#living here isn’t tenable

[yourheartinyourmouth]

husband and i admitted to each other today that we are terrified that poverty is going to kill us. it was terrifying and i can’t think about it or else i get so scared and nervous that i start shaking and i feel like i’m going to throw up & die

[ethanhuntfemmefatale]

drop a Matt Engarde character analysis onto us

Anon I am always ready for a Matt engarde character analysis at five minutes to midnight

Ok here goes. there is so much to talk about with Matt Engarde.

The basis of Engarde’s character is his double personality. There’s a lot of ways to interpret this—as someone who is trying to learn but essentially does not know Japanese at all, I think I remember hearing that he refers to his two personas with different pronouns? Which is Fascinating. It’s easy to imagine there are mental health conditions at play here, but there are a lot of people on this site more qualified to talk about that than me (mentally ill guy who knows very little about mental illness) so I’ll leave it to them. The main thing I think is interesting about Engarde’s personas is the way that they relate to his two major roles, as a child actor and a murderer. These are the two main ways he thinks of himself. A dumb, charming kid, and an evil maniac.

For me, far and away the most fascinating and revealing line Engarde has in the whole game is when Pearl asks him why he would do “something so horrible,” and Engarde replies, “Because I’m a grownup, and I can.” There’s another moment where he talks to Pearl that way—“Let the grownups talk.” Engarde’s evil persona carries the infamous mysteriously appearing glass of alcohol, another symbol of adulthood. This is a pattern.

Engarde grew up as a child performer. That’s a role that involves a ton of responsibility and practically zero agency. It’s safe to say he led a powerless childhood, addicted to fame before he could even comprehend it, with a manager whose relationship with him was, in my opinion, questionable at best. The point of this is, there is a direct association inherent in Engarde’s personas: between his “innocent and stupid and beautiful” persona and the powerlessness of childhood; between his “evil ugly mastermind” persona and the agency of adulthood.

It’s easy to see that Engarde’s fame is a trap. Even though he’s a legal adult, he isn’t allowed to grow up because any act of independence, any show of adulthood, would compromise the image he’s built. He’s obsessed with it, all through the game. It seems at times like the only thing he cares about. We see the lengths to which he will go to protect it. We also see all of the ways that it restricts him. Adrian can’t be seen walking out of Engarde’s bedroom. It would compromise his image. Engarde can’t let the world see his scars. It would compromise his image.

The scars are fascinating too. Obviously, there’s the immediate “disgust-fear” reaction the game expects to elicit when they are first shown, which is pretty shitty. But there’s more to it. Engarde’s scars are likely (as many people have theorized) self inflicted, in an act of rage and maybe even self-hatred while wearing the Nickel Samurai costume. It’s not only that his audiences aren’t allowed to see his scars. Audiences aren’t allowed to see his anger, or his capacity for violence and harm. They aren’t allowed to believe him capable of it. Engarde associates anger, injury, freedom, flaws—in short, any sign of humanity—with the end of his career and the entire life he’s lived until then.

Obviously, an existence genuinely free of these things is simply not tenable. It is impossible for Engarde to truly live in his persona all of the time. But instead of allowing himself to relax behind closed doors—a feat that would likely be very near impossible for someone raised to play a part all of the time—Engarde constructs a new persona to fit the parts of himself he doesn’t like. He refers to this persona in the third person. He uses different pronouns. He essentially does everything possible to separate the two personas. In his mind, they are different people.

There’s an important thing I’m leaving out here. Arguably one of the most important aspects, when considering how exactly Engarde decided to make a whole new self that he had to hide from the world all the time. Celeste Inpax.

I’ve talked about this before. First, Matt Engarde did not cause Celeste’s suicide by telling Corrida about their past relationship. No matter how much the game suggests it as an appealing argument, it’s not. It’s ridiculous. However, I think that Engarde wholly and uncritically believes Celeste’s suicide was his fault. He and Adrian share this belief. They deal with it in different ways.

There’s more to talk about here—Adrian describes Matt’s relationship with Celeste by saying that he was using her. It’s not clear whether that idea comes from Adrian’s hatred of Matt or from Celeste herself. In any case, it’s…not impossible that that’s true, but definitely not the most likely conclusion to draw from the evidence at hand (an older woman with a ton of power over the younger man in her care, who later went on to have another romantic relationship with a young man in her care.) I feel confident in saying that child stars are nearly completely dependent on their managers. Matt certainly seems dependent on Adrian to a degree that goes beyond the persona. And we meet him at age 21. It’s easy to imagine that, when they were dating, Matt was completely reliant on Celeste.

Celeste is a complicated figure. She haunts the entire case. Engarde keeps her picture in his hideout, with a note saying, “Love, Celeste.” It’s likely he has been grieving her for a very long time—while feeling fully responsible for her death, and working closely with a manager who also believes him to be fully responsible for her death. That’s an insane situation! It’s likely that the “evil” persona came from that feeling of total self hatred. From the moment Celeste died, Engarde believed he was a killer, which was utterly incompatible with not only the way he saw himself, but also the person he knew he had to be. He had to make up a whole new person who would do those things, and would also be allowed to drink alcohol and be angry. And he had to put all his guilt and self hatred onto that person, the embodiment of all of his shame. And then he had to hide that person completely and make sure no one ever saw him. Engarde had to continue to seem “refreshing as a spring breeze”, in order to keep the career and the fame and the “love” of the audience that he got hooked on at a young age, that quickly became the only kind of love available to him.

(Side note: again, I do not know Japanese, but I would be interested to know how much of Engarde’s motto is a direct translation. The “spring” part to me suggests a childlike, ���new and innocent’ aspect.)

Engarde’s relationship with Adrian is interesting to me. I am, like many others (check out jackedup180’s excellent engardeposting) fascinated by the detail in the musical production of this case, that Adrian is wearing Engarde’s jacket. Such a strange little incongruous thing. How exactly did that happen? Not only that, Engarde knows Adrian’s “secret”—in turn, she knows his. It seems obvious that their relationship is deeply codependent. I think it’s very possible that there is a kind of twisted affection there. Engarde is one of Adrian’s last links to Celeste, and vice versa. Adrian’s hatred of him allows her a mission, and a productive, righteous anger into which to funnel her grief. The two of them simultaneously understand each other deeply and thoroughly misunderstand each other—which is to say that both of them believe the other’s lie about themselves. Matt believes that Adrian is weak. Adrian believes that Matt is evil.

I have to get up early tomorrow morning so I’ll leave this here. I’m sure there are more details I haven’t thought of, but these are my essential thoughts about Matt Engarde as a character. He’s a fascinating guy!

[guillemelgat]

saying this all as someone who used to collect languages the same way and understands what it feels like. it is not always a practical, irl/real world-workable way to do things.

i know langblr encourages it, but minoritized languages aren’t pokemon. if you learn a language then a main point of focus that you take, *needs* to be whether you will ever use it. the welsh farm dream is one thing, since you intend to actually live there but you have upwards of 5 languages from so many parts of the world in your bio, that are not your heritage language or the one from the place where you grew up. do you consider how the speakers would respond to having their culture basically collected, but not actually joined into or lived in, as a diversion in the life of an academic from another country?

the strongest example from your list is romani. the romani are a very closed culture who usually don’t want outsiders speaking their language, and as for the others, the same principle isn’t as strictly applied with all, but: whether you are invited or not *does matter*, to the people in those cultures. there are levels of open vs closed. no, no one is stopping you, of course, but tact has a role. because (this will be the thought of people who are native speakers) why do you need this language if you’re interacting with few to no people in your day to day life who you will ever be speaking it with? learning it for its own sake as a kind of novelty won’t always be met well.

the reason many of these minoritized languages are minoritized is one involving politics suffering and war. as with bosnian.

i had to figure this out the hard way myself. so. just some food for thought

tl;dr i would figure out reasons why each has a strong call to you, read extensively on the political settings and how fraught things can be in those places and their history/present, and maybe emphasize focus on a small handful of them while ruling out those you’ll never personally interact with. just a few documentaries with interviews from real people who live there and speak the languages might give some perspective shift.

Thank you for sending this message! I've been ruminating for a while about everything you've brought up, and wasn't really sure how to answer this well, but I'll give you my best attempt at an answer(?), if this even counts as a question in need of an answer.

In terms of myself, I'll give you what this made me think:

I will fully admit that I started this blog when I was 17, and I'm now 23. That's a lot of time to change and evolve as a person, which I most certainly have. At 17, it definitely felt like learning 10+ languages (regardless of which languages, even) was a perfectly tenable goal. At 23, I'm realizing that it's not quite as easy as I thought it would be. So I have scaled back my ambitions a lot since then, and am only trying to focus on a couple of languages now. Because of that, I will say that the list on my about page has started to become somewhat misleading. And it does frustrate me that the languages that younger me thought I could learn were all minoritized, because I feel like a shitty person giving up on them—hence why I have tried to put this off for a while.

I did start learning these languages knowing that "collecting minoritized languages like Pokemon" was not something that I wanted to do. It's extremely important to me to be plugged into a language culturally and socially when I'm starting to learn it—everything that you've given as advice here is generally much less than what I've done for all the languages I'm studying, and I wouldn't be able to imagine learning one not having done these things. I will say that I have talked with speakers of every single one of the languages that I'm studying except for Tamasheq. On the other hand, I could certainly do better. I've been struggling with this for a while, and I think that this might be a good time to step back from some languages unless I'm willing to make them an active part of my life. Basically, if I had infinite time, I would be able to maintain all of these languages, but in this world, I have to be realistic.

And I also had some general thoughts on the subject:

I honestly think a lot of the problem with the way people treat minoritized languages is tied up with the attitude that they're "folkloric" or "exotic" and not just. A Language. What I mean by that isn't that they don't have boundaries or can't be closed or you can just learn two words and say you speak them, but I do think that the real question to ask yourself when you're learning a minoritized language is if you're treating it as a full language. A lot of times you'll see famous polyglots or whatever tacking on minoritized languages, and it is really frustrating to see that they can do that with them when they can't with something like Spanish or French. I do think that with minoritized languages, it's easier to go around pretending you speak them (or to think you actually do), because there's usually fewer people to question you and in many cases native speakers are kinder than with larger languages. That is, however, a toxic attitude that I want to avoid at all costs—I'm sure I've done it, because I'm not perfect, but for example I don't bring up languages I'm learning unless there's a context where they're needed. This is the only place where you can see the language I've studied, and I mostly leave it there for clarity. That being said, I won't say that I'm immune to any of this stuff, so I don't want to pretend like I'm without criticism.

I do think that while your definition of strict necessity is fair as a tough question to dissuade beginners, I don't fully agree with it. A lot of these languages I came into without a really good reason to study, but thanks to learning them I've met people who I wouldn't have otherwise met and can't imagine not being in my life. Use is not contingent on living in a place—I've always said this and I will continue to say it. Languages come up in all kinds of places you wouldn't expect, and if you choose to make them a part of your life they do so even more. Especially for minoritized languages, being a part of the community means reaching out to people, pitching in, and doing things in the language. I've found you can do that in many different ways, and in fact, the strict usefulness of the language is usually a factor that hurts minoritized language speakers rather than helping them. I don't know, just something to think about that didn't really sit right with me.

I think that the only thing you can do when learning a minoritized language is immerse yourself in its history, culture, and people. And by people I mean make friends who speak the language. Make the language have weight for you. Understand it on a human level. This sounds really dumb (and looks kind of cringe when written out, sorry) but I think if people did this it would solve a lot of these debates. Just my grain of salt.

Sorry for making everyone read this, if you made it here I hope it was of some worth to you. I honestly think the only thing that you can do as a learner of any language is really to always know that you have more to learn, and to be open to being taught—whatever it is that people have to teach you. That's how you build a respectful language learning relationship, and that's what I hope I've done. Now I definitely need to update my about page though, it's been time to do that for a while 😅

[canyouhearthelight]

The Miys, Ch. 154

Happy Tuesday, everyone!

I was able to get the Master Post cleaned up this morning.  I know there is a reblog going around with some of the links missing... I put that one up originally as a place holder so I could update my page links in chapters 101 through this one.   I did NOT anticipate it would get immediately reblogged, which made me squeak in pleasant surprise.  I’ll reblog the full post so everyone has the right one.

Also, thanks to @baelpenrose, @the-raven-fae, and @charlylimph-blog for keeping me going and all your help beta-reading and checking my links.  You three are the real heroes here!

“The quiet rooms are done,” Hannah yawned the next morning. “It’s a good thing we decided to make them available immediately, because the first one had people scheduling time before we finished the second one.”

“How many did we end up with?” I asked, pushing down my own urge to yawn. I had always prided myself on being able to resist the urge to yawn when others did, and I wasn’t letting that stop now.

The model of the Ark came up on the table emitter, and Hannah zoomed in on the highlighted areas. “Right now, we have twelve, just like you set up for the second Food Festival. But I’ll be honest, they rooms are already booked for the foreseeable future, and I don’t think that’s tenable.”

“Agreed. I’ll talk to the rest of the Council, but at this point, we need to see about setting all available spaces for quiet rooms.” I nodded and added that note to my agenda. “Moving on, food vendors being allowed in BioLab2. Any updates?”

Parvati flicked the data to everyone. “Grey isn’t thrilled with the possibility that the food will contaminate the aquatics, but is willing to allow vendors in ‘The Fairy Circle’?” She gave me a questioning look. “They said you would know what that meant.”

I just smiled and shook my head. “It’s where I go camping. Conor managed to pull off a prank that fooled even Charly and made a Faerie circle.  It’s a good choice, though: ten, eleven feet across, accessible, and far enough from the water that there wouldn’t be any risk.”

She rolled her eyes and smiled. “Credit to Conor on that one. But, Grey was very enthusiastic about the idea of setting up some picnic tables throughout the woods and letting people bring picnics.”

“I already have some vendors on board, there,” I breathed in relief. “Especially the ones who specialize in the type of foods that lend themselves well to being portable.”

Hannah’s face lit up. “Do we get to taste test some of these? I’m really getting some bento box and pasty vibes from what you just said, and I’m not sure which I’m more excited about.”

“I think I can get that to happen,” I laughed. “I wouldn’t mind trying some of the options myself, but I can at least already confirm that all bases are covered for dietary requirements. Next up, where are we on the holiday date?”

“Still working with the other departments to finalize a date where all projects can be completed, paused, or at least at a point where they don’t require direct observation. Everyone is on board, though.”

“That’s the biggest hurdle,” I confirmed. “Means we can proceed with at least putting the rest of the events together in preparation for the final date. I trust you two in handling the party aspect of it, and Charly is already working Bash on another Kink Night event at the Undine - minimal planning needed there. So, let’s figure out who is coordinating the paint-tag fight, and we can loop back to the plans for the party.”

“While I am entirely sure Charly can handle planning for both the paint tag and the other - seeing as both were her ideas - it doesn’t feel fair to leave them both entirely on her shoulders,” Hannah agreed. “It says here that you already had Conor confirm we missed Holi?

“By about six months,” I confessed. “So we’re pretty much both too late and too early.”

“I do believe the arrows would be frowned upon, in any event,” Parvati joked. “I still have her paint formulas - flavors are not listed, but there is a distinct lack of both black and yellow.”

“Those were… scotch bonnet for the black, I know that one. I think the yellow was gochujang, which would still hurt if you got it in your eyes,” I recalled.

She flicked her hands, bracelets chiming. “I will ask for a new formula for yellow, but I think we can live without black paint. The yellow was lovely, though.”

