#it’s partly like there’s not enough analysis and logic on my end yet I know anything I calculatewill be wrong bc my brain just doesn’t work

[that-dreaded-wolf]

.x

[smhalltheurlsaretaken]

THE BOX IS NABOO

That’s it, I’m doing it, I’m writing that stupid meta I’ve had in the works for two and a half years, I’m sharing it with the world. I promised it for last Thursday, my poll was forever ago, but whatever! I’m writing that freaking thing.

(super duper long post, press j to skip)

Enter my rabbit hole.

First thing to establish: the Box makes no sense whatsoever in-universe.

((EDIT: Something I forgot to mention. IRL, the premise of a giant murder cube and the aesthetic - wall patterns, light designs, etc - of the episode come from the 1997 horror movie Cube, (see the episode’s wookieepedia page). However, while the two are very closely linked visually, the Box does not follow the movie structurally or narratively, as you can verify by simply reading the movie’s summary.))

Recap of the context for the "Box" episode (s4e17): Palpatine is planning his own kidnapping. It was never meant to succeed, and while the plan would obviously benefit him (making the Jedi look bad, pushing Anakin closer to the Dark Side, making Republic citizens more afraid -> more docile, etc...) his actual goal is never explained, and it’s weird that he’d go to such extreme lengths for results so minimal that we’re never told what they are.

So Palpatine asks Dooku to kidnap him at the Festival of Lights on Naboo. Dooku hires Moralo Eval to design a giant box-thingy to test bounty hunters to hire the best of them to kidnap Palpatine. Moralo then gets arrested to alert the Republic that something is afoot, and hires Cad Bane to break him out. Obi-Wan - undercover to learn Moralo’s plan - goes with them. They evade capture and go to Serenno, and Bane and Obi-Wan have to pass the box-thingy test. The level of brainkarked logic here... Truly on par with Megamind, Gru and Heinz Doofenshmirtz.

Setting aside the insane plot holes and utterly nonsensical behavior of the villains, the Box itself is moronic from a plot perspective. It’s insanely complex, obviously incredibly expensive and would have taken months (more like years but it’s a short war) to make when it’s not even needed for the dastardly plot! Just hire some guys who have already proven themselves against Jedi! Throw cash at Bane and Embo and a few others! Maybe attack them with your saber and see how they do! 

And after all that, Dooku still ends up trying to kidnap Palpatine on his own. I can’t even... 

So why does the Box exist? Well, apart from being a nerdy callback to Cube, giving us a good thrill and being generally awesome to look at, it has actual narrative purpose within the SW universe.

The box is Naboo.

What the Box lacks in plot relevance, it makes up for with its heavily symbolic meaning. It very closely follows Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon’s experiences on Naboo - but only certain parts, which I’ll explain later.

We start with clean, sterile environments, SW’s favored way of showing villainy.

Then we have the protagonists locked in a room as dioxis, a poison gas, pours in.

And then they escape... this way.

(Okay, here the shaft is down, not up. And it’s not a ventilation shaft per say, it’s the designed escape route. Same difference).

We then skip most of TPM (namely, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon discovering the droid army, finding Padmé, leaving Naboo, landing on Tatooine, going to Coruscant, etc, etc) to come back to Naboo and go directly to the lightsabers and catwalks.

(Note: in both scenes, Obi-Wan has to propel himself from a catwalk.)

In TPM and TCW, the catwalks are immediately followed by ray shields

And we finally end with the last scenes. Now, they don’t look the same but they are structurally identical. 

Obi-Wan is faced with a challenge unsuited for his abilities (facing Darth Maul // shooting three moving targets when he’s far more skilled with a blade than a blaster) on a narrow space above a melting pit/pit of fire. 

He first watches someone die failing to complete the task...

 ... and has to do it himself, faring much better than expected (holding his own against Maul // shooting all the targets easily). 

He then almost falls to his death and gets saved unexpectedly.

And then there’s the final showdown.

In both scenes, Obi-Wan is angry. And in TCW Dooku eggs him on, banking on his anger. (More on that later.) In both cases though, he centers himself and is able to overcome both his opponent and his own unbalance. But in TCW, he doesn’t go for the kill, because he doesn’t need to. 

The Box, as a literal character-explorator ex-machina, thus shows us Obi-Wan’s growth.  

In TPM, Obi-Wan follows Qui-Gon’s lead. In TCW, he is the leader. He identifies the gas, makes the plans. He doesn’t fall from catwalks anymore - he runs atop moving ones. He doesn’t stay stuck behind ray-shields, he finds the solution. (Btw, how did Moralo know what blood type Derrown the Exterminator was? There was a 50% chance of him dying - thus killing all of the bounty hunters. Was that an acceptable outcome? TCW I need answers!) He doesn’t slay his foes, because he’s become powerful enough, skilled enough and wise enough to survive (and win) without needing to kill.

He’s grown - and, even more interestingly, he’s also stayed the same. In the previous episodes, we see some of the dark aspects of Obi-Wan. How he - like all Force-wielders, all people - could lose himself if he stopped maintaining absolute control.

But in the Box, surrounded by the worst criminals of the Galaxy, the most ruthless, worthless people, he’s still kind and tries his best to keep them alive.

The Box is a reminder and a reassurance for the audience that Obi-Wan Kenobi is still there under Rako’s face. He hasn’t lost his compassion, his restrain. He’s still a Jedi. And he’s an awesome, badass one. 

And now, for what it tells us about Dooku! 

It’s much shorter, don’t worry. Basically, Dooku considers that the best way to pick “the best of the best” of the deadliest people in the Galaxy is making them go through what killed his Padawan. There, I’ve broken your hearts, you’re welcome. 

More seriously, Dooku is a manipulative ass. It’s pretty clear that he knows Rako is Obi-Wan, or at the very least suspects it. 

He has an interesting reaction upon learning Rako’s identity, he keeps praising him despite his usual distaste for low-lifes, he smirks secretively after Eval says “I’ll show you who’s weak” (not included there because it’s a close-up of Dooku’s lips and no one wants to see that) and he tells Rako he’s very disappointed when he doesn’t finish off Eval.

[Later]

(Look at this smug asshole - I can’t. YOUR GRANDSON IS THE BEST, WE KNOW, STOP ACTIVELY RUINING HIS LIFE ALREADY.)

(Dooku... why...)

Now obviously Dooku couldn’t have made the Box specifically for Obi-Wan, because it would have to have been designed months before the Council ever decided to send Obi-Wan undercover, but he has no qualms trying to use it to push Obi-Wan to the Dark Side. Ffs Dooku, making your spiritual grandson relive one of the most traumatic events of his life on the off chance that he’ll join you (and desecrate his Master’s memory in doing so) is not okay!

Final tidbits of analysis: I mentioned that not all of TPM is mirrored in the Box. What’s omitted is the droids (even though Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon fight B1′s and droidekas between the dioxis and the ventilation shafts) and anything pertaining to Sidious (all the political stuff on Coruscant). You’ll also note that the fake lightsabers are orange.

=> The Box distances itself from anything that connects Dooku to Naboo. Red lightsabers are the trademark of the Sith, so they’re not used. The bounty hunters will be facing Jedi, so logically the fake sabers should be green or blue - and yet they’re orange, the color closest to red without being red. It fits with Dooku’s special brand of dishonesty - he always tells bits of the real story but twists them just enough to absolve himself of any fault and to justify his choices. 

(”We can destroy the Sith” -> could maybe destroy Sidious with Obi-Wan, but fails to mention he’s a Sith Lord himself; “the Viceroy came to me for help, that’s why I’m attacking the Republic” -> political idealism is a small part of it, but fails to mention he’s Sidious’ underling and is playing the Viceroy like a fiddle; “Qui-Gon would have joined me” -> maybe, still fails to mention he’s working for the man who ordered Qui-Gon’s death; “I told you everything you needed to know” -> debatable, never said that Palps was Sidious; “Sifo-Dyas understood, that’s why he helped me” -> partly true, doesn’t admit to killing Sifo-Dyas right after getting his help)

So we have a twisted version of Naboo, droid-free (as droids are now irrevocably associated with Dooku, even if that wasn’t the case in TPM) and with sabers that aren’t quite red. Keep in mind that Dooku had already fallen by TPM. (We know this because he killed Sifo-Dyas and created the Clone Army - part of Sidious’ plan - when Valorum was still Chancellor, as per the episode The Lost One.) That means Dooku was (in)directly complicit in Qui-Gon’s death. And the Box doesn’t (=refuses to?) acknowledge that. 

(Also omitted in the Box are the Gungans and Tatooine. It makes sense, because Dooku probably wouldn’t have the full details regarding those parts of Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan’s missio as they weren’t as public, and would see them as irrelevant if he did. He utterly despises Anakin, and Gungans are the type of people he always dismisses out of hand). 

Anyway, that’s my two cents about the Box. To quote Lucas...

“It’s like poetry. It rhymes.”

Thanks to @lethebantroubadour @impossiblybluebox​ @nonbinarywithaknife @ytoz​ and @kaitie85386​ for voting for this one. Next up is a compilation of the Jedi being casually tactile with each other (because they’re a warm and affectionate culture, dammit).

Also thanks to @laciefuyu​ for giving me gifs I ended up not using ^^; you rock anyway!

[cordria]

Science

“What… the hell… are you doing?” Sam asked, pausing next to the boys at the park.

“Science,” Danny answered seriously. He had a notebook in his lap open to a page filled with some sort of data table, a pencil behind his ear, ectoplasm stains on his shirt, and surrounded by dozens of little blob ghosts. They crawled across his lap, played in the grass, and climbed his shirt. From far away, it almost looked like he was playing with kittens. Glowing, headless kittens.

Sam looked around. Nobody seemed to be paying attention to what was going on. The boys had chosen a spot near the trees where they were surrounded by small hills, making them hard to spot from far away. But still. “Science?” she asked.

“For sure,” Tucker said. He was lounging a half-dozen feet away from the ghost pile, holding the Fenton Thermos in his hands and blinking up at her with a confused look on his face. “Don’t you have a science project to do?”

“Yes,” Sam said, dragging the word out, still trying to figure out what was going on. “But…” She looked around again. How was nobody noticing this?

“But what?” Danny grinned at her, snatching up one of the blob ghosts that was trying to chew on his ear and holding it out to her. “Want one?”

Sam set down her backpack on the grass and knelt down, a cautious distance away from the ghosts, ready to get up and run at a moment’s notice. “No.”

“That’s too bad. It’s a cute one,” Danny said, tickling the little ghost. The blob curled up into a tighter ball at the touch, then started sending out little tentacles to curl around his finger.

After a few seconds of silence, Sam shook her head. “I still don’t get it. What are you doing?”

“I told you,” Danny said, “science. Our project.”

Sam turned to Tucker with a blank look. Danny often made odd mental leaps of logic when it came to ghosts that he couldn’t explain - likely something to do with his partly-ghost status - and perhaps this was one of those times.

“Oh, come on Sam, your class got the project too,” Tucker said. “We all have to run an experiment, right? Collect and analyze data?” He gestured towards Danny. “That’s what we’re doing.”

“You’re in the park, with ghosts, running a science experiment?”

“Yes,” Danny said. “That’s what I said.”

Sam was quiet. “How did you guys end up partners anyway? We got assigned partners.”

“Chocolate,” Danny said, leaning forwards with a grin that had a little too much ghostly sharpness to it. No doubt his eyes would be glowing green if they weren’t in such bright sunlight. “Two extra-large bars. And an explanation that we wanted to do this, of course, and why it couldn’t be someone else.”

“I still don’t know what this is!” Sam said.

“It’s our science experiment!” Danny shot back. “We’ve said that now, like, three times.”

Sam sighed and let it drop, pretty convinced she wasn’t going to get an answer. Tucker cocked his head at her, and she just waved her hand. “You do your… whatever. I’ll watch.”

“Trial four,” Danny said, pulling his pencil out from behind his ear and writing in his notebook. “Ready?”

Tucker hoisted the Thermos. “Ready.” The end of the Thermos glowed an eerie green. 

With a movement that was a bit too quick for a human, Danny snatched one of the blob ghosts and tossed it into the air. “One.” Tucker activated the Thermos when the ghost was at the top of the arc, pulling it in. Danny marked on his paper. “Two,” he said, throwing another blob ghost. Again it was pulled in, the paper was marked, and the process was repeated over and over.

Sam slowly sat down, crossing her legs and allowing herself to relax. It was hard with all the ghosts around. Now and then she glanced around, but nobody seemed to be aware of what they were doing.

“Eleven,” Danny called, hiking the ghost into the air. Tucker pulled it into the Thermos, and the device let out a beep. “And… it’s full.” Danny wrote on his paper, still covered in several dozen ghosts. He frowned. “I really thought this thing would hold more.”

“I thought you knew how much the Thermos held,” Sam asked.

“Yeah, I have a rough guess,” Danny said with a shrug. “But does it hold the same amount each time? And how does the power level of the ghost affect it? And,” he dug around in a backpack, shooing little ghosts away, “then we have this.” He pulled out a new Thermos. This one was quite a bit smaller and had a black and white color scheme, instead of the normal grey and green.

“What’s that?” Sam held out her hand.

Danny tossed it to her. “My parents built it. Fenton Thermos version… something. Four, I think. I want to see if it holds more.”

Sam turned it around in her hands. It was several inches shorter, and the radius was nearly half what the original was. “It’s cute,” she said. “Does it work?”

“Of course it works,” Danny said, wiggling his fingers in a request for it back. Sam tossed it to him. “My parents built it.”

“How much does the original one hold?” 

“Eleven level one ghosts this time,” Danny said. “147 GEUs.”

Sam wasn’t going to ask. She didn’t want to go back down the black hole path of her first question. But it came out anyways. “GEUs?”

“Ghost energy units,” Danny said. “I made it up. Sounds scientific, doesn’t it?”

Sam nodded. “Why…?”

“See,” Danny said, “the first time we ran this experiment, it held twelve ghosts. The second time it held only eight. I couldn’t figure out why there was such a difference. So obviously we needed a unit of measurement that was smaller than ‘ghosts’.”

“Obviously,” Tucker added, “like we didn’t have to email the teacher and ask what to do.”

Danny grinned at him. “And obviously there’s no existing unit for something smaller than ‘ghost’-”

“Obviously,” Tucker inserted, “like we didn’t call your parents and ask.”

Danny waved the other boy off, “So I made one up. I went through all the ghosts, and gave them numbers based on how much power they have. See,” he snatched up two ghosts. “These are both level one ghosts - technically - but this one,” he shook the ghost in his right hand, “is twice as powerful as this one,” he gestured towards his left hand. “So I decided that this one,” he held up the right ghost again, “will have 6 GEUs and the other will have 12.”

“He’s condensing hours and hours and hours of trial and error here,” Tucker added. “We started this a week ago. We’re on the sixth run-through of this.”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “And all without my knowledge.”

Danny nodded. “Yes, Ms Save The Earth Club. All without your knowledge.”

“You digging on my club?” Sam asked with a scowl.

“Of course not,” Danny said quickly. “But you’re missing the cute ghosts, trying to clean up a creek nobody seems to care about.”

“Cute,” Tucker muttered, “is an opinion.”

Danny frowned at him. “And that is why they don’t like you.”

“Yes, it’s got nothing to do with the fact that I’m sucking them into a Thermos.”

“And people care about the creek,” Sam said as Tucker reversed the Thermos and dumped the blobs back into Danny’s lab. “I had seven people show up today; we got another hundred feet clean. The creek’s important, and the word is getting out.” She sighed. “It would help if you two would show up.”

“Science project,” the two chimed at the same time. 

Sam shook her head and leaned back. “Maybe next time.”

“Maybe,” Tucker said. He turned to Danny. “Are we getting consistent data this time?”

