors and the pattern unfolded to reveal a symmetrical, if rough, outline. The next step was to show the trowel-makers how to transfer the profile, geometrically square, onto the shiny cropped aluminium by using a scribed (accurately-marked) centre line to align the centrefold of the paper along, thus ensuring the blade sat true, i.e. at 90° to the square back edge.

A metal scriber was then used to carefully score a visible line around the flimsy paper template into the soft aluminium. The workshop was quiet except for the soft ringing sound of metal on wood benchtop as, in deep concentration, teaching-staff students guided the hardened and sharpened steel marking tool around the curved card onto the aluminium.

(Still you could hear some light jokey banter, but of a kind, collaborative, encouraging type of joshing – ‘phatic’ communication, some dead continental philosopher of language would say.)

Aluminium can be cut easily - as card with scissors - when using inexpensive aero-industry shearing snips. Commonly used in hand tin-smith work and light commercial bespoke production these tools are designed to cut straight or with a left or right hand bias. (They are colour coded red, green and yellow and a good workshop needs the full set – an additional long-nosed straight-cutting pair is a great help for occasional extended profile cutting or internal corners.) I demonstrated how to cut the aluminium in short snips, neatly following the scribed line, shearing the material slowly and deftly the snips making the waste (swarf) curl upwards, away from the desired external blade line.

It was pointed out to the teacher-students that - novice maker or proficient craftsman - it is generally best practice when cutting stock materials to work ‘outside the line’ leaving a small margin of material for cleaning up post-cutting. Dead flat with fine teeth, hard because made from steel, metal-working files were used to remove the extraneous rough cut metal to the scribed line, scored into the aluminium, demarking the required final recognisable trowel-blade profile. Filing produces sharp burrs on metal which, in this instance, were removed with industrial emery paper. The blade smooth and symmetrical was now ready for the students to roll.

Metal rolling is the same process for a fine silver ring as a thick-walled boiler rolled out from, as it happens, 25 mm boiler plate. Basically, thin or thick factory-milled metal plate is passed through two calibrated parallel rollers which are adjusted to the required gauge of the material to be rolled. Sprung under high tension the front bars force the metal sheet towards a single back roller which is set higher than the underside of the passing steel or, in our case, aluminium. The metal is malleable and -- forced to climb over the higher spinning back roller -- begins to take on the required radius of the part required. This might be a shallow curve as the trowel needs, or a full circle, as in a delicate silver ring or a high pressure vessel such as a boiler whereby the seam is soldered or welded together and ground back. We were using a small jewellery-maker’s bench roller - no more than 300 mm in width - but the radius-forming mechanical principal remains the same.

Operating a bench metal roller is, as I sort of said before, a bit like passing dough through a pasta machine. But instead of making the metal thinner per pass – which, as is well known, is how the metal plate was produced in the forging mill in the first phase of ‘thing working’ - the radius is increased; the careful gradual adjustment – the increased un-alignment of the roller - in small increments forms the aluminium into the practical, and aesthetically pleasant crescent wanted. Students checked the curvature against a small accurate plywood template. They had to make three to four adjustments.

                        Before forming the 6mm bar into the distinctive kinked component joining the wooden handle to the blade of the trowel, it was necessary at this stage to turn a sharp point on the aluminium that would allow the bar to be driven into the end grain of the timber. The stock piece of rod was placed in a three-jaw chuck screwed onto the turning stock of  one of the neglected Colchester lathes in the workshop, and the traverse tool slider bed set at 5°; a shallow machining angle, but correct for this operation. Each operative was informed of which was the correct tool to use for this operation – left hand cutting tool - and shown how to clamp and set the tool in the lathe tool holder to the dead-centre of the lathe and therefore the dead centre of the round stock material to achieve the optimum cutting angle and efficient waste removal.  As a matter of maker education, head-stock turning-speed settings – coded in colour on the foundry-cast body of the Colchester – were demonstrated to, but set by, the learner turners.

                         The trowel project was designed/contrived to include several processes and employ a variety of tools and typical metalworking kit to introduce youngsters to some fundamental craft techniques and experience bench fitting, sheet metal working, capstan turning. 

To secure the cranked arm to the blade two aluminium rivets were to be inserted through the stem and trowel blade and flattened into a pre-drilled countersunk hole so creating a secure fixing. But, the bar was round in section, so that only a small section of the stem would be in contact with the flattish blade. To achieve a better joint it was imperative, then, to flatten out the round bar by heating the end of the stem and bashing it while it was still plastic with heat, hammering it carefully into shape with a heavy ballpein hammer on the arm of a traditional forge anvil; a neat steer of the making process into the lost-world of blacksmithing.  

(Hegel liked to walk in his home town of Heidelberg, and perhaps it was the sight of the town blacksmith toiling over a hot forge, hammering and twisting hot raw iron into shape, making some decorative gates for the local lordship, that inspired his ideas about masters and servants and the transformative effects of working on the thing?  Today, most of us have seen similar images on TV: neo-blacksmiths heating metal in a forge until it glows orange-red with heat from the coals before working it to form, with that romantic ringing of hammer and anvil, before plunging the work into cold steaming water.)

The problem with aluminium is that, non-ferrous, it retains its silver-grey colour when heated, and, to boot, we didn’t have access to a traditional forge, but the old toolmaker had the answer. He produced a plumber’s Gaz blowtorch, “I nicked ‘im from construction cupboard”, and some Fairy Liquid. Go on then, he said, smirking, what’s the Washing-up liquid for? I put my bottom lip out, shrugged with a laugh, and said I had no idea. “Ally don’t glow”. “Oh…I see” I said. “Detergent turns black when metal’s ‘ot enuff…then you can work it on anvil…simple” he grabbed the collar of his white smock with both hands and gave them a tug, before firing up the blowtorch. I passed this tip on to the NQTs and ESWs before they flattened their trowel stems.  

In old-school black and white ink,  a technical drawing indicated to the trowel-makers where on the straight length of aluminium bar marks needed to be made to indicate where the handle section should be placed in the trapping tongue - moved by a simple rack gear - of the Groz bender. The top of the tooling was also marked ‘clock –face’ style to show how far the tommy bar handle should be moved (from 12 to 4 say) and so work the soft rod into the flattened S shaped crank required of the finished component. The makers were having fun using the different kit, especially, the Groz, - they became absorbed in the basic but fundamental metal-forming processes and traditional manufacturing techniques introduced to them - but had to fully concentrate on ensuring that the two bends were executed in the same plane of orientation to avoid twisting the stalk of the cranked trowel stem or out of line with the flattened riveted section.  

[ The Groz metal bender is itself   a thing – converted and worked and cast from material nature (mined raw    iron ore -- made into steel and machine processed)  - made by things – humanised thing makers    (engineers) -  to make small springs,    fixing clips and rings - things for other things; tools, machine parts,    which in their bending, twisting and forming offer a thing maker chance to    transcend its objective thingness in working on this metal material stuff, and objectify its subjective self through the final thing made, which in    the case of machinery and tools may make other things and so on. Such as    clips on a motorcycle in for repair or customisation in Crawford’s American shop. ]       

  The cranked bar was then set in a machine vice on the pillar drill, and a  3mm hole was drilled to take the rivet stalk and slightly larger countersunk hole ( top side) into which the 3mm aluminium rivet stalk would, using a hammer and anvil, be flattened. The wider domed mushroom head of the round rivet traps the thin blade between the stem and blade. To avoid flattening the curvature of the rivet head a purpose-designed hollowed out steel tool -- an exact concaved inverse radius of the convex pip of the rivet fastening -- was used by the participants to protect it when hammering the soft aluminium into the bored out section on the reverse side. This was then also filed flat and finished smooth with emery paper. With this fine fettling the metal-working processes had been completed. Components had all been successfully marked out, cut, shaped, rolled and bent, riveted and finally filed into a recognisable small potting trowel. Everyone in the class (shop) looked dead pleased to have transformed the shapeless bits and pieces of metal into a tool that could be used; but they still had to make the handle out of wood. 

In a small box were a selection of pre-cut handle blanks ready to be matched to the still-shiny trowel parts. There were short 25mm square sections of beech, ash, mahogany, maple, oak and reclaimed pine – all unwanted found offcuts lying around waiting to be made into something useful but beautiful. I explained how that the first task was to set out the curvature required of a rounded handle on the end sections. For example,  a circle is created from a geometrically symmetrical combination of hexagonal flats filed at 45°, then refined further with 22.5° tangents which, if the section diameter was large enough, can be taken closer to a perfect mathematically round profile with 11.25° flats and so on, i.e. angles are halved until  a finite circle is produced. People smile when I say a circle is made of infinite flats, but, in a way, it is. 

The second operation was to drill a hole down the centre of the stock timber with a 6mm drill bit. The wood was set square in a vice on a pillar drill and a hole bored down its core to accommodate the aluminium.                                         

To be honest with you, most of the teachers and ESWs went their own way, freestyling, shaping the wooden parts, integrating underside curves with small finger-shaped hand grips. After the tight discipline of the metal techniques, finishing of the handles with spoke-shaves and rough-sharp rasps into vernacular crafted forms offered the makers a sort of soft therapeutic warm-down. The workshop took on a quieter woody – less hard metallic - aspect; a fresh atmospheric with the room infused by the aroma of the freshly worked old dead growing thing: the trees.

The organic-looking handles were finished with glass paper, students instructed in how to work from the roughing grades, 60 grit through to 100 grit, fining down to 240 flour paper. The job was finished by oiling the timber with Danish oil which brings out the light and shade and twisting lines of wood grain; sealing the material from moisture, and ultimate rotting. The final operation was to cement the riveted trowel section into the completed handle with a small dob of epoxy resin adhesive and stand back and admire; take in what had been achieved in a short after-school making session.