“Ask nicely, and she’ll probably give you the glitter formula colors, which I think are different flavors from the regular palette,” I suggested. “And the glitter is ultra-violet reactive, so that’ll be fun.”

Emphatic stabbing at her datapad ensued - impressive, because it wasn’t even physically there, just emitted from the band on her wrist. “Once I have those, I believe Hannah and I can coordinate that along with the party.  There is no food component, it is only for one day, so the scope is far smaller than the Festival was.”

“And besides,” Hannah added with a shrug, “whip up some paints and some spongy balls to soak it up, set boundaries, invite anyone who wants to attend. Planning done.” She dusted her hands off for emphasis, but she had a point.

“I’ve got the care packages well underway, so we’re solid there. The party. What’s the plan there?”

Parvati dismissed the schematic from the table emitter and sent a different image to it. This one was practically the opposite of what I had expected: where I had anticipated Food Festival 2: Pyrotechnic Boogaloo, I was instead looking at a park that I was reasonably certain only existed in dreams.

Soft green grass that my toes wiggled to touch spanned a rolling, looping thoroughfare. Trees arched overhead like an arbor, and were either woven with lights are absolutely covered in fireflies.  Between breaks in the canopy, a night sky filled with more stars than I had seen in my living memory.  Here and there small braziers burned brightly with fire, resting on sturdy rugs and dotted around with cushions.

“Vati,” I whispered hoarsely. “We can’t use BioLab2 for this, can we? Will Grey allow it?”

“We can, and they are.” Her smile was the feral one that usually preceded a coup de grace of event planning. “This, however, is not BioLab2.  This is the corridors of levels twelve through fourteen, leading into the lab.”

My first urge was to guess what she was planning, but my mind came up blank. I circled around my desk to stand closer to the table. “Okay, talk to me. Make it make sense.”

She nodded. “The grass is real, laid down like sod. The terraforming teams have agreed to let us use it, provided we allow them to collect data on how it holds up to so much foot traffic and include a post-event question regarding the tactile feel on bare feet.  So, bare feet they shall have.” She winked when I realized she and Hannah were going to make it part of the theme. “The trees are an illusion, simple light emitters against the corridor walls, combined with the existing texture of the surface.”

When she moved the image to mimic walking further down the path, Hannah picked up. “The larger spaces are actually where the corridors are longer between quiet rooms. Rather than trying to pull off the tree illusion, we’re going to create a  night sky with shooting stars, comets, the works.  Like a dream.”

“I like it. It’s not what I was expecting, but I’m even more impressed for that.”

“We couldn’t compete with Charly,” Parvati confessed. “She is already going to have our base desires covered.  Anything we tried to do would look like a pale imitation. So, we went the other direction: What else do we do to feel alive?”

“We dream,” I laughed. “It’s all a fairy tale dream, isn’t it?”

“That’s the goal,” Hannah confirmed. “A beautiful dream. One day and one night where you can live out your humanity however you want, without having to compromise.  If someone wants to throw paint with childish abandon, then stroll and dance through a dream, and finish the night at the Undine trying something they never dared to do before, they can do that.”

“When you put it like that, it sounds decadent.”

“I was going for hedonistic, over all, but you’re on the right track,” Parvati laughed. “Hannah and I agreed that everyone on the Ark needed one perfect day.  And since perfect is different for everyone��” She shrugged. “We just decided to give them all the options.  The quiet rooms will be open if their perfect includes a botanical garden, or a cloud… the mess halls will be open if it means a feast, or even just decadent hors d'oeuvres they could never make an excuse to try. It’s literally all on the table.”

“Consider it signed off on.” I still couldn’t take my eyes off that grass, toes wiggling happily. “Just let me know the date when we have one, I need a pedicure to enjoy this completely.”

<< Prev  Masterlist  Next >>

[voiceless-terror]

hmmmm if u want angsty prompt that goes with a song: jonathan sims + the song "using" by sorority noise. + some of that good jmart. feel free to take it anyway you like! angst that evolves into fluff, full-on angst, lotsa fluff with a smidgen of angst... its up to you!!

Here you are! A bit late, but better late than never. This is a great song, thank you for introducing me! This mostly takes place in the safehouse, with a bit of season four thrown in. Jon/Martin, fluff and angst, learning to love each other. Hope you like!

Eventually, Jon starts sleeping again.

It isn't like he has much of a choice. Collapsing from exhaustion every couple of days isn’t tenable, and of course he’s much more coherent when well-rested. If he’s going to ‘save the world’ or be of any use, he needs to sleep.

It doesn’t stop the guilt he feels every time he wakes from his little hellscapes, his gifted nightmares. It hurts, the way he feels better after watching the torment of others. But he gives into the need like it’s an indulgence instead of a necessity. Not ‘eating’ makes it worse, makes him worse. Perhaps he won’t prey on people when he’s awake if he does it in his dreams. 

He looks better. He no longer wakes to a blanket on his shoulders or a steaming cup of tea at his side. His indulgence has its own consequences, personal as they may be. But if he’s going to help Martin, he’s got to be at his best.

And maybe he enjoys feeling well, despite the terrible cost.

On his last day in the Archives, he kills someone. He doesn’t mean to. Or perhaps he does. It’s not his fault Lukas wouldn’t answer his questions.

On his last day in the Archives, he pulls Martin from the Lonely. Jon takes his hand like it's worthy of reverence. Martin doesn’t smile, but his eyes are blue again, not the hazy grey Jon had gotten used to.

They run away together.

It’s not bliss.

It’s not surprising. Martin and Jon never really knew each other. Seeing and Knowing are not necessarily understanding. There was no slowly building friendship, no will they/won’t they scenario like something out of a sitcom. Just a series of tragedies binding them together in the approximation of love. They’ll get there, but they have to take it one day at a time.

Despite his ever-present need for company (especially after his time in the Lonely), Martin needs space. Jon never noticed this about him, too busy wrapped up in his statements and being bothered by his assistant’s fussing. So watching as Martin goes on solitary walks and leaves the room to read in silence is quite jarring. He needs space as much as Jon needs contact. But Martin wouldn’t know that about him, how could he? He only saw Jon reach out once he was too far gone. Jon wants to take his hand, wants to rest against his chest as Martin reads god-awful poetry. Is it selfish to want? 

He just wants to be worthy of Martin’s sacrifice, that’s all. 

They learn each other’s awkward habits. Jon hums and taps and makes more noise than Martin probably thought possible. Jon leaves drawers open that he will inevitably bump into, and is fine with letting his dishes ‘sit’ in the sink. Martin walks too quietly, has a habit of sneaking up that Jon finds jarring. He leaves windows open and lets in the chill. He’s more prone to sighing than talking.

Jon finds out that Martin is good at cards and really good at lying. Martin finds out that Jon can actually cook a decent meal, when he’s not wrapped up in work.

Sleeping is where they find their truce. Jon can curl up in his arms, Martin can bury his face in Jon’s hair. Jon still dreams his dreams and Martin is still unnaturally cold, but the touches are grounding. They’re each lost in their own separate ways. But they’re lost with each other.

Still, it’s a delicate balance. Martin and Jon walk on eggshells, each trying desperately to please the other. Jon tries to be what Martin needs him to be, but he feels like he’s doing it wrong.

He doesn’t feel like himself.

_______

Jon smokes outside.

Martin doesn’t like the smell, and Jon won’t fault him for that. But the bite of the cigarette reminds him that he’s human, in some small way. That he has petty needs and vices. A moment’s pleasure, fleeting and simple. A sin with only himself as the victim.

It feels like a choice, but Jon doesn’t think it is.

“Nasty habit.”

Jon startles at the voice- Martin, of course. Quiet and unassuming as he takes his place beside him. His nose is wrinkled.

“I’m sorry-” he begins, stubbing out the cigarette but Martin cuts him off.

“No, it's fine,” he shrugs, digging his feet into the dirt. “You should be able to do as you please. After all you’ve done for me-”

“Martin-”

“No,” Martin says firmly, looking intensely at the ground. “I never really thanked you for that, you know? For getting me out of the Lonely. You saved me.”

Jon leans his head on Martin’s shoulder, hoping the contact is welcome. Martin doesn’t tense. “You spent months in Peter Lukas’s hold. Months trying to save us. I- I never want you to feel like you have to do that again. I know I haven’t always been the best company-” he lets out a chuckle, one that Martin weakly returns. “-but I’d like for us to do this properly, you know? Without all the-the ‘spooky interference,’ as it were.”

“You said spooky!” Martin’s grin widens in delight. Jon returns it.

“Just for you.”

Martin’s face is a lovely shade of red as he turns from him shyly. “What- what do you mean, ‘properly’?”

Jon hesitates, unsure of how much he wants to divulge. How much Martin wants to hear. But it’s been building up for so long- all the tiny things Martin does that he likes, that he loves. All the things he wants to share with him. But also everything he’s been holding back, everything that makes Jon himself. Everything that makes life worth living.

So he speaks.

“I-I want us to stop sacrificing for each other,” he stutters out. It’s his turn to look at the ground. “That- that can’t be all love is, right? I want to buy you flowers. I want to talk to you about your poetry. I want to complain about the songs on the radio that you always listen to.” He hazards a look at Martin’s face- he’s staring at him with unreadable eyes. Jon can’t look away. “I want- I want to buy you dinner and tell you jokes you won’t laugh at. I want to keep waking up to your face for as long as I can.” He takes a deep breath, willing his voice not to shake. “But I don’t want to live just for you. I want to have things of my own. I want to feel like a person again. Choose things. Enjoy them. And I want you to have that too.”

There’s silence. Martin’s eyes have that bright, incredulous look to them, as if Jon’s said something particularly unbelievable. Perhaps he said too much.

“You- you love me?”

Jon pauses, his brow furrowing. “I mean, yes. Obviously.”

Martin barks out a laugh that manages to be both snarky and joyous. “You never said, you dolt!”

“N-No, I swear I did-”

“You didn’t!”

They stare at each other, Jon attempting to catalogue every one of their exchanges thus far (the Eye is occasionally useful for such things).

He hadn’t, it turns out.

“Fuck.”

Jon can’t help but match the laughter that Martin’s currently choking out. It takes them several minutes to get it under control, but by the end of it Martin’s got an arm around his shoulders and a hand in his. “I’d like that too, you know,” Martin says softly, his thumb rubbing gentle circles into Jon’s shoulder. “I really would.” Something in Jon’s chest warms at the words.

Martin’s taste in music never improves. Jon never gets the hang of doing the dishes. They bicker. A lot. Jon buys Martin dinner and tells him jokes he doesn’t laugh at. Martin goes on his walks. Sometimes he brings Jon along. 

And one time, he leaves Jon behind. Promises to tell him if he sees any good cows. And Jon just smiles, gentle and in love. 

The tape recorder clicks on.

ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27673300

[barricadebops]

I've seen a lot of people say that the killing of the artillery seargent was another one of Enjolras' "unexpected outbursts of soul," something he does while hotheaded and not completely thinking things through, and while I don't want to outright shut down anyone's interpretations (because that's the beauty of literature—we all take away something different from it), I've always seen the situation as the opposite, actually. The decision to shoot the artilleryman was very deliberate, very carefully calculated. Enjolras assesses the situation the rebels are in—he can see that "[i]f this [referring to coming under fire of grapeshot] were continued, the barricade [would] no longer [be] tenable," (5.1.8) because an immediate second round of grapeshot would mean the grapeshot would make it's way through, destroying the barricade, and with it, the rebels gathered inside, so he figures that the best way to stop such a thing from happening would be to "prevent the second discharge" from occuring right at that second. (5.1.8.) How? By getting rid of the man commanding the gun that would lead to the doom of those at the barricade. It's completely calculated: kill the captain, the National Guardsmen will have to take the time to retrieve the body and find someone new to man the gun, and thus will buy the rebels more time to figure out a way to fortify their defenses better so they hold when the next round of grapeshot does inevitably come. And it works too—

"He had to be carried away and replaced by another. Several minutes were thus gained, in fact." (5.1.8.)

Many people judge the moment and say Combeferre is in the better for trying to pursuade Enjolras out of committing the act, and morally in a perfect world he may be so—but logically in this situation, does it make sense?

"Well let us not kill him." (5.1.8.)

Combeferre's logic here is illogical—there's no way that the rebels cannot kill this man and also live on for the few more hours they do, and to a certain degree, I think Combeferre realizes this, too. The life of this man means they suffer all the more—this seems to be the only answer, and that's the entire tragedy of this narrative. It's the fact that Enjolras very well recognizes that the captain could have been friends with him, could have been his brother in his ideal world, but the circumstances he's been forced into means that can never be, because it's either this future at the cost of the artillery seargent's life, or the artillery seargent being spared at the cost of the future and his own life.

"Let me alone. It must be done" (5.1.8)

The tragedy of the narrative here is that it isn't a choice. It isn't something that can be excused by a "heat-of-the-moment" adrenaline rush. The tragedy is that this had to be coldly calculated and swiftly executed, that this action was taken with a cool mind, and that there can be no room for regret if the rebels ever want to reach their goal. The tragedy is that Enjolras knew what he was doing, but he recognized that he would have to do it anyways, even if it tears his soul in two for doing so.

[veliseraptor]

“What needs to happen to get an in-character xingchen to accept his feelings for xue yang in this universe where they’ve completely shattered each other and have to pick up the pieces together?” Reply discussion PLS most kf my ideas rely on a-qing but I don’t want her to be a pun semi intended crutch

(additional credit for this goes to @ameliarating, with whom I have discussed this)

okay!! so I’ve thought about this a lot and there’s probably more than one way to do it, but the main way I have thought about it is a messy combination of a) Xiao Xingchen’s abandonment issues, b) three years intimate living with someone is not very easy to just shake off and abandon, and c) continued close proximity making it extra hard for him to break the attachments he formed. 

Honestly I think the biggest player here is, and it’s not healthy but hey!! who is in this for the healthy, Xiao Xingchen’s abandonment issues. Xiao Xingchen is lonely. He doesn’t want to lose (more) people, even, I think, the people he should want to lose. (More on that later!) At this point, in a situation where Xiao Xingchen has survived his suicide attempt, he’s shattered, has had so much of his life broken, so much of himself broken, and has barely come back from full self-destruction. He is a wreck - which also means he’s painfully emotionally raw. That’s important when it comes to his ability to cut ties with one of the people he’s become closest to. Xiao Xingchen just doesn’t have a lot of people to lose. 

I think Xiao Xingchen goes through a grieving period, actually, where he’s mourning the loss of his friend that he feels like Xue Yang murdered (not what happened, obviously! but he’s having a very hard time reckoning with that whole “one and the same” thing and in some ways it feels easier to try to demarcate that and act like he can grieve his friend without forgetting everything Xue Yang did). But that’s not actually tenable for all that long when Xue Yang is still there, and still - and this is important - acting a lot like his friend. 

It’s confusing. It’s hard. It’s disorienting. It doesn’t make sense. But I feel like it’d keep happening to Xiao Xingchen where he’d be determinedly trying to keep this line of “this is Not My Friend(/Boyfriend, depending on how their relationship was prior to everything exploding), this is Xue Yang, Bad” and then having these moments, like missing a stair, where Xue Yang says or does something that is so perfectly his friend that it throws Xiao Xingchen’s attempts to separate them into chaos. 

