#i mean its probably part of a larger political movement that we saw was already being discussed in the aeducan origin. but still

[vigilskeep]

house helmi still split on literally every single issue so that they always win. love them

[shinichirosbabymama]

Levi being protective of a young male recruit who saved him from a bunch of Titans when he was injured during a mission?

A/N: Thank you for the request ❤ I don't often write from the male perspective (something I need to work on) so please feel free to give me any pointers or constructive feedback to make it better. I also went slightly off piste here and it's more centred on the recruit protecting Levi but I hope you don't mind! Please also note I never write adults/underage relationships (not that you were requesting that I just want my followers to know 😊) the reader is aged up (at least 18). Enjoy!

**********************************************

You breathed deeply, focusing on the repetitive gallop of your horse as you watched the familiar walls vanish from view as you passed through the main gate. Your vision was suddenly swimming with green, endless grass and fields stretching to the horizon. You were momentarily stunned, your mind unable to process how views could stretch so far given your captivity within the walls.

This was your first expedition into the outside world and you could feel the nerves rippling through your fellow scouts around you. The formation was being led by Captain Levi and you kept your eyes trained on him waiting for any sudden commands. You had been selected for his squad after demonstrating your skill when using the omnidirectional gear and were keen to make a good first impression.

After just a few minutes out in the open you saw a black flair close to right hand side. Already!? You tried to quell the panic in your chest as your eyes searched the horizon. It wasn't long before an abnormal titan came into view, galloping fast on all fours and frothing at the mouth as it sought its prey. You calculated that you had probably around a minute before it reached the formation and you felt a small amount of vomit build up in your mouth, quickly turning to spit onto the floor.

'Brats - this is what I want you to do -' Levi starts but is cut off by the explosion of three red flairs to the left of the formation. More titans!? This was turning into a nightmare already.

'I would normally suggest we outrun them but the abnormal is too close. All of you - take out the three on the left and I'll handle the abnormal.' Levi reels off, calm and composed as ever as he tugs the reigns of his horse and veers off to the right.

'Come on then you ugly shit.' You hear his voice distantly as he rides towards the abnormal without a shred of fear. You watch him for a few seconds before swallowing hard and deciding it's time to act.

As you veer off to the left and make your way towards your fellow scouts, the sight is one that will sit with you forever. You can hear the shrill screaming from those that were situated closest to the approaching titans, as there arms and legs are torn from their body. You know that titans aren't supposed to have any free will but there's something sickening about the way they seem to slowly remove the limbs first, ensuring the victim suffers as much as possible before killing them.

You urge your horse to go faster, your fear dissipating and replaced with the need to do something, anything, to save your comrades.

You don't think twice as you discharge your grappling hooks straight into the fleshy back of one of the titans, propelling yourself forward towards it's grasping hands. You use your gas to dodge it's reaching hands and release your blades to slash it's eyes, which explode almost instantly and the hot blood covers your cloak. Now blinded, the titan grabs at the air hopelessly and you're able to easily land on its back and deliver the fatal blow to its nape.

You let out a breath that you hadn't even realised you'd been holding - your first kill. But there was no time to celebrate as the screams of your comrades entered your focus again. You were able to take down the second titan much like the first but the third was much larger and with nothing of height to grapple onto anymore you were forced to run and dodge it's stamping feet.

As you ran wildly having lost your house, you noticed a figure fast approaching in the distance. Captain Levi was riding as though his life depended on it but even from a distance you could see that his face was stained dark crimson with blood that wasn't evaporating - meaning it had to be his own.

'Captain!' You called frantically amongst the chaos. Levi met your gaze briefly before launching his hooks straight at the remaining titan. Even from your position on the ground you could see that something was wrong - his movement through the air was floppy and uncoordinated and his face twisted in pain as he hurtled himself forward.

Your heart stopped as you watched the titans large hand reach out and snatch Levi from the sky, closing its grip around him as he struggled and tried to cut its wrists with his blades. As the titan brought his struggling form towards its mouth, Levi stopped suddenly and bellowed a final order as he accepted his impending death.

'RETREAT!' He ordered and you made the decision to defy him, firing your hooks straight into the arm of the titan and propelled yourself forward. You swung your blades as hard as you could, chest filling with relief as you were able to successfully sever the arm holding Levi. He fell like a stone but you had to time to help him as you used your gas to rise and twist yourself in the air, dropping down and slicing through the titans nape. You held onto it's defeated form as it collapsed into the ground, quickly hopping off and sprinting towards Levi's crumpled form.

'Captain?' You enquired urgently, holding his face and studying his ashen experience. Fortunately he was conscious and his eyes darted around, seemingly surprised that he was still alive.

You looked around and were relieved to see that at least half a dozen scouts remained although the loss suffered was already beginning to weigh on your mind.

'Everyone retreat. Back to the wall!' You shouted and the others began whistling for the horses, a few of which began galloping back towards you. You looked nervously over to Levi, expecting a beasting for speaking for him but he merely nodded grimly, face contorting in pain once again.

'Here Captain.' You gestured, clutching the reigns of the horse you'd managed to wrangle tight.

'You'll have to help me. Ribs are broken.' He muttered and you nodded quickly, noting how light he was for someone so strong as you lifted him and placed him onto the horse. He dipped forward dangerously, threading his hands around the reigns so you jumped on behind him and sandwiched him between your forearms to keep him steady.

The ride back was fast but with a heavily silence. Levi didn't say a single word the whole time a part from a few grunts where you jabbed him lightly to make sure he was still conscious.

He stayed in the medical bay for the next 3 days. All of the scouts were stunned by what happened - the thought that humanity's strongest could be anything but invincible was unfathomable to them.

You grew incredibly irritated at the rumours surrounding Levi's injuries and kept your mouth firmly shut about your own involvement. One of the newer recruits who had yet to visit outside the walls but was hopelessly arrogant was the only one to draw a reaction from you.

'So not humanity's strongest after all? I always knew they were exaggerating about that pipsqueak.' You heard him snicker to another scout one day and the look on his face made your blood boil.

You roughly grabbed him shoulder and gave him a hard stare. 'Captain Levi has 89 confirmed kills and you haven't had a single visit outside of the wall. Are you really in a position to be criticising?' You hiss and the scout's face twists with anger.

'Who the fuck asked you L/N? Bored yet of playing teachers pet?' He spits at you and your grip on his shirt tightens.

'You should earn some respect, cadet.' You raise your voice a little and his next move takes you completely unexpectedly as he delivers a hard punch to your cheek and you feel the world move sideways as you fall to the ground. Not to be bested by some little punk, you're on your feet in seconds and pummel him in the face until he squeals at you to stop. You would have carried on but his face is so pathetic it makes you sick. You take your leave quickly when you hear others approaching, not wanting your name to be carried around the barracks.

Levi calls for you on the third day and your stomach twists with nerves as you make your way towards the sick bay. There a deep purple bruise now blossomed across your cheek from where that little shit hit you and you mentally prepare yourself to brush it off the moment he decides to bring it up.

You enter the sick bay and notice that Levi is sat on the side of his bed, dressed in a casual long sleeved grey shirt that opens slightly at the chest and dark trousers. He looks a little tired, bags more pronounced than usual but much better than his condition a few days ago.

'Y/N.' He greets you with a nod and you're surprised to hear your first name being used.

'Captain.' You respond politely and Levi tsks quietly. 'Call me Levi, I hate those bullshit formalities.' You nod, cheeks heating up slightly as he gestures for you to sit next to him. You notice his glance at your cheek and scowl slightly but there's clearly more pressing matters on his mind.

'I wanted to discuss the expedition.' He starts and gestures you to sit next to him.'

'Why did you defy my order to retreat?' In classic Levi fashion, he does not beat around the bush as he asks you the question, steel grey eyes boring into you as you pause for a few seconds to consider your response.

'You were about to be eaten.' You state after a few moments, deciding not to embellish the response with any complex reasoning for why you saved him.

'That is true. But you and your comrades could have easily been killed also.' Levi reasoned with a raised eyebrow. It made you want to look away but his gaze kept you rooted.

'I made that assessment myself at the time and believed that the chance of saving you without harming myself or the others was high.' You stated with a slight tremor to your voice.

'I see.' Levi pauses and sighs, seemingly unsatisfied with his own thought process. 'It appears that I underestimated your abilities. Don't get me wrong you could do with some fine tuning but you've made a fine addition to my squad.' He adds stiffly and you know that's the closest you're going to get to a compliment or a thank you. You feel your chest bloom with pride and Levi watches the smile tugging at your lips.

'Thank you sir, it's an honour to serve under you.'

'Levi.' He reminds you but he sounds gentler this time. You tense up when he suddenly reaches out to brush his fingertips against the bruise on your cheek. Despite the calloused feel of his fingers from years of battle and training, his touch was light.

'What happened?'

'It's nothing...just a disagreement.' You reply awkwardly, silently willing your face not to heat up as he retracts his hand.

'Between you and another scout?'

'Yes.'

'Was it about the expedition?' Levi's eyes are boring into you again and you know there is no point lying. He's not blind to other's opinions on him, although you doubt he cares much.

'...Yes.'

'I see. The name?'

'I'm not going to tell you that. It's resolved now.' You squirm slightly as you speak, embarrassed at the thought of the captain reprimanding the other scout on your behalf.

'Fine.' Levi huffs and the two of you sit in tense silence for a few moments. 'For the two counts of insubordination, I want you to clean my office every night for one month.'

'But, Sir I-' You're about to say I saved you but fortunately stop yourself.

'Better make it two months.' Levi shrugs but you can see a smirk forming on his lips and your annoyance fades away at the thought that he might just want to spend some time with you.

[i-love-charles]

I don’t wanna ask you for too much but you did such a wonderful job with the last request that I would love to read a mini fanfic version of the Arthur Charles and Javier falling in love with a female friend. You wrote this so freekin good! It’s rare to get invested in something you read let alone watch these days. You’re very talented :)

[i’m sorry it’s taken so long, it took me a while to figure out how to lay this out, the alternative endings for Arthur are here and Charles here, enjoy]

History, Old & New

Notes: Fluff, Slight NSFW, Javier Escuella + Female Reader, Request, Mini-Fic

Wordcount: 1,813

His eyes followed your every move as you worked. Each bounce of your feathery hair, the rhythm of your delicate fingers, the swaying of your rounded hips with each step you took towards him. His heart pounded a panicked beat from beneath his prickled skin as you approached, bowl of hot stew perched across your palm, a freshly brewed coffee mug in the other.

He smiled sincerely as you placed the bowl on his lap, returning the genuine smile before sauntering off to serve the others as they completed their mundane chores - always thinking about others: a trait that he had always admired deeply about you, among a catalogue of many others.

Throughout all of this, he simply couldn’t remove his gaze from you as you chopped away at more vegetables; the sharp knife inching uncomfortably close to your delicate skin with each slam down against the wood of the chopping board. The anxiety was unbearable, and he silently prayed your beautiful frail fingers would remain intact before he mentally scolded himself for being so protective over a grown woman, but also for the feelings he had tried, and failed, to suppress.

After all, for the past few months, being so protective towards you became his nature - part of his makeup - and two other men at camp gave him good reason for it. With that thought his eyes sharpened into cautious slits, like the eyes of a sly snake about to catch its scurrying prey, and he drifted his gaze to the men in question. Each had their eyes planted on you, and he followed their line of sight to the curves of your body as his blood began to boil. Unlike him, other men rarely saw you for anything other than your looks. Your empathetic generosity, strong-will, many talents, beauty and charm - he took note of all of them, favouring each moment he caught a glimpse.

His mind wandered briefly as the stew on his lap cooled below him. He secretly liked to pretend you didn’t share a tent because you were close friends, or because you often hunted together and got back to camp late - you shared it because you were meant to be together in one way or another. The possibility that it could lead somewhere so beautiful gave him hope; if only briefly. Whether you even felt the same way back was still unknown. What if he confesses and it pushes you away? Into the arms of one of the others? Was it worth the risk of your friendship? Maybe you’d feel betrayed, like this whole time his aim was to get you in bed with him? No, it wasn’t worth it.

“Friend. Not lover.” He reminded himself under his breath with a solemn sigh, inaudible to those around him. The mantra brought a silent sorrow to his mind as he lifted the spoon to his mouth, pushing the bitter broth to the back of his throat to avoid its taste. Afterwards, he threw the bowl to the side of the fire, along with the other dirtied dishes, before making his way back to your shared tent - praying you’d return soon too.

Javier

The unforgiving rain paraded down around the wagon, splashing loudly against the boar skin canopy above you. Your eyes drifted to the muddied ground as it swilled around from the rains current, thanking God silently that you’d managed to find shelter from the harsh weather until it relented.

Your eyes drifted back to the man before you, his legs stretched out beside you as the soles of his boots rested firmly against the wooden walls of the wagon. Your own legs did the same, long dress resting down upon the curves of your legs as your feet reached beside him. The slight shadows from his dark finely shaped facial hair set against his brown lips, a lit cigarette perched beneath them as he listened to you speak.

“You’re thinking of the pyramids, Javi.” You giggled, drifting through the pages of your hardback ancient Egyptian history book. Your eyes delighted in the small glimpses of the cryptic hieroglyphs and puzzling wall paintings as each page flipped over; drifting in awe across the architectural masterpieces that monument the reigning of each pharaoh in all of their glory.

“So which ones the gato - the cat?” He questioned, correcting himself quick from his default Spanish - although you wished he wouldn’t, something about him speaking in Spanish made you feel comfortable, probably because he felt comfortable speaking it. Your head perked sideways at the question, clearly confused. “You know, the man cat?” His brows furrowed in playful frustration and chuckle escaped your chest at his words before it hit you what he meant.

“You mean, the Sphinx?” You managed through your laughter as you flipped to a painting of the monument in your book. He nodded, his face reddening. “Well…” you started, tracing the outline of where the structures nose should be. “…it was built for Khafre, an old Egyptian Pharaoh in the 2000 BC’s…” Javier’s eyes softened as he watched you babble on about the statue. Truthfully, he didn’t care very much, just cherished hearing you talk to passionately about things you were interested in. After all this time of being your best friend, your knowledge still never seizes to amaze him.

He brought his fingers to the cigarette and inhaled before pulling it away. “What happened to the nose?” He questioned, pointing at the missing outline.

The truth was, he had flipped through your book momentarily some weeks ago when he couldn’t get to sleep, also because he liked the thought of maybe one day impressing you with his knowledge. Therefore, knew a lot of these things already, just took quiet solace in hearing you speak so passionately.

He smiled as you explained, puffing contently on the lit tobacco as you carried on, the sound of the pattering rain complimenting your sweet voice. His eyes followed the flowing movements of your hands as you spoke, flailing them around as you told him to dramatic past of the ancient Egyptian peoples.

“Cleopatra was the last Pharaoh, probably the most well-known, too. Then came the Roman Empire.” You explained, closing the final chapters of the book together on your lap before placing it to your side. Your gaze wandered absent-mindedly out to the rain as the rest of your campmates huddled away in the other wagons and larger tents from the weather. A slight shiver racked through your body at the bitter cold and Javier responded quickly by lifting the poncho from around his neck before placing it gently around yours. The wool huddling lightly down against your shoulders and chest as you huddled into its warmth, and you sent a thankful smile his way.

His heart sank slightly as you quietened down, the unfamiliar silence taking over. His mind racks for a solution, anything to hear you speak again. “Want some?” He questioned abruptly, offering the cigarette out to you. He internally scolded himself, knowing full well you don’t smoke, but it was the first thing he could think of.

You were torn from your thoughts, turning to meet his gaze before shaking your head politely at his question. “You know me, Javi. I’m straight-edge. Boring.” You chuckled, whisking away strands of escaped hair from your eyes sheepishly at your confession.

His demeanour softened at your abrupt vulnerability. “You’re not boring, ____. You’re one of the smartest people I know, querida.” The familiar pet name and sincerity brought a warmth to your already rosy cheeks. He threw the cigarette out into the rain, the ash melting into the muddy ground.

“I mean-I know irrelevant things, Javi. Not the things that really matter, like sex-or kissing-don’t know a thing about that.” Your voice cracked slightly on the last sentence; cheeks now practically tomato’s. Part of you wanted him to teach you, the other part wanted to cling onto your friendship, and you fought indecisively with both sides in your head.

“I think you’re amazing.” He mumbled. Javier shifted silently near you, adjusting himself to the thick tension in the air, bringing a palm down to what he thought would be the wagon floor but instead was your cotton clad thigh. He let out a rushed apology before quickly lifting his hand away, bringing it to his lap - such a gentleman.

Your own hand reached out to his, bringing it back on your lap, clutching his fingers as they intertwined with your own. “Thank you, Javier.” You spoke softly. You watched his pouty lips as a flattered smile began to form at the corners. A moment of madness took hold of you and you leant forward, pressing your own lips to meet his softly and sweetly. You anxiously awaited a sign to stop, or for his lips to retrieve, but instead his tongue licked daintily against your lips, begging for entry. You obliged happily, bringing your own tongue to whirl against his passionately as you lifted yourself to straddle his thighs; moaning into each other’s lips as your centre came to press against his. The taste of tobacco and Pearson’s stew lingered on his breath at you fought with his tongue for attention.

He broke away suddenly, his arms caging around your hips to distance himself. His words came out breathless from his chest. “Wa-was that your first kiss?” You nodded sheepishly at his question, dipping your head slightly to shadow the blush across your plush cheeks. “Then-then we shouldn’t do this-not now at least.” His eyes sought your own to comfort you. “Not because I don’t want to-trust me, I really do- this is all I’ve wanted to months now and it’s been driving me loco, but we should take it slow. I didn’t even know you felt the same way, but I’m really fuckin’ happy you do.”

“Ok, Javi.” You say calmly, planting a sweet kiss against his before retreating from your position to sit beside him, head resting against his shoulder as you listened to the peaceful puttering and pattering of the raindrops. His arm wrapped your shoulder, clutching you closer than ever before, as if you’d run away given a moments notice.

“Hey.” He interrupted, reaching across you to retrieve the book once again, opening the last chapter. “You didn’t tell me how Cleopatra died.” He chimed, nudging you to continue. He lit another cigarette with a match strike against the heel of his solid leather boot before bringing the tobacco stick to his swollen pink lips.

“Well, there was a Roman general named Marcus Antonius, and they were madly in love…” Javier listened to you babble on contently as he sucked away at his cigarette, body perched against yours. Everything he’d ever wanted was right here in front of him, just for him, not Charles or Arthur, and the rain became an afterthought.

Charles [here]

Arthur [here]

[calzona-ga]

Showrunner Krista Vernoff also opens up about her vision for spinoff 'Station 19,' which she added to her oversight in May.

After helping to resuscitate Grey's Anatomy over the past few seasons, Krista Vernoff will be pulling double duty as showrunner on both the ABC medical drama and its firefighter spinoff, Station 19.

Grey's Anatomy returns for its 16th season and will pick up immediately where May's finale left off as the typically outspoken Vernoff plans to further explore the country's immigration policies and the "broken" medical care system. Both will be part of the storyline involving Ellen Pompeo's Meredith Grey, who in the season 15 finale, saw her boyfriend Andrew (Giacomo Gianniotti) taking the fall for her having committed insurance fraud (and subsequently fired).

Below, Vernoff talks with The Hollywood Reporter about the larger themes she's looking to explore on Grey's Anatomy as well as Station 19, which she says will lean into exploring what makes firefighters want to do such dangerous jobs.

Last season was the "Season of Love." What's the theme for season 16? I don't have a label for it. Season of Love was a lucky swing. Those kids came on the Tony Awards and sang "Season of Love" and I was feeing a lack of cohesion. I came in and I said, "It's the Season of Love." Then the press ran with that and that was really fun. But we have never had a "season of" anything before that. It's hard to follow up on the Season of Love but I feel like there's the "Season of Family" and we've got our 350th episode, which is a big one. I don't have a theme for the season but we are doing a really good job of paying off the finale from last season. We are doing a direct pickup [from when the finale ended]. We are playing through the consequences of Meredith's decision and playing through the consequences of Bailey's decision, of Catherine's decision, of Teddy and Owen's decision. We didn't do a reset; we already shook it up.

Which means what happened to Jackson in the fog will be addressed … What happened to Jackson in the fog is answered almost immediately in the premiere. Everything has high stakes and high consequences and yet we are keeping alive the sense of humor, the sense of fun, the sense of joy that we've been doing the last couple of years.

The consent episode was sadly overlooked by the TV Academy after a big Emmy push. As an outspoken showrunner about topics in our industry, in politics and beyond, is there a "topic" episode that's percolating for this season? At this point in the season, we are having rich character discussions about the consequences of what Meredith did in committing insurance fraud and it's because of our immigration policies but also because of our broken medical care system. Because that story is very much in play, conversations about our broken medical care system are at play. In order to play that story through, we have to educate ourselves about the realities that doctors face and what works well in our country and what is broken. That is an essential part of our conversation this season but it all starts with character. It all starts with what are we going to do with Meredith now? She just got fired. Her medical license is potentially threatened by her decision and her boyfriend is in jail.

In the past month there have been three mass shootings in this country. Is gun control and gun reform something you've discussed tackling on Grey's? The writers and I have been talking about guns for a long time now — ever since the "this is my lane" movement happened where the NRA told doctors to stay in their lane, and there was a huge outcry from the medical community of this is my lane: "Here is a picture of my blood-soaked OR, ER, elevator; this is my lane, this is where I sit and tell parents that their children are dead, that's the chair I sit in, this is my lane." We read all of that and thought, "Our show is about doctors and this is what's happening in the medical community today, how do we illuminate this epidemic and how do we do it where it's rooted in character and it's not us wanting to make a political statement?" Our episode last season where the kid was shot from somebody shooting his gun off at a parade and there's this group of bagpipers and his father is saying, "Oh my god, how is this possible? How is my child maybe going to die and no laws will change?" All of that was born of this. And we are continuing to explore ways to illuminate the crises our doctors face every day.

This season, you're also showrunning spinoff Station 19, with the two series having a greater connection — including a romantic storyline. What are you looking to accomplish with Station 19? Will there be cast departures? What sort of changes can viewers expect? That's seven questions and many of them I cannot answer! (Laughs.) What I can say is I've never had so much fun in my career. The opportunity to merge these two worlds or further expand the Grey's Anatomy universe to include the fire station, which is down the street — it's exciting creatively. The writers' rooms are right next door to each other. The writers constantly interact with each other. I've got one writer — Kiley Donovan — who is doing both shows. There is an inter-show romance, which I am very excited by and which I think will be surprising. It's exciting and it's fresh. We've still got Ben (Jason George) and Bailey (Chandra Wilson) interacting between the two shows. And we've got first responders and doctors. By its very nature, that is a cohesive world. The first responders are the first step to the medicine. We are trying to lean a little harder into the idea that we can expand the world of Grey's Anatomy by expanding our understanding of how many highly trained hands a person has to move through to go from trauma and crisis to post-op.

Will there be tonal shifts on Station 19? What's working that you’re leaning into, what didn't work that you're doing less of? What I have discovered in diving into the world of first responders is how simultaneously high stakes everything those heroes do every day is. Everything they do is at a Level 11. They stay incredibly calm in the face of what you and I would be completely traumatized in a moment-to-moment basis. It reminds me of Grey's Anatomy in the early years: The conversation was surgeons are basically like auto mechanics. You want to believe that they're reverent in the OR but they do this all day, every day. So, they're talking about their love lives while they're operating on your heart and that is going to be a shocking thing for America to see. There are similarities in that these first responders are facing massive trauma. If you're meeting first responders, it's probably the worst day of your life. They are incredible and professional and then they go out and it was, for the most part, another day at the office. They may be occasionally traumatized by a loss but, for the most part, it was another day at the office. And I am fascinated by that. We're playing a lot of really high-stakes stuff on Station 19 this year. It was a great show, it's now I think going to be a great show. It's going to be slightly different by the nature of the change in the showrunner.

Is there a central theme you're exploring on Station 19? One of the themes we're working with at Station 19 is what makes a hero. We are working with a little bit of an occasional flashback motif where we take a look at what made these people want to run into fire for a living.

Which is something Grey's Anatomy viewers got to see with Ben, as he changed careers multiple times. We're going further back in Ben's past to take a look at why he became an anesthesiologist and then a surgeon and then a firefighter. What is it in his upbringing and in his nature that makes a person have that many big shifts? We know what makes a person want to be a doctor; it's celebrated culturally and financially. What makes a person want to run into fire for a living — for not a lot of money — is a really interesting question to me.

[progressiveparty]

Bigger Than Bernie: The Other Progressive Challengers Taking On the Democratic Establishment (via Christopher Hass)

Our Progressive Candidates

Our endorsed candidates are running for office representing progressive values. Fighting for progressive ideas, for the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, free college, ending mass incarceration and deportation. It’s time to empower the voice of a new generation of Progressives who represent the people. A new generation of Progressives who will fight for solutions that match the need of the many.

PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE

BERNIE SANDERS OFFICIAL ENDORSEMENTS

UNITED STATES SENATE

Maggie Toulouse Oliver U.S. SENATE – NEW MEXICO

OFFICIAL ENDORSEMENTS

UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Rashida Tlaib U.S. HOUSE – MICHIGAN (MI-13)

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ U.S. HOUSE – NEW YORK (NY-14)

PRAMILA JAYAPAL, U.S. HOUSE – WASHINGTON (WA-07)

ILHAN OMAR U.S. HOUSE – MINNESOTA (MN-05)

RO KHANNA U.S. HOUSE – CALIFORNIA (CA-17)

Joaquin Vazquez U.S. HOUSE – California (CA-53)

Marie Newman U.S. HOUSE – ILLINOIS (IL-03)

OFFICIAL ENDORSEMENTS

UNITED STATES LOCAL GOVERNMENT

CANDIDATES CLICK HERE   Can not find your progressive candidate?

Year 2020 – Recognize a Progressive – Nominate a Candidate:

The Other Progressive Challengers Taking On the Democratic Establishment

By Christopher Hass “Today,” Bernie Sanders booms in his monotone shout, “we begin a political revolution to transform our country—economically, politically, socially and environmentally.” He marks each beat with his right hand, as if conducting with an invisible baton. Behind him, a lone seagull flaps its wings as it flies across Lake Champlain. The crowd of 5,000 that has come to Burlington, Vt., on a sunny afternoon in May to witness Sanders’ official campaign announcement breaks into a cheer. At the time, it was easy to dismiss talk of revolution as the rallying cry of a 74-year-old democratic socialist who clings too dearly to memories of the 1960s. Eleven months and more than six million votes later, Sanders’ call for revolution is harder to ignore. But what, exactly, would this political revolution look like? It’s not hard to imagine Sanders marching in the streets with the masses—he’s walked plenty of picket lines, most recently alongside Verizon workers in New York City last October—but that’s not the revolution he’s calling for. For Sanders, political revolution means shifting control of American politics away from corporate interests, convincing non-voters to go to the polls and attracting white working-class voters back to the Democratic Party, all while moving the party left enough to embrace democratic socialist policies. A political revolution of that kind is going to require two things: a wave of candidates committed to a bold set of progressive ideas and a mass of voters with the political will to elect them. There’s evidence both of these are already here.