We stood around chatting. People said they’d loved making something. One said it had de-stressed him. Another couldn’t wait to take it home to show others. Some said nothing, but admired their handiwork. A few critiqued their own trowel, then complimented other’s workmanship. Phone cameras came into play. After we all packed away and tidied the workshop up ready for the next D&T school day – vacuum forming plastic bugs for students to stick googly eyes onto – everybody rushed out of the door to get home for tea. But one person hung back. She said to me ‘I’ve really enjoyed making this. Being in the workshop was just what I needed’. Good, I thought, and said ‘I’m glad’. She said ‘No more than that Steve…I needed this’. She paused. Looked a bit upset. She told me she’d had a horrible day. Awful and terrible because she was in personal conflict with a co-worker. The situation was unbearable. The emotional pain almost tortuous, nearly breaking her, she reckoned. So upset, she just wanted to go home; get out of the place. She’d forced herself to stay on. But holding up the trowel said ‘I’m so glad I stuck it out – I’m dead proud of making this’. She waved about the trowel as if digging the earth. It might only be a small thing, she admitted, but the trowel had proved something, her soul was restored, she had something to use and show for herself.        The Trowel project will feature in Museum of Making workshop programming 2021

_____________________________________________

[apprenticeofcups]

on canon & interesting choices

not strictly Arcana, but will use in-game examples. tw language, stage violence, long-ass post, Lucio is there

let’s not call this “how to write”; let’s call this “something to try”. I’m all for throwing out canon when it doesn’t work, but you have to give it a chance to work, first - if you throw it out the second it says something you don’t like or you didn’t think of, it’s so much less fun.

something that was hammered into me in acting school (that i actually appreciate as a person and a writer) is the delicate relationship with “canon”.

You have to be careful not to love it “too much”. nobody performs Hamlet without cutting a few scenes, because it’s five-hour play, and modern audiences don’t fuck with that. Shakespeare purists will insist on doing Hamlet uncut, in original pronunciation, with one day’s rehearsal because it’s “authentic” - and it's a lovely historical tribute, but it’s boring as shit.

But as an actor, working on a script, you have to make absolutely everything on that page work. Fuck, you have to make everything in the production work. (Don’t be the pretentious fuckbag who demands a different costume because “my character would never wear blue”.) As an actor, it’s not your responsibility to figure out what character the playwright was trying to build - it’s your job to fit yourself into the mold they gave you.

Say you’re playing a really fun character: a sweet, charming, mild-mannered person trapped in a loveless marriage who stabs their abusive spouse. (this could be about a hundred contemporary plays, I know.) You’ve put in all the work, made the playlist that maps your emotional state throughout the play, developed a very clear picture of who this person is, and you decide they’re a coward. You decide they’re too gentle, too soft for stabbing - if they were going to kill their spouse, they would use poison. 

Stop.

You have to use every single one of the blocks you were given to build that character, or it’s a different character. You were given clues in the script to flesh out and trace back to the core of a human being, to make them a whole person onstage, and if you leave one out, you are changing the entire play. 

Beyond that, you’re taking the easy way. Instead of taking the time to work out how this sweet, gentle person progressed to or was driven to something uncharacteristically-violent, you’re discounting the source material to protect your first draft. Contrary to what every writer will tell you, the first draft is not, actually, perfect. 

It is so much more interesting to stick to canon in this case. The audience would much rather see an almost unthinkable progression of sweet and gentle to something as violent as stabbing than something more reasonable, like poison. They might walk out saying the same thing you were, initially - “i can’t believe they would do that” “it just seems so out-of-character”, etc. - but that’s good. That means they’re feeling something. And that’s the whole point.

So how is this relevant to fanfic? 

Like I said, I’m not opposed to trashing canon, especially when canon is trash (i.e. racist, homophobic, or just way too straight). But throwing something out immediately because it doesn’t fit the idea of the character you’re married to is just My Guy Syndrome for fanfiction authors. Like MGS, there’s nothing actually wrong with it...but like MGS, it’s not as fun as it could be.

One of the more ~controversial~ canon choices in the Arcana, from what I’ve seen, is Lucio force-feeding Julian the plague beetle. There’s huge backlash from the portion of the fandom who love Lucio to scratch that out. Whether they claim Julian’s lying, or just quietly stuff the whole interaction into the Unused Canon Box, the argument is that while Lucio’s bad, he’s not that bad. 

And on a surface level, I understand it - he has some redeeming qualities, he’s capable of compassion, and of the main cast, Julian has one of the better relationships with him. It’s a hard thing to rationalize - not only is it just a nasty image, but it’s a death sentence, a painful death sentence Lucio is actively experiencing for himself, and to intentionally and maliciously inflict it on someone he trusts, possibly even considers a friend, is very, very low. 

That’s where it gets fun. 

Disregarding the whole event as the devs trying to paint Lucio a certain way, or complaining that it doesn’t fit his character are options. There is also the option to sit and imagine just how bad things have to be, how misguided, irrational, and angry someone has to be, to do something that categorically awful. How much pain, desperation, and futility is in that action? A former war hero, notoriously terrified of his own mortality, bedridden with a debilitating, agonizing disease (for what sounds like close to a year), lashes out at the only person who could possibly save him - who saved his life at least once before. Doesn’t that taste like good angst to you? 

Listen, canon isn’t holy. (For instance, Muriel has a bed, and no one will change my mind on that.) But characters are a gift, from the writer to the you, and there’s a trend of “protecting” them from their own creators that doesn’t foster as much creativity as it could. Personally, I’m used to using all my blocks. I’ve never had a say in my character wearing blue. And when a new addition to canon makes angry, I get excited, I pace around my house, and I scare the hell out of my cats muttering about all the new revelations and connections to be made. That’s what makes it fun. ☕

[lookingfornoonat2pm]

On the Zizek-Peterson Debate

The simplest way to explain the Zizek-Peterson debate that I can think of is that their ideas are not mutually unthinkable on any level, yet it is clear that the two men would never come to pose as the other. In some ways, this is characteristic of our moment of aesthetic radical centrism. What is agreed upon is the sanctity of continuing with the basic traditions of modernity, in spite of the looming specters of climatic apocalypse, nuclear war, holocaust, and political re-feudalization. Zizek, the pessimist, assents to continuation of what he undoubtedly considers our folly, that is, modern life, as we have not yet been stimulated by enough horror to change. Peterson, the man who tries to connect his suburban fatherhood to De-Lillo-esque mythical, cosmic forces, believes the primary task of modern life is to live it. Neither of these men communicated a moral mandate that transforms our humanity, or our understanding of the relationship between politics and the biosphere. What distinguishes one from the other is primarily style: lifestyle. Certainly not intellectual or literary style--Zizek dwarfs Peterson as a speaker, a philosopher, a theorist. But if you walked away from that debate thinking that that was what "winning" means, and are therefore overly enthusiastic for Zizek, you haven't learned the same lesson the Democratic Party still hasn't learned since 2016: being smart isn't especially politically important.

Rather, their clothing probably marked the greatest difference in their lifestyles. Zizek prides himself on his time spent contemplating shit, and made sure to include it in his rhetoric. For this delivery he chose a zip-neck long-sleeve blah of a sweater with slacks and loafers, over his usual tee-shirt and jeans. Peterson appeared in a three-piece suit, bars above his usual average white male professor look. While it is easy to dismiss style as utterly irrelevant to the philosophical content pertinent to the reason for the debate itself, it reflects what kind of event each man believed he was headlining. Certainly both dressed "up" from their typical attire. Peterson appeared to be a salesman, an honored deliverer of a message. One could just as easily imagine him at church or at a tech conference about the future of clinical practice and its relationship to automation. Zizek, on the other hand, made sure at a certain point, to address the audience and attempt to discipline their applause away from sporting. "Please don't do this! Because I really think that, and please, Jordan, I hope that you agree, that why we are here engaged in this debate. Don't take it as a cheap competition. It may be that--[laughter]--but we are, as you said in your introduction, desperately trying to confront serious problems." Peterson showed his real commitment to the protestant work ethic by (apparently) trying to type up a response on stage while his opponnent spoke. The way that Zizek prepares himself personally to confront those problems is to dwell upon morose topics.

Dwelling is not an idle word here, as he, as much as Peterson, has many public photos of himself in his bedroom, in his sweatpants. Bedrooms indeed compose a crucial artifact of theorization for both of them. They simultaneously represent two dramatically different faces of the resurgent interest in psychoanalysis, and the entire philosophy of sex, sexuality, perversion, and inversion that hangs on to psychoanalysis as techniques of explication. Furthermore, one of the most memorable moments from the debate came on the subject of tidying one's space. Peterson reiterated his famous point that one should have one's things in order before attempting to criticize others, or remake society. Zizek responded that we very often find that the reason our homes are not in order is that our society is not in order.

As a social worker, this is fundamental to the way I think about psychological and social problems. When working with someone to reflect on the improvement of their life, everywhere you encounter the pernicious effects of an oppressive society. Yet as a soon-to-be clinician, it is absolutely imperative that I care for myself and my own well-being in order to do any of that reflection effectively, and in a way that can create a meaningful relationship between myself and my client. When this tension emerged in the debate last night, both agreed to some vague delineation along the lines of "One improves one's society as one improves oneself." I find this unsatisfying: it does not resolve the primary philosophical difference between the two, which is between Zizek's illiberal democracy and Peterson's "family-friendly" authoritarianism. Agreement certainly feels nice, though.