Not only does it make that separation hard, it makes it hard to write off everything as a lie, as an act, as part of the game Xue Yang was playing. It raises questions - curiosity! - about how much of it was real, how much of the person he got to know was Xue Yang. And that curiosity has its own kind of danger as far as keeping him from keeping as much of a safe distance as would maybe be helpful, if he was planning on, you know, keeping himself emotionally removed.

And then that’s especially difficult with a Xue Yang who is making, I’d guess, a very concerted effort to not upset Xiao Xingchen and get back in his good graces, at least to begin with and quite possibly, I think, for the long haul. (Xue Yang is very goal oriented when he wants to be! He will put in the work when he has an objective that matters to him, like “revenge” or “repairing the shattered soul of his ex.”)

The final thing is, I think, just that Xiao Xingchen isn’t very good at emotional remove. He feels things, a lot. He doesn’t hold himself back or reserve himself, really, which means that when he falls (in love, in despair) he falls hard. I think, depending on where his feelings for Xue Yang were at, it’d just be very, very hard for him to continue to fight against them, particularly in a situation where there wasn’t an active, continuing threat from Xue Yang for him to focus on as a counterweight to everything above.

I don’t know how happy he’d be with himself about it. But I do think there would be ways he could rationalize it, and come to accept it - with an awareness, probably, that he’s being selfish, that he shouldn’t, that it’s wrong, but on the other hand, how long can he fight himself? And who is gaining from his trying to do so, really? 

Anyway! That is some thoughts. Hope anything in there helps.

[nouveauweird]

A Short Essay on Metaphor by Ocean Vuong

The following is a transcription of the instagram stories shared by Ocean Vuong on the subject of metaphor, which I found quite moving, and hope others can take something valuable from it as well. You can find the originals on his instagram highlights.

Each paragraph below is transcribed from one instagram story slide.

[ The first part is Vuong’s answer to the initial question that sparked the discussion, he went on to elaborate some more, but in his longer discussion several days later he reused some of the same examples so I will only be featuring the longer, 25 slide, “mini essay”. ]

QUESTION: How do you make sure your metaphors have real depth?

VUONG: metaphors should have two things: sensory (visual, texture, sound, etc) connector between origin image and the transforming image as well as a clear logical connector between images if you only have one of either, best to forego the metaphor. otherwise it will seem forced or read like “writing” if that makes sense.

[ elaborated discussion ] 

I’ve gotten so many responses from folks the the past few days asking for a deeper dive into my personal theory on metaphor. So I’m taking a moment here to do a more in-depth mini essay since my answer the Q/A the other day was off the cuff (I was typing while walking to my hair cut appointment). What I’m proposing, of course, is merely a THEORY, not a gospel, so please take whatever is useful to you and ignore what isn’t. ...

Before I begin I want to encourage everyone to forge your own theories and praxis for your work, especially if you’re a BIPOC artist. Often we are perceived by established powers as merely “performers” suitable for a (brief) stint on stage-- but not thinkers and creators with our own autonomy, intelligence, and capacity to question the framework in our fields.

It is not lost on me as a yellow body in America, with the false connotations therein, where I’m often seen as diminutive, quiet, accommodating, agreeable, submissive, that I am not expected to think against the grain, to have my own theories on how I practice my art and my life. I became a writer knowing I am entering a field (fine arts) where there are few faces like my own (and with many missing), a field where we are expected to succeed only when we pick up a violin or a cello in order to serve Euro-Centric “masterpieces”. For so long, to be an Asian American “prodigy” in art was to be a fine-tuned instrument for Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven.

It is no surprise, then, that if you, as a BIPOC artist, dare to come up with your own ideas, to say “no” to what they shove/have been shoving down your throat for so long, you will be infantilized, seen as foolish, moronic, stupid, disobedient, uneducated and untamed. Because it means the instrument that was once in service of their “work” has now begun to speak, has decided, despite being inconceivable to them, to sing its own songs. I want you, I need you, to sing with me. I want to hear what you sound like when it’s just us, and you sound so much like yourself that I recognize you even in the darkest rooms, even when I recognize nothing else. And I know your name is “little brother” or “big sister” or “light beam,” or “my-echo-returned-to-me-intact.” And I smile. In the dark I smile.

Art has no rules-- yes-- but it does have methods, which vary for each individual. the following are some of my own methods and how I came to them. I’m very happy y’all are so into figurative language! It’s my favorite literary device because it reveals a second IDEA behind an object or abstraction via comparison. When done well, it creates what I call the “DNA of seeing.” That is, a strong metaphor “Greek for “to carry over”) can enact the autobiography of sight. For example, what does it say about a person who sees the stars in the night sky-- as exit wounds? What does it say about their history, their worldview, their relationship to beauty and violence? All this can be garnered in the metaphor itself-- without context-- when the comparative elements have strong multifaceted bonds. How we see the world reveals who we are. And metaphors explicate that sight.

My personal feeling is that the strongest metaphors do not require context for clarity. However, this does not mean that weaker metaphors that DO require context are useless or wrong. Weak metaphors use context to achieve CLARITY. Strong metaphors use context to SUPPORT what’s already clear. BOTH are viable in ANY literary text. But for the sake of this deeper exploration into metaphors and their gradients, I will attempt to identify the latter.

I feel it is important for a writer to understand the STRENGTS of the devices they use, even when WEAKER versions of said devices can achieve the same goal via different means. Sometimes we want a life raft, sometimes we want a steam boat-- but we should know which is which (for us). My focus then, will be specifically the ornamental or overt metaphor. That is, metaphors that occur inside the line-- as opposed to conceptual, thematic, extended metaphors, or Homeric simile (which is a whole different animal).

My thinking here begins with the (debated) theory that similes reside under metaphors. That is, (non-Homeric) similes, behave cognitively, like metaphors. This DOES NOT mean that similes do not matter (far from it), as we’ll see later on, but that the compared elements, once read, begin to merge in the mind, resulting in a metaphoric OCCURENCE via a simileac vehicle.

This thinking is not entirely my own, but one informed by my interest in Phenomenology. Founded by Edmund Husserl in the early 20th century and later expanded by Heidegger, Phenomenology is, in short, interested in how objects or phenomena are perceived in the mind, which renewed interest in subjectivity across Europe, as opposed to the Enlightenment’s quest for ultimate, finite truths. By the time Husserl “discovered” this, however, Tibetan Buddhists scholars have already been practicing Phenomenology as something called Lojong, or “mind training”, for over half a millennia.

Whereas Husserl believes, in part, that a finite truth does exist but that the myopic nature of human perception hinders us from seeing all of it, Tibetan Lojong purports that no finite “truth” exists at all. In Lojong, the world and its objects are pure perception. That is, a fly looks at a tree and sees, due to its compound eyes, hundreds of trees, while we see only one. For Buddhists, neither fly nor human is “correct” because a fixed truth is not present. Reality is only real according to one’s bodily medium.

I’m keenly interested in Lojong’s approach because it inheritably advocates for an anti-colonial gaze of the world. If objects in the real are not tenable, there is no reason they should be captured, conquered or pillaged. In other words, we are in a “simulation” and because there is no true gain in acquiring something that is only an illusion, it is better to observe and learn from phenomena as guests passing through this world with respect to things-- rather than to possess them.

The reason I bring this up is because Buddhist philosophy is the main influence of 8th century Chinese and 15th-17th century Japanese poetics, which fundamentally inform my understanding of metaphor. While I appreciate Aristotle’s take on metaphor and rhetoric in his Poetics, particularly his thesis that strong metaphors move from species to genus, it is not a robust influence on my thinking. After all, like sex and water, metaphors have been enjoyed by humans across the world long before Aristotle-- and evidently long after. In fact, Buddhist teachings, which widely employ metaphor and analogy, predates Aristotle by roughly 150 years. 

Now, to better see how Buddhist Phenomenology informs the transformation of images into metaphor, let’s look at this poem by Moritake. “The fallen blossom flies back to its branch. No, a butterfly.” When considering (western-dominated) discourse surrounding analogues using “like” or “is”, is this image a metaphor or a simile? It is technically neither. The construction of this poem does not employ metaphor or simile. And yet, to my eye, a metaphor, although not present, does indeed HAPPEN.

What’s more, the poem, which is essentially a single metaphor, is complete. No further context is needed for its clarity. If context is needed for a metaphor, then the metaphor is (IMO) weak-- but that doesn’t mean the writing, as a whole, is bad. Weak metaphors and good context bring us home safe and sound. Okay, so what is happening here? By the time I read “butterfly,” my mind corrects the blossom so that the latter image retroactively changes/informs the former. We see the blossom float up, then re-see it as a butterfly. The metaphoric figuration is complete with or without “like” or “is”.

Buddhism explains this by saying that, although a text IS thought, it does not THINK. We, the readers, must think upon it. The text, then, only curates thinking. Words, in this way, begin on the page but LIVE in the mind which, due to limited and subjective scope of human perception, shift seemingly fixed elements into something entirely new. The key here is proximity. Similes provide buffers to mediate impact between two elements, but they do not rule over how images coincide upon reading. One the page, text is fossil; in the mind, text is life.

Nearly 5000 years after Maritake, Ezra Pound, via Fenolosa, reads Maritake’s poem and writes what becomes the seminal poem on Imagism in 1912, which was subsequently highly influential to early Modernists: “The apparition of these faces in the crowd: Petals on a wet, black bough.” Like Maritake, Pound’s poem technically has no metaphor or simile. However, he adds the vital colon after “crowd,” which arguably works as an “equal sign”, thereby implying metaphor. But the reason why he did not use “are” or “is” is telling.

Pound understood, like Maritake, that the metaphor would occur in the mind, regardless of connecting verbiage due to the images’ close proximity. We would come to know this as “association”. Even if the colon was replaced by the word “like,” the transformation, though a bit slower, would still occur. In fact, when I first studied Pound years ago, I had trouble recalling whether this poem was fashioned as a simile or not-- mainly because the faces change to fully into blossoms each time I try to recall the poem.

Now let’s look at a simile that, to me, metaphorizes in the same way as the examples above, in [a] line ... from Eduardo C. Corral: “Jade moss on the tree intensifies, like applause.” The origin/tenor image (moss) is connected to the transforming element (applause). This metaphor suggests, not an optical relationship, but a BEHAVIORAL one. Both moss and applause are MASSES that accumulate via singularities: grains of moss and pairs of hands clapping to form a larger whole.

By comparing these two, Corral successfully suggests that moss grows at the RATE of applause, creating a masterful time lapse effect. Applause speeds up the moss growth, connoting rejuvenation, joy and refreshment. That something as mundane as moss deserves, even earns, jubilance, also offers a potent statement of alterity, that the smallest flourishing deserves celebration, which in turn suggests a subtle yet powerful political critique of hegemony. The poet, through the metaphor, has recalibrated the traditional modes of value placed on the object (moss). And no other context is needed for that.

You might disagree, but when I read Corral’s line, I don’t SEE an audience clapping BESIDE the moss. I see moss growing quickly to the sound of clapping. Although the simile is employed, the fusion of both elements completes the action in my mind’s eye. Like Maritake and Pound, metaphor has OCCURRED here-- but without “metaphor”. HOWEVER, the simile is still VITAL. Why?

Because the transforming element is abstract (applause) and looks nothing like moss. We don’t want moss to BE applause, we want the nature of applause to inform, imbue, moss. The line, I feel, would be quite poor if it was formed sans simile: “Jade moss is applause on the tree.” The “is” forces transposition, which is here akin to slamming two things together without mediation. We also lose the comparison of behavior, and are asked to see that moss BECOME applause, which doesn’t have the same meaning as the original. So, although the simile fuses into metaphor (via association) in the mind, such a metaphor would NOT have been possible without the simile. Similes matter greatly-- as tools towards metaphor. Why? Because (thank god) our minds are free to roam.

To summarize, one of the central strategies (and, to an extent, purposes) of the Japanese Haiku is to juxtapose two elements to test their synergy. This impulse is grounded in Shinto and Buddhist concepts of impermanence and structural malleability. That is, all things, even ideas and images, are subject to constant change-- and such change is the most pervasive nature of perception. 

The Haiku then becomes the perfect medium to test such changes. This principle is of central importance to me because it is rooted in non-dualistic (or non-binary) thinking. The poem becomes the theatre in which fixed elements can be transformed, their borders subject to being dissolved, shifting towards something entirely new-- to “create”, which is the Greek root to the word “poet”. The metaphor, then, is more like a chemical, whose elements (like hydrogen and oxygen), placed side by side, becomes water. In this way, Buddhism’s influence on my work and, specifically, my use and understanding of metaphor, is a foundational QUEER praxis for alterity. 

The reason why I emphasize the malleability of simile’s impact is that, although syntax and diction can aide a metaphor towards its more luminous embodiment, the ultimate key to its success is you, the observer. YOU have look deeply and find lasting relationships between things in a disparate world. In this sense, the practice of metaphor is also, I believe, the practice of compassion. How do I study a thing so that I might add to its life by introducing it to something else? At its best, the metaphor is what we, as a species, have always done, at OUR best: which is to point at something or someone so different from us, so far from our own origins and say, “Yes, there IS a bond between us. And if I work long enough, hard enough, I can prove it to you-- with this thing called language, this thing that weighs nothing but means everything to me.”

In the end, it is less about how you set up your metaphors (you will eventually find a way that suits it and you) but more about how you recognize your world. THAT is not easy to teach-- it comes with patient practice, with a committed wonder for a world that at times might be too painful to look at. But you must and you should. Good metaphors, in the end, come from writers who are committed to looking beyond what is already there, towards another possibility. This calls that you see your life and your work as inexhaustible sites of discovery, and that you tend to them with care. That’s it. That’s the true secret to a strong metaphor: care.

Lastly, I want to recommend the work of BIPOC poet and theorist, Thylias Moss, who discovered the Limited Fork Theory, a theory which suggests that the mind engages with the world, and especially with ideas, including text and art, the way the tines of a fork engage with a plate of food. That is, only so much can be held on the work/mind with each attempt to consume, and that no “work” can be possessed in its entirety, which I find happily congruent with Lojong. What a wonderful anti-imperialist and forgiving way to engage with our planet and its phenomena. Thank you, Mrs. Moss! 

And thank YOU for sticking around through my little seminar. I hope this has been helpful. Again, this is just my 2(5) cents! Now I’m going to sleep for four days. In the meantime, me-ta-phors be with you. [concludes with a pixel gif of Obiwan Kenobi with a blue light saber]

[davidmann95]

Might as well get this out of the way... RWBY is Disappointing and Here’s Why: thoughts?

No interest. I guess I’ve mostly heard that hbomberguy is good, but I don’t care to listen to 2+ hours about how a thing I like is bad actually; I’ve gotta exceptionally despise something to care to listen to that about something I hate. Plus from what I’ve heard he spends most of it talking about the first two seasons not working, and that along with the Faunus allegory ultimately spinning into extremely dicey respectability politics are my main issues with the series anyway, so why spend the time going “I already know this and agree with it, but it brings me no pleasure to hear it reiterated”? Pretty much every complaint I’ve seen about it from assorted corners of the internet in the last year or so that I started paying attention falls anyway into either those categories, or anime nerd nitpicking about power scaling/disagreeing with plot decisions or character motivations/not seeing for the forest for the trees regarding character development, so I just don’t really care. This is something where I’m mostly content to just enjoy the thing on my own rather than taking up the banner of defending it from all comers.

everythingsucksbutthatsokay said: I want to like RWBY, but it just has not grabbed me any of the times I’ve tried to start it. The character designs and fight choreography are awesome, but the characters and storyline just don’t hook me. What is it about the show that made you keep watching?