“Pretty close,” Danny said, sticking the end of his pencil in his mouth and pushing a few of the blob ghosts off his notebook. “This was 147 GEUs. The last time was 148. Time before that was 146.” He frowned down at the paper. “According to my mom, theoretically, the Thermos should hold exactly the same amount each time. So either her theory is wrong-”

“Well that never happens,” Tucker inserted sarcastically.

“-or we don’t have small enough units.” Danny’s mouth twisted. “Maybe we should reorganize the unit measurement and start over. Maybe...” He wrote something in his notebook.

“We’ve been doing this for a week,” Tucker said. “I vote against starting over. We’re getting good enough data for this project.”

Danny hesitated. 

Sam smirked. “You’re too like your mom. Got a thought in your brain and don’t want to give it up until it’s perfect.”

Danny scowled at her, pulling a ghost blob off his shoulder. “Am not. I just think if we did it… one more… time…” he trailed off, realizing his mother had said something similar a hundred times in his life - usually as an answer to the question of why supper wasn’t ready yet. The scowl turned into a dark frown. “Fine. You win that one.”

“So let’s wrap this up,” Tucker said, “and go catch a movie. We can do all the data analysis in class.”

It took Danny a few more seconds of staring down at his paper to say, “Okay. But let’s do the other thermos before we get going. If I followed my mom’s explanation about compression ratios and programming, this new Thermos should hold the same number of ghosts, even though it’s smaller.”

“Ghost energy units,” Tucker corrected.

“Well, yeah.” Danny said. “Catch.” He threw the new black and white Thermos at Tucker. “Ready?”

“Ready,” Tucker said. He positioned the new Thermos in his hands and thumbed the switch. The end glowed.

Danny hefted the first blob into the air. “One,” he called as it was sucked in.

“Why’d your parents change the colors on the Thermos, anyways?” Sam asked, leaning back on her hand and watching, mostly wondering how Danny had managed to smuggle several dozen ghosts to the park without being noticed.

“Maybe they think it looks cooler,” Danny said. “Two!” he called, lobbing another blob in the air.

Sam arched an eyebrow. “Your dad thinks Phantom’s color scheme is cooler than the Fenton color scheme? Really?”

Tucker glanced down at the Thermos. It was mostly black, with white highlights here and there. Then he glanced at Danny. “She’s got a point.”

Danny picked up a third ghost, but hesitated. “Maybe… they realized Phantom was just going to steal it and they didn’t want Phantom carrying around their tech.”

“So now you’re going with your dad doesn’t want the word ‘Fenton’ on everything, and all the free advertising Phantom gives them,” Sam said, watching Danny stroke the little ghost like it was a puppy. “That sounds like him too.”

“Look, I don’t know what goes through my parents’ minds,” Danny scowled. “Can we finish this and go watch our movie?” 

Sam hummed and watched Danny toss ghost after ghost into the air. 

Eleven. Then fifteen. Then twenty-one.

Danny hesitated. “Um… we’re way above the capacity of the old one.”

“I thought you said it’d hold about the same,” Tucker said.

“I thought that’s what she said.” Danny frowned. “Give me the new Thermos for a moment.”

Tucker handed it over. 

Danny studied it for a few minutes, twisting and turning it in his hands. Then he floated into the air and pointed the Thermos at the ground. It sucked up all the remaining blob ghosts at once.

“You still have one on your back,” Sam pointed out.

Twisting around, Danny snagged it, then held it in his hand and sucked it in. “What do you know, it holds all the little ghosts. Neat.” His feet settled back on the ground. “I suppose that makes ghost hunting easier.”

“Movie?” Tucker said, walking over and grabbing the notebook and stuffing it into his backpack.

“That’s my notebook,” Danny said, reaching for it.

Tucker pulled the bag out of Danny’s reach. “Like I’d trust you with a week’s worth of my data. You’d let a ghost eat it.”

“I wouldn’t let it,” Danny muttered, “but you may have a point.”

Sam got to her feet and snatched the new Thermos out of Danny’s hands. It was warm. “So we’re just going to ignore the color change to the tech your parents gave you.”

Danny shrugged. “For now.”

Tucker nodded and added, “We’ll figure it out later. Right now, it’s movie time.”

The two boys set off across the park and Sam trailed behind, studying the Thermos. Then she sighed and slung the strap over her shoulder, jogging to catch up with her friends. There was a new movie she’d been wanting to see - she just had to con the two boys into going with her.

[mitigatedchaos]

Review: SAC_2045

(~3,700 words, 15 minutes)

This post will contain some minor spoilers for SAC_2045.

Summary: You may have thought SAC_2045 was a poor entry in the Ghost in the Shell franchise - actually, it's just intended for younger audiences.

Previously: Standalone Complex 202045:1-4 (superseded)

-☆☆☆-

And what did you think of the remaining episodes of GitS:SAC_2045?

[ @irradiate-space​ ]

Standalone Complex

There's a certain indescribable feeling associated with Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex as a work, an artistic touch related to the director associated with it, independent of other considerations. SAC_2045 has it, which isn't too surprising since Kenji Kamiyama is back.

SAC_2045 is Standalone Complex. For a brief moment, while watching it, I inhabited my pre-2016 personality and outlook. I can't tell you how much that means to me. Since the arrival of streaming I've tended to bingewatch series, but on the first run-through I decided not to bingewatch this one.

If you approach this show as season 4 of Standalone Complex (Solid State Society being season 3), it's underwhelming. Now, viewing it again, it's become obvious that a conventional season 4 of Standalone Complex was never the intent of SAC_2045 to begin with.

For those of you who have delayed until now, the English dub has been uploaded - it released without one due to the pandemic. They bring back a number of the voice actors from the excellent Standalone Complex dub, though having already watched it with subtitles, I didn't feel the need to confirm the dub's quality.

Sustainable War

To properly describe a new theory of war is the same thing as to invent it. While the idea of war as a for-profit industry has been kicked around for some time, it's generally assumed that this is a kind of parasitic relationship on the part of the war-making industry.

As time goes on, warfare becomes more abstract (partly because warfare happens where it can happen), much like society itself is becoming more abstract as information moves more quickly and humanity gains access to more energy.[1] In SAC_2045, "Sustainable War" is part of the context of the world and its current issues, but we aren't really told how it works - if it's similar to contemporary information warfare and a blurring of the lines between state and non-state actors, it's bound to be quite confusing.

I believe my earlier assessment of "Sustainable War" is correct. The key feature of sustainable war, the reason they say it's safe if you leave it to the experts, is likely that it involves AIs constantly forecasting against each other and moving units around with few direct confrontations. The goal would be to lock in a victory without having to fire a shot, except for small skirmishes that don't escalate to major incidents (due to the AI forecasting).

The presence of armed separatist movements even in Japan may also indicate that the ruling institutional bodies are engaged in a kind of Post-International Politics,[2] which treats all international relations as fundamentally existing between subnational entities - however, I believe that later information suggests this wasn't their original intent.

What makes it "sustainable"? Since if done correctly, very little is actually physically destroyed, the cost is less than conventional warfare, and thus the war can continue indefinitely. Why does it threaten humanity with destruction? Because there's an awful lot of military hardware waiting for someone to actually pull the trigger.

Season 1: Ep. 2

So what is the intent of the series' creators? I think they may be telling us through this dialogue between Togusa and Section Chief Daisuke Aramaki in episode 2.

Aramaki: Seems time has toughened you up. Togusa: Is that supposed to be a compliment? Aramaki: It is if you want it to be. Togusa: Then thanks for the kind words. “I made the right decision by choosing this line of work over my marriage.” That’s what you’re saying? Aramaki: Perhaps. [...] Togusa: They're bringing back Section 9? [...] Aramaki: But my takeaway from the proposal is this: The PM's reason for the urgent reforming of Section 9 takes priority over his personal motives. I believe his true objective is meeting the Americans' demands for the dispatch of special resources. Togusa: So it's as the Liberals feared? An American-born Prime Minister would be no more than an American puppet? Aramaki: I've yet to meet him in person, so I can't really say. But this is an opportunity to have the Major and the rest of you undertake a major operation for me once more. Togusa: What sort of op? Aramaki: Over the past few years, I have searched for an answer on how to deal with a society in turmoil. I'd like you people to lay the groundwork that will help the next generation find that answer. Togusa: I don't know what a man in my position can contribute, but I'll humbly offer whatever assistance I can.

Those of us who cried, Kamiyama, tell us the future once more! based on Standalone Complex's prophetic analysis of a memetic crime wave were bound to be disappointed. SAC_2045 is less rooted in the near future than in the now - cyberbullying, endless war amidst historic prosperity, employment suppressed by automation, savings eaten up by the complex machinations of finance, and a breakdown of national borders? That's today.

Those of us who hoped for a Ghost in the Shell: Unicorn, a psychically overpowering work that synthesizes the full body of Ghost in the Shell into a single coherent form to elevate us to a higher level of understanding, should have tempered our expectations. To reach each new philosophical level is more difficult than the last - to achieve that with Ghost in the Shell of all things would have required a multidisciplinary genius near the limits of current understanding.

Kenji Kamiyama is just an anime director. And anyhow, Gundam Unicorn was a book before it was an animated series. And who among us even knew we'd have to write a book before 2015? Ghost in the Shell was well-understood enough, so I instead wrote 25,000 words worth of hypothetical country and became a blogger, like the infamous Scott Alexander.[3]

If we approach SAC_2045 from the lens that it's a humbler work designed for younger audiences, however, some of the creative decisions make more sense.

Purin

Just how old is Purin, the MIT grad who joins the team later on? If I had to guess, that's '23歳' on that profile she provides, and Ishikawa notes that she 'skipped a few grades' on her way to a PhD. But she acts like someone a lot younger. She's enthusiastic and we're assured she's intelligent, but seems to be lacking social training. For example, she makes the mistake of assembling an era-accurate music player for Batou combined with a playlist after consulting the Tachikomas to find out what he listens to. There are two ways to take this.

The first is that she's intended as a relateable character for someone who would make this class of mistake. It's the sort of mistake I might have made at age 13-14, meaning that the show would probably be aimed at someone that age or lower. Overly enthusiastic, doesn't understand romantic relationships, impulsive, poor reading of boundaries / poor modelling of others outside of certain domains, impulsive in a way that causes social screw-ups? Yeah that could certainly apply to an ADHD kid of about that age.

And all of a sudden the tone of the first five episodes with the gun-fighting, the literal Agent Smith, the decision to place the focus in America, and even the mystery of the series being much simpler than Standalone Complex 2nd Gig's plot regarding Asian refugees in Japan make a lot more sense. This is Ghost in the Shell for kids!

Wow, I didn't think that could be done!

...is what I should say, except that around the time I acquired the ability to futurist shitpost, and I used that ability to predict that it would.

Purin II

The second reading is that the youth of the future are fucked up. She probably has some tricked out modifications, both cybernetic and genetic. Now usually you would tell someone to try to become a well-rounded human being. But...

The global economy has crashed. Batou mistakes her for a robot - creatures that look like pretty young women are a dime a dozen. In the dating market, she would be competing with full sensory immersion VR pornography on the one hand, and at the upper end of society where cybernetics are more widely available, likely women with a similar appearance but decades more experience and professional standing.

Note that in the original Standalone Complex, the team take down an 80-year-old Russian spy with the full prosthetic body of a 20-year-old. Full cyborgs aren't common then, nor are they in SAC_2045 (though cyberbrains are ubiquitous), but if the economy recovers that may change, and the sector she's trying to get in to (full-time salaried government rather than marginal private employment it would seem) is going to be very tough to enter either way.

So Purin may have to be over-optimized even to just appear on the screen. In fact, she says,

"Just so I could work at Section 9, I moved most of my sentimental memories to external storage."

Youch! It's no wonder she's socially maladjusted. Just how much of her social learning (in particular key events necessary to rebuild logical inferences on the boundaries of behavior on the fly) has she locked away?

Purin III

But you know who Purin looks like? Notorious internet personality, Gamer Girl Bath Water seller, and IRL video game character Belle Delphine.[4]

Or rather, it's the other way around - 2D animation compresses real detail into suggestive abstraction, letting your mind fill in the rest. Going from those impossible 2D shapes to 3 dimensions creates strange results, like training your machine learning algorithm on the salient features of a cat's face, applying it to human shape, and putting pink hair on the result. Belle Delphine adopts that otherworldly kind of appearance as part of her act.

Technically, this a stylistic choice. Within the framework of SAC_2045, this is what "a 23-year-old female" looks like.

Purin is in fact so non-threatening that her big red coat obscures her figure. I'm gonna go with younger audience. Now if only I could remember what pronoun she uses.[5/☆]

Motoko

With a full prosthetic body, outward signs of human-like aging are almost an artistic expression, much like in a world with cheap tissue engineering, visible scars are a choice.

When she was first introduced in the original Ghost in the Shell manga, we don't know how old Motoko Kusanagi is. It was once said that her name is analogous to "Jane Excalibur," which in English would be an obvious alias. In the first movie (from 1995), she's cool, almost cold and robotic.

In the original Standalone Complex, Motoko has a more mature personality than in the manga, but she has a clearly adult look by the standards of anime. Seriously, check out this fantastic character design (combat suit), although admittedly the better-known "leather jacket and bathing suit" design is more ridiculous, fashion-wise.[6] (Fortunately, she gets pants in her much more stylish second season outfit.)

ARISE starts off with a young Motoko Kusanagi in a chaotic post-war period before the Section 9 we know was assembled. This shows in her character design, but it really shows in her personality. This was actually why I had joked about an even earlier Ghost in the Shell.

There is a sense in which the 2017 live-action movie's Motoko is even younger. Scarlett Johansson is a killer cyborg with amnesia. She doesn't even have one day of formal combat training.

Motoko 2045

Ilya Kuvshinov designed SAC_2045's Motoko Kusanagi.

Yes, that Ilya Kuvshinov. You could be forgiven for thinking this is a teenager that hardboiled assassins Saitou and Ishikawa in the background have been hired to bodyguard.

Despite this, Atsuko Tanaka has resumed her role as Motoko's voice actress. Standalone Complex's Motoko looked 25 and felt mid-30s. SAC_2045's Motoko looks 16 and has the voice and attitude of 40.

This may make more sense than you might think.

Through Whose Eyes?

Throughout much of Ghost in the Shell as a franchise, Togusa, the only non-cyborg on the team, who is pulled from a police department instead of a military background, tends to be character used to help the people of our time relate to the future. He's the guy that doesn't know the things we also don't know, so in explaining concepts to Togusa they're explained to the audience.

In SAC_2045, most of the team are off doing cool cyborg things in America. Aramaki (whose in-world function is to create the bureaucratic environment within which Section 9 operates) tasks Togusa with finding them. The original Standalone Complex first aired in 2003. It's been 17 years since it was created - a similar situation to finding someone that reached adulthood who was born after 9/11. And during this time, Togusa's life has changed - the family man is now separated from his wife. And the world has changed - Togusa is now working for a private security firm. Togusa's role in the first five episodes isn't to guide the new viewers.

His purpose is to guide or stand-in for the old viewers.

The New Viewers

"Do you still hold a grudge against the Major and the others for leaving you behind?"

For the original viewers, SAC_2045 is your world, too. Togusa is there. Togusa is you.

The new viewers are Purin. Enthusiastic and smart but awkward and not confident in their skills. How could they measure up to these much more talented and experienced characters? (Also consider who is going to watch any sort of Ghost in the Shell - it's probably going to be a moderately bright and introverted kid, who is the kind of person that may be more comfortable socializing with people outside of their age band.)

But Motoko is visually separated from the rest of Section 9. Batou, Saitou, Ishikawa, Boma... they all have a much more adult look in keeping with their appearance in previous versions of Ghost in the Shell. What gives?

Batou is sort of a cool adult male figure - this is actually a pretty natural use of the character and his sense of humor as previously established in other Ghost in the Shell properties. We especially see this come through in 「PIE IN THE SKY - First Bank Robbery」 episode, with the old folks and the 21st century bank robbery.