Make no mistake, the aesthetic dimension is here entirely constitutive of the debate between the two men. Even if Zizek is right, and it is indeed a convening of illiberal minds to create a future beyond the failures of neo-liberal hyperindividualism and neo-conservative chauvinism, then the expressive mode of that convention is rather like a World's Fair: a just-for-fun festival in which attention and investment are given by the audience in exchange for a comforting image of the future. Like in a world's fair, the competition here is in our economy of attention. If one wanted, one could dig deep into the citations--Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Hegel, Marx, Engels, Foucault, a slew of clinical literature on the topic of resilience. But the only reason to do this is, again, to try to win politics through correctness, rather than through the processes of empathetic communication, negotiation, and solidarity. Peterson's fumbling through a shallow reading of he Communist Manifesto, and a fairly uninteresting history of the USSR and its catastrophes reflects one important thing he understood about the debate: the point was to demonstrate a sincere emotive connection to collective humanity. We are in a time of desperation and loneliness. Aesthesis matters because attachment matters--no one is going to think through the problems we are facing unless they have somewhere safe and warm to dwell, and people with whom to do it.

I do not mean to say that Zizek did not communicate such a sentiment, because again, these two men share much more than one would hope for in such a famed debate. Instead, I mean to caution anyone reading this from taking it as any kind of epic, mythical, world historical, or any other sort of watershed moment. This was two men who are psychoanalysts discussing a series of psychoanalytic questions related to a certain image of how human power systems work. Zizek reflects no small number of men I know whose approach to politics is a kind of internalization of horror, and a reflexive forbidding of having too much fun while the world burns. Peterson meanwhile appeared in a costume that reflected the huckstering that surrounds the entire occasion. Indeed he began his introductory speech by remarking that tickets to the auditorium were being scalped for enormous costs. I attend here to their clothing, and to the aesthetic dimensions of the debate mainly as a way to say that philosophy, especially political philosophy, is not something that can be won. As the libertarians say, this is simply voting with your feet, buying this recycled product or this other organic one because of something you saw at the World's Fair, or on Amazon. It's all well and good for you to do that. The real efficacy of this kind of public performance is to help agglomerate groups that can safely discuss futures, produce ideas, and so on. Zizek was the only of the two to mention the real political problem of our moment--that is to say, the problem of and by the composition of the political realm itself, the existence of rights or personhood instead of barbarism, and the crass rule of sovereign brutality--the displacement of whole regions of humanity into social precarity through borders, camps, and walls. For them, there is no room from which to philosophize.

[alfredomensi]

How to save the Amazon rainforest

The aim of this post is not only to explain the current situation of the Amazon rainforest and in general of the main inter-tropical rainforests. I want to describe a project that I think could be able to stop or contain the destruction of an entire ecosystem. If you want to read the proposed project without further introduction, you can skip this part and go straight to the section “The Project”; however, it is highly recommended to read these previous sections and in particular the section “A Focus” to understand the roots of the problems that this project aims to solve: civil exploitation and roads. If there is an interest to collaborate and get involved, read the section “Epilogue”. During the post, it will be provided a to date picture of the Amazon rainforest, the main protagonists, the role of “indigenous” people and why in most of the cases the cost/productive efficience of the damaging of the forest is not efficient and convenient at all and couldn’t ever compete with the same activities elsewhere. Will be also given a distinction between industrial and civil exploitation: both of them are important to be understood, distinguished and highlighted because, in different ways, they are both dangerous and critical. The main solution proposed is aimed to face the civil exploitation. This post is intended to be first step for the foundation of a non-profit (or partial non-profit) company aimed to make a difference in the fight against the climate change. In my opinion, the solutions again big challenges like this should be real, practical, studied with a scientific approach to the problem: protesting and waiting for someone else to do something, protesting requiring an action without proposing an action and without proposing solutions for modern problems is not a solution and never will be. This book is a first step because it aims to introduce the project to as many people as possible, looking for enthusiasts, volunteers and organizations that aim to do the good to join this kind of “open source” project and “open source” company. Introducing this article, I also want to assert that, in my opinion, the only way to do something for the environment (or for the people, in general for any problematic situation) is through the technology, the innovation and the economy. Without at least one of these, any proposed solution is almost always intended for failure or for short period effects. Our world is run by economy and this is a fact, that’s why it would be absurd to not consider it: if you don’t provide an efficient replacement to the businesses that are now exploiting the environment, you will find out that it is nearly impossible to succeed, have a long lasting effect and be happily accepted by the local communities and the local governments. That’s why you can’t pretend people to leave their jobs for the environment without giving them an alternative and that’s why itis so difficult to make the local and state governments protect the rainforest. Economy can find an alternative and make possible an overall agreement that makes convenient protect the environment for everyone (local people, local communities, local governments, state governments). On the other side, nowadays we have the means to make any idea and plan efficient thanks to the present technology and its fast innovative potential. That’s why it would be unthinkable to make anything without the help of it. From control, to interactive security, to efficiency optimization, to fast emergency action and problem solving, to social presence and sensibilization, to global and community involvement, to logistics and distribution intelligence for the products, to advertise the successes and convince the communities on the edge of the Amazon rainforest to join the project and convert their exploiting based economies to a sustainable circular and more profitable economy. Any project to improve the world should always consider the nature of the humankind. The most important thing is that if there is nothing to eat or any possibility to improve their lives, people will not consider any ideal or any pro-environment activity and if they do, it will be just for the circumstances and for a temporary earning (for example if you pay a former woodcutter to take tourists in Amazon tours, but you pay him just a little more than what he earned as woodcutter, he will not cut trees only because taking tourists around is easier, not because in this way the forest will remain conserved, so when there are not enough tourists, he will become again a woodcutter; a good project shall give welfare to an entire community as long as education means, only then the meaning and the importance of the project and the conservation can be fully understood. It is really similar talking about the relation between the project and the local goverments: if the income and the production are enough to replace the current state of things, the goverments will stop boosting traditional explotation and will not impede an equally or more profitable change. The description of the current rainforests situation will focus on the Amazon rainforest situation describing general aspects and current damaging situations, in particular about Ecuador rainforest (since I elaborated this travelling through the edges of that country rainforest and since I particularly saw the changes there during the last decade and lived the situations and the changes being half Ecuatorian from mother; being also half European and having lived most in Europe and having travelled a lot around the world, helped me to see things from another point of view). An year of Ups and Downs for the Amazon rainforest 2019 (year in which this book has begun to be written) has been an highlighted year for the Amazon rainforest. There have been significant victories and important losses for the environment. As always, the losses always score a more significant importance in the world we live in as most of  them produce permanent scars, while the victories sometimes are not forever-lasting or forever-remembered or simply even worldwide known (sometimes a good action or good idea doen’t have the proper space on the news and sometimes it is not considered at all, giving preference to bad news that can reach a bigger audience; it is also the case of the topic of this book that has been scarcely heard and understood by news channels and even by the environmental organizations, and this is deeply paradoxical and difficult to accept). Among the victories in 2019, it is a duty to remember the Waorani victory against the Ecuatorian government that could prevent the auction of half a million acres from being earmarked for oil drilling and also disrupting the contemplated auctioning of 16 oil blocks that cover over 7 million acres of indigenous territory by providing an invaluable legal precedent for other indigenous nations across the Ecuadorian Amazon. The Waorani are a native population of the Amazonian Region of Ecuador (Napo, Orellana, and Pastaza Provinces) who have marked differences from other ethnic groups from Ecuador (in the past they are also been known as “Auca”, a pejorative exonym used by the neighboring Quechua native people). They comprise almost 4,000 inhabitants and speak the Huaorani language, a linguistic isolate that is not known to be related to any other language. Their ancestral lands are located between the Curaray and Napo rivers, about 50 miles (80 km) south of El Coca. These homelands are always been threatened by oil exploration and illegal logging practices. Until now, Waorani people were able to protect their culture and lands from both indigenous enemies and settlers. Some Waorani communities decided to reject all contact with the outside-rainforest world and continue to move inside the forest, living on what it gives to them. “Waorani” means “We are people”. The Waorani victory marked an important success for the conservation, but also because of the fact that made everyone conscious that if even a little group of people could defend such a big land, a bigger group of people could do much more. This is not the only victory for the environment this year, however as said the losses are much louder than little and temporary victories. Among the good actions made in these years are valid to be remembered and thanked all the organizations that encourage alternative and sustainable local economies with solidal trades and “community” tourism: their victories are the successes of these projects (some are related to the direct exportation of local products like chocolate, coffee and tea produced with an eye to the conservation; some boost local manifacture and give it value, opening to the communities a global and careful market; some take tourists to the communities, which are asked to follow conservation standards for their lands). If I had to list all the losses that this year has seen, I would need an entire book; even worse if I had to list the ones of this decade or of the last 20 years. Apart from painful, a detailed description would be too long to be made. This year saw an unprecedented size wildfires destruction across the Amazon rainforest, even though the wildfires problem, due to raising temperatures, exceedingly dryness and human interests and negligence, have been a worldwide issue: Australia has been the most affected area of the world, where millions of animals died, an entire ecosystem annihilated, along with people dispersed and their homes completely destroyed, up to the date when this book has been written the fires have not been stopped and the disaster is getting everyday bigger and bigger; then also California has been devastated by wildfires. The human negligence is always the core reason of the intensification of this climate circumstances that make it easy for a situation to get worse. However, human negligence has not only an indirect responsability on the problem, but sometimes also a direct one: some people make illegal wildfires, some people throw lighted cigarettes on dry bushes but the main human-caused reason that induce wildfires is the following and is the main one in the Amazon rainforest: people set fire to lots on the edge of the rainforest to clear the land for cattle and/or agriculture (most of the agriculture aiming to feed the cattle too), this practice has been intensifying during the last three decades and generally intended to limited areas of land, but the circumstances of drought, heat waves and wind in these last years made the fires losing control and extend themselves to huge and terrible sizes.

One of the main problems of this “method” is that the land is immediately used and is given no possibility to the forest to grow again, unlike accidental or natural fires.