I’m not surprised it hasn’t grabbed you, because I’m gonna hit you with what’s apparently considered a Hot Take among the longtime RWBY fan community: those first two seasons ain’t very good, which is a situation only tenable because they’re only a couple hours apiece and still breezy enough fun. I only started watching it because I heard “Hey, Marguerite Bennett, who I quite like, is doing a miniseries for DC based on that internet kinda-anime I’ve seen references to and a couple cool fights from on Youtube. Well, it’s free online, what the hell”,* and it was exactly good enough to occupy my attention on the treadmill watching it on my phone without caring enough yet to switch to my laptop. It isn’t until season 3 that the plot seeds and character threads start to come together into something really engaging (and not until season 4 that they switch from the original extremely dated visuals to the current graphics system, even if the choreography from the early parts still holds up), but once it did I unexpectedly found myself profoundly taken with it.

* And then of course the last physical issue of that was cancelled due to the cornoavirus comics industry hiatus; I, a dope, will get the trade, because I liked it and I want it all in one format.

It is when it comes fully into its own a story about pain - abandonment, disaster, political terror and paranoia, endless generational war, oppression, inadequacy, abuse, displacement, long-term emotional trauma, unfair responsibility, and the losses of every stripe of loved one - and how people live with theirs and work to do the right thing and care for one another with that weight bearing on their shoulders, or fail to with monstrous consequences. It actually strikes a very similar chord to me as Kingdom Hearts even if it’s the slightly more ‘grown-up’ take, with its archetypal character templates and old-school fantasy worlds (even if it’s an old-school fantasy world in this case that’s progressed into flying cars and cellphone territory ala latter-day Final Fantasy) and unabashed emotional sincerity. It’s just that for the most part instead of struggling with relatively abstract notions of personhood or literal inner darkness, the people here are outright dealing with death and shame and resentment and uncertainty, even if it’s just as earnest as its counterpart in its belief that those challenges can be overcome, in this case through the power of love or friendship or pride or principles or simple respect for your fellow man or punching a fool with a shotgun blast. Also there are gauntlets that make punches shotgun blasts, and dogs are occasionally fastball specialed at robots, and there’re rock-pop tracks about food fights and fucking up fascists.

So I’d recommend either watching those first two seasons as basically background noise TV or make a marathon night of it, and then give season 3 a real chance to win you over. It’s far from flawless by any metric, but it becomes something really special given time to grow. And don’t forget the little character shorts that go before some of the seasons, they’re not super-important but they do flesh things out.

[nevergiveupneverrun]

Bodyguard - Chapter Fifty “Black Holes and Revelations”

Hello everybody, how are you? Here is chapter Fifty of my Story Bodyguard. I hope you will like this chapter. I’m truly sorry for not posting a lot but this semester is crazy, I have so many things to do...

I’m sorry in advance for the mistakes… English isn’t my first language and I do my best. Here is the link to the previous chapter: Click Here.

I hope you will enjoy this chapter :) 💛

                      –––––––––––––––––––––––

- A drink, Mister Hunt?

Eyes into space, installed at the counter, I raise my head detaching myself from the observation absent from the hotel bar.

I stayed for two days in this establishment which was my favorite address in Seattle, in Downtown: I had spent many stays there in the past between two planes or two missions.

My gaze rests on Roberto, the barman of the hotel and I offer him a slight smile.

- Yes, thank you, Roberto.

- What would you like? And don’t limit yourself, it’s offered by the house, he specifies with a wink.

I smile a little more, touched by his attention, to believe that my absent and distant attitude had not gone unnoticed.

- A glass of Bordeaux please and that’s nice for your offer, but I don’t want you to be in trouble for me.

- Don’t worry. A glass of Saint-Emilion then, he continues, dexterously serving me a glass of particularly prized wine. If you need anything else, don’t hesitate, he said.

- Thank you very much, Roberto, I conclude while letting him go away and take care of the other customers present in the bar.

My mind escapes again after this interruption, stopping on the last two days that I have just spent.

Two days of emptiness, boredom, and worry.

I was more distraught than anticipated in this situation: without a mission, dismissed as a beginner.

Until then, I have always been master of my professional context: my contract ends were well thought out or prepared.

After a sense of duty accomplished.

Or a jointly agreed departure when my weariness was too big.

But there, none of that: an unpleasant feeling of unfinished business, a sum of tensions whereas unlike Amelia, I am convinced that the threat still lurks.

And here I am: I’ve been going in circles for two days in this hotel.

Like a caged lion.

I stayed cloistered, to avoid approaching her neighborhood, to watch her apartment, a strong drive to silence my discomfort and reassure myself.

I feel a coward at the same time because I didn't dare to inform Jackson or Nathan of the situation. I didn’t see how I could justify Amelia’s decision to them without revealing my weakness. This episode of bewilderment of which I am still so ashamed and even more today after all the consequences which ensue from it.

.

“That’s not your problem, anymore.” she told me.

But it’s stronger than me, I can’t turn the page as easily and no longer worry about her fate overnight… after having lived with her for long months and having shared moments that still resonate unexpectedly in me.

It was no longer tenable and I had made the best decision the day before.

I just had to wait a bit…

- Good evening, can I sit next to you?

An unexpected presence is revealed on my right with a soft and singing voice.

I turn my head and discover a young woman with long brown hair, dressed in a tight-fitting, low-cut white dress: she stares at me, waiting for my answer.

- Uh… yes, of course… please, I end up telling her.

She immediately sits on the stool by my side, placing her stilettos against the metal ledge to stand up straight.

- What are you drinking?

- A glass of Bordeaux, I answer a little absent.

- It’s a good vintage, you advise me?

I can see a light accent in her sentences, a touch of melody that reminds me of a Latin country.

- It’s a Saint-Emilion, among the best wines of France.

- I’m going to take the same thing then, I don’t know much about wine… I don’t have your intuition…

- On the other hand, it is not necessarily very cheap…

- It’s not a problem, she replies without particular emotions.

She beckons to Roberto and actually orders him a glass similar to mine. I observe her out of the corner of my eye during this conversation: she had a very fine face, almost perfect skin texture, and her equally flawless, slender and feminizer silhouette.

The style of woman we turn to on the street.

And yet, would I have turned on her?

I’m not even sure I would have noticed her in the bar.

- Hum, it’s a delight this wine, she reacts suddenly after a sip. I’m jealous of not being French in these kinds of moments…

- Where are you from? I asked a little surprised to start the discussion again, but the question had been burning my lips for a few seconds.

- I’m Italien, my name is Monica, she says with a smile.

She scrutinizes me intensely as if she is waiting for something. But I remain disconnected from the moment and the conversation before she speaks to me again.

- And you?

- Owen.

- Nice to meet you, Owen, she repeats with a smile.

I do not answer her, contenting myself with a slight movement of the head.

I look back into my glass, I didn’t want to be rude but I also did not want to have a conversation of convenience.

A silence of a few minutes settles in, but I still perceive this presence by my side and like the weight of a look that studies me.

- What’s her name?

- Excuse me?

I redirect my attention to this young woman by my side, taken aback by her question.

- That pensive and melancholy air. I only know one reason to see it settle so firmly on a man’s face. And in general, there is always a woman behind… Am I wrong?

- Not completely, but it’s not for the reasons you assume.

- I don’t suppose anything, but she obviously occupies your mind largely, she continues while taking a sip of her glass. I’ve been watching you for a few minutes, you have to be blind not to notice yourself in a room, she concludes with a smile.

I look away, uncomfortable with the turn of the exchange.

- Were you expecting someone? I asked her as a signal to dismiss her politely.

- Not anymore. I am delivered from my evening commitments.

Her expression intrigues me as if she were there for obligation and not to spend the evening with a husband, a fiancé or a lover.

- You might be better off finding him…

- I was not there for personal convenience, you know…

- Sorry, but seeing you in a hotel at 9pm and dressed like that, I thought you had a date…

- Somehow, I had to find a photographer to prepare a shoot.

So she was a model, nothing surprising considering her physique.

- But I am very relieved that it is no longer relevant. Maybe I can help you spend a less moody evening.

- I’m only here for a few minutes, I’m going to leave soon.

- A few minutes are enough if they are well used, you know, she argues with a piercing and intense look.

I had the impression to discern strong innuendo in her words and at the same time, I thought of interpreting things, we only spoke for a few minutes after all.

- She left you?

- Excuse me?

- The woman who haunts your thoughts, she left you?

- Yes…well, no… it’s complicated…

- It’s always complicated, she resumes with a slight smile. But things always get better, over time. Love makes us suffer, but it also makes us stronger. Without it, we would only live half…

I had drawn a line of love for several years.

I had painfully and laboriously patched up my heart, but I had taken care to protect it, to surround it with a fortress, of which I threw the key.

Have I been living half since?

Maybe, but living fully with an open wound that bleeds daily was worse than anything…

- She will understand, she will forgive you.

- How do you know I have something to make me forgive?

- I didn’t know it, but you just confirmed it to me. But you shouldn’t be moping like that, loneliness is worse than anything…

I observe her and notice her eyes for the first time.

Two blue pupils with sparkling reflections.

A certain melancholy and sadness are revealed as if she spoke a little about herself through her remark.

A look that destabilizes me… because it looks so much like hers…

- You look like her… I whispered. You have the same…

The sentence escapes me despite me and I can see the young woman’s eyes getting a little bigger and a smile settling on her face.

- You don’t have to call me Monica, you know, she whispers in my ear while letting her hand rest on my forearm.

I stay motionless, my gaze fixed on her hand.

- You are very attractive and mysterious… I’m not used to saying that to a man I met for only a few minutes, but I like you a lot…

I fix her gaze a little more intensely and I look for something in it… something that I cannot identify or define but that I cannot find…

- I have a suite upstairs, I’m as alone as you are this evening, she continues in the hollow of my ear.

Her proximity makes me feel the warmth of her presence while her scent also invades my nostrils.

An olfactory stimulus that breaks the charm and illusion that insidiously settled.

No vanilla and coconut notes.

There are fresh and flowery touches that awaken me bringing me back to this reality: she is a stranger in front of me and not Amelia.

Amelia who should no longer be the center of my concerns…

- I wish you a good evening, Monica, I answer weakly as she detaches from me.

I read surprise and a barely concealed hint of irritation in her eyes.

Clearly, she was not used to being send-off like this by a man.

- Do you often refuse propositions like mine? She challenges me with a piercing look.

- When I’m not tempted, yes…

She laughs suddenly after my answer, then speaks again.

- Not tempted by a lay without commitment? Are you sure you are a male?

- I may not be like all men, so.

- Not like all men, that’s for sure… she is very lucky, she said before getting up and leaving the bar, leaving her glass half full.

.

Silence and emptiness reign around me again.

This interlude leaves me perplexed and disconcerted despite myself.

In the past, I would not have refused an invitation of this kind, from such a beautiful woman and in a context completely free of all constraints.

It was exactly what I was looking for: no attachment, no commitment.

Feelingless relationships.

Episodes to satisfy my body without endangering my heart.

So why did I refuse her advances?

Why did I think of Amelia at the time?

Why did I push this woman away when I realized that she was different?

Without that familiar, comforting scent of coconut… which I miss.

My reactions seem incomprehensible to me, my thoughts unfathomable.

I don’t understand what’s going on, or rather yes, I’m starting to understand, but I don’t want to admit it. The revelation that strikes me is almost too destabilizing.

It would be to recognize that I lost a battle that I thought behind me for a long time.

A revelation as a vivid and frank signal of my failure.

- Mister Hunt?

Roberto’s intervention takes me out of my thoughts and I find the image of the young man in front of me, rebind the counter.

- Your taxi is waiting for you, he says, catching my eyes.

- Thank you, Roberto, I answer offering him a smile.

- I hope you had a good stay with us and that we will see you again very soon.

- Probably, thank you for everything, I said shaking his hand to support my words.

So I leave the bar and join the hotel entrance.

A first doorman opens the doors to the building and a second presents the open door of the taxi.

- Your luggage is in the trunk, Sir.

- Thank you very much, I answer while getting into the car.

- Where should I take you? Immediately asks the driver.

- Seattle Tacoma Airport, please.

.

The car starts slowly and my gaze captures a silhouette outside the hotel.

A gorgeous young woman in a tight white dress smoking a cigarette.

Monica, my temptation for an evening: the Owen of six months ago could not resist.

But today everything is different: I see her go away as the car picks up speed, without any regrets.

No frustration, just calm in me.

.

The decorations parade through the window: Seattle streets, myriad of cars and the concrete landscape of the ring road.

I take this ride to print in my mind these images and this atmosphere of Seattle.

In a few hours, it will only be a memory, when kilometers and an ocean will separate me from my country… and from her.

With the distance, I will be able to more easily forger this unfinished mission, to ignore this paralyzing fear that something will happen to her.

In any case, that’s all I hope: to change the environment to stifle this haunting worry and this drive to find her because it is only with her that I would feel useful.

.

- We arrived, Sir.

The driver turns to me and I realize that we have been stopped for a good minute while « Terminal 2E » covers the entrance of the swing doors visible outside.

I get my wallet in my jacket pocket and pay the driver.

He gets out of the car and I imitate him, finding him near the trunk as he hands me my luggage, a simple little cabin suitcase.

- I wish you a good trip.

- Thank you, I answer while feeling a vibration in my jacket pocket.

I take a few steps towards the entrance to the terminal to get away from the noise caused by the ballet of taxis and buses accessing the airport.

I get my cellphone and answer immediately by reading the name that lights up the screen… my heart misses a beat and my throat tightens… in amazement.

- Amelia?

A breath resounds in the handset for a few seconds, then a weak but familiar voice finally answers me.

- Owen…. I need you…

                      –––––––––––––––––––––––

Thank you for reading. I’ll try to post a chapter Friday or Sunday. Have a great week 💛

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Any fics about hair? Whether it’s hair care or hair pulling, I don’t mind.

Hi Nonny!

Ah, I don’t have very many that deal SPECIFICALLY with hair, but more like hair is within the plot or one of the boys loves the hair! So here’s what I can remember; I know there’s another that’s 100% about hair (Sherlock wants to taste John’s hair and doesn’t know how to ask) and I can’t remember which one it is and it’s bugging me LOL. Anyway, here you are, everything that showed up in a search. I’ll also add Beard Fics too:

HAIR & BEARDS

See also: John Has a Beard

Upon Reflection, Tenable Frippery by emmagrant01 (T, 1,299 w., 1 Ch. || Post-S4, John’s Beard, First Kiss, Fluff) – John was, inexplicably, growing a beard.

Untouched by KittieHill (E, 3,239 w., 1 Ch. || Kissing, Frottage, Virgin Sherlock, Body Worship, Sherlock’s Scars Mentioned, Masturbation, PWP, Rimming, Multiple Orgasms) – Sherlock leaked a lot. John had never needed lubricant. John loved watching it, had once spent an entire afternoon edging Sherlock so he could watch as the thick precome drip, drip, dripped onto Sherlock’s belly.

Love and Hair Dye by Anonymous (E, 3,920 w., 1 Ch. || Est. Rel., Body Worship, Self Conscious John, Voyeurism, Idiots in Love, Smutty Smut) – Self conscious John decides to cover the greys on his head, and the colour isn’t what he thought it would be. Now he’s more self-conscious than ever.