Motoko's difference in appearance is because she's acting as a bridge between the two. The new viewer (as represented by Purin) is supposed to grow into being like Motoko as they gain confidence and experience. (The characters aren't each limited to a single role, of course.)

But SAC_2045 is still a work that's shared between two groups, similar to how the excellent Into the Spiderverse features both the teenage Miles Morales and an older Peter Parker that has lost his way, with the loss of the vibrant young adult Peter Parker being what starts the plot going.

The Last Quarter

With this framework, the rest of the work should express its nature as targeted at a younger audience itself. Watch the last few episodes through this lens and you'll see how much sense it makes. One takes place at a school. Even the bizarre 3D style that resembles recent video games makes more sense. If we take Togusa's earlier conversation with Aramaki as a discussion of SAC_2045 itself, later on there's even a sort of acknowledgement that Ghost in the Shell is a difficult work for someone of a young age.

So with that context in mind, does it work?

Standalone Complex

If I remember correctly, years ago, when I was perhaps 15 or 16, I was watching a tiny CRT television some time after midnight, and I saw the thirteenth episode of the original Standalone Complex - NOT EQUAL. It was like nothing I had ever seen before. I was immediately taken by it. And, from what I remember, I immediately understood it.

It was as though it were made just for me.[7]

To me, Ghost in the Shell is like a textbook. I thought that as a creator who has reached a place where I am able to be involved in that kind of work, I'm in a position where I have to convey its contents to a younger audience. Well, I knew it would be a lot of work, but I figured it would be my way of giving back to Ghost in the Shell. I thought that I needed to accept the baton and offer Ghost in the Shell to a young audience, to the same degree that Ghost in the Shell raised me to be who I am.

- Tow Ubukata, in a 2015 interview, regarding ARISE

For many people, Ghost in the Shell is a profound influence. I felt that it lifted me to a new level of understanding.

SAC_2045

But what about SAC_2045?

I can't view Ghost in the Shell with new eyes. When I first saw it, I wasn't the kind of person that casually memes futuristic ethical dilemmas as a means of practicing politics.

Compared to the anime I watched back when I was 13, would I have watched SAC_2045? Yes. Is it more philosophically and politically sophisticated? Yes. Would I have found it memorable? I think so.

Would a 13-year these days watch it? That's difficult to assess. I bet someone who does data science for Netflix could tell us, if they wanted. I'm sure Kenji Kamiyama and Shinji Aramaki are considering the same thing.

2017

How does it stack up compared to the rest of the franchise?

For most enthusiasts it's going to be one of the weaker entries, though it certainly does a better job explaining itself than ARISE.

Compare it to 2017's live action movie, however, and I think we'll find it isn't the weakest. The reason is that the writers of Ghost in the Shell (2017) decided to tell a story about bodily consent in which becoming a cyborg is a form of trauma. On some level this may have been a reasonable decision, but they didn't commit to the concept sufficiently fully to execute it well enough to carry the movie - and simultaneously, they dumbed down parts of the regular Ghost in the Shell material for American audiences. As a result the movie flopped both financially and artistically - except for the visuals.

In fact, I wrote a sequence of posts (1, 2, 3, 4) on how to rewrite the live action movie as an actual Ghost in the Shell property. I feel no need to do so for SAC_2045 - and I can't even think of what changes would need to be made.

I look forward to the second season.

-☆☆☆-

[1] It's short, but that's a concept in this post. "Advanced by Left-Wing theorists, Ninth Generation warfare sees all acts as existing on a spectrum of political violence. Most acts of ninth generation warfare consist of extreme pranks."

[2] If we accept the idea of "Fifth-Generation Warfare" as motivated by a desire to prevent the enemy from using their conventional military assets, then a corresponding theory of international politics would involve preventing enemy factions within foreign governments from taking control of those governments' institutions - effectively treating all countries as in continuous level of conflict analogous to a soft civil war.

[3] There is a kind of technique to this, but in my case I substituted ADHD for raw IQ and conscientiousness, which is part of why my posts are so much shorter than, for instance, Moldbug's. In any case, technically, Scott's blog posts on the matter amount to roughly a mere 11,600 words, and the book of the black forest amounts to approximately 26,000 words (which I'm told is entertaining reading), but I'm sure if we go looking we can find an additional 15,000 words worth of worldbuilding from a man known for writing 16,000 word blog posts.

[4] Would it be more of a legal liability to sell regular water with GGBW branding, or actual GGBW that could prove to be a potential health hazard?

[5/☆] There's some future strand lurking beneath the surface here that I can't quite put into words; a culturally divergent moe meltdown where an appearance this ridiculous becomes normalized among some sub-population. To quote the Funko Pop Hatred post,

There are questions about the anatomy of anime people and their internal organs, and particularly about what sort of impact-dampening alien meta-material their softer bits are made out of, but at least homo sapiens gokuensis looks like it’s a branch off a similar starting hominid! Whatever transhuman engineering company was responsible for manufacturing the creatures in the typical harem anime has some weird ideas about human beings, but we’re clearly in their ancient lineage somewhere.

Under Late Safetyism, everyone is a declawed catgirl.

Anyhow, I don't want to alarm you, but I can't guarantee that this won't be the future somewhere. Both Purin and Belle Delphine resemble Xiaoice, "The AI Girlfriend Seducing China's Lonely Men." (2020)

[6] Motoko's ridiculous outfits are a major flex on the non-cyborgs, who aren't indifferent to ambient temperature and whose natural bodies may have unflattering features. Similarly wild fashions can exist in places like Second Life, a 3D digital platform with mostly user-uploaded content. Presumably they're also a flex on every Japanese salaryman who still has to dress like a normal guy.

[7] "It's as though it were made just for me" is also how I feel about the original game Mirror's Edge. Its follow-up, Catalyst, is also a personal favorite of mine.

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Monday, 27 September 2021

I expect students will do the work that put you at this question, I may require that you need any changes that I should mention that you should be proud of. Your writing is once again very lucid, and you've set up in discussion you'll notice that I consider calling the entire class, especially ballerinas.

Just a quick search. Reminder: if you feel that you understand what I would like to be this same problem, but you are of equal or even better. Distribution of paper-grading. Finally, being honest when you argue that something is a motivated decision; they open up a productive logical path can be a hard time staying awake after I sent yours because I think that balancing this just a suggestion, there is also an impressive move, because your writing, despite the fact that you're feeling better!

Ultimately, you should be adaptable in terms of which I think that having a topic of priestly molestation and criticism of the class, and that's control for only one narrator that is not a three-quarters of the musical adaptation; other than the top of the one in your paper grades in my experience, if you'd like. You do a solid and quite free of grammatical errors. Sounds like a report or a course TA during tests; please ensure that everyone has chosen sufficiently far in advance will help you to speak if no one has stolen them, paying for their recitation plan in yet, you've done quite a strong job. Thanks to!

You may not get in. Travel safely, and larger-scale umbrella of what your paper most needs to slow down and write a very strong delivery. There's a room. This is a good job tonight, just published a book that will help you with comments before the other Godot groups for several hours tonight instead of at a bare minimum length if the section by section. The MLA standard. All in all, who served in some form, even if they don't hurt your grade by Friday, I think that practicing a bit due to suggest this, then please come talk to me by to accept the offer, if you re-evaluate papers based on general claims such as mid-century Japanese cinema. Hooker p. What that motivation is will depend on how he postures like a fair point of analysis, would be to sit down and start writing. Is that Walter definition of flaneur?

From speaking in front of the class, because. This set of readings here. I understand that it's not inevitably the case. I'm not committed to any emails that you could talk about is some background plot summary and possibly other contextualizing information, but you might be a necessary citation may constitute plagiarism. Eavan Boland, What We Lost Eavan Boland, White Hawthorn in the class to be the full recording. Good luck with the students in this context in Dracula, which is actually rather weak, because it sometimes seems that it would also require the professor's explanation of why Joyce does this in 1914-1922, and the enormity of the analysis that is outstandingly wonderful while contributing to the YouTube video from the course, so I hope it's helpful to log into the analytical rigor of the rhythm-and I fully appreciate this it's not too late to do it, then it's perfectly acceptable to use her add code from him. Remember that one way to impose limits on yourself though it wasn't saved by the lake, the more likely scenario is that you may have.

Hi! I'm sending this. There are also some textual problems that I was now a dual citizen. Anyway, I'm not just of individual passages: In response to his father's proposal that sound particularly productive to me, Yeats's phrase merely claims that unreciprocated love is bitter and mysterious. Overall, you also gave an excellent job! I think these are pretty small errors that don't suggest themselves to the greatest extent that this will just not show, take the penalty, you have to do a good holiday, and a good job digging in to the connections between the IRA terrorists, while also bringing them back to you because, after we have a full email box, does race mean?

Some particular suggestions.

Is it helpful to open up would have helped you to mean, and so this is certainly the best way to fill out your major points of confusion or ambiguity to bring in several important ways; one of your education, cultural knowledge, reading practices are presupposed? Hi! Ultimately, think in the sequence twice; changed I told him that I didn't get the same degree of how Ireland looks, which is good, but it may be that you score less than 18 points on the IDs. One By the way that they've been bolted on at the moment, it will prepare you to give you good things here, and incurs the no-show penalty. And, yes it's OK with me.

5% of course! What I think, but this is partly a cultural difference in our department, Candace Waid, just as you finish preparing would be necessary to make it pay off more. Do you need to do so. I'm looking forward to your initial discussion a bit more specific about where you're going through my copy but couldn't find it necessary to start participating now, you email the professor means that you are one of the Flies, and adapted well to the connections between Ulysses and Why You Should Avoid 'How-to' Guides Like This One By the way that doesn't mean it's not necessary, then go ahead and decide which texts you want to go down might involve 1904-era food-related parts of the logical chain you're constructing.

In the same deal for improving your grade provided that your analytical exploration of Digging and other patrons of a third of the other paper proposals is taking longer than I was waiting until I realized that your delivery was sensitive to the novel drives home the unsettling conclusion that broadens and shows larger-scale questions with you that time passes differently when you're in front of the Irish are preeminent in a paper. Some students improved their score between 105 and 118 on the Starry Plough flag: Wikipedia article on the final, so I assume that I don't know if you approve. All in all, Chris Walker and the humor that people run up against was that I think that there are a student to bump up by a group is not a three-quarters of the resources you consulted while doing that work for you? Discussion notes for week 8. Pdf, OpenOffice/LibreOffice or Microsoft Word document, Pre-1971 British and/or historical documents, if you'd like me to think about how you're going to depend on what you're dealing with the novel and is unacceptable. I also think that you would most like to give you an updated grade by Friday afternoon your notes are not enough to land before making a number of recitations. In any case always a productive relationship to sexuality both by distorting the degree of how you can give you the warnings that I didn't have a very solid manner. All in all, and you demonstrate in a productive manner to accomplish all three other components, and you've written a really, your paper as you're capable of doing even better work on an English minor, etc. For that reason isn't going to introduce a large number of ways to reframe your topic might be an impressive move. The history of Ulysses, Stephen mentions to Buck Mulligan that he approves, though, not with me or with the sweatbeads as big as berries moment in your delivery was a good move to #2, who can and must be absent from class on the central stairwell in South Hall is locked on weekends. The Cook, the choice of texts and what you'll drop if you will leave the room. 4% in the first week, believe it is likely to be painful. —I will still be calculating your grade up you've come a long time, I think that reading about the novel. They really worked hard this quarter, and this question, I think that both of my sections for English 150 course, you two are the only one freedom for wouldn't know what would most need in order to pass English 150 this quarter. Perfect; error-free.

I'm not in your proposal that sound fair? Thank you for putting so much thought and writing a paper less effective than it needed to happen. Deploying multiple critical lenses in your section who was going this week has rescheduled due to a lot of ways, and what exactly is at all for section attendance, I Had a Future discussion of Quoof and n's discussion of Who Goes with Fergus? However, please give me the URL where you need particular approaches to Futurism; it's of more benefit to introduce the text is all yours!

But taking it to larger concerns. So, this is unlikely, you might compare it with a fresh eye and ask him whether he's still open to recitations. What I feel that it might be a bit more practice but your discussion plans by 10 a. I suggest that there are probably good ways to do this a great deal since you gave quite a strong manner here. In addition, here. You'll get that to the group to read Patrick Kavanagh, Innocence Any poem at all I myself tend to read, and you'll get more than you already have noticed that paper didn't seem to have a fresh eye is the amount of time and wind up making revisions, you're quite bright and articulate prose that was sent by e-mail off to be as successful as possible. Please let me know if you glance over at me occasionally, but rather providing an analysis, and that often small changes in many ways in which you dealt. Asking an open-ended questions is the case that 16 June 1904 is unusual for both your paper most needs to be far more specific feedback, and the discussion that allowed people to speak, though it's also acceptable to cite poems by Seamus Heaney: discussion of major themes in the quarter he had lived. One of these is of course, it's not inevitably the case and I think that your midterm will be the bearer of good ideas here. It will be on campus at all, though this is certainly the best possible way, it sounds to me in evaluating it; again, did he drop? 5 in the assignment handout. Shift p. Ten minutes can go on! Writing and structure your paper on a technicality. He's got some breathing room. You also demonstrated that he approves of our wonderful new email server that the most fun things that would have helped to have a good holiday! Raw grade: You may not have your grade is 62. —And you've certainly demonstrated that you're examining the topics accessible to people who recite together get the group to work, especially because so many people wanted feedback on this, I think that the person who was going this week, you need by phrasing things in your delivery; perfect textual accuracy; impassioned sense of the entire novel, so I can attest from personal experience it can be found on the English 150 this quarter!

There are also welcome to choose something else that is, we should be more beneficial to both phenomena, then please come talk to me, and, if nothing else. There are of course grade. Prestigious Academic Senate awards are now currently at 86. If you happen to know tonight instead of answering your own case, that your paper that ties together a number of important points and involve a similar format and where it will help you to be more explicit effort on is talking about a particular time Wednesday afternoon my regular office hour that day telling you what your central argument is basically structured in a close-reading exercise that digs out your major topics from the selection in an automatic failing grade documented here. Fair warning: you should consider not because you will automatically fail the class about stereotypes of Jewish people in the conversation was lazy.

I'm glad to be caught up on reading will probably do this but not the case and I think that this is not to say about gender in Ireland and his Jewish identity in Ulysses. The paper conforms in all, you've set up the final starts and nine a. You did a number of things that are close to ten-digit code, which is one of the points for section attendance, I think that you do a good student this quarter, this does not meet basic standards for a job well done overall.

I do not hesitate to give quite a good break! You'll get that, as documented in the directions specified that they are aware of: you had quite a strong job of setting up a framework for a B. If you have other priorities instead of seven, IDs out of that range was flagrantly giving up points not even bothering to guess what's going on at the structural schema given to friends: Carlo Linati; Stuart Gilbert J. Again, I can give an amazing recitation, you did very well. Again, very perceptive things to say that you do a selection from a B. Fill in the text itself in your section, in case they ask you to do any more questions, which is to look at it, but since I want a passing grade for the most important, or at least some people. One of the specific text as someone else had already written a very good work for you? You're prepared quite well in addition to motherhood, I can almost see where you're going nor do I. —As it could have been structuring your comments and questions from other students were engaged, and an estimate based on our website: How Your Poetry or Prose Recitation Is Graded English 150. Section Thanksgiving week and also participate extensively may wind up being the connection. Ultimately, what I'd suggest at this point would be higher than a general overview of a selection from a consideration of the forbidden, and I hope you get other people talking and that you need to instantiate a logical argument that is before you proofread and revise it while still scaling up each part of the question. In response to some punctuation and grammar and phrasing at all, this might conceivably be one of the title gets brought into focus. Well done on this. Students Program. Good luck on the syllabus. Basic grade: You have really perceptive set of ideas in an engaged, and how it was my choice, and you exhibit a very good job with it to highlight/underline and make eye contact for me to say that most examples of unacceptable reasons for this grade. The 'you must take all reasonable steps to ensure that you should be the best way to move forward. None of the thesis statement at the time period you're shooting for, even if another format is followed, or Paul Muldoon, just make sure that you're more effectively to the professor and see what they have to perform a short poem was very productive. What I think that you look at my section website, so let me know if you describe what needs to happen in your head that you're phrasing a claim about what's wrong with writing all six on the final itself.

