#my partner is the epitome of polite behavior

[oddcryptidwrites]

Welcome Back to the Collection of the Odd Cryptid's Writings

Hi! I'm Athens/Andy (they/them). I am a somewhat old yet somewhat new face on writeblr. I'm currently a second year student at a university in the deep south, studying history and anthropology in order to become a museum curator. Most of my free time is spent writing, which is the driving force behind this blog. Writing has become the love of my life over the past ten years.

AthensWrites has had two prior iterations. All I posted here in the previous iteration was privated, including Not Your Typical Fairytale. Don't fear, NYTF will make a glorious return ;)

With all that said, welcome back to the odd writings of Athens, and I hope you enjoy your stay. Below the cut, I've detailed some of my current projects, which range from Sci-Fi (my favorite) to thrillers to fantasy to realistic fiction. I've highlighted key content warnings and tags for each, just to keep you aware. If you'd like to hop on a tag list for any of these stories, please let me know! Some of them I post more frequently than others. I am also very tag list and tag game friendly so PLEASE tag me in stuff. If you need other people to tag in a writeblr tag game, look no further than this post!

The collection is constantly updating and evolving, so stay tuned!

Not Your Typical Fairytale (#nytf)

Although originally planned as a standalone novel, NYTF has now expanded into three separate books: Knight of Dawn, Queen of Noon, and King of Dusk. There's an additional collection of short stories/untold stories planned as well, tentatively titled Pawn of Midnight.

Content warning: gore, death, violence, graphic scientific experimentation, derealization, paranoia, drug use and abuse, alcohol use, child abuse (physical, verbal), relationship abuse (verbal, manipulation), sex (consensual) Related tags: nytf, Piers Hall, Grady Yensey, Rene Dubois, ATLZoS

Knight of Dawn

Piers Hall is the newly crowned monarch of the post-apocalyptic State of Georgia, after their mother, Queen Adele, was declared unfit to rule. Despite meaning well, they find themself unprepared for the role, especially as political rivals, like North Carolina’s President René Dubois and Councilmember Shanna Miles, close in on their tail, seemingly threatening to topple their rule. When various palace staff start to show where their real loyalties, it seems like Grady Yensey, Commander of the Royal Guard and their closest friend, is the only one they can trust. Piers and Grady must scramble to uncover the truth behind Queen Adele’s questionable associates, Piers’ missing past, and President Dubois’ shady activities

International Alliance of Superhumans (#iash)

Superhumans have existed as long as we have, normal people who suddenly develop seemingly magical powers overnight. That’s why the International Alliance of Superhumans was founded in 1945, to help control these superhumans to better humanity. Now, the Alliance's ideals and control is falling apart, as the Underground and the Union threaten its weakening rule over the superhuman community. Fireball is the golden hero of the Alliance , the face of the organization, the beloved apprentice of the Chief Administrator after the death of the one and only GoldenSon. He’s brave, courageous, kind, and always up to take a photo with the kiddos, accompanied by his partner, NightSong. He’s taken down villains from Quantum Rift (the killer of GoldenSon) to Árbol Terror, and now has his eyes set on taking down Hueso Blanco and Morpheus Nox before they can tear a hole in reality. Brigid Roberts is the face behind the mask of Fireball. They’re the only child of the now-deceased Nikki Roberts and find have found themself seeking revenge for Nikki’s death…while also trying to manage this superhero business and their senior year of high school. It doesn’t help that the administration of Wesmoreland keeps threatening to expel them for their aggressive behavior. Hueso Blanco is the epitome of an ex-Alliance villain, a well beloved hero fallen from grace, after Árbol Terror and Quantum Rift convinced him to join the Underground. Now with both of his former allies dead, he leads the Underground, and with the help of Morpheus Nox (an up and coming villain with a terrifying similarity to Quantum Rift) he plans to tear a hole in our reality, ripping out world apart. Martin Garcia-Flores is the sole caretaker of his younger brother, Elias, and would do anything to protect him. After the Alliance's violent threats, he left, in order to protect what was left. He lost friends and family and his love to the Alliance's corrupted side, and now works tirelessly to bring it to his knees…while also trying to work three separate jobs to keep himself and Elias afloat. When fate brings Brigid and Martin face to face, maskless and vulnerable, the two come to understand they may not be as different as they’d both previously thought. Content Warning: violence, gore, death, family abuse (physical, verbal), alcohol (use) Related Tags: IASH, superhumans, Brigid Roberts, Martin GF, Hueso Blanco, Fireball