The Oolong Disaster by unicornpoe (T, 4,151 w., 1 Ch. || John’s Beard, Fluff, Humour, Frustrated Sherlock, John Takes Care of Sherlock, Case Fic-ish, Pining Sherlock, First Kiss, Possessive Sherlock) – John has a beard. Sherlock has a panic attack.

If He Knows by shamelessmash (M, 4,513 w., 1 Ch. || TSo3 Fic, Pining Sherlock, Bed Sharing, Angst, Sherlock POV, Texting, Internal Monologue, Blanket Forts) – I imagine mornings: John handing me a cup of tea, hair sticking out at odd angles. How he would bend down to kiss me, smiling fondly as he pulls away. The way his skin crinkles at the corner of his eyes, the way his skin looks in the morning light. The soft sigh as he sits in his chair with the morning paper, the way his toes curl in the carpet, the way he rolls his shoulders before sinking deeper into his seat. I watch him, how he is when he is content, as it should be. As he deserves. Happy. With me.

Facade by distantstarlight (M, 4,715 w., 1 Ch. || Fluff, John’s Beard, No-Shave November, Grumpy Sherlock, Clueless Sherlock) – Sherlock is highly irritated with a challenge John has agreed to undertake. Why does he need to grow a beard anyway?

One Day Like This by nondeducible (E, 4,872 w., 1 Ch. || First Time, Bed-Sharing, Romance, Fluff, Virgin Sherlock) – When Sherlock emerged from the bathroom, the sight before him nearly took his breath away. The only light in the room was the small lamp on the bedside table. John’s skin shone like gold, his hair like the purest silver. He was on his side, facing the empty part of the bed, his outstretched hands ready to embrace whoever climbed in next to him. Sherlock could imagine, just for a second, that this was their shared bed and he was coming back to settle into John’s arms.

Survival Strategies for the Domesticated British Butthole by Atiki (E, 6,183 w., 1 Ch. || Crack, Rimming, Anal Sex, Iced Lolly, Hair Removal, Depilation) – In which there’s a rimming disaster, Sherlock depilates his butt, everything goes very, very wrong and groceries are mistreated. This fic contains hair removal creme in a butthole, ice lollies in a butthole and John Watson’s penis in a butthole. You have been warned.

The Death of Doubt by Gingerhermit (E, 6,584 w., 1 Ch. || Alternate Canon, BAMF John, POV Sherlock, Sherlock’s Mind Palace, Hurt/Comfort, Angst/Drama, Meddling Mycroft) – Mycroft asks for John’s help in rescuing Sherlock from his Serbian captors.

The Tip Over Into The Inevitable by ivyblossom (T, 6,894 w., 1 Ch. || Grief, Cuddles, Insomnia, Hurt/Comfort, Friends to Lovers) - When his father dies, Sherlock avoids sleeping. Then discovers he can’t sleep at all. John finds a way to help.

Onomatopoeia by aquabelacqua (M, 6,904 w., 1 Ch. || First Time/Kiss, Frottage, Dirty Talk, Domestics, Word Kink, POV Sherlock, Dry Humping / Sex, Chair Sex, Hair Pulling, Lazy Mornings, Hand Jobs, Friends to Lovers) – Something is the matter with John. Sherlock is determined to figure out what it is. Mark his words.

Beg for Mercy (Twice) by Solitary_Endeavor (E, 7,060 w., 1 Ch. || Est. Rel., Bottomlock, Bearded John, Edging, Rough Sex, Idiots in Love, Canon Compliant) – Sherlock hasn’t left the flat in four days, the itch of impatience beneath his skin too great to allow him to suffer interaction with any human being who isn’t John. This is probably a mercy that goes both ways, as he’s driving even himself mad. Sherlock supposes there is a lesson to be learned here about having himself to blame, but of course he blames Mycroft.

Of Razors, Pipes, Red Notebooks and Rugby Jerseys, Or: Sherlock Doesn’t Like His Doctors Clean Shaven by allonsys_girl (E, 7,313 w., 1 Ch. || Est. Rel., PWP / Porn With Feelings, John’s Beard / Beard Kink, Roleplay, Love Declarations, Banter, Rimming, Anal, Domestic Fluff / Bliss, Idiots in Love, Emotional Lovemaking, Pet Names, Obsessive Sherlock, Sherlock POV, Bottomlock, Cranky Sherlock) – John grows a beard. Sherlock really likes it. Part 1 of Consulting Husbands

Christmas by Anonymous (E, 7,673  w., 1 Ch. || Worried Sherlock, PWP, Drunkeness, Christmas, Est. Relationship, Idiots So In Love) – John feels a lump rise in his throat, and it hits him, again, that this beautiful, infuriating creature is his. Completely, one-hundred percent his.

And if you say the word, I could stay with you by CaitlinFairchild (E, 12,842 w., 1 Ch. || Domestic Fluff, BottomJohn / Topping from the Bottom, Fluff and Romance, Dirty Talk, Proposals) – What Sherlock thinks is, On the day I die, be it in a dirty alley at forty or in my bed at eighty, the last thing I will remember is tonight, the way you looked at at me on the snowy pavement, cheeks pink with the cold, breath puffing in frosty white clouds, your heart in your eyes and snowflakes in your hair. I will remember that single perfect moment in my life, that moment I knew I had everything I ever wanted, and whatever happens next, I will die content. What he says is simply, “Marry me.”

Where Else Would I Be? by cwb (E, 34,910 w., 10 Ch. || Retirementlock, Domestic Fluff, Falling in Love, Parentlock, Fluff and Smut, Reminiscing) – John and Sherlock’s five-year-old granddaughter spends the weekend with them in Sussex. Sherlock happily indulges her whims, and John takes care of them while quietly revisiting the past thirty years of their lives together.

Albion and the Woodsman by Glenmore (NR [E], 54,437 w., 50 Ch. || Post S3, Parentlock, Pining Sherlock, Angst, Family, Drug Use, Depression, Sherlock POV) – Sherlock and John are devastated after Mary Morstan makes her final moves. Sherlock relapses at the crack house, John walks around the world … and a lot happens in between. Parentlock, in the good way.

The Thing Is by TSylvestris (E, 56,743 w., 21 Ch. || Case Fic, Dev. Rel., Anal/Oral, Blow Jobs, Meddling Mycroft, Drama, Romance, Humour, Casual Encounters, Pining Idiots, Possessive Sherlock, Orgasm Delay, Rough / Alley Sex, Public Sex, John Whump, Drugged John, Emotional Love Making, Awkward Relationship, Marriage of Convenience, Switchlock, BAMF John) – The problem with living with Sherlock, John thought, was that you never, never, ever knew the significance of anything. Like your flatmate’s nose buried in your hair. Whilst you’re in bed. Part 1 of Nitroglycerine

A Further Sea by i_ship_an_armada & ShinySherlock (E, 125,492 w., 23 Ch. || Historical Pirates AU || Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Doctor John / Pirate Captain Sherlock, Sailing, UST / RST, Masturbation, Action / Adventure, Mild Angst & Peril, Romance, Shaving, Molly/Janine, Bottomlock, Hand / Blow Jobs, Past Drug Use, Slow Burn, Mild Violence, Facial Shaving, Happy Ending) – Here be a tale of adventure for both body and soul, but beware if ye be not of stout heart, for this be piratelock, ya savvy? Luckless ship’s surgeon John Watson takes a chance, and finds himself eye to eye with The Ghost, the scourge of the seven seas and a definite thorn in the side of the blaggard, James Moriarty. But when John finds there’s more to this most cunning pirate than be meetin’ the eye, he has to choose… is it a pirate’s life for him?

MARKED FOR LATER

Curlock by 88thParallel (G, 1,285 w. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Sherlock’s Hair, Fluff, Ficlet) – How Sherlock learned to control and appreciate the incredible gift he was born with, and the man who helped him sort it out.

Of Razors, Pipes, Red Notebooks and Rugby Jerseys, Or: Sherlock Doesn’t Like His Doctors Clean Shaven by allonsys_girl (E, 7,313 w., 1 Ch. || PWP, Porn With Feelings, John’s Beard, Bottomlock, Domestics, Fluff and Smut, Banter, Declarations of Love, Rimming, Anal, Est. Rel.) – John grows a beard. Sherlock really likes it. Part 1 of Consulting Husbands

How to Sleep with Your Enemy in One Semester by 221b_careful_what_you_wish_for (M, 9,699 w., 6 Ch. || College / Uni Professors AU || Professor John/Sherlock, Enemies to Lovers, Rivalry, Bickering, Office Sex, Blow Jobs, Fluff, Domestics, John’s Beard, Idiots in Love) – Visiting professors John Watson and Sherlock Holmes are longtime academic rivals — and now unwilling office mates — at a prestigious American university. When their tense arguments give way to an undercurrent of mutual attraction, their war of wits turns into something more personal — until it goes off course. A party, a phone number, and deserted office at night might just bring them back together.

[kinetic-elaboration]

April 15: Limetown S2

Finished listening to Limetown today. Then I read a lot of reddit posts about it. Now I have a lot of thoughts but also I desire to go to sleep because it was supremely hard to get up this morning and I’d like to finish work at a reasonable time tomorrow.

I liked S2 more than a lot of other people seemed to, but I think that’s pretty understandable. I mean first off anyone participating in a subreddit about Limetown is, or was at one time, a huge Limetown fan and huge fans of anything are going to be more critical of what they love because they’re more invested. This is especially true when talking about new installments of anything, because the new has to live up to whatever original installment created that intense love in the first place. I’ve gotten increasingly critical of everything I’ve ever been A Fan of, so I get it. With Limetown, I’m much more of a casual listener, but I needed to hear others’ opinions and interpretations, so I went to the Internet.

Plus, the frankly ridiculous wait between seasons means that S2 could never have lived up to S1. S1 becomes legendary by the mere passage of time. S2 would have been a letdown even if it hadn’t been farmed out to new people to write and produce and even if it hadn’t been surrounded by drama and controversy.

And, finally, that finale was bonkers, and I think it’s hard not to finish and not immediately think....okay, and? What am I supposed to think of THAT? And that can eclipse what came before and make it harder to judge the season as a whole.

All that said, I did like it as a whole. I thought the first four episodes were solid and episode five had certain things that were very good, even if I’m unsure how to feel about other parts.

A few specific thoughts (may or may not be coherent):

I was a bit surprised by how much lone-wolf activity there was--I really thought from the end of S1 that Lia was taken by some kind of Organization, not just One Guy. Similarly, for some reason I thought Charley was being held by some Group of some sort, not just, again, One Guy. (I’m not 100% convinced that the first bit of confusion isn’t a plot hole though.)

I liked the back story of the Bridge and I didn’t find it a let down at all. Halifax and the Bridge were probably my favorite eps of the season. But I also think perhaps I’m more into the whole ‘ramification of the tech’ angle than others?

Speaking of ranking eps and comparing seasons, I wouldn’t put anything in S2 above Scarecrow, but I think Halifax and the Bridge and probably Bordeaux were better than Winona.

I did ship Daniel and Emil. And I’m not convinced I wasn’t supposed to.

It’s canonically true that Emil is Lia’s father, right? Like I find it weird that people continue to refer to them as niece and uncle when it was confirmed they are not. I kind of called that, only in that I didn’t understand how an estranged niece would be so important to him. Also... there’s always a surprise father lol. Always.

I’m on the fence about how much of a plot hole it was that Emil didn’t know that Cleo was fake based on his own knowledge of Limetown. I see the argument... but even in small communities, not every one actually knows everyone else? I don’t know. More importantly than the simple logistics, though, I think obsessing about what he would or wouldn’t have known misses the point. (See below.)

I felt a little bit cheated by the twist with Charley playing Emil, only because I felt like it was so late in the game for that, and I’d put too much into her story, all of a sudden, to have it just as suddenly taken away. It seemed a little too much like ‘psych, it’s all fake though!’ Which I think is what other people got from it too, especially when coupled with her last speech and then what I’ll refer to as the Lia Coda.

But. Having only listened to it once. I do get, I think, what they were trying to do.

First, and most importantly, I think they were really getting at Emil’s hubris, a hubris that’s been created by his ability. Which is why I think it might be missing the point to say that ‘well he would have known he didn’t know a Cleo.’ Yeah, if he had to think critically. But he doesn’t because he assumes that he can just read the truth in someone’s brain, because that’s how it’s always been.

So what I’m saying is that if you think of the theme or point of the series as ‘what would having this ability, mindreading, do to people?’ and all of the different eps and character backstories and story lines as being variations on that theme--what would it do to a community, what would it do to a marriage, what would it do to children--well here is another one: it’s created a blind spot in Emil, an exploitable weakness out of what he thought was his strength.

I guess what I’m saying is I do think that’s interesting. I felt like I had other thoughts on it but... can’t remember.

Um, I think it helped me see what kind of person Charley is. Maybe this is me and my desire to empathize with literally every character but, just having her be the POV character for so long, I was giving her a lot of benefits of the doubt. And then, you know, I felt bad for the lamp, so to speak. So obviously I felt played but, having been played, I felt I’d learned something. I’m not convinced that ‘playing the audience’ wasn’t a purposeful part of that twist, is what I mean.

I definitely could have done without Charley’s little speech at the end, both in terms of form and substance.

It becomes slightly more tenable to me when paired with the Lia Coda BUT... it’s way too late for me to get into that lol. In short I will say I think it’s easy to conflate the character who speaks last with the author and the last opinion given as the Right Opinion, the Message, the Lesson. But it’s not necessarily so. Maybe Charley was supposed to be fucking annoying. And part of the purpose or perhaps even the central purpose of the Coda was to point this out to the listener.

I also have not read the book and know only what’s on the four corners of the podcast, so to speak, so I didn’t know what Lia’s power was supposed to be. I thought she and her mom were, like Sylvia, immune to the mindreading. So that might also have affected the way I read the Coda. But again, not going into it rn. Especially because I have a half-formed Wild Theory about it that I’m not even sure if I like myself.

[fightmeyeats]

Skin Care as Self-Care: The Appropriation of Self Care by the Beauty Industrial Complex

Because we live in a society where our worth is heavily framed in terms of our production/capitalist exploitability as workers, emphasizing the importance of taking care of ourselves is absolutely important and can even be radical. However, “self care” as a framework has increasingly become individualizing and part of the larger neoliberalization of health/wellness in the U.S.. One place where this becomes especially clear is in the way self care has become deeply intertwined with the beauty industrial complex in contemporary practices and ideologies of “skin care”. 

More below the cut. 

Self care, at its root, is not the problem. As Audre Lorde’s famously said, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation and that is an act of political warfare”. We are frequently made to feel that our only value is in how much we are able to do, how busy we are, how convenient we are; in this context, taking care of ourselves can feel selfish, and reframing the way we value ourselves and our needs becomes particularly important. However, increasingly we can see the ways in which self care serves to make contemporary capitalism (appear) tenable. 

This becomes clear first and foremost through the way self care is positioned as a response to the harm which occurs through late stage capitalism; we only need self care because of neoliberalism/capitalism, and yet by imagining self care as a practice of healing and revaluing the individual over the corporation, self care implicitly naturalizes the system which produces the need for self care. Essentially, self care operates through a neoliberal framework, individualizing care, healing, and wellness, in ways which disrupt or obscure communal networks of care. Through this framework, care not only becomes something which is enacted by and for the individual, but also constructed as the responsibility of the individual--typically in addition to regular obligations.One of the central problems exploiting workers causes corporations (assuming workers do not strike) is the problem of selling products--if no one can afford to purchase items, the system starts to fall apart. Because of this, mobilizing self care to encourage consumption helps support the entire system. “Self care” has increasingly become appropriated and intertwined with consumption; not only has he phrase itself becomes a kind of marketing, used in ads to sell products (for example, targeted instagram ads by a companies with the handle such as “selfcareisforeveryone” offering t-shirts with catchy slogans like “GOING TO THERAPY IS COOL!”), but “self care” as a practice is frequently associated with buying the things you want (#treatyoself) or, more and more often, buying items specifically marketed as being specifically necessary to produce relaxation, namely bath bombs, facemasks, and other skin care products. 