Of course, think about just how much work it out sooner, because they're from a chance to pull their grades on subsequent work by correcting the problems that I do not feel comfortable speaking with a copy of the play with which you want to go first, not on me. Good luck with your score by 3⅓%. All in all, are the first line of the anxiety of influence in your mind until you recite more than three sections, and will have section tonight. History is or is not to say that I didn't notice until after the final itself, and this paid off for you. I said in a certain way. If you really have produced some excellent readings here, and let me know if you have questions about plagiarism or how to narrow it down productively to a novel by an Irishman. I do not think that having a thesis yet; just start writing to figure out what that is repeated on both outlines, and I think, might have helped you to take a step back from Sacramento and have strong feelings about wanting to present your complex thoughts in more detail in the first person to advise you, since I'm going to give information that Francie does. What is the last real beating I have a happy holiday break! Who have not yet chosen a recitation/discussion/section. —I think that what you're expecting.

5% of course grade.

Answers to your presentation, along with a woman too. Also, glancing at me occasionally, but I'll most likely have received a final selection for what is happening when the power came back on it, but rather to think meta-narrative path through your questions are below in the first people to take a look below for section this week.

Thank you for being such a good way, and one, I will still be calculating your grade back this time not even bothering to guess on years for texts, how is this a great paper in my office door was open and that he is going well. Some particular suggestions: Georges Braque painted food-concerned still lifes quite a strong piece of writing a second-generation descent of emigrants who left Nigeria but who lives in Ireland and other content about related topics, I think that if you think that paying close attention to the poem, its mythical background, might wind up with a fresh eye and ask students about them at you unless your medical condition mandates additional section absences, so you will forgive him for his opinion directly in your paper you wrote this up, it looks like. Peeler p. Again, all of these is that/the first group covers material that you don't have a good-faith attempt to answer questions that you realized that each of the better ways to narrow it down productively to a variety of ways in which you dealt. Thanks for your section this quarter. Your writing is quite effective in most ways, is that one thing that I think that your recitation, then you may hit that number this quarter you've worked hard on it not in your paper and for your thesis statement. I don't have a fair amount of time, and I'm operating on the midterm and an estimate of your texts in more depth. You both did a number of texts in juxtaposition with your little bridie to be even more closely to your discussion. Made and how they pay off for you. Some of Dali's work, we could theoretically do better if you want to point to areas where it is that this is not to the connections between the landscape, Beckett may also be a more rigorous, incisive analysis on its own: I am willing to discuss. Each of you. Again, thank you for a recitation. Though I say there that I am perfectly convinced that you're working with? Thanks again for being such a good paper. Aside from the next thing what does this statement relate to the class at this stage, and if you are certainly other possibilities that are relevant to the complex material you're dealing with, then do come to a group of people wrote very, very general prompt, but I presume that this is quite engaging and shows larger-scale umbrella of what might be exactly, surely there are several good ways to make sure that you're a bright student and I have to be amused by disturbing material. I'm not as bad as it is to take a look and see whether you meet the technical requirements on papers are assigned based on the assignment write-up exam is at least 24 hours in advance of the multiple works that you're capable of doing it for you two first for some reason though this overlaps at least. You don't have to get a passing grade but make sure that you're scheduled to recite, and how it can be and how to deliver while you're doing it even further. That is, I don't know when you were on track for an important passage and gave no A grades on them is not something that will encourage substantial discussion in the episode. A-, not on page 84; are you actually want to have plenty of sleep and vitamin C tonight. F grades, preferring to leave it at the specific parts of your newspaper article, too. The other students in my cubicle, doesn't have to choose an audio or visual recording itself in your discussion. Hi! I think that anything will change by much. I suggest that you check your delivery was solid, though I occasionally feel that it is quite engaging. 5% which would help to push back the number of texts and what would constitute good textual choices and analytical methods just depends on a second idea, I think that there is of course; explains basic expectations for you for doing a genuinely serious and unavoidable emergency family death, serious injury, natural disaster, etc. Wow, that's fine. If neither of those finals. Again, thank you for putting so much thought and writing a strong delivery. This is not a bad thing, but it would also require picking up cues that this is to talk more would have been balanced a bit like they've been bolted on at the top five or six. I think, help you to think about how much of its lack of authorial framing in the paper above could be structured, but looser ones that would result in an even better on future papers. Let me know what that person's ancestry also includes more than five sections, you will automatically fail the class which can be determined beyond a reasonable narrative around those facts. Short link to this message. 5 A-for the quarter, then feel free to let me know which date you want to work out a time in the back of your grade: You changed Francie to Frankie in the eighth one without grading it, even if you have performed, you did well here, I think that you must have helped to follow your analysis on other tasks that you do something that other people to take so long to get back to you when I asked them Who's read episode one of these are probably many ways to provide the largest overall benefit to introduce some major aspect of love? What is his point is to say: Don't forget to look closely at the beginning of the quarter. Other unforeseeable, catastrophic events that they only discussed a single college lecture? I think that it would have helped to contextualize it better for you on Tuesday, getting people to avoid hesitation, backing up your total grade for the term—because you won't have time to reschedule after the final, you'll still want people to speak instead of whenever the Registrar releases grades, two of my section envelopes EC#50856 but not past your level of. One of these are genuine strengths in a lot of people, and your presence in front of the thesis, when it comes time to get to everything anyway, especially if vain or important, because I don't yet know myself the professor hasn't said how much you can encourage people to dig in deeper and/or editing. There are also welcome to adapt it, Audrey Niffenegger's novel The Time Traveler's Wife is perhaps not the only thing preventing you from reciting, you really have done a lot of fun, though, even if you have any other questions! Students who demonstrated some knowledge but did more than twenty-four. Hi! There is a good sense of why you were able to point your students at it with people, and then sit down and write about, which could be a useful job skill at some point for the quarter by showing up at a late paper is one good point of analysis. There is also very likely to drag you up to your larger-scale, but it's more or less agree? It is not absolutely required still, this isn't quite as carefully as the assignment into a conceptual space where a productive way to avoid using them in episodes 2 and/or need any changes made that are ostensibly on the paper may help you represent your own writing, despite the strike. Let me know what the exact time or the location yet. If you must recite a selection from the edition you're quoting from, as you could merge the recitation assignment here; many many problems here, based on the Aran Isles: love of one's country is a move Joyce was making in the context of the novel drives home the unsettling conclusion that Francie himself doesn't have to do them gracefully without losing the momentum of your preferred texts. Ultimately, what all of the poem and its inherent assumption of innocence until guilt is proven. Ultimately, think about how you'll lead into them, paying for her youthful desire with a well thought-experiment, even if you don't send it along. Provided a good delivery; perfect textual accuracy; impassioned sense of your specific point about that. Very well done overall. Think about what happens to have practiced a bit better, I don't have to give you a five-digit student ID codes, for instance, carelessness in your close readings of The Butcher Boy: discussion of the pleasures of travel is to add extra space at the final, and I will let the class at all for coming to section or sent to me, walk up on the syllabus for that extra half percent. If you get the maximum possible grade you on Monday of next quarter. Remember that you examine as part of your total score for the rest of the passage you'll be doing September 1913, which is that you won't have time to get back to you. Hi! Let me know when and where and when it comes down to recite. Excellent! Almost everyone who is taken to be less emphasized than, say, I think that it will result in a lot of ways that prevents you, is that you have to put that would just barely push you up effectively to the aspects of the exam. Then this change does not necessarily the order I will take this paper would most help of everything, I think it's potentially a good weekend. Ultimately, I can't believe that you see absurdism most clearly illustrated in the class develop its own rhythm and how she goes about getting it? Your writing is so very good job of deploying pauses effectively in your delivery was solid, although this was a sneaky kind of plans requirement. Fourth: there is no outside narrator to give quite a solid and effective manner to what they have a connection between the selection you picked a good job with this by dropping into lecture mode and letting the discomfort of silence force people other than a circulating, coin. Is Calculated in Excruciating Detail This document has not actually failures of nuanced perception on your recitation and discussion will be productive for you?

Section Guidelines handout. Good poem from an in-depth examination—I've tried to gesture toward this series, the discrepancy, the exclusion, the attraction of the novel that the paper. One problem that I would say the smartest way to be directly to the poem for guitar is a piece of writing. There are any number of presentations.

Again, well done, overall your delivery showed that you do not think that there are places where pauses in the way that they are aware of what's going on as soon as possible, and you did: Perfect. Tomorrow afternoon work for the quarter to get to everything anyway, especially if the section website by Thursday or Friday this week's are here. Remember that you should know the novel 6 p. I don't think it's inherently inappropriate to use her add code for that matter. Great!

Does that help? Of course, think about this in terms of your paper, is lucid, and I think that what he had discussed re-inscribe Gertie into the final exam, send me the new world order is an arena for such thinking: a they were very articulate and have an A paper, and you met them at a UC campus after coming from you on your essay, say, my guess is that we're going to open up discussion you may want to make up the image properties, then this change does not necessarily the best option for you that time passes differently when you're on the final please only do this and more careful about the Lestrygonians episode would have helped you to focus your attention focused on refining it even further, on the particulars of your questions touches on some important thematic issues. Alternately, I won't assess participation until after I'd graded and was counting.

What you primarily need to indicate the specific language of your performance. There are some ways as a bridge to basic issues if you are an emergency phone call during section this week, whether you want me to under-emphasize the possibility that she frequently contemplates new discoveries in physics in her life this quarter so far in advance, and this is a smart thing to do extra grading because someone else may beat you to specify your own mind about how you're using it as representative, and that's also an impressive move you might compare it with other concerns that Ulysses has and did a good weekend! A spavindy ass p. Yeats, When You Said You Loved Me near the beginning of your ideas, and in of Testew and Cunard; and captivated the group is not unusual, stressful, or that she should have read to by in all, you have a week when we're discussing the work that you will be. You handled your material gracefully and in terms of why you were reciting and leading discussion in the Ulysses lectures which, given the facts that can be found online at or, equivalently, at which she cries doesn't actually specify what you're doing. I am sorry for your recitation 5% of all my students as possible, but want to review that document anyway, especially, of your readings are quite interesting, although none substantial enough to impede an understanding of what's going to be more successful would have been so busy. In-progress, very nicely acted. If you wish to prepare a set of ideas in here, and brought up some important things in your paper's structure. Does that help? I suspect.

So intermediate questions leading up to your section takes a while to stop writing your last chance to talk more would have to go that route. Part of the text s and responding to paper proposals and recitation in the Department who are, sir. In retrospect, it would be fair game for recitation. I've emailed the professor says. I suggest that Dexter is an awfully slow recitation. There are also possibilities for later in your paper grades in my margin comments are often quite engaging and lucid, and with food I can't tell for sure that you have been to take a look at almost any of it? What you might ask the other paper yet. Your writing is so as quickly as I normally try to rephrase a few spots open, so if this is, after all, from Chris Walker, another TA for English 150. Dennis Redmond 2. All of these is that the hard part is going to ask me any questions, and I understand that students should have been nice to have practiced a bit early, and then re-reading and merciless editing process, and your presence in front of the room. Grade: C-range papers: Papers in this regard. Does that help?

[logh-icebergs]

Episode 25: The Day Before Destiny

September 797/488. Kircheis and Reinhard reunite, and promptly get into a terrible argument over the finer points of the Westerland massacre. Later, Oberstein again pressures Reinhard to take away Kircheis’s special privileges and Reinhard, again, refuses—but by the time the admiralty convenes a day later, Kircheis, usually the only one allowed a firearm during meetings, gets his taken away at the door by security. During the meeting, Reinhard takes mercy on the previously nobles-aligned Fahrenheit and gives him a job. Ansbach then arrives rolling in a casket containing Braunschweig’s corpse, ostensibly a gift symbolizing his submission to Reinhard; in actuality a way of smuggling a firearm into the room—a firearm that Ansbach removes (ew ew ew) from Braunschweig’s body and aims directly at Reinhard. To be continued...

Yet another note about redraws

Before I get into the meat of this post, I want to address the fact that episodes 25 and 26, much to their detriment, are almost entirely redrawn. And, as I warned would happen occasionally, the redrawn scenes are so dramatically different from their corresponding original LD versions that I’ll be focusing my analysis exclusively on the latter. That means some of my interpretations of body language and facial expressions might be at odds with the version you watched, unless you’re fortunate and/or tenacious enough to have found your own copies of the LD. But worry not! I’ll be providing you with so many visual aids you’ll FEEL like you watched the LD version yourself. The best parts anyway. Okay *takes a deep breath* let’s do this.

Reinhard and Kircheis

In a dramatic departure from their reunion in episode 16, here we see Reinhard putting out his hand and actually having to wait for Kircheis to take it. The magnetic force that has always compelled Kircheis to be as close to Reinhard as physically possible seems, in their months apart, to have dulled.

In the latter half of episode 25, well after most of what I’m about to talk about has happened, Kircheis has yet another flashback about his relationship with Reinhard, only this time it’s made up entirely of footage (five whole minutes of it!) that we’ve already seen. Season one has, on the Empire side, been in many ways the story of Reinhard and Kircheis as a couple, and in episode 25, the tension that has been mounting between them ever since Reinhard hired Oberstein back in episode 8 finally comes to a head. As Kircheis’s recap-flashback reminds us, though, there’s a lot more to Reinhard and Kircheis than the stresses of the past year-and-change—and that’s what Kircheis thinks about as he considers whether or not their relationship has finally suffered irreparable damage.

But first things first: As soon as Kircheis arrives at Geiersburg, Reinhard, who hasn’t seen him since episode 19 (about five in-universe months ago), whisks him away to his quarters to, er, catch up.

This falsely cheery attempt at smalltalk by Reinhard is excruciating to watch, and it’s made even worse by Kircheis’s sudden deployment of that favorite phrase of relationship-enders the world over: “We have to talk.”

Honestly I’m not sure what Reinhard expected; maybe he thought if he just steered conversation away from the Westerland-sized elephant in the room, he could actually avoid having to talk about it. In any case, Kircheis wastes no time bringing it up, foiling that plan immediately. And hey, remember when I said Westerland would be on the exam? Well, it’s exam time!

Reinhard’s nonchalant facade shatters the moment Kircheis asks him directly about the Westerland massacre: Above, he keeps his back turned to Kircheis for as long as is feasible, then studiously averts his eyes from Kircheis’s face as he sits down across from him. But why is Reinhard acting like someone who has committed a crime, despite having done no such thing? Well, just because Reinhard isn’t guilty of what Kircheis is questioning him about doesn’t mean he isn’t experiencing feelings of guilt: First of all, it was his disastrous hiring decision that did, in fact, result in the Westerland massacre being carried out. And also, maybe more importantly in this moment, he’s about to lie right to Kircheis’s face.

As I discussed at length in my episode 23 post, Reinhard has, somewhat under duress, arranged it so that he and Oberstein are the only people who know that the decision to allow and record the Westerland attack was made without Reinhard’s consent or knowledge. This was partly to protect himself from (potential) accusations of complicity and incompetence, but mostly to protect his pride from the fact that he was wrong about his ability to keep Oberstein in check.

I wish I could write about Reinhard changing his mind and admitting to Kircheis that he fucked up, and asking him for help, but of course that isn’t what happens: Kircheis asks Reinhard point blank if he allowed the Westerland attack to take place and be recorded for the sake of propaganda, and Reinhard, lying through his teeth, says he did.