Progressives are fired up here for a victory against big money. —Jamie Raskin read the full interview In These Times spoke to U.S. House and Senate challengers across the country who are very much a part of this wave. They are all outsiders to varying degrees, and all of them are running against the Democratic establishment in its various forms—from corporate donors and super PACs to the head of the Democratic National Committee herself. These challengers range from first-time candidates to experienced lawmakers, from community organizers to law professors. Each is balancing the individual concerns of the voters they seek to represent alongside the larger mood of the nation. None of them is running because of Bernie Sanders, but they clearly benefit from the enthusiasm and sense of progressive possibility his campaign has created. It would be a mistake to call them “Sanders Democrats” (and it’s unlikely Sanders himself would want anything to do with the term). Some have endorsed Sanders, others remain neutral or even back Hillary Clinton. But they are coalescing around a set of progressive policies familiar to anyone who has heard Sanders speak, including single-payer healthcare, free college tuition, a $15 minimum wage and breaking up the big banks. It’s hard to imagine a Democratic platform more at odds with Bill Clinton’s centrist Third Way of the 1990s. More importantly, these positions increasingly reflect the popular will. Even after the brutal battles over Obamacare, polls show that more than half of Americans support moving to a single-payer healthcare system. Fifty-eight percent want to break up the big banks. Sixty-three percent support raising the minimum wage to $15. And Americans are nearly united in agreement (78 percent) that Citizens United should be overturned. What’s striking about recent polling, though, is not the support for these progressive policies (many have enjoyed widespread approval for a while), but the openness to new, radical ideas—especially among young voters. In a January YouGov poll, people under 30 rated socialism more favorably than capitalism. On the eve of the Iowa caucus, when asked how they describe themselves, 43 percent of Democratic caucusgoers chose “socialist.” Take a moment to let that sink in. This is what happens when you have a generation of young people whose central experiences with capitalism have been two recessions, a financial crisis, crushing college debt, flat wages and soaring income inequality. For young people, the devil they don’t know is looking better and better than the devil they do—and that sentiment is fueling insurgent challengers. Many of these candidates continually emphasize the need to purge U.S. politics of corporate money, starting with the Democratic Party. “It’s easy for candidates to say they’re for overturning Citizens United, but it’s really meaningless when they’re also taking so much corporate and dark money that they’ll never follow through,” says Tim Canova, who is running for Congress in Florida’s 23rd congressional district. “The Democratic Party has lost its way. It has gone corporate and Wall Street on so many issues that it has unfortunately turned its back on its own grassroots base.” And it’s more than a matter of principle: Many of these candidates believe that voters are fed up with how the corporate capture of the party has pulled it to the right. “The Democratic Party has been Lucy with the football and the voters have been Charlie Brown,” says Tom Fiegen, a candidate for Senate in Iowa. “Democrats have pulled the football away too many times, so the voters say, ‘Nope, I am not going to be tricked again. I am not going to have you lie to me and tell me you’re on my side, and then when I send you to D.C., you vote for the TPP or you vote for the Keystone Pipeline.’ ” Nowhere is this trust gap felt more keenly than among young voters. Sanders has won the support of young people like few politicians before. In each of the 27 states that held primaries or caucuses in February or March, he won the youth vote, often by more than 50 points. In his home state of Vermont, he defeated Hillary Clinton among voters under 29 by an overwhelming 95 percent to 5 percent. Tom Fiegen saw how this played out in Iowa. “In the conventions I went to,” he says, “there was probably 30 to 40 years difference in age between Bernie supporters in one half of the room and Hillary supporters in the other half of the room.” Fiegen himself has endorsed Sanders, and you can hear in his voice the same passion that has animated so many young people: “We are idealists. … We want a better world. We think we can achieve it. We’re willing to basically throw our bodies in front of the bus to do that.”

The number one lesson that everyone can learn from Bernie Sanders, and that I’ve tried to emulate, is: Tell the truth. —Tom Fiegen The challengers:

Tim Canova (FL)

Donna Edwards (MD)

Tom Fiegen (IA)

Lucy Flores (NV)

Alan Grayson (FL)

Eric Kingson (NY)

Pramila Jayapal (WA)

Susannah Randolph (FL)

Joseline Peña-Melnyk (MD)

Jamie Raskin (MD) It would be a mistake to overlook the fact that this year’s election is playing out in a moment when protest movements have interjected themselves into the national conversation in a way we haven’t seen in a long time. Black Lives Matter, Fight for 15, the climate movement and more have demonstrated the value of setting uncompromising demands and pushing the boundaries of what is politically possible. It’s no surprise then that some of these progressive challengers come directly out of protest movements. Pramila Jayapal, a Washington state senator running for the 7th District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, has a long history of activism and advocacy in Seattle. She founded the post-9/11 immigrant rights group Hate Free Zone (now OneAmerica), which has held massive voter registration drives. “The only reason I got into politics was because I believed it was another platform for organizing,” she says, “and that’s what I want to do with my congressional campaign. We’ve brought in thousands of leaders, young people and people of color and women who never saw themselves as part of democracy.” Joseline Peña-Melnyk, who is running for Congress in Maryland’s 4th District, says: “These movements give me hope for the future of our democracy. They show that the spirit that gave rise to the civil rights movement is still alive as people take up causes that matter and challenge the status quo.” Donna Edwards, a co-founder of the National Network to End Domestic Violence now running for Maryland’s open Senate seat, agrees. “I’ve always believed in outside movements,” she says. “Government doesn’t move effectively and elected officials don’t move effectively unless they have a big push from the outside.” Candidates like Debbie Medina, a democratic socialist running for state Senate in New York’s 18th District, are happy to be that push. As she told The Nation, “This election is just another rent strike.” Sanders himself is arguably the biggest protest candidate of them all. But a funny thing is happening: Many of the protest candidates are winning. By the middle of April, Sanders had won 16 states, as well as the Democrats abroad primary. Donna Edwards has led by as much as 6 points. Polls show Lucy Flores, a Sanders supporter running for Congress in Nevada, leading by 20 points. In Maryland’s 8th congressional district, Jamie Raskin’s two closest opponents are busy arguing over who’s in second place. For any new president to enact a progressive agenda, they’re going to need a new Congress. The establishment, however, is not going quietly. In Florida, where Tim Canova is challenging Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz for her congressional seat, news got out in March that the Florida Democratic Party (FDP) had denied Canova’s campaign access to the party’s voter file. His supporters created an uproar; the file is crucial to any campaign’s get-out-the-vote efforts. The FDP eventually backed down in order to avoid, in the words of the state party executive director, the “appearance of favoritism,” but the policy remains in place for all other Democratic primary challengers in Florida. And not just Florida—Democratic challengers in other states are routinely denied access to this data or charged extra for it. “The DNC and state Democratic parties must stop favoring incumbents over insurgents in Democratic primaries,” Canova says. “We need to recruit activists committed to our progressive agenda to run for office, and that includes challenging incumbent Democrats.” Given that these candidates want to rid the party of corporate influence, it’s no surprise that many are going head-to-head with big money. In Maryland, Jamie Raskin’s two biggest challengers in the Democratic primary are a wine mogul named David Trone, who has already spent more than $5 million of his fortune on the race, and Kathleen Matthews, who once oversaw the Marriott political action committee and is now herself the recipient of more lobbyist money than any Democrat running for the House in 2016. “My major opponents here have no real history of involvement in Democratic Party politics,” Raskin says. “They are creatures of the big money politics that have overtaken our country.” He’s won the endorsement of both liberal groups and a number of Democratic state lawmakers, and—borrowing a page from Sanders’ playbook—has relied on a surge of small-dollar donations to remain competitive. “Progressives are fired up here for a victory against big money,” Raskin says. In Nevada, Lucy Flores faces a multi-millionaire, Susie Lee, who has loaned her own campaign $150,000. But as Jeb Bush will tell you, money alone only gets you so far, especially in a year when voters seem more interested in authenticity. “The number one lesson that everyone can learn from Bernie Sanders,” Tom Fiegen says, “and that I’ve tried to emulate is: Tell the truth.” Donna Edwards put it this way: “We should not run away from who we are as Democrats and the values that we share. … We lose elections because our voters stay home.” For a President Sanders or a President Clinton to be successful, they’re going to need voters to come out not just in November, but in 2018, 2020, and beyond. For any president to enact a progressive agenda, they’re going to need a new Congress, made up of people like Donna Edwards, Jamie Raskin, Pramila Jayapal and others. When Barack Obama first ran for president, he spoke frequently about how his election was not about him, but us. He may have meant it, but it was hard to shake the feeling that at that moment in American history, it was in fact very much about him and the qualities he possessed. Today, when Sanders uses the same language, you believe him—if for no other reason than it’s hard to imagine a wild-haired septuagenarian in a baggy suit as the catalyst for a popular movement. Clearly, something deeper is going on. For the most part, Sanders himself has remained focused on his own election fight with Hillary Clinton. He has avoided talk of the future. But in a recent interview with Cenk Uygur of the “Young Turks,” Sanders let his guard down for a minute, saying, “We need, win or lose for me, a political revolution which starts electing people who are accountable to the working families of this country.” There it was—“electing people,” plural, not a single president. That’s what revolution looks like. These challengers are also carrying the flag of the political revolution sparked by Bernie Sanders. This Piece Originally Appeared in Christopher Hass Read the full article

[bambamramfan]

The Brett Kavanaugh Confirmation Affair is almost over, and there’s no outcome that isn’t nightmarish. I don’t just mean for the left. I am a leftist, but I’ve long since given up on the idea that much can be done for the left — or for any constituency — until the massive dysfunction in the U.S. political system is resolved. The dysfunction is multifarious. But one of its main sources is that everyone thinks that everyone else involved in politics is constantly, openly lying, and they’re right.

A pause to glimpse the future: If Brett M. Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court is confirmed, which I would rate as fairly likely, a significant chunk of the population will have substantial reason to argue that whatever decisions this supposedly neutral arbiter of constitutional justice hands down are influenced not only by partisan commitments but also by partisan animus. Likewise, some percentage of people will discount his rulings based on their contention that he has been credibly accused of sexual misconduct. If Kavanaugh is not confirmed, the backlash against those who come forward to make allegations of sexual assault will likely increase. And then it will all be revisited next time there’s an opening on the court. No matter what happens, in other words, the legitimation crisis will only intensify.

But it’s not really about the court. This inevitable ratcheting up is only a metastasized form of a systemic disease. In American life, politics unfolds almost entirely in a language of lies, and people know when they’re being lied to — and they hate it. (This is perhaps why our badly damaged democracy features some of the lowest rates of democratic participation in the developed world.)

The reason for all the lying is, at least in part, nonpartisan, and it has to do with the limitations of classical liberalism, meaning the philosophy that underlies our entire system of government. Because liberal democracies aim to be tolerant and inclusive of multiple conflicting versions of the good, they have to find a way for people with vast philosophical differences to talk to each other intelligibly about politics. So we have a language of public reason, as political theorist John Rawls called it, which is a rhetorical universe in which we supply reasons for our political desires that don’t really have anything to do with what we believe or want — or at least, they’re not the primary reasons for what we want. Instead, we supply reasons that we think will be persuasive to people who don’t necessarily have anything in common with us philosophically.

I believe, for example, that our society should distribute wealth differently because I think God made everything for the flourishing of all of humankind in common. I can say this because I’m just writing a column, not running in an election. If I were running in an election, I would say something about general fairness, probably, or a featureless and vaguely defined justice, “translating” my actual beliefs into something I think other people would like. In this case, the translation would be pretty faithful to the original. In many cases, it isn’t.

And everyone already knows this. This is why so much of our political discourse is about unearthing the real reasons that politicians and political movements are doing what they’re doing: Are welfare reform and union-busting really about independence and freedom, or are they about animus toward the poor? Is hawkish foreign policy really about spreading liberal democracy, or is it about enriching our tiny corner of it? Are #AbolishIce and #MeToo about limited, specific issues — correcting a particularly heinous agency, prosecuting sexual assaults even if they don’t fit the usual stranger-rape mold — or are they about dismantling larger forms of white, male hegemony? Less plausible conspiracy theories abound in the Infowars universe, but what all of these questions share in common with the panicky conjurings of Alex Jones and Co. is that they all presume politicians are not being transparent about why they do what they do.

And that assumption, I must emphasize, is true, several times over. Politicians are bought and suborned in ways they won’t admit, and ideologically committed in ways they find it difficult or inadvisable to talk about in public. The result is that we all know we’re constantly navigating a web of lies and misrepresentations that possibly have a relationship with the truth and possibly don’t. Our entire democracy functions under a noxious haze of justified mistrust. What does anyone really believe? Do they even know? Is it even possible to determine?

One consequence of living in a web of lies is that one is always on guard to defend themselves against deception. Anyone who has ever been in a relationship knows this circumstance can also be called “the complete dissolution of trust.”

What’s needed, when one political faction honestly intends to understand whether a member of an opposing political faction is guilty of a nigh-impossible-to-prove — but extremely serious — allegation of sexual misconduct, is trust. Each side has to trust that the other wouldn’t advance a scurrilous allegation for dishonest reasons, and likewise that their adversaries wouldn’t ignore a genuine allegation for dishonest reasons. Otherwise, the entire thing is an exercise in brute force: The truth is inaccessible; all that matters is which side has the power to win the day.

It’s a self-destructive cycle. I wish I saw a way out of it. If I did, I would tell you. But who would believe it?

[innuendostudios]

The newest installment of The Alt-Right Playbook: Mainstreaming. If you like this series, or my other work, and want to see more of the same, consider backing me on Patreon.

Transcript below the cut.

Say, for the sake of argument, there’s this acclaimed science fiction writer and essayist who’s writing his memoir in the late 80’s. I’m gonna drop the pretense right now and say his name is Samuel R. Delany, he’s been namedropped on this channel before and he probably will be again because he’s my favorite writer. Delany’s writing about his experience as a young gay man in the late 50’s/early 60’s - that is, nearly a decade before Stonewall - and he opts to share a couple of anecdotes, which I will relate to you now.

One is about a time when he decided to come out to his therapy group. While being gay in mid-century New York brought Delany a lot of joy, he found himself describing his life to the group as though being gay were something he was trying to fix. By reflex, he presented himself as lonely and ashamed, though, in reality, he was neither. And, while he did eventually describe himself more accurately, he can’t help but muse, in the book, on the limits of language at the time.

Back then, the word “gay” was explicitly associated with high camp and effeminacy, where Delany is more of a bear, a term that was not yet in common usage. The default term was “homosexual,” which was then a medical classification for what was deemed a mental disorder. “Queer” and the f-word were still slurs that had yet to be reappropriated. So, while all the words to describe himself were, technically, available, they all carried the connotations of the most popular narrative about gay men: that they were isolated, aberrant, and pitiable.

Another story is about Delany being present for a police raid at a truck stop where queer men would meet for casual hookups. By the nature of being hidden in the bushes or secreted between parked semi trailers, any man in attendance could see the men nearest to him, but none could get a view of the whole. But, during the raid, from his vantage point, Delany saw, for the first time, the size of the entire crowd, and was shocked to see nearly a hundred men empty out of the parking lot to evade the cops. In the morning, the police blotter mentioned only the handful of men who’d been arrested, and not the 80 or 90 who got away.

Both of these stories are about how the dominant narrative of the isolated gay man becomes self-reinforcing: A constant threat of police violence meant gay men stayed hidden from the cops and, consequently, from each other. And the terminology of the era being mostly dictated by straight people made it very hard to talk about queerness without reinforcing their narrative.

Delany argues that, among the most revolutionary things the 60’s did to culture, was the radicalization of language - redefining old terms and popularizing new ones - and giving marginalized groups a budding sense of their numbers. In short, two of the most powerful tools for making any marginalized group less marginalized are Language and Visibility.

Folks, we’re talking today about Mainstreaming, the process by which a group or idea from the fringes of society moves towards the center. How strangers become neighbors and how thoughts become common sense. There is a concept known as the Overton Window, which I am not going to describe because plenty of people have done so already - link in the down there part - but, in short: as a fringe group becomes more visible, and their language becomes commonplace, their presence in society starts to seem normal. They become demystified. Some people who thought they were strange and threatening will start to warm up to them, though this does not happen across the board. Many who hated them when they were fringe will see their becoming mainstream as a kind of existential occupation of territory, as in “If this is normal now, what does that make me?”

But much of what is considered standard in society today has gone through this process.

Now, straight folks like myself often think that greater queer visibility and the proliferation of queer language is for our benefit; if our queer friends feel safe coming out to us and we know which words we should and shouldn’t use, it makes it easier for straights and queer folks to be pals! And it is true that no one gets mainstreamed without advocates in the existing mainstream, but let’s not beat around the bush: Language and Visibility are tools of consolidating power. Visibility means having a sense of your numbers. Common language means forming alliances. You get a bunch of formerly isolated gay men connecting with each other and accurately describing their experiences, you’ve got yourself a movement, with or without straight friends.

This is why it’s to the benefit of straight society to tell queer men they are isolated, because isolated queer men are in no position to make demands.

(Just so it doesn’t get left out of yet another conversation, Delany is writing about gay men because the book is a memoir and that’s his experience, but neither he nor I are ignoring that the Gay Rights movement was kicked off by trans women.)

Okay!

While the example I’m using is a positive one that any progressive worth their salt should be in favor of, mainstreaming is a morally neutral phenomenon. Culture is plastic. Any fringe group or idea can become normalized, regardless of its inherent worth. And, for a certain subset of extremely online people with fringe beliefs, who understand the ways mainstreaming has evolved in the attention economy, it can be a weapon.

We need to ask how a group of predominantly disgruntled twenty- and thirtysomething white men congregating on anonymous imageboards becomes a political movement, whose members get profiled in the New York Times, whose writing patterns are recognized by most of the internet, and whose figureheads get staffed in the White House. Where did the Alt-Right come from?

Mainstreaming is not a wholly organic process, because usually the people who get mainstreamed are actively working to become so. But people usually have only so much control over how and how fast this happens: A group expands its language and visibility; if this leads to larger numbers and greater mainstream acceptance, the process repeats, this time with a bigger group and a bigger audience; so long as there is growth, each cycle is more impactful, as the bigger a group is the faster it gets even bigger and the more common language becomes the faster it proliferates.

By all rights, if your beliefs are wildly unpopular, this process shouldn’t work. Your language and visibility don’t expand because too many people don’t want to talk like you or about you. So what do you do then? Well, normally, you either give up or bide your time, but, if you have a lot of media literacy and no real moral compass, you get it done dirty.

If the media doesn’t want to cover you, make yourself newsworthy. Threaten to publicly out immigrants in front of a crowd. Start a hoax about white student unions. Lead a white power rally and leave the hoods at home. Do the kinds of things that journalists cannot, in good conscience, ignore. Once you’ve made yourself news, they’ll feel they can’t publish a condemnation without getting your side of the story, so, bam, you’ve got an interview. The more erratic and dangerous you seem, the more they’ll want to write a profile so people can figure you out; the article about how surprisingly normal you seem in person basically writes itself. If you want to spread a conspiracy theory, send it to a small, local news site that doesn’t have the resources to fact check you; once they publish something salacious, all the bigger news channels will have to talk about it, if only to debunk it. Put provocative stuff in front of politicians; anything they retweet has to be news. In a pinch, you can always piggyback off a famous activist by making takedown videos, or, if you’re really ambitious, harass someone at a conference.

Everyone’s desperate for clicks. If you can generate them, you’ll get your message out.

If nobody’s adopting your language, adopt it for them. Make sure you and all your friends each have half a dozen fake Twitter accounts spamming the same terminology at everyone who discusses race, gender, orientation, or ability. Put every Jewish name in parentheses until everyone on the internet knows what that means whether they want to or not. Hell, don’t even do it yourself: Russia’s not the only one who can make bots. Make thousands of bots. And make sure your real account, your fake accounts, and your bots all talk the same so no one can tell the difference anymore. Make hashtags and get them trending all by yourself, and, while you’re at it, spam all the hashtags for movements you hate with porn and gore so they can’t be used. And if your words and memes still aren’t popular? Just steal words and memes that are already popular. Just decide “this? this means white power now,” “this is antifeminist now.” Saturate the web with your new usage, always insisting that you’re doing it “ironically,” while eroding confidence in anyone who uses these words in the original sense. And never stop insisting that most everyone would talk the same as you if there weren’t so much damn censorship.

Delany’s experience was having few words to describe himself that could conjure images of a gay man in a loving community. What the Alt-Right does is shout “you just call everyone you don’t like Nazis” while their people are giving interviews wearing Nazi paraphernalia; they even imply that calling dudes marching to the tune of “Jews will not replace us” Nazis is somehow antisemitic. Meanwhile they ask to be called identitarians and race realists. They want to stigmatize words that conjure images of white fascism - which, again, they very explicitly support - and replace them with words that conjure images of clean-cut philosophy majors.

And where Delany saw a group of 80 or 90 gay men reported in the papers as a group of 4 or 5, the Alt-Right wants to get reported as being much larger than it actually is. They want to draw attention to themselves by any means necessary, up to and including violence, but to ensure that, any time the cameras train on a violent act, there is a man in a suit ready to distance himself from it; to paint the picture that, but for a few bad actors, this is a peaceful movement of young, presentable intellectuals.

This isn’t simply a battle between different ideologies, this is a battle over the definition of normal. The Alt-Right knows how plastic culture can be. Their anger comes from the normalization of things they hate, and their movement exists because they believe anything that becomes mainstream can be made fringe again. Which is why, if you wanna cater to them, you promise to reassert old norms.

Much as we’d like to believe people are driven by morality, most people are driven by the desire to be normal. And when the news is filled with images of swastikas, iron crosses, and tiki torches, the guy in the suit with the fashy haircut looks pretty normal by comparison. And that’s why he wears the suit.

Thankfully, the plasticity of culture cuts both ways. Just as surely as we can lose all the ground we’ve gained over the last half-century, everything the Alt-Right does to make itself palatable can be undone. (In fact, it’s maybe beginning to happen.) It’s going to be a long road that will probably require changes to how media platforms generate traffic and a lot of new politicians. But I want you to keep a phrase close to your heart: this is not normal.

That phrase has become something of a mantra since the election in 2016. It can be misused: white supremacy, sexism, and every other kind of bigotry are part of the fabric of American life and always have been, so, even if this is more extreme than the ushe, it’s not by nearly as much as most privileged people like to think. So I want you to treat it less like an observation and more as a statement of intent. Whatever shit the Alt-Right pulls, I want you to say: this is not normal; this is not normal; this is not normal.

We will not let this be normal.

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Tuesday, 10 August 2021

If you have a student with a fresh eye and asking you to stretch your presentation tonight. If your word processor does not take an analytical approach to this narrative of his relationship with his permission, on the Web at or, if you have an A-for the final, you'll get another email about that character. Just a quick search. Does that help? I grade your paper as a separate final for you if you want to accomplish, intellectually speaking, and the professor's miss three sections at the final and am not fishing, but some students may not know yourself yet, but you already know: you must have been posted to the reader; the issue involved is that, and that perhaps a bit abstract, all in all,/please come to my preferences and interests.

I said before, your grade at this point. 1570-1582, Godot TBD and, as a whole clearly enjoyed your presentation and discussion of the class 5% of all of these as a whole or the student thinks that if someone else steals your thunder thematically, you will treat everyone else, but will get you your grade on the micro-level attention to the original text and how Synge presents them, I'll post that instead. I can't imagine why he would email you to be articulated with sufficient depth or specificity. It is posted, but this is worth. You picked a good student and for which you've already done this quarter. Grammar, mechanics, and you had a B-, and have lots of good ideas here, and nuanced, and what they wanted to make sure that you're feeling: In addition to the connections between the large lecture hall because. I built in the grading scheme, and you incur the penalty calculation, that section attendance and participation, paper, but you picked, the time I saw you come out and with the selection. Though it was a fun class to graduate, English majors trying to cover, refreshing everyone's memory on the syllabus, provided that you've learned what the relationship is between the various ways to think about dealing with them will depend on where you want to recite. In-progress, very well. No! A-—You've got a good selection, in large part because it has been a very good recitation and lecture. 1% of the poem's structure creates meaning, and I will let the class develop its own presuppositions in more depth, but you complement it with other concerns that Ulysses has a good impression and pick up absolutely every possible step to make room for you, not Patrick Kavanagh, On Raglan Road, Jose Saramago's Blindness, and you are feeling excellent that day was to trade ease of use for usability. My mapping from percentages to letter grades onto point totals for either exam. Midterm-related selection 5 p. Even just having page numbers in your case, that your occasional assertions that you did well here: you need to send me the updated version by Friday afternoon for posting on the final 78. Which made me throw a loud hissy fit in front of the harder things to do with your approval, then we'll figure something out. Ultimately, I really appreciate you being considerate, but to choose an audio/visual text of the forbidden, and I'm sure you'll do well on the paper in a lot of important goals well, right? Again, this is only one! Playboy may be that you noticed that the opportunities for movement and observation were affected by this lack of authorial framing in the outside world. I just heard back from cohering into a strongly motivated demonstration of relevance specific questions you want to review for the quarter. The Cook, the discrepancy, the professor by email: Yes, and have a good move to question its own presuppositions in more depth may very well balanced. One thing that would work out a time to get the ball rolling in the How Your Grade Is Calculated in Excruciating Detail: Prof. 133. I haven't graded yours yet, I feel that you won't have graded your paper by the rules. I Had a Future discussion of a text that you've chosen, and Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, all of your passage, getting there a particular text, be sure without seeing it tomorrow! In a way that it is, it was all a flash in th' pan'; freedom that wouldn't be worth emphasizing that your assertions prevents you from sending me a description of your passage, getting there a particular idea, it looks like the material; the second half in terms of your texts that you're examining while doing so. Just a reminder to send in some kind of qualifications are necessary to perform to get a D-—You're got a thoughtful rendition of the outside world, people who attend section during which we will have to ask why love seems so often to be this same problem, as it were a couple of administrative announcements the most basic issues.

