#in an attempt to take some form of intellectual high ground about a show where the main characters gets in a fight with a bear

[johnathanthetiger]

i wish some of the more insane people in the supernatural fandom who are mad about other people celebrating a pretend wedding were in the riverdale fandom if only so i could see a legitimate call out post for somebody for shipping barchie 

[save-the-spiral]

Hey, I know you have a lot of asks, and I really hate to back it up so feel free to ignore this, but would it be possible to have some fluff featuring Fledge? Any scenario is fine!

This. Got out of hand. And I do not apologize. Welcome to an in depth dive into a side headcanon I have as well as my development of Grizzleheim in Fledge’s timeline(s).

(Fledge’s tag) Content warnings for civil war, violence, blood, weapons, animal violence, child neglect, child abandonment, child endangerment, faking child death, arguments, cultures being disregarded and/or mocked.

Fledge had a good start to their childhood, actually.

They were one of those rare, irresponsible cases from those who inhabit the Spiral. They send their baby, all bundled up in a basket, through the Spiral Door. Many do this in the secrecy of night, they fake the death of this small being and send them off, trusting in the love of another world.

And the Door does send the child wherever they will grow up happy, healthy, and alive. This happened with Irisi as well, just sending a baby away and hoping for the best, and she appeared, so small and precious in a maroon blanket and woven basket, in the warm pyramid of Krokotopia where the Spiral Door rested, where the Door knew someone in that world would take her in and love her.

But Fledge was sent in a ragged baby blanket, pale patches of soft sheep worn from their pastels into white though still stained, frayed stitches and moth eaten holes throughout. It was a small threadbare quilt, barely covering Fledge’s swaddled body, and the rush of a fresh breeze startled Fledge from their sleep, causing them to cry out in distress.

Grizzleheim was not a peaceful world at this time.

The Bears were a prosperous people, their trading culture expanding across the Spiral, their invented Common language becoming a staple of all questing wizards, all of their fellow merchants as well. Their monarchy was strong, centralizing their trading into coffers for the entire society to thrive. Their strongest warrior, Valgar Goldenblade, had recently ascended to the throne, his teeth sharp and gilded blade sharper.

The Wolves were an instinctive people, focusing on what it means to be one with nature, their healers fundamental to their community. They favored the environment around them most, finding solace and meaning in the trees, the waterfalls, the rivers, the genuine and unapologetic nature of nature itself. Their land was encroached on, their trees felled with no regard for their funeral practice of planting a new sapling. The Bears cut down the strong, aged trees of ancient Wolf ancestors for timber, for their new cabins and ships, and that was cause for the Wolves to fight back. They sharpened their claws and gritted their teeth, and their healers prepared to work long days.

The Ravens were an intellectual people, focusing on philosophy and the meanings of what people think and do. They created vast libraries of knowledge, compiling it and trying to find the significance of the everyday aspects of the Spiral. Trying to find deep magic, how it interacted with wizards, exploring what history was recorded, interpreting a history that is not theirs. The Ravens were called pedantic by the Bears and Wolves, in far less kind words. What the Bears and Wolves also suspected was how the Ravens would hide and plot in secret, stealing what little recorded histories and academic texts the other two cultures had. The Ravens knew they would be found out one day, and so they kept their talons sharp and quills sharper, prepared to fight and then record their victory, as all histories are written.

And so, claws screeched against the metal and wood of finely crafted shields. Talons scraped and knocked against horned helmets. Blades cut into flesh, whether it be furred or feathered, the tool itself tasting blood, uncaring of its use.

All anyone outside of Grizzleheim knew was that trades were stopped, and merchants had gone to their home world, and nothing more.

Why, then, did the Spiral Door send an infant into this world?

Why, then, is anyone brought into such a cruel world, one might as well ask. The Spiral Door was not truly given a sentience, only as much as any tool of destiny or fate has.

But what right does any tool have to make a decision without a master to guide it? When does the hammer gain some sliver of sentience and smash the priceless crystal of its own accord?

Largely, people believe the Door itself cannot think, cannot reason, and does not decide where lost infants go. That is the only reasoning the young wolf had when she found this swaddled lost child, cold, afraid, and alone. A battle ended a day ago, and she had planned to sneak away, back into Wolf territory.

Her name was Eir, and she was first and foremost a warrior, no time or need for any kind of romance, though her friendships ran deep, and she had never thought of bearing pups of her own, too intent on being another pillar of support to her community. But Eir was a Wolf of duty, of protecting the weak with her own compassionate strength.

So this large armored woman, pale grey fur matted with blood and dirt,  set aside her spear coated in the flaking dried blood of those who destroyed the land the Wolves saw as sacred, and she carefully lifted the young human with her large paws, her sharpened claws causing more tears in the fabric. It was reminiscent of how her claws so easily raked through thin, feathered flesh...

Eir’s eyes widened, her breath catching in a rough puff of air, the flash and recollection of how the civil war was progressing sinking into their mind. This, Northguard, was no place for a child.

But then, where was there a place for a child? The pups of the Wolves’ entire society were all hidden deep in the caves of Mirkholm Keep, but any fortress could fall, and that was so very far away from the Spiral Door.

She quickly, automatically, set the child aside for merely a moment as she discarded her armor, laying it aside to rest with her weapon. She wore only a woven tunic colored a deep blue, coppery brown designs to match her eyes in runes of strength and protection weaved throughout it, alongside her leather skirts to protect her. Eir gathered the infant in her arms, only to swaddle it clumsily in her warrior’s tunic, leaving her furred back bare, cold wind already rustling her fur and seeping into her flesh.

Eir knew she would do anything, anything for this child. So she wrapped them in her tunic and held them close, attempting to soothe their whimpers with soft croons of song as she began to walk the rainbow bridge, the bifrost sparkling and tinkling musically. The soft chimes of the bridge seemed to soothe the child, for which Eir was grateful, but then she was in Northguard proper.

There was only one choice. She would not gamble with the child’s life, would not expose it further to the elements to avoid conflict. Eir always preferred to face problems head on, anyway, and keep hope in her heart.

It was with that hope that kept her head held high as she surrendered to a pair of bear guards that held their blades to her throat.

The only defiance Eir showed while imprisoned by the enemy was in the care of the child she held in her arms. She insisted on keeping them at her side always, on never letting them out of her sight. Soon the child grew hungry, thirsty, and dirty, and thus the guards were forced to bow to her demands lest they sit and hear endless wails of an infant and know it was their fault.

They knew of Eir. Of her prowess in battle. They knew that even without a spear or armor, to truly fight her would result in many deaths, and the bears would not stand for that needless bloodshed when they could simply assist in the care of a child.

Then a council was held, because word escaped and spread through Grizzleheim that a child was being held alongside a war prisoner.

The oaths of peace and pacifism, just for this meeting, were held on magic and blades, the knowledge that breaking those vows would result in painful death sending shivers down every oath taker’s spine. And then they all sat, outside, in the emptied marketplace of Northguard.

Three groups sat there, tension rising.

The Bears, at a well crafted table, the redwood’s varnish shining in the weak winter sunlight, the carvings’ depiction of violence causing others to scoff. The king himself, Valgar Goldenblade, sat between his advisors and weaponless guards, his chair just slightly more intricate, facing his own stronghold where the famed warrior would come.

The Wolves, on woven mats and rough rugs, furs as well, all sat on the well trodden ground. All of them were slight, with keen eyes, smelling of herbs and spices, obviously healers. They were wise almost to the point of cynical, the war sharpening them into fine, dangerous points. They awaited Eir’s arrival with bated breath, the warrior a friend, a pillar to their community.

The Ravens brought their own table and chairs, spindly things, old and used with no thought for upkeep. Some of the Bears sneered at the poor craftsmanship, the crude make of their furniture, treating it as another tool as opposed to a facet of a home. The Ravens sat, curious about the child, wondering how it appeared in Grizzleheim at all.

Eir was brought forth from the stronghold of the Bears, and the Wolves murmured in discontent, lips pulling to reveal teeth without them thinking of the threat.

She was hunched over a bundle in her arms, her large form conveying a weariness everyone could see. Her fur had patches matted and encrusted with blood and dirt. Her coppery brown eyes were anxious as she quickly gazed at those gathered in front of her, though she obviously found solace in the sight of the elder healers from the Wolves.

“The child?” The leader of the Ravens croaked as Eir approached, standing in the middle of the semicircle of gathered people. “Is it truly a human?”

Eir clutched harder at the swaddled form in her arms. “Yes, and they are healthy and safe in my care.” She stared hard at the leader, fur bristling.

“The warrior is truthful. She has only requested or spoken on the behalf of the child, and has been almost fervent in her care” Valgar spoke, face passive.

“Yet still, a human child does not belong with the Wolves.” A raven spoke.

“And yet it belongs with you birds?” A wolf healer spoke, his nose scrunching with distaste. “For what purpose, to examine them, to experiment on someone with so much potential yet no bias of race?”

“How dare-“ The same raven spoke again, standing up abruptly.

“Calm yourselves!” Eir snapped, her voice a stage whisper, as she rocked the baby back and forth, intent on soothing the child who had awoken.

“Forgive me, Eir.” The wolf healer said with a bow of his head.

“Forgiven, Helge.” Eir answered absentmindedly.

Words were paused as the child still fussed in her arms, and everyone witnessed one of the living legends of the Wolves coo and rumble to comfort a human infant, mumbling in a sing-song with kind, gentle eyes.

“We... must decide the child’s fate.” Valgar spoke again. “The child was left at the Spiral Door... correct?”

“Yes.” Eir did not look away from the baby’s swaddled form. “The poor pup was left in rags, I could not leave them to freeze, so I gave them the clothes off my own back for their safety.” She did not appear to notice how jaws clenched, how they all knew what it supposedly meant for a child to be sent through the Door.

“But still...” Valgar’s voice became firmer, more insistent. “We cannot allow for the human child to be raised as a Wolf. It would be far better to have the honor of a Bear.”

“A Bear’s honor?” The Raven’s leader exclaimed. “What use is honor? Why not the safety of becoming a Raven? We could teach them magic, we could-”

The eldest wolf, fur greyed and eyes milky with blindness, scoffed loudly. “Besides. Saying a Bear has honor is an oxymoron. Since when has a Bear possessed the amount of honor I have in a single claw?” The wolf raised their paws, showing some missing digits, but still wiggling them mockingly.

“We have honor! Just due to your Wolves’ jealousy we have-“ A bear advisor snarled.

“Jealousy! Jealousy?!” The elder spoke again, spitting at the ground. “Jealous of what? Gold? Bowing to the whims of others who demand your goods? Or maybe, maybe jealous of the sacred trees you callously felled and carved into what, a bookshelf? Another pretty table? Bah, jealousy.” They spat again. “The nerve.”

“What?” Valgar stood, pressing a hand on the angered advisor’s shoulder. “Sacred trees? I was not told of any sacred trees.” 

“The Wolves plant trees to mourn their dead, and to imbue life in the world where death has touched. It is common knowledge.” A raven piped up, then bashfully turned away once attention was on them.

“Yes. Everyone knows of the significance, yet you Bears chopped down our most ancient of trees.” Eir spoke again, voice soft in its reprimand.

Valgar looked around, mouth open slightly. “We... did not know...” He sat back down hard, a paw to his face. “I cannot believe...”

“You truly did not know?” Eir asked.

“No.” The helpless, almost vulnerable tone caught everyone off guard. “No, we would never! As far as I knew, that land was in our territory!” The king gestured widely in the direction of the Wolves’ land. “And yet, my ignorance deceived me, and I have ruined... oh, to imagine if the tables were turned, and our stones were desecrated...”

The Wolves were almost statues, the eldest of them shaking.

“Aside from that, we had no quarrel with the Bears.” Eir’s soft, forgiving tone was simply another blow to Valgar. “Everything since has been a result of that, retaliation for and unknown slight...”

“Did you Ravens do this?!” A young bear guard growled. “Manipulated us into war?”

“No- we were caught in the middle of that as well... simply nearby, collecting artifacts.”

“Artifacts?” Another Bear sneered. “You mean stealing from us? Our masterpieces and treasured items?”

The Raven’s eyes widened. “They were untouched for decades! Artifacts!” She insisted.

“They were kept safe! To be used is an honor, but some are so old to use them would be to ruin them, and thus they are kept secure and isolated! And you stole them!” Valgar’s voice was stern, as if he had come back to himself.

“None of this matters!” Eir’s voice flared into a yell, unrestrained. “The war is nothing, apparently, built on lies, yet still that does not matter!” She gestured forward, displaying the now awake and staring young human. “They matter! This child! And all the others that we dared endanger in our foolishness! To argue of artifacts and territory is to ignore the youth who cry for warrior parents gone for months, for homes that are ruined, and empty bellies neglected. You all must come to a compromise. Now.”

With that, she walked purposefully to the Wolves’ area, where the healer Helge had set up a soft nest of furs and woven fabric for Eir and the child. With a nod of thanks, Eir sat with legs crossed, settling the child with a large paw gently supporting their head.

“... She is right. A compromise, and peace, must be made. Today.” Valgar’s determined tone washed over the rest, conveying the need and trust that they could reach peace in so few words.

“We shall.” The lead raven nodded sagely, leaning forward, now eager.

The peace was almost laughably simple, once met.

Eir sat, letting words pass over her tired mind in a low rumble, her eyes only for the child in her arms.

They were so small. So soft, fragile. They had bright brown eyes, dark brown skin. They had two little hands, terrifyingly small in her large paws. They had a little nose, its bridge wide, and it was so much more charming than any human trader she had seen, she wanted to prod at it with dulled claws and cause them to laugh like she did at times for the pups at home.

This child deserved a world to grow up in, a peaceful, kind world.

And they got it.

Fledge had three names, really. As part of the peace treaty, they moved from pack to stronghold to roost, rotating around and learning the ins and outs of every culture, of what it meant to be a Wolf or Bear or Raven. Their three names were simple, just called Pup (sometimes Puppy, by a teasing Eir), Cub, and Fledgling. 

They changed who they were with ease, happy and content with the shifting, asking to be a girl or boy or neither when it suited them, and their families complied. Almost every citizen of Grizzleheim had housed them at one point in their life, had seen how small and charming and wonderful this strange child was.

They were allowed to speak as much or as little as they wanted. They could spend weeks only communicating in the broad, blunt gestures of the Grizzleheim sign language, or more nuanced of Common sign language. Then other times they would grow excitable, teeth bared as they rambled on to their friends and fellow wolf pups as they played in the creek, talking of their studies with the Ravens and the honor code of the Bears.

They learned the ancient runes, their own strange passion that few understood, but they allowed it, they encouraged it, because to see their Pup or Cub or Fledgling smile like they were given the world was enchanting.

They were a natural fire wizard, as well.

The destructive magic would usually be a worry, but they were taught control of their strength with the Bears, and an appreciation for wild untameable things from the Wolves, and an understanding of magic itself from the Ravens.

And so their fire magic was life, was what kept people warm in the harsh winters. It was the necessary burns to control the forest and keep it from destroying itself later, it was the cauterization of a bad wound to keep someone alive. Their fire grew so quickly, still in control. It was a spark that quickly flared and crawled each kindling of knowledge and passion into a bonfire, something to be loved and celebrated.

Just as Fledge had been loved and celebrated.

Whether she was their Cub, or he was their Fledgling, or they were their Pup, they were loved so very much, and always cared for, and always warm.

So the Spiral Door made the right choice, if it can do such a thing.

[ghostofbambifanfiction]

I found a piece of fic that I wrote ages ago and decided never to post and miraculously did not delete! Which is rare for me! I delete too much! I think it’s pretty crap but I promised an anon a while ago that if I found something like this I’d share it (and apologies if there are errors this is a completely unedited first draft of something that I never finished).

Lily Evans is thirteen-years-old when her mother sits her down and explains that her body is about to "undergo some changes."

Her active participation in such a conversation is not how Lily pictured kicking off the summer holidays, but after two years at a boarding school that keeps her apart from her family from September 'til July, her mum is chomping at the bit to delve right into the Talk, lest her daughter learn about menstruation elsewhere—or god forbid, wake up covered in blood one morning and assume that she is shortly about to die.

Of course, Lily knows what to expect from her period. She can read, for one thing, and has numerous female friends. Beatrice got her first ever period at the start of second year, and on the train to school, of all places. Lily will be fine if left to her own devices, but her mother is so excited to talk about Puberty and Buying Bras and Now You're Becoming a Woman, and Lily doesn't have the heart to tell her that she's already quite clued in, thank you very much. She doesn't think she could live with inflicting such disappointment.

There's even a shoebox of props to hand, for Grace Evans is a nurse, and she wants her daughters to have all the information that she was denied at school.

Menstruation education station, she calls it.

"Tampons," her mother tells her, slapping the tiny, lipstick shaped contraption down on the kitchen table like she's preparing to place it as a wager in a high-stakes poker game. Her hand returns to the box and draws out yet another item. "Or pads. They're your two main choices. I'll give you a good supply of both before you go back, just in case, unless—do they have some other method, at Hogwarts? Some sort of magic potion? It's a very difficult subject to research, in my position."

Lily's father walks into the room—newspaper in hand, lips pursed as if preparing to whistle—catches sight of them both, then turns and walks right out again.

"What's wrong with Dad?" says Lily to her mother.

"Men are afraid of menstruation, sweetheart," Grace tells her, with a baleful glance at the door through which her husband has just exited, "because they're weak and silly, and can't be bothered to learn."

"Oh," Lily says, then lets out a laugh. "I suppose I won't ask Professor Slughorn how witches deal with periods."

"Heavens, no, he'll faint dead away."

Lily does not add that it would be rather funny to watch Slughorn faint to get out of an awkward conversation about the miracles of puberty. She doubts that he would feel comfortable talking to the boys about such a thing, let alone a member of the opposite sex.

Puberty is so much easier for boys, she reflects, and that's dead unfair. She may be but a girl and ignorant to the inner workings of the male body, but the only visible change she ever noticed in any of the boys in her year—specifically, in her house—was a sudden onslaught of squeaky voices. To make things more unfair, that phase didn't even last very long, except for poor Peter Pettigrew, who seems to be a squeaker by default.

Now she has to deal with people like Potter—to pick a name completely at random—acting like puffed-up, macho twits because their voices have finally broken.  

"I don't know what witches do normally," she says, "but I can always ask Madam Pomfrey. She's the matron at school. My friend Beatrice started hers last year but she's Muggle-born too, so she never thought to ask. Her mum just sends her pads."

"Make sure you do," says her mum, her tone almost warning. "I can send you whatever you need, but it'll be easier for you if there's some magical method you can access, especially for the cramps." She pauses, looking thoughtful. "And the mood swings. And the sore boobs—" Her eyes light up. "—which reminds me..."

Lily groans as Grace delves into the box again and extracts a small measuring tape, such as a tailor might use.

"I don't have boobs to measure," she reminds her mother, clasping both hands to her chest.

"Yet," says Grace, brandishing the rolled-up tape like a particularly tempting treat. "You don't have boobs to measure yet, but that doesn't mean you'll never have boobs." She nods down at her own chest. "I was your classic late bloomer—not so much as an insect bite until I was sixteen, then I ballooned out. Same with your sister. In any case, you've got at least enough to fill an A-cup, and you need to start wearing bras."

"I don't need a bra."

"Well, you're getting one. As soon as I've got you measured up, I'll take you to M&S and get you sorted."

"What else have you got in there?" says Lily, eyeing the battered blue box with a wary eye while her mother unfurls the tape.

"Just the essentials," says Grace airily. "Some leaflets from the hospital, panty liners, condoms—"

As if her mother has cranked up the dial on an embarrassment meter that only a parent has the necessary skills to operate, Lily immediately turns as red as her own hair. "Mum!"

"I'm not saying you need to use them—"

"I'm thirteen!"

"—but it won't hurt you to know how, for future reference!"

"Mum, no," says Lily, as firmly as she can, in her best attempt to sound as if she's taking a mature line on this, "I don't have any reason to want to know how to—how to use—honestly, no." She can't pretend. Her face feels all hot, as if it has been set aflame. Even the thought of what her mother is referring to makes her feel slightly sick. "Seriously, no, I don't want to learn—"

"You don't have to take them with you in September, of course, you're still only thirteen," Grace continues, completely undaunted by her daughter's mortification, "but it seems like you were just a baby five minutes ago, sweetheart. The time goes so fast, honestly, and it won't be long before you start to experience your own sexual awakening—"

"I'm going to my room," says Lily desperately, and shoots out of her chair.

"It's really not that bad—"

"I am grounded. I am grounding myself."

"Really, Lily, I'm just trying to help." Her mother lets out a hefty sigh. "Once we've measured you for a bra, I'll show you how it works on a banana, and you'll see that it's really not that complicated."

Lily Evans decides that she will never eat a banana split again.

***

The inconvenient, unwanted, and oft warned-of sexual awakening comes to hammer down Lily's door when she is fifteen-years-old, by which time her boobs have most certainly come in.

Despite a multitude of painfully awkward conversations with her mother—who doesn't say it, but seems desperate for Lily to fancy someone, anyone, so that they can gossip about it together—on the topic, she finds herself entirely unprepared for it.

She's unprepared because it's… weird.

Lily has had crushes before—sort of—fleeting things that seemed to exist because she thought they were supposed to, rather than stemming from any particular stirrings on her part. She's a late bloomer, just like her mum, and she knows as much. Bea and Mary have both been snogged, and Lily knew that she was trailing a little behind, but she never cared. It was fine and dandy and totally normal. She might even say that she's been lucky to escape it for this long.

It doesn't happen in the way she was expecting, not that Lily had any particular expectations, but had she ever, they would not have formed along these particular lines. It wouldn't be so embarrassing, or confusing—not the how or the why or the when or the where, but the what. The what, of all things. 

The what is the thing that baffles her most, because Lily always figured that it would be some transformative, meaningful thing, like an effortlessly witty conversation with a mature intellectual—tall, dark, and a little bit older than she, a boy with soulful blue eyes and scholarly interests.

The what should not be James Potter's arse in a pair of jeans.

But it is.

The thing about the magical world at large is that the robes are basically formless—loose, large, flapping things that hide the body away and become quite annoying during hotter months—but younger witches and wizards will opt not to wear them when it isn't strictly required. Throw Hogwarts, where robes are the mandatory default, into the mix, and something as unexpectedly disarming as a structurally spectacular derriere may spend a vast amount of time being cunningly hidden.

It's the last Hogsmeade trip of fourth year—with summer looming tantalisingly ahead like a ripe apple dangling from a tree—when Lily steps out of Scrivenshaft's and finds herself perfectly positioned to spy James Potter's denim-clad backside as he walks past with his mates.

Her eyes flick over his form as she scans the general area, then Lily finds her gaze dragged abruptly back, as if she's snagged her sleeve on a nail whilst passing through a doorway.

And now she's staring.

At an arse.

At James Potter's arse, which is the worst of it. If Lily has just discovered that she is, in fact, a person with a thing for bums, James Potter's bum—a neat, compact, beautifully fashioned marvel that looks like a peach in those bloody jeans (what monster let him go out in public wearing those things?)—should not have been the catalyst for this discovery, because James Potter is an immature sod, a walking headache, and a bloody annoying git. He and his gang of mates are childish boors, and Lily considers herself to be quite above their general tomfoolery.

She doesn't want to stare, but her eyes won't cooperate.

She likes it, and as she's quite certain that she doesn't much like James Potter, that makes even less sense than the school’s policy on using quills in a world where ballpoint pens exist. Would that she could deny it to herself… but Lily is not deluded. She can recognise the pleasure she's deriving for exactly what it is.

And that is just… not acceptable.

And how dare he, really?

"James Potter," she says hotly, finding herself suddenly and inexplicably compelled to acknowledge his existence, point him out, say his name, anything, "is a complete and utter toerag."

"What?" says Beatrice, who has been counting coins in the palm of her hand.

"Potter is a toerag," Lily repeats, even as she's telling herself to stop, shut up, why are you letting these words come out of your mouth? "I can't believe McGonagall even let him come here after the prank he pulled the other day."