A Focus The Amazon rainforest (similar to other rainforests and areas around the world) is very rich of natural resources. The main natural resources are mainly oil, gold and silver (in the African Congo River basin rainforest for example there is less oil but there are diamonds and Coltan). The wood has always been considered a natural resource and times ago been consistently used, but nowadays it is not the main cause of the deforestation in the Amazon rainforest; the wood is a natural resource that could be thought as “retail” exploited: only some kind of trees are considered “good, valuable and useful” and there are not large areas with just one kind of tree and there are thousands of tree species, as a consequence when a “good” tree wood is required, one tree is taken out from the forest; the tree or the bunch of trees could be 100, 200 or 400 meters inside the rainforest: to take it/them everything on the way is destroyed and a line across the forest is deforested. But there are some other natural resources that are less considered but are the most important to be protected to be able to protect the environment. The water and the land. The Amazon rainforest is sometimes thought like a kind of “no one land” by settlers; also local governments think the same and that’s why “give” lands to whom wants to exploit and use them or encourage people to occupy territories on the edge of the rainforest. The water is obviously fundamental for any process: from industry to agriculture any process needs water, a lot of water; the rainforest has a lot of it: it rains frequently (it is to be noted that the more the Amazon rainforest is destroyed, the less clouds will be generated over land and the less it will rain; even worse if you also consider the worsening, over-heating and drought climate change effect), there are large and numerous rivers and the aquifer layer is quite close to surface. These two natural resources make it easy to understand why so much land is easily cleared for cattle, agriculture and mining. Obviously the territory of the Amazon rainforest is not all the same; there are places where is more difficult to clear or work a land for agriculture due to the presence of hills or short mountain ranges, making them more protected from agriculture exploitation (but absolutely not from mining), but in general most of the territories are easy to enter and clear completely (even easier after a wildfire).

It is important to make an important distinction between industrial and civil exploitation. For industrial exploitation I mean the exploitation leaded by big industries and companies whose permission to work in the Amazon rainforest is directly discussed and approved by the government of the country, so it’s a kind of “high-level” bargaining between them. Sometimes this negotiation is even reserved and hard to be stopped or even hard to be known in advance by people. Generally this kind of exploitation oil and gas, industrial legal mining and energy production (like the big hydroelectric power plants and their water reservoirs built in the Brazil Amazon rainforest). An exception takes place in Brazil where in some agriculture is an industrial exploitation: agriculture to produce hydrocarbons and extensive agriculture for exportation (like soy exported to China). The industrial exploitation is obviously one of the main actors of the rainforest damaging. It is hard to be stopped, or even controlled from outside: most of the times the plants are military guarded and if any problem comes out inside the plant or in the process, the corruption towards local politicians and newspapers will say nothing for years. The scars made to the rainforest by this kind of exploitation are mostly permanent and sometimes irreversible. The accidents have been countless and they are both accidental and due to human negligence (maybe were not made the security and safety proceedings that should have been taken, or an accident has been hided for too long): oil leaks can be a big threat for the environment and for the people (to be remembered the disaster caused by the voluntary negligence of Chevron/Texaco in the region of Sucumbios, Ecuador, not respecting the safety enviromental standard voluntarily, spilling millions of gallons of oil and chemical on the ground and the rivers between the 70s and the 90s, burning all the gas under the ground instead of putting them back as usually made to reduce the environment impact, being named the Amazon Cernobyl that hurt consistently the ecosystem), but also the road and the facilities built to get to the plant; however the biggest threat for the natural environment are the accidents linked to mining like leak of refinement or disposal processes chemicals (to be remembered the accident in 2015 on the Rio Doce in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais in which a wall of some pools of chemical disposal broke and the chemicals entered in the river, killikg literally everything on its way to the ocean; it happened again at the beginning of 2019 again in Minas Gerais where died also more than 150 people) and the complete destruction of hills, mountains and entire pieces of lands opened and caved. These industrial plants are extremely profitable for their companies and for the governments, that’s why are very difficult to stop. It is only possible to avoid them to be built or if impossible it should be a duty to, at least, pretend that this plants are going to be sustainable (as much as possible) and safe for the environment (these two must be conditions and are possible now because the nowadays technology makes it possible and gives no excuses to accidents, fails or insufficient safety measures). For civil exploitation I mean any other exploitation not mentioned above. Specifically, it is guided by civilians as individuals or as little or medium size societies or farms. Sometimes this exploitation is also made by part of local and native communities. Generally, we can classify this exploitation in three groups: legal, illegal and not legally defined. All three, in my opinion, are equally dangerous and problematic. The legal ones are the agriculture with a permission to deforest or buying the land, the cattle breeding, the construction of houses, waterparks, urbanizations and hotels, the woodcut with permission, the hunting and fishing with permission, the woodcut with permission and the mining of sand and stones for construction with permission. The illegal ones are woodcut in natural reserves without a permission, gold, silver and copper mining (private mining is maybe one of the most and periodic polluting process because is made by individuals who have poor means to work mainly the gold; being completely illegal it is largely persecuted, so the miners settle in temporary housing, temporary camps, are armed from head to toe and use toxic and cheap chemicals to work the gold, releasing then them directly into the rivers), the farming and the processing of drugs, the hunting and poaching in a natural reserve, the poaching of protected species, the fishing with unethical means like explosives. The “not legally defined” group of activities is a group of activities that would anywhere else considered illegal, but on the Amazon rainforest edges are mostly unpunished, uncontrolled, accepted and legalized after they are done; they are: agriculture occupying and deforesting a land without asking permission (for example after a fire, that has been probably set by the same farmers), cattle breeding on the land earned through occupation and fire, the costruction of houses without a permission, the hunting and poaching in a part of the rainforest that is not natural reserve or that is on its edge, woodcut in a part of the rainforest that is not natural reserve or that is on its edge. It is to be understood that there is a so big not legally defined range of activities because there is the need for local population to have some kind of income and do not know how expensive and dangerous it can be for themselves, there is the aim of local administration (and sometimes state governments, but not always) to encourage the local economic growth and prevent the areas to be left and lose population. Even though the most dangerous and toxic activity (apart from the drugs farming and processing, of course, that it is also a difficult to be fighted one and it is a big issue that is not intended to be discussed in this text) is the private mining (also because is as dangerous as the drugs farming for the sorrounding communities, since the miners do not hesitate to use violence), the most damaging for the Amazon rainforest activity among these is the agriculture because occupies and uses the biggest territory among the listed activies, because the agriculture essence is linked to the ongoing occupation of land and the massive usage of water that are the same essence of the rainforest (and of course the agriculture and the rainforest cannot exist at the same time on the same land), because the land is cleared for agriculture and cattle breeding/ranching through the most destructive existing way (that cannot be controlled and that gives no possibility to any vegetal or animal species to survive or re-born), because there is no possibility for any resource exploited to restore itself, because the change of local environment and vegetation (from dense tree and bush vegetation to medium-low tall seasonal plants, like from forest to corn field or soy plantation) changes the climate of region (forests help to “generate” clouds that discharge rain on the forest, but also generate humidity that is taken far away by currents: this generates a climate both over the forest and far away where the humidity is taken, without forest the climate changes in both places with heavy consequences), because the large quantity of water used for agriculture is returned to the environment not with the same quality but full of chemicals (whose utilization could maybe be limited anywhere else but not in places so far and isolated from big cities and where there is a “not legally defined” range of action for anyone who wants to act improperly without facing any legal consequences). Most of the agriculture is lead by cattle breeding. We can assume agriculture and cattle breeding as “farming”, also because as just said most of agriculture is required for cattle breeding with the “pasto” (as the plants grown are called in Spanish speaking coutries) or corn or soy. Cattle breeding is exploiting the rainforest through agriculture but also with the “old manner”: huge pieces of lands are partially cleared and cattle is let it go around to feed itself (cattle ranching). Counting the water usage connected with agriculture, the water needed to clean the used facilities and the water drank, cattle breeding uses huge amounts of water for cattle: an average milk cow consumes 200 liters per day, an average meat bovine 50 liters per day. It is easy to understand how impactful it can be on a natural water-based ecosystem.

The civil exploitation is dangerous because can be has many protagonists as many live on the Amazon rainforest edge and as many have enough money to invest there, but also because it is guided by the need of some people to survive or to improve their lives (that’s why I insist that is very important to be understood and that’s why a solution should involve all the protagonists and their needs and cannot mean a recession in local (for ”local” meaning in some cases local communities or cities or provinces and in other cases states) economy, but must be a growth and must be good under any social aspect, must teach the local economy that a sustainable way is possible and must boost the local commitment with the results). One other reason of the size of the civil exploitation is that is virtually as big as many people has to survive or wants to improve their life: nearly all people in those regions can be described like that. It is important also to be understood that the people involved in this kind of damaging has generally (apart from some ill case) no bad and mischievous intentions: the rainforest is seen as a resource that is legit to exploit, there is no other point of view. Even the local natives deeply indirectly think it, but they live this process with a deeper connection and respect for the environment. This aspect of deeper connection is in part dangerous in the protection of the environment. While on one hand make them guardians of the rainforest from external exploitation, on the other hand some of them (not everyone) mixes modern technologies with ancient sustenance traditions and habits, I’ll make some examples. For example, decades ago they went to monkey-hunting with bows and arrows and blowguns, limiting the preys killed to 5-6 maximum (which was the maximum they could do with their hunting tools). Now some of them use fragmentation bullets and expanding bullets rifles to hunt monkeys (but it is just an example, much more are the animals hunted) and are killed as many animals as they can (more than 5-6 and more than the number of preys really needed, sometimes up to 20 monkeys at time, an entire monkey family) because they consider any prey that can be captured as a gift from the rainforest and have to be taken. It wouldn’t be wrong but it is if we consider that most of the rainforest animals are threatened by other circumstances like poaching, loss and contamination of the habitat: this logic does nothing but worsening the problem, also considering that the communities that still hunt are getting bigger (so will need more and more preys). Ancient techniques of hunting need a big patience, experience and give the opportunity to the animals (or at least to give to some members of the group of animals) to escape, rifles using fragmentation and expanding bullets don’t. From this point of view, it would be even more ecological for them to consume modern conventional food. The usage of modern weapons gives also the opportunity to remove radically potential menaces like local predators (like jaguars or snakes) and animals getting too close to homes (similar to the local communities decisions taken in another part of the world by Aborigen leaders in the Australian lands “APY Lands – Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara” that at the beginning of 2020 decided to kill more than 10.000 wild camels in 5 days because “they demand too much water and to look for it come too close to homes”: this decision came in a moment of emergency for Australia, that due to drought and fires lost about 1 billion of wildlife animals, and seems ridiculous to kill more wild animals with the main motivation that they just look for water). Another example is the use of land for conventional agriculture, not an aspect of local traditions. Some members of the communities are attracted by quick and easy earnings and clear the land for cattle breeding, cattle breeding cultivations (as previously said known as “pasto”) and corn. Generally are used one to two hectares of land. The modern technologies used, for example, are tractors. What comes to be highlighted is that one hectare produces just from 80 to 200 $ per cutivation cycle, every 2-3 months on average: a low earning even for developing countries. The profit becomes even shorter when big farmers sell at lower prices. So one could understand that the environment is destroyed for nothing.