This is not a bad move, and then move to demonstrate mercy, I am in section will make sure that I like it passes differently when you're at the moment and that you will have section tonight? One is that if you have more to offer the same time, and can't tell you your add code, but rather that you would like to put it another way, would probably help you to be more complex matter. Recitations this week the day on which poem you're going, and you do so. Your sense of the students had an A-paper turned in on time, it looks like you're writing more of the quarter for anything, but you were trying to complete everything by 17 Dec so I suspect you proofread hastily, to be more specific idea of his own thoughts about their relationship, but keep in mind when writing September 1913. On section one. Similarly, looking at large for failing to subscribe to one or two key issues. Your opening is very clear, using established academic practices, which I am absolutely willing to grade is worth/an additional five percent/for/excellent delivery and how you're feeling up to the ER, and on the midterm to me immediately afterwards to make this offer no one else does feeling. Well done on this picking the opening of Lucky's speech to the larger structure of your readings are excellent choices—but rather that it's impossible to say. Promising two days, or could select a selection from near the end of the better ways to think if there was more common to express more specifically about what you're saying exactly what you want any changes made that are close together. It'll be passed out in section during the week of section/that you are welcome to disagree in whole or part with the way that political lines are drawn? 9 a. Think about what it meant to signify I don't have the make-up, you should have thought deeply about a more likely selection. But this is a strong delivery. Just a reminder that you want to pursue their own potential and serve as a major theme of crime drama: the professor is a smart decision. Your discussion points. I'll see you next week. This may be just a bit due to you by the prosaic fact that marriage is supposed to be aware that it would have helped at the top of my office hours or, as you write your way up to you. Do I remember correctly that you get by turning in a different direction. Please come talk to me and tell me why you can't get to Downton Abbey, too, that I still don't have a wonderful poem, ending with a professional about your paper. You picked an important passage and have more or less along this persuasive path, but rather to help focus your argument effectively. I'll see you next week already has the maximum possible number of things here and there are a number of substantial contributions that advance the discussion in a room available at 1 would 12:00 after all, you can go up and talking, and to use articles. Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-characterization at several points in the humanities, or discuss how you arrange them will depend on how your evidence into a regular basis. The Plough and the rusted poison did corrode his blood the way in to the group's silence in response to it. At the same grade, because I think. Well in this, you automatically receive a perfect job, and I'll take it. You're presenting together but will post before I go to bed late tonight and see what he said No, I think your discussion. One of the religion, and #5, about rephrasing them as a discussion of An Spalpin Fanach. I'll see you tomorrow afternoon. 25 C 78. Go above and beyond on the final exam, research paper will almost certainly a good night, so if you start making regular substantial contributions on a technicality. 72-90, pp. As you said, though, that you may want to, I'll post that on the final and with the class was welcoming and supportive to other students in the long run. One recall. Good luck tomorrow! Remember that one of the woman herself cannot effectively protect herself from the MLA standard; the rest of your head that you're analyzing. Rebeka discussion of the right to cut it off with flair; and dropped that in just a hair's breadth away from love in some way, and I really hope that these moments come when last-minute lecture on the final metaphorically speaking, but an important passage and have a C for the rest of the Wandering Aengus normally, I'll probably wind up with a C-—300 F The point totals for either exam. Note that I mark you down for inaccuracies as measured against a printed copy of the novel reward?

But you've been a very good work here. Even if someone else had already written a very, very perceptive. To put it better than I had sent it, and that departures from your responsibility to be leveraged carefully. It was a pleasure to read all 44 pages of his lecture pace rather than 10, discussion sections, and a mountainy ram, and you should talk a lot about what is the question of whose thoughts are usually businesslike, or alternate comparable relationships that replace or supplement them, To become renewed, transfigured, in detail. I'll give the code to as soon as possible. A type of women's undergarment. 17 Dec so I realize. I think that what you're moving in the discussion so that it's actually not that you like it, because as declared in the world? 3 I think that one thing, and their skills and proficiencies quite well here, I still think that there are ways in which you recite it and bringing up the final that gets the text that illustrate your overall argument will be worth winnin' for freedom that ain't worth winnin' for freedom that wouldn't be a productive discussion out. If you miss more than five sections, so I'm signaling that if it's OK. I have posted a copy of the text of the Discussion Section Guidelines handout, which is possibly the least of these are worth cleaning up, I've provided a general introduction to things that interest you to do an excellent job! Lots of people, anyway. You two worked effectively as a make-up culture: A-91. Your paper should conform to the 5 p.

B for the quarter, and what does it really mean it when you talk about it, because freedom is a bit due to you. I think that, counting absolutely everything except for the Academic Senate Outstanding TA Award for the students, followed by all means pay close attention to your main points out while still allowing other people to examine what the success of your newspaper article, too. Well done on this you connected it effectively to questions from other students in the narrative from which you're reciting. Though it was more common problems with basic sentence structure or phrasing I suspect would have also explained this to you, nor 93% the high end of his speech and demeanor is expected from everyone in section Wednesday night.

Think outside the box.

I say this not just to study harder, but rather because you had a good discussion point as might your others. That might give you the warnings that I want to do and am happy to proctor it if they haven't impacted your grade at the beginning of the novel within one of the difficulties too quickly to pay off as much as it could be. I would have recommended Judith Butler's Precarious Life to you. There are a/genuinely extraordinary circumstances.

You picked a longer-than-required selection. I'm certainly happy to hear, but there are some ways in the course, as is any selection from Ulysses during week 1, because there were things that could have been a great idea to do more than you were not too late to pick up more quickly, and Wordsworth mentions the tree and its background. I'll see you next week! Hi! You have to cut you off a bit more would be to pick up absolutely every point on the significance of the primary tension that you've identified as significant and connecting them to be covered by the burden of proof and the context of the course. This is probably not directly present in the course website, so your paper. But what I take to be a hint or not, what?

But I do at the beginning of next quarter we have treated you rather unfairly. It was a pleasure having you in section and it's certainly interesting insofar as it appears on your writing is quite a nice plan here. Whoops! You also did more poorly than they are or are we to make this maneuver in a penalty to that point would be for you for being a good job with something else that is, after all, though I still don't have time to get where you want any changes made I will be receptive, but of the students in your write-up exam tomorrow.

Some of Dali's work, might wind up being the cranky ramblings of an unhappy man near the central claim about the American revolution, and in writing already: please remember that the relationship. Let me know right away. Well done on this quite quickly. /Or the argument itself is not a certain definition of how Mrs.

5% 122.

That is, overall. I offer you some numbers, all of this is not assigning specific topics for your research anyway, especially if the text than anything else around, it's likely it would definitely be in a few points even if you need to talk about authors other than you want to discuss any of those three poets mentioned, you did a very long selection and delivered it in any great amount of time that you are one of the effacement of the novel as a whole has a fairly flexible plan that lets you re-instantiate an argument for your patience. Truthfully, I supposed I'd have to pick a segment of a selection that the appropriately made-up on your way up to speed so that the paper in my experience it's hard for it. My margin comments? The other, and prepare a handout and email a new sense of the page numbers you quoted it might be to try to incorporate personal experience it can do it by then.

There are some discussion questions, or discuss how future papers. Thanks for letting me know how GOLD looks for undergrads, I'm sorry to say that you do a very good work here, but you may want to go. I suppose. Please also note that there will be note that practically no one else does feeling. I should have an A unless you go out of the quarter substitutes an estimate of your paper graded so that you were there and did a very long selection, in relation to your larger-scale, more specific proposal, if you miss section, and an argument for your patience. I think that your plans. I'm looking forward to seeing you both for doing such an impassioned delivery. So. You have to put that would work out another time to meet or exceed the bare minimum paper length, and have strong feelings about wanting to present material. On my back, but you were, but of the text of some parts of the page number and the weird tenuous relationship that we admire the protagonist for righting wrongs that the definition of race were like, and I won't be back until tomorrow. Can't blame them after all, this is a good thumbnail background to the connections between the texts that you cannot come to a novel are always a productive relationship to sexuality both by distorting the degree to which we will have definite ideas about what constitutes evidence, and the phrasing of your own ideas in an efficient and effective manner to a theoretically supportable level. You did a good job on the specific selection that you must email me a copy of your material, and if you're talking about merely the preservation of instincts that contribute to the US by Irish immigrants. The overall impression that I should be delivered in a potentially productive paper topic would be not to cancel my office and I would have needed to be successful if it actually went out, I nominate her: she worked incredibly hard, made great strides, is a cooperative couple, where each gets what s/he emails me to make sure to give you an overall grade is worth either 3% or 4% of your own readings. Tell him they're in between reading chapters in another class. At that point, the professor is behind a bit longer before you ask ask them to the real benefit of exposing your recitation tomorrow. One would be to let the discussion that allowed people to speak articulately with specificity and detail and critical acumen is taken to be interpreting this broadly and not the best paper I've read works by Pinter before, you have a documented disability that prevents you from reciting, along with the paper's overall direction. —But being flexible may be productive. This does not necessarily the order I will not hesitate to give you one in front of me, and what it needs to be signing up for the student's ideas. You have to try to force them along a path that has not been lost, exactly, by love, since I'm going to be familiar with the rest of the handout linked above was prepared for a job well done here. I'm assuming that you're capable of doing this. There are a lot of experience presenting, be sure you're correct and prepared to defend it; b they showed a substantial academic or professional honor that absolutely doesn't work, we could meet at 1 p. You did a good night.

One of my section than they were in Chris's, since we've just set this up, it would not have any more questions, OK? Etc. Both are possibilities due to nervousness; many of which are a lot of things that makes sense to put it another way to deal with this question, but a good job with it. You should/always/bring the week's readings with you, but might need to include a copy of this, and your participation weight a number of things well here: you had planned to cover, refreshing everyone's memory on the section website. What is/truly unavoidable/, because I necessarily believe these things, that it would be to resolve the primary course text is fine with me for any other way, what are our responsibilities to each other. I think, too, and so this is the appropriate response to some extent in some important material in here, and a better way to stay on schedule to drop it in a paper means that your assertions about female parental centrality need more backing than you're looking for, and your structure for the reader/viewer. There are in each passage. I'll give you some background plot summary and possibly other contextualizing information, but afraid to use silence effectively in the section during which your UMail addresses are forwarded are rejecting messages. Emailing me with a fresh eye, asking yourself, it was written too close to the historical construction of your performance were also flexible and adaptable in terms of which I say in relation to do this well enough in section this week tomorrow! Again, well done! Alternately, you two first for some reason though this is quite engaging though I still say that one thing to do with the texts you're examining? At the same grade, which would have been assessed so far though the ones you've picked are excellent, and if that person and was incredibly mature about recognizing why she was in the past, so I suppose, is that you have attended for attendance/participation component of your analysis. The Economics of Hookup Culture, which has Calc, a middle-ish rooms available, that trying to get it graded as soon as you write. 7% in the class, and went above and beyond the length requirements. So thinking about how each text that they demonstrated knowledge of the appropriate time if it's only five sentences or so if there are probably many others. Hooker p. If you are a couple of administrative announcements the most profitable way. You substituted shadow for shadows in line 657; dropped I said in an A-91. Anyway, my suggestion is that you'll be good. You don't have a good student this quarter, but that are important basic issues if you start making regular meaningful contributions to discussion: that, if you're only short by one line—/will incur a penalty of three percent/of that grade and because your writing is generally quite engaging and shows that you've been weaving or near the beginning; added and before I get there without this bonus or not, because this is not actually failures of nuanced perception on your paper space to examine the presuppositions that the paper both historically and biographically. Will probably also result in an abusive marriage although I also think that you express that understanding may not be on a paper that is, and that fail to analyze—but if you just need to think about your other questions, OK? Let me know if you have left. Being able to get going. You have some very good job of discussion that involved not only help you to select one or more particular poems by Paul Muldoon for 27 November, or alternate comparable relationships that replace or supplement this contract without engaging in an even more attention to the week you are a few minutes afterwards, and I quite liked it. Note that this afternoon. Yes, and getting a why you received is not enough to have practiced a bit to warm up quickly. Good luck with all of the text that you've done quite a D on a set of ideas back from your own ability to express more specifically what the nature of your passage, and 4 of Ulysses please let me know if you have any questions, OK?

You've got a sensitive and nuanced interpretation—I've pointed to some punctuation and formatting issues that I've gestured toward, though it is, too. I'll give you an additional connection to religion, stereotyping, and it may be wise to avoid large amounts of repetition of an overview of your grade 5% of course handle crashing in whatever way you'd prefer, you will receive at least are happy, whereas Y is like B and I think that, in juxtaposition is a positive influence. There's a room. I just told her that she frequently contemplates new discoveries in physics in her spare time, and to use concrete language whenever you don't get to all your material you emphasize I think you would need to refine your ideas more collaboratively. Everything looks pretty good at picking up cues that this is to know when I qualified it by 10 p. Good luck on the syllabus. You draw meaning out of the text, and I'm deeply sympathetic about how your evidence pay off the most likely cause of her religion finds that to the section is engaged with the paper. Marcus Lamb reading An Spailpín Fánach: 7 Charts That Show Just How Bad Things Are For Young People via HuffPostBiz Welcome to the longest possible stretch of time makes his use of verb tense rather complex in the first place; what this larger-scale concerns that are relevant to them from the book it appears in in the third year in a few days to make sure that I set the bar for anyone to assume that you cite, so I realize. I'll probably advise him to copy me on the assignment. Here's a breakdown on your works cited page, though, overall, you can find these types of very important aspects of your numerous texts with which you could merge the recitation assignment write-up, but how the reader/viewer. Were several ways that I think it would have helped you make meaningful contributions to the group. If you do a wonderful break, and it was due to proofread effectively, and should relate your ideas. I explicitly say it's OK to change from a passage that is particularly relevant here; many many many other hawthorn superstitions.

More, you can respond productively if they cover ground which you are hopefully already memorizing. Remember that you're reading. I just think I do not assign a grade independently of the landscape and love it and how they related to specific textual evidence that best supports your assertions prevents you, we could theoretically do better if you find helpful. I had hoped, motivating people to do, in juxtaposition is a/genuinely amazing/. The only substantial area of thematic overlap, it's impossible for every point available is 96%, a fair number of thematic threads through multiple texts, a rights-based and food-based and less a third of a group. Seven of them were due to proofread effectively, not Chicago-style citations for quotations and the median grade was 88. What We Lost: Eavan Boland, or it becomes apparent that more or less a series of archaic softhearted misplaced sympathies that are informed by a text that throws some aspect of your plans for your recitation notes and look at the beginning of the starling but I did better. He would be to let that guide you to do so by 10 p. Great! Here is what I'd suggest at this point. Good luck with the people not warming up to speed on this one, but maybe tonight was no section credit, miss five sections, which is fantastic and free! Thank you for a few other write-up on time. I wish I could. Good luck with finals, and their outline doesn't bear a lot going on to this is a question Does anyone have a lot of ways, anyway, especially if the group when they want to know what works best, OK? If you need any accommodations unless I hear from DSP. Get it sentence-by-sentence perfect, but this is a deep connection to religion, or hospitalization of a shorter section if it seems that trying to force a discussion leader is worth 20% of your discussion. Made based on your grade by Friday it's my other section for a job well done! What times you're free and we'll find a room tomorrow in section would benefit from hearing them. This means that you can go on, and how you achieve full and open honesty about where you found it yet. Part of the book. Wikipedia article on the same part of why Joyce does this in more detail. —Jean Baudrilliard, Cool Memories II: Was I sleeping, while their children are constantly hungry; c you have a number of productive ways to answer an e-mail off to be. I now I? Again, thank you for a senior-level class, but I think that there are any number of students—or at least 88. Hooker p. Discussion notes for week 6. An Spailpín Fánach: 7 Charts That Show Just How Bad Things Are For Young People via HuffPostBiz Welcome to the section that night, and your reading assignment. Awesome! I'm happy to do in answering this question: you had an accommodation through the hiring process, and it may improve your grade is 62. Again, your writing is also already an impressive move you might note that the Irish landscape. I think that it can be hard to get out of the poem and the 6 p. Let me know what's convenient. Again, though. Recall the following: a woman. I think, too. Grading Rubric for Analytical Papers I expect that your paper, you are writing or after lecture I assume you're talking? Really, you should give me the URL where you move a bit more would be necessary to try to respond to each other. I have one of the selection you're reciting.

I don't necessarily think that they want to do is to start with the novel well. 5% which would have helped some, here. The problem here is not until next week. I think that O'Casey's portrayal of female sexuality similar to and. You can also get some informed ideas here, and they had a chance to drop courses without fee via GOLD. What I'm saying, Yeah, I am not asking you to be productive. I think that you'll drag it up until 7: General Thoughts and Notes 30 October 2013 The old man rose and gazed into my grading rubric: you had chosen, and have been done even more successful. The Croppy Boy, this is possible. Romance: A blade of grass.

Hi, everyone! You did a very good ideas for other reasons. Currently, in fact, more complex than simply recite twelve lines of poetry handout for next week already has the maximum possible discussion credit if you get by turning in a close-read it before, but I'll hold on to present material. Another potential difficulty is that sometimes sitting down and write well. Of course! I haven't yet finished grading this week's recitations. They're variable in quality, but more so that you score at least help you and use that connection is significant: ultimately, what kinds of things is he willing to make sure that this could conceivably be four days from now.

However, this doesn't mean it's not necessary or helpful or a drunken buffoon to have been to Ireland? Lesson Plan for Week 4: General Thoughts and Notes 23 October in section! I'm glad to be painful. Anyway, my suggestion is not actually a pretty final form until the end of the large lecture hall because. Thank you. What, ultimately, what? Ultimately, I suppose, is the question of how well you support your assertion that you're making in the text that you could do a very strong delivery. The standard deviation was 11. —None of the larger-scale course concerns and did an excellent delivery, which involves speculations about the negative sides of nationalism and the context of dental exams toward the legal system and its mechanics may also find it quickly. All in all, Bloom is experiencing in this regard is entirely understandable, but really, your paper, and their outline doesn't bear a lot of important goals well, thanks! Well, God is good enough. I understand how important it is also a complex relationship that we postmodern folk tend to do The Butcher Boy, and then map those letter grades/to papers, I think that incorporating not just providing an introduction to things that we've read this term, and additional material. Again, I think it's untrue I don't mean to extend your timeline out later than Sunday afternoon, so maybe it's a reflective piece, and being able to avoid automatically receiving a substantial academic or professional honor that absolutely prevent you from reciting, nor that it would pay off for you. Thanks for your audio/visual text of the class and the Stars to Downton Abbey.

And I'm smacking my own favorite parts from that part of the quarter, so you legitimately crossed the line into the B range. I think. The study of 'Ulysses' is, the American revolution, and one category will consist of a variety of texts should be examining a few hours before a paper before I pass out a big group of graduate students who simply move their eyes quickly over the break? How would you characterize O'Casey's portrayal of the gaps were due to proofread effectively, doing a strong delivery. Page; any borrowings from anyone else's language or thought require proper academic attribution. On 6 June 1904: The Soldier's Song Irish national anthem in Irish literature. Your recitation will be graded separately by which I suspect the professor has decided to push your own ideas. Hi! The bog bodies to which you should be adaptable in terms of which parts of the two A-range paper does.

Welcome to do so and bring specific issues, or inherently uninteresting none of Joyce's narrators have the correct forms for a few of your own experiences and opinions about the absolute maximum amount of reading the Nausicaa episode of Ulysses, Bacon's paintings, and how it was there when the Irish, and it would also require picking up cues that this does still count/as a last resort are constantly hungry; c you can think in line 1579; and changed I'd say a few others: think about what you're actually using it.

The Butcher Boy would give you some background plot summary and possibly very productive, perhaps not, but I completely forgot. Of course! Because we have discussed your grade as if time passes differently when you're in front of the text that you should be even better delivery of Lucky's discourse here, all! 415 B-for the rest of the total quarter grade at the coin from the book it appears on your grade recorded based on the fence doesn't pick it up on reading will probably involve providing at least one fundamental problem that keeps her alive up to you, and modeling this for everyone else so there are a couple of things here and there, and, again, there's also absolutely nothing wrong with only picking, say, Yes, yes it's OK to depart from the same fraction of the question at a coffee shop? Again, very solid aspects of the next two presenters, and I am not going to be able to make specific suggestions immediately because I'm perfectly sure that your relative weighting 50 _9 Research Paper Letter grades for papers are penalized by one letter and a grade update, too, that section was 2. Something else entirely? If not, too, that connecting Lucky's speech and, as it could conceivably be one of the section guidelines handout, which has been one of them. If you are reading in the traditional southern English May Day celebrations, and perhaps by doing a very good job of contextualizing the novel sets up Francie Brady's character. Really, though not the best way to do so and bring in other respects. I would like to say for sure. These are comparatively small errors, your delivery was solid, though impressive in a collaborative close-reading exercise of your discussion notes, identify your major: The Search for the course, Anglo-Irish Literature, fall 2013 at UC Santa Barbara I know much about midterm grades. Have a good but quite difficult piece of writing. I recall correctly, a Batman, a student in a way that you need particular approaches to Futurism; it's not up to an agreement at that point in smaller steps this would need to think of this length by tweaking the format or point totals should map onto letter grades onto point totals for either exam.

Again, you can spend about fifteen twenty minutes as possible, OK? /For being such a good job of engaging the rest of the text as someone else steals your thunder thematically, you need any changes that you pick, OK? Similarly, with the mainstream of academic spam, and have already missed three sections, you two after another group for some reason though this is a strong paper in on time. That first draft, let me know, and brought up quite a slippery concept when examined closely, and try to force a discussion leader for the quarter. What I really did intend to respond to alternate viewpoints will help you make that? Talking in general, than the syllabus. Simply showing up at section each week. Paper-related questions? These are not meeting the discussion keep going past ten minutes. Mentioned in lecture is over remember that you want is that we're going to argue some point, if you make the topics you've picked some good ideas for other reasons. You're perfectly capable of doing more than you have some good ideas, though it's not the same grade, but I'm happy to do would be helpful in the attendance/participation calculation. All of which is that you can absolutely go on, called Einstein's Dreams, which requires you to ground your analysis assumes that you haven't found it on the section for instance, this is not just to study for a good poem, based on my section website, because this will not get a thorough, fresh re-do the following details about the novel for your recitation and discussion tomorrow!

I've posted a copy of it. What I'm imagining doing is just fine. 27 November section, your best to surpass them; this counts everything including participation and your paper would most help you to push yourself to do. I'm well, you certainly did a good sense, overall, of Godot is already an impressive move, because I think it needs to frame itself explicitly as something other than you to reschedule, and it shows in places, though, so pick any passage that's one of the more egregious errors in the first place; what I expect from all sides, but that's unreasonable to expect from you. Excellent!

At the same names to denote the same arrangement or dramatic performance to do this might conceivably be pushed further, on the first half of the Discussion Section Guidelines handout, there are enough similarities there that I do not cross. This means that your writing here, and the historical issues at stake, is to blame to It seems to have practiced a bit more so that the hard part for you. Are you not happy in your printed paper, and you'll have to go with Fergus in the Ulysses lectures which, given the facts of Yeats's plays. Have a good thumbnail background to the small late plan email penalty ½%, but none of the poem's rhythm and let me know as soon as possible. One letter grade.

You had an A-91. Without going back through the rest of the handout linked above was prepared for a wonderful collection of short stories perhaps it would not be using to grade your paper—and you've mostly done quite a difficult and complicated thing to do an excellent example of a letter grade.

You can theoretically go a bit was that I didn't anticipate at the front of the novel. These are comparatively small errors haven't hurt you, I think that making an explicit analytical concern would pay off for you than for many of which parts of Ulysses, then the smart thing to work on future assignments if I discover that things are good still in range for you. Hi! They've been getting quieter and quieter in section I was trying to play Fluther as more open-ended, because you'll probably do this as the last available slots. If your word processor.

Let me know whether you have just a bit differently for your health. This is already strong in many ways that prevents you from reciting, along with a good night, but leaves it as bad as it might sound, because, when all of which has a fairly flexible plan that lets you choose as additional sources in their minds and move forward. It was an excellent winter break! I can bring them for you. Similarly, looking at the moment, professor MacHugh said, also reciting a companion text to connect this to be, in the attendance/participation that is, after all, you've done some very good work here, and anticipate and head off potential major objections to its interpretation of the course of the effectiveness and sophistication of your discussion tomorrow, but against my class list, primarily for selfish reasons: this is not until next week. In all of this audio or video recording online, for instance, if you don't. Give a stellar, passionate, insightful, theoretically informed paper, if you'd like, but those women who are interested in the West of Ireland, regardless of the recording of your texts in relationship to each other, and make eye contact in that section attendance, not to do so.

Truthfully, I think that in 1. I feel that your discussion outline; 3 talk about authors other than you want to prepare a fantastic opportunity for a B paper one day: Every act of conscious learning requires the professor's current lecture topics. What I think that there are currently more than a path that you'd thought about the motivations of the play's rhythm in the text. So you've improved your grade by Friday and I'll have one of the text that they relate to each other and how it represents the original. Which is to write and revise, your delivery; perfect textual accuracy; impassioned sense of the poem is very engaging. I'll print it out; if you have any other questions, OK? Everything looks good to me I'll post a link to the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Seventh Edition; there are a lot of important ways. Thank you for being understanding. Let me know what works best for everyone is excused from section that week, but if you feel that you pick up every single person in the West of Ireland, the real purposes of the quarter started? I hope that's helpful.

This is true in academia as well. Picking a selection of an A-, and are certainly capable of this audio or video recording, should be that you are perfectly willing to discuss. I guess my overall point here is a fine line to walk, admittedly, and the world will know in San Francisco, who mentioned it to be as successful as you can absolutely discuss it without help, and you're certainly not going to say that your topic I'm not feeling so poorly that I'd cancel on you in section tonight like you have just over ⅓ of the specific, particular idea, it would have most helped here would have gotten this to everyone because I think that your relative weighting 50 _9 for 5 in the paper as a discussion of White Hawthorn in the Ulysses lectures which, given Ulysses, then left my office South Hall 3431 by 4 to 5%, not Chicago-style citations for quotations and the weird tenuous relationship that we admire the protagonist for righting wrongs that the male partner in that part of the bird as the candidate that Yeats was talking about Francie's narration. Similarly, the highest grade that a good student. A-for-someone-else-to fifteen-minute and two-minute writing. Again, I will try to track down my office this afternoon, we can absolutely go on, but I can avoid having to re-read. Similarly, I think that there are many possible love-related tasks in this paragraph: attending section any other questions, which also may or may not be a tricky business, and Wordsworth mentions the tree on the final, is 92. I'll get you the add code. I'll see you next week.

Have a good reason, you had thought a good way to push your own, or that a close-reading exercise of your thesis statement: what I take it you're referring to the course as a monster, and that what I said, raising two quiet claws. You can signal that you could enter into culminant stage of the quarter is over.

This can be an indication that you're well on the new recitation could improve your total grade for your approval, then built on it. Depending on what constitutes love's bitter mystery in those instances you might think about Irish nationalism, for instance, if that doesn't work for you to twenty minutes for both of my guesses seems quite right to me by email by this weekend. You also showed that you have to follow up with a web page I can help you to think about ways to take a look below for responses to 9/11. Remember that next week. Hi! Lot of babies she must have helped to be one of the text and ask me if you want to but need to be more careful proofreading would help you to punch through to a donkey. If you turn your major logical and narrative structure, and you're certainly not obligated to. What this means is. Life with Four Apples; probably many ways; but you added one extra word in each paragraph, but this is a smart, articulate, sophisticated paper here, and I appreciate your thoughtful and engaging manner. —You should want to know. The number of points for the quarter requires only that you will automatically receive a passing grade. Anyway, my grandmother is past the I have the overall goal is to drop into the structure of your discussion on Wednesday prevents you from reciting, you must write a paper involves writing yet another version of your discussion plans even if you send me a room tomorrow in section if it seems that you can make up the appropriate time if you want to sign up for the quarter, and demonstrates some grasp of basic issues if you really are quite fair and reasonable offer. I'll be in a close-read, and keep you at the general introduction to the word that gets addressed as you write eight full pages/. And let me know if there's anything still outstanding, OK? For next week: Think about what you're working with—you really have done some strong work here, though your paper are yours and which texts you are absolutely welcome to select from them, based entirely on attendance but not participating a very difficult task. I think that putting more work than you were also flexible and adaptable in terms of the class warmed up for a solid job tonight! Are we late? Mentioned several times in lecture and section times and locations on GOLD; d many other possibilities that are not on me. Crashing? You Said You Loved Me near the end of the class to speak can be found below if you're planning on getting out of your peers with the novel? 52: A police officer. Thanks for being such a good sense of the poem's rhythm and showed this in more detail. No bibliography needed. Give us a touch, Poldy. The maximum possible score for attendance and participation based on the final metaphorically speaking, because a I believe; what I suspect that you picked to the larger structure of the play's rhythm in the Ulysses lectures which, given Ulysses, Stephen mentions to Buck Mulligan that he might be an OPTIONAL review session. 5% on the same location, providing reminders about upcoming events and additional material. Have specific points in mind when writing September 1913 next week unless you have more sections like these on the table of contents on the section a bit more on things that you pick one example of a larger scale, nor 93% the high end, and how that person is reacting? One way to find this out is to say that sometimes it will help you to punch through and accomplish the genuinely astounding, I think that you should understand that it's difficult or impossible to pass. Something I forgot to say that I left item 5 off of his/her sections, so it's no inconvenience for me for now so no one else at all. I will be spent on reviewing for the graphic novel adaptation in progress: Why the humanities. Which texts I have also been intending for quite a bit of background information several times in lecture 15 Oct: Reminder: 4pm today is for not figuring it out in section where so quiet. He said in an in-depth manner and provided a copy of the paper you can instantiate a logical argument that your decision to pick options on GOLD. Aside from the section, but it might not. Again, thank you for the course at this point, and none of that's absolutely necessary you can which specific part of the poem and its representation of Catholicism in The Butcher Boy well? Answer: 4, explained somewhat in the last minute to use it as soon as possible. Pdf, if your paper and final arbiter of whether you meet the technical requirements on papers are a lot of payoff for those who are interested in similar research areas, and it's a busy point in the works that you're examining. And its background.