"He got a bunch of detentions," says Mary, eyeing Lily curiously.

"Isn't that enough?" seconds Bea. 

"Why are you so angry?" Mary adds. "What's he done to you?"

"Nothing, he's just an arse." 

That's an unfortunate choice of words, Lily thinks, colouring nicely.

"Right, but he's always an arse," Mary presses on. "Why are you so angry about it now?"

"Nothing," Lily repeats, "but he just walked by and it reminded me that he's been pissing me off lately."

"If you say so, I suppose," says Mary, looking nonplussed, but a giggling Beatrice sticks her free hand in the air, waving as if to signal a rescue ship.

"Oi, Potter!" she bellows.

Several heads, including James Potter's, turn in their direction.

"Potter!" Beatrice repeats, waving him over.

Lily's heart leaps into her throat, gets stuck, and slides sheepishly back down to her chest.

"What are you doing?" she hisses, taking a swipe at Beatrice's arm.

"If you're pissed off with him, you should tell him to his face," says Bea, dodging out of Lily's grasp to beckon Potter over. "More fun for me that way."

Mary snorts, while Beatrice grins like a cunning fox. Meanwhile, Potter has left his friends to wait for him outside the Three Broomsticks, and is sauntering over with his hands in his pockets.

"I hate you," Lily mutters to Bea.

"That's right," says Bea, smiling broadly, "get it all out of your system."

"I don't want to talk to Potter."

"Then you shouldn't have been mouthing off abo—hey!" says Beatrice brightly, as Potter draws level with their group. "Look who it is!"

"Hello to my adoring fans," he says, with a grin that would be charming, if only it were spread across any other face, and widens considerably when his gaze lands on Lily. "Alright, Evans?"

Potter has been doing this lately, offering bog-standard greetings to the masses, then following them up with, "Alright, Evans?" as if he’s been compelled to single Lily out.

Knowing him, there's some wildly nefarious reason behind it, and Lily persists in believing that despite Bea's insane theories pertaining to thoughts and feelings of the romantic persuasion.

"It means a lot that you don't consider me a fan," she says coolly.

"It's not my place to tell all your secrets," Potter replies. "What did you buy?"

She frowns. "What?"

"In Scrivenshaft's." He nods to the shop behind her. "What did you buy?"

"That's none of your business."

"Oh, right, because Scrivenshaft's is known for selling top secret wizarding spy equipment, and the world as we know it will end if you tell me," he says, sending her a flat look. "Why'd you call me over?"

Lily has to force the corners of her mouth to stay determinedly downturned, rather than laugh, which she really wants to do. "I didn't call you over."

"Didn't you?"

"No, you idiot. Beatrice did."

"That's strange. Could've sworn it was you." His eyes haven't budged from her face for a second, and Lily is beginning to feel irrationally fearful that he's seen her ogling his arse. "Why'd Beatrice call me over?"

"Because Lily wants to talk to you," says Beatrice.

Lily wants to die on the spot.

[ne-nsw-stargrazing-festival]

Bored in lock down at home?

Yep, we are locked down to.  Our StarGrazing event sensibly postponed till next year  2021. Probably around 16 to 18 April. 

In the mean time, can we help you out a little, with the ‘stuck at home’ syndrome.   

1.

If you have thought about it, but not done it yet, perhaps now is the time to try a little astro-photography.  The way to learn is just give it a go. 

The moon is a great way to begin.  Visible at some time from your balcony, unit window or backyard.  Capture it silhouetted by tree branches, or in full moon brightness.  Add some photo manipulation software, and perhaps you can combine photos of a low light earthly scene with a different zoom photo of a clear full moon.  Astrophotography can be creative, artistic, evocative, blending of images, not just recording a scene in factual scientific details.

Lachlan, one of our very young StarGrazing enthusiasts sent me two of his pics of the moon this last week.  I am posting the one I like the most.  Simple, Dark, Moody.

2.

One of the good things about astronomy is it is (mostly) family friendly. Things for kids and adults, different intellectual levels.  And it is educational. Gets young minds thinking. How big? How fast? Cool.  So to help you find something to distract the kids for awhile, or give your mind a little something different to think about, below are a range of utube and vimeo links you may want to explore. 

I know technically any of you can just go do a net search.  But what do you search for?  What sort of thing is new, interesting in Astronomy and space?  That is where we can help by giving you some video links, with a bit of a guide, to get you going.  A sort of short cut guide to current evolving space and astronomy topics. (Or at least some of them!)

Share with the kids, make it home work, chat over dinner with what they thought and think.  Inspires young minds, and old. 

Lets begin with a full tour of the universe to put your mind a little more in the picture of all that is out there.  Journey to the Edge of the universe. Narrated by Alec Baldwin.  Lasts for 1.5 hours, so put the older kids in front of it and take a break.  Kettle on ... oh work yes  ... more emails to attend.. coffee first.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P17h_JwzMuU

Rockets:  Humans recently succeed in the “reusable rocket”. (Thanks Elon and Space X). Cheaper, we can do more, go more, put more probes and astronomy stuff into space.  The last scene here is like one straight out of science fiction movie.  But it is real, on Earth, year 2018.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0FZIwabctw

The above is an amazing achievement.  This video goes with it.  The mistakes along the way.  Failing in tasks is part of learning how to achieve something new.  A key part of every endeavour.  (You may be in that cycle right now! Take heart!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ

Rocket size comparison. (For the kids mostly.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ380rPYE4Q

How to land the space shuttle (and how young people can be passionately inspired by space stuff.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb4prVsXkZU

At one of our past StarGrazing events, we watched the international space station pass over us.  Here is a long (1 hour) detailed tour of the International Space Station.  (In zero gravity, there is no “up or down”.)  A robot makes a very brief appearance in a zip up bag.  This is an international collaboration while wars and pandemics go on below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvTmdIhYnes

Humanities next step - setting up a permanent base on the moon.  The challenges...  space radiation, need for shelter, need for water for humans and to make fuel.  Solution.... find a cave.  Set up your moon base in there protected from space radiation.  Yes, there appear to be caves on the moon.  Like Hawaii, the moon has ancient flows of lava, called lava tubes.  The difference is, and it is a good difference for us human explorers, the moon has 1/5 the gravity of Earth.  So where as the cooled lava tubes in Hawaii are up to 10m high, on the moon they are up to 100m tall and wide.  Huge.  Sometimes somewhere along a part of a lava tube, a meteorite strike or something, the roof of the lava tube has caved in, so you get a deep dark hole that looks slightly different in lunar photos to a deep dark shadowed crater.  Hence the search is on to find a lava tube moon cave, in a good place to set up a permanent human moon base.  Within decades there will be cave men and women again.  On the moon! 

(Note: It was school kids exploring moon photos on the web that discovered the first moon cave.  A major breakthrough opening up this whole solution to the “professionals”.  Before then, no one had noticed these rare things. All assumed to be the normal run of the mill craters in deep shadow. )

https://vimeo.com/250518650

Here is a question.  This planet has been through several catastrophes with mass extinctions.  As we humans evolve, we are endangering this planet by our sheer numbers.  Is our emergence as a ‘planetary dominant species’ naturally what planets do over time.  To eventually evolve a species with a capacity to either destroy itself, .... or act to defend that planet from mass extinction space risks?  Depending on that species collective intelligence and behaviour, it may be the source of another self extinction and mass extinction, or if it can manage itself responsibly go on to be an asset to that planets overall survival.  Could this be a part of a ‘natural selection’ process for life on planets through out the universe?  If so there is a challenge, and a more positive thought for our species! 

The kind of event that killed of the dinosaurs can happen again at any time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEIjKjIgCA0

You probably did not know it, but NASA and ESA have missions planned to try some techniques on asteroid deflection to see how they can work.  (Yeah!)  Set for launch 2021, with an asteroid strike attempt 2022.

I think their careful selection of a target so that they can observe changes after impact from Earth based telescopes is so simple yet such a really clever solution.  I would have just chosen any asteroid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9fxIxH8LqM

Just so you now in recent years, humans have formed a ‘planetary defence unit’ officially.  With a budget.  It is no longer science fiction. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNSYuY6N1Rs

Humanity exploring our local solar system.  Human camera’s going everywhere on probes.

Did you know you can explore the surface of Mars, using Google Earth, downloadable for free here. https://www.google.com/earth/download/gep/agree.html?hl=en-GB

Thanks to some NASA missions to Mars, there were a few years where humans had a more complete and finer resolution photographic map of Mars, then we did for our own home planet Earth.

You can explore this mass of imagery using Google Earth from home.  This is an old video from 2009 as a starter for you.  Shows you what to click on to look at Mars imagery in Google Earth.  I do not think things have changed much since 2009.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjcCF6cIlPw

Prefer an on the ground level view of Mars.  Try this next video.   This is the surface of another planet. Cool.  So much the same, yet different.  ( May be its all secretly filmed in outback Australia, like man never really went to the moon, it was filmed in outback Arizona .. te he. )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weCG_yODtvM

The next Mars rover (is that no 4?) is due to launch soon for Mars. (Google search and Wikipedia is your friend to find out more.)  Possibly now is a great time to introduce this next mission to the kids, and have them follow it as a hobby project over the next few years.  Plan your own ‘watch the launch’ and ‘watch the landing’ parties.

Above we talked about asteroids.  OK, would humans have close up pictures of the surface of an asteroid yet?  Yep.  A loose rubble pile type of asteroid, just held together by gravity.  So if your curious if it looks like some past Armageddon movie scene, find out.  Thanks Japan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHvDO_fzZLs&list=PLpGTA7wMEDFjzlSiNurKy6TyDRmPWMlLd

Lets go further out.  How about a video of, not just the surface of another planet, but the moon of another planet.  Its 2020, can do.  Here is the surface of Titan, a moon of Saturn.  No oil crises on Titan.  Rivers of hydrocarbon.  Awesome.  Hard to believe this is real.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9L471ct7YDo

As for other planets, here is a solar system tour of images ..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uF14sGoymW0

This next video is for the geeks amongst you.  A long lecture, but not too technical.  (1.25 hours and not for kids really).  There is talk of another, yet undiscovered, “Planet 9″ in our solar system.  10 to 20 times the mass of Earth.  No 9 with Pluto demoted from being a “planet”.  The evidence from modelling seems pretty sound.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMCwezegPNg

Other planets around other stars ..

Over the last decade new instruments are discovering 100′s of planets around other stars, and even using maths to work out what the conditions may be like on them.  It is looking like many other solar systems are not at all similar to our own.  Our solar system, and hence the circumstances that have led complex life and us to evolve on this planet may be rare.   Two videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5I_FOEh47RY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mVRc80vhhQ

Any planet earth like planets - rocky, with water, in the temperature goldilocks zone?  Yes.  Check out the Trappist System.  Its not far from us either. ..!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnKFaAS30X8

How will we know more about the character of other extra-solar planets around other stars.  Ones like Earth?  To really know if there are planets with life supporting environments like Earth, one way is to gain the spectrum of light from a star that has just glanced and passes through the atmosphere of that planet of interest.   In so doing, the kinds of molecules in that atmosphere, oxygen, nitrogen, and organic life molecules like methane and other complex molecules each absorb and take out specific frequencies of that stars sunlight.  This provides a finger print of “absorptions” that can enable us to read what gases are in that planets atmosphere.  This amount of light is so incredibly small that it is just beyond our current best Earth based telescopes and their exquisitely sensitive detectors.  A key hope of being able to observe such light is with the next space telescope after the Hubble Telescope. The $10 billion dollar (including wages and run time into the next 10 years)  James Webb Telescope.  This due for launch next year, around this time.  March 2021.  Here are some videos.

About it:    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VqG3Jazrfs

With most space missions, including the James Webb telescope, require long time lines from conception to final outcomes. Their team members have to bet their entire working careers on the project going through to success, with the risk that if the rocket blows up, it is decades of life work gone in a few seconds.  For the love of knowledge, ..”To go where no one has gone before..” (Chuckle, but kind of true.)  The James Webb telescope project is no different.  It began back 30+ years ago, 1989.  Here is the story from then to now, and on into the future, all going well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXiU1YxWyzY

NASA and ESA gets all (or most) of the public mind attention.  Australia has fostered and hosted an equally significant project. (Including my old work place, cool ..)  The Square Kilometer Array SKA.  This is an international collaborative project.  The radio astronomy equivalent of the CERN Hadron Collider.  Did you know it is currently in the process of being built.  It is being assembled in both Western Australia and Southern Africa.  The telescope hardware will span across two continents!

This radio telescope system will look out deep into the universe in radio waves.  Without the pretty pictures in the visible light our eyes see, this project attracts much less attention from the general public than Hubble and James Webb telescopes.  Scientifically though, it is very exciting.  Like the above telescopes, when this is fully operational, what it sees will make or break lots of current cosmological theories.  When fully operational, it will create as much data in real time, as the entire world internet currently generates each second.  Wow!   Petabytes (look that up).  This is a really major science endeavour.  World class, world leading. 

This project will also reach further than ever before, and one of its capacities will be detecting radio signals from other civilizations.  The “We Are Not Alone” moment is most likely to come from this project in the next 20 years. 

Go Aussie’s go! (Quiet achievers.) Project and construction is uniting people from across continents.  And at less than half the cost of the James Webb. (Yeh - both are really valuable projects.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hog411ZSzEY

I have spent a couple of days looking through old and new video links to put this list together.  There are so many good videos out there.  These are chosen to cover a range of topics and starting points for you to follow up and explore further.  Hopefully covering kids interests and adults in the mix.

Doing so has lifted my spirits.  I think one of the values of astronomy and space in uncertain times, is that it helps to see others facing challenges, problem solving, working successfully, collectively, to get to new places.  New in knowledge, new in exploration, new in endeavour and achievement, and new in human cooperation.  Such is not an easy or simple thing to do. 

I certainly needed the reminder and the lift. 

Best wishes to you.

[willowishstudios]

Character Narrative: Taqtu

The gilded halls of Huatzintepec were enchanting in a way that Taqtu found difficult to describe, his tongue still stumbling over the sharp consonants of this foreign language.  

"C-cali... cualtzin?"  

Despite his best efforts, the Empress laughs, her voice throaty and commanding even when mirthful, as she kneels down and hands him a small piece of parchment. 

A map?  

He feels his father's hand on his shoulder, and watches the Empress' smile widen as she gestures around the map, sharp tones falling easily from her painted lips. Her teeth glint white, and the image of a jaguar flashes in his mind.

Back home, people say the Sun God chose her to do his Will. Seeing her now, he has his doubts. The sharp and graceful features of her face, the golden sun inlaid in her forehead, the crimson red lines over her skin that he remembers from tapestries of heroes of old.

"The Empress has decided to allow you to explore the palace at your leisure, my son, but to stay away from the private quarters." The grip on his shoulder tightens, if only slightly, a warning implicit in the action. His breathing quickens. "What do you say?"  

"Cenca tlazohcamati." Taqtu recites, his voice as level as he can keep it. His father's grip loosens as the Empress nods, responding with a short Ahmitla.  

With that the adults disappear, as do the anxious whispers in his head, and what feels like seconds later he finds himself alone, staring into the open air of the center garden.  

Green, green, green. From floor to ceiling, only interrupted by the vibrant blue-green of the fountains that start so high he can't tell where the water comes from, and the climbing, flowered vines that he wishes he could reach out and climb.  

Nothing like the glimpses of long-dead green peeking out of packed snow, the near-uninterrupted white land and sky that he has come to love.  

It's that thought that brings him back to the present, and his current predicament.

On the map, it had seemed like there was more space to explore, but he had underestimated the sheer size of the various private quarters. He could barely walk ten steps without landing in front of one of the forbidden hallways.  

Taqtu sighs heavily, blowing a stray strand of white hair out of his eyes. The parchment mocks him from the railing where he left it.  

Where he left it.  

This is a huge place, it'd be so difficult to find that slip of paper again if he lost it. And it's with that thought that he flicks the map off the railing, and watches as it flutters towards the lush, green ground.

By the time it lands, he's already standing in front of a tall, tall door. So tall he almost lies down on the floor in an attempt to see the top. Cut gems depict a figure standing before the sun, not eclipsing it, but seemingly becoming it.

Taqtu has studied the prominent religions of the area, but never understood them. He thinks of the long, long day of the summer, and the even longer night of winter, inescapable dark and light.

He thinks of a God in the Sun, bearing down on his people, watching their resolves fail and spirits break under unnatural heat. He thinks of the Empress and wonders why his father wouldn’t warn him of Gods living in the city of Sun, so close to the rest of them, mortal and fragile.

That’s when a rumble of deep, staccato huffing catches him by surprise. Looking over his shoulder, he sees a snout, barely visible as it crests the water, the maw of a predator falling open to make a show of its teeth. His whole body tenses down to his fingertips, and he doesn’t even feel himself shift to mirror it, that same rumbling tone rattling out of his chest.

The animal huffs, seemingly unimpressed with his display, as it emerges from the pond. The beast’s size was cause for concern on its own, and his father’s lessons on approaching your prey intelligently echo frantically in his head. Taqtu runs through options, something small and fast that could escape- a fox, perhaps? Still, he can’t gauge the speed of this ...reptile? He had heard stories of enormous creatures with tough scales and gaping jaws that roamed the swamps of these lands. He should have kept that map. He should not have strayed.

A small, young voice cuts through the echoes of his thoughts.

“Cacao!” Small footsteps grow closer, and the creature moves in response. It heaves its heavy body to block the hall as a boy visibly younger than him stumbles to its side.

Red hair, a sharp, straight nose at odds with his youthful features, a resemblance that turns Taqtu’s blood to ice in his veins and thaws it just as quickly as the boy pats the creature like a beloved pet.

The boy- the prince, his mind supplies- looks up from the creature, and immediately shrinks in on himself as he looks Taqtu over. Hurriedly, Taqtu allows himself to shift back into a human form.

“...Are you the son of my mom’s friend?” The boy asks, timid, even as the flowing syllables of Taqtu’s own language fall from his mouth. He speaks Inuktitut? At that age? Granted his vocabulary is a bit strange, but his accent is nearly unnoticeable. 

The familiar sounds and brief surprise soothe some of the remaining adrenaline from Taqtu’s muscles, and he finds it’s not as hard to work a smile onto his face.

“Tulumaaq is my father, if that’s what you mean.” Their parents had never seemed like friends to him, but maybe that’s what friendship was like for adults? “Is this your friend?” He gestures to the creature where it sits, having curled into a  seemingly defensive half-circle around the prince.

“He’s very big. Your dad, I mean. And you, and Cacao, but I meant your dad.” The boy says, stumbling through the sentence rather impressively. “Even my mom isn’t that tall, or my dad.” He bites his lip. “Cacao is my friend, though, yes.”

Poor kid, must not get out a lot. Taqtu huffs a laugh through his nose, pointedly ignoring the irritably swinging tail of the creature. “What is he?”

Taqtu swears he sees a sparkle in the boy’s eyes as he answers. “A crocodile! They’re aquatic reptiles that live in tropical areas.”

A crocodile, huh? The word brings the prince’s name out of the back of his memory where they overlap. Cipactli.

“Huh. Well, it’s nice to meet you, Cipactli and Cacao.” The creature smacks its tail into the tiled floor restlessly, the thwack a testament to the mass of the animal. “I’m sorry I scared you, I got lost in the halls.” He rubs the back of his neck sheepishly, silently resolving to never mention his natural sense of direction.

Cipactli lacks the bravado Taqtu expects of a boy his age, deflating slightly and clambering over the creature’s back to stand before him. “S’okay. You didn’t mean to.” He pauses, that same glint in his eyes. “I’ve never seen a white crocodile. It was really pretty.”

Taqtu’s brows raise, and an easy grin tugs at his lips. For an awkward princeling, this kid sure does say what he thinks. “You think so? Huh.” The smile grows a bit wider, into that grin he knows displeases his father. “Any other animals you haven’t seen? I’d be happy to show you.”

Cipactli’s eyes widen to nearly comical proportions, and he seems to stutter over several words before landing on “P-polar bear?” He takes a beat to put his thoughts in order, seemingly embarrassed by the outburst. “I’ve seen them in books, but the books in our library don’t say much about them…”

A polar bear? The number of times Taqtu’s fallen asleep a boy and woken up a polar bear is impossible to count. The prince might as well have asked him to demonstrate his breathing techniques. A boisterous laugh is out of his throat before he can stop it.

“A bear? I can do that, no sweat.” The prince’s brow creases at the colloquialism, but the gleam that Taqtu has come to pin down as ‘blossoming intellectual fervor’ grows even brighter. What a bookworm.

The ensuing delighted gasp at Taqtu’s transformation and excited pleas to touch his fur having him laughing as much as he’s able through the maw of a bear, rumbling out as a chittering purr. 

From what he's seen in just a few minutes, Cipactli would fit in perfectly with the other kids at home, once he finished breaking out of his shell. 

It’s with that thought that a pang of discomfort worms its way into his mind. If Cipactli keeps growing as he has, with only a crocodile and his parents for company, will he ever break out of that shell?

Unlikely.

But is it worth the danger that comes with exposing a prince to the outside world? Full of bitterness and rot, the churning disquiet that accompanies war and hate. Even the gilded city of Huatzintepec is not immune to it.

Perhaps the Empress is right to seclude her son so. But this visit could be the compromise he needs. A friend, a confidante willing to be his bridge to the outside world.

A laugh like wind chimes solidifies his resolve, and Taqtu steels himself for the inevitable ire of his father. Making a request like this of the Empress will be no easy task.

This is worth it.

[attackfish]

Storytelling, Craft, and Conveying an Idea: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Jurassic Park

Okay I never had to learn to love Jurassic Park, and I never stop worrying.

Jurassic Park was the film Steven Spielberg directed just before Schindler's List, and it's nearly impossible for two films to be more different. Spielberg, at the time an acknowledged master of the summer blockbuster, didn't think he was capable of directing a film with the weight and magnitude of Schindler's List, and attempted to enlist other more respected, in his opinion more worthy directors for the project he intended to produce. It was only after these other directors turned him down that he took the helm himself. With Schindler's List came a sea change in Spielberg's film-making, after which he gained the confidence to take on more ambitious projects and make the kinds of movies that would bring him recognition not only as a man who made fun movies, but as a great filmmaker.

He did not spring fully formed as a great filmmaker. While his vision was much grander in his later films, Spielberg's summer blockbusters already showed him to be a master of the craft of telling a story through cinema. This mastery of craft underpins all of Spielberg's more ambitious movies. And, conversely, without his later grandness of vision, Spielberg's storytelling craft is much easier to spot in films like Jurassic Park.

And this is why I want to talk about Jurassic Park, not because of what it means for Spielberg's development as a filmmaker, but as an example of a finely crafted story. Artistic craft in general is the tools that enable an artist to convey an artistic vision to an audience. Storytelling craft more specifically is the ability to express ideas and themes in the form of a story so that they have emotional impact and are rendered compelling to an audience.

There is an idea among some critics and indeed some writers, that ideas get in the way of a good story, and writing a story with big ideas is a surefire way to get a very bad story. This is an understandable belief, but fundamentally misguided, because a story, no matter what the author's intent, is going to express the author's ideas, and it is much, much better for the author to know what ideas they are working to convey, so that the story and the ideas harmonize. So what ideas does Jurassic Park convey? What is the big idea at it's heart?

Like all good stories, Jurassic Park has many ideas threaded through it, but the central theme, that the movie comes back to over and over, is the consequences of human hubris.

This is a common theme in the human storytelling tradition. The Greeks for example loved it. Frankenstein is such a story. Because of man's hubris in creating life, disaster happens. With such a beginning, it's unsurprising that modern stories of hubris, Individual hubris, and especially the collective hubris of humankind, would find a home in the speculative fiction genres, especially science fiction.