Space Clue/The Murder of Fredrik Lexand (#tmfl)

In 2183, humans abandoned earth as her ecosystems collapsed and became uninhabitable. Now, the remnants of humanity live in the Lexand Starfleet, a group of 16 name-brand ships, sailing towards deep space. In control of it all is Fredrik Lexand, the 17th great grandson of the original founder of Lexand StarFleet. From his living pod at the head of StarSeeker Alpha, he controls everything and anything that happens to humanity, from their food to their spouses to where the remnants of humanity will travel to. The weight of the world on one man’s shoulders (who are we kidding, of course he has lackeys who do all the menial work), worshipped as a god. Until the morning he is found brutally dismembered, mangled parts of his body strewn all over his office. Humanity freezes, watching intently, as the Lexand Pod is locked down by Detective Scoud Tambry, swearing to uncover the killer, and avenge the Corporate god-king. Content Warning: Violence, gore Related Tags: tmfl, space clue, Triple A Siblings, Scoud Tambry

Something Queer is Afoot (#SQIA)

Something Queer is Afoot is a massive collection of stories, all centering around queer life and romance. The Queer Crew is the group which most of them are centered around. This collection is MASSIVE and has about 10 different novella-length stories within. The content warnings listed below covers ALL of SQIA. Content Warnings: su*cide, death, homophobia, transphobia, abuse (physical, verbal, and sexual), drug use and abuse, religious trauma, sex (consensual and noncon/r*pe) Related Tags: SQIA, tqc, nlth, frf, sunandgun, boc

Still to be added: All of SQIA's individual projects, Cryto Conspiracy, The Great Fantasy American Road Trip, World of Ateine, Neon Squad

MORE TO BE ADDED SOON, SO STAY TUNED!

Athens' Current Objectives....

Blog Tag Directory:

#athenswrites: Personal writing

#athens answers: ask games

#other writeblrs: exactly what it sounds like, other writers I've reblogged

#writers I love: reblogs of close friends or writing that just hits me different

#rblg: general reblog tag

I'm pretty good at tagging extensively, so if you need to find something or are looking for a specific wip in my blog, there's a high probability I've tagged it like crazy

[temperatesnz]

Consider a polite sneezer, who always sneezes into their elbow whether in company or at home alone. Now consider this person preparing to cover a sneeze that then gets stuck and so they stand with the back of their wrist pressed to their nose, breathing slowly and deliberately with their eyes tightly shut while they try to coax it out.

[catmarlowastrology]

🔥🍃 Sun in Sagittarius, Moon in Taurus: A Quick Jamie Campbell-Bower Birth Chart Reading

Since the premiere of Stranger Things season 4 on Netflix, Jamie Campbell-Bower has been featured on all of my social media timelines. People are falling in love with him (or falling in love all over again), and it's easy to see why. Here's what I discovered in his natal chart.

Due to the fact that we don't have his birth time, this reading is incomplete. If he was born early, he may have a Scorpio Sun. Everything described in this interpretation could also be altered by his Ascendant. This reading is also for entertainment purposes only, and focuses on his chart.

Personality

Jamie's Sagittarius Sun is outgoing, passionate, and optimistic. He is the kind of individual who truly embodies their personal philosophy and lives according to his beliefs. His charisma and confidence are enhanced by the Sun-Mars trine in his chart. Jupiter's opposition to his Sun in Sagittarius is one of his weaknesses, as he tends to go overboard. He occasionally overestimates his abilities and is overly enthusiastic, and then ends up making promises that he cannot keep. He loves to take big risks, which sometimes backfire. At times, he can also be arrogant.