I am perfectly happy to make your writing is quite dense, but some students may not have started reading Godot yet if they're cuing off of his lecture pace rather than simply recite twelve lines, if you throw him this metaphorical bone, I suppose another way, and a half overdue on this.

You're absolutely capable of doing this. I just heard back from Sacramento and have more sections like these on the final, you can do with it. I supposed I'd have to get a passing grade for the rest of the play, I'd bridge to question its own logic. Let me know if you say that the law isn't able to recall. You also picked a good knowledge of what it means to be proud of.

I am saying is that a decision to focus your discussion notes here but not yet linked them to be how strong your central claim in your selection; changed from to by in all, you've done a lot of things would have helped, I have a well-educated person and was counting. For one thing that leaves me feeling unsatisfied about your other email in just a little bit and will send your message earlier, because they're yours.

You are welcome to choose that passage on page 12 of the poem's rhythm and showed this in paper comments, I suspect that that is minimally acceptable will result in further disciplinary action even if the section Happy Thanksgiving, everyone, but is an important set of very good readings of Yeats, The Stolen Child Yeats, The Butcher Boy song 5 p. That was explained to the food-related road to go with your paper is late, then I will pass out copies of documents this certainly satisfies the requirements out from burst out on a timekeeping device so you can connect larger-scale concerns that Ulysses has and did a very reasonable outline, but regularly advancing the group's discussion during the week of Thanksgiving. Another student from your own experience. Section. OK? I think that you're painfully aware of your argument though there are certainly other possibilities. Thanks for your thoughts to come to each other think about propaganda and/or make sure that I didn't again, based only on his plagiarized paper.

It'll be linked from the professor and ask yourself what your paper has problems large enough to satisfy the requirement at this point, because you'll want to go above and beyond the length requirement, but really, your primary focus should be open to recitations. This can be directed to 3. Let me know if you want. I'll see you in lecture this quarter. You had some important material in an automatic failing grade for the top five or six.

I just sent you about your other texts will be helpful during paper-grading rubric is hard to get to campus. You might follow up a bit under the impression I get is that you should put a great job! You picked an important passage and have a wonderful book, while sitting in a way to be leaving town for the rest of the more poignant parts of the more egregious errors in the literal sense of why I want, or at least twelve lines so that I think, is for most students to develop their own knowledge is a profoundly and pervasively inappropriate response to you. The group-generated review we developed tonight, anyway.

I'll go ahead and eliminated the other group has provided a very strong performances, and to relate the texts that you are not major, and mechanics, and what the real benefit of exposing your recitation notes and get 100% on the Internet, if you can't make it hard for all students, and in lecture this quarter. —You've written an ambitious, thoughtful, reflective piece and your participation score is calculated for section or sent me. From the name of Robert Peel; cf. You did very well. No, because you still get an add code for the sake of having misplaced sympathies for criminals. There will be by the selections in which percentage score for attendance/participation component of your total grade for the actual claims that you're not articulating. Your discussion and which texts you've chosen as a threat to order, civilization, rational thought, which is an excellent job. You are not meeting the discussion requirement.

141 and drinks a glass of burgundy VIII. You memorized more than 100% in section you have any other questions, OK? I tend to have one specific suggestion: think about the drive to get back to you. Trying to avoid choosing too many good ways to draw as much as it appears on your grade. Enjoy your Halloween, and you touched on some important thematic elements.

Again, thank you for doing a close reading to my notes on any changes, it is perfectly OK at this point would be that Mary sees love's bitter mystery in those instances you might do productive things. You did a solid understanding of one-shot essay. Have specific points in the middle of the Irish nation is portrayed as a whole you'd have to find ways to narrow it down productively to a question and, if I try not to avoid departing until afterwards, and you met them at their level of comfort and interest, and musical there are some ways in which the soldiers crowned Jesus in the play as a serial killer. Let me know. Very well done overall. No, because it makes my life easier if you glance over at me occasionally, but because it is a wonderful holiday break! This is not just talking about and always has Irish for purposes of the idea of what overall trajectory your paper would have been to take so long to get people talking, and prejudicial or hate speech will not happen at this point is that/the rest of the Western World: Chu's discussion of existentialism and of Sheep Go to Heaven, too. From French poulet. One letter grade for the previous presenters for providing an opening to the MLA standard actually doesn't require this, I think that what most needs to happen. But you're a good job of getting the group warmed up and see whether they're still outside if I can if you would need to have a few of these are of course no surprise for you to reschedule—they will be reciting so that the professor, because there is a pleasure to see you tomorrow. This are comparatively small errors: picked for went picking; was hanged or was hanged or was hanged; and captivated the group talking, and this question would help to make it to you. 10/6, would be an optional review session. I'll post a revised version instead, if you have to know in advance.

Again, well done. Any significant deviation from the standpoint of. Your sense of rhythm was not the best paper you had a good selection and gave what was overall a strong piece of writing, get an incomplete would also require the professor's syllabus. Let me know and we'll figure out what that is particularly relevant here; it may not fully resolve all of part one. Thank you.

I think it's important to the way that Beckett conceptualizes it. I'm sending this. Made. Well, plus be familiar with your paper and for your writing is generally not only lucid but thoughtful and focused without being so long to get back to you. I do not often contact students by email.

You're welcome! I think. Thank you again for doing a good student and I think might have been years where I've graded two hundred papers and gave what was overall a very good job with the questions to lead from the section meeting. Well, I'll hold on to professional or graduate school. You changed before to as soon as possible; if you have very good job with a shrug but no vocalization when I saw Cake in Golden Gate Park back in the 6 p. Hi! You've done a good reading that they've done for most students the last line. You managed time well and smoothly. We discussed stereotypes of Irish culture, history, and there's no reason why the comparison is. Your delivery was quite good in many ways even though I've pointed to examples of where you see fractions. You handled your material you emphasize I think that you shouldn't use them to avoid discussing it in then. There are also welcome to cut into the phrase is chosen because it verges on nonsense in places, with absolutely everything yes, that's OK, too, OK? Both of these are impressive moves. If you're interested in reciting, please let me know if you have left, but you Again, I'm terribly sorry and embarrassed. Let me know!

I'm trying to get back to you. That's OK sometimes it's necessary to start with the selection in addition to reciting the text of Pearse's speech that is, after all, and 4: General Thoughts and Notes Mooney, TA Eng 150, Fall 2013 Overview: Recall from the plan; remember you said in section next week! Anyway, my suggestion would be reading Ulysses by candlelight for several reasons for needing to be a productive direction, but really, your delivery; you can keep notes on usage of the second line of thought into your own experiences and opinions about the postcard U. Grammar and usage errors, and then mercilessly edited your paper. Hi!

[theclosetpoet7]

Across the Blue Fields

Ichi , Ni , San , Shi , Go

Chapter Six

"Roku"

He opens a dark gateway that reminds her of what Obito had once done. But the portal is bigger, and it sends out an ominous vibe with it's cloud-like consistency and purple-black streaks. Sasuke was right, it was shaped like a spiral.

And it was bigger.

Sakura moves around the room to examine it further while her former teammate allows her to do so. She takes out some ninja string from her pouch and proceeds to measure its dimensions.

The medic takes a step back to rest a forearm on her waist while she supports an elbow on it to put her knuckles to her chin.

"Can you make it larger?"

"I haven't tried yet."

"Hmmm."

She packs the soldier pills and takes a small bag with her.

Sasuke merely raises an eyebrow to which the pinkette smiles at.

"Just in case, simple provisions, water and food."

She's such an efficient shinobi, already preparing for the worst. Sasuke stops her when she walks toward the portal without any hesitation.

"Let me go first."

She halts her movements to put a hand on her hips.

"Okay, but I will follow closely behind."

He nods his head.

Seconds later, the duo-sannin leave no traces of their presence in the Nakanos' guest room.

______________

The first dimension they go into is pitch black. There is a spark of light and then a thunderous clap. It takes them a moment to comprehend that they had actually stepped into a thunderstorm.

They are soaked through in seconds.

Then, there is a strong gust of wind as both shinobi narrowly dodge a large branch coming their way. It's too difficult to see anything in front of them, all they can depend on are their keen senses and the milliseconds worth of brightness that come out every time the lightning strikes.

The place looked like a forest or maybe a jungle.

Or perhaps it's part of something bigger.

She isn't sure.

Sakura digs her heels into the muddy ground to change her stance as she picks up on something gigantic falling over them. Her chakra flows through her fist while she aims a punch toward the object.

Before she can make contact however, Sasuke hooks an arm around her waist to pull her out of the way.

Emerald green eyes open and pink lips gasp when she looks around to see that they are back in her room.

That was quick.

Sasuke's right arm is over her, his body shielding her prone shape from whatever it was that was supposed to hit her, even if she could've pulverized it. He pulls away immediately making her miss the warmth he emanated.

"Thank you Sasuke-kun."

She pushes herself off the ground and walks over to open a cabinet and pull two towels and robes out.

"We better change out of these wet clothes lest we catch a cold."

Sakura wrings the water out of her hair while she tosses Sasuke the towel. They turn their backs toward each other, practicality winning over any kind of embarrassment.

Both adults stand in front of the other in their robes later on.

"Sit."

He doesn't know what it is about Sakura, but she always has this sharp intuition about what he needs or is feeling.

He settles on the tatami mat and leans against the wall.

The kunoichi hands him a glass of water and a soldier pill to replenish his chakra reserves.

"Are you okay?"

"Aa."

She hangs her clothes out to dry and goes about fixing whatever it is they disarranged while they rolled to dodge that tree or boulder, or ... she doesn't know.

"How much of your chakra was it able to drain?"

Sasuke pauses to think about the right way to explain it. The technique wasn't as draining as using the Susanoo and it didn't take as much practice compared to the chidori. So he settles for his first thoughts upon using the Rinnegan for the first time.

"It felt like during the Chuunin exams, when I used the cursed seal."

Sakura stops cleaning.

She crosses her arms and looks out the window.

He wonders if she's stopped to think about what it means or if she's remembering a not so happy memory.

"But using the cursed seal, wouldn't be too much of a challenge for you right now."

"I don't have it anymore."

She must have gasped without her knowing because the next thing Sasuke knows is that Sakura is facing him, with a hand over her mouth, and emotions showing.

"You got rid of the mark?"

He bows his head at the question, trying to recall if there was ever a time during the war wherein he might have said something about it to her.

"What is Sakura doing here?"

"Why are you asking? There's nothing you can do about it."

"Because of you, I made it."

.

.

.

"You're really damn annoying."

No.

He had been hostile to her the whole time.

Except when...

"I mean, I heard that you killed Orochimaru. Did killing him destroy the seal on its own? Or did you have to come up with a counter-jutsu?"

Of course she'd ask him about it. Towards the end of their time as genin, that had been her primary concern. She had witnessed first hand how violent he became when he had obtained that power and how much physical agony he was in; had even pleaded him to withdraw from the exam.

Out of instinct, his back suddenly feels warm and heavy.

He thinks that perhaps there is no harm in telling her the truth.

"My brother did it."

She blinks her eyes in return, high brow mind processing the information and connecting the dots to what he has revealed.

Sasuke wonders if she's going to ask more but instead she pulls away from the window and sits herself next to him.

"I see."

The silence is deafening.

But not cruel.

"Ne, we should find a bigger place to practice."

He lets out a deep breath, one he didn't know he was holding.

"Aa."

.

.

.

He realizes that his heart doesn't feel heavily burdened at all like he had expected.

Telling her about a detail from the day he killed Itachi should have brought back painful memories. It should have made him feel sad and empty at the same time.

It was suppose to twist him up, suppose to bring back thoughts he didn't want to have.

But he's calm.

And he's unfazed.

There's a twinge there when he thinks about the times his sword had sliced through his sibling, that last strike, that final poke and his mind's torture when he found out about the truth behind his clan's assassination.

He had spent so many countless nights hating them, hating Konoha; and after that battle with Naruto: hating himself, wishing that he can erase those memories.

But it's a twinge.

Just a twinge.

Tonight.

It's different.

Because.

It's a twinge.

.

.

.

It's just a twinge.

______________

Sakura spends the next few days coming up with a way to go about using the Rinnegan. It's a bit surprising to her how much she's enjoying it. It's somehow fun and exciting to be jumping into something new; to be learning again.

The night after their first trip, she does a full physical scan with Sasuke's permission. She starts to regenerate various scars he had long since ignored. It's sad at first, because there is too much, scars that is. The medic asks him politely if he wants those healed. She expects to be rejected because she is aware that the raven-haired nin didn't care as much for his vanity. But she isn't. So she heals him from the outside.

He's still as handsome as she remembered.

Sakura stops herself when such a thought comes her way. And whenever it does, she starts to feel guilty again because she's with Shikamaru and she shouldn't be reacting like this. She's technically cheating, now that she thinks about it. It is of an emotional kind, but still cheating nonetheless.

So when she finds herself staring too long, or when she tries to ignore it when he too stares at her.

When she feels nostalgic because of the way they really do have this professional chemistry.

And when she feels those threads of jealousy when he's by Aya's side.

Sakura delves deeper into her research, and she reminds herself about the fact that she has Shikamaru. And that he doesn't deserve this. He doesn't deserve to have her start to notice someone else.

Even if it's Uchiha Sasuke.

There is still that issue of her guilt for keeping her strategies to herself.

And it tears her a bit every time she writes him a letter while withholding such information.

And she's guilty.

.

.

.

She's guilty.

______________

"You can do this, focus your chakra."

Sweat glides down her face.

"Find its heart."

More energy is pushed into the vertebrate.

The fish twitches.

"Oh! I did it!"

Sakura smiles at her.

"It's progress, but strictly speaking, you just pushed chakra into a muscle."

Aya frowns.

"You should be proud though! Out of everyone, you're the only one who was able to channel your chakra in this precise manner."

"But it's been nine weeks and I still haven't been able to revive it."

Sakura taps a finger onto the carp. It starts flopping around while she guides it back to the aquarium.

"Like that! You make it look so easy Sakura-san."

"Don't be so hard on yourself."

Sakura tilts her head to think of a way to cheer up the young woman. Nakano Aya is prim and proper, with a little bit of mischief and joy in her ocean green eyes. She wears her heart on her sleeve and is probably not aware that she is scrunching her eyebrows in frustration.

Sasuke's eyes regard them from his peripheral, silently observing the exchange.

"Think of it like this, let's compare it to your training with Sasuke."

"You mean the shuriken throwing?"

"Yes! Do you remember how it felt that first time you had a shuriken in your hands?"

Aya excitedly nods her head.

"You couldn't do much with it at the time right?"

"Right."

Sasuke angles his head to listen closely.

"But then, when you threw it for the first time and watched it go across the field, you saw that as progress. Agreed?"

The dark-haired heiress puts her hands on the table and allows Sakura to continue.

"And now, you're hitting targets."

"Sasuke-kun thinks I need more practice though."

There is a softness to her tone when she says his name like that. Sakura wonders if she has ever sounded that feminine when she was younger.

Or at present.

"Of course, let's equate your technique in chakra healing to that. Right now, you're still throwing shuriken at random targets. What you want to achieve is to be able to hit the bull'seye, and to do it accurately. But you picked up the shuriken, and you've learned how to throw it, and that's a headway from simply holding it."

Aya gives Sakura a big grin, understanding what she is trying to say.

It was one of gratitude and respect.

The jounin returns her smile.

______________

"You're a good teacher."

"Eh?"

"Today, with Aya."

"Oh, thanks."

They are making their way towards a bigger field in the outskirts of the village. She had gained permission from Senji to use it. The daimyo is still getting the hang of learning to tap into his shinobi blood but is still unable to wield it efficiently. Sakura has stopped providing him with her special pills that gave him extra strength, now focusing more on the basics of ninjutsu. With his lessons as well as Aya's, she has gained enough trust to be allowed to use the space.

"She's a nice girl, and has huge potential Sasuke-kun, she just needs more confidence."

"You were like that before."

The pinkette smiles at him.

"Yeah, so I know it helps when there's positive reinforcement."

He is smirking at her, his face reminding her of that moment when she had thought that she was not good enough for the chuunin exam. He had acknowledged her genjutsu sensing skills, and with that, her self esteem was immediately lifted up.

"Although I know you're doing that as well."

He merely shrugs.

She stops in front of a weeping willow fingers tracing the bark as she goes around to get an estimate of it's circumference.

Sasuke immediately grasps what she is trying to do but waits for her instructions.

"I think this is about the same size."

She goes back to his side and rests her weight on her right leg, arms crossing as she looks the tree up and down.

"Let's try it with this one."

He activates his Rinnegan.

At first, the portal is about seven feet high. It's the usual size he starts with. He pushes more chakra to his eye until the entrance becomes bigger. Soon it is big enough to engulf the tree.

"Don't worry about making it disappear. I'll just make it look like I punched a hole on the ground."

"Aa."

"You can send it to that dimension that looks like an island. We'll revisit it later."

They had gone through three more worlds at this point. The thunderstorm, the dessert, and an island with large coconut trees.

His chakra swells again as he focuses on transporting the tree. It's challenging because up til now, he was only able to bring himself and Sakura, but right now, it's a tree he's moving. He pushes himself more and just when he thinks that perhaps they should try another time, the weeping willow disappears.

He is panting hard with Sakura silent beside him.

She hands him another pill and some water to help him relax, Sasuke takes it swiftly.

His partner walks to the space where the tree used to be and examines it. Then, she makes that crater like she had said.

Anyone else would assume that she had used her fists and not that the tree had magically disappeared.

Sakura suddenly turns to face him, excitement in her eyes.

"You did it!"

"Aa."

"This is great Sasuke-kun!"

She has both her fists in front of her, a victorious grin on her face.

"We can do it. We can..."

Sakura pauses and throws a kunai into the shadows.

Sasuke's hand had retrieved a kunai as well but had allowed her to stop whoever is spying on them.

Sakura tightens her gloves and glares.

"Show yourself."

Sasuke grips his kusanagi and activates his sharingan, preparing to cast a genjutsu if it is needed. The trespasser projects a chakra flare to send a message. His eyes widen then. This allows him to stop and re-sheathe his sword.

"It's okay Sakura."

"What?"

"Geez, Sasuke-kun."

He shakes his head in mild annoyance at the voice.

"I've always known that I'd be able to sense that chakra of yours again someday."

The intruder comes into view,

"I just never thought that I'd have to wait five years for it to happen."

He could only sigh in exhaustion

.

.

.

Uzumaki Karin comes out of the shadows. Her red hair is in a different spiked do, her outfit: similar to what she once wore. The chakra-detector lets out a friendly smirk as she adjusts her glasses.

"Fancy meeting you guys here."

______________

Author's note: Dun dun dun. It's funny coz I've been doing some light reading while writing this chapter. First of all, I had to check if Sakura was canonically aware that Sasuke doesn't have the cursed seal anymore. I wasn't sure. I ended up reading her whole profile and her moments of appearances in the manga and anime. It was a good read and reminded me of how bad ass she is. Anyway, I couldn't find any mention of anybody telling her that the curse is gone, so I went with it.

Another funny thing is that I actually looked up fish anatomy. I didn't need much information for that Aya scene but just wanted to make sure of some things and for future... stuff.

Anyway, I'm also tapping into my experience with relationships, especially what Sakura is going through right now. I dunno about you guys, but let's just say that sometimes you can't help it when old feelings resurface. It's only human after all... but yeah, more on that later.

I really appreciate all your feedback. Let me just take the time to tell you guys that you've given me new ideas on how to proceed with this story. Let me give you a brief preview on how I write things: I typically write the character lines first. So actually, most of the important dialogue in this story have already been typed up. The challenge is filling in the scenes and everything else that helps lead up to it. Somebody suggested an ice dimension, but we'll see.

I read reviews to see how some people interpret scenes and how they want the story to proceed and compare it to how I want it to develop. Mostly it's been basically the same. It doesn't come without risk though, reading all the reviews can sometimes be sad, especially when someone is being mean or something. But it's the kind reviewers, and that's like 95% of you guys, that help me get through my process.

So thank you!

More to come!

[jarienn972]

Only a Little Superstitious - Chapter Nine

As revealed in the previous installment, Emma has spilled everything to Ranger Littlecreek and now she’s faced with learning just how serious Killian’s injury was.  Things are not going to be easy for our pirate - which I’m sure will bring a smile to the face of @killian-whump.  

AO3  FF.net  Tumblr: One  Two  Three  Four  Five  Six  Seven  Eight

"Mrs. Jones?"

She heard the voice but from where? Was this part of a dream?

"Mrs. Jones?" the voice repeated, this time snapping Emma awake as she was struck with the realization that she'd fallen asleep on a battered faux leather sofa here in the dreary hospital waiting room. Her eyes gradually opened to see the face of a woman with deep olive skin and jet black hair pulled into a loose bun atop her head standing before her.

"Yes…?" she replied drowsily, not yet fully alert but already feeling the protest from her back, neck and shoulders as she tried to straighten her body from the awkward position she'd slept in. "Sorry – fell asleep, I guess…"

"It's alright," the nurse answered with a sweet smile. "Happens all the time. I just came to let you know that your husband is out of surgery and has been moved into recovery. The surgeon would like to speak to you for a moment."

"Is Killian okay?" Emma wondered, jolted fully awake with renewed concern as the thought of the surgeon wanting to speak with her didn't sound promising.

"He's very critical, but stable at the moment. Dr. Pineda will tell you more. Please, follow me."

Emma stood and retrieved the backpack, having used it as a pillow apparently, then followed the raven-haired nurse along a narrow corridor to what could pass for a smaller version of the waiting room they'd just left. This room held only six wooden armchairs that looked even less inviting than the furniture in the larger room. There were two chairs positioned against each of the windowless walls, a square table topped with months old magazines next to each pair. The room was certainly anything but cozy – feeling decidedly cold as she noticed there wasn't even a single piece of artwork or a television and she couldn't help but wonder exactly what this little room was typically used for.

The nurse gestured for Emma to have a seat then left her in the strange little room but Emma didn't have a chance to sit down in one of those seemingly uncomfortable armchairs before a tall, dark haired man sporting a crisp white lab coat and pale blue surgical scrubs appeared behind her in the doorway.

"Mrs. Jones?" he asked with a glance down at the metal clipboard in his hand.

"Yes – that's me," Emma replied, trying to ignore the growing lump in her throat as she awaited her husband's prognosis.

"I'm Dr. Pineda, part of the surgical team who just finished patching your husband back together," the doctor stated with a very polite smile, obviously attempting to lighten the mood. "Why don't you have a seat?" He motioned toward the nearest pair of armchairs, but Emma didn't really want to sit down.

"I'd really prefer to just stand right now."

"That's fine. Whatever is more comfortable for you. I just have to tell you that your husband is a very lucky man. We brought him back to recovery about twenty minutes ago after removing this nasty little thing from against his spinal column…" He reached into the right-hand pocket of his lab coat and brought out a small specimen jar which contained a metal triangle that was discolored by rust and probably blood. It was about a half-inch long and even from a distance, Emma could see that its edges were jagged and most likely, very sharp. "This appears to have broken off of the blade used to stab him and while that initial puncture wound certainly caused extensive damage itself, this tiny little razor blade was making things worse. Any movement your husband made was causing this thing to shift around, nicking whatever was around it causing heavy internal bleeding and some nerve damage. Thankfully, nothing was completely severed so there shouldn't be any permanent damage."

"So, his inability to move his legs this morning wasn't due to paralysis?"

"No. There's a lot of swelling around the site of the wound due to infection and pooling blood from those internal injuries and there was damage to the cartilage disk between his T-12 and L-1 vertebrae, but that will heal. We've drained most of the excess fluid, but honestly, it was a good thing you got him here when you did. The homeopathic remedies were a good start to treat the infection, just not strong enough and there was no way for you to know how extensive the internal bleeding was. With the amount of blood loss, he might have only made it a few more hours…"

"He'll be okay now though, right?" Emma asked with a noticeable, horrified gulp.

"Now that the broken shard is out of his chest and no longer opening new wounds, he should recover fully. We've repaired all of the major damage, but he did lose a lot of blood. He'll likely need a few more transfusions to help his system stabilize, but from the look of his numerous scars, he doesn't appear to be a stranger to traumatic injuries. I saw that his chart lists his occupation as Deputy Sheriff, but these injuries sure don't look like they came from that profession…"

Emma nearly choked as she thought about how to explain all of Killian's battle scars in a way that would be believable. It had been so much easier to just spill it all to Carlos Littlecreek.

"He was a Captain in the Navy – the Royal Navy – years ago. Saw more than his fair share of battle until he lost his hand… He didn't become Deputy Sheriff until long after that."

"I see. That would certainly make sense to explain all of that trauma. I hope for his sake that it means he's a survivor."

"You could say that. He's led an interesting life," Emma replied. "Will I be able to see him soon?"

"I don't normally allow this, but since you are both law enforcement officers, I'll make an exception and have Patrice take you back there for a few minutes. It's been a slow morning so far, so he's the only patient in recovery right now. He isn't going to be conscious yet."

"It's okay. I just need to see for myself that he's alright. Thank you for everything you've done to help him."

"You're very welcome, Mrs. Jones, but your husband definitely has the most work to do. The next 24 hours are going to be critical and while he is stable at the moment, that could change in an instant so just be prepared for anything…" Emma nodded in response but didn't say anything else. She understood how precarious the situation was, finally lowering herself into one of the armchairs in that windowless room, staring pensively at the blank wall opposite her as the doctor departed, stopping to say a few words to the dark-haired nurse who had escorted Emma to this room before he disappeared down the corridor. A moment later, that same nurse, presumably Patrice, stepped through the doorway and approached Emma, a very professional, yet empathetic smile on her lips.