Even worse if you consider that most of the “individual” exploiters’ production is very small comparing to the big land owners and to the production in different areas of the same country, making the individuals’ provision to the country economy insignificant: for example in Ecuador and Colombia (and in the past in Venezuela) extensive agriculture on the coastline territories is much more relevant than the one that is carried on accross the rainforest, it even fixes the price for the products and make the Amazon regions’ product sometimes non-profitable; furthermore, in some Amazon rainforest areas the ground is not a plain and makes the application of extensive methods difficult, contrarily to the coastline landscape. This example is very relevant taking in consideration the countries on the Western edge of the rainforest and in some central an Southern areas of the Brazilian rainforest; however, in Brazil the situation is quite different since a huge part of the country’s rainforest is in a plain.  

These problems, along with excessive plastic usage and wrong recollect and disposal and along with wood and animal sale to the cities, of course are not the main forest-destroyers and are guided by a local search of continuity with traditions without refusing or fully understanding modern technology and products. Despite of these tradition-contamination that is not fully understood and fought by communities, the local communities on the edge and inside of the rainforest are the first line in the fight against the rainforest exploitation, mainly against the industrial explotation, and this has to be noted. With a better aid toward these communities we all could protect the environment in a better way.

Now we will discuss more about the civil exploitation method, in particular the agriculture (to be complete in the description, the most common plantations in the Amazon rainforest region are: banana, cocoa, coffee bean, soy, corn, sugar cane, oil palm, tea and ”pasto”. They are all affordable to most of the medium class population), that along the cattle ranching are the main protagonists of the rainforest damaging (sometimes agriculture and cattle breeding/ranching can be considered as two aspects of the same “farming” exploitation problem).

The roads It is important to understand how the exploitation is began and expanded. The most common way to clear the land for agriculture is, as previously discussed, by fire: it is set fire to a limited part of forest, then smoothed the ground and the agriculture process can start. Often, the fire goes out of control and much more of the environment is destroyed with terrible consequences as we are experiencing during the last years. But this actuation is not carried on across all the Amazon rainforest region, it is used mainly in Brazil, on the Southern and Eastern edges of the rainforest and in isolated areas (not close to main cities).

So, talking in general, the beginning of agriculture exploitation (but of course also cattle breeding and construction) is driven and boosted by roads. Even after fires in Brazil. If Ihad to say what is the biggest menace for the rainforest, I would say it is a road.

Once a road is built, the disaster begins. On the edges of the road people start to exploit rainforest because of obvious logistics advantages: it is easier to access, to take there vehicles, materials, people and tools, to extend facilities and to take products or natural resources out of there. The road has always been a condition to human presence and exploitation of a territory, this is so important to understand how fast and large a civil exploitation can be. From the road, the territory is occupied perpendicularly towards the rainforest. Then, it is occupied more and more, until when a new road towards the occupied inner land, perpendicularly to the initial road and as long as the occupied territory.

Due to efficiency and convenience, a road is built perpendicularly to the second road and parallel to the first one: any land still not exploited between the first and the third road has all the easiness to be exploited, but also the land on the “outside” side of the third road (towards the virgin forest) and the cycle starts again. Apart of activities like agriculture or cattle breeding, also private mining and construction (like urbanizations, hotels, resorts and the other activities workers lodging) are reasons why a road can be built and added to the dense web of paths.

Most of the roads are built by individuals who need them for their activities, then, generally, the local administration help to pave the roads. In some cases the local governements build roads “ex-novo” to match an economic growth plan, encouraging then people to settle there. A road is basic for local business and regional sustenance, but if it and the environment in which it is put in are not managed properly and sustainably, it will be a kind of “expanding infection” for the rainforest. To have some example, you can simply look through Google Earth at any place on the edge of the Amazon rainforest and you will see the penetration of human activity into untouched forest through the roads. If you have the opportunity to cross the Amazon regions on the road, while staying on the road, you will mostly have the sensation that you are not in a rainforest but you could be anywhere else.

If something has to be done to protect the Amazon rainforest, it will have to take in consideration the road problem and (as said before) the local economy sustenance.