This is not a failure of those who are using self care to survive, but something directly produced by and through neoliberalism/capitalism; the necessity of self care starts to feel like

[image id:Seth Rogan putting duct tape over huge crack in the wall] 

but the central issue isn’t the people using the duct tape, it’s the way the late stage capitalism and neoliberalism intentionally frame band-aid solutions as meaningful responses to the damage capitalism produces--and then sell the band-aids for a profit. 

The connection between specifically skin care related products and broader “self care” discourse is certainly nothing new or surprising; in the last few years skin care has increasingly become a central focus in the marketing of U.S. beauty practices, with the concept of “self care” often being mobilized in these discourses. As Constance Grady argues in her 2018 Vox article “The skin care wars, explained,” contemporary ideas about skin care have not been hijacked by corporations “because skin care in its modern form has always been corporate” (emphasis added). 

While there are many ways in which one might critique this--for example, the way someone’s “natural” face comes to mean a face without makeup, subsequently naturalizing the artificial, expensive, and extensive routines which are required to achieve “clear” “moisturized” “healthy” “glowing” “natural” skin --what I am interested in exploring here is the shift in language from the beauty industry’s heavily “choice feminism” flavored branding of make up to the current branding of skin care. Whereas the branding of make up was (and still is) typically linked to discourses of creativity, freedom, and power (ie “winged eyeliner sharp enough to cut a man”), skin care is dominantly a neoliberal disciplining discourse, centered on the notion of individual responsibility to clean/purify skin through strict regimens of “care”. This is absolutely not to imply that make-up is better than skin care, merely to point to the various ways the beauty industrial complex deploys certain positive associations, often appropriated from or in conversation with the language of various feminisms, in order to increase marketability. 

One of the things which Jia Tolentino points out in her 2017 New Yorker article “The Year That Skin Care Became a Coping Mechanism,” is the way that while beauty standards have remained largely the same, the framing of these ideals shifts as feminism becomes more common in society--for example, rather than emphasizing looking young/anti-aging, there is an increase in the use of words like “radiance.” While her overall argument suggests that anti-aging skin care is an act of resistance because of the way it insists that there will be a future during a moment where the future feels increasingly unstable, the “coping mechanism” actually seems to be a response to agency panic, a way of controlling one’s self as a response to general instability. Again, like self care it imagines that individualized practices resist structural violence, while simultaneously increasing the marketability of misogynists beauty ideals. 

Feminist aesthetics and language are frequently appropriated by corporations to sell products to “conscientious” consumers (obligatory reminder that there’s no ethical consumption under late stage capitalism), or to profit off of the increasing visibility of various feminist activism. Just as we can see with the way the broader category of  “self care” is increasingly mobilized by corporations to sell products, in the last few years we’ve seen “skin care” culture come into vogue as the “positive” new version of make-up culture. The idea here is that skin care allows people to be “natural” and “healthy,” simultaneously justifying the time and expense associated with these updated beauty regimes, while also imaging that a) “healthy” skin is clear/even/looks “perfect” without the need for makeup and b) this skin is attainable by anyone who puts in the effort to achieve it. At best, skin care culture is a kind of capitalist ambivalence: regardless of whether prioritizing skin care is better than prioritizing cosmetic routines, the beauty industry only cares about selling product. As Tolentino argues, “when my skin feels good, I feel happy...at the same time, it’s impossible to ignore that the animating idea of the beauty industry is that women should always be working to look better”. Grady similarly points to this ambivalence, pointing out that “while it’s true that some forms of acne and dry skin are physically painful, the drive for “perfect” poreless skin is primarily an aesthetic one”.

At worst, skin care is insidious and damaging because despite the rhetoric of “care,” skin care is, at its base, a discourse of neoliberal bodily discipline--skin “defects” cannot simply be covered up but must be addressed through intensive routines which center a personal responsibility in fixing them. It is these same logics which produce the idea of a “glow up” (or “glo up”) which frequently compare an “ugly” picture of an individual--typically during their early teens (while they were going through puberty)--next to a “glowed up” version of the individual as a young adult. While these pictures do frequently involve makeup as part of the “glow up”, weight loss and clear skin are often associated with a glow up, and one of the central ideas being conveyed through this practice is that beauty is something “achieved”. 

Ultimately, my point is not to critique those who engage in skin care as self care, but rather the beauty industrial complex itself and the way that corporations intentionally appropriate and mobilize discourses of resistance in order to sell products. We know that physical appearance is associated with inner qualities and value; having “bad” skin often becomes a social signal for poor moral qualities (uncleanliness, laziness, unhappiness, lack of self care, etc); as many have come to realize, “choice feminism” is useless because while we do of course have agency, our choices are in part produced by the contexts we find ourselves in; the problem is not the individual people who engage in extensive skin care regimes, but rather the way that this is produced as a necessary and/or desirable choice. What we need to do is de-corporatize self care, and expand self care into practices of mutual/communal care. What we need is to create a world where self-care is more compatible with community organizing/striking/protesting than it is with the consumption of serums, lotions, face masks, face oils, exfoliators, toners, and eye creams. 

[ltleflrt]

prompt please: dean/cas panties

Okay so fun fact about this story:  This is actually the first seed of an idea that developed into Satin and Sawdust, but I ended up not being able to use the premise for Reasons.  I always wanted to do this little meet cute ficlet though, so thanks for giving me an excuse.  Also thanks to @pallasperilous for helping me get over the tiny hurdle that I ran into with the plot :D

Working from home means pajamas as a uniform. There’s a lot of advice against it; stuff about “getting into aprofessional mindset” by “dressing like you’re going to the office” and otherbullshit that probably works for others, but Castiel doesn’t subscribe to thosenotions.  Especially not before he’s on his third cup of coffee, and eventhen, why dirty another set of clothing? He hates doing laundry.

Of course, he does haveto leave his apartment sometimes.  For meetings, or to deliver thefinished product to the office.  But for the short trips to the office topick up his mail and deliveries, pajamas are just fine.  It’snot like a t-shirt and some Ninja Turtle patterned sleep pants are indecent, oranything.

Not that he cares whatpeople think about how he’s dressed.  He’s only on coffee number two, andsocial functioning doesn’t start until halfway through cup three.

He’s more alert thanusual this morning though, even if he isn’t awake enough to justify changinginto normal daytime clothing.  A new neighbor has moved in across thehall, and Castiel catches him leaving for work sometimes.  The eye candy is almost equal to a third andfourth dose of caffenation.  Brown hair, scruff, freckles, and eithergreen or hazel eyes--maybe light brown?--plus a body built to kneel before inworship and supplication… The guy’s practically built to Castiel’s taste.

And oh how he’d like ataste.

Maybe he should startthe caffeine infusion earlier.  So he’ll feel fortified enough to start aconversation one of these days instead of just exchanging a smile, a wave, anda quiet hello before they go their separate ways.  And he can finally getclose enough to figure out the guy’s true eye color.  It would be worth getting up earlier.  He’s not a fan of mornings, but he’s a fan ofhot potentially single guys.  He can make an exception.

Unfortunately he seemsto have missed the object of his desire this morning.  The door across thehall stays firmly closed for the few minutes Castiel lingers, hoping to get hisother morning fix.  But he decides it’s just a little too chilly out toloiter any longer, and he heads down to the office to pick up his mail.

There’s three packagesfor him today, and he’s pleasantly surprised because he wasn’t expecting one ofthem for another day or two.  That means he can get started on the nextproject earlier than he’d promised.  Hecan use the extra time that saves him to stock up a few pre-made things for hisEtsy shop.

He goes over a mentalplan for what kind of crazy sweaters he can design for the shop as he opens theboxes.  He smiles as he unpacks the Alpaca yarn, pausing to pet the softgreen.  This one is for himself, and hepromises he won’t use it for any commissions this time.  He’s got a lovelyscarf in mind, and since the weather is getting cooler, he needs to get startedsoon if he wants to use it this winter.  

The second box is fullof regular wool, and he checks to make sure all the colors he requested wereincluded.  Last time his order had been short a few hanks, and it had beena huge pain in the ass to get everything straightened out with his supplier. Everything is fine this time though, and he’ll still be on track for hiscurrent projects.

The third box shouldcontain the vegan yarns.  Not his favorite to work with, but he respectsthat people choose a lifestyle that requires it, and they still want mittens,scarves, and sweaters.  Plus they’re usually okay with paying extra forthe cotton yarn instead of the acrylic. So as long as they’re willing to shell out the cash, he’s willing to knitout the goods.

When he opens the box, hesmiles when he’s greeted with a rainbow of colors and reaches in to pull outthe plastic wrapped skeins.  He rips at the plastic, and then hissub-optimally caffeinated brain catches up with reality and he realizes thathe’s not holding yarn at all, but something satiny.  Whole cloth, not thematerials to make it.

It’s a pair of panties.

Castiel blinks at thered satin in his hand.  “This is not what I ordered.”

He pulls out a few moreplastic wrapped bundles.  All panties. What the hell?  

Finally he reaches theorder sheet.  And when he reads the information printed at the top, horrorcreeps through him.  This package wasn’t meant for him.  He doesn’t recognize the name, but hedefinitely recognizes the apartment number.  It’s for… his new neighbor.  

“Oh, no.”

 ***

 Dean is more than readyto get home and relax after the day he’s had.  Too many fires to put outat the job site, and feathers to unruffle when he had to advise the client thatthe new timeline they were requesting wouldn’t be tenable.  Seriously whatis up with folks agreeing to an estimated finish date, and then wanting it donein half the time?  Entitled bastards.

At least it’s Friday,and he shouldn’t be needed for anything for the weekend.  He’s going tocozy up to a few beers and the episodes of Doctor Sexy building up in his DVRand relax.  

Plus, he’s got a packagewaiting for him that he’s been looking forward to for days.  Just thethought of it puts an extra bounce in his step as he locks up his car and headsfor the office.

Ten minutes later, hisgood mood goes up in a puff of metaphorical smoke.  The package isn’tactually there.

“Are you sure the emailsaid it was delivered today?” the receptionist asks for the third time.

He waves his smartphoneat her.  “Got the delivery notification email right here.”

Her vaguely hopefulexpression crumbles and she shakes her head.  “I’m so sorry, it’s reallynot here.  I even checked to see if itgot left on someone’s desk instead of in the mail room.  There isn’tanything addressed to you.”

Dean sighs and tucks hisphone away.  Well there goes part of his weekend plans.  And on topof it he has to deal with reporting a lost shipment to the vendor.  Funstuff.  “Thanks for checking anyway.”

She smilessympathetically.  “Have a good evening.”

Despite hisdisappointment about the missing package, his plans aren’t totally ruined. So his smile is mostly genuine. “Thanks, you too.”

A few minutes later helets himself into his apartment, and he leans back against the door and justbreathes for a few seconds.  It’s quiet and dark and it’s nice not havinganyone needing his attention.  It reallyhad been a rough week, and he feels like he hasn’t had a minute to stand stillfor days.  The only bright spots in his week have been the notificationthat his present to himself had been delivered, and the few times he’d caught aglimpse of his hot neighbor across the way.

Those are always gooddays.  It’s become something of an obsession for him to see what kind ofwacky pajama bottoms the guy’ll be wearing each time they meet.  Dude’sgot quite the collection, ranging from bumble bees, to kittens, to hammers andsaws, to superheroes.  Plus he’s fuckingsexy with his sleepy eyes and mumbled greetings.  He never quite lookslike he’s all the way awake, but he always greets Dean with a warm smile and adorky little wave that leaves Dean feeling light and bouncy all the way to hiscar.

Maybe when thisconstruction project is done he’ll take a few less intensive jobs. He can seeif his hot neighbor wants to hang out a bit.  Even if he’s not into dudes,it would be nice to make a friend in the new place.  Dean’s used to having a roommate, but nowthat he’s living on his own, it’s a little lonely in his down time.

“Oh well,” he says intothe empty apartment.  “At least I’ve still got Doctor Sexy.”

A light knock betweenhis shoulder blades startles him away from the door.  He looks at itsuspiciously for a moment before putting his eye to the peephole to see who’sknocking.  When he gets a glimpse of wild dark hair and blue eyes, hejerks back in surprise.

Why is Hot Neighborknocking on his door?

Only one way to find out.

When he opens the door,Hot Neighbor seems startled.  He stares up at Dean with wide, very blueeyes, that immediately make Dean’s world fall away for a few seconds.

“Oh,” Hot Neighborbreathes.  “Green.”

The non-sequitur bringeverything back. “What?”

“What?” his neighborparrots, squinting in confusion.

Oh no, he’s cute. Dean’s internal monologue sometimes has a knack for stating theobvious.  He shakes his head, dislodging the thought and dismissing the previousexchange.  “Uh, hi.”

Hot Neighbor shakes hishead too, apparently also needing the mental reset.  “Hello,” he says, anddamn his voice is just as sexy when he’s fully awake as it is when he’s sleepy. “You’re Dean, right?”

“Yeah, that’s me. How did you--?” The question cuts off when he realizes that Hot Neighboris holding a box.  That’s been opened. “Oh.”

Heat rushes into hischeeks when he realizes that this guy has probably seen what exactly is in thatbox.  It’s only slightly reassuring when he also blushes, all the way tohis hairline.  At least Dean’s not alonein his mortification.

“Sorry, I picked this upwith my other packages,” his neighbor says, holding the box out to Dean. He clears his throat and smiles. It looks forced.  “Your girlfriendhas excellent taste.”

Maybe it’s because he’stired, or maybe it’s shock from the situation, or maybe he’s just a dumbass,but Dean’s mouth opens and the truth comes out.  “No, these are for me.”

If the increased heat inhis cheeks is any indication, he’s about to spontaneously combust.

“Oh, um…”His neighbor lifts the box in Dean’s direction again.  His smile turns tosomething far more genuine.  There’shumor there, but also… maybe interest?  “Well, you haveexcellent taste.”

Okay yeah that’sprobably interest.

Dean finally takes thebox, unsure how else to respond to the compliment other than “thanks, man.”

The guy nods and grinsbrightly.  “Anyway, uh… have a good evening, Dean.”  He does hisdorky little wave and turns back to his own apartment.

Before he can open thedoor, Dean’s brain finally shifts into the correct gear.  “Wait, what’syour name?”

Hot Neighbor turns withhis hand on the knob.  “Oh, I’m Castiel. Or Cas.  People call me Cas.”

“Castiel,” Dean says,relishing the way it feels to say.  “I was going to veg out with a beerand some trashy TV.  I got a few extrabeers if you’d like a drink.”

HotNeighbor--Castiel--Cas, beams so brightly that Dean’s a little dazzled by it. “Yes, I’d like that.”

Thrilled, Dean stepsaside and gestures for Castiel to come inside.  When he shuts the doorbehind them, his eyes fall on Castiel’s ass. Through his admiration of the shapely body he notices that Cas is stillwearing pajamas.  They’re covered in Ninja Turtles.  “Dude, your pants are awesome.”