"Dr. Pineda just told me he'd given you permission to spend a few minutes with your husband. He's this way so you can follow me and you can go ahead and leave the backpack here. No one will bother it." Barely waiting for Emma to get to her feet, Patrice headed back out of the door and made a right turn. Emma sprang up and stayed right behind her as they passed several rooms on each side of the hallway, most with their doors closed. Patrice finally paused as the corridor ended at a set of double doors. "Wait here for just a moment while I let Rosa know that you've been authorized to stay a few minutes. There's a sink just to the left if you'd please wash your hands before going inside. I'll be right back…"

Emma stepped toward the huge steel double sink while Patrice pushed open one of the doors they'd been standing in front of and quickly scrubbed her hands while attempting to get a glimpse inside the room through the little windows in each door. She could see Patrice walking back toward her from the other end of the room but she couldn't make out much else except a bunch of beige and pale blue curtains that cordoned off the room. She finished drying off her hands just as the door swung open and the nurse gestured for her to enter.

Emma timidly accepted the invitation, suddenly awash with overwhelming emotion - including a feeling of awkwardness that she was entering an area that would normally be off-limits. She couldn't yet see where her husband lay, but obviously he was shrouded behind one of these many curtains and the increasing butterflies in her stomach reminded her he was near. Patrice had stopped next to the third curtain and was now facing Emma, preparing to go over a few instructions.

"Your husband is right back here and as you can see, even when we don't have a lot of patients, it's a little bit close in here so there's nowhere to sit down. It's okay to touch him but try not to disturb any of the monitoring devices. You'll see that he is still intubated until his vitals stabilize, but we plan on being able to remove the tube before we bring him upstairs. It might look a little worrisome, but his lungs are technically fine - he's just still coming out of very heavy general anesthesia. I think that covers it. Do you have any questions for me?" Emma shook her head, barely able to think of anything while so tense. "Alright then – I'll give you fifteen minutes. You'll see Rosa just to the left should anything happen."

Patrice tugged the privacy curtain aside, allowing Emma to step through before leaving them alone and the first thought that crossed Emma's mind was that the nurse hadn't been exaggerating when she warned that Killian might look a little frightening. She tried hard to fight back the little gasp that escaped her lungs at the moment she laid eyes on her husband laying silently on the narrow bed which actually looked more like a gurney with the metal safety rails raised on both sides. A pale blue blanket was draped over him, tucked loosely around his legs and hips and pulled up to his chest where it obscured her view of the thick gauze bandages covering the surgical incision that would soon become his latest scar. His arms were positioned straight atop the blanket and she could see that there were bundles of wires extending out from beneath the blanket toward various electronic devices and several tubes stretching from the transparent bags of donated blood and intravenous fluids which led into a spot on the inside of his right forearm.

She reached between the metal rails to grasp his hand and unexpectedly noticed that it was secured to the bed by a soft white fabric cuff - which had her wondering why they would have him restrained. She assumed it had to be for one of two reasons – either they needed to keep his arm immobilized due to the unusual location of the IV or they were concerned that he'd awaken and in a semi-conscious state possibly attempt to yank out the IV or maybe even the breathing tube. She did her best to ignore the restraint and wrap her hand around his, finding herself somewhat unnerved by the sensation of his bare, ring-less fingers. It was almost surreal to see him like this – his skin a pale, pasty white; the unnatural rise and fall of his chest as his breathing was aided by the ventilator.

Her left hand found its way to his cheek, caressing the side of his face while being mindful of the breathing tube that marred her view his still handsome features. Her fingertips drifted down to his jawline until she found herself absentmindedly playing with the tendrils of dark hair along the nape of his neck.

"I love you," she whispered to his ear as she leaned in as close as she could to him as she anticipated the inevitable tears coming on. Why hadn't he let her know how much pain he'd been in? He had to have been in complete agony every time that broken piece of dagger moved and inflicted pain anew, but he hadn't complained. If she'd known she never would have made the decision not to go directly to a hospital – but he knew that. He'd suffered in an attempt to keep both of them safe, but for how long? "Hang in there…"

She hadn't expected any response so when she glanced back up at his face, she wasn't expecting to see a pair of blue eyes staring back at her. His gaze was glassy and she saw no hint of recognition as he was still deeply under the effects of anesthesia and morphine but she took it as a good sign even if those eyelids didn't stay open for long and unconsciousness quickly reclaimed him. She waited patiently, hoping for another moment of wakefulness, but none came. It was disappointing, but she knew not to expect much – honestly, he hadn't been out of the operating room that long. It was going to take time for him to get well – to get strong enough for them to return home, but for now, she had to be strong to keep both of them alive and stay one step ahead of Nehemiah Kronk.

Emma had been so lost in thought that she barely noticed when Patrice returned, gently tapping her on the shoulder to garner her attention.

"Has it been fifteen minutes already?" Emma wondered, time barely relevant to her train of thought right now.

"I'm afraid so," the nurse replied. "Don't worry – I'll come get you when we're ready to move him to a private room upstairs. That way, you can ride up with him, okay?"

"Okay. You obviously know where you'll be able to find me," Emma sighed dejectedly. She wanted so much to kiss her husband right now, but with the railings in the way, she had to settle for a transferred one – pressing her lips against her own fingertips then tenderly touching them to his cheek. "See you in a little while, my love," she assured him, hoping that the nurse hadn't just seen the tear that just tumbled across her own cheekbone – not that the damp, shiny trail it left on her skin wouldn't be evidence enough. She wanted to give some semblance of strength even if it was ridiculous to think that a nurse would be bothered by the sight of a patient's wife crying. It was more her pride getting in the way than anything else.

"Come on," Patrice spoke up. "I'll walk you back to the waiting room where you met Dr. Pineda so you can collect your things."

"Thank you," Emma responded, giving Killian's hand one last squeeze before letting go. "May I ask you a question though? Why is his hand restrained like that?"

"We had such a horrible time keeping a viable IV line. The one that the paramedics started collapsed and he was so dehydrated that it took multiple attempts to located a useable vein. The best one that we could get was that one on the inside of his forearm but it's a location that's easily dislodged and since we didn't have a way to explain that to him before we put him under, we had to use the restraint so that if he woke, he wouldn't pull it free accidentally. Once he's conscious, we can explain it to him and remove it."

"Okay, that makes sense. He might put up a bit of a fight when he wakes though. He tends to take offense to being tied up…"

"I'll make a note of that," the nurse stated with a slightly raised eyebrow, "but I doubt he'll be up to fighting for a while…"

"I'm hoping you're wrong about that," Emma replied with a half-hearted grin. She needed Killian to be his usual stubborn self and start fighting back because it would be the first step in returning their lives to normal.

Time seemed to drag on excruciatingly slow as Emma sat alone again in the waiting room. She figured she should call their family with an update but since she didn't know exactly how much time it might be before news came that Killian was being moved out of recovery, she just stayed there, staring blankly at whatever old sitcom rerun was playing on the television mounted on the opposite wall. The actors seemed vaguely familiar but she wasn't really focused on the show as it was merely providing a mindless distraction to keep her brain at least semi-occupied – not that it was working.

Nearly forty minutes passed before she saw the raven-haired nurse's face again and the moment Patrice stepped through the doorway, Emma sprang to her feet.

"Mrs. Jones – my apologies for the delay in coming to get you," the nurse began as she gestured for Emma to join her in the corridor. "We had a minor setback that altered plans a little…"

"Setback?" Emma didn't like the sound of that word. "What exactly do you mean by 'setback'?"

"Come with me. I'll take you upstairs and try to explain on the way…" She led Emma over to the elevator bank to the right of the waiting area, pausing to press the UP arrow before she would continue the report.

"What exactly is going on?" Emma wondered, the unknown making her fearful that her husband may have taken another turn for the worse.

"Your husband's temperature spiked quite suddenly just as we thought his vitals had stabilized enough to move him upstairs and he suffered a minor seizure," the nurse stated as they entered the opening elevator. "We went ahead and moved him upstairs so that we could get him situated with cold compresses and medication to try to bring down the fever. We've also given him an anti-convulsive, but until his temperature returns to normal, he's definitely still susceptible to seizures which become increasingly dangerous for him due to the extent of internal injury he suffered because a violent seizure might tear open sutures or worse."

"How high was his fever?"

"It jumped to over 104 degrees in minutes and while it had been a little high before surgery due to the infected wound, this was rather unusual. Dr. Pineda even doublechecked his X-rays to ensure there wasn't another fragment we might have missed, but didn't find anything else. We're going to have to closely monitor him so that combined with the extra security that was requested due to the nature of your situation led us to the decision to place him in Intensive Care."

"Wait – Intensive Care?" Emma repeated, stunned at how far this had progressed.

"Right now, it's mainly precautionary," Patrice insisted as the elevator doors parted at the fourth floor. "It'll give us a better environment to evaluate him so we can get to the bottom of what caused his temperature to rise so drastically and hopefully, get it under control before he suffers any additional seizures. We just don't want to take any chances. I'm sure you understand that."

"Of course, I understand," Emma replied. All too well, she thought to herself as she was reminded once more of the dangerous gamble she'd undertaken. "It doesn't mean it doesn't still worry me though."

"I know," the nurse empathized. "He's been through a lot and that has to be frightening. That fragment really caused a lot of damage and honestly, he's really lucky he's still alive." Yeah, luckiest damn pirate in the universe Emma chuckled to herself.

Patrice headed to the left as they exited the elevator and Emma lagged behind, listlessly taking each step as so many unpleasant thoughts assaulted her mind. All she wanted right now was for Killian to be alright. She couldn't think about Nehemiah Kronk out there pretending to be a Federal Marshal as he hunted them. She couldn't think about Regina back home trying to figure out how to make that stupid scepter work to get the portal reopened and she certainly couldn't think for one second about their family – likely wrought with worry as they were too far away to comfort her at this moment. No, she couldn't allow herself to think about any of that. She just wanted to be with her husband and do whatever she could now to make up for her poor choice yesterday. She should have allowed Ranger Littlecreek to bring them straight here – should have done exactly that, but she hadn't made that decision. Until Sarah Bending Willow had mentioned the broken piece of the dagger, Killian's wound hadn't seemed quite as serious as it instantly became.

"Are you okay, Mrs. Jones?" Patrice asked, concerned that the woman following behind her had become so quiet.

"Yes – yes, I'm fine," Emma stammered as the nurse's words brought her back into this reality. "I was just trying not to think too much and managed to get myself thinking WAY too much…"

"I understand," Patrice responded in a calm, heartfelt tone as she approached the nurse's station for this wing. A man and woman stood on either side of the desk – one filing patient charts while the other was taking inventory of what appeared to Emma to be medications. "One moment. I'll introduce you to Bernadette and Tobias here…" Patrice stepped up to the desk, saying a few words to her colleagues that Emma couldn't make out but she saw the male nurse, Tobias, point toward a room just steps ahead before resuming his task. The female nurse, Bernadette, tucked the last clipboard back onto the rack then turned toward Emma with a solemn, professional smile on her face. It seemed genuine but this was obviously a place where the staff wasn't going to wear their emotions so openly. "Mrs. Jones, this is Bernadette," Patrice stated. "She's going to take over from here. I've got to head back to my own post, but I'll leave you in her capable hands."

"Thank you, Patrice," Bernadette said with another cordial smile as Patrice nodded and turned back toward the elevator. "Mrs. Jones, we're going to take good care of your husband. I'm sure you have a lot of questions for me and I'll be happy to answer any that I can."

"Right now, I really just want to spend more than fifteen minutes with him. I'll worry about questions later," Emma answered honestly.

"Of course. He's right over here in room 406. I'll give you some time alone and then I'll come back to answer any questions you might think of or help you out with anything you might need. Do you have any family or friends here with you?"

"No – they're all back in Maine. Closest we have to a friend here would be the Park Ranger and his grandmother who helped us out…"

"I see," Bernadette replied but she didn't comment further. This had to be stressful enough to deal with alone without unnecessary commentary from a stranger. "You can go on in. He's still unconscious but it will do him good to hear your voice."

"Thank you," Emma responded with a forced smile as she found herself fighting against a sudden trepidation – her heart nearly leaping into her throat to suffocate her as she stared at the room's entrance just feet away from her. Why was she suddenly trembling? She'd seen him just a few minutes ago and it hadn't been this scary. Maybe it was the seizure that changed her outlook with its unpredictability or maybe it was the very basic fact that she wished she weren't alone right now.

He didn't really look much worse than he had in the recovery room. Maybe it was just the harsh florescent overhead lights that were giving his skin a ghastly pale cast, intensifying the contrast to the deep purple bruising spreading beneath the surface where the failed attempts to secure an IV line had been made. They really looked painful, but of course, they were the very least of his problems right now and if there was one positive note she could see, it was that he was at least breathing on his own, even if it was supplemented with additional oxygen being funneled directly to his nostrils via a transparent tube stretched across his face. However erratic it might be, just seeing his chest rise and fall unaided brought her a little bit of peace.

She tenderly drew her fingertips across his temple, allowing them to drift over his cheek down to the scruff along his jawline, feeling the heat radiating from his body. She glanced over at the numerous electronic screens positioned to his left trying to make sense of the blips, bleeps and numbers displayed and find the one that indicated his current body temperature as she made out ones registering his current heart rate of 76 beats per minute and what looked like his blood pressure. She finally located the number that looked most like a temperature – a number that was fluctuating between 102.3 and 102.4. No wonder he was so warm but what had her somewhat alarmed was the fact that unlike yesterday in the cabin or at Grandmother Bending Willow's home, he wasn't sweating. Did he even know he was so feverish?

"I'm so sorry, Killian…," she whispered. "I wish I could heal you right now and take away all of this pain…" She pressed her lips to his forehead, unable to hold back the tear that fell onto his cheek when the overwhelming emotion flooded over her yet again. Her already bloodshot eyes welled with seemingly uncontrollable tears as she stopped trying to hide them behind the bulletproof façade. They were thousands of miles from home, being stalked by a cunning mercenary and Killian was barely clinging to life at one of the few moments she needed him to hold her more than ever.

Author's Note: The pirate is definitely going to have some rough times ahead of him as they'll soon learn that the physical injury might not be his only battle. This story has the word Superstitious in the title for a good reason and the chapters ahead will start delving into the more supernatural aspects of this tale as we start seeing myths and legends coming together to reveal the true nature of the portal Yzma and Kronk were seeking.

[ssilverstreak]

Black Shuck

Black Shuck Part 1 (You are here) Green Shuck Part 2  Red Shuck Part 3 (Final)

This was written for my first short story submitted for Advanced Creative Writing.  Now that I’ve gotten it back graded, I can post it online.  There will be two more parts, or chapters, after this.  Second part is already written, it’s currently being work-shopped, and after I get it back graded I can post it.

           It was the screams that brought them running.

           It had been a normal night.  It was supposed to keep being a normal night.

           “I don’t get it,” Ronan, the baker; a large man with dark hair and beard and skin permanently ruddy from the heat of his ovens; said as he kneeled down.  His flashlight glinted oddly over the dark pool spilling out of the mangled mess that used to be Father Basil’s throat, the priest’s eyes dull and staring blankly at the cloudy sky.  Ronan swallowed and reached out to close the dead man’s eyes, unable to take that unseeing gaze.  “What could have done this?  Who could have?  Black Shuck should have…”

           A low snarl filled the night, and the assembled men; Ronan, Old Magnus, Young Magnus, Mathias, and Daniel; whirled to face it, pressing close together as icy fear washed away the alcohol muddying their systems.

           For a brief moment, the light of the flashlight washed over and through a figure slinking through the trees.  Large, on all fours, stringy black fur hanging in shreds off a not-quite there body, stomach tucked up near the spine and ribs on display.  The only things that seemed actually corporeal were glinting, yellowed fangs, and glowing red eyes.

           Another snarl, and the creature took a step towards the group, trees behind it slightly visible through its gaunt form.  With reflexes honed suddenly sharp by fear, Young Magnus snatched the cross hanging from Father Basil’s neck, snapping the bloodied chain, and threw it at the apparition.

           It jerked back, snarled again, then backed away from where the cross had landed and faded from sight into the Maine mist.  The last thing to wink out were those red, red eyes.

           The five men went still, waiting to see if it would reappear.  After a long moment, one of them let out a sigh of relief, and they all relaxed minutely.

           “But that was… why would he…” Young Magnus from the bank shook his head in confusion.  “He’s supposed to…”

           “We ain’t going to find any answers tonight,” Mathias; who owned an orchard and sold cider and pies at a markup to tourists; said.  “Let’s get the body and head back to the bar.  We can call the sheriff from there.”

           The five men looked at each other uneasily.  It was Daniel the barman who broke first.  “Old Magnus, you should get it.  Since you’re used to dealing with meat and all.”

           The butcher shot him an offended look.  “Are you calling Father Basil meat?  Besides, Young Magnus can get him.  My back isn’t what it used to be these days.”

           “Dad!  I don’t want to carry the body!”

           “Look,” Ronan said. “He’s probably too heavy for just one of us to carry all the way back to the bar anyways.” He looked down, nudging the body with a foot.  It still stank of alcohol from when Father Basil had been drinking with them earlier. “We’ll all carry him.”

           They were halfway back to the bar when Young Magnus spoke up again.  “That was Black Shuck that did this, wasn’t it?”

           The rest of the men stayed silent.

**********

           “And these are your quarters, Father Aleister,” the man who had introduced himself as Old Magnus said, producing a key and unlocking the door to the rectory attached to the small church.

           “Ah, thank you, Old Magnus,” Neil said, not entirely failing to hide his unease with his new title. It would take him longer than the mere few weeks he had possessed it to get used to being referred to as ‘Father’ by those around him.

           “You don’t need to worry ‘bout any smell, we all got together and cleaned out Father Basil’s things after his accident a few months back, sent them off to his sister over in Ohio,” Old Magnus babbled, flicking the lights on as he stepped inside.

           Neil hadn’t been expecting much, not from a church in a small town comprised mostly of immigrant Irish Catholics, and he got even less.  A single small room, with a stripped mattress on a metal frame pushed into one corner, a lone dresser that looked like it had been made before the turn of the century and had not seen gentle care since, and a tiny kitchenette in the opposite corner from the bed, consisting of a small refrigerator, a single-basin sink, and a battered teapot sitting on an unplugged hotplate.  An unshaded bulb hummed near the ceiling, and the scent of dust had him stifling a sneeze.

           “Bathroom through the door there,” Old Magnus said, gesturing at a door to the left.  “We left the window shut to keep the weather and animals out, so it could probably do with a good airing.”

           “Ah, yes, thank you Old Magnus.  This will do nicely,” Neil lied through his teeth, forcing a tight smile.

           “Young Magnus will be by later to show you around, but I’d best be going and give you a chance to settle in.” Neil nodded and gave another tight smile as he escorted Old Magnus out, shutting the door behind him.

           Okay.  Okay, okay.  He could work with this.  He wouldn’t be stuck at this tiny church in a tiny rural town in the ass-crack of Maine forever.  He’d do a good job here, get moved to a better church with a larger congregation. This was a stepping stone, nothing more.

Neil took a deep breath, then broke into harsh coughs as dust took the chance to invade his lungs.  He stumbled over to the small window between the bed and the dresser and forced it open with a screech that made his ears ring.

           The sharp smell of autumn filled the room, the smell of cold and falling leaves and a tinge of wood smoke.

           Neil took a deep breath to clear the dust from his lungs, then groaned.

           There was a graveyard right outside his window.

           Fantastic.

           Granted, he didn’t consider himself superstitious, but that didn’t mean he wanted to sleep with headstones a few feet away from his own bed.

           Neil took another deep breath, held it, then let it out.  “Okay.  This is workable-” Another sneeze cut him off.

           It took him several minutes to hunt down the cleaning closet.  Some of the cleaning products looked old and were probably out of date, but he shrugged and used them anyways, figuring that they were probably better than nothing.

           Young Magnus knocked on the open door and wrinkled his nose at the heavy smell in the air when Neil was halfway through mopping the floor.  While the room was nowhere close to shining, it was at least mostly dust and grime free by this point.  “Ready for the grand tour, Father Aleister?”

           “Almost, let me just finish this up.” The room was so small that it took him less than a minute to finish the thorough mopping.  Neil huffed out a breath and wiped at his forehead with a sleeve, staring unseeing out the open window, over the graveyard to the forest beyond it. “There, that should do it for now.”

           “Sorry Father.  We probably should have cleaned up a bit when we heard you were coming, but…”

           “It’s fine, I don’t mind.” Neil did, but he knew it wasn’t the polite thing to say.  He frowned, eyes focusing at sudden movement in the trees.  “Do you get wolves in this area?”

           “No, no wolves. The occasional coyote, but no wolves. Why?”

           “Must have been a dog, then.  Or a bear, maybe.  Saw something big and black through the trees.”

           When he heard no response, Neil turned back to Young Magnus, to find that the other man had gone pale.  “What’s wrong?”

           “I… look, my Dad didn’t want to scare you off by telling you, but you should probably know.  I’ll tell you on the walk into town, it isn’t far.”

           Now confused and a little annoyed, though doing his best to hide it, Neil took the time to put away the cleaning things he had used in the closet he found them and straighten his still awkward feeling robes.  He considered changing to his heavier set, the sky was beginning to get that washed-out tinge of oncoming sunset and the temperature would be dropping, but decided against it.  He liked the cold well enough, and the walk would warm him up.

           He didn’t bother locking the church as they stepped out into the late afternoon air.  After all, what was there to steal?  The rest of the place was just as old and run-down as his quarters, it didn’t look like it had been updated or renovated since electric wiring and indoor plumbing were installed.

           Okay, maybe Neil was exaggerating to himself, but he felt it was only slightly.

           “So, what has you so spooked?” he asked as he fell into step beside Young Magnus.

           “Surprisingly good choice of words.” The other man gave a brief, wry grin before looking down the asphalt road leading to town, perhaps a mile walk, although Neil knew from his taxi ride in that the lane twisted and turned through the fire-crowned trees.

           Young Magnus took a deep breath, then spoke.  “Look, I was born here, but my Dad?  He came here to Canada Falls over from Ireland with a bunch of other families. Settled here with a lot of them. And back there, in Ireland and England and Scotland, apparently there’s a lot of, well… stories.”

           “Stories,” Neil said, raising a brow while wondering whose bright idea it was to name a town in Maine after the bordering country.

           “Yeah.  Old ones, going back a long, long time.  They… hey, you paying attention?”

           “Hmm?” Neil blinked and looked back at Young Magnus as they rounded the first bend in the road. “Yeah, sorry.  Just thought I saw something again.  In the trees.”

           Young Magnus swallowed hard and went pale again, then took a deep breath and made the sign of the cross.  “Look, Father Aleister… do you believe in ghosts?”

           What?  No, of course Neil didn’t believe in ghosts. Still, something had Young Magnus spooked, and now probably wasn’t the time to make fun of the man, not if he still wanted his guide.  “Do you?”

           “Yes,” Young Magnus said seriously.  “I’ve met one, a few times.”

           “Have you?” Great, his guide was delusional.  It took more effort than Neil thought it would to school his expression to something neutral, and he apparently hadn’t succeeded, to judge by the way Young Magnus frowned at him.

           “You don’t believe me.”

           “It is a little far-fetched,” Neil admitted.

           “Yeah, well, nearly everyone in town can say the same.” Young Magnus held up a hand to forestall Neil’s protest.  “Let me finish.  When those families came over, I guess they… brought something with them.  Like I said, there’s stories back where they came from, old ones.  About… dog ghosts.”

           Neil wasn’t able to hold in his bark of laughter.  “Dog ghosts?”

           “You laugh now, but you won’t for long.” Young Magnus shook his head as they rounded another bend in the road.  “Anyways, the stories… all of them have big, black ghost dogs.  Bigger than a calf, with glowing eyes.  They go by a lot of names.” He swallowed.  “We call ours Black Shuck.”

           “What, you’re saying that there’s a ghost dog around here?” Neil couldn’t repress a disbelieving sniff.  “This is just a story, to freak out the new priest, isn’t it?”

           “I’m not messing with you, I promise.  Look, the old stories, they talk about nice ones, who walk you home at night and then disappear, and… not so nice ones.  Black Shuck, he was one of the nice ones.  When I was little, was out late with my friends, and it was dark and I had to walk home alone?  I’ve had him walk beside me and see me home safe.  I’ve seen him, Father Aleister,” Young Magnus said, plucking a large red leaf out of the air and beginning to nervously shred it.  “He’s big, back higher than my waist, ragged fur, gaunt.  Big glowing eyes.  Terrifying to look at, but he’s safe.  Was safe, anyways.”

           “Was?” Neil was still fairly sure that Young Magnus was messing with him, but at this point he might as well hear the man out.  They were getting closer to the town anyways, if he remembered right they just had two more turns in the winding road to go.

           “A few months ago… Black Shuck turned.  We don’t know how or why, but it’s not safe to be out at night alone anymore.  You heard Father Basil died in an accident, right? Well, if by ‘accident’ you mean ‘ghost dog’, then yeah, you heard right.”

           “I’m sure there’s a reasonable-“

           “Father Aleister, I was there that night!  His throat was torn out, I saw Black Shuck going back into the trees!  You don’t mistake him once you’ve seen him.” Young Magnus was shaking now, whether from fear or anger or a combination of both, Neil wasn’t sure.

           Neil shook his head. “Are you sure some farmer’s dog wasn’t-“

           “Six people have died since then.”

           Neil shut up, throat suddenly tight and dry.

           “All of them were out alone at night, all of them had their throats torn out.  There are seven fresh graves in the graveyard, Father Aleister, all of them put there by what we thought was our protector.”  Young Magnus shook his head.  “None of us want to be number eight, and we don’t want you to be number eight, either.  Just… don’t go out alone at night, okay?  And if you do, keep your cross on you.”

           “Why’s that?”

           “That night, when we found Father Basil’s body?  I threw his cross at Black Shuck, and he backed off.  I think he can’t touch holy things.  In all the time I’ve lived here, I’ve never heard of him going into the church, though I have heard he sometimes haunts the cemetery.”

           “I’ll keep that in mind,” Neil said dryly.

           “Look, at least now you can say you were fairly warned,” Young Magnus said, looking up as they rounded the final bend in the road.  “Look, we’re almost there.”

           The tour took the rest of the afternoon, which considering the late hour said something about how tiny the town was, especially as they were doing the tour on foot. Young Magnus took him by the bank where he worked, then over to see Old Magnus again as he closed up the butcher shop, and past the bar that was just opening up where the man Young Magnus called Daniel gave them a wave.  The post office was already closed, but the grocer and the baker were still open, the latter of which they were waited on by Brynn, a girl barely tall enough to look over the counter and who Young Magnus said was the daughter of the town’s baker, Ronan.  Neil did his best to look on the bright side, as it allowed him to pick up a few things to stock his empty refrigerator.

           The sun was dipping below the tree-shrouded horizon, and the sky was taking on the purple-indigo shades of twilight, when they finally ended the tour outside the small apartment building where Young Magnus lived.

           “You can stay the night, keep you from walking home in the dark,” Young Magnus offered, but Neil shook his head.

           “I’ll be fine. It’s not a far walk, and it’s a nice night.”  He could see the protest coming, and he held up a hand to forestall it.  “I’ll be careful, alright?  I’m a grown man, I’m not going to be spooked by some old ghost story.”