The Project This proposed project aims to find a solution to protect the Amazon rainforest environment from civil exploitation and to limit the effects of industrial exploitation. As said before, any modern solution must be designed considering modern tools: technology and economy. Technology is not only consistent things (like drone, etc...), but also social media, communication and network platform. Economy is not only the local economy or buy-sell/produce-sell processes, but also circular economy, crowdfunding, equity, big distribution organization, e-commerce and farmer to buyer system. As already said in the introduction, this project would aim to be a partial non-profit business: this means that the earnings made are mostly re-invested in expanding the areas involved in the project and in improving the process and the advertising to the world, but a part of the earnings would be divided in the local communities for community or region projects (like water facilities for people, education, disease prevention, women support, drugs use prevention, city stray animals protection (the stray dogs problem is huge around all the world, in South America the problem can be limited and solved with the education of the people and sterilization programs to prevent the expansion of the project) and people sensibilization and waste recollect and recycle) and among the local workers as a bonus salary. A substantial part of the profit should also be used to create a solar and wind energy production system; another smaller part to a wildlife protection system, a wildlife hospital and to projects to prevent and locate wildfires, poaching and illegal woodcut. Considering the community value social addition, this project could be considered fully no-profit, but the profit is not entirely going into the same aim of the association. The only way to make the project possible is that all the organizations get involved in the protection of the Amazon rainforest. This project is not a “multi-chance” project: cannot be launched and fail more than once per project-aimed territory (if it is launched in a specific area of the Amazon, it has to work in that occasion, any further launch could be dangerous for the validity of the project). It could be thought as a “one-time” project, not because it has a limited time validity but because it has to be able to start and develope enough after the launch. After developing enough, each local project should develope itself after the launch, never stopped and lauched again. The core of the project is to combine together native traditions, new technologies and know-how, global interest and sensibilization, local economic growth and respect for the environment. If any of these aspects is forgotten, then everything will fail or will be just temporary. It is also points to the fact that once the economic plan works out, local farmers and land owners will see convenience in it and will join the project voluntarily, turning their business into a sustainable and project standards converted one as a condition. The logic is this: if we give another income to local people, they will not have to exploit the forest to survive and if we can control and protect the edges of the roads in the Amazon rainforest, we can prevent the rest of the of the rainforest from being mass-exploited (or civil exploited, called also mass-exploitation because involves a virtually very big number of people). An industrial exploitation generally takes place in an inner rainforest, requiring, as a consequence, a road to reach the plant; this road is not be itself because encourages people to exploit its edges and develope activities there beginning the cycle already described. That’s why an industrial exploitation is not dangerous only by itself, but involves much more than the plant. The main idea is the following: buy all the lands next to the roads from 40 to 100 meters towards the remaining rainforest (meaning a land long as the road and wide 40 to 100 meters; 40 to 100 meters taken  perpendicularly to the road, perpendicularly to the road in any part of the road). This is the only way to protect further environment damage. It could appear a little bit impossible to be made, but it is just difficult and effort-demanding, not impossible.   The lands bought that still have virgin rainforest would be protected while owned, but the most important part is to recover those that have been exploited until when they are bought. These last mentioned lands () have to be restored in the following way: 75% of the inner (meaning the part of these lands pointing towards the virgin forest) former-exploited territory should be restored with trees that are typical of the rainforest area, the remaining 25% close to the road should be converted to a kind of “protection belt” between the road and the rainforest; in this area should be made all the activities to replace exploiting existing activities. This 25% of land is very important because it makes the whole project sustainable and gives to the local communities the possibility to have an economic growth while protecting the environment. This 25% of former exploited land should be productive through sustainability; the methods through which obtain results would be: - Tourism: creating eco-lodges in the cities or in the communities nearby and creating theme paths crossing the lands that are part of the project; with these paths could be given tourism attractiveness to these areas; some paths could be “themed” to specific topics like rainforest survival, vegetation acknowledgement, environment education, hiking and adventure expeditions. - The cultivation of high value “not known” (meaning that are not known very much in Western and global markets, but only known locally) fruits (to be noted fruits, so there is not “lack” of vegetation in any time and the natural cycles are respected; approximately 3000 fruits that grow in the rainforest that are edible); these cultivations would not be “mono-tree/mono-fruit trees” (meaning that there is not a single cultivation in the same pieces of land), but there would be two-three fruit tree in the same place; can be two/three different types of high trees, both palms and not palms, or high trees combined with medium/short trees; these trees would be the locally known ones, the traditions of native populations and communities should be the key for the success of the project: the nature treasures will save the same environment. There are almost unknown, or better saying just locally known, palm trees whose fruits can be easily turned into a special oil that is used by local women for their hair with incredible results. There are other fruits and seeds that are edible, tasty (for example the fruit called “pitihaya” that tastes like a mix of banana and kiwi) and others that have other notables qualities highly demanded in the Western market. Other trees that can be easily combined with each other and with inedited (for us) trees are coffee, cocoa and banana (for these three kind of trees mentioned should be made a clarification: coffee and cocoa should be guided by “special products manifacturing” meaning that should be offered coffee beans specially flavoured and chocolate with flavour mixed with local fruit essences; banana should be grown for the production of “unusual” products like marmalade or juices; this clarification has to be made because, as previously stated, these kind of agriculture sometimes leads to civil exploitation with terrible consequences, that’s why, if applicable, these three cultivations have to lead to a special value quality, not to quantity and that’s why the “applicability” should also and always be studied to see if using these three cultivations could lead to an “imitation” of local communities not involved in the project, leading to a worse civil exploitation). - Research and developement of new materials derivates of fruit skins and seeds to replace conventional plastic items (like bags, straws, forks, glasses). These activities should involve all the local communities and cities workers previously employed in exploiting activities: changing their point of view on the rainforest from just a resource to be used to survive to a resource to be protected to keep surviving is the first success of the project. The only production admitted is the low production (in the aspect of the quantity produced, comparing to the classical extensive agriculture that is nowadays carried on in those regions), but it has to generate high value products, superior than that of the common exploiting agriculture. The project could not stop here because the added value would be provided also by the global (even that also the Western market would be big and fruitful enough to provide an efficience and an economic sustainability to the whole project) market; the markets through which the products are sold should recognize the environment protection effort of these products and give them a special higher consideration place comparing to those produced with conventional agriculture exploitation; the highest goal that the producer-to-customer process could obtain is that the large retail chains gives absolute priority (or even purchase exclusivity) to the products that respect the project standards in terms of environment protection and respect, sustainability, local communities involvement, low carbon emission, the percentage of the profit used to finance green energy (and the use of it in the production process), hectares of virgin rainforest protected and hectares of rainforest restored: this behaviour of large retail chains could lead to volunteer partecipation of local farmers to the project (conditioned to the respect of the project standards). Since the main income of the project organization would be the added value given to the products, the products have to be new, natural and special, finding their roots in local traditions, but the real winning asset of the added value are to be given by the distributors and big chain retailers, both supermarkets and ecommerce platforms, which recognize the difference that this products can make in protecting the rainforest and, doing so, fighting the climate change.   Both the final customer and the distributors have to understand the difference that the products made through this project can do to the environment and that buying similar products that don’t comply with environment respect and protection verified standards can produce terrible consequences. As mentioned, the project would produce money to be mostly invested in the project expansion and improvement itself. However, the main problem is evident: where the launching capital would come from. As said, there is just one launch (meaning per specific area) and it would have to be definitive and solid. The modern technology and communication network and the modern economic tools must be the vehicles of the launch success. Social networks like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, “advertisement supporters” like Google, Yahoo and mass media like TV will be the ways for the needed advertisement to reach as many people as possible. The point of an advertisement campaign would mainly be reach as many people as possible that are far from the problem that this project is trying to solve: in most of the areas of the world you don’t see the destruction of the nature by man or by climate change in their everyday life (people in great cities, specially in Europe or North America for example); most of them would like to do something but see the problem far from them and the solutions impossible for them to be carried on directly; reaching everyone of them and involving them would make them part of the solution and virtually close to the problem. Advertisement would make them know they can be close, but the modern tool to make them live a project and its motivations is crowdfunding: Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Causes, Gofundme and others crowdfunding websites demonstrated how people apparently far from a topic can feel themselves so closely and deeply involved; the logic would be the same and it have to be made the most of all the classic crowdfunding websites. As already said, all the means useful for the launching success have to be used at their best. Obviously, also direct donations would be accepted with some locally made gift as thanksgiving (this would involve even more the donor or “backer” and an immediate return would give immediate help and acknowledge on the local economic potential to local communities). (When considered appropriate, the “hybrid no-profit” project organization could be taking in consideration the entry of equity funds for the growth and only in absence of other money resouces; this entry of equity funds should be decided case per case, only if the area doesn’t contain natural resources like oil and mining minerals (to avoid exploitation pressures on local communities), with no more than 25% of equity value for the organization and with an obliged exit of approximately 2 years with an interest maximum of 5% on the interest to be returned at the exit.)  Crowdfunding and donations collected money would be used for the purchase of the land next to the roads and the production machineries needed; this would make everyone of the backers and donor owner of a little piece of protected land: through this way of money collection, no one would be a donor or “shareholder” or “stakeholder” bigger than the others, avoiding any possible will of starting to exploit the protected land (this will could maybe driven by economic or social changes), making possible only to follow the organization regulations, giving no way to overtakes in the administration. As said before, also an Amazon typical gift would be shipped to backers and donors; they would also be invited to spend their holidays in the enviromental project that they contributed to create: they would live an ecotourism experience that would be less expensive (so the former backer tourist would save money) than that offered by the tour operators in their countries, but will impact positively on the project funding and on local communities; furthermore, the donor would see the project born and develope, give his/her contribution (not only with money but also with knowledge exchange) and the local people would see how important their contribution can be considered by people from the other part of the world. The other funding resources from where this project will start would be the local governements or administration donations: it has already been explained how the local governments try to encourage exploitation thinking it as the only way for economic growth, they have to be explained how this project can have a great positive impact on local occupation and, as a consequence, on local growth. This consciousness can lead the local governments and administrations to donate “unused” lands (both already exploited or not) making a difference in the project starting size and finding a possible solution to the local employment specialization (if the project is seen working and having good results as planned, it will be easily applied to bigger areas that would see secure employment not dependent from region politics or local economy (which is very unstable generally) but from larger and high demanding markets, that would be the dream of any local business and administration). With the ongoing project, the project sustenance and expansion funding would be provided by the products sold abroad, but this would not be the only one. One of the others funding resources has already been mentioned before and is the tourism; it was mentioned the donor/backer discounted tourism but it would be also open to all the other tourists; from adventure tourism to eco-local community-tourism to specific topic tourism to luxury tourism, tourism will be supremely important for the project: apart from the economic importance, it will be strategic also for letting the world know the project and its successes and developement to the world with real witnesses. The other additional income would come from volunteering projects: on the model of African wildife refuges the volunteers will pay housing, food and transportation (along with a little contribution to the project funding) on theirselves and will make experience contributing to make the project work (in different areas like wildlife animals study, protection, rehabilitation, stray dogs and cats rehabilitation and recover, vegetation study, fruit recollection, production, community education, market advertising, next project-involving areas study, tree planting, world relations).

CROWDFUNDING -> RAINFOREST PROTECTION -> PRODUCTION to MARKET (+ Tourism + volunteering projects + exclusivity distribution value) -> RAINFOREST PROTECTION and LOCAL ECONOMY GROWTH

The intended start date of the just described project is by the end of 2020, until then will be found possible parnerships with organizations working on the environment protection and talents willing to make it possible. Up to the date (beginning of 2020), still no organization has answered positively but the validity of the project will make it real and appealing to partnerships (has to be noted that most of the organizations working for the environment protection that have been contacted are aimed to the sole sensibilization and don’t try to experience direct action; in my opinion the protests and the words alone without proposing solution or without creating real and strong proposals are not making a positive difference in the environment fight that we  currently need). The first land purchases are expected on March 2021, the first tourist expedition on December 2020 and the first product to market on May 2021. These expected dates are just a forecast.

A quick Brainstorming on the project

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mBAbGhlF-mRI9UgAYfqI4-xD2BS1iR5A