I was a certified scifi and fantasy nerd growing up, so I was bound at some point to stumble across the mid-twentieth century intellectual scifi sub-genre. If you spend any time in the speculative fiction genres, you probably know the type of story. They focus around a single idea that the author wants to make you think about. They are short, they often have a twist ending, and half the time the characters aren't even named, they are so unimportant to the author. And once the idea has been expressed, the story ends. They are stories that aren't really stories. Everything that would make for a good story with real emotional impact has been sacrificed in service of beating the audience over the head with the all important idea. They are the kind of story your well-meaning English teacher recommends to you because it will blow your mind.

I mention these stories for two reasons, one is that the consequences of human hubris is one of the most common ideas they attempt to convey, which makes sense, because they reflect the anxieties of the Cold War and the dawn of the nuclear age. Because of man's hubris in splitting the atom, the world could end.

I am singularly unimpressed with the sub-genre and its modern descendants. I don't think they're half as smart as they pretend to be, and they're boring. It's not that the ideas these stories are trying to convey are without value, it's simply that they are badly conveyed. And I would argue these stories, and other similar stories in other genres, are a big part of the reason for the disdain some writers and critics have for "stories with ideas", i.e. stories where the teller sets out to convey ideas. Because these stories sacrifice all the characteristics of a good story to convey their idea more succinctly, they are indeed bad stories. And because they bash you over the head with their Big Idea, it can seem as if stories that convey their idea with more subtlety don't have an idea to convey. This is why I have a certain amount of sympathy for this viewpoint, even though as I said earlier, there are ideas in every story, whatever author intent, and it's much better to have them there deliberately were they can be integrated into the story in an intentional and thoughtful way. Storytelling and the ideas in a story don't have to be in conflict. In fact they should not be.

The other reason is because these stories are much more likely to be respected as smart, cerebral than Jurassic Park in spite of often sharing the same underlying Big Idea, because of man's hubris, disaster happens. I think this is because there is a strain of thought in the West that says that emotions and reason are in direct conflict and reason is superior. If a person is having an emotional response to something, they must not also be having an intellectual response, and this is bad. Emotional responses are bad and we should fear them. This is not true. Everything we know about human development and learning tells us the opposite, that humans learn and internalize information and ideas better when they make an emotional connection to them. Furthermore, a good story, where the ideas are integrated into the story allows the audience to tease out the themes and ideas for themselves, allowing for a simulated experience, and audience's own discovery. Humans are also much more better able to learn what they discover for themselves than what they are told. Ironically this means that spoonfeeding an idea to an audience, as the terrible stories I talk about above do means that the audience is much less likely to learn that idea, or remember it. This also means that stories are a profoundly important means of conveying ideas. Humans are built to learn through stories.

So, with all that background in place, how does Jurassic Park tell a good story? How does it create emotional impact for its ideas? How does it show its ideas in a way that the audience gets to learn by simulated experience? How do the ideas and the story harmonize with the story serving the ideas at its core?

First and very simply, Jurassic Park gets its audience to care about its characters. Everything else, all of the emotional impact, rests on this. The novel Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, on which the movie is based, has a lot more in common with the storyless scifi stories I mentioned above than it does with the movie. Crichton was great at coming up with high concept premises and not very good at actual storytelling, and this is why although Michael Crichton wrote the original screenplay for Jurassic Park the movie, Spielberg called for extensive rewrites mostly focusing on characters and character development, giving characters arcs, shuffling around traits, and rebuilding some characters from the ground up.

This is how Ellie Sattler got personality and agency, Alan Grant got his dislike of children, Ian Malcolm went from an obnoxious author surrogate who existed to explicitly state Crichton's ideology while high on morphine, to an anxious intelligent audience surrogate, and John Hammond went from a greedy, grasping, conniving evil business man to a genial wealthy eccentric who wants to give children the experience of a lifetime. The children also are engaging and sympathetic instead of terminally annoying. This is also where the character arcs begin to take place. Alan Grant's initial dislike of and discomfort with children leads to his character arc learning to understand and appreciate children, and Hammond, no longer so revolting, can learn his lesson and live instead of the well deserved death he gets in the novel.

Spielberg also demonstrates his understanding that character arcs serve a purpose. While character arcs can be a useful tool to keep a character, especially one who gets a lot of focus, interesting, there is nothing wrong with static characters. Character arcs should tie back to the themes of a story, and Jurassic Park the movie does just that, Hammond's character arc especially. It's Hammond's hubris that leads to several deaths, and Hammond, his beloved grandchildren, and all of the main characters being placed in mortal peril, and it's the consequences of this hubris that force Hammond to reconsider his core assumptions about the world, how it works, and his place within it. Grant's character arc ties into many of the movie's secondary themes. of coming together, of self sacrifice, and that children are the hope for the future.

Ellie Sattler and Ian Malcolm meanwhile do not have character arcs. In both cases, the ways in which they could evolve over the course of the story would be thematically weird. Ian is our anxious audience surrogate, who complains and warns of impending doom, and is visibly anxious and sarcastic throughout. In a lesser story, he would be eaten by dinosaurs. In a mildly lesser story, he would be given an arc about overcoming his fear. This arc would clash with the main theme of the story, because Ian's fears are justified. He is the one not succumbing to hubris. Instead, what happens is Ian is shown to be both anxious and brave at the same time. He doesn't have to change to be brave. When the time comes, he can show tremendous courage and self sacrifice, and then when that time is over, he can go right back to being visibly anxious. This subverts audience expectations and makes him a richer character without changing him and dealing with the thematic implications. Ellie meanwhile also does not have an arc. Instead, she is the one who articulates the realization Hammond needs to come to. Much like Ian, she represents where the other characters need to get to. Both characters do this for Hammond. but also for Grant. Ellie gently mocks his discomfort with children and shows her own lack of the same discomfort, while Ian regularly shows concern for the children, and understanding of them and their feelings. They both push and prod the two characters undergoing arcs into the changes they need to make without feeling preachy. And Ellie especially makes choices that advance the plot in positive ways, making her proactive and more interesting without forcing her to change.

But great characters are unimportant if the audience doesn't get to know them before the emotional impact is delivered. Jurassic Park give the audience plenty of time to get to know the characters and watch them interact and bounce off each other. This process of getting to know the main characters and coming to like and identify with them means that later, we will care when they are in danger.

Spielberg also uses story structure to advance the themes of his story. The movie is structured in such a way as to build maximum suspense, but more importantly, it is designed to play on audience expectations, and to mimic within the movie the feeling of watching the movie. Spielberg knew of course when he was making the movie that his audience would go into the theater knowing certain things about the movie. There would be dinosaurs, they would be a towering special effects marvel, and then the dinosaurs would get loose and eat people. Instead of subverting this expectation, Spielberg gives it to us and sells it.

The first thing he does is show us a dinosaur, killing someone. This is off screen and only heard, and we don't actually see much at all of the raptor. This gets everybody onto the same page. If you managed to miss the whole "people will be eaten" thing, now you know. And this is something that other characters can reference throughout the first part of the movie, to build suspense and highlight Hammond's careless faith in the safety of his park. We are next introduced to Grant, Ellie, and most importantly, Hammond. Hammond in the movie is a clear surrogate for Spielberg himself, and the filmmakers more generally. This well-meaning showman will give the other characters dinosaurs in a stunning scientific and technical achievement, just as the movie will for the audience. And Grant and Ellie are sold on the park and the potential of seeing dinosaurs, the wonder and technological impressiveness much the same way the special effects dinosaurs are sold to the audience.

We are teased some more with the prospect of dinosaurs, we get to watch the characters interact, and then, at last, the movie, and Hammond, gives us what we, and the characters, have been waiting for. We get dinosaurs.

Within the movie, the dinosaurs are a stupendous, awe-inspiring fulfillment of all of the characters’ desire to see these amazing extinct creatures walking and breathing in front of them. And outside of the movie, the dinosaur special effects are a stupendous awe-inspiring fulfillment of all of the audience's desire to see these amazing extinct creatures walking and breathing in front of them. For one transcendent moment, the experiences of the characters and the audience are in near perfect unity. This binds the audience closer to the characters, causing us to identify with them, and it allows us to buy into their journey, to become stakeholders in it.

This wouldn't work if the special effects weren't really just that good. The dinosaurs in Jurassic Park are breathtaking in how real they look. It's been decades and they still look staggeringly real, more real even than the dinosaurs in some of the more modern installments in the franchise. This movie really is as close as most of us will ever get to that childhood dream of seeing real dinosaurs. And Spielberg sells it. He sells it hard, with sweeping visuals, John Williams's soaring score, and every cinematic trick in his arsenal that I don't know nearly enough about to describe. And he sells it not only because this is what the audience paid the price of admission for, but also because it does bind us to that character experience, and critically, it gets us to buy into the hubris at the center of the story. Yes we know the dinosaurs will end up eating people and it will all end in terror and tears, but aren't they cool?

They really really are.

And because we the audience buys into the hubris, there is a sense of betrayal when it all goes wrong. And this emotional gut reaction is in spite of the fact that the entire audience knows this is coming. It's the other thing we paid admission for, not just to see dinosaurs, but to see them eating people, to be thrilled and scared. The audience is given the shock of the hubris coming back to bite everyone. We experience through the story the theme of the story. And this is done so deftly it's hard to realize it's happening.

And that is why Jurassic Park is a shining example of storytelling craft, and why I love this movie.

[avengers-nextgen]

We Are One XIII

“Holy shit what happened to you two?” Penny stared wide eyed at James and Fox both of whom had a large amount of blood on their clothes.

“I’ll explain but rally the troops,” James promised before turning his attention back to Fox, “you stay. Get cleaned up. You’re sitting this out.”

“You can’t bench me. I’m fine.”

“You’re being benched,” Maria remarked, walking briskly past the two towards a security monitor. With a growl of frustration, Fox marched off cursing the entire way. “So I got the scoop on what happened. I think we’re on the same page here James.”

“Glad someone thinks on my wave length,” James smiled thinly. He waited impatiently until everyone showed up. When they were all gathered and quite James did his best to give a rundown of what had happened twenty minutes ago. “Anyone not here at the moment or somewhere secure is in danger. Killian’s taken to targeting family or anyone in close relation to us who can’t readily defend themselves.”

“Shit!” Piper cursed, turning on her heel and sprinting down the hall.

“Ah hell, I need a jet. And a pilot. Mainly a jet,” Nathaniel worried turning in a circle as he tried to figure out a plan of action.

“I’ll pilot,” Orion offered.

“Oh thank god,” Nathaniel looked like he wanted to kiss the other boy. “Come on!”

“Where are you going?” Maria asked.

“The ranch!”

“You know, you kids give me about twelve heart attacks a day!” Maria glowered turning back to her computer.

“Anyone else?” James asked, studying his group of friends.

“Chloe...” Arthur mumbled, “but I don’t know where she’s at. She won’t talk to me or anyone else for that matter.”

“Then you better hope she can take care of herself,” James looked sympathetically at the other boy. He could only imagine if Alex had gone MIA on him.

— — —

Curse words streamed from Piper’s mouth as she darted into the lab adrenaline pumping like mad. “Dad you dumbass. The one time you go without your suit-agh! I can’t believe this. A stupid convention. It’ll be fun they said. We can all go. Even Gen’s going and Uncle Peter. Well woo hoo!”

Armored up in less than a minute and brimming with anger Piper took to the skies in a flurry. In the distance clouds had begun to collect in angry dark masses. She could only guess who was responsible for that. Setting her jaw, Piper shot off in the direction of the storm.

Drawing nearer to the dark mass it became quite clear that one person in particular was responsible for the mayhem below. People scrambled about in frantic groups as the building roof continued to crumble away in pieces.

Though it was difficult to see, Piper went in for the landing and prayed she didn’t squash anyone in the process. Taking out the glass casing of a prototype Piper began to scan the crowd of people for her family. Heart pounding she caught a glimpse of red arching through the air: Peter.

Shortly after her uncle’s appearance a blast of lightning hit the air. As skilled as Peter was it would be difficult to take Killian out on his own. Stilling her nerves, Piper launched into the air speeding towards flashes of light.

“What are you doing here?!” Peter cried, zipping by after leaping from a wall.

“The cavalry’s here!” Piper replied, twisting away from a fork of lightning. “Where is everyone?”

“No idea,” Peter panted landing at a run.

“Thanks for the reassurance,” Piper sighed. “Scan the building for threats and give me a full schematic layout. Look for heat signatures along the way.”

“On it,” Came her suits reply.

Just off to the right glass shattered as Peter came tumbling through to the ground. “I cannot get behind this kid!!”

“Hang on,” just as expected Piper’s suit shifted to reveal heat signatures including a 3D schematic of the building’s layout, “I have eight pings. Only one has an extremely high signature and that’s gotta be Killian.”

“That info is great but I can hardly see from all this debris and shit!”

“On it.” Planting her feet firmly into the ground, Piper’s suit receded at the shoulders producing two rather large looking engine turbines. “Power up the turbines.”

“As you wish.” The mechanical voice was followed by a steady thrum as the turbines came to life. At first nothing happened until the power built and released nearly knocking Piper flat onto her back.

Any debris in the air had been blasted away from the building revealing all that it had to offer. As expected, Killian was the source of the storm but something was different.

“He’s got a weapon?!”

“Doesn’t he always have a weapon?” Peter asked.

“No!”

“Well great. Now I know why he liked the convention so much,” Peter settled his hands upon his hips like a disappointed father.

“I didn’t know you had spiders too,” Killian mused, twirling the new metal rod in his hand. It was different from the silly staff he used on occasion.

“There’s a lot you don’t know about my family,” Piper set her feet once more.

“Perhaps,” Killian shrugged lashing out with the metal rod. A loud thrum followed the gesture as lightning slaked across the room from its tip. Diving to the side, Piper took cover behind an exhibit case.

“That’s new.” Panting, she glanced around the corner only to be greeted by another blast of electricity. With a grunt, Piper used her thrusters to shoot back into safety behind a tool case.

“Oh, hey kiddo!”

“Dad?!” Piper stammered, looking at her father who was currently bent over a device with a set of pliers in hand. “What are you doing?!”

“Coming up with a solution while you buy us some time.”

“Us?”

“Drill.”

“Mom?!”

“Hey honey,” Pepper smiled tossing Tony a drill from the nearby supply closet.

“Little help!” Peter shrieked, sailing over head with a steaming rear end. “I hate being cooked!”

“What’s the rod thing Killian has?” Piper asked.

“It’s some sort of conductor, naturally,” Tony explained, “but it allows you to concentrate thick streams of electricity. The pointed end allows it to pierce nearly anything in order to ground the electricity if need be. It was supposed to help lessen the amount of energy lost between the potential and kinetic transi-“

“Thanks. Bye!” Darting from her hiding place once more Piper was greeted with a metal tip to the neck. Electricity shot through her suit with such power it blasted her backwards into the wall. “Should have seen that coming.”

Thunder rolled over head as Peter attempted to remain out of Killian’s sight. Each time he got close he was nearly fried to death. As if things couldn’t get worse rain began to fall steadily.

“Oh come on!” Peter cried. “Is there no God? Give me a miracle!”

Groaning, Piper slowly staggered to her feet with a steaming suit of armor. “I really hate this guy.”

Rain continued to pour as Piper and Peter attempted to overtake Killian, but he was in his element. Everything seemed to happen at his will. In mid flight Piper was struck down and this time her suit seized up once more.

“Pete-“

“I’m coming Baby Stark!” Peter swung low kicking Killian back but in the process he opened himself up for a counter strike.

“No!” Nailed in the back Peter went limp like a rag doll on the ground. “Come on. Move! Work you piece of shit.”

“You’re good at fighting,” Killian noted, standing above Piper with the metal rod’s tip angled at her chest. “You’re also smart. I admire that. I can acknowledge other intellectuals.”

“You seem to suck at counting dick head!” A loud clang sounded followed by Killian collapsing to the ground. Gen held a metal plumbing pipe like it was a baseball bat. She’d pegged him in the head.

“Miracles do happen!” Peter slurred staggering about like he’d drunk too many beers.

“Got it!” Tony cheered, emerging from his hiding spot with a gnarly looking gun. “Aaaand I missed the party.”

“You could have picked a more practical solution!” Piper yelled. “Like a pipe!”

“I’m sorry I can’t hear you through the mask,” Tony remarked sarcastically.

“Ugh!” Piper was on the verge of throwing a tantrum. “Listen-just get me out of this thing!”

“Yeah yeah,” Tony chuckled, going to aid his daughter when a blinding light seared Piper’s vision.

— — —

“If I ever get my hands on him again I’m killing him!” Piper fumed, angrily tearing off pieces of her suit. “He always manages to escape!”

“Easy,” Pepper frowned, “what matters is everyone’s safe.”

“No. Mom, no one is safe. Fox’s Dad was just murdered not long ago. The only reason I showed up was because James told us. Otherwise you would very likely be fried like some horribly installed electrical wiring.” With an angered huff Piper slammed her helmet onto the table. “What’s worse, it could’ve been you and dad and uncle Peter and Gen. Four for the price of one.”

“But that didn’t happen,” Peter piped up.

“Can it.” Piper glowered. “You have your own family to worry about. You can’t just go deep frying dead on them.”

“Okay fair point,” Peter shrugged.

“Just give me time to cool off okay?”

“Okay,” Pepper nodded sharing a look with Tony who only shrugged. Piper left the lab behind and made a straight shot for her room. She wasn’t mad at them so much as she was at herself. “Stupid. The same mistake twice! I have to make a new suit-but there’s no time. If this happens again though...it can’t and it won’t. I’ll be more careful but I’m never careful so that’s stupid to even consider.”

“Are you talking to yourself again?”

“Did my mom send you to make sure I’m not beating my head on a wall?” Piper asked, turning to spot Gen standing just inside the doorway.

“Actually I brought this,” Gen held up a small booklet, “it’s the written report for the tech Killian stole. I figured it might ease your mind a bit if you could at least read up on it. Get some form of an advantage.”

“Yeah,” Piper nodded, taking the booklet with care. “Thanks.”

“Of course,” Gen nodded.

“You didn’t get hurt right?”

“No, I’m in one piece,” Gen promised. “You on the other hand-“

“I’m fine,” Piper shrugged scanning herself for injuries anyways.

“I was talking about this,” Gen snorted, tapping at the reactor core in Piper’s chest. “I don’t think it’s necessarily good to be electrocuted by a lot of volts numerous times when you have heart issues.”

“Probably, but it’s unavoidable at the moment,” Piper grumbled.

“Some things are avoidable.”

“You’re still soaked,” Piper noted rather suddenly.

“Thanks captain obvious,” Gen snorted, “but I was more concerned with this.”

Gen plucked the booklet from Piper’s hands and smacked her on the cheek with it. “Science, as always.”

“Got a problem with it?”

“Nope.” Piper assured, “no problem.”

“Good.”

“You’re awfully smug and I hate it,” Piper glowered.

“Pfft. Don’t pout.”

“I can if I want. Besides, nothing you do can make me not pout when I want to pout because I get my pouting from my dad and he’s the expert pouter.”

Piper was met with a serious case of Deja Vu after that. The arched eyebrow and the ‘you confuse me ’ look along with the damp cheeks (this time from rain not tears) lead to a very familiar set of events. Only this time Piper didn’t phone a friend (aka Alex) upon realizing what happened. She was quite content and somewhat okay with it.

[claudinei-de-jesus]

The existence of God

1. Its declared existence.

Nowhere do the Scriptures attempt to prove the existence of God through formal evidence. It is recognized as a self-evident fact and as a natural belief of man. The Scriptures nowhere offer a series of proofs of the existence of God as a preliminary to faith; they declare the fact of God and call man to venture into the faith. "Whatever comes to God, believe that there is God", is the starting point in the relationship between man and God.

The Bible, in truth, speaks of men who say in their hearts that there is no God, but these are "fools", that is, the ungodly practitioners who would expel God from their thoughts because they have already expelled him from their lives. These belong to the large number of practicing atheists, that is, those who proceed and speak as if there were no God. Their number far exceeds the number of theoretical atheists, that is, those who claim to adhere to the intellectual belief that denies the existence of God. Note that the statement "there is no God" does not imply that God does not exist, but that God does not deal with the affairs of the world. Counting on his absence, men become corrupt and behave in an abominable way. (Sal. 14.)

Thus writes Dr. A. B. Davidson: (the Bible) does not attempt to demonstrate the existence of God, because in all parts of the Bible it is understood that he exists. There seems to be no passage in the Old Testament that represents men seeking to know the existence of God through nature or the events of providence, although there are some passages that imply that false ideas about the nature of God can be corrected by studying nature. and of life ... The Old Testament considers as little about the possibility of knowing God as it does about proving his existence. Why would men argue about the knowledge of God when they were already persuaded that they knew him, aware of being in communion with him, their thoughts being filled and enlightened by him, knowing that his Spirit moved in them, and guided them throughout your story?

The idea that man comes to knowledge or fellowship with God through his own efforts is totally foreign to the Old Testament. God speaks; it appears; the man hears and sees. God approaches men; establishes a concert or special relationship with them; and give them commandments. They receive him when he approaches: they accept his will and obey his precepts. Moses and the prophets are nowhere represented as thinkers reflecting on the Invisible, forming conclusions about it, or reaching high concepts of Divinity. The Invisible manifests itself to them, and they know him.

When a man says, "I know the president," he doesn't mean, "I know the president exists," because that is implied in his statement. In the same way, biblical writers tell us that they know God and these statements signify his existence.

2. Its proven existence.

If the Scriptures offer no rational demonstration of the existence of God, why are we going to make this attempt? For the following reasons: First, to convince those who genuinely seek God, that is, people whose faith has been overshadowed by some difficulty, and who say, "I want to believe in God; show me that it is reasonable to believe in him." But no evidence will convince the person, who, wishing to continue in sin and selfishness, says: "I challenge you to prove that God exists." After all, faith is a moral issue, not an intellectual one. If the person is not willing to accept, he will put aside any and all evidence. (Luke 6:31.) Second, to strengthen the faith of those who already believe. They study the evidence, not to believe, but because they already believe. This faith is so precious to them that they will gladly accept any fact that increases or enriches it.

Finally, to be able to enrich our knowledge about the nature of God. What greater object of thought and study is there than him? Where will we find evidence of the existence of God? In creation, in human nature and in human history. From these three spheres we deduce the five evidences of the existence of God:

1) The universe must have a First Cause or a Creator. (Cosmological argument, from the Greek word "cosmos", which means "world".)

2) The design evident in the universe points to a Supreme Mind. (Teleological argument, from "Teleos", which means "design or purpose".)

3) The nature of man, with his impulses and aspirations, points to the existence of a personal Governor. (Anthropological argument, from the Greek word "anthropos", which means "man".)

4) Human history gives evidence of a providence that rules over everything. (Historical argument.)

5) Belief is universal. (Common consensus argument.)

(a) The creation argument. Reason argues that the universe must have had a beginning. Every effect must have a sufficient cause. The universe, being the effect, must therefore have a cause. Consider the extent of the universe. In the words of Jorge W. Gray: "The universe, as we imagine it, is a system of thousands and millions of galaxies. Each of them is composed of thousands and millions of stars. Close to the circumference of one of these galaxies - the Milky Way - there is a medium-sized star with a moderate temperature, already yellowed by old age - which is our Sun. " And imagine that the Sun is millions of times bigger than our little Earth! The same writer continues: "The Sun is spinning in a dizzying orbit towards the circumference of the Milky Way at 19,300 meters per second, taking the Earth and all the planets with it, and at the same time the entire solar system is spinning in a gigantic circuit at speed an incredible 321 kilometers per second, while the galaxy itself spins, like a colossal giant ferris wheel. By photographing some sections of the sky, it is possible to count the stars.

At the Harvard College observatory I saw a photograph that includes images from more than 200 Milky Way - all recorded on a 35 x 42cm photographic plate. It is estimated that the number of galaxies that the universe is composed of is in the order of 500 trillion. "

Let us consider our small planet and on it the various forms of life that exist, which reveal divine intelligence and design. The question naturally arises: "How did all this originate?" The question is natural, as our minds are so constituted that they expect every effect to have a cause. Therefore, we conclude that the universe must have had a First Cause, or a Creator. "In the beginning - God" (Gen. 1: 1). In a simple way this argument is exposed in the following incident:

Said a skeptical young man to an elderly lady: - I once believed in God, but now, since I studied philosophy and mathematics, I am convinced that God is nothing more than a hollow word.