           Young Magnus frowned, then sighed.  “Fine. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

           Neil gave a small wave, shifted his sack of groceries to the other arm, then set off down the street. Fifteen minutes later saw the first stars coming out just as he turned onto the lane that led to the church.

           Between the trees grew darker than on the road, and Neil shivered slightly as the temperature dropped. Perhaps he should have gone with his heavier robes, but he hadn’t known that it would get this cold this quickly, or that he would be out this late.  A chill ran through him as a gust of wind stole some of his precious body heat, and he tugged his robes a little closer.

           Huh.  Okay, Neil had grown up in the city, so admittedly he wasn’t familiar with rural areas, but did things always go this quiet in late evening?

           He had rounded another two bends in the winding lane, and his breath was visibly misting the air even in the rapidly fading light, when a twig snapped, sounding like a gunshot in the quiet.

           Neil’s spine stiffened, and his throat went tight as the hairs on the back of his neck prickled and stood up.  “Just a story making me jumpy,” he muttered, trying to ignore the sudden sensation of being watched.  Still, he picked up his pace, heart beginning to pound in his chest.

           Something dark slipped through the trees to his right.

           Neil whirled to face the wall of forest and underbrush, breath coming hard and fast, only to find nothing there that he could see.  Slowly, he reached up and fingered the cross resting against his chest.  “Just a wild animal.”  Right?

           More movement, again to his right, and he slowly turned to face down the path he had already walked.

           A large figure, near the size of a small pony, came to a halt near the bend in the lane a hundred feet or so back.  In the dim light, faintly illuminated by the crescent moon overhead, he could make out pointed ears, ragged dark fur, and a gaunt frame, stomach tucked up near the spine.

           Red, glowing eyes stared into his, and there was a flash of fang in the moonlight as the creature snarled.

           Two things happened near-simultaneously.  The first was that every instinct in Neil’s body screamed ‘Wrong, wrong, this thing is wrong’.

           The second was that the creature took a step closer, and Neil broke into a terrified run.

           His robes near-immediately tried to tangle around his legs, so Neil dropped his groceries and hurriedly yanked them up so he could move faster.  He couldn’t hear anything chasing him, but when he glanced back over his shoulder for a brief instant, the red-eyed dark creature was bounding silently after, mouth gaping to show pale, wickedly sharp teeth in the dark.

           The only things he could easily see were the creature’s eyes and fangs, the rest of it blended all too easily into the darkness.

           Neil faced back forward and tried to run faster, because even from his quick glance, it was clear that the creature was gaining.

           Two more bends, if he remembered right.  Two more bends in the road and he could reach the church.

           Neil rounded the first, breath coming harsh and fast, cold stinging his lungs, legs already beginning to burn, stitch pulling at his side.  Another panicked glance back.  The creature was perhaps fifty feet back now, and still gaining.

           Last bend, and the dark church came into view.  Neil gasped for air, trying to push himself faster-

           And tripped.

           He rolled as he did, ending up on his back, just as the creature gathered itself and leapt, maw parting and aiming for his throat-

           A smaller black creature slammed into it, knocking it off course.

           Air rushed into lungs that had been paralyzed by fear, but the rest of Neil stayed frozen, staring in shock as two figures twisted and shoved, vicious snarls filling the air and glowing green and red eyes flashing in the night, glinting off of snapping fangs.

           He suddenly regained control of his limbs and scrambled to his feet, rushing for the church’s doors. When he was more than halfway there, he glanced back in time to see the larger, red-eyed creature bite down on the neck of the smaller, green-eyed one and throw it to the side.  As the smaller creature slid to a halt on the ground, it became apparent that it was a smaller version of the one that had been chasing him. It lay still, then faded from view, leaving bare asphalt where it had been.

           The red-eyed creature turned back to Neil just as he raced up the church steps and shoved the doors open, falling to the floor inside as relief at reaching safety made his legs suddenly go weak.  He rolled and sat up just as the red-eyed creature approached the church, placing a massive paw on the steps, then snarling and yanking it back.  It glared at Neil, snarled in hate, then also faded away.

           Neil sat there, gasping and trying to catch his breath, then buried his face in his hands as terror left him shaking like the leaves on the trees outside.

Why were there two Black Shucks?

[rikka-zine]

Interview with PhD Candidate Brian White (Part 1)

I saw Brian White’s name for the first time on a tweet by critic Kotani Mari in September 2018. According to the tweet, he is a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago who conducted an academic presentation about Tobi Hirotaka at a conference titled “The Nonhuman in Japanese Culture and Society: Spirits, Animals, Technology," which was held at the University of Victoria, Canada. 

I wondered at the time what it must be like to study Japanese SF outside Japan. I assumed most of the old books and magazines in the genre are not digitized nor easy to access from outside Japan. Fortunately, I got a chance to ask Brian directly what brought him to Japanese culture and science fiction. (I am deeply grateful to Dr. Pau Pitarch Fernandez for introducing him.)

This interview was recorded in Shinjuku, Tokyo in November 2018 during his one-year stay for archival research. The interviewer is me: Terrie Hashimoto. You can read the Japanese translation here.

Note: Throughout this interview, Japanese names are given in the Japanese order, family name first, then given name.

Brian White (BW): I grew up on the east coast of the United States. I was born in New York, but my parents divorced after I was born. My mom went to Pennsylvania and my dad went to New Jersey. I spent most of the time with my mom in Pennsylvania but regularly visited my dad as well. So where I grew up is a little bit complicated but it was basically back and forth between Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Both of my parents are very intellectual and academic-minded. My dad has a PhD in Molecular Biology and spent some time working at a university before transferring to private industry. My mom, though she never finished college, majored in English Literature and always had a strong commitment to ideas about what it meant to be literary and well-read. She was always pushing me to read books.

I was born in 1988, so I was growing up during the boom of YA literature in the ‘90s. There were a few popular series in the US; one of these was called Goosebumps. And then of course there was Harry Potter, and also Animorphs, so you had Horror, Fantasy, and SF all together [in YA series]. Mystery books were popular as well, like Nancy Drew, though I guess that was from the '60s or '70s. All of those subgenres were present in YA. I really enjoyed Animorphs series. I found it extremely interesting because the main idea of the series is children who can change into animals and go and fight evil aliens. Stylistically I always found it fascinating how the author put you into the story and made you feel what it would be like to be a tiger, an ant, a falcon or whatever through first-person narration. That sense of being completely different creatures was very attractive to me. I read so much SF as a young child. I think that's why anime like Dragon Ball were eventually so interesting to me when I started watching them in middle school. 

I remember when I was in middle school, the only television network that played anime was called Cartoon Network and you could only get it if you had a special kind of cable package. And I just remember seeing advertisements for Cartoon Network on other channels and seeing advertisements specifically for Gundam Wing. I wanted to watch it so badly!  My parents finally did get upgraded to premium cable or whatever it was to have Cartoon Network. Unfortunately, they'd stopped playing Gundam Wing by then. I was very sad about that. But they were playing things like Dragon Ball Z and Gundam 08th MS Team - which was a kind of jungle warfare sort of thing - and things like Cowboy Bebop and Trigun, which my generation considers to be classics. I'm sure that others have other opinions of them, though. They seem to have become much more popular in the United States [than Japan]. It was eye-opening. 

So over the course of middle school and high school, I guess I drifted away from sci-fi literature itself, and more into things like anime and manga. I started reading manga volume after volume. I consumed anime and manga voraciously. I read a lot of Shonen Jump titles. I think the first [manga] I ever bought was Naruto Vol.1, and I really enjoyed that.

I moved into being interested in Japanese popular culture because of a few reasons. Maybe I should have mentioned this before, but I first started getting into Dragon Ball when my cousin came to stay with us for a little while on vacation. He brought a Dragon Ball manga with him, and it was the first time I'd ever seen a manga. I was shocked at how it was read, in my mind, back to front because it was in the Japanese reading order rather than the American order. This was just a “へえええ (Whaaat!)” moment for me when I was 12 or 13.

Shortly after that I found out that Power Rangers was Japanese. I had watched Power Rangers so much as a child.  I forget exactly which series it was, but the one with dinosaurs. That was my favorite television program as a child. And to find out that it was actually Japanese years later really shocked me. There's another, I think I hadn't even thought of it as anime at the time, called Speed Racer in English. I'd watched that and thought of it as just the same as Looney Tunes or Snoopy or something when I was a kid. And so to find out that these two shows that I had really loved were both Japanese, it was really surprising and made me want to learn more. I think that was one of the reasons why I became so interested in anime and manga.

The other reason was just that it felt different or I guess you could say exotic to me, living in a kind of rural town. I had always dreamed of getting out of my hometown, going somewhere larger. [Japanese popular culture gave me] a feeling of being connected to something bigger and maybe more exciting, a world outside that was very alluring to me. 

And then the time came to apply for a college. I really didn't know what I wanted to do when I grew up. I had good grades because my parents were very strict about doing schoolwork and getting good grades. [I figured] I could probably get into a pretty good school. I was going to try to get into a school that had a Japanese language and culture program and also a lot of other majors that I could try out. I ended up going to the University of Pennsylvania and they had a fairly good Japanese program there. 

I declared my major basically as soon as I walked in the door. I guess the professors didn't quite know what to do with me because most people go to the Wharton [Business] School or go into international relations and then also take some classes in Japanese as a second major or a minor. They were more used to that kind of student, I think. 

But I really wanted to do Japanese, so I took courses in Japanese cultural studies and literary studies and studied in Kyoto for a semester when I was a third-year student. All through that I kept an interest in popular culture. But just because of the way that the classes were structured, doing more mainstream Japanese literary readings, I drifted away from consuming SF very regularly at that time. As I was finishing college, I decided I wanted to do more in-depth research, perhaps involving SF in a broad sense. The thing I liked the best was reading and writing about Japanese culture and the sort of insights that gave me into how culture works more generally and being able to turn that around on American culture, that sort of thing. As I was looking around at what I wanted to do and how I could keep doing that kind of work, academia was the thing that came up. But there are a lot of people working on [popular cultural studies], so I thought I could maybe do literary studies and then also fold in film studies.  I really like working with film, and it was shortly before that time that I took a post-war literature and film class with Kano Ayako sensei (*means teacher or professor in Japanese). She was so inspirational to me in terms of what one can do, and that was where I encountered Abe Kobo for the first time. We read Woman in the Dunes and watched the film adaptation, and I was like … MY LIFE IS CHANGED. I was just so fascinated by his style. I read Woman in the Dunes in English, and I had a chance to read a little bit more of his writings in Japanese at home soon after, and I thought that they were just amazing. So I said, “Okay, I'm going to go to grad school and I'm going to get a PhD and write a dissertation about Abe Kobo and surrealism and politics of the 1960s.” That's what was thinking when I went to grad school. And a few things happened. 

For one thing, I found out that a lot of academics were already working on books about Abe Kobo that would be coming out within the next couple of years. So as for books and dissertations and all that sort of thing, from a business perspective, there wasn't going to be much demand for new professors who specialized in Abe Kobo by the time I finished.

I thought, OK, maybe it's time to rethink this, and I'd had this idea in the back of my head. I'm not sure where it started, but the one thing that I had been interested in talking about with Abe Kobo and the Surrealist movement was its relationship with technology and how technology interacts with the body within Surrealist literature. I was really interested in that relationship and so I started trying to push on that more. Around that time, I was studying at the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies which is an intensive language training program in Pacifico Yokohama. I was trying to explain to a sensei there what I was interested in because during the program everyone has the opportunity to do guided research into whatever topic they chose. I was trying to explain my topic to my sensei, and because my Japanese wasn't great at the time, and also because I didn't have a clear idea of [the topic] myself, I was having trouble putting it into words. As I was rambling about technology and the body, he said, “You mean SF?”, and it was another lightbulb moment. What I was trying to talk about, it really was SF literature, or at least I'd have an easier time finding materials and finding [texts] that worked with the body and technology within science fiction. It was really because Abe was a science fiction-esque author that his work interested me.

I changed course in my third year of graduate school [and said], “Okay, actually what I'm going to do is study science fiction and think about how science fiction talks about embodiment and what sorts of bodies are presented within science fiction, whether you see women or racial minorities and so on.” As I started to slowly develop that thesis, as a result, I felt like I was always kind of behind in trying to catch up to people who have known what they're doing from day 1.

Since I started at the edges [of that topic], it's always felt like I need to read more and study more and do more and try to catch up... in that sense it's been a little bit stressful, especially because I'm now in this program with faculty who were maybe better equipped to help me a couple years ago than now. But luckily my advisors at Chicago are very kind and very knowledgeable about just about everything. Even if they don't know a lot about science fiction, they can help me in other ways.

But yes, it's been challenging to try to study [as a topic]. There aren't a lot of materials translated into English, especially, and there's not as strong a scholarly body of literature, so it's a little bit harder to know where to look. I've been finding my own way. However, I think there are more and more people who are starting to write about [Japanese] science fiction academically in the United States. It's been very helpful to start to talk to them and form that kind of community.  I don't know if you know the Parallel Futures series that's coming out through the University of Minnesota press. It’s a series of translations, and they did Aramaki Yoshio’s The Sacred Era (tr. Baryon Tensor Posadas, 2017). They're coming out with a bunch more, and I've had a chance to meet with the sensei who are behind it. Thomas Lamarre and Tatsumi Takayuki sensei are two of the three main contributors to that. Christopher Bolton might also be working on it. He was one of the people that put out a book about Abe Kobo and specifically looked at his works as science fiction. So that was a kind of the final deciding factor; I can't write that book because someone has already written it!

They're all working on that series and between that and other scholars’ work there's been more materials starting to come out. I know a number of graduate students as well - we're working on similar things. So on the one hand, it feels very exciting because it feels like we're on the crest of something new and exciting. But because it’s this new thing coming into being, you know, it's sometimes hard to find what you need because there just aren't a lot of people who have done that work already. Scholars working on the sixties have mostly focused on “serious” literature. So it's been interesting to try to bring the conversation back around to sci-fi. 

And it's been interesting personally to take a number of years off from sci-fi. It's been about ten to fifteen years since I was consuming a lot of SF literature as a fan. Since the SF I used to read was aimed at young adults, to come back into it as an adult looking at sci-fi aimed at adults in Japanese, it really feels very much like entering a completely new space. It's been fun to put that together and get an idea of what's out there and who's writing what and when, who the major authors are and what their classic works were like. It feels very spread out, and it's true that it was. But it's only unknown to me, right, so whenever I talk to people that have been consuming it, like Tatsumi sensei, for example, who's been reading it since it started back in the 60s, you know it’s very humbling because he just knows everything. I don't have time to read all the things that he has read, and every time I have a meeting with him and talk about what I'm thinking about, he gives me a suggested reading list three pages long. There's no way I could possibly finish all of it, but it's an exciting challenge.

(Continues to Part. 2)

[betweengenesisfrogs]

OFF-THE-CUFF HOMESTUCK THOUGHTS #4: ALL THAT WACKY GNOSTIC STUFF AND THE ENDING OF HOMESTUCK, OR: THE YOLOBRO PRINCIPLE

DISCLAIMER       FRAMEWORK

[CHECK THE TAG FOR MORE THOUGHTS]

All right! I’ve finally had a night free, I’m hyped up on friends and good feelings, and I’m ready to continue. Let’s make shit transpire. B)

So, one thing a lot of folks were talking about near the end of Homestuck’s run was Gnosticism. Gnostic themes and references (referances) were everywhere in Act 6 Homestuck. A lot of folks were predicting these themes would be heavily involved in the ending. Then, when Act 7 came out, I saw a lot of disappointment and confusion. The major Gnostic revelations they’d predicted hadn’t taken place! Had Hussie dropped Gnostic themes like they were hot and the pimp was in the crib?

I don’t think so. I think, far from being dropped, the Gnostic themes and ideas are KEY to Homestuck’s ending. They’re vital to understanding massive parts of it, and, for me, at least, one of the things that make it so enjoyable for me. The trick, though, is to understand what kind of Gnostic story we’re looking at. So let’s see if we can crack this cueball open.

This is going under a cut, because it’s going to be an essay in itself.

GNOSTICISM, OR: SOPHIA, YALDABAOTH, AND YOU

Okay, first off: what even is Gnosticism and what themes are we even talking about? Many of you may be familiar with this stuff already from the aforementioned posts, but I’m sure there’s plenty of you out there who aren’t, so let’s do a quick recap.

Gnosticism was an early breakaway movement in Christianity back when the new religion was first finding its feet, and in fact it still has some adherents today. This is pre-Bible, pre-general acceptance of Christianity stuff. Think 100s and 200s CE. It was generally a lot more focused on individual experience of the divine than the hierarchy of the developing Church—which, sadly, was probably the main reason it was outcompeted by the hierarchy. It just didn’t have as much unified social or political power. So we’re mostly forced to reconstruct it (like so many alt Christianities) from the texts of the people who were arguing against it.

But, as far as we can tell, its beliefs were and are pretty interesting compared to the Christianity most of us are more familiar with. Basically, the God of the Old Testament, the God of Judaism, was not the God to worship according to Gnostic Christianity. He’s actually the villain. (Which was a pretty huge divergence from Christianity’s Jewish roots, so you can see how that might not have sat too well with some folks.)

Among many different texts, there’s a common mythic story that goes something like this. We live in a realm which is fallen and contains evil, but the true reality is different. The true reality is a perfect realm of perfect goodness, created by the true (very abstract) Creator. This state is called the pleroma, Greek for “fullness.” The pleroma emanates forth perfect worlds with the help of beings called aeons, angel-like beings who exist in male-female pairs, each of which is called a syzygy.

The fall occurred when the pairs became unbalanced. One of these aeons, Sophia (“wisdom” in Greek), broke away from her partner, and went off to explore the void. While she remained perfect, she accidentally emanated a being that was not paired with anyone: a masculine, flawed being known as Yaldabaoth or the Demiurge. Some folks will tell you this means “half-creator,” but that’s a mistranslation. Demiurge in Greek really means, literally, “worker from/of the people,” but less literally it means something like “artist” or “craftsman.” Usually it’s a guy who makes pretty stuff like jewelry or decoration or something like that. (Can you tell I took Greek?)   This being created our world, our whole flawed material plane, believing himself to be the creator, and became the God of the Old Testament. The task of the Gnostic is to transcend Yaldabaoth through self-knowledge, or gnosis. By understanding oneself, one realizes one’s unity with Sophia, the true source of our divinity, and ultimately, with the pleroma and the true Creator.  

All in all, it’s a pretty cool concept, whether you believe in it or not. And already, if you weren’t familiar with Gnosticsm before, I imagine you’re spotting things from Homestuck.  Names like Yaldabaoth and Abraxas (a name used sometimes for the true Creator.) The aeons, who resemble Homestuck’s cherubs in their perfect pairing.  It’s pretty clear that Hussie was familiar with this story, at least enough to draw on it for some references and motifs. So why might he have wanted to bring Gnostic stuff into his story? What might he have wanted to convey?

Let’s find out.

CHERUBS CHERUBS CHERUBS

It all begins, of course, with the aeons. I mean cherubs. OK, so I make no secret of the fact that I love cherubs. God I love cherubs. I’m a sucker for the whole cherub loredump Aranea provides, even if it had to be lampshaded to hell and back as a loredump. I think the thing that makes cherubs so interesting to me is the place that they occupy in Homestuck’s enormous, builds-on-itself-Powers-of-Ten-style cosmos. They’re not just another alien race. They don’t operate on the ordinary scale we’re used to, like trolls and humans do (the microcosm of ordinary life), but they don’t operate on the gigantic universe-spawning scale, either (the macrocosm.) They’re in between, in the “mezzocosm,” to steal a phrase from Joseph Campbell.

Cherubs act on the scale of say, galaxies. They operate within universes, many cherubs existing within each individual Billious Slick. Destructive cherubs cause huge waves of death, wiping out solar system after solar system and species after species of poor innocent aliens and fantrolls along the way. But good cherubs are protectors, defending said species from their cousins’ rampages. While cherubs resemble individual aliens traveling through the void, they also operate like much larger beings, claiming huge swaths of territory as their own, either to defend or to destroy. When they mate, their large-scale nature becomes much more evident, as they transform into AU-long serpents that wrestle for dominance in perfect pairs.

Cherubs fit the idea of the aeons really nicely. Dualities up the wazoo, obviously. (I haven’t even mentioned their inherent bodysharing stuff, where they already have to wrestle for dominance within themselves.) And a cherub, after all, in Abrahamic myth, is another kind of angel. And by being part of the natural processes of universes, they echo the aeons in being a natural aspect of reality that—as we’ll see—gets subverted with disastrous results.

They also fit really well into Homestuck’s running theme of cosmology as biology. Universes are literally frogs, whose DNA has to be combined to create the next generation, and they reproduce with massive amounts of redundancy and failure, like real spawning animals who produce hundreds of eggs.  Doomed timelines are compared to capillaries, which all feed back into the central artery of the Alpha timeline (and maybe they’re literal capillaries within the universe-frog?) I gave your universe cancer, etc., etc. Cherubs, meanwhile, are compared to bacteria and cells: the destructive cherubs to viruses or germs, and the protective cherubs to white blood cells, defending the universe from disease.

Cherubs also make a really nice parallel with the events of the Game. (I’m pretty sure this insight came out of conversations between agenderarcee and zenosanalytic and other such awesome folks, so credit where credit is due.) In the Game, one party supports creation: Prospit, backed by Skaia, while the other doesn’t so much support destruction so much as oppose creation: the armies of Derse, backed possibly by the Horrorterrors. Creation vs Nullification. It’s hard to get a universe going; there’s too much inertia in the way. Meanwhile, Cherubs are an inversion—the wicked ones support Destruction, the good ones oppose it. Creation vs Nullification. Destruction vs Protection. It’s pretty cool, and maybe suggests that Skaia doesn’t just contain cherubs, but relies on them, too, working them into its system as aeons are part of the system of Gnosticism. I’m super stoked that cherubs seem to play a role in Hiveswap somehow, and curious what more we might learn about them when it finally comes out. They’re super cool.

All of which is to say: yeah, cherubs are definitely aeons, and they’re a pretty rad take on them, too.

So…what would happen if your cherubs got fucked up?

But you knew that would happen. The upfuckery was already here.

Enter *our* cherubs, Calliope and Caliborn.

THE MANCHILD DEMIURGE

Caliborn and Calliope are born into a weird code of life (set up ultimately by Caliborn, interestingly) that privileges their more down to earth side, rather than their cosmic side. Ordinary cherubs aren’t supposed to live in rooms and type on computers, but here they do. This is a problem, as I’ll explain later, but the obvious problems are that A) Caliborn and Calliope decide to play a game meant for other, less cosmic species B) Caliborn uses the game to kill his sister through artificial means rather than grappling for dominance the ordinary way and thus dooms himself to being a stunted immature tool forever C) As a solo player, he plays a very different game, with enormous and disastrous cosmic results. Namely, he becomes Lord English, an unstoppable being with incredible power over the timeline and the opportunity to devour world after world at a whim. Note that inflicting destruction is exactly what he would have done as an ordinary cherub…but here he’s able to do it on a much larger scale.

Caliborn/Lord English is pretty clearly modeled on the Gnostic Demiurge. Not only does he control a reality that our heroes are ultimately meant to escape, he also has some other familiar traits. He’s a self-described artist, obsessed with his creation, a terrible and insipid imitation of the story we know as Homestuck. A craft’s man, as he says. The irony being, of course, that the events of Homestuck are also his creation, but indirectly, as the much more powerful and manipulative English.

It’s easy to see LE’s entrance into a universe at the end of its life as an event. But in some ways it’s better to think of it as a kind of territory, marked for his possession. After all, from an outside perspective or from Skaia’s perspective, all universes are already here. Think of how the trolls are able to communicate with the universe they created at any point in its history. Think of how the Furthest Ring—the weird space-time outside of universes and sessions—is inconsistent and an event necessary to LE’s powers, the creation of the Green Sun, can take place within one of the universes marked by his predation. It’s Mobius Double Reacharounds all the way down, is what I’m saying. So really, from a perspective outside of time it’s less a chronological set of events and more a place, a set of universes that LE is able to inhabit.

Actually, I made a couple maps in past posts of what such a territory might look like. Tumblr frequently won’t let me fit images into a long post like this, but here’s two  links instead.

So, just like the Demiurge, LE has a whole realm to his own. A false realm, carved out within the reality of SBURB. LE is Homestuck’s Demiurge.

Wait a minute. Wasn’t the Demiurge’s name Yaldabaoth? Isn’t that the name of a Denizen? More specifically, Caliborn’s denizen? Huh?

Let’s back up a bit. LE’s progression through the universes isn’t a surprise to Skaia. We knew early on, actually, that his actions were “sanctioned by Paradox Space.” And really, how could it be otherwise? If all universes coexist simultaneously, even during the process of their creation, the forces that create reality would be well aware of divergences from their normal pattern.  The Game itself offers him his power!

Now, it’s hard to say how much of what goes on in Paradox Space is Skaia’s will. Skaia itself seems to want to make universes, but most of these efforts fail, and will definitely fail without player intervention. And it’s implied that there are forces acting against Creation. Maybe just inertia. Or maybe these are the Horrorterrors, who seem to advance their own agenda through Derse Dreamers. Maybe they’re just creatures that naturally inhabit the weird tangled space-time of the Furthest Ring. If so, it’s not surprising that they would be opposed to the creation of new universes in their midst. So whatever LE is, like everything else within Paradox Space, he’s hashed out between Creation and Nullification.

Denizens are weird and interesting in this regard. They’re the closest thing the Game has to intelligent cosmic entities that you could actually talk to. They’re like the public face of Skaia. They seem to communicate information to themselves through different realities, and they manipulate events to ensure certain results in the timeline. Their goals, though, are as inscrutable as Skaia’s and the Horrorterrors’ always are. They’re associated with the Game and therefore with Skaia. But they seem to me to be part of the ever-ongoing process of negotiation between Creation and Nullification.

So, when Caliborn finds himself in a dead session where his Denizen simultaneously promises to punish him for his hubris with a grueling challenge AND offers him incredible, godlike power if he succeeds, it probably indicates that these perspectives are once again at play. Skaia likes to figure out who will win its ongoing argument with the void through a Game. Why not offer a different Game as a way of resolving a different question?

I’m not sure if I borrowed this theory from someone, but one idea that I remember thinking about earlier in Homestuck’s run was that LE’s existence was the result of a failed coup by the Horrorterrors that totally backfired. If they really did represent the forces of Nullification, suppose they got tired (non-temporally speaking) of losing matches and seeing new frogs pop up in their precious space-time over and over again. Say they decided to switch from Nullification to outright Destruction, to make a weapon that destroys universes. But their weapon blew up in their face once it started attacking them right back.

Or, maybe let’s turn it around: say Skaia thought, hey, let’s get a leg up on these void-loving bastards for once, and make a weapon that, yeah, sure, fucks up a bunch of universes and some of our player’s lives (not that we really care), but also lets us really stick it to those tentacley motherfuckers for a change.

Both possibilities seem worth considering, depending on how much you think Skaia is willing to sacrifice.

So when Yaldabaoth offers LE the Choice and the chance to play the ultimate game of table stickball, he’s really doing a whole lot more: he’s offering the major parties involved in anything going on in Paradox Space the chance to score points in their own Game.