Castiel turns and flickshis eyes down at the box in Dean’s hands then meets his eyes.  “Yours too.”

“Maybe we can do afashion show for each other some time,” Dean suggests, feeling brave.  IfCas was going to be weird about the panties, he wouldn’t be here now, right?

“I think I’d like that very much.”

Oh yeah, they’re goingto get along great.  

Unless…

“I’ve got a bunch ofDoctor Sexy on the DVR.  That sound okay?”

Castiel practicallyglows with excitement.  “It’s my favorite show.”

Dean grins. “Awesome.  Have a seat, I’ll getyou that beer after I put these away.”  

Yup.  Definitelygoing to get along like a house on fire.

[heartslogos]

newfragile yellows [714]

"There's a surprise for you in the garage.”

Bull’s half tempted to ask if that surprise is that she’s moved the rest of his stuff from their game room into the garage with his custom table, but he knows better than to do something so stupid and risk her actually doing it.

A quick glance into the dining room confirms that Ellana did not have a miraculous change of mind and switch the custom gaming table and the rickety, curb-side dining table they had picked up off the street when they first moved into this house together. No. The uneven table is still there, looking beat up and visibly uneven.

They could’ve had a very nice, very presentable, very functional and efficient table in its place. No, instead Ellana insisted on separation of play and necessary tasks for daily living and that’s why his masterwork of craftsmanship is in their garage.

At least the garage has space heaters for him.

Bull tosses his jacket onto the back of a kitchen chair, eyeing her as he passes through the kitchen door to walk towards the garage. Ellana doesn’t give anything away, she just continues to sort groceries and put them away.

That woman has no tells and it’s incredibly unfair how attractive that is.

Bull unlocks the garage door, ready for anything from there being no table to her having repainted the entire interior of the structure like she’s been threatening to do since they moved in while he was out getting groceries.

He flicks on the light and freezes.

He turns around and Ellana’s opened the kitchen window. She waves at him, smiling.

“Do you like them?”

“Babe,” Bull turns back to the garage.

Arranged around his gaming table, lid open because he was working on a map, are six matching chairs. He knows they’re matching because it’s the same wood, they’ve got matching legs and aesthetic design, and he can see the matching seal of the woodshop’s logo on them.

“Babe,” he repeats, dumbstruck. “You hate the table.”

“I don’t hate the table,” Ellana says. The kitchen door opens and closes behind him and a moment later her arms circle his waist, her cheek against his back. “I hate that you spent so much money on a table we can’t even use to eat because it’s never going to have its lid on. But I don’t hate the table itself. It’s a very beautiful table, excellent craftsmanship.”

“You commissioned chairs for the table.”

“It seems like such a waste for us all to sit around such a beautiful table on plastic fold out chairs.”

“You commissioned six matching chairs for the table.”

“And somehow it only cost slightly more than the table itself.”

“You found the sales order.”

“Of course I found the sales order, you didn’t exactly hide it babe. It was literally in the receipt folder for your card. I emailed the company asking about the details of the order because I wanted matching chairs and they were more than happy to oblige.”

He puts his hands on her hands, walking them both into the garage so he can inspect the chairs. One of them is clearly sized for him.

“I think I might cry a little,” Bull says, putting a hand on one of the chair backs and feeling the smooth finish.

“I love how in touch with your emotions you are.” Ellana lets go of him to sit on the chair next to his, leaning on the table to inspect the game map in progress. “I’m glad you like them. We’re still not moving this inside the house. But hopefully this makes the garage situation a little bit more tenable for you.”

-

“Midnight on the bridge, come alone,” Ellana reads the message. “What kind of shady business dealings are you up to?”

“You’re the one who asked me for help getting your partner a birthday gift, who are you to judge my sources and my methods?” Mahanon replies. “Don’t worry. I’ve used this source before. They’re trustworthy.”

“That’s not comforting, you’re a geologist why do you have sources? Why are you so shady? You’re a nerd. You’re a giant nerd who likes cartography and looking at rocks and collecting pebbles. Why do you have sources?”

“Everyone has sources. And that just shows what you know about my job. Geology is the only science where I can lick my specimen to identify it. And we’re very competitive about our specimens.”

“Why do you have to go alone? This is very suspicious. What bridge?”

“My source is very envois and gets shy easily,” Mahanon says. “What do you mean what bridge? There’s only one bridge around here.”

“You mean…the old broken on that no one’s used for literal decades because it’s falling apart and a disaster waiting to happen? The one that homeless people risk camping on when the weather is bad knowing it might collapse about them any second? That bridge? And you’re going to go onto that bridge alone at midnight — there isn’t even any cell reception out there, Mahanon.”

“Should I call the deal off?”

Ellana puffs her cheeks out. “You said this guy gets the good stuff. The really quality stuff.”

Mahanon taps his sister on the nose with his phone.

“I’m not some rank amateur. I’ll pull this off, don’t worry. Besides, my contacts know better than to fuck with me. I made sure to make an example of the first one, now they all know better.”

“Mahanon, seriously. Are you lying to me and mom and dad when you say you’re a geologist? Are you — are you in deep?”

“I’m not going to bother answering that. You know that, right? Anyway, you’re going to need some kind of box or gift bag about this big for this thing,” Mahanon says, making an approximate shape with his hands.

“That’s big.”

“Yes. You’re welcome.”

“Are you going to tell me what you’ve got your hands on? Or am I just handing money over to you blind?”

“You trust me, so no, you aren’t handing your money over blind. And I’m not going to tell you until I’ve confirmed the quality with my own eyes first. The lengths I go to for the two of you, honestly.”

[lookingfornoonat2pm]

Love As a Political Force

Introduction

           This piece ended up longer than I would have liked, but I am publishing it, even unfinished, because I’m not in any university. I’ve tried to keep it spicy, with a lot of provocations, hot takes, and rhetorical flares. I welcome comments, feedback, and (non-shitty) criticism. It grew to be so long because I wanted to not only move towards a politics of love, but to describe the chief challenges it must rise to. Doing the reading is helpful, but not essential. Familiarity with the play, Angels in America, will help a lot. It would also be helpful to be familiar with Erick Erickson’s structural theory of psychosocial development, as well as Carol Gilligan’s crucially important feminist critique of it. Much of what I’ve written follows a rhetorical path meant to reflect these concepts of individual social and emotional development. But this, too, is not essential. You can get away with only reading part one. The rest addresses contentions and then seeks to invoke radical social change.

Love as a Political Force

tw: rape mention, HIV/AIDS, suicide

More Life

“But still. Still. Bless me anyway,” says Prior Walter to the angels in heaven, in Tony Kushner’s masterpiece, Angels in America. Facing the likelihood of a life cut short, and dramatically diminished by AIDS, in 1985, before AZT became widely available, Prior begs the angels to allow him to endure, even in all the pain and sickness. They tell him that the world will be undone, that life on Earth will end, and that there will be more death than all the great disaster of history thus far. But still—“More life.” Prior Walter blesses the audience at the close of the play. He survived long enough to get on medicine, and outlived the AIDS crisis by the play’s ending. The angels ask him: Who could want to live through such times? Who could want to face the apocalypse and not flinch? What is cowardice now, if we are all willing towards exactly that blessing, all trepidation aside? Much philosophy is dedicated to the question of what sort of person desires beyond the horizon of their death. We are all that now. Instead, I want to ask who the person who faces that horizon must become in order to not be alone on the other side. That answer is easy: A person in love.

We all like that. There, you are done: you have loved, you are forgiven of your duty to reconsider. You know what you mean by love. What could reading on possibly contribute to that? Especially if Hannah Arendt was right, that love is killed the moment it is displayed in public: if you were to argue with me about love, we would both lose everything on this account, or else arrive at not much more than an aesthetic, mutually inscrutable juxtaposition. Arendt is wrong, but I’ll get to that momentarily. Love, I will argue, is the chief theological question of our time, and if you do it right, we might just make it out alive. What I mean by love here is not agape, or the love of the divine, or even a love which is its English homonym, an “agape” love that accepts all. What I mean is a certain kind of love that is a political love. And it is a love which is not a given, nor naturally felt by all, the way the banal emotions are. For this kind of love to exist, politics must exist. But still it may not be the sort of love of Prior Walter for the audience.

Certainly, it is not the love of his ex, Louis—or of God—the characters who abandoned their beloveds once sin and disease befell them. At best, these forms of love are a kind of useful evil. As Zizek said in an easy-to-find youtube video, love is evil. Of all the many reasons to exist, the many reasons to give life, the many reasons to work or to improve oneself—or even to endure horrible indignity in the name of sacrifice—I choose this one. You. You, in particular, above all else, are my reason. This is the love of young sex mates, and of the narcissistic parent. This sort of love says I was ready to abandon this world, to give all my time and wellness to font a fountain in my own bath tub, my own personal Red Sea of healing, but then you came along. You, in particular have given me a reason to share the glories of being, the trials of becoming. Once you cease to be a sufficient reflection of my own reality, somewhere to project and reflect my deepest fears and individual needs, you are no longer worthy of my petty love. Our desire for this reflection is always in surplus of the limited capacity of any person to provide for it. To demand they do so any way, this is philia, and I absolutely chose that word in order to make this tangent: God is a homophile. But he does not love us. Not since we asked for more. Not since we began to ail. It is still love, however, and that is important. Our identity and sensation begins to crawl into the skin of another, and we are put at risk of great disturbance thereby. But it is only the beginning of what love can do for us.

Rainer Maria Rilke writes that young lovers should like to fall in love with a great “tearing down [of] all boundaries; [while] on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude.” If my touch is the only boundary between myself and the object of my love, my own self-destruction appears to be aimed at them, and I feel theirs to be aimed at me. This would, however, remain true of two lonely stone towers, however joint. No doubt, Rilke’s understanding of love is head-and-shoulders above the mystifications of Zizek or of Arendt. But, if Rilke’s love-as-a-sanctuary respects the dignity and autonomy of the individual, it also robs autonomy from love itself. Love, on this account cannot possibly be theological in its nature (unless our theology is ecstatic or dualist), because it flits out of our reality the moment we stop working with our partners to maintain this sacred vigil. Rilke’s mistrust of our tendency to overextend ourselves in the name of love is related to his distrust of the crowd and populism: that we often find ourselves the instruments of irrational forces. Love in this way can be tragic—we love against our own well-being. Rilke proposes the equity of solitude as a remediation to this threat. It redounds, therefore, to a condition in which love is a sort of contract, and once again our world depends on the well-being of our trustee. Your sex mate chain-smoked a pack of cigarettes just now, or guzzled a heart attack of coffee, or drove home drunk—you are at war with the horizon again. We may disrupt our solitude to try to save them, but this is the folly of the person who is always trying to save their lovers. If you can love from this distance, even in crisis, and you remain in love in spite of these failures, then higher love cannot be either what keeps us separate, or what breaks down our little ego forts. This is love. But it, too, is only another level of love in its development.

The achievement of autonomy and the overcoming of egoism are essential political tasks. Arendt’s mystification of love then can be understood as a latent desire for illimitable love, of the kind Zizek amply describes. Still, her politics contain the form of isonomy before the disaster and before apocalypse which I believe is core to love as a political force. By Arendt’s account, politics can be very nearly encapsulate by this contradictory mandate: Become more yourself even as you forswear any pursuit which empowers that self over others. Yet for Arendt these selves are aggregable, and she resolves this contradiction in the process of alliance, and the being-towards-the-future of natality. We mate and produce offspring (provincially, and not necessarily) with those we love, and we see our reflections in our community, and ideally, in the other communities that make up our political sphere. For we cannot be egoists about the world where we’re dead; “the general future of mankind has nothing to offer the individual life, whose only certain future is death.” Our autonomy is enumerated in part by what we elect (or are forced) to replace ourselves with. This choice can only ever be made by the abolition of individual autonomy and the choice to extend sensation and identity to another, over whom we have no control. Isn’t that another way of saying love? Not love of the state, nor an anonymized brotherhood, but love of our children, and the possibilities their world may contain is what guides, for Arendt, our private love to take on a public life.

There. We may have a tenable sort of love now. Arendt names as “the political” the process by which we will ourselves into immortality and therefore die. Arendt wouldn’t call this love, of course, but she could not imagine a love that is beyond the individual, like Zizek, or Rilke, or Louis or God. In his magnum opus, The Accursed Share, Georges Bataille writes, “Individual love is not in itself opposed to society; yet, for lovers, what they are has no meaning unless it is transfigured in the love that joins them; otherwise it is unavoidable meaninglessness… [Love] is in itself an opposition to the established order.” While Bataille’s writings on love pale in comparison to his writings about sex, we can detect something of what we’re looking for in this passage on silly young people fucking. We want an idea, a sensation, like a talisman or idol that will contain for us the whole of another way of being, even when we are submerged in the evils of life, even amidst apocalypse. As in Zizek’s image of love, the rest of the world fades away, and the object of our love becomes the center of a new, subversive symbolic order. Bataille’s thought here is helpful when we find, for example, that our habits of mind or body, taught to us by our society, are found to be harmful to the people we love. We change, therefore, in our will towards this love. Rilke might blanch—wouldn’t this be allowing love to overturn our sovereignty? In fact, it is the very opposite. When we aim to change to please our beloved, we compromise ourselves and that very ill-founded growth. When we aim to change the quality of our love, we must start with affirming our own sovereignty in that process.

Prior Walter isn’t the only person in Angels in America to actually see the angels. While coming to visit her newly made friend, Prior’s ex-lover’s new lover’s mother, Hannah Pitt is also visited by the angel that has given Prior his visions. Actually, the angel makes her cum. It’s really great, you should totally watch and/or read it. I mean, Meryl Streep performs the divine orgasm in the HBO version, and come one. You want to see that. What brings Prior and Hannah together, oddly, isn’t Prior’s newfound religiosity, but Hannah’s steadfast one. Hannah flew to New York to try to save her closeted gay son’s failed marriage, and finds herself spending most of her time at a Mormon community center. Prior walks in, in a daze of heartbroken misery and HIV-associated dementia, and she starts to try to help him. There are three ways to read this. The first is that Hannah is simply acting out of charity: she sees someone ailing, she’s a good Mormon, and so she helps him. The second is that Hannah is reacting in distress: she sees someone in pain, and seizes upon the demand that places on her—as a person, or a Mormon, or a community center volunteer. Either of these can be easily explained away because charity and duty both stop short of beginning to listen once Prior, the apparent madman, begins to speak. The third, and I believe correct one, is that Hannah is acting out of love. What can we call this love? Something like spontaneous, atomization-crossing enjoyment of the presence of the other.

Crucially, Hannah begins by listening to Prior. He tells her that he knows her son. She’s his ex-lover’s ex-lover’s Mormon mother. So when he collapses in the community center, Hannah begins to actually help him because he has something she wants. She allows herself to be curious about the needs and experiences of a total stranger. She wants to learn more about him. But that’s only a moment before Prior falls to the ground. In 1985, she could have easily called the police, and convinced herself that the sick man was going to make her sick as well. Our excuses for not helping those in our immediate path are plentiful. But Hannah doesn’t only help him stand up, she also goes outside to help him get a cab. She doesn’t only help him get a cab, she goes with him to the hospital. Because of this, and only because of this, Prior learns that she has something that he, as a budding prophet, needs: theology. The book of Hannah and Prior is the book of political love. Wrested from angels, it is a love of love itself; a love of the heroic possibilities and catastrophic risks entailed in pursuing a shared thriving. And it takes practice. Hannah delivers probably the deepest cut against our overdeveloped pseudo-intellectualism: “At first it can be very hard to accept how disappointing life is […] because that’s what it is and have to accept it.” The Mormon mother turns out to have amor fati. What’s more, it is this present, living, breathing love that puts Hannah in a position to receive those in need of it.