"Well," said the lady, "it is true that I have not learned these things, but since you have already learned, can you tell me where this egg came from?"

"Naturally from a chicken," was the reply.

- And where did the chicken come from?

- Of course an egg.

Then the lady asked: - Allow me to ask: which one existed first, the chicken or the egg?

"The chicken, for sure," replied the young man.

- Oh, so, the chicken existed before the egg?

- Oh, no, I should say that the egg existed first.

- So, I suppose you mean the egg existed before the chicken.

The boy hesitated: - Well, you see, that is, of course, well, the chicken existed first.

"Very well," she said, "who raised the first hen from which all successive eggs and hens came?"

- What do you mean by all this? He asked.

- Simply this - she replied: - I say that the one who created the first egg or the first chicken is the one who created the world. You can't even explain, without God, the existence of an egg or a chicken, and you still want me to believe that you can explain, without God, the existence of the whole world!

(b) The design argument. Design and beauty are evident in the universe; but design and beauty imply an architect; therefore, the universe is the work of an Architect endowed with sufficient intelligence to explain his work. The great Strasbourg clock has, in addition to the normal functions of a clock, a combination of moons and planets that move, showing days and months with the exactness of the celestial bodies, with their groups of figures that appear and disappear with equal regularity when the hours on the big timer. To declare that there was no engineer who built the watch, and that this object "happened", would be to insult intelligence and human reason. It is foolish to assume that the universe "happened", or, in scientific language, that it proceeded from "the random contest of atoms"!

Suppose that the book "The Pilgrim" was described as follows: the author took a wagon of press types and with a shovel threw them into the air. As they fell to the ground, they naturally and gradually came together to form the famous story of Bunyan. The most incredulous man would say: how absurd! And we say the same thing about the assumptions of atheism in relation to the creation of the universe.

Examination of a watch reveals that it bears the signs of design because the various pieces are brought together with a previous purpose. They are placed in such a way that they produce movements and these movements are regulated in such a way that they mark the hours. From this we infer two things: first, that the watch had someone who made it, and second, that its manufacturer understood its construction, and designed it for the purpose of marking the time. In the same way, we observe the design and operation of a plan in the world and, of course, we conclude that there was someone who did it and who wisely prepared it for the purpose it is serving.

The fact that we never observed the manufacture of a watch would not affect these conclusions, even if we never knew a watchmaker, or if we never had an idea of ​​the process of this work. Likewise, our conviction that the universe had an architect, in no way changes due to the fact that we have never seen its construction, or that we have never seen the architect.

Likewise, our conclusion would not change if someone informed us that "the clock is the result of the operation of the laws of mechanics and is explained by the properties of matter". Even so, we will have to consider it as the work of a skilled watchmaker who knew how to take advantage of these laws of physics and their properties to make the clock work. Likewise, when someone informs us that the universe is simply the result of the operation of the laws of nature, we are embarrassed to ask, "Who designed, established and used these laws?" This, because the presence of a legislator is implicit since there are laws.

Take, to illustrate, the life of insects. There is a species of beetle called "Staghom" or "Horned". The male has magnificent horns, twice as long as his body; the female has no horns. In the larval stage, they bury themselves in the earth and, silently, wait in the darkness for their metamorphosis. They are naturally mere insects, with no apparent difference, yet one of them digs a hole twice as deep as the other. Because? So that there is room for the male's horns to develop perfectly. Why do these larvae, apparently the same, differ in their habits? Who taught the male to dig his hole twice as deep as the female does? is the result of a rational process? No, it was God, the Creator, who put in those creatures the instinctive perception that would be useful to them. Where did this insect get your wisdom from? Someone may think that he inherited it from his parents. But does a taught dog, for example, convey its cunning and agility to its offspring? Do not.

Even if we admit that instinct was inherited, we still encounter the fact that someone had instructed the first horned beetle. The explanation of the wonderful instinct of animals is found in the words of the first chapter of Genesis: "And God said" - that is, the will of God. Anyone who watches a watch know that intelligence is not in the watch but in the watchmaker. And whoever observes the wonderful instinct of the smallest creatures, will conclude that the first intelligence was not theirs, but that of their Creator, and that there is a Mind that controls the smallest details of life.

Dr. Whitney, a former president of the American Society and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, once said that "one day repels the other by the will of God and no one can give a better reason." "What do you mean by the expression: the will of God?" someone asked him. Dr. Whitney replied: "How do you define light? ... There is the corpuscular theory, the wave theory, and now the quantum theory; and none of the theories is more than an educated guess. With an explanation as good as these , we can say that the light walks by the will of God ... The will of God, this law that we discovered, without being able to explain it - is the only final word. "

Mr. A. J. Pace, designer for the evangelical periodical "Sunday School Times", talks about his interview with the late Wilson J. Bentley, expert in microphotography (photographing what you see under the microscope). For more than a third of a century, this man photographed snow crystals. After photographing thousands of these crystals, he observed three main facts: first, that no two flakes were the same; second: they were all of a beautiful pattern; third: all were invariably hexagonal. When asked how this hexagonal symmetry was explained, he replied: "Certainly, nobody knows but God, but my theory is this: As everyone knows, snow crystals are formed by water vapor at temperatures below zero, and water is made up of three molecules, two of hydrogen that combine with one of oxygen. Each molecule has a positive and negative charge of electricity, which has a tendency to polarize on the opposite sides. on the subject from the beginning. " "How can we explain these very interesting dots, the graceful turns and curves, and these beveled corners so delicately chiseled, all of them arranged with perfect symmetry around the central point?" asked Mr. Pace. He shrugged and said, "Only the Artist who designed and modeled them knows the process."

His statement about the "figure three in the subject" got me thinking. Is it not then that the triune God, who shapes all the beauty of creation, initials the trinity itself in these fragile ice crystal stars as if he signs his name in his masterpiece? When examining snowflakes under a microscope, it is instantly seen that the basic principle of the snowflake structure is the hexagon or the six-sided figure, the only example of this in the entire realm of geometry in this regard. The radius of the circumscribed circle is exactly equal to the length of each of the six sides of the hexagon.

Therefore, six equilateral triangles result in the central nucleus, all angles being sixty degrees, the third part of the entire area on one side of a straight line. What a suggestive symbol of the triune God is the triangle! Here we have unity: a triangle, formed of three lines, each part indispensable to the integrity of the whole. Curiosity now compelled me to examine the biblical references to the word "snow", and I discovered, with great pleasure, this same "triangle" inherent in the Bible. For example, there are 21 (3 x 7) references containing the noun "snow" in the Old Testament, and 3 in the New Testament, 24 in all. So I found references, which speak of "leprosy as white as snow". Three times the cleansing of sin is compared to snow. I found three more that talk about clothes "as white as snow". Three times the appearance of the Son of God is compared to snow. But the biggest surprise was to discover that the Hebrew word, "snow", is made up entirely of "three" figures! It is a fact, although it is not generally known that, having no figures, both the Hebrews and the Greeks used the letters of their alphabet as figures. A casual look from a Hebrew to the word SHELEG (Hebrew word meaning "snow") was enough to see that it means the number 333, as well as it means "snow". In Hebrew the first letter, which corresponds to our "SH", is worth 3OO; the second consonant "L" is worth 30; and the final consonant, our "G", is worth 3. Adding them together, we have 333, three digits of three. Curious, isn't it? But why not expect mathematical accuracy from a fully inspired book, as wonderful as the world that God created?

About God, Jo said, "Do great things that we cannot understand. For he says to the snow: Fall on the earth" (John 37: 5, 6). I have already spent two full days to copy the drawing of God with six snow crystals with pen and ink and I was very tired. And how easy it is for him to do it! "He says to the snow" - and with a word it is done.

Imagine how many millions of billions of snow crystals fall on a hectare of land for an hour, and imagine, if you can, the amazing fact that each crystal has its own individuality, a design and model without duplicate in this or any other storm. "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it" (Ps. 139: 6). How can a sensible person, in the face of such evidence of designs, multiplied by any number of varieties, doubt the existence and work of the Designer, whose capacity is immeasurable ?! A God capable of doing so many beauties is capable of everything, even of shaping our lives by giving them beauty and symmetry.

(c) The argument of man's nature. Man has a moral nature, that is, his life is regulated by concepts of good and evil. He recognizes that there is a right course of action that he must follow and a wrong path that he must avoid. This knowledge is called "conscience". When he does good, conscience approves him; when he does evil, she condemns him. Conscience, whether obeyed or not, speaks with authority. So Butier said of conscience: "If it had power in the same proportion as its manifest authority, it would rule the world, that is, if conscience had the strength to put into action what it commands, it would revolutionize the world." But it turns out that man is endowed with free will and, therefore, can disobey that intimate voice. Even if misguided, without clarification, the conscience still speaks with authority, and makes man feel his responsibility.

"Two things impress me," declared Kant, the great German philosopher, "the high starry sky and the moral law within me." What is the conclusion to be drawn from this universal knowledge of good and evil? That there is a Legislator who idealized a standard of conduct for man and made human nature capable of understanding this ideal. Consciousness does not create the ideal; it simply testifies about it, recording its compliance or non-compliance.

Who originally created these two powerful concepts of good and evil? God, the Just Lawgiver! Sin overshadowed the conscience and almost annulled the law of the human being; but on Mount Sinai God engraved this law on stones so that man would have the perfect law to direct his life. The fact that man understands this law, and feels his responsibility towards it, manifests the existence of a Lawgiver who created man with this ability.

What is the conclusion that we can draw from this feeling of responsibility? That the Lawgiver is also a Judge who rewards the good and punishes the bad. The one who enforced the law will finally defend that law.

Not only the moral nature of man, but also all aspects of his nature testify to the existence of God. Even the most degraded religions demonstrate the fact that man, as blind, groping, seeks something that his soul longs for. Physical hunger indicates the existence of something that can satisfy it. When a man is hungry, that hunger indicates that there is someone or something that can satisfy him. The exclamation, "My soul is thirsty for God" (Ps. 42: 2), is an argument for the existence of God, for the soul would not deceive man with thirst for what did not exist. So a scholar from the early church once said, "You made us for yourself, and our hearts will be restless until they find rest in you."

(d) The storyline. The march of events in universal history provides evidence of a dominant power and providence. The entire biblical story was written to reveal God in history, that is, to illustrate God's work in human affairs. "The principles of divine moral government are found in the history of nations as well as in the experience of men," writes D. S. Clarke. (Ps. 75: 7; Dan. 2:21; 5:21.) "English Protestantism sees the defeat of the Spanish Armada as a divine intervention. The colonization of the United States by Protestant immigrants saved them from the fate of South America. , and in this way he saved democracy. Who would deny that the hand of God was in these events? " The history of mankind, the rise and decline of nations, such as Babylon and Rome, show that progress accompanies the use of God-given faculties and obedience to his law, and that national decline and moral rot follow disobedience "( DL Pierson.) AT Pierson, in his book, "The New Acts of the Apostles," exposes the evidence of God's dominant providence in modern evangelical missions.

Especially God's way of dealing with individuals provides evidence of his active presence in human affairs. Charles Bradiaugh, who at one time was the most notable atheist in England, challenged Pastor Charles Hughá Price to a debate.

The challenge was accepted and the preacher, in turn, challenged the atheist in the following way: As we all know, Mr. Bradiaugh, "the man convinced against his own will always maintains his point of view", and, since the debate, as mental gymnastics that he is, he probably will not convert anyone, I propose that we present some concrete evidence of the validity of the claims of Christianity in the form of men and women redeemed from worldly and shameful life by the influence of Christianity and that of atheism. I will bring a hundred of these men and women, and I challenge you to do the same.

If Mr. Bradiaughá is unable to present a hundred, against my hundred, I will be satisfied if I bring fifty men and women to stand up and testify that they have been transformed from a shameful life by the influence of their atheistic teachings. If I am unable to present fifty, I challenge you to present twenty people who testify with radiant faces, as my hundred will do, who have a great new joy in their high life as a result of atheistic teachings. If I cannot present twenty, I will be pleased to present ten. No, Mr. Bradiaugh, I challenge you to bring in a single man or woman who gives such a testimony about the ennobling influence of his teachings. My redeemed people will bring irrefutable proof as to the saving power of Jesus Christ over their redeemed lives from the slavery of sin and shame.

Perhaps, Mr Bradiaugh, this will be the true demonstration of the validity of Christianity's claims. Mr. Bradiaughá withdrew his challenge!

(e) The universal belief argument. The belief in the existence of God is practically as widespread as the human race itself, although it is often manifested in a perverted or grotesque form and covered with superstitious ideas. This opinion has been contested by some who argue that there are races that have no conception of God at all. But Mr. Jevons, an authority on the subject of comparative races and religions, says that this opinion, "As is known to all anthropologists, has already gone to the limbo of dead controversies ... everyone agrees that there are no races, however primitive as they are, totally devoid of religious conception! Although someone cites exceptions, we know that the exception does not render the rule useless. man is essentially a creature without feelings. The presence of blind people in the world does not prove that all men are blind. " As William Evans said, "the fact that certain nations do not know the multiplication table does not affect arithmetic."

How did this universal belief originate? Most atheists seem to imagine that a group of theologians met in a secret session in which they invented the idea of ​​God, which they then presented to the people. But theologians did not invent God, just as astronomers did not invent stars, nor did botanists invent flowers. It is true that the ancients held wrong ideas about celestial bodies, but this fact does not deny the existence of celestial bodies. And since mankind has already had faulty ideas about God, this implies that there is a God about which they could have erroneous notions.

This universal knowledge did not necessarily originate from reasoning, because there are men of great reasoning ability who also deny the existence of God. But it is evident that the same God who made nature, with its beauties and wonders, also made man endowed with the ability to observe, through nature, his Creator. "For what can be known of God is manifest in them; for God has made it manifest. His invisible perfections, his eternal power, and his divinity, are clearly seen since the creation of the world, being perceived by his works" (Rom. 1:19, 20). God did not make the world without leaving certain signs, suggestions and clear evidence, which speak of the works of his hands. "But men, knowing God, did not glorify him as God, nor did they give thanks, but rather became infatuated with his speculations and his foolish heart was in darkness" (Rom. 1:21). Sin blurred his vision; they lost sight of God and, instead of seeing God through the creature, they despised him for ignorance and worshiped the creature. It was in this way that idolatry began. But even this proves that man is an adoring creature and that he is necessarily looking for an object of worship.

This universal belief in God is proof of what? It is proof that the nature of man is so constituted that he is able to understand and appreciate this idea, as one writer put it: "Man is incurably religious", which in the broadest sense includes: (1) The acceptance of the fact of the existence of a being above the forces of nature. (2) A feeling of dependence on God as one who dominates man's destiny; this feeling is awakened by the thought of its own weakness and smallness and by the magnitude of the universe. (3) The conviction that a friendly union can be achieved and that in this union he, the man, will find security and happiness. In this way we see that man, by nature, is constituted to believe in the existence of God, to trust in his goodness, and to worship in his presence.

This "religious feeling" is not found in the lower creatures. For example, anyone who tried to teach religion to the highest of apes would lose their time. But the lowest of men can be instructed in the things of God. Because? The animal lacks the religious nature - it is not made in the image of God; man has a religious nature and seeks an object of worship.

3. Its existence is denied.

Atheism consists in the absolute negation of the idea of ​​God. Some doubt that there are real atheists; but if there are, it is impossible to prove that they are sincerely seeking God or that they are logically consistent.

Since it is atheists who oppose the deepest and most fundamental convictions of the human race, the responsibility for proving the non-existence of God lies with them. they cannot sincerely and logically call themselves atheists until they present irrefutable evidence that in fact God does not exist. Undeniably, the evidence for the existence of God far exceeds the evidence against the existence of God. In this connection, D. S. Clarke writes: A small proof will demonstrate that there is a God, since no proof, however great it may be, can attest to his non-existence. A bird's footprints on a rock by the sea would prove that at some time a bird visited the lands adjacent to the Atlantic. But before it was declared that no bird had ever been there, it would be necessary to know the entire history of this coast since the beginning of life on the globe. A little bit of evidence will show that there is a God. Before it is said that there is no God, all the elements of the universe must be analyzed; all mechanical, electrical, biological, mental and spiritual forces must be investigated - all beings must be known and fully understood; one must be in all points of space at the same time, so that possibly God is not somewhere else and thus escapes your attention. That person must be omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal; in fact, that same person must be God before he dogmatically asserts that there is no God. As strange as it may seem, only God, whose existence the atheist denies, would have this ability to prove that there is no God! Furthermore, even the most remote possibility that there is a moral Sovereign puts immense responsibility on man, and the atheistic conclusion is unacceptable as long as the existence of God is not irrefutably demonstrated.

The contradictory atheist position is demonstrated by the fact that many atheists, when they are in danger or in difficulty, have prayed. How many times, life's storms and struggles have swept its theoretical refuge, revealing the spiritual foundations, and demonstrating human behavior. We say "human" because he who denies the existence of God shakes and suppresses the deepest and noblest instincts and impulses of the soul. As Pascal said, "Atheism is a disease." When man loses faith in God, it is not due to the arguments (no matter the apparent logic with which his denial is presented), but "to some intimate disaster, betrayal, or neglect, or some corrosive acid distilled in his soul that dissolved the pearl of great price ".

The following incident, told by a Russian nobleman, clarifies this matter:

It was in November 1917, when the Bolsheviks overcame Kerensky's government and began a reign of terror. The nobleman was at his mother's house, filled with constant fear of being arrested. The doorbell rang and the servant who answered brought a business card with the name of Prince Kropotkin - the very father of anarchism. He came in and asked for permission to examine the apartment. There was nothing else to do but allow him to enter, because he was evidently allowed to search and even requisition the house.

"My mother allowed it to pass," says the narrator. "He entered one room and then another, without stopping, as if he had lived there before and knew the order of the rooms. He entered the dining room; he looked around and suddenly went to the room occupied by my mother.

- Oh! forgive me - said my mother, when the Prince was going to open the. door - ; it's my bedroom.

He stopped for a moment in front of the door, looked at my mother then, as if he were ashamed, and in a shaky voice, said quickly:

- Yes yes I know. Forgive me, but I need to get into this room!

He put his hand on the doorknob and slowly started to open the door, and then suddenly closed it behind him after entering. "I was so agitated by the Prince's conduct that I found myself tempted to look. Prince Kropotkin was kneeling praying before the oratory in my mother's room. I saw him kneeling making the sign of the cross; I did not see his face or his eyes because he saw him from behind. His kneeling figure and his fervent prayer made him look so humble as he slowly whispered the prayer. He was so busy he didn't even notice me. " "Suddenly all my anger and hatred for this man had evaporated, like fog in the rays of the sun. I was so moved that I carefully closed the door." Prince Kropotkin remained in my mother's room for perhaps twenty minutes. He finally came out looking like a boy who had made a mistake, and he didn't even look up, as if recognizing his mistake. However, there was a smile on his face. He came close to my mother, took her hand, kissed her and then said in a very small voice: - I thank you very much for allowing me this visit to your home. Don't be nervous with me ... you see, it was in this room that my mother died. It was a great consolation for me to be in her room again. Thank you, thank you very much. "His voice trembled, and his eyes were moist. Then he said goodbye and disappeared." This man, despite being an anarchist, revolutionary, and atheist - still prayed!

Is it not evident that he became an atheist because he crushed the deepest feelings of his soul? Atheism is a crime against society, because it destroys the only foundation of morality and justice - a personal God who places on man the responsibility of keeping his laws. If there is no God, then there is no divine law, and all laws are man's. But why should we proceed legally? Why does a man, or a group of men, command him? It is possible that there are people with a relative nobility of spirit, and that they do good and are right, without, however, having belief in God, but for the great mass of humanity there is only one sanction to do what is right and that it is - "Thus saith the Lord", the Judge of the living and the dead, the mighty Governor of eternal destiny. To remove this is to destroy the foundations of human society.

James M. Gillis comments: The atheist is like a drunken drunken man who enters a research laboratory and begins to add certain chemicals that can destroy him, as well as everything around him. In fact, the atheist is facilitating with more mysterious and more powerful forces than anything in test tubes; more mysterious than the much talked about death ray. Nor can one imagine what the outcome would be if an atheist really extinguished faith in God; the entire tragic history of this planet does not register a single event that illustrates such a universal cataclysm that would occur.

Atheism is a crime against man. He seeks to pull from the heart of man the yearning for spiritual things, his hunger and thirst for the infinite. Atheists protest against crimes committed in the name of religion; we recognize that religion has been perverted by priestly and ecclesiasticism. But trying to erase the idea of ​​God because there has been abuse is as absurd as trying to pull love out of the human heart because in some cases that love has become distorted. ... A existencia de Deus

1. Sua existência declarada.

Em parte alguma como Escrituras tratam de provar a existência de Deus mediante provas formais. Reconhece-se como fato autoevidente e como restaur natural do homem. As Escrituras em parte alguma propõem uma série de provas da existência de Deus como preliminar à fé; declaram o fato de Deus e chamam o homem a aventurar-se na fé. "O que se chega a Deus, creia que há Deus", é o ponto inicial na relação entre o homem e Deus.

A Bíblia, em verdade, fala de homens que dizem em seus corações que não há Deus, esses são "tolos", isto é, os ímpios praticantes que expulsariam a Deus dos seus pensamentos porque já o expulsaram das suas vidas. Esses pertencem ao grande número de ateus praticantes, isto é, esses que procedem e falam como se não existisse Deus. Seu número ultrapassa em muito o número de ateus teóricos, isto é, esses que pretendem aderir à religião intelectual que nega a existência de Deus. Note-se que uma declaração "não há Deus" não implica dizer que Deus não exista, mas sim que Deus não se ocupa com os negócios do mundo. Contando com a sua ausência, os homens corrompidosem-se e se comportam de maneira abominável. (Sal. 14.)

Assim, o Dr. A. B. Davidson: (a Bíblia) não tenta mostrar a existência de Deus, porque em todas as partes da Bíblia subentende-se a sua existência. Parece não haver nenhuma passagem no Antigo Testamento que represente os homens procurando conhecer a existência de Deus por meio da natureza ou pelos eventos da providência, embora haja algumas passagens que impliquem que idéias falsas sobre a natureza de Deus podem ser corrigidas pelo estudo da natureza e da vida ... O Antigo Testamento cogita tão pouco da possibilidade de conhecer a Deus quanto cogita de provar a sua existência. Por que os homens argumentariam sobre o conhecimento de Deus quando já estavam persuadidos de que o conheciam, cônscios de estarem em comunhão com ele, levando seus pensamentos cheios e iluminados por ele, sabendo que seu Espírito neles movia, e guiava-os em todo a sua história?

A idéia de que o homem chega ao conhecimento ou à comunidade com Deus por meio de seus esforços próprios é totalmente estranho ao Antigo Testamento. Deus fala; ele aparece; o homem ouve e vê. Deus aproxima-se dos homens; normal um concerto ou relação especial com eles; e dá-lhes mandamentos. Eles o apresentam quando ele se aproxima: aceitam a sua vontade e obedecem aos seus preceitos. Moisés e os profetas em parte alguma são representados como pensadores refletindo sobre o Invisível, formando clicando sobre dele, ou alcançando conceitos elevados da Divindade. O Invisível manifesta-se-lhes, e eles o conhecem.

Quando um homem diz: "Eu conheço o presidente", ele não quer dizer: "Eu sei que o presidente existe," porque isso se subentende na sua declaração. Da maneira mesma os escritores bíblicos nos dizem que conhecem a Deus e essas declarações significam a sua existência.