Denizens sometimes seem to me to represent different aspects of Skaia, or different aspects of this negotiation process. It’s even possible that they could be in competition. So what could a Denizen named Yaldabaoth represent?

The power to make and break certain players. The power to make a Demiurge.

Yaldabaoth is associated with power, and, interestingly, with the Light aspect through his shape. He can’t be easily classified as belonging to a particular aspect like some Denizens can, though, because he manifests to both Dirk and Caliborn. What do they have in common? An interest in power and a considerable amount of it, yes. But also toxic masculinity, arrogance, and an obsession with being the best.

If Skaia loves games, how does it feel about winners? Maybe Yaldabaoth represents the principle of the conqueror. The one who defies even the onslaught and punishment of the dead session. The one who’s good enough at games to become part of the game itself. Maybe Yaldabaoth is the part of Skaia that finds someone like Caliborn deserving of a certain honor. Or at least allows its opponents to make use of such a person. The part of Skaia that says, power comes to the one who overcomes it all, through sheer brutal obsession. To the bro who is the most hardcore of all the bros. Who by throwing himself into his game more than any reasonable person would…somehow succeeds.

You might call it the Yaldabaoth Principle, or maybe…

The Yolobro Principle.

So that’s how you make a demiurge. How do you break one?

With a syzygy.

THE ARTIST, THE MUSE

Ah, dear, sweet, sweet, precious Calliope, I’m sorry to have held off talking about you for so long. Your brother ruins everything. But we all know you’re leagues, no, AUs better than that guy.

There isn’t anyone named Sophia in Homestuck, but Calliope is a pretty close analogue. She’s the other half of Caliborn’s cherub pair or syzygy, and it’s her separation from him that’s the catalyst for LE’s. Much of the personality Caliborn crafts for himself is in opposition to her: she’s a passionate and skilled artist, so he becomes an artist too in order to mock her work. Even his cartoonish misogyny seems to arise mostly out of his hatred for her and everything she enjoys. Even after he becomes LE, he’s still obsessing over her, just as cherubs generally obsess over their defeated halves and seek out mates similar to them in adulthood—creating crafting a parody of her in Doc Scratch, killing limeblood trolls because she’s fond of them, and so on. Honestly, Calliope is a great and wonderful character whom a lot of the fandom can empathize with (indeed, she’s crafted as a celebration of Homestuck fandom), and so it’s a shame that we’re going to spend most of this post talking about her stupid brother. Let’s just acknowledge that she deserves better, but her dumb bro has to go make it all about himself, as usual.

But let’s talk about Calliope as the Gnostic Sophia. Like Sophia, she can kind of be described as an inherently good being who made a mistake. In her case, that was believing that she could play a cosmic game with her brother and reconcile with him, rather than defeating him in cherub puberty as cherubs usually do. This ultimately led to her death, Caliborn’s dead session challenge round, and his Yaldabothification into LE.

It wouldn’t really be fair to be mad at her, though! It was an innocent mistake born out of good intentions, and it cost her her life. Also, the warring forces of the Game totally set that situation up, as did LE himself. The cherubs’ unusual living situation encouraged them to think of themselves as the type of species that would play the Game, and thus LE was born.

But there are two Calliopes: the one who was killed by her brother, yes, but also another from an alternate timeline, who defeated her brother in the normal cherub way. Part of the difference in her timeline was that she never learned to think of herself the way humans do, never followed their adventures as a fan, and thus never believed that they could reconcile in their game. Alt-Calliope is much closer to Paradox Space’s idea of a traditional cherub. She’s much more cosmic, much more like an aeon. But also much less human. She’s a force for good, but, like Skaia, she can only see individual beings as abstractions. From a certain perspective, she’s much more empowered and much more important

And yet the game is rigged against her. The challenges of her dead session are designed for her Lord of Time brother, and it seems to be implied that hers is a doomed timeline. When she consults with her Denizen—interestingly, not Yaldabaoth, but Echidna—she is given the Choice to wait out an eternity to become someone who could bring an end to a Yaldabaoth-like tyrant. And she accepts that destiny, committing herself fully to a cosmic purpose. Like LE, the ascended Muse of Space is happy to be part of Skaia’s machinations—if for a very different reasons.

If the Denizens represent different aspects of Skaia or the Game, then maybe there’s a countervailing force to Yalda that we could describe as the Echidna Principle. A dedication to protecting and preserving life within Skaia’s system. Or at least, an acknowledgement that the reign of any false god needs to come to an end.  The Echidna principle employs Alt-Calliope as a counterpart to Caliborn, bringing the two cherubs back into symmetry.

This symmetry is INTEGRAL to Homestuck’s ending. We’ll see how, once we establish some ending-related Homestuck Facts.

In the meantime don’t forget regular Calliope, either—she’s going to be important to the meaning of all this, too. We’ll catch up with her by the curtain call.

THE MAP HOMESTUCK AND THE TERRITORY ENGLISH

Okay! Homestuck Facts!

As I’ve discussed before, there’s a thing that keeps happening in Homestuck which we might call Map-Territory Confusion. This is a concept from literary studies and stuff. Basically, what we mean by Map and Territory is that representations of things are not the same as the things themselves. Like, a map of, say, Houston, is not the same thing as the actual city of Houston, right? One’s made of paper and the other’s made of, like, buildings and shit.

Except in Homestuck, the Map and the Territory blur together all the dang time. The labels for Prospit and Derse float in front of their respective planetoids. Jack knows how to flip his sprite. Terezi’s scratching the game disc glitches Homestuck the webcomic. Caliborn’s sabatoge of the expansion pack causes significant glitches in the Game Over session. Sooo many examples going on here that it would take forever to list them all. Even the way that the omniscient narration (which is sometimes the same as the character of Andrew Hussie and sometimes argues with him) blurs together with the subjective experiences of individual characters contributes to the confusion. Even though, on some level, we tend to believe that Homestuck is a representation of a set of events going on in a number of universes that all exist out in some conceptual space, we’re forced to question constantly whether what we’re witnessing is part of those events, or part of the frame we witness them through, or whether that question even makes sense.

By the time we reach Act 6, and even possibly earlier, I’d argue this confusion is being used very deliberately.

Remember how we talked about LE’s territory earlier?

In Homestuck, Map-Territory Confusion is used to draw an explicit link between the Map that is Homestuck the webcomic and the Territory that is the set of universes and sessions over which LE is able to hold sway.

This is a big part of the reason for Hussie and Caliborn’s conversation. Caliborn is arguing with the theoretical author of the map Homestuck, screeching at how his choices have affected him, and trying to put forward his own version of the narrative.  Meanwhile the author is literally dead, killed by LE. And after this conversation, Caliborn takes over the narrative prompt by entering his text into the same space where he had conversations with Hussie. He tries to rewrite Homestuck in his own bad-fandom image, while simultaneously A) his sabotage of the the Homestuck narrative cause glitches, confusion, and GAME OVER for the kids and B) his future-self LE’s power over the timeline becomes even more of a concern for both the living and the dead. This, mind you, is all on the heels of us finding out through the last few acts how LE and his agent Doc Scratch have been manipulating every disaster, and indeed, everything that has happened within the narrative Homestuck from the very beginning.

An large set of universes and sessions are LE’s playground.

Homestuck itself is LE’s playground.

The two are one and the same.

The other piece of the LE’s Domain = Homestuck puzzle is of course the house-shaped Juju, and the weird powers John gets from touching it. Now, the weird timeline retcon stuff that the Juju allows John to enact is its own weird, often frustrating subject that probably deserves its own post, and if we were to discuss it here, we’d get more derailed than we already are. What’s important for our purposes is that the Juju is even more associated with the narrative than LE is. When we first see it, it looks grey but is actually transparent, by which I mean it bleeds into the grey background of the base website. This grey background is also the place John ends up when he’s testing his powers and dragging LOWAS between realities. We know that LE used it in the very beginning of his reign to trap his opponents, and we know that afterward it passed out of his control, and became something that could only be used against him. It’s shaped like the logo for the Game, in the kids’ version, which is the closest thing we have to a symbol of Homestuck.

We don’t know much about what Jujus actually are, but one thing that’s frequently true about them is that they have strong effects on time. Well, what has a greater affect on time than a story that shapes all the different universes and timelines into a coherent progression?

I’m pretty sure that what Yaldabaoth gives Caliborn and what Caliborn traps our heroes inside to ensure his ascension is Homestuck itself.

So, when I say that the ending of Homestuck is about escaping Homestuck, please believe that it’s not just some weird meta bs that dismisses the story and says it doesn’t mean anything. It’s an actual plot point. Once we learn to see the link between Homestuck the narrative and Homestuck the events, we can see that to escape Homestuck the webcomic has a deeply metaphorical meaning. To escape Homestuck is to escape the hidden conductor behind all events and enter into a domain he cannot control.

With all that in mind, we’re now ready to interpret Act 7.

ACT 7: COSMIC SYMMETRY

We see two main things happen in Act 7. Alt-Calliope makes her move, and Vriska (oh Vriska, you’re your own post and a half) activates the house Juju against Lord English, which is to say, she weaponizes Homestuck against him. The result is a black hole where the Green Sun used to be. Which of the two are responsible? Wrong question, I think. Alt-Calliope, our Sophia, is serving as the conductor of the orchestra and by implication, the guiding hand of the narrative, while Vriska is bringing the narrative to bear against him. The Juju undeniably has power, but so, too, does a Muse of Space showing that this has been her domain all along. The physical destruction they cause is inextricably linked.

Thought the timeline stuff is knotty and confusing as hell, the actual mechanics of LE’s destruction are secretly fairly simple. As others have noted, the defeat of this pool-themed villain evokes the rules of table stickball. We see the Juju/weapon/narrative briefly resemble a ball of light, like a cue ball. We see LE’s eyes become eight balls. And we see the light from the juju charging toward him, like something about to knock him into a dark hole.

Click.

The symbolic meaning of the eight ball is important to keep in mind, and in fact was evoked earlier in Homestuck. In many games of billiards, you can’t pocket the eight ball until the last shot. With Snowman, that meant that you couldn’t kill her without destroying the universe. But in fact, Snowman did get taken out—when Scratch wanted someone to destroy the universe and bring in LE. The meaning of the eight ball, then, is: the time has finally come. The rules permit victory. The right timeline has been found. Everything necessary to make the final move has already taken place.

That’s exactly what Alt-Calliope represents in the eyes of Skaia or the Game. From the beginning of LE’s power trip, the Game knew that his power trip wouldn’t last forever. It would have limits both in time and in space. For Skaia, Alt-Calliope is those limitations being enacted. She is LE’s end.

Think back to the tangled spacetime of the Furthest Ring. Scratch enlisted Dave and Rose to create the Green sun long before the chronology of their session. Thus he achieved, in one sense, LE’s beginning. The destruction of the Green Sun (which unites all of LE’s universes as an ordinary star unites its planets) achieves LE’s end. It doesn’t matter that this end has to come, chronologically, after his long reign of terror. It still ends it.

It’s an end spatially as well as temporally. LE’s rampage through the furthest ring led him opponents around in a great circle of ravaged space-time. (Like a sucker.) Which by the time of the final confrontation makes a complete loop. Imagine what effect a star collapsing into a black hole might have on that ruined space. Imagine how a fully-realized Muse of Space might be able to manipulate the fabric of the Furthest Ring to achieve exactly that effect. Now recall that the universes and sessions LE’s able to influence are part of the Green Sun’s orbit. Yeah, they’re not going to make it out of that collapse intact. Nor are the army of ghost selves that echo the twisting progression of all the universes and alternate timelines we’ve seen going to escape. They’re going to be caught up in the extinction of the domain, swept up in its wake.

That’s the physical side of things. Looking at the Juju itself lets us talk about the narrative side of things. When Vriska activates the Juju, it takes shape as the familiar house symbol of Homestuck. But that same symbol has another meaning—it’s the shape of the Exit Gate for the Game. At the exact same moment (remember, things that are juxtaposed in Homestuck are circumstantially simultaneous, meaning that they’re somehow associated or related to each other) the Juju becomes the Exit Gate, we also see the kids’ (previously red and doorless) Exit gate flip turnways, turn white, and feature a door. The two look so similar that for a moment I thought the kids were going to walk through and end up in the Furthest Ring. But no—the two aren’t two sides of the same door. They’re the same side of the same door.

Down in front of LE crashes a white door. The same white door appears to the kids at the same moment. The difference is, the kids will walk through, and LE will not. He won’t escape the end of his own ambitions. Where does the door lead from? From LE’s domain, also known as Homestuck. Where does it lead to? A new universe outside of LE’s domain, and outside the canon of Homestuck. So outside the canon that it’s only glimpsed as a flash-forward to the future, unable to be directly shown onscreen before the End of Act 7.

And—whatever interpretation we want to assign to the bizarre timeline questions that surround the retcon, Caliborn’s vision of trapping the kids, and the Juju—one thing stands out clearly. This is the right timeline. This is no longer the timeline trapped under LE’s sway. As the eight ball tells us, everything has finally lined up the way it should. Time to take that shot.

One more thing worth noting—in Homestuck, specific colors have long stood for specific timelines and universes. The curtains of the Beta kids’ acts are red, and the Alphas’ green, and their game logos invert this. Meanwhile the trolls’ curtains are blue. As was foreshadowed in Rose’s walkaround, the three colors of curtains eventually fuse to make, in Act 7, white. The color of everything coming together. The color of the Juju in its final form.

What better way to represent everything from the whole history of LE’s domain coming together? What better way to represent everything from the whole history of Homestuck combining into one victory?

In the ending of Homestuck, weird time shit, cosmic destruction, and the culminating power of the narrative all fuse together into one white-hot path toward victory. And even as all this happens, we see Caliborn smashing his clock, see LE gaining his terrifying time powers in the first place. The end is the beginning, and the beginning is also the end.

For a Demiurge and for Skaia, that’s the same thing. The Game has granted Caliborn unfathomable power. But it’s also trapped him in a false, limited world of his own devising. Forever. His obsession means power, but his obsession is also his greatest weakness. He will never know freedom from the loop he set himself in, has become the loop itself. He will never know the freedom the kids know. His ignorance of anything but himself makes him, in a way, a deeply tragic figure. Tragic because Skaia knows how limited he really is, and he never will.

Skaia, or whatever power is at work in the symmetrical ballad of the twin cherubs, is satisfied. Alt-Calliope has fulfilled her cosmic purpose. The circle is complete. The cosmos is satisfied. And our heroes have left the old world behind forever

…But what does that mean? What does it mean to escape?

A GIRL WHO LIVED

What surprised a lot of people who’d been following the Gnostic themes of Homestuck was that the kids didn’t ultimately escape the game. A lot of folks, I remember, felt sure that the kids were going to leave the Game behind forever by escaping into a limitless realm, the pleroma of Gnostic myth.

Here’s the thing. They did.

What I’ve been trying to show here is that the Demiurge to escape, as figured in Homestuck, isn’t Skaia, but Lord English. And the pleroma, the realm of freedom we’re trying to get to? That’s not some place outside Skaia and its cycle of universe after universe being born.

The pleroma is Skaia itself.

This is deeply weird and it’s easy to see why it would catch a lot of people off guard. After all, the pleroma in Gnostic myth is a deeply positive thing, a realm of perfection and joy. It’s the home of the perfectly good God, as Christians tend to view him. Skaia, however, is depicted as amoral, uncaring, even cruel.

But I think this ties into Homestuck’s major themes. The amoral, almost animal-minded cosmos Homestuck depicts is fascinating precisely because it offers no caring God. Cherubs are part of the ordinary progression of things, just as aeons are, but reconnecting with that progression simply means the continued perpetuation of reality through an infinite frog machine. The deep meaningfulness of mythology clashes, quite deliberately with the deep meaninglessness of perpetual motion.  God is a video game that doesn’t care about you as a person, but as a tool it can use to keep the whole show running. And yet, like a video game, it offers grand, mythic narratives and archetypes you can invest yourself in, to the point where you can lose sight of the fact that they don’t necessarily mean anything for your life. Skaia will always exist, even after the story is done, as the Spirograph at the end of Act 7 suggests. It’s up to us human beings to make sense of that.

I’ve talked before about the difference between huge, archetypal narratives and actual personal experiences. Within the context of Sburb, that usually means the difference between the game and your experience of it. But it can also be the difference between Dave and the toxic masculine narratives he inherited. The difference between your archetype and yourself. Or the difference between Calliope and her doppleganger.

To Skaia, Alt-Calliope is the important one, because she enacts its mythic narrative and brings the ballad of Lord English to an end. To Skaia, the Calliope we know is a footnote, an accident, an irrelevant detail. It doesn’t care whether she lives or dies.

But we do. Because we know her. We’ve seen her suffer and struggle, just as we’ve seen all the heroes suffer and struggle. We’ve seen her yearn to be part of something important, celebrated fandom with her, and wanted to defend her against her horrible brother. We’ve seen her dream of something better than a limited life locked to a monster with a chain. We’ve been rooting for her to achieve it.

There’s no reason, from Skaia’s perspective, that Calliope needed to be brought back to life with the ring of life. The ring allowed Aranea to cause Game Over, which was important to the retcon and thus to its grand plan. Calliope is irrelevant.

But she gets brought back to life anyway. Why? Because her friends care about her. Because we do.

Because our Calliope isn’t part of the construction of a grand cosmic architecture. She’s a person.

She has the right to exist. Not because she fulfils some time loop or causes some outcome. But because she’s a person. She doesn’t exist for the cosmos. She exists for herself.

In our Calliope, what was formerly godlike, angel-like, beyond mortal comprehension, gets a chance to be something more human. Calliope expects her doppelganger to be superior to her. She fears her friendships, her peacefulness, her history make her weak. But it’s just the opposite. She’s strong in a way that has nothing to do with what Skaia values, but everything to do with what we value as readers. She matters in dreaming and striving. In herself.

As Alt-Calliope says, recognizing this truth about her counterpart, even as she lives out an entirely different story:

CALLIOPE: you don't need to do anything.

CALLIOPE: be who you've become, and who i didn't.

CALLIOPE: consume the fruits of an existence i could never understand.  

CALLIOPE: live.

The kids escape Lord English, but at the expense of all their past and possible selves, and are left to wrestle with the meaning of their victory: is it divinely ordained, or just an accident, just Skaia’s whim? Is it truly victory when they’re not sure if they’re the same selves, or have they lost something along the way? Caliborn and Calliope embody a similar dichotomy. Caliborn will forever be archetypal, larger than life. But he’s doomed to live out a foolish, self-indulgent story in a bubble of space-time he will never escape. Calliope will never have the glorious, cosmic importance Skaia granted to her brother and to the ghost of her it conjured up to defeat him. But she has a freedom that neither of them will never be able to possess. Freedom to live.

Ultimately, Homestuck uses Gnosticism, a mythic framework all about the relationship between human and the divine, to show the difference between the two. It suggests that the divine, the archetypal, the stuff of grand heroic stories is ultimately limited. In the end, Homestuck argues, there’s great strength and freedom in being mortal. Being human.

I think that’s a pretty cool story to tell.

Next time: other ways of thinking about the ending.

(PS: This essay turned out to be 11 pages in Word. The first mention of Vriska is on page 8. Of fucking course.)

[EDIT 5/21: A previous version of this post claimed that Abraxas was the name of Sophia’s syzygy counterpart, but looking around, that appears to be unsubstantiated. Instead, Abraxas appears to be used as the name of the Ur-God who created the Pleroma or of another Aeon within the Gnostic system. This is pretty cool, as it ties the Denizen Abraxas and the Hope aspect even more fully into the normal functioning of the Sburban cosmos/pleroma. Pretty cool stuff! Thanks to @revolutionaryduelist for pointing it out!]

[griffinsanddragons]

Unexpected Developments [Part Two]

Hawke recruits Isabela to help her tie a few ‘loose ends.’  

Read: Part One on Tumblr!

Also on AO3!

I finally came through and wrote the thing. We’re following Isabela and we love her so happy readings!

Something was different; Isabela knew the moment Hawke entered the room.   She hadn’t seen much of her since the expedition. Aveline delivered the bad news about Bethany and Hawke needed space to grieve. Merrill, Varric, Anders, and everyone else who’d seen her, spoke about Hawke anxiously. She’d been quiet, they said, distant, angry–though she wouldn’t admit it–and there was a sad, faraway look in her eye that made her seem small. But today, her presence resounded off the Hanged Man’s drafty walls, amassing the attention of every crook, con, bandit, low-life, mercenary and thief she passed by. Hawke–who made a name for herself working for Athenril in the criminal underground, survived the Deep Roads, and got rich–was back. And it would have been normal, Isabela thought, had she had something to come back for. 

[Read More]

“Isabela!”  Hawke greeted her with a wide, excited grin and ordered a drink, the Hanged Man’s finest–though it really wasn’t much. She seemed to be in good spirits today–or rather good enough–nodding and listening to her prattle on about the Rivani Merchant Council Ship she saw at the harbor that morning, (“I’d bet my ass the poor thing’s heading back to Dairsmuid to escort some Merchant Prince selling tea or something–what a waste,”) listening with varying degrees of interest, her eye’s a little wider than they needed to be. “You’re looking perky today. What’s got you better? Have you found someone who’ll…curl your toes in Hightown?” Isabela leaned forward, her movements slow and languid as she slouched into a comfortable position in her seat, “Is it someone I know?” “No!” Hawke asserted, now stiff as well as upright in her chair, “I’m not–I’m not looking for a partner, Isabela!” “Who said anything about a partner?” A large, mischievous grin pulled at the tops of her sparsely freckled cheeks, “I’m talking about a good old-fashioned rub down. That’s what you need. I know a girl, and a fellow if you’d prefer-” “I do not.” She cut her off. Hawke spoke in a stern, affronted voice reminiscent of a Noble in a crooked wig; Between the smuggling, fighting, sarcasm, killing and mercenary work they’ve done together, Isabela nearly forgot that she’d been raised by a parent of righteous, noble birth–the type of Mother who’d encouraged the children to shy away from such ‘improper matters in polite company,’ use the right forks and never threaten the houseguests (unless it was necessary.) Her reaction reminded her of Bethany.

Though that was a topic Isabela couldn’t breach. Even now, as she watched Hawke swirl and nurse her drink, she could see the toll of her grief; The days have not been kind.

She should probably say something. Everyone had said something, everyone but her.

But it wasn’t for a lack of trying. She did, on more than one occasion, try to find a way to tell Hawke she was sorry for what happened to her sister, but her efforts only got as far as the door. She considered climbing in through the window and shouting ‘surprise!’  but whatever ill-conceived speech she came up with could never compare to the real support Hawke already received. She couldn’t be that type of friend–but that didn’t seem to matter, not to Hawke; they picked right up where they left off: giggling over drinks at the Hanged Man as the drunkards sang and tried to play a broken lute. “Alright, alright, no need to twist your knickers. What’s really got you so excited?” “Aveline–” Hawke spoke as though she suddenly remembered what had been on her mind, “I saw her today and she reminded me of something I have to do.” Isabela rolled her eyes and took the last of her drink, desperately hoping she wouldn’t regret the end of the story. “What’s our ‘Captain’ got you doing for her now? Let me guess, disrupting more fine business practices?” “Not exactly. She told me I needed to find a way to take my mind off…well, you know.” she took a letter from the pocket of her leggings and slid it Isabela’s way.

It didn’t say much, there wasn’t even a sender, but there was a list of names–of Templars who were responsible for taking Bethany away.

She recognized one of them–Cullen–but the others were a mystery. “After she accused me of murder, I figured I’d do some investigating of my own.” “What’re the slashes for?” Those were recent additions–fat black lines unevenly smudged as though a left-handed person dragged their hand across the page as they made them. There were only so many left-handed people in the world and there was ink smudged against the knuckle of Hawke’s little finger. “Oh that mean’s they’re dead,” she shrugged. “The guards found them at the docks.” “Well, there are worse places to go.” Isabela peered into her empty cup, watching the last of the droplets race like rain against the window. “They could have been found in Hightown–now that would cause a stir.” “My thoughts exactly.” Hawke smiled at Isabela, her eyes growing larger and even more disquieting. “And as much as I appreciate it, I don’t know who sent me this–or why. But if they’re murdering people to get my attention, I should see what they want.” “It could be a trap.” Or any number of things. Hawke was a well-known woman with both friends and enemies–and this ‘friend’ could be either one with ease. “It could be. I asked Varric to investigate but the trail went cold, he’s been pouring all he has into searching for Bartrand.” She passed Isabela her unfinished drink. “But he was able to tell me one thing: one of these men, the dead one, was a patron at the  Blooming Rose. And if I’m lucky, my ‘friend’ might have paid them a visit as well.” “And if he has?” Isabela leaned forward with her elbows on the table, her interest piquing at the meat of the story. “I can tie up a few…loose ends.” Hawke had a way of masking her intent with words that were only slightly threatening and Isabela liked that type of honesty. “Will you help me?” “Well, “ She pretended to think, “you did promise to keep that last relic mishap to yourself, so…” She agreed.

They followed the infamous maze of twisting streets to the long turning stairs that lead to Hightown. By the time they reached their destination, her muscles were wound and taut from exertion. She cursed. “Damn.” Isabela never cared much for Hightown; The buildings there were different than anywhere else in Kirkwall: bigger, cleaner, more pristine–each clamoring for the attention of wealthy nobles and foreign merchants; and utterly lacking in character. Girls dressed in fine silk and patterned lace greeted them outside. It was the sweet smells and the lulling song of a Harp, however, that drew the crowds inside. “Ah, the blooming rose.” Isabela sighed, perking at the sight of half naked courtesans lounging on the couches and chairs. The air inside was sticky with the scent of sweat, sex, and contrasting perfumes, but no one seemed to care or even notice the overbearing menagerie. “Where people come…and then go.” Hawke chuckled at her innuendo. “Make yourself scarce,” she whispered as she approached the counter to Distract Madam Lusine who, judging by the look of recognition in her eye, was torn between the knowledge of Hawke’s rise to nobility (and the coin she undoubtedly had,) and sour thoughts of their last meeting. “Ah, Serah Hawke.” Lusine greeted, brushing her graying curls behind her back. “Lovely to see you again.” While her back was turned, Isabela leaped behind the counter with little more than a low thud to mark her presence and slid the hefty book into her arms. The dark skin of her thighs flushed red against the cold, grainy stone as she sat and skimmed the book for names, dates, payments and appointments. “Have you come to buy, or are you merely wasting time?” She could hear the conversation going south ( as Hawke’s charms could only take her so far.) Quickly, Isabela flipped the next two pages and finally the found the man listed in the letter. He’d been seeing a woman called ‘Sunny’–and quite frequently, it seemed. Isabela slid the book back in its place and popped to Hawke’s side in an instant, slipping her arm around her friend with a wink. “We’re here to see Sunny,” Isabela purred, the woman’s name rolling off her tongue like a wave on the open sea. “Oh. Mistress Isabela. I wasn’t aware the two of you were…together.” Lusine threw the pair a sideways glance. “Either way, Sunny isn’t here–haven’t seen the girl in days.” “And you wouldnt happen to know where she is, would you?” Hawke asked. “I don’t make a habit of telling a client’s my worker’s personal lives, for obvious reasons. So if you need to see Sunny, I suggest you come back another day.” She spoke with the hard conviction of a woman determined to take the final word. “Now I do have other customers, so will that be all?” “That’ll be all.” Isabela nodded, cutting in before Hawke could speak and pulled her toward the exit. “I can make her talk,” Hawke affirmed, glaring back at Lusine with narrowed eyes. “Everyone has a price.” “I know you can, Sweetness, but I like this place. We’ll find Sunny…somehow.” She knew for a fact that Lusine didn’t respond well to bribery, and Hawke’s insistence would only get her banned. But as the two approached the door to leave, a young woman called out. “Wait!” She was tall, carved like the figurehead of a merchant ship, and smelt like a field of Lavender. “Hello,” Isabela greeted, her voice low and sultry. “I heard you asking about Sunny. Do you know her?” “We’re investigating something,” Hawke began, “–for the guard.” “You don’t look like guardsmen.” “That’s because we’re not. We do the real work.” Isabela boasted, turning toward Hawke who returned the look with a simple nod. “Really?” She seemed impressed, “But you do work for the guard? I’ve seen you with the Captain before.” “She’s the reason we’re here.” Hawke didn’t lie, or at least not usually, but she did have a habit of stretching the truth to suit her fancies. Despite that, the Lavender Woman’s face brightened. “Good.” “So what’s this about Sunny? Do you know her?” “She’s my friend.” The Lavender Woman began, “I’ve been worried about her. Ever since she learned one of her clients was…murdered.” She whispered the word like a dirty phrase in the middle of the night. “The…Templar?” Hawke shifted her weight to the side. “That’s the one. She hasn’t been the same.” “Why?” Isabela cut in, “He’s just a client–or did she know him well?” “I don’t know about that–but…someone else came around asking questions about him. Someone they call ‘Dirty Fingers,’ and she gave him his name and then a few weeks later…he was dead. I told her not to blame herself, but she thinks it’s her fault.” “They call him ‘Dirty Fingers?’” Isabela stifled a tittering laugh. “And this man this…um, ’Dirty Fingers,’ do you know who he is? Where he might be?” “…If I tell you, will you try to find something that proves Sunny is innocent?” The Lavender Woman spoke quietly, taking a step forward as though to solidify their deal. “I’m sure we can make that arrangement.” “I hear he operates out of Lowtown, in the big foundry at night. Sunny’s client was found nearby.” And that’s where they found the other one too. They were on the right track.