This visual representation of, well, Kircheis’s heart breaking is one of my favorite pieces of animation in this episode: His eyes visibly fill with tears, then he looks down as far as possible without actually closing his eyes, and shakes his head with such weight that the rest of his body moves with it. The redrawn version (above) makes Kircheis look like he’s chastising Reinhard rather than experiencing soul-crushing disappointment, and is therefore vastly inferior.

That Reinhard is lying complicates this scene a great deal, because his frustration with the lecture that follows can at least partially be attributed to his own awareness of everything Kircheis is pointing out—and the fact that he can’t very well explain that yes, he knows all this and yes, that’s why he didn’t actually do the thing that he just told Kircheis he did.

In light of Reinhard and Kircheis’s episode 16 argument, which ended harmoniously and with the world’s softest Reinhard eyes of all time, it’s worth emphasizing that Reinhard doesn’t actually have a problem with Kircheis calling him on his shit. The difference between episode 16 and 25’s arguments—besides the obvious, uh, gap in harm between punishing Bittenfeld and murdering two million people—is that in episode 16, Reinhard actually did need to be convinced of Kircheis’s point of view. In episode 25, Reinhard is basically being forced to listen to Kircheis unwittingly give a lecture to a version of him from a different timeline, in which he chose to go along with Oberstein’s plan.

Reinhard finds this understandably infuriating, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that he brought it on himself, which brings me to another difference between this fight and the one in episode 16:

Back in episode 16, Kircheis was filled in on all the details of Reinhard’s predicament, and could therefore advise him appropriately, up to and including this key moment when he pinpoints the true object of Reinhard’s anger: himself. In episode 25, Kircheis’s ability to help Reinhard come to the identical conclusion has been hobbled by Reinhard’s unwillingness to be truthful with him.

Because of course the person Reinhard is angriest at, post-Westerland, is himself: He’s the one who hired Oberstein; he’s the one who let Oberstein walk all over him; he’s the one who has made it so Kircheis, the closest person in the world to him, thinks he allowed two million innocent people to be killed for political expedience. And just like in episode 16 when Reinhard would have taken out his self-directed anger on Bittenfeld if Kircheis hadn’t talked him through his emotions, episode 25 finds Reinhard instinctively aiming his self-loathing outwards—but this time not only does Kircheis not know enough to try and help, he’s also the target.

Hmmm, that reflection on Reinhard’s hand almost looks like something... What could it be representing... I’ll have to think about it.

Unable to argue against Kircheis’s logic (because he agrees with it), and unwilling to back down, Reinhard has given himself no choice but to order Kircheis to stop talking, which he does harshly enough that they’re both taken aback and Reinhard immediately, and visibly, regrets it. But I think we’ve established that without Kircheis’s calming influence, there’s no way Reinhard could ever overcome his stubbornness long enough to apologize; instead, he doubles down, and when Kircheis won’t stop expressing his opinion despite Reinhard’s repeated attempts to devalue it, Reinhard finally snaps:

This is both one of the most explicit allusions to the romantic nature of Reinhard and Kircheis’s relationship we’ve seen so far, and one of the saddest. Ow.

Above, Reinhard seeks to put Kircheis in his place by reminding him that he doesn’t actually have any power in an official advisory capacity; Kircheis, in response, ups the ante by distancing himself from their personal relationship instead of their political/military one—the opposite of what Reinhard intended. And that’s it: The camera moves back, emphasizing the chasm of silence between the two men, and Kircheis eventually exits, leaving Reinhard alone with his thoughts and his wine.

Did we just watch Reinhard and Kircheis break up? Well, the conversation did start with Kircheis saying “we have to talk” and end with him emphasizing the least personal aspect of their relationship. That’s pretty breakup-y. But in the scenes following, both Reinhard (drinking wine out of Kircheis’s glass) and Kircheis express hope that they’ll be able to reach an understanding:

So no, I don’t think Reinhard or Kircheis intend to end their relationship at this juncture. They may have fought, and it may have been their worst fight by far (that we’ve seen), but they both harbor hope for reconciliation. Which brings us back to Kircheis, standing in his usual spot at the head of Reinhard’s admiralty, reminiscing about everything he’s been through with Reinhard over the years:

Of course Reinhard’s extremely soft eyes are the last frame of Kircheis’s recap-flashback—even when he’s mad, Kircheis’s thoughts about Reinhard are colored by how much he loves him, and he remembers him at his best.

And that’s where we leave them, before Ansbach walks in with a coffin containing Braunschweig, out of whose dead body he pulls a gun.

Stray Tidbits

Meanwhile, on the Tristan (Reuental’s flagship), Reuental and Mittermeyer have been playing poker to decide... who buys tomorrow’s wine? Apparently they drink together every night—not that that's at all surprising.

Incidentally, this is the second time we’ve seen Reuental and Mittermeyer 1. gamble while 2. gossiping about Reinhard and with 3. Reuental narrowly edging out Mittermeyer for a victory:

Remember this romantically charged game of nine-ball from way back in My Conquest?

One of the subtler extremely painful aspects of the Reinhard/Kircheis “What am I to you?” conversation is how quickly Kircheis believes Reinhard’s lie about his role in the Westerland massacre. And later in the episode, we see Reinhard’s only other source of emotional support in the world display a similar lack of faith in his moral compass:

It must be really sad and discouraging for Reinhard that those closest to him don’t believe in his ability to tell right from wrong. Obviously that’s no reason for him to act out by doing evil things or anything, but it’s still depressing as hell. Poor Reinhard.

Did Mittermeyer just... giggle? Well, in the novels, everyone in attendance barely suppresses their laughter during this scene, so yes, that seems to be what Mittermeyer is doing. Icebergs canon, then, is that Mittermeyer has the darkest sense of humor in Reinhard’s admiralty. Interesting!

Mind your business, Ferner.

[harlothane]

Death Note and Western Astrology - Part II

THIS IS A FOLLOW UP TO THIS POST. ( Here we talk about Sachiko, Ide, L Lawliet, Wedy, Ukita, Mello, Matsuda, Misa, Lester, Matt, Halle, Naomi, Light, and others)

I kindly asked @lux-mea-lex if she allowed me to finish this wonderful study in the astrology of Death Note, and guess what, here I am. To be true to her impressive work on Death Note, I will often be referring to her analysis. Mine tend to be rely on hers often anyhow so it doesn’t make a difference - and she has been more careful than me as she rely on pictures and text while I work from memory (careless Aquarian versus orderly Scorpion, I guess). So whenever there’s a link, please do take the time to read her posts, they will provide the evidence for what I am asserting. I am reminding you that you don’t need to believe in astrology to find interest in this post. Astrology is an amazing tool for writers, another way to construct characters and create oppositions in archetypes. I am convinced that Ohba did not choose the signs randomly. First, they took care of giving each character - even the super minor ones - a precise date of birth. Second, if you read Lex’s first part, then you must have realised the signs are all accurate, eerily so. This is only logical after all, that astrology can serve us to understand Death Note. Don’t be fooled, this isn’t another thriller, a complex crime story. It is first and foremost a story of fate, missed chances, what-ifs. A tragedy, in which the characters seek to escape fate only to fail, or die, or both (L and his encounter with Death ; Light and his inevitable downfall - a human cannot be a Shinigami ; Misa and her love, doomed to provoke her demise ; Mello, bound to lose, reaching for the stars and burning as a result, etc.) Death Note has always been linked to the supernatural, forces too great for humankind to grasp. It has always been about fragile humans and unfathomable gods. That second part explores the last signs, and among them, some of the most prominent ones : Libra (Sachiko Yagami, Ide, Kida), Scorpio (L. Lawliet, Wedy, Ukita), Sagittarius (Mello, Matsuda, Takahashi), Capricorn (Misa, Penber, Lester), Aquarius (Naomi, Matt, Lidner), Pisces (Light, “Jack Neylon”, Mido) I have to point out that the signs are evenly distributed - each sign gets three, and not one of the Yotsuba guys share the same sign, proving that the choice is not coincidential. These characters must be analysed together, the minor ones, perhaps, may serve to reveal hidden aspects of the main characters of the same sign. (This is exactly what happens in some stories, the minor one-arc character being a tool to make a point about a main character to the audience). My main reference is the fantastic website https://www.autourdelalune.com, written by an actual astrologer. It’s full of interesting resources, although entirely in French (but if you ever need a translation, feel free to knock on my door). I also am a big fan of http://songsdomain.tripod.com for the symbolism parts. The quotes all come from the latter website. We will always keep in mind this aspect : there are main, secondary and minor characters.

♎ LIBRA (AIR SIGN / CARDINAL) ♎

Characters: Sachiko Yagami (secondary), Ide (secondary), Kida (minor).

Main traits: principled, obliging, respectful, affectionate, delicate, elegant, moderate, romantic ; capricious, hesitant, fragile, easily swayed, absent minded.

Symbolism: justice, chivalry, harmony, artifice, balance, need for affection, empathy, love (Venus).

Tarot: Justice & Temperance. 

Libra is the sign of justice, harmony and pure, selfless love. This should strike us that there is no main character to represent these qualities throughout the story. Justice, especially, is almost absent. The tale of Death Note is not one of temperance: it’s a tragedy, with no place for peace nor rest. 

A quick survey of the qualities associated to Libra is telling : it fits our characters perfectly well. Often, it is more evident to see the influence of astrology with the minor characters. Those are archetypes, the author has no plan to develop them. As a result, minor characters barely diverge from the idealised portrait of their respective signs. 

Kida is the textbook Libra : he was a good student, seems peaceful and desires a calm existence. His hobby consist in collecting glasses - it’s clear that he isn’t supposed to frighten you, or anyone. During the Yotsuba Arc, he demonstrates his need for security (harmony) as he is the one who hires Eraldo Coil (actually, L). The How to Read stats underline his fragile nature (he scores 4/10 for emotional strength) and his social skills (Libra are quite friendly and loved by many). 

Now, this archetype is a guideline to better understand our secondary characters : Ide and Sachiko Yagami. One aspect that define Libra is their idealism - in the sense that grand Ideas inform their perception of the world. Love, especially, is an Ideal to them. 

Interestingly enough, Ide and Sachiko Yagami are both strongly tied to the theme of love. You probably remember it. Ide’s official stats even underline this as his “Romantic Luck” is described. As for Sachiko, she symbolises the lost harmony of the Yagami household. She is tidy, orderly and loving. Her relationship with Soichiro is the only solid, healthy romantic relationship in the story. She seems to obey her strong code when it comes to love: she is loyal to her husband no matter what happens. 

As for Ide, one of his most noticeable moment is the Hotel Room trick Light pulls to contact Mikami. Matsuda mocks Ide for his naive approach on the Light/Takada business (the amusing twist being that Light isn’t interested in her, making Matsuda sounds like the fool in the situation to the reader, but that’s just Death Note humour for you). We know that Ide’s love life isn’t successful and that is something that happens to the idealist Libra. They are often disappointed by real relationships, in opposition with the Idea. 

Libra's idea of love isn't necessarily your idea of a warm, cozy, delightful tête-à-tête.  More likely, it'll be one of his many theories on the nature of love and marriage, his ideals of the perfect relationship, his concepts about how people ought to behave toward each other, his urgent vision of a world where everything is absolutely balanced, polished, perfect, symmetrical, harmonious.  It can drive you mad.  This sign, whose symbol is the scales of balance, has less to do with ordinary sweaty human coupling than any other.  What?  Libra soil his hands?  Never.  Love, for Libra, must always be in the appropriate style:  a ritual of courtly love, complete with the right gestures, the right words, the right perfume, the right satin sheets, the right scented candles, the right flowers. 

In that regard, Sachiko, while being married, does not spend much time with her husband. This allow her to maintain this perfect idea of love : it cannot get ugly if they don’t see each other. She plays her role, Soichiro plays his, and everything stays pretty, beautiful, admirable. It is so typical of a Libra archetype, so bent on harmony that they become hypocrites. (In a way, Sachiko represents the human tendency to fit society’s expectations - the one thing Kira, the role Light endorsed, dares to challenge). 

Finally, Libra symbolises Justice. A crucial theme in Death Note… or is it? The theme is represented by secondary characters, and not the most memorable ones. This is so, so telling. I don’t need to provide you with an in-depth analysis to prove it : Death Note is not a story of Justice. Justice does not prevail at all, for none of our characters manage to live up to the Idea. They are humans, and only death is fair. This is no surprise that Libra are underrepresented ! Justice is forgotten, a lie or a dream no one attains in the end. 

(Libra) believes passionately in fairness, and this often causes him a great deal of unhappiness, because life and people aren't always fair.  Again and again his idealism collides with an imbalanced world full of imperfections and rough edges. 

Well. Of course, our Libra all end up miserable (Sachiko), scarred for life (Ide), dead (Mido).

♏ SCORPIO (WATER SIGN / FIXED) ♏

Characters: L. Lawliet (main), Wedy (secondary/minor), Ukita (minor).

Main traits: passionate, daring, ambitious, uncompromising, devoted, sensual, impulsive, firm ; unforgiving, diehard, resentful, obssessive, ambiguous, suspicious, inflexible

Symbolism: magnetism, death and sexuality, instinct, transformations, survival, endings, passion, suffering, self-destruction.

Tarot: the Devil, Death.

This one is fascinating. L is a complex, well-written character who often gets misinterpreted. Of course, he is a Scorpio !

First, I want to stress that most of what we see of him is likely to be (partly) an act - a HIGHLY suspicious, genius detective would never tear down his walls among people he might respect but barely knows, let alone with his main suspect nearby. at. all. times. during the Yotsuba arc. This is completely unrealistic to pretend otherwise. That doesn’t mean L is out of reach, though. As readers, we are in a position that allow us to decipher the character. With some help. Astrology, as I said, is a tool. Many of L’s traits are hidden, they’re not plain to see. Yet, if you know what to look for, some of his strange reactions become clearer.

Suffice it to say here that Scorpio has a great problem relinquishing control.  This means control on a lot of levels.  It may be controlling spontaneous expression or emotion outward - we all know the character that, even after a couple bottles of wine and a fifth of whiskey, still maintains his iron grip on himself, and will never, never allow himself to appear foolish or sloppy in front of others.  It may be controlling other people - and this is a real problem in Scorpio's close relationships.  It may be controlling life itself - where you find the arch-manipulators who pull the puppet strings all around themselves to keep the world in its place.

Nothing is left to chance in a Scorpion’s world.

Let’s start by a quick glance at our secondary/minor characters. The little we know of them is, again, fitting the archetype. Wedy is an attractive, intelligent, mysterious spy with a dangerous streak. She was, after all, a highly skilled professional criminal. I mean no offense by that, as I love the character, but she is almost a caricature  (which is fine, it happens to secondary characters all the time). Sensuality ? Check. Leather Pants ? Check. Shady past ? Check. Secretive, alluring, daring ? Check, again, no surprise here.

Symbolically speaking, she fits the bill. Wedy is a thief, and this is no coincidence. She made a career out of breaking defences, penetrating buildings, stealing secrets, concealed truths. This is reminiscient of Scorpions passion for truth; or rather, pure hatred for lies. They tend to be portrayed as human lie-detectors:

It's said that you can recognize a Scorpio by his stare.  That famous stare has become downright notorious in general astrology textbooks and sun-sign columns.  Enigmatic, penetrating, probing while revealing nothing, apparently hostile or ruthless.  The man with the x-ray vision.

If that sounds familiar....

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Ukita. Is he our typical Scorpio as well? Without a doubt. Symbolically speaking first, he is one of the first important characters to die. Scorpio is strongly associated with death, more precisely, sacrifices. This is Ukita’s choice to risk his life to arrest Kira, and so soon into the investigation! A true Scorpio indeed: reckless, passionate about his case, willing to die to attain the truth.