2. Sua existência provada.

Se as Escrituras não suportam nenhuma demonstração racional da existência de Deus, por que vamos nós fazer essa tentativa? Pelas seguintes razões: Primeiramente, para convencer os que genuinamente buscam a Deus, isto é, cuja fé tem sido ofuscada por alguma dificuldade, e que dizem: "Eu quero crer em Deus; mostrame que razoável seja crer nele." Mas evidência nenhuma convencerá a pessoa, que, por desejar continuar no pecado e no egoísmo, diz: "Desafio-te a provar que Deus existe." Afinal, a fé é questão moral e não intelectual. Se a pessoa não está disposta a aceitar, ela porá de lado todas as evidências e quaisquer evidências. (Luc. 6:31.) Segundo, para fortalecer a fé daqueles que já crêem. Eles estudam como provas, não para crer, mas sim porque já crêem. Esta fé lhes é tão preciosa que aceitarão com alegria qualquer fato que a faça aumentar ou enriquecer.

Finalmente, para poder enriquecer nosso conhecimento acerca da natureza de Deus. Que maior objeto de pensamento e estudo existe do que ele? Onde acharemos evidências da existência de Deus? Na criação, na natureza humana e na história humana. Dessas três esferas deduzimos como cinco evidências da existência de Deus:

1) O universo deve ter uma Primeira Causa ou um Criador. (Argumento cosmológico, da palavra grega "cosmos", que significa "mundo".)

2) O desígnio evidente no universo aponta para uma Mente Suprema. (Argumento teleológico, de "Teleos", que significa "desígnio ou propósito".)

3) A natureza do homem, com seus impulsos e aspirações, assinala a existência de um Governador pessoal. (Argumento antropológico, da palavra grega "anthropos", que significa "homem".)

4) A história humana dá evidências duma providência que governa sobre tudo. (Argumento histórico.)

5) A decoração é universal. (Argumento do consenso comum.)

(a) O argumento da criação. A razão argumenta que o universo deve ter um princípio. Todo efeito deve ter uma causa suficiente. O universo, sendo o efeito, por conseqüência deve ter uma causa. Consideremos a extensão do universo. Nas de Jorge W. Gray: "O universo, como o imaginamos, é um sistema de milhares e milhões de galáxias. Cada uma delas se compõe de milhares e milhões de estrelas. Perto da circunferência de uma dessas galáxias - a Via Láctea - existe uma estrela de tamanho médio e temperatura moderada, já amarelada pela velhice - que é o nosso Sol. " E imaginem que o Sol é milhão de vezes maior que a nossa pequena Terra! Prossegue o mesmo escritor: "O Sol está girando numa orbita vertiginosa em direção à circunferência da Via Láctea a 19.300 metros por segundo, levando consigo a Terra e todos os planetas, e ao mesmo tempo todo o sistema solar está girando num gigantesco circuito à velocidade incrível de 321 milhas por segundo, enquanto uma gira própria galáxia, qual colossal roda gigante estelar. Fotografando-se algumas fontes dos céus, é possível fazer uma contagem das estrelas.

No observatório de Harvard College eu vi uma fotografia que inclui como imagens de mais de 200 Vias Lácteas - todas as funções numa chapa fotográfica de 35 x 42cm. Calcule se o número de galáxias de que se compõe o universo é da ordem de 500 milhões de milhões. "

Consideremos nosso pequeno planeta e nele como várias formas de vida existentes, como quais revelam inteligência e desígnio divinos. Naturalmente surge a questão: "Como se originou tudo isso?" A pergunta é natural, pois as nossas mentes são constituídas de tal forma que origina que todo efeito tenha uma causa. Logo, concluímos que o universo deve ter tido uma Primeira Causa, ou um Criador. "No princípio - Deus" (Gên. 1: 1). Dum modo singelo este argumento é exposto no seguinte incidente:

Disse um jovem cético a uma idosa senhora: - Outrora eu cria em Deus, mas agora, desde que estudei filosofia e matemática, estou convencido de que Deus não é mais do que uma palavra oca.

- Bem - disse a senhora - é verdade que eu não aprendi essas coisas, mas desde que você já aprendeu, pode me dizer donde veio este ovo?

- Naturalmente duma galinha - foi a resposta.

- E veio a galinha?

- Naturalmente dum ovo.

Então indagou a senhora: - Permita-me pergunta: qual existiu primeiro, a galinha ou o ovo?

- A galinha, por certo - respondeu o jovem.

- Ah, então, a galinha existia antes do ovo?

- Oh, não, desvie dizer que o ovo existia primeiro.

- Então, eu suponho que você quer dizer que o ovo existia antes da galinha.

O moço vacilou: - Bem, a senhora vê, isto é, naturalmente, bem, a galinha existiu primeiro.

- Muito bem - disse ela -, quem criou a primeira galinha de que preencheu todos os sucessivos ovos e galinhas?

- Que é que a senhora quer dizer com tudo isto? - perguntou ele.

- Simplesmente isto - replicou ela: - Digo que aquele que criou o primeiro ovo ou a primeira galinha é aquele que criou o mundo. Você nem pode explicar, sem Deus, a existência dum ovo ou duma galinha, e ainda quer que eu creia que você pode explicar, sem Deus, a existência do mundo inteiro!

(b) O argumento do desígnio. O desígnio e a formosura evidenciam-se no universo; mas o desígnio e a formosura implicam um arquiteto; portanto, o universo é a obra dum Arquiteto dotado de inteligência suficiente para explicar sua obra. O grande relógio de Estrasburgo tem, além das funções normais dum relógio, uma combinação de luas e planetas que se movem, mostrando dias e meses com a exatidão dos corpos celestes, com seus grupos de figuras que aparecem e desaparecem com regularidade igual ao soarem como horas no grande cronômetro. Declarar não ter havido um engenheiro que construiu o relógio, e que este objeto "aconteceu", seria insultar a inteligência e a razão humana. É insensatez presumir que o universo "aconteceu", ou, em linguagem cientifica, que procedeu "do concurso fortuito dos átomos"!

Suponhamos que o livro "O Peregrino" foi descrito da seguinte maneira: o autor tomou um vagão de tipos de imprensa e com pá os atirou ao ar. Ao caírem no chão, natural e gradualmente se ajuntaram de maneira formar uma história famosa de Bunyan. O homem mais incrédulo diria: que absurdo! E a mesma coisa dizemos nós das suposições do ateísmo em relação à criação do universo.

O exame dum relógio revela que ele leva os sinais de desígnio porque diversas peças são reunidas com um propósito prévio. Elas são colocadas de tal modo que movimentos e esses movimentos são regulados de tal maneira que marcam as horas. Disso inferimos duas coisas: primeiro, que o relógio teve alguém que o fez, e em segundo lugar, que o seu fabricante compreendeu a sua construção, e o projetou com o propósito de marcar as horas. Da mesma maneira, observamos o desígnio e uma operação dum plano no mundo e, naturalmente, concluímos que houve alguém que o fez e que sabiamente o preparou para o propósito ao qual está servindo.

O fato de nunca termos observado a fabricação dum relógio não afetaria essas informações, mesmo que nunca conhecêssemos um relojoeiro, ou que jamais tivéssemos idéia do processo desse trabalho. Igualmente, a nossa convicção de que o universo teve um arquiteto, de forma nenhuma sofre alteração pelo fato de nunca termos observados a sua construção, ou de nunca termos visto o arquiteto.

Do mesmo modo a nossa conclusão não se alteraria se alguém nos informasse que "o relógio é resultado da operação das leis da mecânica e explica-se pelas propriedades da matéria". Ainda assim teremos que considerá-lo como obra dum hábil relojoeiro que soube aproveita essas leis da física e suas propriedades para fazer funcionar o relógio. Da forma mesma, quando alguém nos informa que o universo é simplesmente o resultado da operação das leis da natureza, nós nos vemos constrangidos a pergunta: "Quem projetou, estimou e consumiu leis?" Isso, em razão de ser implícita a presença de um legislador uma vez que existem leis.

Tomemos, para ilustrar, a vida dos insetos. Há uma espécie de escaravelho chamado "Staghom" ou "Chifrudo". O macho tem magníficos chifres, duas vezes mais compridos do que o seu corpo; a fêmea não tem chifres. No estágio larval, eles enterram-se os mesmos na terra e, silenciosamente, surgem na escuridão pela sua metamorfose. São naturalmente meros insetos, sem nenhuma diferença aparente e, no entanto, um deles escava para si um buraco duas vezes mais profundo do que o outro. Porque? Para que haja espaço para os chifres do macho se desenvolverem com perfeição. Por que essas larvas, aparentemente iguais, diferem assim em seus hábitos? Quem ensinou o macho a cavar seu buraco duas vezes mais profundo do que o faz a fêmea? é o resultado dum processo racional? Não, foi Deus, o Criador, quem pôs naquelas criaturas a percepção instintiva que lhes seria útil. De onde indicar esse inseto em sua sabedoria? Alguém talvez pense que a herdara de seus pais. Mas um cão ensinado, por exemplo, transmite à sua descida sua astúcia e agilidade? Não.

Mesmo que admitamos que o instinto fosse herdado, ainda deparamos com o fato de que alguém havia instruído o primeiro escaravelho chifrudo. A explicação do maravilhoso instinto dos animais acha-se nas palavras do primeiro capítulo de Gênesis: "E disse Deus" - isto é: a vontade de Deus. Quem observa o funcionamento dum relógio sabe que a inteligência não está no relógio mas sim no relojoeiro. E quem observa o instinto maravilhoso das menores criaturas, concluirá que a primeira inteligência não era a delas, mas sim do seu Criador, e que existe uma Mente controladora dos menores detalhes da vida.

O Dr. Whitney, ex-presidente da Sociedade Americana e membro da Academia Americana de Artes e Ciências, certa vez disse que "um dia repele o outro pela vontade de Deus e ninguém pode dar razão melhor." "Que quer o senhor dizer com a expressão: a vontade de Deus?" alguém lhe perguntou. O Dr. Whitney replicou: "Como o senhor define a luz? ... Existe uma teoria corpuscular, uma teoria de ondas, e agora a teoria do quantum; e nenhuma das teorias passa duma conjetura educada. Com uma explicação tão boa como essas , podemos dizer que a luz caminha pela vontade de Deus ... A vontade de Deus, essa lei que descobrimos, sem a podermos explicar - é a única palavra final. "

O Sr. A. J. Pace, desenhista do periódico evangélico "Sunday School Times", fala de sua entrevista com o finado Wilson J. Bentley, perito em microfotografia (fotografar o que se vê através do microscópio). Por mais de um terço de século esse senhor fotografou cristais de neve. Depois de haver filhotes de dois filhotes de cristais, ele observou três critérios principais: primeiro, que não existem dois padrões; segundo: todos eram de um padrão formoso; terceiro: todos eram invariavelmente de forma sextavada. Quando lhe perguntaram como se explicava essa simetria sextavada, ele respondeu: "Decerto, ninguém sabe senão Deus, mas a minha teoria é a seguinte: Como todos sabem, os cristais de neve são formados de vapor de água a uma temperatura abaixo de zero, ea água se compõe de três moléculas, duas de hidrogênio que se combinam com uma de oxigênio. Cada molécula tem uma carga de eletricidade positiva e negativa, a qual tem a tendência de polarizar-se nos lados opostos. assunto desde o começo. " "Como podemos explicar estes pontinhos tão interessantes, as voltas e as curvas graciosas, e estas quinas chanfradas tão delicadamenteeladas, todas elas dispostas com simetria perfeita ao redor do ponto central?" perguntou o Sr. Pace. Encolheu os ombros e disse: "Somente o Artista que os desenhou e os modelou conhece o processo."

Sua declaração acerca do "algarismo três que figura no assunto" me pôs a pensar. não seria então que o triúno Deus, que modela toda a formosura da criação, rubrica a própria trindade contendo estrelas de cristal de gelo como quem assina seu nome em sua obra-prima? Ao examinar os flocos de neve ao microscópio, vê-se instantaneamente que o princípio básico da estrutura do floco de neve é ​​o hexágono ou a figura de seis lados, o único exemplo disso em todo o reino da geometria a este respeito. O raio do circulo circunscrevente é exatamente igual ao comprimento de cada um dos seis lados do hexágono.

Portanto, resultam seis triângulos eqüiláteros reunidos ao núcleo central, sendo todos os ângulos de sessenta graus, a terça parte de toda a área num lado duma linha reta. Que símbolo sugestivo do triúno Deus é o triângulo! Aqui temos unidade: um triângulo, formado de três linhas, cada parte indispensável à integridade do conjunto. A curiosidade agora me impeliu uma examinar as referências bíblicas sobre a palavra "neve", e descobri, com grande prazer, este mesmo "triângulo" inerente na Bíblia. Por exemplo, há 21 (3 x 7) referências contendo o substantivo "neve" no Antigo Testamento, e 3 no Novo Testamento, 24 ao todo. Então achei referencias, que falam da "lepra tão branca como a neve". Três vezes a purificação do pecado é comparada à neve. Achei mais três que falam de roupas "tão brancas como a neve". Três vezes a aparência do Filho de Deus compara-se à neve. Mas a maior surpresa foi ao descobrir que a palavra hebraica, "neve", é composta inteiramente de algarismos "três"! É fato, embora não seja geralmente conhecido que, não tendo algarismos, tanto os hebreus como os gregos usavam como letras do seu alfabeto como algarismos. Bastava um olhar casual de um hebreu à palavra SHELEG (palavra hebraica que quer dizer "neve") para ver que ela significa o algarismo 333, bem como significa "neve". No hebraico a primeira letra, que corresponde à nossa "SH", vale 3OO; uma segunda consoante "L" vale 30; e a consoante final, o nosso "G", vale 3. Somando-as, temos 333, três algarismos de três. Curioso, não é verdade? Mas por que não esperar exatidão matemática dum livro plenamente inspirado, tão maravilhoso quanto o mundo que Deus criou?

Acerca de Deus disse Jo: "Faz grandes coisas que não podemos compreender. Pois diz à neve: Cai sobre a terra" (Jo 37: 5, 6). Eu já gastei dois dias inteiros para copiar com pena e tinta o desenho de Deus de seis cristais de neve e fiquei muito fatigado. E como é fácil para ele fazê-lo! "Ele diz à neve" - ​​e com uma palavra está feita.

Imaginem quantos milhões de bilhões de bilhões de cristais de neve caem sobre um hectare de terra durante uma hora, e imagine, se puderem, o fato surpreendente de que cada cristal tem sua individualidade própria, um desenho e modelo sem duplicata nesta ou em qualquer outra tempestade. "Tal conhecimento é maravilhoso demais para mim; elevado é, não o posso atingir" (Sal. 139: 6). Como pode uma pessoa ajuizada, diante de tal evidência de desígnios, multiplicados por um sem-número de variedades, duvidar da existência e da obra do Desenhista, cuja capacidade é imensurável ?! Um Deus capaz de fazer tantas belezas é capaz de tudo, até mesmo de moldar como nossas vidas dando-lhes beleza e simetria.

(c) O argumento da natureza do homem. O homem dispõe de natureza moral, isto é, a sua vida é regulada pelos conceitos do bem e do mal. Ele reconhece que há um caminho de ação que deve seguir e um caminho errado que deve evitar. Esse conhecimento chama-se "consciente". Ao fazer ele o bem, a consciência o aprova; ao fazer ele o mal, ela o condena. A consciência, seja obedecida ou não, fala com autoridade. Assim disse Butier aproximadamente da consciência: "Se ela possuir poder na mesma proporção de sua autoridade manifesta, governaria do mundo, isto é, se a tomada de consciência tiver a força de pôr em ação o que ordena, ela revolucionaria do mundo." Mas acontece que o homem é dotado de livre arbítrio e, portanto, pode desobedecer àquela voz íntima. Mesmo assim, mal orientada, sem esclarecimento, a consciência ainda fala com autoridade, e faz o homem sentir sua responsabilidade.

"Duas coisas me impressionam", verdadeiro Kant, o grande filosofo alemão, "o alto céu estrelado e a lei moral em meu interior." Qual a conclusão que se tira deste conhecimento universal do bem e do mal? Que há um Legislador que idealizou uma norma de conduta para o homem e fez a natureza humana capaz de compreender esse ideal. A consciência não cria o ideal; ela simplesmente testifica acerca dele, registrando a sua conformidade ou não-conformidade.

Quem somos criou esses dois poderosos conceitos do bem e do mal? Deus, o Justo Legislador! O pecado ofuscou a consciência e quase anulou a lei do ser humano; mas no Monte Sinai Deus gravou essa lei em pedras para que o homem tenha a lei perfeita para dirigir a sua vida. O fato de que o homem compreende esta lei, e sente sua responsabilidade para com ela, manifesta a existência dum Legislador que criou o homem com essa capacidade.

Qual é a conclusão que podemos tirar desse sentimento de responsabilidade? Que o Legislador é também um Juiz que recompensa os bons e castigar os maus. Aquele que impôs um lei finalmente defenderá essa lei.

Não somente a natureza moral do homem, como também todos os aspectos da sua natureza testificam da existência de Deus. Até as religiões mais degradadas demonstram o fato de que o homem, qual cego, tateando, procura algo que sua alma anela. A fome física indica a existência de algo que possa satisfazer. Quando o homem tem fome, essa fome indica que há alguém ou algo que deseja satisfazer. A exclamação, "a minha alma tem sede de Deus" (Sal. 42: 2), é um argumento a favor da existência de Deus, pois a alma não enganaria o homem com sede daquilo que não existisse. Assim disse certa vez um erudito da igreja primitiva: "Para ti nos fizeste, e nosso coração estará inquieto enquanto não encontrar descanso em ti."

(d) O argumento da história. A marcha dos eventos da história universal evidência de um poder e duma providência dominantes. Toda a história bíblica foi escrita para revelar Deus na história, isto é, para ilustrar a obra de Deus nos negócios humanos. "Os princípios do divino governo moral referência-se na história das nações tanto na experiência dos homens", disse D. S. Clarke. (Sal. 75: 7; Dan. 2:21; 5:21.) "O protestantismo inglês vê a derrota da Armada Espanhola como uma intervenção divina. A colonização dos Estados Unidos por imigrantes protestantes salvou-os da sorte da América do Sul , e desta maneira salvou uma democracia. Quem negaria que a mão de Deus ocorreu nesses acontecimentos? " A história da humanidade, o surgimento e declínio de nações, como Babilônia e Roma, mostra que o progresso acompanhado o uso das faculdades dadas por Deus e a obediência à sua lei, e que o declínio nacional e a podridão moral seguem a desobediência "(DL Pierson ). AT Pierson, em seu livro, "Os Novos Atos dos Apóstolos", expõe como evidências da providência dominante de Deus nas missões evangélicas modernas.

Especialmente o modo de Deus tratar com os principais competições de sua presença ativa nos negócios humanos. Charles Bradiaugh, que foi em certo tempo o ateu mais notável na Inglaterra, desafiou o pastor Charles Hughá Price, para um debate.

Foi aceito o desafio e o pregador, por sua vez, desafiou o ateu da seguinte maneira: Como todos sabemos, Sr. Bradiaugh, "o homem convencido contra a própria vontade mantém sempre seu ponto de vista", e, visto que o debate, como ginástica mental que é, provavelmente não converter a ninguém, proponho-lhe que apresentamos algumas evidências concretas da validação das especificações do cristianismo na forma de homens e mulheres redimidos da vida mundana e vergonhosa pela influência do cristianismo e pela do ateísmo. Eu trarei cem homens e mulheres, e o desafio-o a fazer o mesmo.

[the-whoofwhoof]

What Is Dementia In Dogs

Individuals frequently consider dementia a human condition, however it is something from which dogs can likewise endure. More dogs than any time in recent memory are getting dementia, which is otherwise called canine intellectual brokenness disorder. This is on the grounds that dogs are living for longer gratitude to propels in veterinary medication. It is assessed that 25 percent of dogs matured 10 or over give a few indications of experiencing dementia and it is more normal in medium or huge measured dogs than it is in more modest dogs. If you looking for best pet grooming in delhi visit to our website

Indications of Dog Dementia

It tends to be precarious to distinguish the indications of dementia in dogs as they won't lose their keys or fail to remember their own date of birth in the manner that people do. The greatest indication of canine dementia is disarray and bewilderment. Different manifestations to pay special mind to in your dog are uncommon rest designs, collaborating less with relatives or different pets, yelping for reasons unknown or extreme woofing, done welcome you at the entryway, getting less dynamic, having housetraining mishaps, uneasiness, and general changes in conduct.

It is regularly hard for a vet to analyze canine dementia as the side effects of this are like those of numerous different conditions. These can incorporate hearing misfortune, kidney illness, vision misfortune, joint inflammation, diabetes, disease, incontinence, and numerous other medical problems. For instance, housetraining mishaps can be because of dementia, however they are additionally an indication of diabetes and kidney issues. Essentially, an absence of interest in taking a walk may show dementia however the explanation could likewise be that your dog is experiencing joint agony joint pain. On the off chance that you believe that your dog is giving indications of dementia, at that point it is significant that you plan a meeting with your vet as quickly as time permits. The vet should lead a full actual assessment to preclude other likely issues prior to diagnosing dementia. If you are searching best dog grooming in delhi contact to whoof whoof.

Is There Medication for Canine Dementia?

On the off chance that your dog is determined to have dementia, at that point the primary thing the vast majority consider is whether there is something that will help your dog. Sometimes, vets will endorse a medication called anipryl, otherwise called selegiline hydrochloride. This aides the side effects that are related with canine psychological brokenness condition. There are likewise a few enhancements that your vet may prescribe your dog takes to help their cerebrum wellbeing. These may incorporate Senilife and S-adenosyl-L-methionine. These contain a blend of fixings that help the wellbeing of the mind, for example, Vitamin E, Ginko Biloba, and phospholipid film stabilizer. There are additionally dog nourishments accessible that contain fixings that help cerebrum wellbeing. Some are sold straightforwardly from pet stores while others require a solution from your vet.

Will Exercise Help?

Prescription isn't the best way to assist a dog with dementia. Perhaps the least difficult approaches to help them is to improve your dog's intellectual capacity through exercise and this is totally free. As per considers, practice positively affects the minds of the two dogs and people, so practicing together is valuable to you both. The proof from the examinations has indicated that expanding the degrees of active work will reinforce the cerebrum. Thus, this will balance a portion of the impacts of maturing. Indeed, even a straightforward action, for example, a lively walk, will profit the strength of your dog. Strolling expands blood course and this sends both glucose and oxygen to the dog's mind tissue. As this is a low-sway movement, all the oxygen and glucose are shipped off the cerebrum as opposed to the muscles, which is the thing that occurs with high-sway exercises.  If you are searching best dog grooming in delhi contact to whoof whoof.

The advantages of activity are expanded in the event that you roll out normal improvements that will invigorate the dog's cerebrum. You should attempt to visit new zones with various conditions for your strolls. In this way, one day you can stroll along the way to a companion's home and one more day you can visit the neighborhood park. On the off chance that you live close to forest or a sea shore, attempt to incorporate these in your daily practice as they offer diverse environmental factors. Alternate ways that you can add changes to your dog's strolls is by acquainting them with new social settings where they can meet new individuals and different dogs, and by permitting them an opportunity to stop and sniff new things.

Shouldn't something be said about Interactive Play?

Examination has indicated that intelligent play can assist with fighting off dementia in dogs similarly that people are advised to keep their cerebrums dynamic by testing themselves intellectually. It can likewise assist with dogs that have just been determined to have dementia. Suggested exercises incorporate low-sway dog sports, for example, canine free-form of nose work. Take a stab at encouraging your dog new deceives or giving them new toys or taking care of business games with them.  If you looking for best pet grooming in delhi visit to our website

[thesethingsofours]

Embracing Failure in Photography

In every photograph taken, there exists profound potential.

Istanbul © Neal Gruer 

We will all end in failure, but that’s not the most important thing. What really matters is how we fail and what we gain in the process.