Climate change and human activities It is clear that the world climate has cycles that take it to be sometimes hotter, sometimes colder. But this cycles happen natural when the nature is left acting alone without any “interference” that can’t prevent it to find a new peaceful equilibrium. Human exploitation and industrial activities are an interference. This interference can make it very hard for nature itself to find easily a new equilibrium similar to the previous one. An equilibrium is always reached but the way through which it is reached can make a difference on the life that is adapted to exist with the previous equilibrium. The difficult path through which the nature stabilizes itself after overcoming the human interferences is traduced in what we are calling a violent climate change: we are accelerating changes, that would be normal in centuries, in a few decades; our activities are strongly boosting an already existing natural change. The nowadays climate change is deeply and quickly raising global temperatures, disclosing extreme meteorological events and weather conditions. Heat waves, intensifying metereological situations and raising temperatures are the first changes that are hitting the Amazon rainforest: stronger and longer drought seasons and hotter summers are really incisive in an ecosystem strongly dependents on abundance of rainfall water; even though these natural changes and events (so called even that they have been leaded by human activity accelerating cyclic changes) can have virtually terrible consequences, the main problem of these climate conditions is that they worsen the human activities that can lead to further environment damage: the fires are most important example (some of them are natural but most are started by man to clear the land for exploitation). The rainforest can play an important role for both fighting and worsening the climate change: it can absorb the carbon dioxide “breathing” but also produce it if it is burned. That’s why it is important to protect it and make it work as one of the largest carbon dioxide absorber and oxygen and humidity releaser. Our activities should develope without creating interferences with the nature, trying so to be as sustainables as possible, trying to find an alternative solution when the exploitation is seen as the only one and trying to contain the natural changes and events that can make their our actions even worse. The importance of Amazon rainforest The Amazon rainforest (also referred to as the ‘Lungs of the Planet') is the world's biggest rainforest, larger than the next two largest rainforests — in the Congo Basin and Indonesia — combined. The Amazon rainforest covers 7.8-8.2 million square km, more of the size of the forty-eight contiguous United States and covers some 40 percent of the South American continent. The Amazon is estimated to have 40,000 plant species and 390 billion individual trees and it is thought to have 2.5 million species of insects. The Amazon rainforest plays an important part in regulating the world’s oxygen and carbon cycles. Has long been thought to act as a carbon sink, meaning it readily absorbs large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. If we lose the Amazon, we lose a crucial part of the world's life support system: the Amazon rainforest produces up to 20% of the oxygen in Earth's atmosphere, cycles water that regulates our weather, and hosts a wealth of undiscovered species with potential for new medicines. 25% of all western pharmaceuticals come from rainforest based ingredients, yet less than 1% of the trees and plants in the Amazon have ever been tested by scientists. Many plants around the world have medicinal qualities. Of the plants known to have anti-cancer properties, 70% are found in the rainforest. Amazon natives use rainforest plants regularly but 90% of the ones they use have not been studied by modern science. Tropical forests and woodlands (e.g. savannas) exchange vast amounts of water and energy with the atmosphere and are thought to be important in controlling local and regional climates. The Amazon rainforest plays a large role in rain patterns because the moisture that its vegetation traps and releases travels as clouds for thousands of miles. Water released by plants into the atmosphere through evapotranspiration (evaporation and plant transpiration) and to the ocean by the rivers, influences world climate and the circulation of ocean currents. This works as a feedback mechanism, as the process also sustains the regional climate on which it depends. 70 percent of South America's GDP is produced in areas that receive rainfall or water from the Amazon. The Amazon influences rainfall patterns as far away as the United States. Climate models show that the Amazon's moisture affects rainfall as far away as the US. If the Amazon were completely deforested, that would cut Texas rainfall by 25%, cut the Sierra Nevada snowpack in half, and reduce precipitation by up to 20% in the US coastal northwest. For that reason, large-scale deforestation in the Amazon can "pose a substantial risk to agriculture in key breadbaskets halfway around the world in parts of the US, India, and China," according to the WRI report. The Amazon may also play a role in ocean currents, since the Amazon River accounts for over 15% of all fresh water that enters the oceans. Changes in the ocean's balance of fresh water and salt water can slow down or speed up ocean currents, which regulate weather across the globe. But when trees are logged and the forest is burned, that carbon is released into the atmosphere at alarming rates. Recent research has suggested that these forests might actually be emitting more carbon dioxide when set fire than they’re able to absorbe. The Amazon rainforest has been burning for half of 2019: Brazil has seen more than 74,000 fires in 2019 ⁠— nearly double 2018's total of about 40,000 fires. The deforestation rate has increased 88 percent over the past year, while the number of fires has increased 84 percent compared to the same time in 2018, according to Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE). Through July 2019 over 7,200 square miles of the Brazilian rainforest has burned—an aggregated area nearly the size of New Jersey. Humans have cut down nearly 20% of the Amazon in the last 50 years, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). If another 20% of the Amazon disappears, that could trigger a "dieback" scenario in which the forest would dry out and become a savannah. Furthermore, it's estimated that if the climate change were to increase the world's temperature by only 3 degrees Celsius then 75% of the Amazon would be destroyed. Last month, the Amazon saw record-breaking rates of deforestation, primarily due to infrastructure projects, logging, mining, and farming. Data from Brazilian satellites have indicated that about three football fields' worth of Amazonian trees are falling every minute. Epilogue The proposed project is thought to be open-source. The protection of the Amazon rainforest, the fight to climate change and the awareness of the importance of the nowadays natural weather equilibrium are not limited to ethnic groups (that sometimes identify themselves as only climate fighters while exploiting an environment in an equally dangerous way) and political parties (which is something that is too many times forced by public opinion) but are issues for everyone in the world. We all live in a world in which we have long been part of the problem, but we have to be part of the only solution. In my opinion, even that sensibilization and people involvement are always good (at least to raise awareness and politics attention), but the problems we are facing need solutions to be proposed and carried out, not only protests. The logic is the same of the project previously described, to change nowadays habits, alternatives have to be found. That’s why this project is open-source and open to anyone who have capabilities or even only the will to create a new hope for a new approach to the future cohabitation of the environment and us. For further collaborations and for anyone willing to work on the project described or anyone who has suggestions, here is the contact to write to: alfredo.mensi@gmail.com

[marginalgloss]

different and worse

‘…There were so many ways in which the vast army of the dead could be drilled, classified, inspected, and made to present their ghostly arms. No end to the institutions, civilian and military, busy drawing up their sombre balance sheet and recording it in wood, stone or metal. But if there was no end to the institutions there was no end to the dead men either. In truth, there were more than enough to go round several times over…’

Troubles was not the first novel by J.G. Farrell, but it was the first to achieve really significant literary success. Farrell wrote three novels set in a loosely connected trilogy set in the twilight of the British empire — I read The Singapore Grip last year, and I’ve been meaning to revisit this one, which I first read many years ago. It might be the best thing Farrell ever wrote, though I now find myself wanting to reread The Siege of Krishnapur as well.

Troubles is set in Ireland, in the immediate aftermath of the First World War. Having been freshly discharged from the army, Brendan Archer (mostly known as ‘the Major’) travels there to visit Angela Spencer; Brendan is more or less convinced that he and Angela are engaged, having met previously while he was on leave from the front lines. They have exchanged letters since, but on arriving at her home — the Majestic hotel — he finds her distant. Her father, Edward, is a model of English strength and reserve. And then there is the hotel itself: a gothic revival falling apart at the seams, overrun by potted plants and cats, populated by a skeleton crew of staff and flocks of elderly women. 

The hotel is labyrinthine and seemingly fathomless, like something out of Ballard or Borges. It is an unmappable confection of turrets and towers, sewn up with catwalks, stairwells, secret corridors. The tennis courts are thick with weeds; the glass ceiling of the ballroom is on the verge of collapse; there are strange things swimming in the murky remnants of the swimming pool. Here, at the end of a lonely peninsula, the residents are cut off from the outside world. The only reminder that the Irish exist at all comes from the figures glimpsed at the roadside, sometime seen standing in the fields, or rummaging in the bins at the house. (Many of them are starving.) 

We soon realise that the Major lives in a state of post-traumatic myopia. Everything around him seems to take place in a sort of dreamlike haze. Like a typical man of his class he makes a point of not seeing things about how the world is operating, but his experiences in the war place him at a further remove from the rest of society. He is typically English; he adopts an attitude of perpetual befuddlement, leaning heavily on privilege and impatience to get himself through the day. He is inflexible and uncommunicative. But he is also deeply traumatised. His memories are shot full of holes:

‘Although he was sure that he had never actually proposed to Angela during the few days of their acquaintance, it was beyond doubt that they were engaged: a certainty fostered by the fact that from the very beginning she had signed her letters ‘Your loving fiancée, Angela’. This had surprised him at first. But, with the odour of death drifting into the dug-out in which he scratched out his replies by the light of a candle, it would have been trivial and discourteous beyond words to split hairs about such purely social distinctions.’

Ireland is riven by violence. Rumours of killings are rife around the hotel. People are shot in ones and twos every day, apparently at random. Interspersed throughout the book are newspaper clippings, many of which seem absurd. It seems a bleak, purposeless cycle of assault and recrimination. But in spite of the resident paranoia, next to nothing actually happens on the grounds of the Majestic. No republican ‘shinners’ appear intent on massacring the residents in their beds. But regardless, the English are determined to make a stand — even if it is only in the bar of the local pub.

This novel was first published in 1970, at a time when Northern Ireland was seeing some of the worst violence in the latter half of the twentieth century. By comparison the level of strife depicted here seems almost parochial by comparison. But this is because the whole text of the novel is sunk within the consciousness of an observer who is too broken himself to see what’s really happening. After all, this is 1919: in historical terms we are in the thick of the Irish war of independence. The country would finally become its own nation state a few years later. But none of it feels that way to the characters in the book.

Perhaps there’s something about it that approximates the feeling of watching the news in the late sixties or early seventies— while living in England, of course. It is a constant drip-feed of appalling atrocity, delivered with the benefit of distance so that the expected response from the audience is to feel exactly as the Major does: ‘An old man is gunned down in the street and within a couple of days this senseless act is both normal and inevitable,’ reflects the Major. For him these killings might as well be happening in a vacuum. Names like De Valera float through the air, but they might as well belong to legendary beings. There’s no awareness of history or context. There is barely a line in this book which affords a glimpse of the world from an Irish perspective. We don’t know how they might feel about it because we aren’t told. 

‘The Major only glanced at the newspaper these days, tired of trying to comprehend a situation which defied comprehension, a war without battles or trenches. Why should one bother with the details: the raids for arms, the shootings of policemen, the intimidations? What could one learn from the details of chaos? Every now and then, however, he would become aware with a feeling of shock that, for all its lack of pattern, the situation was different, and always a little worse.’

We are stuck in the belly of the beast, and the beast is dying. The Major is trapped in ‘the country’s vast and narcotic inertia’. The hotel is falling apart. Angela vanishes not long after the Major arrives, and then she dies. Somehow this is not a cause for much regret. From then on, he has no reason to stay in Ireland, but the place has a strange gravity that seems to draw him back. And there is Sarah, a local woman who seems to have taken an interest in him. She is fiery, direct and open — far more than he — and initially she is mostly confined to a wheelchair. There are shades of Stefan Zweig’s Beware of Pity in their relationship: the Major is a model of polite restraint, while Sarah is openly flirtatious, at times frantic with emotion:

‘One day when he had been speaking, though impersonally, about marriage and its place in the modern world, she interrupted him brutally by saying: ‘It’s not a wife you’re looking for, Brendan. It’s a mother!’ The Major was upset because he had not, in fact, been saying he was looking for either. ‘Why are you so polite the whole time?’ she would ask derisively, while the Major, appalled, wondered what was wrong with being polite. ‘Why are you always fussing around those infernal old women? Can’t you smell how awful they are?’ she would demand, making a disgusted face, and when the Major said nothing she would burst out: ‘Because you’re an old woman yourself, that’s why.’ And since the Major maintained his hurt and dignified silence: ‘And for Jesus’ sake stop looking at me like a stuffed squirrel!’’