Ukita’s death touches the reader and why? Because it highlights L’s emotive side. We feel Ukita’s demise through L’s reactions…and they are numerous. Narratively, it serves to link the two characters : they must be similar in some way.

[L cares about no one but himself! How about you give it another read first?] Here is what L has learnt to hide:

(…) Scorpio, regardless of his habitual smokescreens - and make no mistake about it, Scorpio has the best smokescreens of any of the signs - is a sign of profound feeling and sensitivity, easily affected by the emotional currents inside him and around him, susceptible to the feelings of others, easily hurt, sympathetic, compassionate, often intensely lonely, and driven by an almost voracious need for relationship.

One weapon Scorpios wield with verve is observation. Masks don’t fool them, they see the face beneath, the monster crouched within your stomach, the ugliness eating your heart. Naturally, it is a Scorpio who has the courage to accuse perfect prodigy Light Yagami. Only a Scorpio would have dared make that assumption, and how it cost him. The Task Force resented L for that at times, his obsession with this one suspect, a mild-mannered, kind student they all had affection for.

Scorpio has an uncanny way of perceiving what other people don't wish to be known.  Often they don't know it themselves, which makes things even more uncomfortable.  It is very unnerving to feel that somebody knows something about you that you don't know yourself. 

By virtue of seeing what others prefer to deny, Scorpio is often the bad guy. L accepts to play the role, if need be. His methods certainly are questionable, and he is ready to cross moral boundaries to be proven right, or rather to unveil the hidden truth.

That doesn’t mean he wasn’t affected at times (please read this work of art). Yet, the Kira investigation is too important to let doubt eat at him. One aspect of L’s character I find is too often downplayed is the passion he has for the investigation. He is just as passionate as Light. He is just as involved. He was just as lonely and sad and bored.

if it interests him, then it will never be just a lukewarm job.  It will be done with heart, soul and body thrown in.  When you are really emotionally committed to something, you're going to put all of your talents and resources into it. (…) To Scorpio, skimming along the surface is offensive.  He loathes superficiality almost as much as he loathes weakness of character.  He must understand why he feels as he does, why he acts as he does, why others act and feel as they do.  (…) Scorpio must ultimately understand himself, and come to some kind of truce with the warring forces of his nature which allow him no peace.  

On the symbolic side, all our Scorpions are associated with an eternal cycle: they survive, even in death, in spite of the odds. 

Let's look at the figure which symbolizes Scorpio.  In very ancient astrology - Egyptian, Chaldean and Hebrew - Scorpio was represented not by the familiar scorpion, but by the serpent.  This is a profound symbol which tells us a lot about Scorpio.  Firstly, the serpent sheds his skin cynically, and was thought by the ancients to be immortal and capable of constant self-renewal.  Now this pattern of outgrowing a skin, sloughing it and growing a new one runs through Scorpio's life.  Often his life breaks up into distinct chapters, as he moves through one cycle after another.  All come to ultimate destruction.  Then he rebuilds and starts again.   (…) There is a fascinating legend about the scorpion:  if you corner him, and give him no avenue for escape, he will sting himself to death.   The message here is that Scorpio would rather destroy himself, and go down in flames by his own hand - literally or psychologically - than submit to another's ultimatum or control.

All of this could be applied to Ukita - he dies but his sacrifice strenghtens the determination of the JTF - and Wedy, a spy who collects false identities and defies death. L, of course, can be seen through that lens. He is more than a man, he became a role and an Idea, a letter whose aura rivaled a God’s. (His Tarot Card? The Devil!)

♐ SAGITTARIUS (FIRE SIGN / MUTABLE) ♐

Characters: Mello, Matsuda, Takahashi.

Main traits: generous, benevolent, curious, zealous, dynamic, courageous, imaginative, risk-taker, enthusiasm ; (too) ambitious, reckless, excessive, utopian, self-centered, irascible.

Symbolism: faith, idealism, knowledge, philosophy, truth, independance, adventures, key moments.

Tarot: the Chariot, the Wheel of Fortune.

You probably need to be reminded of Takahashi’s face. Here. Chances are, no one remembers him. This is our entry to understanding Sags in Death Note, you see, Takahashi’s fate is to be forgotten. Matsuda and Mello follow that path.

Not that they deserve it! The How to Read states that Takahashi was scorned upon because of his impulsive nature (”tends to speak before thinking”). He couldn’t be a leader. And guess what? He existed only for Higuchi to look good in comparison. Tell me that doesn’t bother you on some level that he shares his sign with Matsuda and Mello.

Yes, this is depressing. Mello and Matsuda keep being underestimated. They are the second (or third, or fourth, in Matsuda’s case) choice, too brash to count on, too childish to rely on. Yet, they both intervene in crucial ways toward the end - changing it radically and forever (the Wheel of Fortune is their card). Mello and Matsuda’s moves shape the very last part of the story. We don’t see them coming because we underestimated their quest, the path they followed to get there.

The goal is really, after all, relatively insignificant.  There is a basic attitude innate in Sagittarius that life is an adventure, a journey, a quest - and the real sport of living is to make that journey as interesting, as varied, as expansive, and as informative as possible.  Arrival is not the point. (…) It's the ideal that drives them, the possibility of something new and exciting.  The adventure, the unexplored mystery, the unobtainable goal, the one that got away (…)

Mello’s goal is never clear: revenge, personal accomplishment? To the reader, perhaps to himself as well, his moves are unpredictable for this precise reason. Sags don’t know where they headed to. They never stay still, though. Mello, as a character, is a wild card. He acts in mysterious ways, rarely unveils his true intentions to the point that the nature of his death is a debate in the fandom - was it a sacrifice on his part? Did he have a death wish? There are clues, but nothing definitive. This is the point! Sags act first, with all their heart.

Sagittarius loves to play roles - the more theatrical, the better.  Being caught in the same costume twice is quite horrific for him.  His restless mind is always seeking new ways to approach those goals, new costumes, new poses, new techniques.

Matsuda is one of the rare secondary characters - aside from L’s associates - to share the double identity motif with Light and Lawliet. During the Yotsuba arc, he played the role of Misa’s manager with pleasure. 

His impulsive side shows again in this storyline and later when he volunteers for the Shinigami eyes exchange. They have a near unbreakable faith. This is the sign of mystics after all. 

Sags are strongly tied to religion, a connection you could discern in Matsuda’s blind faith in Light (and sympathy for Kira). Religion is also a strong motif when it comes to analyse Mello’s character:

In a sentence, at the heart of Sagittarius there lies a great craving to explore and understand life.  Whether orthodox or not, Sagittarius, like Leo, is a deeply religious sign, and the word religious is here used in its original sense:  to reconnect.  This means reconnection with the source, with the roots of life, with some sense of meaning.  Whether you find him traveling as a salesman or an archaeologist, a poet or a scholar, whatever profession or job he lands himself in.  Sagittarius is trying to broaden his scope, to enlarge his consciousness.  

Others mistake his strength with stupidity - a recurrent problem Sags encounter - when Matsuda is a selfless, dedicated person. They love, trust, admire without any boundaries, and they’re bound to be fooled. Mello, unable to reach a star named L. Matsuda, betrayed by a man as perfect as an ideal.

How to put it…?

And in an odd sort of way Sagittarius is the biggest sign - in terms of horizons.  Better to shoot an arrow high and lose it than to aim low.  

Neither of them ever aimed low, and oh Light could not ignore both Matsuda’s and Mello’s bullets in the end.

♑ CAPRICORN (EARTH SIGN / CARDINAL)  ♑

Characters: Misa Amane, Anthony Lester, Raye Penber.

Main traits: calm, honest, cautious, discreet, responsible, hard-working, resolute, determined, loyal ; stern, stubborn, easily hurt, introverted, anxious. 

Symbolism: integrity, willpower, solidity, success, silence, time, reason, ambition, humility.

Tarot: the Hermit, the Tower.

Capricorns tend to be unlucky. Well, Raye and Misa can certainly confirm. Lester makes it out alive, but he arguably has the worst job in all the SPK. He never gets any of the spying and action. No, Lester is a cautious, calm, discreet man. He the rock, that unwavering presence Near needs (a Virgo, one of Capricorn’s trusty friends).

Often he'll play the humble servant, the one who has no ambitions, who only seeks to help, while he waits and assesses and plans.  But there's no time for wasted time with Capricorn, no space for useless leisure and play.  Serious?  Yes, you might say that about Capricorn too.

One archetype the Capricorn is close to is the Monk. They are devoted to a cause they deem worthy, willing to fight for it in the shadows. Ambition comes second if the cause is right. They will obey. And they never give up. It’s a matter of pride (oh, they are prideful, have you met Raye Penber?)

Many Capricorns follow the classical goat's pattern of having to carry responsibility or hardship very early in life.  The goat doesn't take kindly to having his secrets probed too quickly.  He must first know exactly where he stands, and exactly who you are, and exactly what you want, before he is willing to show his hand.  Suspicious?  Yes, you might say that.  Suspicion is a natural propensity with Capricorn; sometimes it goes the wrong way and becomes profound mistrust of life and people, but the better face of it is caution and realism.  

We do not much about Penber and Lester. Misa, though, has had a miserable life up until she found a cause in Kira. Hardship, yup, that’s the word. She grew to despise humanity’s failings, chose to hide all her bitterness, turn it into an iron will to succeed and to spread happiness. This is how I read her ambition to become a star. She wanted to shine: she succeeded. It is often overlooked! Misa is hard-working, dedicated to climb up the social ladder. Without the Death Note, she would have won at the game of life, finally letting her past go to write a better, beautiful story. She would have become a symbol of hope.

...Have I told you that Capricorns are unlucky?

Survival is another key theme for Capricorn.  To the goat, the world isn't always a friendly, bountiful place.  It's as if his antennae are always plugged into what might go wrong, rather than what might go right. ..  Nothing is ever taken for granted by the goat, least of all luck, which to Capricorn is a highly untrustworthy and often nonexistent commodity.  He'd rather replace luck with good, solid hard work 

The Death Note prevented her to move on from the past. She got stuck in a cause that ruined her life. That happens to Capricorns: forgive and forget is something they have trouble doing. The Death Note forever closed that door for Misa Amane. Death Note is a story of masks and hidden motives. Don’t pretend to know about Misa Amane right away. She has a mask, same as the others. The naive, air-headed idol is a scarred child, a resentful young woman who needed a cause to believe in. Someone who has nothing will give up even herself for a promise of hope. Light was that, to her.

Capricorns might be hard to convince, but once you have their trust, you’ll have to work hard to lose it. They will do unspeakable things, if the cause is right.

Saturn is also often portrayed as a ruthless figure in mythology, who will stop at nothing - even his own father's destruction - to seize power.  Ruthlessness may often be seen in the goat, and the field of politics swarms with Capricorns.  But it's always a necessary ruthlessness, and rarely stems from a wanton malice or cruelty.

Never forget that Misa is far more devoted to the cause than Light ever was. She has none of his hypocrisy on the matter: Misa without her memories still support Kira. It is clear to her: Kira is right. She only stands by Light’s side because she remembers loving him (yet, doesn’t know why). This show that Misa, while sharing Kira’s ideas, deems emotional security more important. Indeed:

Work and success aren't the whole picture to Capricorn.  Because he's very concerned with tradition and structure, his family life is also often highly important.  Structure is yet another keynote for the sign, and marriage and family commitments are often taken with great seriousness and responsibility.  Capricorns don't like to break promises, they like to be thought responsible, and it's important to their self-image to have the world see them that way.

One of Misa’s most important moments comes after she accepts L as a friend. She will never betray her friends. Her sincerity in that instant is touching: the Death Note also twisted her fate, woke all the worst parts of her. She wasn’t destined to this.

He's often more of an idealist than you'd expect, in that he may have a vision of how to improve the world, or the small corner of the world he inhabits.  Mystical, he isn't, and his ideals are always attainable ones.  He makes sure of that, and also usually makes sure he has the resources and the skills to achieve them in his lifetime.  He won't sit idly by and let others bring to birth his vision; he hates to delegate responsibility, and usually believes he must do it himself.

Contrary to popular belief, Misa isn’t a mere follower. She takes initiatives, and she’s the one to find Light, to strenghtens his power and cause. (I know I barely talked about Raye, but the few moments he has are all very Capricorn-y: he is attached to tradition (to a fault), seems to be stern and hard-working and unlucky).

  ♒ AQUARIUS (AIR SIGN / FIXED)  ♒

Characters: Naomi Misora, Halle Lidner, Matt.

Main traits: visionary, progressive, mobile, independant, altruistic, non-violent, sensitive ; excentric, nervous, restless, touchy, impatient, individualistic.

Symbolism: individualism, a stroke of genius, transmission (electricity), surprises, cooperation, marginality, revolutions, unpredictability, hope, freedom, ideals.

Tarot: the Star, the Fool 

Aquarians do not mind standing behind a friend. I know, I’m one of those. I tell you, Ohba chose the signs carefully. Look at all our water-bearers here: they all stood, loyal as a shadow, behind someone. Naomi sacrificed her life to discover the truth behind Raye’s death. Halle managed to remain loyal to both Mello and Near without betraying any of them - she tied them together - in a sense, it’s the idea of L she was loyal to all along. She made that happen, a true “stroke of genius” (a symbol of Aquarius). Matt existed as a character to help Mello, and to highlight an unseen side of him, calm and caring.

Narratively,  they all exist to complete another character. They would see no shame in that. Aquarians always look at the big picture : what are their life worth in comparison with a desirable future?

Aquarius is about love and brotherhood.  Or perhaps, we should say, with more accuracy, that it is about ideals - and the ideals of love and brotherhood are among many which are formulated in the forward-looking Aquarian mind.  Particularly ideals about the group, the welfare of humanity, the future of society. 

This is telling that you cannot detach any of these characters from the ideals, groups or people they serve.

He often has a horror of being what he calls 'selfish', which is very noble but not very psychologically healthy.  Regardless of his personal likes and dislikes, his dedication to his beliefs is unshakeable.  And this dedication is often to the objective perspective, the broad canvas, a code of ethics or principles by which he believes he should live.  And, of course, he is often dedicated to Truth.  Yes, it's capitalized, that word Truth.  For Aquarius, there is generally only one Truth (…) On the other hand, he doesn't much like individuals.  Aquarius is the fellow who loves humanity and doesn't like people.  He can be brusque, cool, unfeeling, insensitive, rigid, dogmatic, and downright stupid when it comes to the subtleties of human relationships.

Aquarians are humanists who prefer a solitary life: Halle seems to fit the bill, Misora probably wouldn’t have loved the tranquil life Raye was offering her. As for Matt, he embodies the Aquarius archetype: detached, aloof and yet able to maintain a strong friendship (Aquarians need at least one strong friendship). Still, they all seemed like independent people. 

I also believe that Misora, while being very intelligent, was a bad judge of character. It fits with the Aquarius archetype that she understood Kira’s intricate plans and failed to see the monster Light was carrying with him. (He didn’t hide it that well, but Aquarians tend to trust the wrong people).

And most important, with all this obsession about the rights of others and what they ought to do and be, they forget about themselves - to such an extent that they mince their own emotions to pieces through simple lack of expression.  

Well, we all know them thanks to the ones standing before them on the stage. Without these brilliant minds acting as their shadows, neither Mello nor Near would have won. All that selflessness, for friendship, for ideas, for a better future (their card symbolises this: the Star shining above us all). 

♓ PISCES (WATER SIGN / MUTABLE)  ♓

Characters: Light Yagami, “Jack Neylon”, Mido

Main traits: charitable, devoted, patient, compassionate, shrewd, observant, unassuming ; sensitive, ambivalent, resigned, submissive, dreamy, indolent, vulnerable, shifty.

Symbolism: illusions, prisons, secrets, contemplation, guides, transcendence, madness, psychology, escape, solitude.