- Costica Bradatan, In Praise of Failure

An artist’s life is a never-ending, unresolvable, inconclusive search for the perfect expression of an internal sensation as it relates to the wider world. In this endeavour, most are lucky if, a handful of times in their entire lives, they stumble upon something merely approaching “decent”. Consequently, rather than being preoccupied with creating, the artist spends vast resources interrogating themselves from within, and observing the world at large, carrying the faint but persistent hope of working out who they are, what they think, and what is worth expressing. The goal is to produce an artwork that contains at least a slither of that intended expression, and to hope beyond hope for a slither of that slither to contain some understandable meaning. In this regard, art is built from a catalogue of failures, falling one onto another, eventually making a stack tall enough for something to be plucked from the elusive top shelf of meaningful expression.

In photography — particularly the improvised forms of street and field photography — the arduousness of this process is clear. Not only do you need to take a ton of photos in order to find something worthwhile, but you need to spend many exhausting, sole-wearing, soul-wearing hours walking around on high alert, searching. Alex Webb goes as far as to put a number on it, maintaining that “99.9% of street photography is about failure”. Even he, one of the most renowned practitioners in the history of the field, aims for just 1/1000 photographs to be a success, of which only a small percentage will become widely celebrated. If, at best, just 0.1% of an artist’s effort is successful, how is the overwhelming “failure” to be understood?

In life generally, we tend to misplace “failure”. We look at the outcomes of our activity and judge it against arbitrary, extraneous benchmarks. In photography, failure is typically positioned in one of three places: the appearance of the final image; the technique used to take the picture; or “missing the shot” in the first place. In truth, none of these are where the real failure lies. Arguably none are even failures. Instead, the only failure in photography is a failure to see; to purposefully engage. Why? Because regardless of whether you end up with something materially valuable, the contrails of purposeful engagement will linger with you, no matter what.

Failure Fanatic

Personally, by choosing to become a field photographer with manual, mechanical, half-century old, analogue cameras, I have deliriously maximised my relationship with failure. I am a flop aficionado; a bungle believer; a disappointment devotee; a washout worshiper. Compared to digital photography, which is increasingly moving towards a zero percent failure rate, manual film photography has the potential for failure at every turn: leaving the lens cap on; unknowingly using expired film; irreparable over- or under- exposure; inaccurate focus; mechanical failure; failing to wind the film forward; moving too slowly to catch the moment; running out of film before the moment arrives; light leaks from accidentally opening the back of the camera (FFS!!); light leaks from deterioration of the camera’s sealant; film exposed to x-rays in airport security; film lost in the post on its way to the developer; film incorrectly or poorly developed; or maniacally smashing the camera against a wall out of pure frustration at all of the above.

Anyone shooting manually on film must accept, from the outset, that no matter how well-intentioned, experienced, capable or careful, at some point, one of these failures is inevitable. Failure is deeply embedded into the process and only so much within your control.

Beyond the practical failings of taking pictures, in metaphysical terms it is arguable that, rather than only 99.9% of photographs failing, the failure rate is 100%. Whether on film or digital, no photograph will ever fully replicate the internal stimulation that prompted you to take the photo. First, given the limitations of biology, converting a thought into an act can never be done with complete accuracy. It can be close (the exploits of Simone Biles and Nadia Comaneci are testament to that), but there will always be a minute or massive degree of approximation between what you intended to do and what you did. Second, if you do manage to catch a scene as close as physically possible to what you had envisaged, in every photograph there remains an insurmountable structural failure: the inability to convey the entirety of a three-dimensional, five-sensual human experience into a comprehensive, two-dimensional, visual testimony.

Madrid © Neal Gruer

Seeking Success

If indeed the physical act of photographing and the photograph itself are cursed to fail by their very nature, then where in the photographic process can success be found?

Ultimately, each photographer must find success within themselves, in the internal exploit of seeing, and seeing well — the deliberate operation of visual, intellectual conception; grey matter moulding grey clay of sight and emotion into an exhilarating, vibrant sculpture of idea and object. If your body fails to compel the camera into action, or the camera fails to record your bodily response, or if everything goes as well as possible, but the resulting image is lost or destroyed; provided you succeed in the act of instantaneous conception, you will be forever changed, minutely or massively. If you screw it up, lose it, miss it, destroy it: you still saw it; conceived it; “took” it. Even without a camera to hand, the exercise of seeing well offers boundless thrills, but the camera acts as an amplifier, pumping up the volume on the jazzy rhythm of human existence. Fundamentally, it’s about being a photographer rather than taking photographs.

Ironically, this mentality is the furtive ground on which taking meaningful photographs is sown. What you have seen becomes part of who you are, and will forever exist as one of the many grains that fills the beach of a future photograph; a future artwork; a future profound, non-photographic interaction with the world.

Under this process, there is no such thing as missing a shot — there are only shots gained. I shall furnish you with an example.

Photographing Phantoms

As a field photographer, I roam around looking for stirring, naturally occurring scenes to take pictures of. In March 2017, for four days, I was doing this in Bucharest, Romania.

Having nearly finished a roll of film, I took my afternoon break. Inside a coffee shop, a server in boy-fit jeans, a navy roll neck and oversized, wire-rimmed glasses gleefully introduced herself to me: “Cristina”. With hair bundled anarchically into a blonde, cotton candy nest, she took my order and asked me about my camera. Surprised by her enquiry, I fumbled my way through an explanation, vainly attempting to seem simultaneously aloof and interesting.

Immediately, I was taken by her manner and appearance. With one frame remaining before changing the roll, I resolved to ask for her photograph. But between her busyness and my sheepishness, I failed to catch her eye. Despite sipping my flat white as slowly as I could, the opportunity never arose, and with the encroaching dusk hastening my need to get back to work, I relented, clumsily asking one of Cristina’s colleagues to play subject. I took the picture and wound the roll onward, expecting to hear a click. To my surprise, despite showing “37” on the counter (typically the maximum number of frames on a 35mm roll of film), there was no resistance under the winder. I still had one frame left.

Suddenly, positioned by the till under a theatrical spotlight, there stood Cristina. I approached her. Besides paying for my coffee, I paid her a gentle compliment and quietly asked for her picture. She bashfully agreed. I shot and wound to 38. This time, click! In a moment of rom-com reproduction, she asked for my details in order to see my work. Like a struggling salesman at a vacuum cleaner conference, I fingered through my wallet and formally delivered her my card. We exchanged smiles, and I left; flustered but buoyant.

The next evening, I returned to the coffee shop for an evening cocktail event. Cristina was there. We spoke, expansively. After the event, we went to a bar and continued speaking. Then to another, and another; diving deep into the night before floating towards the shallows of early morning and departing each other’s company, possibly forever.

But within three months I had moved to Bucharest. Within four, we were living together. Three and a half years later, here we still are.

Not knowing how this would all turn out, photographically-speaking, you might say two things are important — first that taking Cristina’s photograph furthered the nascent channel of communication between us; and second, that I will always have that precious photograph from the first time we met.

On the latter point, you would be wrong. As it turns out, the last frame on my roll of film was a phantom. There was no film left, no picture to develop. I took her picture but have no picture.

However, I do have her.

Cristina, March 2017

Art Imitating Life

As this (entirely true, yet implausibly romantic) example demonstrates, taking the photo was more important than having the photo. Whereas it would generally be perceived that I failed in taking Cristina’s photo, in truth it was an enormous success. It opened me up and my life was irrevocably changed.

Yes, to have the 3:2 image from that moment would be amusing — one can imagine it being wheeled out over the decades at any major celebration of our partnership; the first, rectangular page of an amorous, amorphous fairy-tale. We would intermittently return to it, pouring over Cristina’s expression, projecting thoughts into her then-head; arbitrarily amending those thoughts to suit our wavering memories of the moment. But self-evidently, the physical image has become entirely irrelevant.

Success was achieved the moment I meaningfully, deliberately, and honestly engaged with the world through my camera— here, in the delightful, atomic shape of Cristina. After doing so, the ability to subsequently show anyone what that moment looked like became largely frivolous. Admittedly, the extraneous consequences of this engagement were extreme — it’s highly unlikely for the love of your life to emerge every time you take a photo (if nothing else, I’m 99.9% certain Cristina would now prefer I ensure this is not the case). In fact, most of the time, I am photographing people who never know I have taken their photo, who I don’t directly speak to. But even if I never saw Cristina after that moment, or had taken her photo without her knowing, I would still have aspired to have been meaningfully transformed by the act of releasing the shutter.

Cristina, June 2017 © Neal Gruer

Finding success in seeing rather than taking equates to a certain philosophical view of life in general, where success lies in being rather than doing. As mortal creatures (at least until Elon Musk devises an alternative), human life is characterised by failure — eventually our bodies flounder, and we cease to exist. Yet arguably, it is the inevitability of this failure which drives us to love, explore, create and accomplish. Being a photographer can help put this philosophy into practice. If you get a few good pictures along the way, all the better.

See more of Neal’s photographic work at nealgruerphotography.com.

[shadowsfascination]

YAAU - Chapter fourteen - Puzzled

In a nearly silent room filled with more empty coffee cups than considered to be good for one Miles Prower and Dr. Eggman sat behind their desks, cracking their brains in order to decode information and find patterns in the map they created from the A.R.'s underground tunnel network. The duo had been working for hours but hit a wall  when a virus bypassed the system's security and tried to delete the information they were trying to convert into a map. Being an excellent hacker with lots of experience the mustached scientist succeeded in disarming the virus and put it in quarantine . After a sigh of relief and a cocky smile  spread across the former evil genius' face a new challenge was provided to them in the form of a timer. “I thought you disarmed the virus?!” “I swear I thought I did so too...” His words slowly muted into silence as he contemplated the screen. “No need to tell you only bad things can come from the timer hitting zero as you were a satisfied user of them in the past,” Tails stated sarcastically, alluding to the rocket issue in Station Square years ago. “No need to tell me indeed, fox boy.” He answered with his eyes still locked at the screen, the light's reflection of it showing in his glasses as his signature feature. “Not so much of a coincidence this happened, considering the intellectual abilities of our opponent as proved before...“ he added. “Yet it's an unpleasant surprise that it happened within hours after the military provided this information to us. How could they know this already?” Tails wondered out loud. “We have no time to focus on that right now. Let's get back to work and see if we can do something about it before it hits zero and who knows what'll happen.” Tails nodded and turned to his own screen again after glaring at his co-worker for a moment. Even though he needed all his attention on the job they were given, he couldn't stop his mind from wandering off and forming all these conspiracy theories. It is remarkable that this happened right now. How could the A.R. Already know about their discovery? It raised questions as well  as suspicion on the case and with his co-worker having quite a record he was Tails' number one suspect of playing both sides. What if Eggman was about to sell them out- once again? No time for that now. Just keep an eye on him. You know his moves. Obliged by his job, working with this man was inevitable now and so would the subject of trusting him be.   “I can't locate the source of the virus.” Frustration being read between the forming lines of his now frowned brows, Eggman scoured the ends of his mustache together. His gloved hands swiftly pressing the keys of keyboard on the mahogany colored desk, his eyes prying- set to catch this prey and disarm it- but found nothing. The wrinkle between his frown deepened. The young fox behind the other mahogany desk in the room had a similar expression. He palmed off the desk in exasperation, heaving a sigh, his hands thrown into air. The office chair rolled him backwards into the room and stopped when he hit the wall. The scientist did not pay attention to him. “Could it be another file type?” The youngster questioned out loud after moments in silence. “Like?” The other person still did not turn around, but only swifted his eyes to him. “We're searching for a file that's most likely a '.exe' file. What if it's another file type?” “There's only a limited number of possible options. It doesn't make sense to look for another type of file.” “I mean: what if they're using another file type to cover the program running behind it?” “Hmm.” Dr. Robotnik twisted the ends of his mustache once again, his view now locked on the ceiling, contemplating the theory for himself. “That actually makes sense. Let's run another search on active programs and files.” “Roger.” Tails swifted his chair back in position, took a deep breath and opened the prompt window to command a search on the entire system. “I'm running the scan as we speak and will check the main files again.” “I'll try to reboot the system.” “WAIT!” He scowled seriously and with an almost startled note in his voice, not looking away from his screen. “Not until we're out of other options.” “I will prepare, just in case.” “Hm.” Tails nodded while his eyes regarding the screen again. Scanning the list of what seemed an endless amount of files, his pair of deep blue orbs followed the movement of the downwards scrolling list. The sounds of mouse clicks and pressed, then released buttons on the keyboards filled the room and the more concentrated they dug into the job, the more present these sounds seemed to become- even annoying in a way. Clicking the files to open and closing them again became an act of routine in the passing time. Once in a while they anxiously glared at the timer, then moved their attention back to the screen once more. Tails started to sweat it now. The pressure was killing, heavily breathing in the back of his neck and chasing him into a corner. Hints of this restless feeling connected with his memories of several previous situations of the past- like when Eggman tried to blow up earth with the eclipse cannon. The situation appeared hopeless at the time too and this time not even Sonic and Shadow would be able to fix it. Sweat presented itself on his now shining forehead and he rubbed it away with his left arm. Focus!  Like an inner voice calling him to his senses he forced himself to continue solving this puzzled madness. There must be a clue! There has to be a link- find it! If there's a connection between their plans and ours... Let's limit the search to that area... Where do they store the files regarding battlefield strategies and such? “Stop being such a coward, Tails!” Eggman scoffed at him firmly and angrily, catching Tails by surprise. He hadn't known the man had been observing him and wondered how he kept his cool in situations like this. “You can't fully pay attention to the case if you're scared. The adrenaline will only arouse you and despite what many think: it doesn't sharpen your senses, it blurs them. We need to work together and give it our all.” He now turned his chair toward him and glared at him from behind his glasses. Miles locked eyes with him for a moment, swallowed , regained self-esteem and returned his gaze with a determined look: “I might have a clue on how to fix this puzzle. “ “Let's not delay our victory any longer then.” The lips of the scientist curled up just enough to call it a smile. “What do you know?” “I believe there's no way this attack is a coincidence. I suspect we're either dealing with a spy or one of our own team members is playing both sides. Someone must have known about the discovery of the map. It doesn't matter how they do it, they have access to inside information about our moves.” “I agree with you on the possibility of a spy being amongst us. This attack has been too awfully  specific. What do you suggest?” “If we limit our search, and that's a risky move, to the military strategy files, we might be able to find it quicker. What do you say?” “Let's do it.” “Be prepared to shut down the system at any time.” “Roger.” Meanwhile in the Mystic Ruins Amy sat on a rock, eyes closed, crossed legged and wiggling her left foot in impatience – when did she pick up that habit from Sonic? She and Knuckles had made plans to investigate some recently discovered caves underneath the surface of Angel Island. What's taking him so long? They were supposed to meet at 12 o'clock, right? She looked at her wristwatch to check and let out an agitated sigh when she found she was right indeed. How much longer was he going to let her wait? They didn't have all day- she at least did not. When nothing went wrong Amy and Knuckles got along just fine, but when things didn't go as planned their temperamental personalities would easily clash. Either she'd feel like he took her for granted or he would misunderstand something and blow up the subject to march away in anger. As for today: chances were things were going to explode once again, judging from Amy's chagrined mood.  It was just one of those days where she found herself unable to stop getting upset over every little thing. Looking at her watch again she had enough. She was going to find that Knuckles and give him a piece of her mind. “No need for a long search when that red moron is surely around the altar of the Master Emerald” she murmured while footing her way to the entrance of the cave that would lead to the open air again. She jumped into what appeared to be a pit, but was lifted up by the strong winds blowing out of it and once she was lifted up high enough she dived onto the higher ground of another cave tunnel. “Knuckles! How much longer were you going to let me wait?” The tone in her voice did raise the hairs on the back of his neck and Knuckles turned around to face a very agitated Amy Rose. “I had more important stuff to take care of. I was going to meet up with you after I finished them.” “More important stuff to do? Excuse me?” “I don't have time for drama right now, Amy. Now, get out of the way.” He shoved her aside and looked into the eyes of his comrades, whom Amy did not notice had arrived, but the friendly atmosphere that was  usually around them, was gone. Instead you could cut the tension with a knife. “Get out of the way, Knuckles!” The red echidna didn't even flinch, simply closed his eyes and crossed his arms. No need to tell anyone he wasn't gonna step aside. “Knuckles, we don't want to hurt you. Don't be so stubborn. Military orders, man! We can't do anything about it.” “It is what it is, just move!” The comrades all shouted at him in futile attempts to get him out of their way. All except one: Espio. The chameleon stood in the back of the group and leaned onto a tree with his eyes shut and one foot pressed against the trunk. “Knuckles, what is going on here?” Amy now asked. “They want to take the Master Emerald and the Chaos Emeralds away.” “Why?” “This is none of your business, lady!” “Yeah, in fact we should take her with us as well.” “What?” Amy glared around in discomfort, trying to figure out what was going on. “What are they talking about, Knuckles? What orders?” “Didn't ya hear, missy? Three hours ago multiple explosives were brought to detonation all over the region. The damage is enormous, the chaos even bigger and the military has given orders to start the emergency evacuation plan.” “We need those emeralds for that!” “... And all the women and children are to be brought far away for their own safety, so you're coming with us!” “What?! Emergency evacuation?!” the screaming bystanders suddenly seemed muted when the shocking facts dawned to her now awe-struck mind. She turned to her contacting device and in great haste she opened the news app. It was loaded with recently posted articles about the blown up parts of cities close to them. How could she not have noticed anything? Without warning all the air was knocked out of her lungs and a strong, sharp pain flung through her chest: what about Sonic and Shadow? All of the sudden she noticed the device was muted and her eye was caught by the many unread messages on the device. What the-? She anxiously  tapped  the screen to open the message-application and found Sonic and Shadow had tried to contact her as well as Tails. She was brought back to reality when someone roughly grabbed her arms and pressed them behind her back. “Hey!” When had everyone started fighting? Around her everyone was fighting, kicking, punching and screaming bloody murder over the emeralds. As strong as Knuckles was, he couldn't take all of them by himself. Amy struggled to free herself and grab her hammer, but the hold of this stranger was to tight. While she was still thinking of a way to free herself, she was pleasantly surprised  to find the man behind her suddenly collapsed onto the ground.  She turned around and caught a glimpse of a blurry silhouette that swiftly threw a ninja star at another man and she knew she was covered. Amy grabbed her hammer and swung a bunch of their opponents down the stairs of the shrine and saw Knuckles aggressively punching the remaining men with his shovel claws. She chuckled when the last man standing was now swung through the air by what seemed to be an invisible adversary. The chameleon became visible again and stepped towards Amy and Knuckles. “Now what? We can't keep them occupied forever.”

It took me a little while, sorry for that. This chapter needed to be well constructed because it will be a key-part of the story. You'll see I have yet to start with the next chapter. Lately I have trouble keeping my focus compared to a couple of months ago. That's partly the reason that it took me some time to finish this chapter. Previous chapter: read here Next chapter: Illustrations:

[foro-del-raval]

THE URBANITY OF ARCHITECTURE

Today I will be mainly addressing new students, those students who are starting this year. I think this is to a large extent the sense of this ceremony, and therefore I will speak about very basic things. I do not mean with this that they are 'easy quite the opposite, but they are indeed very important or at least I believe them to be so—. I will talk about issues which I hope you will remember at some point during your studies, which will hopefully help you to understand what the sense of your work is, of your profession, and of your attitude towards society. 

I would like to start with something that bothers many of us, a serious matter: the solitude of architecture. The solitude of architecture is the greatest problem of our cities. It is the tendency of many of the most notorious architectures to keep apart from the place where they are, to isolate themselves from the city and their respective responsibility. I am speaking about solitude as a voluntary posture, as the will to stand alone. It is not only the result of being aside, but the attitude of enjoying this distant position. It seems to me that, indeed, our cities suffer because architecture has abandoned them. And a city without architecture is dead, or else very ill. And I think that here we are facing a serious problem. Please do not worry, I will not go into a pessimist or negative talk, but let me take this as a starting point. 

It is this isolated, insolent, unsupportive architecture that is arising rejection against contemporary architecture among the majority of citizens; an architecture where they feel excluded and not welcome. This architecture, on the other hand, tends to gather the most attention from the media, therefore becoming an object of desire of more or less ambitious governing members, mayors and property developers. It is the privilege of the architecture of the capitalism, the 'wow-factor' architecture, the so-called iconic architecture. The one that can be bought and sold. The fruit of 

The Urbanity of Architecture 

The Barcelona School of Architecture Opening Lecture for the 2009-2010 academic year, entitled The Urbanity of Architecture, was given by the architect and university lecturer Manuel de Solà-Morales on September 22, 2009. The text of the lecture was later published in the ETSAB's architectural journal, Visions n°8. With this new edition the English translation of the text is incorporated. 

115 

arrogance: above all, of the person ordering the project, but also of the architect. And arrogance means distance, separation, isolation, solitude. I said this was the most important problem of our cities, which in fact have many social problems, economic conflicts, cultural difficulties, etc., but these are present in the cities and not belonging to the city. The issue we are talking about, however, is a problem of cities that are creating themselves: large architecture (the mediatic one, the one with large figures) has abandoned urban obligations. Unfortunately, the other architecture (the common one) does sometimes follow this same logic, forgetting that the quality of a work lies on its capacity of artistically expressing its functional, structural, economic and simbolic condition, and not on the element of surprise and spectacle, of uniqueness and exception. Sadly, there is a tendency to let these values invadeall works. 

I am telling you this because, during your professional life, you will often experience this tendency as a dilemma at your work, in your own personal production. If important architecture becomes isolated from the city, if it avoids any contact in an attempt to show up as an arrogant individuality, what is there left for the city? Public space, we might answer. Fine. But in such a context, this is not a solution but a problem. 

During the last years, the design of public space has become an expanding sector in our branch. This has created a new group of professionals, a specialisation, a series of technical and artistical practices linked to the design of these spaces. Spaces, however, which are increasingly absorved in their own topics and grow more and more separated from architecture. The public space is thus turned into a new discipline, 'architecture at street level, with a focus on pavement, street lamps, walls and artificial topographies (with vegetation and trees) that takes advantage of subject related knowledge but is growingly achieving a radical dissociation from architecture. Therefore, two new worlds arise and split the city up: the architects who will create the buildings and the urban designers or specialised town planners who will create the public space. In my opinion, 

this is absolutely wrong from a cultural point of view. As with any specialisation, it has the advantages resulting from improvement and specialised knowledge, but separating architecture and public space --an intellectual, professional, executive, functional etc. separation, means that architecture refuses to accompany the shaping of the city and allows public space to become an autonomous object, as it happens in the design of monuments or independent art works. This division between public space and architecture is both cause and effect of the solitude pursued by architecture or, in other words, of the city's isolation once it has been abandoned by architecture. 

What is relationship berween buildings and the city? The ground-floor level is the common plan, it is not only external, from the city, but also from the very same buildings. The way these buildings leave out the city reflects an essential crisis that should be the focus of our activity, and I encourage you to keep this in mind and to overcome this crisis during the years you will be in this house by studying and discussing. It is certainly easier to create an isolated and autonomous architecture, merely concentrated on itself. However, what brings a building to be part of the city is its handling of urban complexity problems, not by providing solutions but by referring to them. To sum up, we can say that the ills of this crisis lies on the project separation between the open space and the closed space, between the public space and the private space, between the elevation and the plan of the city. And cities, today more heterogeneous, more dynamic and more complex than ever, are calling architects, particularly all of you, future young architects, to overcome it. Because, effectively, architecture is the only discipline that has the mechanisms to do it, to synthetize this increasingly excessive duality between the urban space and the architectural form. 

The trust in architecture must bring us to absorb the city, to stop abandoning it. It is easier to do so sometimes very splendid, sometimes much more brilliant-, but the design of the city does not lie on the design of gardens (although very necessary and sometimes very beautiful), 

Manual de Solà-Morales 

The Urbanity of Architecture 

CL 

streets and roads, but on the construction by architecture of the civic space, the collective space, the common space of citizens' lives. 