It’s a very funny book. Farrell was a masterful stylist, and he wields irony here like a weapon. There is humour to be had at the expense of the English in a way that recalls P. G. Wodehouse. But with Jeeves and Wooster there is the pleasure of retreating inside a world which is entirely its own — for the most part, nothing really awful can happen there. Whereas here, we are never allowed to forget that something awful is perpetually happening only just outside of that friendly bubble. And it isn’t so cosy inside the bubble either. 

Either way, we cannot forget that the characters of the novel are all implicated, if only through their vast unthinking ignorance. There is something very dark crouching at the heart of this book, something made all the more tragic by the Major’s essential simplicity, by his constant air of strained incomprehension. We know that he will never learn, that he will never grow. Somehow he is both entirely innocent and fully responsible for everything that goes wrong. 

He is not the only pathetic creature here. The author reserves a special combination of pathos and threat for the animals that reside at the Majestic. They are vehicles for fables in this story. There are the countless stray cats, which ride the dumb-waiters, climb through the chimneys and nest inside the wrecked sofas. (The biggest cat has orange fur and bright green eyes; a noteworthy colouring, perhaps.) And there’s Edward’s old dog, Rover, who has an especially hard time of it:

‘By degrees he was going blind; his eyes had turned to milky blue and he sometimes collided with the furniture. The smells he emitted while sitting at the feet of the whist-players became steadily more redolent of putrefaction. Like the Major, Rover had always enjoyed trotting from one room to another, prowling the corridors on this floor or that. But now, whenever he ventured up the stairs to nose around the upper storeys, as likely as not he would be set upon by an implacable horde of cats and chased up and down the corridors to the brink of exhaustion. More than once the Major found him, wheezing and spent, tumbling in terror down a flight of stairs from some shadowy menace on the landing above. Soon he got into the habit of growling whenever he saw a shadow. Then, as the shadows gathered with his progressively failing sight, he would rouse himself and bark fearfully even in the broadest of daylight, gripped by remorseless nightmares. Day by day, no matter how wide he opened his eyes, the cat-filled darkness continued to creep a little closer.’

There’s another elderly dog in Farrell’s later novel The Singapore Grip — an elderly spaniel who is nicknamed ‘The Human Condition’. The irony there is a bit less subtle, but the implication is equally bleak. By the end of this novel Edward and the Major will both be reduced to growling at shadows, each in their own way. But perhaps the Major has more in common with the deserted pet rabbit who has been left to fend for himself in the grounds of the hotel: 

‘…Old and fat, it had been partly tamed by the twins when they were small children. They had lost interest, of course, as they grew older, and no longer remembered to feed it. The rabbit, however, had not forgotten the halcyon days of carrots and dandelion leaves. Thinner and thinner as time went by, it had nevertheless continued to haunt the fringes of the wood like a forsaken lover…’

Of course the rabbit ends up riddled with bullets. He is shot to death by British soldiers for fun. But the twins are not as upset as the Major expects them to be. They only want to know if they can eat him. 

[chercher0w0]

The Book of Life

Why I read this Gotta finish up the trilogy. Also, after 2 whole books I’m really really really curious what actually is in the Book of Life. They got SO CLOSE to it in Shadow of Night. But of course, the final reveal would be in the final book of the trilogy. Of course.

Rating: 4/5

And we’re back to an urban fantasy again. Skewing more to the fantasy side at the beginning as Diana gets used to the powers she learnt to control in the past, then moving more towards the realism aspect of the plot as Matthew and Chris uncover the genetics behind all the creatures, particularly the creature chromosome that separates creatures from ordinary humans. I don’t have a particular bias towards one or the other. Now that I’ve finished the whole trilogy, I can say that both the plot and the romance between Diana and Matthew interested me equally throughout.  As someone who used to be really interested in biology, the world of this series as a whole is really fascinating, to tie in supernatural abilities with genetics and mutations.

Since the book opened with the ghosts, I was hoping there would be some kind of big reunion between Diana and Philippe, Emily, and Rebecca, since she’s the only one who can see ghosts. But alas :(  At least the last glimpse of Philippe at the end was a nice bit of closure, even if it did come with the burden of restoring the godesses’ arrow to Diana. Though since the Goddess wants Diana to continue meting out justice on her behalf, I’m curious how long Diana’s lifespan will be. Because if she still has a normal human lifespan, Matthew’s future is kind of depressing. Even his own children and their children only live a few hundred years, compared to his immortatlity. :(

I honestly thought the blood rage thing was just...a bit of extra anger for a creature that was already more of a wild animal than human. The fact that it’s an affliction to be put down, akin to doing something bad enough to cause a witch to be spellbound, was an interesting conflict for the book. Also explains why Matthew turned to the study of genetics, to find a way to cure his hereditary disease. It’s kind of sad that in the end, there’s not really a cure since it’s not caused by a certain gene but the activation of several different ones.  He has really come a long way throughout the series. Though my first impression of him is coloured by watching the TV series first, reading through the trilogy a second time for these book reviews has reminded me how posessive and destructive Matthew can be, both for himself and others. To see him fully embrace being the head of the family, the patriach of his own scion, instead of a creature in the shadows, wielded as a weapon for his blood rage was so satisfying. It’s nice to see him settled at the end with his family, at peace. 

Baldwin is a conflicting character. Since my first introduction to him was through the series, my impression was always someone who did not get along with Matthew but in the end always had the best interests of the family at heart. He starts out the series so antagonistic, honestly did a double take and had to reread when his first appearance in this book is to interrupt Diana and Matthew’s private bedroom time. I mean...wow. And yet, in the end, he’s the one who approves of Diana as an official de Clermont/child of Philippe. And he relinquishes the de Clermont seat in the Congregation to her. I...don’t know how to feel about him. Though it will be interesting to see what they do with that in Season 3. The show has a tendency to tone down the actions of the “good” characters, since you would still want the audience to root for them.  

Though this series fully embraces the technologies of the current time, what with all the genetics research, the part about Ysabeau’s imprisonment and manipulation of Gerbert through the internet and social media still felt kind of jarring. For a creature who has survived so many centuries, to be brought down by the manipulation of modern technology felt weird. But also some sort of justice in a way. Gerbert might live in the present and embrace modern technology, but he is mostly still stuck in the old ways and doesn’t fully understand what these things can do. He expects it to be just another tool at his command, not suspecting the ways it can be used against him because he doesn’t fully understand what it is.  Also...the amount of daily alarms Ysabeau has. I...is the phone ever silent? 

On my first read through, I was kind of disappointed at how little they showed of the words in the Book of Life. Though on a reread, what little is revealed does kind of tie in with what they find out later, that genetically all the creatures are the same species, just different races, as well as the explanation of why only certain witches and vampires are able to produce children. I’m still really curious about the origins of the book though, if every page has as much history as the one about the witch whose skin was used. And who compiled and made it in the first place, as well as the enchantment that makes it an actual Book of Life, a record of all creatures. 

Honestly, overall where the plot lead was rather unpredictable, which I enjoy in a book. At it’s core, it is still a star-crossed lovers romance, but I enjoy the equal attention to the world building and plot that separates it from being a typical romance novel. 

The part where they reveal that creatures exist to normal humans though. So refreshing to see that happen in a fantasy novel for once. Probably inevitable in this day and age where in certain media, even superheroes are shedding the pretense of a secret identity. And in a generation that has grown up with so much supernatural media, it’s not unthinkable that the fact that creatures exist in the world would be embraced. Especially when it’s to people who already know the characters. 

I’m already halfway through Time’s Convert but I really do look forward to any other books in this world that may be written in the future, though to be honest, I would always love if there was at least some bishmont in them. It is still the main reason I started this series.

Re-readability Yes.

[ramblingpandas]

For my old friends I feel I should share this bad news. Mookie is experimenting with nudity, specifically a boringly “human” mongrelman cock and balls. On the plus side there will be less gore.

You may have noticed the full-frontal (mongrel)male nudity in today’s comic.  Expect more of that, both male and female, in The Legacy of Dominic Deegan.  Six years have passed since I made the last comic for Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire, and in that time I’ve rearranged my priorities when it comes to what I want represented in my work.  For this new series, I won’t be censoring or obscuring nude forms and I’m doing away with graphic violence.

I was a much younger man when I started Oracle for Hire back in 2002.  I loved splattery gore and body horror.  I squealed at the chance to play in gory fantasy, ripping bodies apart and gleefully drawing blood-splatter all over every panel I could.  I was a real gore-hound, so to speak, and indulged that in the medium of comics.  But, as time went on, I got those gory spectacles out of my system and began to notice what we readily censor and what we eagerly embrace.

We tend to accept graphic violence without much thought, but the presentation of a nude body is almost unthinkable without a content advisory.  As the years have rolled on I’ve noticed how accepted graphic violence has become in most mainstream media, to the point where I find myself going, “Oh wow, they went that far on TV?  They blew that dude’s face half off his head!”  But things like breasts, buttocks, and genitals?  Things like loving, consensual sex?  Unthinkable.  Dead and dismembered bodies?  Horrific violence?  Now those are acceptable for modern audiences without warning.

Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy indulging in ridiculous splatter.   Mortal Kombat 11 is one of my favorite games these days.  But doing The Legacy means doing things differently.  It means challenging myself to make something I’ve never made before, and to approach comics in a way that’s outside my comfort zone.  And maybe, in this case, to challenge some preconceived notions as to what’s acceptable and what isn’t.

So consider this your “content advisory” for The Legacy of Dominic Deegan.  There’s going to be nudity.  It’s going to be uncensored but I’m going to do my best to keep it “natural” instead of “explicit” or “gratuitous.”  There isn’t going to be any graphic violence.  Like I said before, I got that out of my system during the Oracle for Hire years, and you’re welcome to revisit all those splattery comics any time you like.  There may even be loving, consensual sex scenes if the story calls for them.  We’ll see what happens.

Seriously it was possibly the most boring male genitalia I’ve seen in art, he had all of nature to draw upon but no, just a bland, boring dick and scrotum