The absolute poet of love in our time is bell hooks. On the subject, she has written so much that to address it briefly is cruel both to those who adore her work, and to those who are yet deprived of her insights. However, for the purpose of exploring a politics animated by love, bell hooks cannot be avoided. She writes, “For most folks it is just too threatening to embrace a definition of love that would no longer enable us to see love as present in our families.” This is because love and abuse cannot coexist. We needed fuller, more satisfying, more fire-quenching love, and for too many of us, our parents were either too overworked, or too dependent upon petty pleasures to provide it. And it is now up to us as adults to relearn even the first, all-consuming love so that we can strive to contain it in the second, co-equal love, and develop it further into a love of love itself. Only then can we begin to practice healing that is a vocation of our heart, instead of being blood-bags for the desperate. Hooks furthers her critique through both dialogue with regular people, and material analysis of the actually existing society. She notes that our capacity to love cannot develop under conditions designed to dominate, or which teach us to dominate. We must be  be both alive to our connections with other, and respectful of the illimitability of inner experience. Arendtian love disappears in our need to speak honestly and frankly about our families and how they taught us to love. Zizekian love, in its joyful negation of the world in favor of its object, severs the social and spiritual connections which in fact comprise the persons themselves and therefore must be overcome. Rilkean love begins to multiply its autonomy-stewardship dynamic, ideally, to a point where solitude becomes untenable as a description of our lives.

What hooks describes as “a commitment to spiritual life,” is based on the fundamental understanding that in order to thrive, we must have a material base of minimal comfort, and social base of recognition. While we can recognize that love, in its own sovereignty, may bless us with greater capacities to love than what a statistician might predict, this understanding of the spiritual life is core. When we love and seek to magnify that love, and seek to extend its possibilities for the lives of others, we everywhere confront material and spiritual deprivation. Even children of wealthy families find their parents locked in the narcissistic pursuits of public esteem and private capital, and therefore unable to give them the love they needed to thrive as young people. “Spiritual life,” writes hooks, “is first and foremost about commitment to a way of thinking and behaving that honors principles of inner-being an interconnectedness.” Thus, we can see the political life of love as the extension of this network of reciprocity, admiration, nourishment, and respect. When we love love, we desire for all people to develop this capacity to its utmost. We are called on, therefore, to act not from charity, nor from duty, but to protect and uphold the possibility of love growing from every corner of our communities.

           When I asked my lover what she thought political love could mean, she described an experience she often has on the subway. Some old woman, or some sad-looking man will board the train, and spontaneously, she will feel that that person deserves her unconditional support and love. The feeling may pass, but the moment is absolute if it seizes us. We become, like Hannah, instruments of love, when we allow our futures to be altered by the love of those we find along the path. We can have this experience with neighbors, if you’re not too closed off to it. We can have this experience with whole communities, if you spend enough time in public to enjoy the life of the city streets. This sort of love does not die by exposure to the public. It lives only through our exposure of ourselves to its possibility in the stranger, the fellow bus passenger, or the neighbor. And we can develop in ourselves our capacity to feel this love. Because I am, in many ways, still trapped in Zizekian love, I will take my lover’s authority on this matter to be beyond critique. Arendt’s structure of the frail plurality of the future, and our relation to it describes the same gambit love as a political force demands. bell hooks describes what that love must contain in order to be a strong, capacious love. Kushner’s Prior Walter shows us how to love ourselves, and protect ourselves from neglect and wrong. Kushner’s Hannah Pitt shows us how essential and unbreakable the love of love becomes when we practice it daily.

The Virtual and the Spiritual

           It is an exciting time to be alive, if you have even a modicum of derring-do and/or masochism. The perennial cycle has arguably returned to theology (from its stint in aesthetics from 1989 to 2018) precisely because of the stakes in our politics: Once again, the apocalypse isn’t just an idle threat of clerics, or Schmittian protestants, or geopolitical goliaths. It is a visibly active force reshaping whole countries, and it is a sort of polymorphous death angel: Here the death of a democracy, there a coup; here the burning Amazon jungle, there the burning down of all our parents understood to be honor; here a culture wiped out, there a culture that fetishizes the new to the point of cannibalism. Here a hurricane, there a singularity. The specificities of the apocalypse are uninteresting to me, philosophically speaking, because they all amount the same thing: an unavoidable horizon, and after that, perhaps a freefall. Supposing it is a freefall, there is surely value in investing in parachutes, so to speak, but that’s what people said about bitcoin. The air might be too thin for the parachute to spread properly. Acid rain may burn it any way.

           In practical fact, the apocalypse is primarily a matter of labor value. Understanding the apocalypse in terms of freedom is less than useless—noxious, even. You are free to die. Go ahead. Understanding the apocalypse as a matter of justice comes closer to confronting the theological dimension: the caprice of the Earth which produces the obviously unjust situation in which the most polluting nations have thus far experienced the mildest consequences. Labor value more fully encapsulates the primary practical consequences of apocalypse. Life will be made considerably cheaper, to the point of the rule of sovereign brutality. Furthermore, thinking about it in terms of labor value connects our immediate experience to what is beyond the storm. It’s hilarious these days to go to interviewing for white collar jobs. I haven’t heard the question, “Where do you see yourself in ten years?” since 2016. We know the answer, and it’s probably either shoveling heaps of shit or else meticulously placing your shit in the shit container to be delivered to the shit heap. But what is the work for? What good does it do a person to work all their life, if the fruits are enjoyed by someone else? Why should I develop myself any further if I’m just going to jump into the gristmill of someone else’s idea of progress? Understanding the practical reality of the apocalypse as a matter of labor value reasserts the importance of love: what we live for, what we commit to against our better judgment, what wills us beyond the horizon. However we characterize the passive feeling of love, its ugly namelessness accompanies us unconditionally whenever we desire beyond possibility, for the wellness or joy of others.

           But which others? For the conservatives, that is practically the only question. With the advent of the virtual, we of course have a massive panoply from which to answer this question. That changes absolutely nothing for the conservative, of course: if anything, it lengthens the list of people not to let past your little stone fort. The earning of trust and respect is paramount for the conservative of course because he believes it is in man’s nature to seek conquest. Only in love is there an exception. However, even if consent is given, his love remains a sort of rape because it is love for him insofar as it is illimitable: the Zizekian love, the Platonic love of abstraction, the love of Tony Kushner’s Roy Cohn for the law. What can we call this sort of philia? Perhaps a chauvinist love—a trap I may well fall into myself by seeking out the highest love. Nevertheless a difference persists. Who you allow into the realm of intimacy—the realm of sovereign connection, where emotion is the primary rationality, and relationship is based on identity-as-genital/s, and expands out from there—reflects who you are as a person. In treating love as this holiest of exceptions, against which neither god nor God nor society can intrude, the conservative reveals his failure to love love.

           It is easy to see how charity and duty are handily enough satisfied by the virtual, to the point of imbecilization. Love demands more. The best this mistrust of love itself can achieve is Rilke’s love between spouses, and even then, the conservative political project is underwritten by a belief that only one gender truly deserves their solitude.

           The german idealist notion of the virtual/representational as the spiritual persists in our irony towards it, but it is false. The virtual is fun, but fun is the shallow end of a blunted spectrum. The other side is nausea. We watch these horrors, and while the horror is easily felt to be universal, it is absolutely essential to sort it out. Our virtual relation to the global, and therefore to each instance of the apocalypse, can go no deeper than fun or nausea as its absolute extremes. It is a horizontal abyss in which, as Baudrillard says, “only few things and at rare moments achieve pure appearance.” On this account, our love can walk the streets, perhaps even chant and hold our fists high, but only because the public has been eclipsed by the virtual. Every disaster has a gofundme by the end of 24 hours. The state’s response to climate change is implicit already in its response to each small calamity, each life boat on the Gulf or Mediterranean. It is already culpable in the displacement in the first place, as centuries of colonialism rot into wasteland. The apocalypse, as it is made to appear in the virtual, seduces us to stay comfortably lost between nausea and fun.

           Love—political love, love that is a force in politics—is like chocolate. You ever see a kid eat chocolate candy for the first time? They didn’t know how empty and meaningless their life had been until that first rush of dopamine. Love is chocolate for the apocalypse. We can expanded our capacity to love such that the virtual horrors inspire something more than fun or nausea, not just sometimes, but as a way of relating to the world per se. Perhaps then we could see the biome and its torments as implicit in our decision to love on a day-to-day basis. You don’t know how good you can be until you’ve tasted it.

           That expansion is something people actually already know how to do. And it is the practical life of spiritual development. Expansion of sensation and suspension of identity are not boxes on a spreadsheet, which can be supplanted for this-other-religious-belief, or that-other-political-commitment. Extending empathy is a skill you can actually improve, using your actual body. Actual bodies require labor. And if any of our actual bodies make it out to the other side of the apocalypse, they will not be drawn together by the ecstasy of the virtual, but by the necessity of the spiritual. There are hundreds of thousands of people who have already survived an apocalyptic visitation, and they have names, and if you live in a democracy, you can probably go meet them if you’d like.

 You, Yer Dad, and Everyone You Know

           One time at a party, I got trapped in the corner with some insufferable hippy like myself, and he made me listen to his spiel. He said, “According to the Buddha, if there are gods, or even, you know, big-G God, then that changes nothing. If they have an identity and a desire, they’ve got the same problems as you and I.” He smelled bad, but the lesson is a good one. Supposing this is true, it would remain true of any sort of hostile AI singularity event. On the Buddhist account, life is suffering, and compassion is the key to unlock what lies between ourselves and our enemies. If it suffers, then the humanity can love it. Well, so what? The machine doesn’t love me back, so who gives a shit? We are done with what Sloterdijk called “loser romanticism,” so this love had better actually do things. Because, if it doesn’t, we all have a lot of other emotions—hate, greed, boredom—that motivate whole industries.

           Love is an essential political task now because so few people seem to be worthy of it. You, yer dad, and everyone you’ve ever loved is living on a planet that is dying, and the apathy with regard to that fact is galling. Even some of the brightest, most optimistic minds cleave to a sort of processual nihilism. “We’re doing everything we can!” said one friend. Another said, “If what it takes is some kind of horrible, overwhelming violence, or dictatorship, or both, to turn climate change around, maybe it was meant to happen. Maybe that’s the tragedy.” You can hear echoes of this in almost every response to climate change that isn’t coming from a tanky or a nazi. The religious find a different confidence. We need love, not just to have it, but to pursue it, magnify it, and seek within each instance the grain of a higher love. We need it because if we actually loved ourselves and our loved ones as much as we say we do, we would not need to scrunch down and hide when we look at the apocalypse. Love becomes a political force not by some fiat, some laser eye-beam of pure eros. Nor does it become a political force merely through solidarity with either our tight little chauvinist circle, or our cadre, or merely our fellow worker. Love becomes a political force when we seek with others to magnify the possibility of love, for ourselves, and for others.

           The mystics may balk, but we as a society actually know a lot about how to produce that kind of love. Without the ability to form secure attachments as a toddler, that ability is hampered throughout life. Without the opportunity to play and make mistakes free of repudiation or humiliation as a child, our capacity for open play is hampered throughout life. Without the ability to assert oneself authentically as a young person, one’s ability to do so in relationships with lovers, friends, or family is perpetually hampered throughout life. Without the opportunity to give, receive, and reciprocate intimacy through the kinds of intense relationships that form as a young adult, our belief in solidarity, and ability to extend trust is damaged. These are essentially empirically sound facts gathered from a century of psychological science. And at each phase, the ability to form a higher love can be thwarted or nourished. Without stability, without assurances of health and well-being, and accompaniment, none of these capacities can thrive, and yield the fruit we crave. The love of hooks, the political love of the stranger—these are not given to us simply by our development as human creatures, but rather require practice, and the security in which to fail. So why don’t rich kids become rich people who love more? They hit about 21, form those intense relationships we all like to reminisce about, and get cock-slapped by patriarchy and capitalism. At some point, your dad says something amounting to “You’re letting a bunch of fuckin faeries steal all the weed outta yer garden! You dumb fuck. Stop feeling so much and get your shit together.” And somehow, they always do.

           We can, in fact, observe empirically how lower forms of love grow to become higher, more secure, more generous, more certain forms of love in the individual lifespan. These transformations appears to be an individual choice one some level. We have to practice good communication to be any good at it. There is some genetic component, but it appears to be made negligible by the simple power of a present, loving face, warmth, and food at infancy. Yet under all of that is the value of labor. If the value of labor is high, parents spend more time with children, neighborhoods have more healthy activities in them as people naturally bridge their isolation with their free time—they may then neglect their children, as bell hooks says, by supplanting loving presence with material objects. Yet the fundament of material safety is necessary to develop our fullest capacity to love. Political love which is love of the leader or the country or the state is in fact simply chauvinism: loving what you see of yourself in the object (and is why romantic love can be a source of danger under the rule of any philosopher-king). But it does not ascend the level of loving difference, as Rilke’s true partners might. Instead, if we want a politics of love that is not chauvinist in nature, we have to begin at the moment of immediate experience, which is to say, praxis.

           When was the last time you experienced a sudden, uncontrollable desire for the health, happiness, and joy of another? Have you sought to cultivate this capacity in yourself? What is stopping you from doing so? Why do you associate love, and especially the radiant quality of your own love, to be a liability for you? Was yer dad a cruel prick?

           Angels in America ends with the characters having what is supposed to look like an ironically unwinnable conversation about theory and practice, and the necessity of both. Louis comments that he doesn’t want the play to have a Zionist tone, with its reference to the angel who would bring forth a new wellspring in the holy land. Kushner’s writing intones both a joy and a detachment with regard to theorizing: the only character who does it, really, is the sick-lover-abandoning Louis. Identifying the practice of love, and the magnification of love, with the daily experience of living and loving is not meant to subvert the divine. Divine love is no doubt something we are all capable of with the proper development, and besides, it radiates through us any way, whether we like it or not. Prior Walter, the AIDS-stricken prophet, has blessed you with more life. He wants you to thrive, like the bodhisattvas and the Christ. No one can take that away from you. But they can take away your polis. The massive chasm that separates love in its form as a political force from love as the force of creation itself is that political love must be willing to defend itself. If capital is an imminent force of calculability, then love emerges as its opposite, not because of its illimitability, but because of its refusal to supplant or replace or liquidate or substitute. Love cannot do without its particularities, given from each according to their ability, and seeking always for needs it can meet. Love in its chauvinist form is seductive for our political impulses because it promises to magnify our love for our neighbor by replacing him with someone we already love. Love in its political form—which is to say, love that respects the autonomy of self and other, while still seeking to overcome individual egoism—is the expansion of sensation and identity by means of cultivating this capacity in oneself, and guaranteeing the minimum social needs are met for your neighbors to cultivate it as well. You don’t need to bless the whole audience, you just need to bless more than the person you bless.

           This is the love you must be in in order to survive the apocalypse. If a love that is so open-ended yet certain and specific; that is defined by its radiance, rather than its negation, or its qualities of exchange, cannot be willed into history, it will be willed out of it in retrospect by whatever comes next.