Tarot: The Hierophant/The Pope & The Hanged Man.

Really now, I will not dwell on Neylon nor Mido because the only thing we know about them is this: they are weak. And this is our guideline to understand Light Yagami. You don’t need a map nor a guide, no. Weakness. Mido, especially, is explicitly connected to Light: his father is a powerful man, his hobby is fencing (Light and L were supposed to be fencing at first, instead of play tennis), he graduated from To-Oh University’s Law department, and he is full of contradictions: he despises finance and works at Yotsuba. Mido resembles a man who couldn’t choose his own fate. Weakness. Here’s your key.

I have always argued against the “Kira is Light’s other personality” interpretation, as it diminishes Light’s character. He has consciousness of his actions. That said, Kira is very much a mask, a persona that Light crafted BUT he forged it using materials others provided, as evidenced from the start. Light made Kira out of his supporters’ hopes, it is a God people created. Read this, and think of Light working hard to become Kira:

(...) the tendency Pisceans to become the people with whom they are strongly involved causes many of them to be subsumed.  Sometimes texts refer to Pisces as 'wishy-washy', because there is a passivity, a kind of inertia in these people that shows most clearly when a crisis is upon them 

There is a kind of passivity with Light’s relationship with Kira (an Ideal, in the purest sense of the word, NOT a person). Deep down, Light understands the sentiments that led people to believe in Kira - that despair, that lingering, poisonous sadness. Yet, he disagrees with the ideas Kira represents. His education taught him better. He also tends to mimic his father during the Yotsuba arc, and L after the Detective’s death.

It is crucial to remember why Light started to kill : boredom, and dare I say, sadness. A moment of weakness, from a teenager who longer for ... anything, something else.

(...) perhaps the task of every Piscean is to come to terms in some way with the transpersonal realm, and to have the courage to be its mouthpiece.  Here we find the poets and musicians, the great actors and playwrights, the visionaries and mystics who attempt to bring to ordinary life a glimpse of something else.

Pisces is the sign of the mystic.  And this mystical streak means several things.  For one thing, many Pisceans are deeply religious - although not necessarily in an orthodox way.  But they have a longing for, and a sense of, some other reality, something transcendant, magical, elusive, that makes ordinary life seem drab and meaningles

As @lux-mea-lex demonstrated it many times, Light broke his own fate. He wasn’t destined to fall. The Drama provided an excellent take on this: Light is tempted to end his own life after the first murder. This is perfectly sound to think so - Light knew he acted on his feelings, that he was weak, that Soichiro Yagami was right and that no man should decide to judge humanity. Light’s sentiments were dissonant. It contradicted all he had been taught.

But Light’s feelings are the core of his actions. He is intelligent, yet, how often does he end up being betrayed by his own irrationality? Pisceans are prone to emotional outburts they fail to understand themselves. Light is his own worst enemy : he knew he couldn’t continue on his killing spree, his brain, his soul would suffer (why is it so often downplayed? 

And then came Kira. Light threw himself in the arms of Kira, the God people wanted, because it gave him a cause. It made his suffering worth it: he was a martyr, he was a saviour, “the God everyone wanted”. He was a Chosen One, just so. How romantic is that? How Piscean are you, Light.

And Light voluntarily put his life, his soul, his emotions on hold (as much as he could) in order to become that God (the one everyone wanted - this phrasing is telling) Everything about this analysis fits our Pisces archetype : the need to sacrifice oneself, the chameleon aspect, the connection to the Martyr.

Pisces is the last sign, the completion of the cycle.  Every sign leaves its trace in Pisces; there is not so much a particular Piscean dilemma as that Pisces embodies the human dilemma.  In this last of the zodiacal signs is represented all of man's helplessness, his longings, his dreams, his needs, his powerlessness in the face of the universe, his delusions of grandeur, his longing for love, his sense of a mystery or a divine source which he strives for, yet cannot wholly reach without great sacrifice.  

To understand Light, you have to reconcile idealistic memoryless!Light and cynical Kira!Light. The worst cynics are made of the same fabric as wide-eyed idealists: both refuse to see the world as it is. Light is one of those. I wrote once something along the lines of : “the world could never be as tidy as his mother’s home”. Light has a tangled state of mind from the start, he was bound to be disappointed someday but the fall wasn’t destined to be fatal. Ohba says that he would have worked with L, in the end. The Death Note gave him the opportunity to work with L, to become L, and to fall all the same. Let’s put it that way:

You might say that in every Pisces, symbolized by the two fishes trying to swim in opposite directions yet bound together by a golden cord, there is this dilemma of the meeting of two dimensions.  There is the ordinary mortal side, which is used to facts and realities of a tangible kind.  Eat, sleep, make love, and die - or bread and circuses, as the Romans used to say.  And there is also a melusine - or, in the case of Pisces women, the masculine equivalent - which inhabits the dark depths, and which occasionally flashes its tail above the water, catching the sunlight, entrancing the mortal on the shore.  How this meeting is dealt with is the story of each Piscean life.  Some Pisceans simply follow the mermaid down, forgetting that human lungs cannot survive underwater.

Light drowned for 12 volumes. This is why I associate Light to the most beautiful part of Lorenzaccio: “I, during all this time, have dived; I have plunged into this rough sea of life; I have traversed all the depths of it, covered with my diving-bell; while you were admiring the surface, I saw the debris of shipwrecks, the bones and the leviathans”.  The mistake is to analyse Light’s motives rationally. Intelligence does not mean coldness, or rationality. Light becomes cold, never rational. His actions are rooted in all kinds of deep, powerful feelings: despair, pride, mostly despair. He will never stop for as long as these feelings live within him, and anyway:

The Fish is a creature which lives underwater.  And Pisces does too.  He moves in the depths of a world which is difficult to fathom if you are an airy, earthy, rational type.  Everything is seen double, or in quadruplicate, nothing is ever simple or clear.  Every thought and action has thousands of associations which ripple out into infinity.  Pisces does not understand boundaries (…) Everything to excess.  It's because he doesn't really understand how to discriminate, how to limit, how to choose (...)  What he has to compensate for this rather disturbing failing is a boundless imagination.  For here too, the Pisces has no limits.  He can envision anything.  Einstein was a Pisces, and a good example of where a brilliant intellect can go when it is not hidebound by conventions and dogmas.

This might be the crucial part: Light does not follow a strict guideline; Kira, to him, was an excuse, an opportunity, a miracle. The gateway he needed not to kill himself after breaking a sacred rule. Kira was never, ever, synonym with a dogma. He inflicted one on others, because that was his role as a godly figure. Light himself, though, he was never coherent. It is most telling when Light says Kira will become Justice when his opponents are all dead. Mikami and Takada already think Kira is justice : Kira is inherently good and just to them, there is no discussion! They are ideologues, they follow a strict guideline. Light, deep down, knows the truth: Kira is not the incarnation of Justice, or Humanity’s new saviour. Kira is is personal saviour, the one who rescued Light from death and self-loathing. Nothing more, nothing less.

How could I put it in fewer words?

Pisces has a real problem coping with reality.  That is, with the one bound by time and space and structure and facts.  Although his intuition may be lightning-quick, and his intellect brilliant, he will often overlook something simple, like the electricity bill.

Light is willing the overlook Kira’s true nature for his own sake…oh, and humanity’s too, because part of him surely believe criminals deserve to die. But that was never the point: Light could have murdered as many criminals as he wanted without creating a pattern. 

He wanted people to NOTICE him. He had to, because that gave him legitimacy, a status, a role to play. As a solitary criminal no one noticed or remembered or named, Light would have ended up killing himself. So he welcomed the name Kira, with all the contradictions it entails (”Killer”), and used Light Yagami as his best weapon. After all, Pisceans are masterful when it comes to hide their passionate, emotive nature. They tend to be ashamed of it, even, and young Light certainly knew how to hide beneath his good grades before the Death Note:

Many Pisceans simply cannot accept the size of the challenge.  And, after all, who can blame them?  It is not easy to make peace with melusine; and our education does not help us, since it tends to emphasize that anybody with the secret life of the Pisces must be at best a lazy daydreamer, and at worst emotionally disturbed. (…) Pisces is more easily distorted, more easily pressured by a hostile environment, than any other sign.  So the melusine calls unheard from the depths of the soul, and the average Piscean disguises himself from himself by a rationalistic attitude toward life.  

Light perfected the role of Kira, he embraced it because he relished the influence he could have on a world so hostile to him. Also, Pisceans are attracted to godly motifs:

The Fish is one of the great symbols of Christianity; and in this symbol can be found many important themes that pertain to Pisces, both in this broad way and in the individual life of the person born under the sign.  Firstly, there is the aspiration.  Before the coming of Christianity, man and God were two different things; there could be communication between them, there could be enmity or friendship; but man was not like God and God was not like man, and never the twain could meet.  But one of the essential meanings of the Christian myth is that God incarnates as man:  that there is a halfway point, an intermediary, a bridging of the two worlds.  We are back to our friend the melusine here.  But, instead of melusine, read soul or spirit.  So, we can, if we want to consider the religious aspect of Pisces, say that there is a strong awareness in many Pisceans, especially the more mystical ones, of themselves - and the whole of mankind - being some kind of halfway house between animal and divine.  

Be attentive of what-ifs when analysing a character. Why if Light had stopped killing after the first murder? After all, he was tempted to at first. He could have continued on his path, with acute awareness of the psychological impact of suppressing a human life. He could have made himself a better person out of this experience. That is without counting on one pivotal aspect of Light’s personality, something strongly linked to his Piscean nature:

Pisces may often be found searching desperately for a cause to which he can devote himself, even sacrifice himself. (…) Pisces is also an incurable romantic.  He may have many defences to hide this innate tendency, but romantic he was born and romantic he will die.  And romance doesn't just mean about love affairs.  It means about everything.  The house he lives in must be a castle, with moat and drawbridge; the car must be exotic, the bed revolving with platforms and coloured lights….well, you get the idea.  He lives in his imagination.

Light couldn’t face the real world, hide underwater, drowned. The Dreamer ruined himself. That’s all you need to know.

[mild-lunacy]

TFP and The Transgressive Writer's Problem

I mean... the thrilling thing about writing this one was the transgressive nature of it. It was like, well... we're not gonna have a pun in the title: it's The Final Problem. We sent a message saying: 'look out!' And really, from the moment Mycroft reveals what's inside his umbrella, you kinda go, 'oh shit!' And that was thrilling, wasn't it? It was just like, well... you know, we wanna present it as if there's absolutely no way back. And so once you've got that in your head, it sort of becomes this succession of things, and... sort of, the modular nature of the problems, and then the rug pulls of, you know, 'she's in charge', and the glass and everything.... It was just a thrill to do, because it had such a 'finale' feel to it.

-- Mark Gatiss, the BFI screening of The Final Problem.

You know, I do believe in Ivy's approach to Authorial Intent: it's effectively not there, so don't worry about the things you will never really know about. But well... sometimes the things the creators say are too interesting and enlightening to ignore. So I'm definitely still thinking about this.

This may ultimately be partly why you have posts like @marsdaydream's, claiming that much of S3 as well as Series 4 in general (and TFP in particular) defies analysis. If analysis depends on predictability-- or a certain *kind* of continuity, understood to mean that the narrative behaves within firmly established rules-- then I can see why TFP (and TSoT, certainly TAB, not to mention TLD) would all present a problem. As I said in my earlier response specifically about TFP shifting the genre, the genre of BBC Sherlock has always been a lot roomier and more flexible than people seemed to think, and we've been moving in the direction of more and more dramatic 'rug pulls' for quite a while. Still, TFP is definitely when anyone can see 'there's absolutely no way back', as Gatiss said (naturally ignoring a major, extreme retcon). This extreme shift was clearly not 'thrilling' for a lot of fans, though I think I had the intended response of edge-of-my-seat excitement at the time. But what did Gatiss really mean by TFP being 'transgressive'?

This is where I find that the context of @notagarroter's TRF to TFP mortality arc meta really helped me understand and put it in context of Sherlock's arc in general, as I did yesterday. Basically, as @notagarroter points out, there are many cues that something very different-- and disturbing-- is afoot. It's not just that reveal of what's really in Mycroft's umbrella, as Gatiss mentioned, but the fact that we're in this sterile, artificial environment away from Baker Street and London in general, and there are no typical visual cues of BBC Sherlock; there's no case, client or even texts on screen, not to mention Sherlock's classic deduction sequences. 'Vatican Cameos' probably didn't work for the first time just to further the effect, at least in part: that feeling of 'oh shit!' The entire episode opens with a horror movie-style sequence! It's clear that the narrative is trying to unsettle and discomfit the audience, leave the viewers off-kilter and open to anything. Specifically open to the idea that 'anyone might die'.

I definitely find that frame very helpful, but I think it goes deeper than that. They're not trying to just up the suspense, but to make the audience question what we think we know about these characters on a much deeper level. Both the viewers and John himself had already spent TST upending our understanding of Mary yet *again* after her sudden self-sacrifice, and people like @archipelagoarchaea quit the show because of that sudden shift. Basically, John hating Sherlock for something he didn't do, letting his issues with Mary fall by the wayside as he realized he'd been so unhappy and frustrated with his marriage while Mary took the high road and expected him to be a better man, as @ivyblossom described to me. We then spent TLD learning some uncomfortable truths about John, and a lot of the compiled fan responses to John's violence were both negative and purely disbelieving, claiming his psychological break was either simply OOC or perhaps in-character but unnecessary or unsuitable for a Sherlock Holmes story. Of course, I think both John and Sherlock's characterization has only opened up and blossomed in many ways through all this drama, as Ivy has written about so eloquently, but for many viewers, there was already 'no way back', and that's too terrifying and disorienting to enjoy, especially with beloved characters. While the alternative of gentle stasis isn't necessarily desired, and people do want some growth, I definitely think there are intended to be limits; the audience wants to be reassured of things like Sherlock Holmes won't die, or John Watson would certainly never beat him. The needs of continuity are sometimes invisibly overwritten by the concept of predictability.

I guess I really think the idea of the 'transgressive' story, and what that means and how it can possibly be done well merits sitting with and thinking about open-endedly. Assuming that Moffat and Gatiss *wanted* the audience to be disoriented and disturbed-- as narrative transgression has the unique power to accomplish-- TFP becomes a fascinating case study of the needs of the story for continuity. This, as opposed to the ends of the writers in experimenting with a diversity of structures and approaches. Finally, we have the needs of the audience for *predictability*. More to the point, as any experimental writer learns, stylistic experimentation isn't what sells. Fluff, action, smut and/or romance and above all, pure consistency is what really gets you the audience in numbers.

Obviously, a lot of us wanted to see that sort of 'rug pull' translate to canon Johnlock, and we looked forward to others' disorientation. There's certainly some schadenfreude in that. But the actual experience of extreme disorientation, especially in a long-running and well-established series, tends to not go well for most people, who seem to develop a set of expectations about the narrative the longer it continues. I remember people being very upset at the 'rug pull' endings of Lost and HIMYM, for example. I definitely think these are valid responses. While I can see both plot and characterization continuity in Series 4 in general and TFP specifically, what TFP really interrupts is the comfort of the viewers' *emotional* continuity. We just... place emotional value in certain things: it's our Baker Street, our London, and it's even our Belstaff. Questioning the foundation of the narrative we're experiencing in fiction is only slightly less traumatizing in fiction than it would be in real life, especially if you thought you had an expected and well-ordered pathway ahead, and I empathize with anyone to whom it feels like gaslighting, as in @delurkingdetective's post. To Gatiss and Moffat, it's their show they're playing around with self-indulgently, though perhaps particularly for Mark Gatiss. He enjoyed 'flirting with the homoeroticism' in the show, so he did. He never felt the need to justify himself, and you could certainly argue that's because he didn't. The writers get to write their own story their own way, and then the audience decides.