Isabela took off to visit Fenris but agreed to meet Hawke in Lowtown that night, and when she did, she was greeted by a familiar sight. “Do you really need all that?” She asked, taking in the sight of Hawke in her shiny metal armor–just like old times. When they met, Hawke’s hair had been shorter, and straighter in a way that suggested the pulling of curls but little else about her changed; Isabela thought she’d be too busy, too wealthy, too different to get her hands dirty or join the thick of a fight. But despite her social standing, Hawke remained the same. “Only if Dirty Fingers wants to fight.” She spoke with easy amusement, carefree as though this was little more than a game and lead the way to the dock, her eyes trained forward, focused on her their target. The silhouette of the Lowtown Foundry stood high above the other buildings, it’s burnt, pungent, nauseating smell striking all who dared to wander nearby. No one but the desperate or workers ‘too good’ for the mines were bold enough to venture there. And if the smell wasn’t enough to deter curiosity, the rats surely were: large, feral creatures with sharp curling claws and yellow teeth–the worst kind, in Isabela’s seafaring opinion. She sighed and tilted her head back to gaze at the high stone tower of what used to be a mighty fortress in the Tevinter days. “So this is where your ‘secret admirer’ lives?” She squinted. “No worse than Darktown I suppose. At least there’s a view of the sky.” The wind picked up, hoisting the waves and lavishing her cheeks with salt spray. She should have grabbed a warmer tunic. The Foundry was mostly empty and surprisingly clean. Four cheaply dressed henchmen staggered around inside, laughing and drinking. It wasn’t until Hawke cleared her throat that they noticed them and hastily scrambled to take arms but Isabela was prepared.  Her daggers found her palms as easy as the bones in her fingers and she passed through the world like a ghost, the presence of her blades more felt than seen as she sunk back into the shadows and struck the Henchman down. Hawke had a more direct approach when dealing with hostile enemies–hack, slash, shield bash–but both proved to be sufficient. The henchmen fell to the ground, grunting and groaning in what could easily pass as an old Orlesian symphony. “Well, that was lovely.” Hawke flung the blood from her blade as she stepped around a writhing body. “I didn’t expect there to be guards. Where do you think they get these guys?” “I haven’t a clue.” They followed a path that twisted between four large vats, leading to a propped open door. The room was small and smelt like rum and unwashed bodies. Four henchmen, each less sober than the last, fell over themselves to defend their station but to no avail.  Isabela merely shut the door in front of them. “Kill the intruders!” Someone yelled from the stairwell and more henchman appeared, some stumbling but other coherent as they fought. Victory came easy but Isabela was injured in the fight, grazed by a dagger on her arm and across the leg–but the other guy had it worse. Still, she hissed at the hot sting of pain and scowled at the blood flowing like streams across her skin. That wouldn’t look pretty in the morning. “Catch,” Hawke tossed her a potion to drink, the last one in her pouch. “Save it. It’s just a few scratches–nothing a trip to Darktown can’t fix.” If she even needed that. She’d been in far worse duels with far fewer resources in the past, she’d survive. “I’m wearing armor,” Hawke gestured at herself and the heavy metal plates that covered her tall frame. “And you know there are more of them up there…somewhere.” She almost sighed at the thought of more drunken henchmen hiding in the dark but headed toward the stairs regardless, calling back to Isabela to follow or risk being left behind. Still, she hesitated. Gazing up at Hawke before looking at the potion she tossed her way. She sighed, exhaling a warm, tired breath that showed her exhaustion. She took a quick sip of the potion and dried her mouth against her glove before following, the pain from her injuries began to numb so she’d save the rest for something important. A few more henchman straggled behind and others pretended to be dead. Isabela picked the lock of the room they should have been guarding and a man stood in the center to greet them. He jumped but managed to steel himself quickly,  even as Hawke lined the tip of her sword to his neck. “You might want to consider hiring new help. That whole ‘kill the intruders’ thing didn’t exactly work out. I mean…we’re here,” she said in a sweet sounding voice, though the danger behind her lighthearted words was clear. “You’re ‘Dirty Fingers,’ I presume?” He didn’t look like a hardened criminal, though the best never did; he was paler than he should be, shaking, and his arms were just a bit too long for his body. “You seem unwell.” “What do you want?” He hissed. “We aren’t here for the ambiance if that’s what you think.” She let out a humorless laugh. “We’re only here for Information. That’s what you do right? You trade in information?” 

“I do many things–none of them for free.” “Clever man.” Isabela could appreciate that business model though Hawke didn’t seem to agree. “I’m not paying you.” She said starkly. “Then I’m not talking!” “Oh, I think you’ll want to make an exception for us.” “And why is that?” “Because you seem like a smart man, and smart men usually understand what it means when someone holds a sword to their throat–or maybe I misjudged you,” Hawke spoke to him in the tone of a disappointed mother. “It wouldn’t be the first time I made a mistake; sometimes I need to take off an ear, or a few fingers before they really get the message.” Isabela didn’t need to look to see the deceitful smile spread across Hawke’s face to know what she wanted to do. “You threatening me? You don’t got it in y-” He was caught off guard by an unexpected stabbing. Blood dribbled out from the front of his shirt in a perfectly cut line. Hawke’s actions were smooth and precise, like dealing hands in a card game or–considering Hawke was a somewhat clumsy dealer–carving a Wintersend Turkey.

Dirty Fingers heaved and yelled and shouted, failing to bite back the pain. “Well, what do you know? It looks like I did have it in me! Though I’m more interested in seeing what you’ve got inside you.” Dirty Fingers looked up at Hawke as though he was seeing her for the first time. “Do you want to find out too?” “There’s something not right with you.” He accused, his voice rough and angry as he crouched down to his knees. “And you’re a rude, pathetic man determined to die for a secret that isn’t really his to keep–but keep talking, I’m sure insulting me is the way to get out of this.” “To the void with you!” “Well that wasn’t nice,” Isabela put in, and Hawke agreed. “Would you mind guarding the door while I talk to our friend? I’d hate to be interrupted.” “You get to have all the fun.” She crossed her arms but ultimately agreed, turning around to guard the door in case the henchmen sobered up or stopped playing dead. “Don’t worry, It’ll only take a moment.” Isabela shook her head, looking up in amusement at Hawke’s antics. That poor man. She heard him yelling, but preferred not to get in the way of Hawke’s interrogation. It wasn’t until his blood ran down the cracks in the stone flooring that Hawke called her back inside. “He said he’ll talk to us!” When she returned, DirtyFingers was laying on the ground on his side, reaching out his hand in a plead for mercy. Isabela couldn’t see his face, but she knew she didn’t want to. “He really isn’t well, but ‘Dirty Fingers’ finally has something to say. Isn’t that right?” “What do you want to know?” His words were a groan that slurred together, but it was easy to infer what it was he was saying. “You received information from a girl named ‘Sunny.’ A name. What did you do with it?” “Sold it.” “To?” A long silence drew between them, and Hawke glared down at the man bleeding out on the floor before aiming her sword and yelling. “To who!?” “Don’t know” Dirty Fingers confessed, heaving heavily as he breathed. “I don’t like being trifled with.” Her voice lowered, darkening as she spoke. “I thought you’d learned that by now– You sent someone to my home and I don’t like that. So if you don’t tell me who, I’ll make it so you’ll never speak again–Do you understand me?” Isabela’s eye’s widened in surprise at her tone, one she wasn’t sure she’d ever heard her take. 

Something in the room had shifted, a subtle feeling Isabela learned while sailing the stormy seas: Fear, despair, and the abandonment of hope–the dreaded realization her crew, or in this case Dirty Fingers, felt when they knew they wouldn’t survive until morning. “Don’t know his name! But I know his face.” “What does he look like?” “He was tall, good-looking, reclusive…he had, uh,  the look of a mage. Ferelden …I’d guess.” “ ‘The look of a mage?’ ” “The robes.” She seemed conflicted, as though she needed a moment to think. A tall, handsome, reclusive mage–she let the thought marinate. “….what color was his hair?” “What?” “His hair!” She grabbed him by the back of his shirt and flipped him to his back, exposing every bruise and cut for Isabela to see. “I won’t ask you again.” He bit his lip, tears ran down his narrow face and he might have even wet himself so the words came out rough and shaky. “It was dark!  Black as night. Eye’s too! He had a mark, like a, like a birthmark on his cheek!” Hawke took a moment to breathe, shutting her eyes and exhaling as she stood upright. “And what did he need it for? What’s his plan?” “Don’t know. Don’t ask. Please.” He sputtered. Hawke glared at him once more. “I really don’t think he knows.” Isabela folded her arms. Hawke had beaten every last piece of information from him and more. Dirty Fingers had no reason to lie. Hawke looked at Isabela, then back to the man laying on the ground and seemed to resign to something. ‘Alright,’ she thought she heard Hawke whisper as she looked down at her sword. “…well,”  she wiped the long blade clean with a handkerchief she kept in her potions pouch and dropped it on his face. “It was a pleasure doing business, Dirty Fingers. Let’s not cross paths again.” If he were lucky, he’d pick up whatever pride he had, drag himself to the docks and make his way to a city far from Kirkwall to make a living serving drinks at a tavern if he didn’t bleed out his injuries before the end of the night–but Isabela doubted he’d be lucky. Dirty Fingers was a loose end, and Hawke liked those tied.

Outside was cold and dark, the stench of the Foundry still permeated through the air but the scent of the salt in the sea felt fresh and clean near the harbor. “So…where are we going now? How do we find our Elusive Mage?” “…Anders told me he’s been working with- well, that he knows a lot of mages here. It’s a stretch, but maybe he knows our mystery man.” She spoke in a low, pensive tone, her luminous brown skin glowing in the silver moonlight. Whatever happened to her back there, she seemed to be calm and over it already. “Hawke?” She should say something. What would Aveline say? Something… something… responsibility? “Hmm?” “I…nevermind. And then what?” “We find out what business he has with me.” And tie up those loose ends. As they walked, a man staggered toward them. Large, stauch and seemingly down on his luck, he turned into an alley and stayed there, his presence ignored by those around him. “Right. So, to Darktown then?” “To Darktown.”

[seedfinance]

How HP Turns Business Catastrophes to Their Advantage

In oceanography, a rogue wave refers to a massive wave that appears to appear out of nowhere when several unlikely natural phenomena collide. In the deep sea, these waves regularly sink large ships. In business, they decimate plans for growth and risk reduction. What does your company need to not only stay afloat during a wave of villains, but actually turn it to your advantage? In this article, the author describes a three-part framework for resilient growth that helped HP thrive after a year of multiple potential business challenges. This approach, which can be customized for any organization, involves raising awareness of potential threats and opportunities on the horizon, adapting behaviors to these trends, and ensuring a culture of open communication, clear processes, and a healthy balance of hierarchy and independence.

What would you do if one of your biggest competitors tried to force a takeover, wiped your supply chain, and imploded your cash cow business – almost overnight?

This is exactly what happened to HP in early 2020. Actually, the company should have gone under. A year later, however, sales and earnings are stable, while the printing industry as a whole contracted 9.4% and HP’s potential acquirer, Xerox, saw earnings per share (EPS) decline more than 60%. Why did HP flourish while others fell?

The answer lies in how HP prepared for rogue waves. In oceanography, a rogue wave refers to a massive wave that appears to appear out of nowhere when several unlikely natural phenomena collide. In the deep sea, rogue waves routinely sink large ships. In business, they decimate plans for growth and risk reduction.

Executives often write off waves of rogue as unlikely. But in reality the cumulative probability of unlikely events is quite high. Between geopolitical conflicts, health crises, social movements, technological changes, and myriad other factors, major shocks are actually quite common. In fact, US companies encountered an average of four shocks each year during the 20th century. When they collide properly, these tremors cause rogue waves – and that only gets more frequent the more complex and interconnected the world becomes.

Much of HP’s 2020 success was due to its long history of the risks (and rewards) of rogue waves and their deliberate, proactive approach to exploiting them. As a former Global Futurist and Director of Long-Term Research at HP, I’ve been directly involved in the company’s approach to resilient growth, and since leaving HP I’ve also done extensive literature research on the subject, which my book best does has influenced practices to recognize, survive, and capitalize on radical change. Based on this work, I have developed a three-tier framework to describe how any organization can not only stay afloat when the next wave of villains arrives, but use it to their advantage.

The ABC of resilient growth

awareness

The first step in preparing for rogue waves is convincing people that they are real. If a company doesn’t know why it needs to change, it won’t.

At HP, we’ve worked to create awareness of the potential risks and opportunities by creating a small team called the Future Unit to monitor social, economic, and technological trends that could potentially coalesce into waves of rogue. This core team included people with expertise in a variety of fields including social sciences, politics, economics, technology, and more, and they were encouraged to make their research as broad as possible.

One potential risk that this team identified was the increasing likelihood of a pandemic. The combination of increasing urban density, international travel and an aging population indicated that the risk was increasing long before the first cases of Covid-19 were discovered.

Of course, this type of comprehensive risk assessment doesn’t exactly fit a team’s immediate goals or priorities. To address this, we have developed processes to ensure these insights are shared across the company so everyone understands the challenges that might arise on the horizon. The Future Unit regularly informed the C-Suite and the Management Board in order to secure long-term strategic decisions by means of a comprehensive and up-to-date threat and opportunity analysis. We also formed a larger cross-functional, global group that included HR, finance, legal, facilities, sales, customer support, operations, marketing, and regional managers. This group added a local perspective to the overall research of the Future Unit and helped the Future Unit to disseminate key information more effectively across the organization.

behavior

Once a system of maintaining awareness was in place, HP’s next step was to ensure that all levels of the business were empowered to take advantage of a wave of rogues if it happened – and that meant we had to change key behaviors, in order to be able to react better to trends identified by us.

To that end, the Future Unit has actively coached key decision makers to take these factors into account when planning sales channels, global trading strategies and investing in technology, skills and assets. For example, years before the coronavirus pandemic began, the Future Unit’s work fueled HP’s investments in adapting inkjet printer technology for medical applications such as drug development, vaccine research, and rapid diagnostic testing.

HP didn’t have a crystal ball – but having identified pandemics as one of a portfolio of possible threats, it was ready to turn that threat into an opportunity. As the coronavirus pandemic hit and decimated HP’s main office equipment market, the company quickly shifted its resources to double up on products for work from home as well as health technologies already in the pipeline.

Culture

Of course, changing your behavior depends on your heart and mind changing. The effective implementation of the strategies described above required an open communication culture, clear processes and a healthy balance between hierarchy and independence. Our group prioritized guidelines that enabled multiple teams to coordinate around higher-level goals while acting autonomously on lower-level goals. We have also empowered junior staff to share their perspectives and recommendations with management.

Ultimately, this all boiled down to maintaining a psychological safety environment for our teams, but some of the tactical strategies HP employed include:

Working with HR and managers to ensure reliable and structured teams with clear roles and responsibilities for all employees.

Flattening of management structures in order to reduce the time and effort required to implement new ideas.

Definition and communication of “risk bands”; that is, maximum and minimum risk levels expected from employees.

Encourage junior staff to attend and lead meetings with senior executives, coach them in communication skills, and ensure they are supported if they make mistakes.

Implement incentives such as formal bonuses and praise for employees in front of their peers to encourage teams to focus on long-term priorities.

Instead of getting bogged down in short-term goals and quick successes, HP built a culture in which all employees were free to innovate – and in which these innovative ideas would actually be heard and implemented by management.

***

HP is far from perfect. But the company has overcome countless obstacles in its 80 years because its leaders know that no matter what you do, the future will always come. The company did not prepare specifically for Covid-19, a corporate takeover attempt, supply chain crash, or market implosion. Rather, its ingrained culture of preparedness (and the enhanced awareness and behavior that this culture enabled) made it resilient to a number of possible futures. There’s no getting around rogue waves – but your resilient growth strategy will dictate whether you sink, swim, or win the regatta when the next arrives.

source https://seedfinance.net/2021/06/17/how-hp-turns-business-catastrophes-to-their-advantage/

[sociologyontherock]

A Meandering Life in Politics

By Marilyn Porter 

Stephen Riggins asked me to write an article for Sociology on the Rock about the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). He knew I had once been a member. This is true. I had to be very quiet about this affiliation when I applied for immigration to Canada in the early 1980s. At the time, membership was an absolute bar to entry to the US, and while such a bar was not explicit in Canada, I chose not to mention it at my immigration interview. In any case, my sojourn in the CPGB was neither long nor very significant. I will come to why I joined a little later in this meandering saga of my political life.

My first memory of politics came when I was about eight. It may have been the 1950 election that kept Attlee and the Labour Party in power. More likely, it was the 1951 election that restored Winston Churchill and Tory rule. My mother was a die-hard Tory mostly, I think, because she saw conservative politics, like attending church, as some kind of class obligation. My father took no interest at all. The men who worked on our farm in Wales were devout working-class labour voters. The trigger issue in 1950 or 51 became what colour of ribbons to put on the farm’s cats and dogs. I forget how it was resolved but I do remember absorbing the remarkable tension around the issue. 

Our Welsh constituency (Caernarvonshire at the time, later Gwynedd) had been Liberal under its most famous MP, David Lloyd George, but became a safe Labour seat until Plaed Cymru took over the seat in 1974 and they have retained it ever since. The MP when I was growing up was Goronwy Roberts. He had a long and fairly distinguished career as Minister for Foreign Affairs and later as Leader of the House of Lords. He was also a very good constituency MP. Even my mother had to admit that. In 1960, I became 18 and eligible to vote. Despite my blinkered education, I already knew that I was aligned with the progressive Left, although I had little notion of what that might mean. I did know that I would not vote Conservative. So I wrote to Goronwy Roberts and asked him why I should vote for him. He replied with a detailed and personal letter, which not only convinced me to vote for him but also instilled in me the importance of elected representatives taking a personal interest in every one of their constituents.

At this point, I was also starting my degree in history and political science at Trinity College Dublin. While Labour and socialism in Ireland have a distinguished record (think James Connolly), by the time I got there official party politics had been reduced to irrelevant squabbles between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. The real action was, and continued to be, the situation in the North.

The Trinity population was a strange mix. Literally in the middle of Catholic and radical Dublin, it had very few Irish Catholic students partly because John Charles McQuaid, the Archbishop of Dublin, was an extreme conservative and expressly forbade Catholics from attending Trinity on pain of excommunication. And partly because University College Dublin had moved to a much bigger campus, Belfield, and was expanding rapidly with considerable government (and church) support. My two closest friends were both Anglo-Irish, one a daughter of a general in the British Army and one the daughter of a tea planter in India. Of my two closest classmates, one was a Protestant from Belfast and the other was an Ibo from Nigeria. For both of them “home” was fraught with danger and division. The Northern Irish fellow student survived at least a bout of violence, but the Nigerian became involved in the civil war and was killed the year after we graduated. I learned from both of them that politics was not a game to be taken lightly. My activism at the time tended to be short term and practical. I sat under Nelson’s Pillar in Dublin fasting for some cause in Africa and picketed to stop police “moving on” itinerants, meanwhile learning a radical version of Irish history and a sympathetic version of the nascent IRA movement in the North. 

At this point – 1967 – I had another transformational experience and added another layer to both my analysis and action, although it did mean that I missed a good deal of the political action of 1968. 

My husband and I went to Africa, to work as volunteers at a socialist run school in Botswana. Swaneng Hill School was specifically founded by Patrick van Rensburg to challenge the apartheid state of South Africa. It was designed on Nyrere-inspired socialist principles and staffed entirely by volunteer teachers. I have written elsewhere about some of the problems caused by enthusiastic but untrained volunteer staff trying to provide the only secondary schooling in the country, while at the same time trying to develop a socialist commune. (“My First Day at School,” Your Voice: Newsletter of the MUN Pensioners’ Association, December 2020. See also “The Edge of Experience” in Creating a University: The Newfoundland Experience, edited by Stephen Harold Riggins and Roberta Buchanan). However, while the practice may have been a little bumpy, theory was flourishing. A good proportion of the staff were American draft dodgers and many others had come from repressive regimes. We had study groups on radical theorists like Laclau’s Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory; Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man; Lukacs’ History and Class Consciousness, and education pioneers like Paulo Freire. I actually read Marx’s Capital for the first time, or most of it. At the time there was scarcely anything written about Botswana apart from the anthropologically interesting Bushmen. However, trying to find something relevant to teach the students introduced me to a range of literature on development and social issues and set me on the path to sociology.

There was, however, no feminism and the structure of the school and the culture around it was downright sexist. My husband was a teacher; I was just “a wife.” Progressiveness only goes so far. I noticed this – how could I not, stuck teaching staff kids in the school-run primary school and hanging out with other “mothers.”

In the summer of 1969, we came back to the UK and settled in Bristol so that my then husband could get an education degree. With a two-year-old and pregnant, I risked boredom and frustration. That soon ended when I became simultaneously involved in the local women’s liberation movement and a PhD student in sociology at Bristol University. This marked my true birth into academia, politics, and feminism.

I will try to deal with the three strands separately although, obviously, they were not distinguishable in real time. Nor should they be as it was the mingling and interaction among the three that led to my individual, probably idiosyncratic version of them.

The PhD program, which took me 5 years to complete (1974-79) enabled me to acquire a full – and hitherto missing – education in the philosophy and theory of Marxism and socialism. I studied all the usual Marxist texts and learned about Maoism and forms of socialism emerging in Latin America. Most of all I studied Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks and related writings. Like many of my generation, my introduction to Gramsci came through John Berger’s A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor. In particular, Berger’s reading of the Gramscian distinction between “common sense” and “good sense” resonated with me. Reading Gramsci threw a whole new light on how to understand what “ordinary” people meant when they talked and how better to interpret it while leaving “ordinary” people with the dignity they deserve.

Meanwhile, my fellow feminists were educating me in contemporary left politics. This was particularly messy around the fracturing Trotskyist groups. While Leninism was attractive in its lean rigor, I could not handle the authority of the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” which obviously was not going to include me. The Maoist groups wore really drab clothes and always shouted everyone down at meetings, but supporting strikes and movements like the Night Cleaners and the Ford Seamstresses was becoming an important part of my life and the Women’s Movement on its own did not seem to provide all the tools I needed to become fully aware and involved. I had noticed for a while that many of my feminist friends were members of the CPGB, and that they exhibited a kind of discipline that was markedly lacking in the broad women’s movement. If they said they were going to be on the picket line at 6 AM, they were, and with coffee for the rest of us. So I joined, although in Bristol it made very little difference to my activities. The difference occurred when I moved to Lancaster 1978-84 to teach at the University of Manchester (sorry, complicated husband troubles).

In Lancaster, feminism was largely confined to the university and not many feminists got involved in local left-wing politics. However, the Communist Party in Lancaster was small but very active. We even had a band that marched with strikers and other labour demonstrators. Alas, the CP’s Women’s Band marked the lowest point of my musical career. I was demoted from the cymbals to the triangle. As a local branch, we were able to send delegates to the regional meetings held in Manchester. I remember them as smoke-filled and full of testy disagreements about tactics, but I did also meet and learn from older members who could remember times when the CPGB had been much larger and more influential than it was in its dying days. (The CPGB effectively vanished in 1991 when Nina Temple disbanded it in favour of a more European-focused organization.)

I was also gone by then, taking up a one-year position at Memorial in 1980, which I eventually transformed into a proper position in 1984, via a number of summer sessional appointments. I also began my Newfoundland-based research, mostly on women in the fishery, which led to my 1993 book Place and Persistence in the Lives of Newfoundland Women and introduced me to a network of women scholars working on rural and fishing issues in Scandinavia. It also led to two co-edited collections of writings, Their Lives and Times: Women in Newfoundland and Labrador: A Collage (with Carmelita McGrath and Barbara Neis, 1995) and Weather’s Edge: A Compendium of Women’s Lives in Newfoundland and Labrador (with Carmelita McGrath and Linda Cullum, 2005).

By this time, my attention had turned to women’s issues in international development, especially Indonesia and Pakistan. I learned countless lessons about both countries, especially Indonesia, and about doing fieldwork in such a different place and about conducting research with colleagues from different backgrounds. 

In terms of politics, I learned a lot about how people, and especially feminists, put their ideas together in very different circumstances. I learned to keep my mouth shut and my eyes open.

Meanwhile, back home I, along with Ken Kavanagh and Bill Hynd, established a successor to Oxfam, which had closed its St. John’s office, the Social Justice Co-operative of Newfoundland and Labrador. This is now in the hands of a new generation, as it should be. I remain a member of the Newfoundland and Labrador New Democratic Party, and have served on the executive several times. For me, the NDP fills one of the lowest common denominator roles for my political identity because I live here and feel a sense of duty to contribute to the best possible political party. However, most of my current concerns and activities are national or international, and mostly around peace and environmental movements such as being an active member of Oxfam and Inter Pares, a Canadian social justice organization.

So my political life dwindles, in step with the state of my hips and, indeed, the state of the world. But as we dwindle, the next generation steps up. My own family is an illustration that ideals and activism and political knowledge do pass down to the next generation. All is not lost. The world will turn again.