In Barcelona, unfortunately, we have some recent cases that have been quite misguided in this sense. Let us discuss them, nor with a malevolent spirit but with the pedagogical will of learning to look at the problems of certain architectures. We all know the Torre Agbar desgined by Jean Nouvel and, if we observe here the various images of its base, something surprises us. Exactly the same that we find when we visit the street level as citizens who are not watching the picture taken from the Tibidabo mountain (although this picture is important as well) but are watching the building as users of the city. This tower, which from the construction point of view is a good building and has also some virtues at a landscape level —these might not be the most interesting but they do definitely exist–, touches the ground in a totally contentious and isolating manner, condemning all contact with citizens or the public ground and being surrounded by a moat with a ramp. The door, the basic element of such a large and important building, is hidden and conceals its direct functional relation with the city under the building's figure. The sides of the construction suggest a rather ineffective occupation of the square meters next to it, always having to keep a necessary distance. As a whole, it is a context of evident isolation that, from an urban point of view, explains the will of autonomy and separation from the adjacent city. We always highlight-and you will listen this again and again during your studies---- the importance of a building's ground floor, namely for the city: the isolation does not only bring buildings to abandon the city, but also the city to abandon the buildings, which are the first to suffer from this. 

Another example is the Torre Espiral, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, located at the end of the Diagonal Avenue and still under construction. The price of the building is extremely high and its purpose has changed on several occasions: planned as a public library, it was next supposed to become a sort of social centre, then some kind 

of record storage facilities and afterwards, finally, it seems as if it will be a rectorate building for a university. I do not think that the program has bothered much the architects in charge of designing the project. There is no doubt of their will of expressivity -a positive and innate attribute of architecture, but this can be only found here in the independence from the volumes towards any kind of reference, whether it is to constructive rationality, to its placement in the city, to its surroundings, etc. However, this building does not seem to have arisen among citizens the fright or shiver we could have expected. The city of Barcelona should be ashamed that such a work can be performed with impunity, so carelessly and so frivolously, with such a tremendous cost that, if its authors maintain it as a tradition, it will triple the figures next time. To top it off, this is a university building, what a crime against culture in the name of a university building! This is quite a serious issue... we are facing not only a lack of urban planning capacity, but a lack of common sense. This building represents a very serious problem. This will, iconicity, is - I will repeat it once more-- the responsible of isolating the building from the city, of creating the solitude of architecture, explicitly pursued in some occasions. The contact with the ground, with roadways, with public space... Good grief, this is the Diagonal Avenue in Barcelona, not Texas! Consider how it is placed in the space, consider the references that it could symbolize. To what intensity of expression does this shape respond to? What project proposal can justify that the 60 million euros planned turn into 120? The ingenuity of a sketch is what an architects' office proposes as the explanation of its project, its budget and its work, 

Let us move forward. May I repeat that I will not adopt a negative perspective, but I need you to understand che key elements of my outrage. We are now at the former stadium of the RCD Espanyol, a very controversial issue in Barcelona eight or ten years ago. The football stadium was falling down. Pros and cons. Many people were asking themselves why it should be removed... The final decision 

An extract from:

Manuel de Solà-Morales 

The Urbanity of Architecture

[semicolonthefifth]

Fans won't like this, or, Death Note 2017

“Death Note” is a story that I got into at the height of its popularity, when the anime and its English Dub was being spread across media, and when fan support was at its most public. I saw it around the time when the “Death Note” aesthetic was growing in stores like Hot Topic, and when schools were banning products similar to the titular notebook from their classrooms. Although I was spoiled on several of the critical plot points surrounding the series, I still enjoyed it from beginning to end. Aside from the animation and story, which followed the dramatic battle of the minds between a teenager who wished to use the death note as a means to combating the world’s ills and the mysterious detective bent on putting this self-appointed god down, it was the themes and intrigue that truly grabbed me. Each episode was another new method in out-thinking your opponents, in a world where death could be brought down by simply writing a person’s name in a book. Light Yagami was cold and calculating, always thinking 2 steps ahead as he slowly went insane from an ever-growing god-complex and disillusion of moral superiority; the detective L, although a socially-awkward golem, proved to be Light’s intellectual equal, and was getting closer and closer to learning Light’s identity as Kira, an omniscient figure who killed those who committed bad deeds. There’s a lot of themes to pull from the story, even to this day, but it worked thanks to a series that approached it all through the genre of a detective piece, with multiple characters making the mystery all the more complicated. It’s understandable then that an American film adaptation would draw in a lot of concern and hate, especially due to the controversial name and race change. Unlike some anime where race is somewhat questionable due to fictional locations, “Death Note” is undoubtedly Japanese in both location and culture. It would be controversial to make all but one of the characters non-Japanese, in addition to changing the main character’s name to fit the western location (the now often-mocked Light Turner). In addition, with all western film adaptations of anime, the story is heavily condensed to fit the typical running time for a movie, and so a lot of the characters and story that would have been present in the original manga and anime is cut out to fit the new story. Obviously “Death Note” isn’t a good adaptation, enough so that you wonder why it wasn’t its own movie. Dwelling on that thought though, there’s an observation I have to make. Could it be that, were this film not an exact adaptation of the “Death Note” story, and at best a side-story to the universe, that the film is actually pretty good? What I’m saying may come across as blasphemy to fans, but let me explain through this review. STORY: Netflix’s “Death Note” follows Light Turner, a bright kid in high school who (after a run in with some bullies) discovers the strange death note. In his time at detention he reads the rules of the book and soon discovers the presence of Ryuk, a death god who has chosen Light as the keeper of the notebook. When an individual writes a name into the book, while thinking about that person, the named victim will die, whether by the writer’s choosing or through some form of fate. Light, testing the book, uses it on one of his bullies, and witnesses the books effect almost immediately. With the book, Light decides to take up the mantle of Kira, and uses the death note to kill criminals, terrorists, and evil people. He does this with the help of a high school friend turned lover named Mia Sutton, who helps in picking the names for the book. However his actions soon takes the notice of the world, and with it its greatest detective, L, who quickly theorizes the location of Kira being where Light lives. Now Light must hide from L’s investigation, all the while Misa grows reckless, his sanity starting to slip, and Ryuk watching it all with a sick sense of glee. DEATH NOTE THE ADAPTATION: I’m going to devote a section of this review to pointing out the differences between the film and the original anime/manga. While the film does its best to match the general story, there’s a lot of changes between the source material and the adaptation, enough so that the film feels like its own story. Light Turner is vastly different from Light Yagami. While Light Yagami is mostly cool-headed and places himself at a moral high-ground, Light Turner is prone to emotional outbreak and often questions his use of the death note. Yagami is more intellectual in his actions and behaviors, to the point that you can believe he has truly thought out the use of the book, its strategic value, and the value in his way of thinking; Yagami is also charismatic, and he does a fine job in hiding his identity from everyone around him. Light Turner, on the other hand, is in way over his head, and constantly runs into issues regarding how he uses the book through much of the film. Although bright enough to dodge suspicion, he lacks the charisma to really convince people of his involvement to Kira, to the point that it’s easy to suspect he has some sort of ties. In a battle of wits, Yagami overpowers Turner very easily. The same could be said between the American L and the Japanese L. Both L’s are socially awkward, and prove to be competent in their investigation, however that is where the similarities end. Anime L is awkward, but it more shows that he’s absolutely focused on the case, and that there are attempts to softening his act when he needs to get close to people; L is also as intellectual as Light Yagami in how he acts, and very rarely does he go into emotional outbursts. Film L, meanwhile, is very awkward, trusts very few people, doesn’t attempt to connect with people, and is very prone to letting his emotions get in the way. Whereas Anime L can be seen as an investigator who is barely a person, Film L is a gifted youth who can be ruthless in his attempts to finding Kira, and loses as much sanity in this case as Light does. More so than Light, the film L is very different from his anime counterpart. Other characters are different as well, with Light’s Dad being more gritty and as father than an investigator as compared to the anime, and Film Watari barely having a presence. Misa Amane, the second Death note user and an obsessive love interest to Light, makes an appearance as Mia Sutton, Light’s partner and potential lover who quickly becomes obsessed with the death note and Kira. On Mia versus Misa: Misa was characterizes as being bubbly and in love with Kira, and having a tragic backstory that led to her ownership of a death note. Mia, meanwhile, becomes a partner to Light when he shows her the death note’s power, and helps him along in hiding from L while slowly wanting to power of the book herself. Lastly there is Ryuk, who is the most like his original character than all the others. Still, the film Ryuk is actually more evil and gleeful in how he acts, in contrast to the anime Ryuk who, while gleeful, is treated more as an entertaining spectator to Light’s actions. One can almost see the film Ryuk as a villain in how he’s portrayed, however that would be getting ahead of myself. Aside from the character differences, the stories are vastly different. Missing from the anime is the friendship between L and Light, as well the in-depth investigation to finding Kira, as well much of the characters that were present in finding him (like all the agents who helped Light’s father). Rem is not present, nor is she mentioned, as well as any other Shinigami (the death gods aside from Ryuk). The second half of the anime is cut out, so we also don’t meet Near and Mello either. Instead we have a story that’s all about L trying to find Light; Light’s relationship to Mia; and the fears towards Ryuk and what he plans to do with the death note once Light’s done with it (if it even goes that far). If you are a fan of the original “Death Note”, there’s a good chance you’ll be pissed by all these changes. The story doesn’t match the source material, and its understandable to be frustrated by it. Of course it’s also quite expected, as it would’ve been impossible to adapt such a long and complicated series without cutting so much out to fit a single film. All of this sounds like it makes for a bad film… …right? Well, here’s where I think I may lose some people. While this film is a bad adaptation, strangely enough it’s a pretty good film. Not necessarily a great one, as there are issues, but it’s actually good. Allow me to explain. STORY (SPOILERS) AND ACTING: I want you to first change how you think about this film. Let’s pretend that this isn’t a movie about the story from Death Note. When approaching this film, let’s think about the story in a different way. If we were to see this movie as a side-story to the Death Note universe at best, which followed another user of the book who was influenced by Ryuk (or any other Shinigami) who was also hounded down by another detective (perhaps even change all the characters’ names so they don’t match the source at all) you would get a film that is actually quite interesting. Instead of the story surrounding a battle of wits between two intellectuals, you’d instead get a horror story surrounding a naive youth who comes across the death note, whose problems grow more and more as he’s hounded by an obsessed detective. Both sides are quickly losing their sanity, all to the entertainment of a sadistic death god who simply had to toss a book their way to bring out an insane world-changing phenomenon. What the film lacks in intrigue, it almost makes up for in madness. Almost. Light Turner is alright, but he comes across as foolish for a lot of the film. You sympathize with him not for his beliefs and the idea that he could fix the world, bust instead because he’s very pathetic, and you feel sorry for him for getting caught in this mess. The actor’s performance is great, and there’s nothing bad that comes to mind about it. L is cast almost as a secondary villain, especially in how he jumps to outbursts towards Light. He’s less of an investigative character, and more so an obsessed detective who is letting this particular case become more personal as time goes by. Another fine performance, almost better than Light in how he uses his emotions within the story. Another villain is Mia, as she progresses to this mad individual who keeps trying to influence Light to go deeper into his Kira persona. She’s very different from her anime counterpart, but in a way that she becomes her own character. Like the others, her performance is actually quite good. I’d say that everyone does a fine job, but nobody gets on Ryuk’s level, thanks to the voice acting done by Willem Dafoe. Dagoe’s Ryuk is amazing, although it does get into Spiderman’s Green Goblin at times. He’s very sadistic in how he acts, taking delight in Light’s suffering and always making joyous threats to what he’ll do with the book when he passes it on. The way he comments on Light’s situation is always entertaining, and the way the film raises him to a full-on antagonist is amazing (specifically for the film, of course). The story is simple where it needs to be, with the investigative intrigue being present at the middle and end of the film. There’s less of a mystery and more of a horror/drama, with Light being in panic over what he’s gotten himself into, and the actions he commits to trying to fix everything. The first third of the film is a hard sit; the attempts at comedy can be dull, and Light is pretty dumb in a lot of the moments at the beginning. In addition the beginning feels a lot like a typical horror movie, with bully characters, death scenes and scares. However, after Light takes the alias of Kira and L is introduced does the film become a lot better. The way Light tries to avoid capture is great, and L’s obsession raises the stakes well enough. I’d say that the film gets better and better as it goes, with the ending making up for the beginning. The gore tones down along with the dumb moments, and the film actually starts being smart in how Light uses the death note. It’s at the end where it feels like a real “Death Note” film, with a closing scene that is the best in the film with how it leaves on an ambiguous (albeit frustrating) end. Honestly a lot of the fault lies in the beginning up until L comes in. The way characters act is dumb and very typical, with Light’s father being a gruff cop who scolds Light for getting in trouble, and Light being this typical teen who has some angst. Once the actual crime drama comes in does it finally get better. As great as the anime/manga though? Not close at all. The original anime/manga is a lot smarter, and has the advantage of being a series, whereas the film is short and relies more on the drama/action side of things. Still, it’s quite entertaining, and there are moments that does serve as a smart film. VISUALS AND MUSIC: The visuals and cinematography is great, and a lot of the artistic editing/shots are fantastic. The film does a great job in adapting a lot of the wild angles and shots that were present in the anime, and I’d say that’s well worth some praise. Some shots are really dark though, especially whenever Ryuk is present, however the coloring and lights is great when the darkness isn’t too strong. Once more the beginning feels a lot like a typical modern horror movie with its use of blues, but (again) the tone improves once L enters the picture. There’s a careful use of CGI, mostly in Ryuk and in other scenes. It’s not too obvious, although Ryuk (while as incredible as he is) does feel like a puppet when he talks. He’s certainly better when seen either from behind or away from direct view. The music though… is more miss than hit. I think it was a mistake to use a lot of songs from bands, rather than its own original soundtrack. They try to be quiet for a lot of the film, with a soft orchestral soundtrack in a lot of the scenes. However in the final third the music tracks come right after the other in attempt to make certain scenes feel more powerful. It can be laughable at certain times, but in others it’s just extremely noticeable and gets in the way of seeing the film. It’s a terrible mistake, and one I wish wasn’t in the film as much in the end. CONCLUSION: This is going to be difficult. If this film were its own story, or was treated as a side-story with characters completely separate from those in the original, it would be an entertaining film that has some flaws, but could be considered a good watch. Not something you could recommend to see, but a good film to pass the time. However, as an adaptation it is extremely unfaithful, and fans will hate this film a lot for what it did with the story and characters. The film-makers had to make the film about Light Turner and a detective named L, and for that it suffers for making so many changes. Were it about a teenager (not named Light) who was stalked by a code-named government agent, with the teen finding a death note that looks eerily similar to a case happening in Japan (thereby being a story running parallel, rather directly from it) this movie would be seen as an interesting mini-drama that could perhaps expand the world more. Instead it chose to be a adaptation, and it’s difficult to ignore that, even for me. So do I ask you to see it? Perhaps to not see it? I can’t say. If it is impossible to ignore this film as an adaptation, than I’d say don’t watch it. Go watch the anime, or maybe the Japanese film adaptation in 2006. You won’t find the anime or manga in this Netflix film. Fans will hate it, this I promise. However, if you can treat this as a side-story, or something completely cut from Death note, it’s a good popcorn film to see with friends. Nothing worth remembering, but entertaining nonetheless. I wouldn’t say it’s worth recommendation, but if you have any free time and you’re browsing Netflix, I don’t think you’ll regret putting it on.        

[darkfalcon-z]

You cannot take it back, make it undone chapter 3: Vegeta

DBZ AU fanfiction.

Raditz, Gohan, Vegeta, Nappa

over 1600 words, space fantasy/soft science fiction/slice of life (I know, right), gen

warning: expect things you’d expect from Saiyans (authors note by chapter one)

Many thanks to Over8000 for proofreading this chapter. 

Comments welcome. Come on don’t be shy!

first chapter, second

next chapter

chapter directory

on AO3

Several months prior.

Raditz woke up from artificially induced sleep. His tiny spacecraft neared its destination. Soon he was going to meet Vegeta and Nappa for their new assignment. He checked his position in relation to the navigation beacons.  Everything had run according to expectations. He looked at the chronometer. Thirty seven hours had passed since he left Earth, or ten times that long, depending where you took the measure. There was only an hour remaining until landing. He needed to prepare himself mentally.

On his lap, the sleeping cub stirred. Oh  yeah, right, he had to somehow prepare the boy as well. 

There was no way to make this particular cub look acceptable in such a short time, but if he kept cool, he probably would survive this. They both would.

He nudged the cub. He had slept even longer than Raditz, it was time to wake up. 

The cub yawned and stretched out. Then he realised where he was, and with whom, and  started panicking. In the limited space, there was no getting away.

"Calm the fuck down!" Raditz ordered. 

It worked. Somewhat. The cub settled a bit but continued sobbing and snivelling. 

Raditz eyed him critically.

"Cease your cries! Do you want to be seen like that? If your enemies saw you crying they would know your weakness and  they would attack to take advantage of it. And if your allies saw how weak you are they'd abandon you," he admonished.

"What enemies?" The cub whimpered. "I'm just a little boy. Where is my Dad?"

"I wouldn't fucking know. He saw you cry and decided you are not worth it." Raditz was irritated. The cub’s plight felt a little close for comfort.  

"You lie! Dad would never do that!" The cub looked angrily at him, tears slowly drying up.

"You called it. I lied." Raditz admitted unabashed. "The truth is, he's dead." The truth was, he 

wasn't happy with the turn of events either. 

The cub looked at him, mortified.

"You've killed him,” he said with audible disbelief. "It's false. You're lying again."

"He is dead." Raditz repeated. “but it wasn't me who killed him. A green guy did it." At those words, the cub started to whimper again.

"Don't worry, I killed the green bastard myself, so your father is avenged." Unfortunately those words of assurance didn't have much effect on the cub’s mood. It couldn't be because the cub wanted avenge his father himself. He was obviously much too weak to handle that green guy now and he had to know it. He wouldn't want to delay his revenge for gods know how long, would he?

Raditz didn't quite know what to do. He would opt for violence, but they were inside the pod and he didn't know how would the cub react. He suspected more crying would ensue and he didn't want that. Then again the cub could always try to retaliate, which in different situation would be a welcome outcome. In that case, Raditz would just overpower him and that would be the end of it. However they were in a space pod, where their freedom of movement was greatly limited. It would be ill advised to start a fight, which could lead to breaking some part of the machinery.

Unsure of how to proceed, Raditz decided to give the cub a few minutes to collect himself before intervening any further.

Between the sobs he heard the cub murmuring. "... I don't believe...Daddy...lie...bad man... no, no, no...all his fault..."

"You fucking done?" Raditz finally lost his patience.

The cub looked at him, startled and angry.

"Now, your father is dead and as you may've noticed, we are travelling through space in my pod. You are now my responsibility and you have to do as I say. You do what you are told, and you get to live. You don't and you die one way or another. Soon we’ll land on planet Skwash and meet up with our comrades who are Saiyans as well. They are stronger than us, born better. You will show respect and composure. That means no crying. Got that?"

"You took me away from Earth?"

"Oh, we have an intellectual here," Raditz said, half mocking. Truth to be told the cub was quite articulate for the age Raditz suspected him to be. "You got that right. More questions?"

The boy shook his head. Raditz expected he had lots of questions, but was too overwhelmed to formulate them right now. There would be time for that later... or it wouldn't matter at all. Raditz was reasonably sure he was going to get his way, but you never knew with Vegeta.

At least the cub was somewhat calm right now. Raditz took the occasion to snatch the canister of water from under the armrest and drink some.

"Great. I have some questions for you. What's your name?"

"Gohan."

"That's not a Saiyan name. I should give you a new one, a better one."

"But I like my name,” the cub protested. "I don't want any other name!"

"We'll see. It's not like anyone will bother to remember how you are called for now."

The cub did not answer, just gave a tearful, angry stare.  Raditz could smell fear on him. It was definitely the dominant emotion right at the moment.

He thrust the water canister into the cub's hands. "Here, have some."

The cub looked up at him startled, once again. Untrusting.

Raditz groaned. "Don't give me that look. You're dehydrated from all that sleep and your stupid fucking, crying. It's just water."

Hesitantly, the cub lifted the  big canister to his mouth.

Raditz knew he still needed to instruct the cub about how to act in front of his superiors, but first he had more questions. Also, he needed to assess the cub's abilities before they met up  with Vegeta and Nappa.

He started with most obvious one. "How old are you?

***

No one was on the landing site on the foreign planet when they arrived. Raditz checked the coordinates on his scouter, grabbed Gohan, and took to the sky. After several minutes of flight, Raditz dove to the ground and dropped Gohan in front of the awaiting Saiyans.

Gohan knelt on one knee, like he had been instructed, but he was still so shaken, that he needed both hands to support himself in that position. Afraid but curious, he looked up.

There were two of them. One was huge and imposing, so much bigger even than Raditz. Gohan recognized him as Nappa. The other one was... not so much. Next to Nappa, he could pass for a child.  That, Gohan knew, was Vegeta. And somehow Gohan didn't even need an explanation that Vegeta was the one to be most afraid of.

Raditz stepped ahead of Gohan, knelt in front of Vegeta, and hit the ground with his fist in a show of reverence.

"Prince Vegeta, my brother is dead," he reported.

"In that case, you have failed your mission. Is that right?" Vegeta inquired.

"Yes, my Prince." Raditz dropped his gaze toward the ground in anger and shame. His jaws tightened. He knew what to anticipate.

Vegeta smiled an ugly smile. "I see."

Upon uttering those words, he kicked the kneeling Raditz in the jaw with enough power to make the latter fall backwards. Without delay, Vegeta stepped on Raditz's stomach and forced him to unwrap his tail or have it smashed. Too quickly for eye to follow, Vegeta grabbed Raditz's tail and squeezed tight.

All of Raditz’s strength abandoned him and all of his attempts of resistance ceased.

"Look at you. You are pathetic," Vegeta proclaimed.

Vegeta yanked Raditz’s tail painfully, then stepped on his head with one foot.

"It's not like I expected any better from you." Vegeta snorted. "You’ve disgraced yourself. We heard everything. You were too lenient. Fucking low-born!" he shouted and kicked Raditz in a frenzy. "You were all too forgiving. You have gave him too many chances. You should have at least disciplined him properly before making him such a generous offer. You should have shown your power. Why do I have to tell you how to do your fucking job?!"

Gohan watched the scene in shock and fear. To think that someone had brought the powerful Raditz so low so easily! Remembering Raditz words earlier he was determined not to cry: “Don't show weakness to people around you - they will use it to take advantage of you. Crying would make things worse. Don't cry before your enemy. “

"Apologies my Prince," Raditz was barely able to mumble. In response, Vegeta merely kicked him once more and then let him go.

"And what have you brought with you?" Vegeta eyed the quivering Gohan.

Raditz shakily gathered himself up from the ground. Blood ran from his nose and bruises already formed on his skin. He winced  with pain, but otherwise seemed able to move without much of a problem.

"He's my brother’s son, Your Highness. I want to train him into a proper warrior."

Vegeta pressed the side button on his scouter.

"Raditz, he’s not worth it. His power level barely registers," he stated in a dismissive tone.

"I know that. His father neglected his training. But he is the only Saiyan cub we know of, the only other Saiyan alive. It wouldn't hurt to at least try and train him," Raditz tried to persuade.

"Vegeta, I think Raditz's right this time. It's worth a shot. We can always kill the cub later if he shows no hope of growing stronger. But if he does, then we could..." Nappa trailed off. He was afraid of creating futile expectations.