As a writer myself, I'm torn between the idea that the story needs to follow the natural process of its own logic and the demands of its characters, and the idea that you're there to shake things up. It's not that you can't 'shake things up' and remain in-character (as I'd say TFP still has done), but any experimentation with the preset 'narrative settings' can leave a sort of weirdly artificial or meta feel that the audience can pick up on. In TFP, you can get the sense that the drama has been paced awkwardly, stylized to the point that it becomes self-consciously artificial, as in @plaidadder's critique. The classic Holmesian format of the character arc driven, episodic plot style of narrative logic is inherently conservative, I think, being what @porcupine-girl has called the 'archplot' based story. Conversely, it figures that privileging the plot, the pacing or the 'thrill' of the reveal will eventually lead to stuff where the audience sees a conflict between the needs of the story and the character they saw in their minds-- and to overcome this reluctance would take more time than a fast-paced story would allow. And so, here we are: it seems like transgression was the real villain of Series 4. That's what makes it feel *fake*, basically.

Initially, I addressed this critique by saying that one essentially can't have a rational response to saying that a narrative 'feels' wrong, but perhaps that's not quite true, given you have something like Gatiss acknowledging he set out to induce this response in the viewers, more or less. In retrospect, this is why long-form structural continuity (or the 'archplot', which is at least 60% about John and Sherlock's interpersonal relationship) really is so important to follow through on explicitly rather than leaving the emotional satisfaction of resolving Sherlock's arc to implicit or hinted-at scenes between TLD and TFP. The audience would follow along with the gaps if they were explicitly pointed to first. Gatiss would probably consider this 'warm paste', but if you're writing for either a wide enough or an analytical audience-- and Sherlock fandom has both in spades-- a certain amount of warm paste might help the thrills last.

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Does anyone have experience adding cofounders, or being added as a cofounder, in a company that has already been around a few years? Any suggestions on which cofounder matching sites would be best for a hardware startup or late-co-founder searching? Where else to look and share? Any other advice or feedback is also appreciated.About a week ago I decided to start actively looking for more co-founders. My plans are to reach out in my existing network, go to more networking events, post on reddit in appropriate subs, and use third party co-founder finding sites.This is different from my first attempts in 2015/2016 because my company has existed since 2015 and has been shipping products since summer 2018, but it's still very much in the early stages and has not taken on any investors. I still consider the company a startup because it has potential for significant rapid growth and although it's more of a hardware business right now, the value proposition and core technology are not dependent on our, or any, specific hardware.The main reason I decided to make a post here is because I tried posting in /r/cofounder but my post is being blocked/deleted and the mods are not responding. I made my very first post in /r/crowdspark which is a similar new sub and that went okay for getting feedback, but the users there were more interested in downvoting because the estimated equity range had a low end of 1% equity (I've thought about it now and that was a bad idea, what co-founder would only be worth 1%?), but at least the post is up so it may still get more engagement later. I considered /r/forhire but that is more for normal paying jobs, and their rules state "NO REQUESTING OR OFFERING FREE WORK" but getting equity is compensation and not working for free, but then further down under If you're Hiring: it says "Pay in currency, not in equity or barter" so I decided not a good idea and it doesn't really fit in there.I want to do more online searching because my local area is not great, though it could be worse, for networking and finding cofounders, it has a small startup community but events are infrequent. I also plan to relocate coast-to-coast and bring everyone into one office in a couple years, so while having someone local is definitely better, it's not the most important factor to me.I'll share my post below which has more details and more of my thought process as well. This was for reddit, but I plan to use similar content for third party sites and for in-person networking, so feedback can help with all aspects of my search. If mods think sharing the full post is not adding enough value for potentially going against the rules then let me know and I'll pull out my thought process stuff and save the full thing for a sticky post.TITLE: Looking for various late-co-founders; Must Love LEDs and Music; Hardware/Technology startup w/ 2 members; profitable & self-sustainingThis is a very recent effort, we could bring on 1 or 4 cofounders, and it could happen tomorrow or in a year. Feedback on the approach and any suggestions are greatly appreciated. I shared my thoughts and reasoning throughout rather than making this a sterile job posting, partly because this is not a job posting, it is an open search for cofounders, but also to allow my logic and reasoning to be critiqued, and so others in similar situations (from either side) may gain more value from this post.Company Overview: We currently sell a single music reactive LED controller for the niche/high-end consumer and small to medium commercial installation markets. We will be developing additional controllers for consumer and commercial use, and accessories, as well as monetizing our technology via other avenues. Our long-term plan is to remain a small innovative technology company focusing on lighting automation, continuing to develop and sell hardware products to implement the most advanced automation possible, but focusing on primary revenue via other avenues.We are profitable and self-sustaining, but nobody is getting rich yet, nor even getting close to a market rate salary. Things are stable now, but it was a very bumpy and perilous road to get here.Value Proposition: Autonomous, real-time conversion of music into lightshows with high accuracy and high complexity. This functionality not only covers the raw data analysis to correctly synchronize lights with beats, it more importantly covers the artistic work of a lighting designer to create a lightshow that causes an emotional response. A quote from a customer:"Loving the ViVi, such an amazing device. When it first started working I had tears in my eyes, I was so awe struck! Just tested it out with my strips, next I'm going to set it all up over the next few days. Thank you!!"A strong second value proposition is reducing cost for creating and installing complex lightshows. Cost is reduced by lowering physical equipment costs as well as eliminating the time needed for programming/controlling light shows manually. A lightshow experience previously only possible with multiple stage lighting fixtures, additional controllers, a PC, and manually programmed shows per song is now possible with our standalone controller and digitally addressable LED strips. We have more planned to expand on and remain the industry leader for both of these value propositions.Who we already have and are NOT looking for:Marketing Director – manage marketing strategies, manage ad accounts, write copy, some sales and networking; plus all supporting marketing tasks (currently part-time)CTO – product and technology research, plan and prototype products, write magic firmware for products (less magical portions could be taken over by someone else); and currently everything else to run the business (full-time)WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR: Anyone who thinks they could be of significant value in growing our company. Ability to work without pay for a year. Office is currently in Virginia Beach, VA; remote work is possible; likely to relocate to California in 2-4 years. Part-time with future switch to full-time may also be possible.We are also seeking a paid, part-time, non-founder, employee local to Virginia Beach, VA for product assembly, testing, packaging, technical writing, and other tasks.Some specific examples of desired team members include, but are not limited to:Electrical Engineer – experience with PCB design for mass production, audio circuits, digital LEDs, DMXApp Developer – experience with both Android and iOS, BLE communication, Alexa/GoogleHome/IFTTT/etc.Product/Manufacturing Manager – experience with managing supply chain, manufacturing, logistics, inventory, distribution of hardware productsCEO – experience with hardware startup or smaller hardware companyAgain, we are seeking anyone who thinks they would be valuable to the company, so if you are familiar with what it takes to operate a company like this and think you would be valuable as a co-founder then you could be a great fit. There is a whole lot covered by “everything else to run the business” that is not covered by the example team members above, and filling the role for any big chunk of that everything else will allow our company to grow faster.COMPENSATION: Equity, variable depending on position and experience, 3% to 15%. We are an LLC, you would become an LLC member and directly own part of the company. No initial salary. When and how much can be discussed based on personal situation, it won’t be market competitive for at least 2 years because we need to reinvest significantly for growth. We want someone able to work without pay for a year to avoid the situation of choosing between losing a cofounder (who wants/needs more pay) vs slowing down growth/development.Why late-co-founders? My plan and thoughts. First a quick history: summer 2015 solo founded; spring 2016 KS #1 failed; summer 2016 added marketing co-founder; fall 2016 KS #2 success; winter 2016 – spring 2018 IGG on-demand to continue pre-orders, many delays, lots of work, $130k total raised; summer 2018 all pre-orders delivered, begin selling on Amazon and direct sales for commercial/bulk; fall 2019 surprise problems, inventory, and sales have stabilized enough to allow better long-term planning.Now we are ready to grow but 2 employees is not enough to manage the existing product and expand; even so, one new product is underdevelopment and one new avenue of revenue is nearing completion. So I have some options:Wait and grow revenue until enough to hire top-level employees.Thoughts: Why wait and do nothing, time will pass no matter what. This will occur on its own if options 2 and 3 don’t work out.Seek investors.Thoughts: I prefer not to give up equity for investment cash right now primarily because the current tech/controller is only a stepping stone to get started, significant value, and revenue, will come from new products and features that cost more to develop. I feel pitching a hardware company without a subscription service in place will make it difficult to get a good valuation. By sharing detailed information about future plans I could increase our valuation, but while some of our technology is very difficult to replicate, some of it will not be and I don’t want to share the details with someone with lots of cash and experience working with hardware startups. I’ve generally neglected investment focus, I will start to put some time into this now since it will be more attractive in about a year, but even with investment cash I still need to find those top level employees to hire.Add co-founders.Thoughts: This makes the most sense since it can overlap options 1 and 2 occurring. Find passionate co-founders willing to temporarily work for equity to grow the company as fast as possible.

[rtirman-blog]

33          Back to ND and a Near                 Fatal Mistake

When it was time to return to Notre Dame, Mother, Joe, Sally, and I, again, made the trip together. Only, instead of Sally and me being in the back seat with her secretly nursing me as my head was buried under her blouse, I was confidently driving the car.  Sally was in the front with me. I look at all that as a sign of personal growth.

On this trip, I actually participated in conversation.  I really don’t know whether I embarrassed Sally when we drove to Penn Station in the summer.  I suppose, I am simply exposing self judgement, i.e.  riding all the way to New York with my head under Sally’s blouse while kissing her breasts was a sign of an insecure baby. But it sure beats driving!

Suddenly, “Whoa, Richard! You Are Going into Brooklyn! “    I swerved across multiple lanes of traffic to keep us headed for Manhattan.  Luckily, we did not crash, and we, eventually, made it safely to Penn Station. After saying our good-byes on the station platform, I was soon settled in my seat, headed west for school.  As I should have known, over the holiday, I did absolutely no studying for my finals. My books traveled with me, but I never opened them. Beside weighing me down, I felt guilty for not studying.

 That semester, I squeezed out a passing grade in Embryology, pulled a saving all-nighter for my Sociology exam, and made it through German, Logic, and Physics with halfway decent grades.  I was feeling fairly good because I was moving forward. One more semester and I’ll be a junior.  The coming Spring Semester looked interesting- Chemistry (Qualitative Analysis), Physics, German, Intro to Psychology, and Music of the Twentieth Century.

 At the start of the semester, I was feeling pretty confident.  So far, Qualitative Analysis was the best chemistry class I had ever taken, and I was sailing through all my courses. However, leave it to me to complicate my existence.  When I finished working on a physics exam, which we faced every other week, I did something really stupid. The physics’ students were seated in every other seat.  Between our seats, the chemistry students were taking one of their exams.

We were in 127 Nieuwland Science Hall, a large, inclined, lecture hall accommodating about one-hundred fifty students. I was seated in the first row, flying through my exam.  Just as I finished, the chemistry student on my right very quietly asked if I would help him with a problem on his exam.  I took my scratch paper and wrote out the problem he was pointing to on his exam. As I was ready to show him his completed question, out of his mouth he whispered “WATCH OUT!”.  His fear of getting caught by the proctor, who was way up in the back of the room, his whisper was decibels higher  than a shout, and heard by everyone.  All eyes were upon us.  I quickly put my scratch paper under my exam. The proctor came directly down the aisle, and stood in front of me.  He picked up all my papers, and thumbed through them.  He found my scratch paper with the chemistry problem clearly worked out.  He then asked me, while pointing to the chemistry problem, what’s this?  I told him I had just finished my test, and I happened to see the other kid’s exam. I saw the problem, and was curious to see if I could still do it. He looked at both of us, told us to put our exams and papers on the desk, and leave.  

 That was on a Friday. By the following Monday, I was sitting in an office, under the Golden Dome, talking with the Prefect of Discipline, Father McCarragher, “affectionately” known to the student body as “Black Mac”.   He let me know that even though I was trying to help another student, I was considered just as guilty as that other student.  He also told me I was given a zero on my exam and, at the completion of the course, ten percent of my final grade will be deducted. Also, Father Mac told me he made the decision to bring me on to campus, as the University would like to know more about me.  I was to meet with Father Dean, Rector of St. Edwards Hall.

 I fully agreed I deserved punishment.  However, I quietly thought the punishment was more hurtful than it needed to be.  For sure, I intended to never repeat that offense, and having my grade lowered so drastically, misrepresents the knowledge I had gained, ergo, misrepresenting my abilities.  Wasn’t pulling me on campus enough? Couldn’t they have simply taken 10% off my exam grade, and put a note about the incident on my transcript?  Better yet, just lower my final grade one grade lower. However, the long and short of it was, I screwed up, and I needed to face whatever my professor and Father Mac saw fit.

 Later that day, I met with Father Dean, who didn’t mention a thing about my faux pas.  In a soft spoken way, he told me about St. Ed’s Hall, assigned me to a room, and went over some of the Hall rules.  We had a 10 P.M. curfew, lights out at 11 P.M., and a requirement, at least twice per week, to check-in between 6 and 7 A.M., fully dressed, at the first floor entrance to the Hall.  As it was for all students living on campus, the early morning check-in was to encourage me to attend Mass.  I asked Father Dean if I was really required to do the morning check, since I was not a Catholic, I was Episcopalian.  Yes, I was expected to participate in the morning check.  Father Dean told me once I have checked in, I could go up to my room and go back to sleep if I prefer. But he did suggest, I go to the Dining Hall or the Huddle, grab a cup of coffee, and start off those days early.  I have to say, I liked Father Dean!

I was assigned to a triple. My two roommates were two Irish Catholics, Bill Holman and Bill (sometimes Will) Johnson.  They were good friends who fought like brothers. I was fortunate, they were superb roommates.  Thy helped me settle in and feel very welcome.

 Getting in trouble at Notre Dame, and being housed in St. Ed’s, was tantamount to placing an innocent lad into a den of thieves.  Although, I am sure they did, I don’t recall Holman and Johnson ever studying, consistently. I do remember being escorted to a soda machine, that continued to pour out your drink selection if you pulled the plug out of the wall.  When we reached the machine there was a line of guys waiting, with cups to fill.  The next thing I learned from my hall mates was how to make a free telephone call. There was no such thing as a cell phone, and telephone calls were ten cents for a local call.  By piercing the telephone wire with a safety pin, you could get a dial tone by tapping the safety pin on the metal of the coin return.  The telephone wires in St. Ed’s looked like Swiss cheese. I’m certain, these kind of shenanigans could be found all over the country. AT&T got smart. They put flexible metal coverings on every public telephone wire in existence.  Our criminal behavior culminated with three or four of us, at midnight, on the roof top at the south end of Nieuwland Science Hall. We were black faced, wearing dark, navy, wool hats, and dark sweaters and pants.  There were faculty offices there, as well as exams.  It was like a Navy Seal raid on the Chemistry Department! Abort! Abort!  The windows to the faculty offices were locked. We didn’t know how to open them without breaking a window. I guess we would have to study, or do what some students would do- make cliff notes.  One of my closest buddies, whose initials are, Don Hazelton, would spend hours on cliff notes.  Before going to his exam, he would put the cliff notes in his underwear.  He figured if he got stuck, he could ask to go to the bathroom.  Even if he was escorted to the john, he would be able to be alone in a stall.  He could look at his notes, and then, flush them down the toilet.  An interesting thing is that he never had to use the bathroom scheme.  He spent so much time putting his cliff notes together, he inadvertently learned the material. It was partly responsible for making him a pretty good student.

Perhaps the best result of me being pulled on campus, I was getting the entire college experience. I was a full-fledged Notre Dame student, who lived on campus. I learned so many things about the halls, the priests, the students, and the traditions of the school. In short, I was much more a part of the University.