"Do whatever you want," Vegeta spat. "He's your responsibility and your problem. But don't let it come in the way of your duties," he warned. "Either way, He can't become any sorrier excuse of an excuse for a warrior than you are. "

With those words of warning,  Vegeta flew away, much to Gohan's relief.

 directory

next chapter

first chapter 

[nbtful]

Stuffed Fun

They say never to meet your heroes, but I would add not to revisit them either. Returning to someone or something that you once held in high esteem with the curse of fresh eyes has a similar effect to seeing it up close. It’s much easier to see the whole of something, warts and all, given the benefit of passed time and it’s hard not to take the reality of a former love falling short of one’s admittedly colossal expectations as a personal affront to everything one holds dear. That said, I’ve never been one to follow my own advice, so I recently revisited one of the defining pieces of media from my childhood; Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes. Despite the aforementioned tendency for childhood entertainment to not fully realize the rose-tinted memories that they inhabit, Calvin and Hobbes nevertheless seemed as vital as when I first read it. For good reason maybe, as it’s hard not to love Calvin. He’s an effortlessly charming scamp, moving around wildly across the strip, constantly in tow with him is his best friend, a stuffed tiger. It’s all instantly endearing and it’s not hard to understand why people are instantly drawn to inhabiting this world. Still, where other comics derive their following largely from the lengthiness of their run, it’s audience growing through syndication and long-term exposure, Calvin and Hobbes lasted a relatively paltry ten years. Add in its creator’s intense aversion to publicity and the comic’s lack of merchandising and it becomes increasingly strange to take for granted how often people of all ages treat it as a personal touchstone. The comic somehow attained a sustained cultural impact while never resorting to prolonged commercial overexposure. This continued relevance betrays a fundamental difference in the technical makeup of Calvin and Hobbes compared to its contemporaries, a key artistic decision that keeps it sticking in our public consciousness. There’s something at the heart of Calvin and Hobbes that’s genuinely affecting, and much more than say, Garfield. Whatever it is, this crucial creative choice of the series, the element that keeps us returning to it, what is the reason that so many of us care so much about the boy and his tiger?

First and foremost, Calvin and Hobbes is a traditional, four-panel comic strip. The Sunday strips would push wider, but for the majority of the strip’s run, a simple, black and white four panelled story would be what was offered. It’s important to identify the structure of the comic, as there is a direct link between how an audience consumes a piece of art and how it affects them. Fred Sanders argues that the statements made by the strip obtained a greater impact by its adherence to the traditional comic formula, noting that “Insensitivity to the medium-message connection” is what can cause a piece of art to be “bathetic when it attempts profundity” (Sanders, “What You Can Learn from Calvin and Hobbes”). This “medium-message connection” is crucial to understanding at least part of the strip’s appeal. Much like any other form of media, there’s a set of conventions that the average comic reader has been conditioned to expect. These conventions can either be met or subverted, but what is important is that they are respected. Watterson was adamant in refusing to license his strip for commercial merchandise because, in his slightly dramatic words, all the “licensing would sell out the soul of Calvin and Hobbes.” He goes on to say that “the world of a comic strip is much more fragile than most people realize“, revealing his belief that artistic and thematic consistency is key to the success of a piece of art (West, 59). It’s an approach that can provide a richer sense of story and characterization, but it’s also one that demands more from the readership. Since the only avenue with which the public had to these characters was through the comic itself, not through one-joke t-shirts or plush toys, to be a fan of the strip required a greater deal of engagement than it would for other comics. The investment that the strip cultivates was, at least partially, a direct result of it’s refusal to betray the message of its medium.

As compact as that sounds, I can’t imagine that it’s the primary reason for my own unending devotion to the series; somehow I think that the commitment of the comic to its chosen artistic medium was particularly resonant for a six year old. Beneath the purity of the comic as a comic, there’s another, more affecting facet: nostalgia. To some extent this is unavoidable, as comics are largely consumed during childhood and the memories associated with them oftentimes are rose-tinted. Nostalgia is behind all that unending disappointment, the type that springs from the contemporary discovery of something’s true quality. It can also work in the opposite direction, becoming a tool to obfuscate our current experience with the art into a mere recollection of our original experience with it. We are then no longer participating with the art itself, but rather with our perceived reaction to that same art. It makes it hard to detach yourself, from conflating your current opinions with the memory of your past ones. Is there a way to reconcile the sentiment of the past with the critical experience of the present? In “The Ghost of the Hardy Boys”, Gene Weingarten attempts to come to terms with the sheer awfulness of The Hardy Boys, novels that were once, to him, “the pinnacle of human achievement.” He delves into the author’s life story, the publisher’s tyrannical edits, the contexts behind the writing of each book. And while he realizes that the series is hardly superb, there’s always something that “made you turn the page”, an “all-too-brief moment in which the writer seems suddenly engaged” (Weingarten, “Ghost of the Hardy Boys”). While Calvin and Hobbes doesn’t suffer from this problem, Weingarten’s methods in finding his original attraction to the books without the lens of nostalgia lay in looking at the intrinsic nature of the books, the way that the small, engaging details drove the plots. So what intrinsic is hidden in the details of Calvin and Hobbes?

It’s hard to encapsulate a decade’s worth of artistic choices into a few easily digestible points, but some elements tend to stand out. Calvin’s idiosyncratic tastes, from the works of DuChamp to a magazine about bubble gum. The ever changing backgrounds, from completely empty to vividly inked and populated. The tension between fantasy and reality. A potential thread emerges, one of memory; not in the intellectual sense, but in the emotional one. The strip is able to transcend simple “nostalgia buttons” because it doesn’t ask us to remember specific shared moments or events, but rather specific feelings.  We see Calvin being banished to his room and sulking outside his window in an imagined Martian landscape, filled with the brilliant colour and configuration that only childhood loneliness can muster. We see this and we don’t remember this exact event happening to us, but we remember feeling alone, misunderstood, ostracized. And we can remember the methods we used to try to escape from this unhappiness. As Libby Hill puts it in her retrospective on the series, “isolation breeds fantasy, which breeds isolation” (Hill, “Calvin and Hobbes Embodied the Lonely Child”). The rejection pushes one inwards and the continued time away from anyone other than oneself causes further rejection. It’s thoroughly emotionally exploitative, in that we can’t help but feel sorry for him. It triggers an uncontrollable empathy, as we’ve all been children and experienced that powerlessness. Watterson is reminding us what it felt like to be completely powerless, completely vulnerable, and completely alone, all within the realms of a four-panel comic strip. It's the kind of juxtaposition that tends to stick with people.

What’s significant about this specific type of juxtaposition is its usefulness in fostering both comedic and dramatic material. The incongruity can be mined for laughs, like Calvin tracking polls for his father as if he was a presidential candidate, or moments of almost unbearable resonance, like the repeated collision of Calvin’s hyper-vivid daydreams with the mundanity of his schoolwork. It’s non-escapist fantasy, the type that is fully inhabited by a dreamer who is nevertheless completely self-aware of the context of their situation. It’s reminiscent of early Simpsons episodes, where the family dynamic is grounds for great humour, but the creeping shadow of a burdensome reality consistently threatens to dramatically tear down the surrealist facade that has been ever-so carefully constructed. It was not uncommon for The Simpsons of the early 90s to have an average, slice-of-life storyline (like a housewife needing to get a job in order to make ends meet) that was punctuated by instances of brilliant absurdity (like that same episode featuring a 50 foot tall Marie Curie and a Scottish groundskeeper wrestling a wolf). Calvin himself best resembles a tragic combination of The Simpsons’ two child protagonists. Bart Simpson is the devious prankster, tirelessly putting every ounce of his energy into the next meaningless act of destructive mischief and Lisa Simpson is the isolated intellectual, forever an outsider because of her contextually inappropriate sophistication. Both The Simpsons and Calvin and Hobbes are consistently held up as all-time greats in their respective fields of entertainment, but unlike the latter, The Simpsons doesn’t have the benefit of an expedited run to sweeten the memory of its early quality. Indeed, the common rap on The Simpsons is that its creative decline came around the time when it started priding outlandish storylines over more emotionally grounded plots (Sullentrop, “The Simpsons”). Its downfall, according to the detractors of the show’s later years, came from the move towards treating its characters as a tool to deliver quirky jokes instead of treating them as a realistic family. Perhaps some of Calvin and Hobbes power is derived from the strip’s laser-like focus; it never forgets who or what is at it’s centre. While it deals with many topics, the power of imagination, the peculiarities of growing old, the fleetingness of the good times, the core of the strip is a young, confused, surprisingly wise little boy. The tragedy of Calvin’s character is that he lacks the inhibition or self-agency to prevent himself from slipping in and out of his chosen reality, but he’s granted the intelligence to be painfully self-aware of his circumstances. He’s been put in a world he can’t hope to understand or change and he knows just enough to realize the full extent of his powerlessness.

There’s a Sunday strip from 1989 that I think defines the entire series, as it’s one of the few moments where Watterson lets the curtain of imagination completely fall away. On March 26th 1989, Watterson, for the umpteenth time, showed us what an average day was like for Calvin, except this time, Hobbes is nowhere to be found. He starts his day off being yelled at by his mother to get out of bed, then he’s being berated by his teacher for not knowing the answer to a math problem, then he’s being threatened by a bully, then there’s homework, bad food, bath time, a turned off TV, and then back in bed again. His mother kisses him goodnight, reminding him that “tomorrow’s another big day!” And all alone in the dark, he sighs, broken and thoroughly sad. This is a terrifying comic strip. There is not even an attempt at humour here, no half-hearted jokes made, just full-bodied, unencumbered, childhood angst. This is a child that is dreading his every waking moment and finds the world he inhabits unbearable. Is it any wonder he needs a friend entirely of his own control and creation? This is a strip that best exemplifies how, according to Hill, Calvin and Hobbes “normalized the inherent loneliness that childhood can bring”, how the lack of any kind of control can lead almost inevitably to feelings of extended solitude (Hill, “Calvin and Hobbes”). This one strip is perhaps the series’ most devastating, precisely because of how it normalizes isolation, how it presents loneliness as life’s fundamental feature rather than an easy-to-avoid pitfall. Instead of asking how to deal with the death of our loved ones, it asks us about the death of desire, our motivation to wake up the following morning.

I’ll admit that despite my attempts to disentangle myself from the nostalgic web Calvin and Hobbes weaves, this strip is still distressingly evocative. Yes, the routine portrayed in the strip contains the average, normal events that all children go through. But it’s the mundanity that makes it worse. If we can’t deal with the everyday, what hope do we have to cope with everything else? And by not judging Calvin’s adverse reaction, Watterson provides validity to all forms of stress, regardless of age or status. Tony Kushner. in reference to Where the Wild Things Are author Maurice Sendak, once said that “for the great adult creators of children's books, the work at hand is a reclamation, through the difficult exploration of feelings most people have forgotten, of the past” (Kushner, “How hard can it be?”). Reclaiming the feelings of the past is exactly what’s happening here. In revisiting Calvin and Hobbes, I tried to confront my hero. I tried to deconstruct it and see what made it tick. But maybe all I was doing was trying to reassert what Calvin represented, to stake a claim in rebelliousness, whimsy, and crushing loneliness as the tenets of childhood. Maybe the series was like a companion, providing hope and comfort by showing us the universality of our feelings of solitude.

While there is undoubtedly a cathartic sense of relief that the series grants, there’s a nagging doubt that stating this is somehow antithetical to the core of the comic. Looking at other bastions of slightly melancholic children-oriented media, like Charles Schultz with Peanuts or Maurice Sendak’s aforementioned Where the Wild Things Are, there’s a tendency in them to portray children and adults as fundamentally different. Sendak’s adults were authoritarian figures and the Peanuts cartoons famously had a teacher communicate literally incomprehensibly through the nosies of an unidentified brass instrument. Calvin and Hobbes doesn’t really do that. The dichotomy between adults and children fades, where one finds instances of Calvin’s father being just as prone to staging a scene in a grocery store as his son is. The lack of distinction between the two seemingly disparate groups suggests something. Furthermore, the huge popularity of the comic strip suggests that there is a a deeper connection being forged than one borne out of surface-level enjoyment and to find it, we can revisit Kushner’s quote about Sendak. He specifically mentions how the work of the “adult creators of children’s books.” In a field where the best work regularly incorporates serious subject matter in an accessible way, their work is not simply an exploration or a celebration, but first and foremost a reclamation.

Think about the word “reclamation”. It’s not just taking back something, it’s about reasserting that it was always yours. Despite efforts to the contrary, whatever it is that’s being reclaimed has always been there; lurking in the shadows perhaps, but still there. One might immediately associate ”reclamations” with “reminders”, but in this instance, it’s more precisely related to a “realization.”  A realization that we still have what we once had and that it never truly left. In the case of Bill Watterson, one needn’t look too far to see what he is making us realize.  Hill’s assertion that her attraction to Calvin and Hobbes was “seeing a child…struggle with the world he inhabited” makes all the more sense in this light (Hill, “Calvin and Hobbes”). It’s the struggle that binds us. Regardless of age, creed, or affiliation, we all struggle everyday. Watterson reclaims that struggle by showing it through the lens of one intelligent, imaginative, and lonely child. The problems that Calvin go through are always articulated in a way that is not only widely accessible, but widely applicable. Take a strip from December 1987. Calvin is musing to Hobbes that he doesn’t understand the concept of Santa Claus. “Why all the mystery?” Calvin asks. “If the guy exists, why doesn’t he ever show himself and prove it?” And just in case the implication wasn’t clear enough, he ends the strip with admitting that “I’ve got the same questions about God.” That’s childhood pre-holiday anxiety combined with a grown-up crisis of faith. It’s an unending struggle that the comic reminds us doesn’t really go away.

When we’re confronted with the harsh realities of whatever situation we finds ourselves in, a natural reaction can be to ignore them. It can be overwhelming to have to deal with all of the troubling issues in the world and it’s all too easy to disregard them entirely. But Calvin and Hobbes doesn’t promote apathy. If anything, Calvin’s interest in such issues as environmentalism, mortality, and religion all point towards a call for a greater interest in pressing social matters. What it doesn’t do is offer pat solutions for how to deal with all of them, how to reconcile our struggle. Sure, sometimes it can help just to talk to a friend, but all too often we’re left alone, staring out the window at our blasted Martian dreamscape. And for Watterson, that’s okay. If Calvin can be said to be one thing, it’s persistent. We might be powerless, but that isn’t an excuse not to try. As long as we keep fighting, keep struggling against the issues, against the way we fit in the world, we have a reason to wake up. Tomorrow’s another big day, after all.

[captainignatiuspigheart]

Wow, the last couple of weeks alternating surging heat and grim weather has thorough melted every bit of my desire to do anything, including remembering the time before the heat haze. Still – we shall prevail! It was a quietish couple of weeks in any case, though did have a couple of cool things in it. Not least that I’ve been able to live outside in my gazebo office, and keep a close eye on our ridiculous cats and their shade seeking antics. We were all sad when the thunder and hailstorms drove us inside… Taking keen note of the foul weather I finally picked up some serious LEGO storage towers and did some reorganising. They don’t take up less space, which is unfortunate, but I can access key bricks sets much more easily!

Big fella in a hedge

Little lady in her rooftop fort

Last week turned out to be a mini podcast week, so I’ve spent more time talking than usual (taking up precious drinking time, alas). More We Are What We Overcoming, which has become a cornerstone of my fortnightly routine, and really does help me think about how I feel and how I’m behaving in this quarantini time. That’s not the same as actually changing my behaviour, but being aware that I’m doing little but drinking and sighing at the sun is a start… My other half and I were also interviewed for the Knot Ready podcast: a look at marriage from a modern, feminist perspective, since we’re nearly twenty-two years into a non-marriage we have some insight into why folks may not get married, or at least, possibly, why we haven’t. It was a lot of fun to chat about how we got together (half a lifetime ago!) and other stuff. I’ll definitely remember to share when our episode is out, but you should subscribe to the podcast anyway because Lucy is pretty ace and it’s a genuinely interesting subject.

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I am KNOT READY 💍😘 . I am ready to tie the knot! I am lucky enough to have found an amazing person who makes my life better and who I want to commit to fully 💕 . So when I say I'm freaked out by marriage – it's not a commitment thing! . I'm freaked out that this institution, this human invention, controlled by religion and the state and shaped through time by patriarchal narratives, has become synonymous with romantic love, and not just culturally but for me personally! Something has got it into my head that our relationship is incomplete without marriage, despite suspecting on an intellectual level that nothing much will change afterwards. . Why am I spending a silly amount of money on one day? Why did it make me sad to not be engaged to my person? Why is marriage so important to me? . Freaky questions! For some answers, turn to Knot Ready 💍😘 Episode one comes out this Friday! Link in bio to subscribe or learn more 💖

A post shared by Knot Ready (@knotreadypodcast) on Jun 23, 2020 at 12:13am PDT

We’ve also seen a few more genuine humans in the meatspace, a thing which makes me feel ever so odd. I suspect that I have been at home for too long… But we had a lovely slow wander around the University Park lake and a bit of the radically altered campus up the back of the Portland Building. Lots of baby birds, and our friends’ new baby of their own.

Building: LEGO Hidden Side’s Newbury Haunted High School #70425

OK, so I built this ages ago, but it’s really pretty. Thing is, in its standard configuration it sprawls a little wide, and is distressingly not quite a modular building. So I fixed it! My goal was for it to fit in with the other modular buildings, but of course it’s four studs wider than a baseplate, so something had to go. In my first attempt I tried to compact the bay windows but made a horrible mess, so dismantled the whole thing and rebuilt it using the instructions and deviating where necessary. Where necessary was a bit of a pain – to keep the play functions I needed to keep the bay windows and the full width of the clock tower. My only viable option was removing the four silver unicorn spires with their supporting arches, and that hasn’t really hurt the build much. I’m not super-happy that the decorative ground floor arches are now somewhat obscured, but I’m chuffed with the overall result. That it gave me a chance to go nuts on a swirly tiling pattern in coral pink was a massive bonus. I’ve kept all the play features, but lost some of the details inside. I may remove all the worn detailing too and just have a lovely school in between the detective’s office and the bank. As was noted in the Brickgeekz Facebook group, its colours do rather resemble the now-exceedingly rare Town Hall which I could never quite afford. Win!

Four studs too wide…

It fits!

Beautiful flooring

Play features intact

Watching: Space Force

This is certainly quite fun. A show about Trump’s cretinous “space force” which supposedly satirises the idea, but instead gets caught up doing a sort-of sincere NASA knock-off to get Americans back on the Moon. It doesn’t seem to be sure what it’s taking the mickey out of, leaving the comedy unfocused and swaying madly in each episode. The characters are pretty stock fodder: uptight air force general played by Steve Carell, who looks rather lost, desperate to make it funny by crashing in and out of character while relying heavily on clearing his throat to cover all forms of emotion; very smart scientist guy who isn’t that great with people in the remarkable form of John Malkovich, who shows off his comedy chops nicely (largely by staying in character); total arsehole PR guy Ben Schwartz, who is utterly hateable (in a good way) but of course redeems himself, sort of; space force pilot/astronaut Tawny Newsome, desperate to get on the moon and be somebody; the air force general’s neglected daughter who just wants to have some fun / get any attention at all from her dad. The supporting cast do a great job too, but the tone constantly swinging from idiots messing up the mission to “hurray USA” sentiment leaves them all out in the cold. It’s just odd. I did enjoy the show, and it certainly has some splendid moments, mostly as they get towards the moon landing itself, but I’m not going to be racing back for season two. The Chinese are the main rivals in this new space race, and it’s a bit… broad… for 2020.

Doing: We Are What We Overcome

The next of our “lockdown specials”, lovingly recorded by Zoom and broadcast live in Facebook. Didn’t quite work last week, for no clear reason, so we popped it up on Tuesday instead. We talked about the thorny subject of change, which we seem to have to deal with all the damned time! It’s an interesting issue, covering not just what change is and how it feels, but how we learn (or don’t learn) to deal with it. All terribly pertinent and that. We came back yesterday Monday 19th to discuss how we feel about the easing of lockdown (or whatever the fuck this shower of wank called a Tory government are doing): check that one our here: Facebook Live.

Kickstarter Reward: Munchkin Bricks 2

With all the global lunacy I’d quite forgotten these were on the way! The last-but-one project of Guy Himber, aka CrazyBricks. These are pretty silly accessories and things to accompany the equally silly Munchkin card/boardgame. I just thought they were really cute, god knows what I’m going to do with them. Particular favourites for me are the chibi cthulus (some may become gifts for others…) and the splendid octobricks!

Swag

Swagger

You should definitely check out his current project, which is already very well funded and heading for far-reaching stretch goals: Dino Dudes! Yep, it’s just what it sounds like. Go get em! Nicely covered here by the excellent Beyond the Brick channel:

Reading: Provenance by Ann Leckie

My first Leckie, having not yet gotten around to reading the acclaimed Ancillary Justice series, though this one is set in the same universe. It’s perfectly fine small-scope space opera, focusing on a young woman’s attempts to secure her future (by being named as heir to a senior politician – her adopted mother in a society with interesting communal creche arrangements) by breaking a thief out of prison and lording her victory over her brother. The thief has apparently nicked some precious vestiges, Leckie’s intriguing concept of highly-prized mementoes of the past, which might be anything from an actual artifact, eg a bell used in the first summoning of parliament, to a signed bus ticket on a special day. The Hwaean people are obsessed with the things, and it would be a terrible shame if they turned out to be fake… There’s lots of running around with aliens and robots and occasional murder of diplomats and so on, all risking the failure of a super-important peace accord between humans and some potentially terrifying aliens. Provenance is neatly written, though it loses something in having the plot summary on the back cover take only the first chapter or so to resolve, leaving me unsure where it was going after the exciting sounding heist was dealt with so quickly. It never quite recovered for me, which definitely confirms that I should not read the back cover of books I’m about to read. The author’s interest in diversity and multiple genders, modes of address and interesting social set ups are fun and satisfying to read about, so I suspect I’ll enjoy getting properly into the Ancillary Justice vibe; I just shouldn’t have started here.

More LEGO. SCUM: A Star Wars Story

I’ve now built the main cast of our Star Wars RPG! Clockwise from top-left: my Tusken raider with savaged translator droid strapped to my back, Jon’s Twi’lek bounty hunter, Ben’s Nautolan hacker, Diarmuid’s hapless and much abused Imperial officer, Joe’s GH7 medical droid (a real delight to assemble) his Mandalorian bodyguard (played by Charlie). It’s fun! Now I wanna build some of our missions…

Watching: Agents of SHIELD season 4

I’m sure you’re growing weary of this, but Agents of SHIELD is a goddamned delight. Best show on TV? Maybe. (Warning: many spoilers ahead.) This was the last of the seasons that I’d seen before, so was by far the most familiar. And yet, in the style of all their seasons, a MILLION things happen, overwhelming any sense I had of how long any of the events took. To give you some idea of just how wild this season is, we go from introducing Ghost Rider, in a surprisingly coherent way, to another Avengers nightmare of AI coming to life and taking over various characters with robot duplicates (in this case, Ada, built by splendid returning cast member John Hannah), followed by an incredible immersion of the main cast in a vast virtual reality “The Framework” (built by Ada, John Hannah, and Fitz) a terrifying alternate reality where Hydra has won and rules the world, busily oppressing and annihilating inhumans so that Ada can build herself a real body. Jesus Christ, it’s a lot. Add to that a new director of SHIELD, the ongoing friction between SHIELD and the inhumans vs the rest of the world, plus god knows what else that I’ve forgotten, and I’m happily mindblown. Of course, it’s also the doomed FitzSimmons romance show too, as those two get yet another absolute kicking when we see that Fitz is the chief Hydra scientist, experimenting and murdering all sorts of folk, like Simmons… How will they put themselves back together? Who the hell knows because at the end of this season most of the team is abducted and wake up in SPACE! In truth I’m already a good way into season 5 and I could not be happier.

Doing: MissImp’s virtual improv comedy drop-in

I’ll admit, I’m as behind on these as I am on everything else… First up, The Tiny Glass Person with Feña Ortalli:

Followed by the marvellous David Escobedo in Discovering Your Dynamics:

Last Week: LEGO, Knot Ready, Space Force, Provenance, MissImp, CrazyBricks, Agents of SHIELD, We Are What We Overcome… many things! I’ve gotta get back to doing this weekly… TV, books, much LEGO, some improv and podcasts. https://wp.me/pbprdx-8Gx Wow, the last couple of weeks alternating surging heat and grim weather has thorough melted every bit of my desire to do…