His Sun is complemented by a Taurus Moon that is more grounded. His conscious and subconscious are completely different since Sagittarius and Taurus don't have anything in common. He is a sensual guy in private who, like an epicurian, finds comfort in all the pleasures life has to offer. Since we don't know his actual birth time, we don't know the precise aspects to his Moon. He may have a Moon-Pluto opposition, which would cause him to feel emotionally overwhelmed. In certain situations, he needs to be in control to the point of obsession. Despite his outward appearance of fun and lightness, he can be rather intense in private. 

Thanks to his Scorpio Mercury, he has a sharp mind and is quite observant. He likes diving deeper into subjects and despises lies and secrets. Any falsehoods are quickly discovered by him. He doesn't need to flaunt his intelligence by using extravagant words, and can express his ideas clearly and effectively with only a few well chosen words.

His Mars in Aries demonstrates his drive to achieve his goals. He is straightforward in pursuing his interests, and quite passionate. But his Mars is squared by Saturn and Neptune. Mars-Saturn is a frustrating energy because he feels limited in his ability to pursue his goals by some overpowering fears. The Mars-Neptune square intensifies the difficult energy by making him uncertain and occasionally deluded about his goals. He basically has a lot of drive and is motivated to achieve his goals, but he has a hard time identifying them, and when he does, his worries and concerns weigh him down. He undermines himself.

His Jupiter is in Gemini, showing a genuine interest in learning and confidence in his intelligence. Jamie has a way with words and can transform all the knowledge he possesses into something useful. He could possibly be a talented writer.

His Saturn in Capricorn is squeezed between Uranus and Neptune. His boundaries are unstable and quick to dissolve despite his desire to uphold adult principles of behavior and be a responsible person. 

Relationships

As a friend, he is fun and always down for a good time. Due to his sensuous nature, he can be the sort of person that enjoys going out but finds it difficult to maintain balance. He can occasionally be a little bit too honest and will tell you things as they are. He doesn't seem to be overly sentimental.

In love, he seeks a companion who epitomizes beauty. He likes people that are sweet, charming, and generally lovely to be around. His Venus in Libra and Moon in Taurus are very venusian, so he dislikes vulgar behaviors. He will be drawn to partners who are refined, polite, and well-mannered.

He is a really good flirt and knows how to seduce people. His tendency to be indecisive and his potential reluctance to settle down with someone are the only flaws in his chart when it comes to love.

More: Curious about the hidden powers of your natal chart? You can purchase unique and insightful readings on my website, www.catmarlow.com!

[liskantope]

Hopefully this will be my last-ever post complaining about what someone said on social media, because current events are simmering down and once they’ve reached a moderate enough hum I’m going to redouble my previous efforts to stay away from it. But the particular interaction I’m going to describe seems to have furthered my progress slightly in understanding why so many people shout their views in the way that they do and how I should learn to better accept it.

One of my “closest” Facebook friends for over a decade, whose life’s passion nowadays revolves around anti-racist work (mainly in childhood education; she is white) posted a few hours after Biden’s victory was officially called last Saturday to preach that white Biden-voters shouldn’t claim any of the credit for his victory because it was BIPOC and particularly black women who carried this election (her justification for why they “carried us” was that as a demographic group most of them voted for Biden while as a demographic group a majority of white people voted for Trump), and that nothing will be better now except for who is in the White House because “whiteness and white supremacy have not disappeared” and that “your” responsibility is not diminished and “you” are not absolved as a good white person. She ended with an exhortation to bow down and “bend your knees” to BIPOC for “saving our asses”.

(Just realized looking back at her post to write this one that the phrasing was not “bend the knee” as I repeatedly misread at the time, assuming that it was a direct reference to Game of Thrones of which I know she’s a fan, and having recently listened to this insightful 8-minute Sam Harris podcast episode which used the phrase. This is slightly unfortunate since it was the obnoxiousness of that particular phrasing which tipped me over to acting against my better judgment in not just ignoring this like I have with so many dozens of other statements. I still find it obnoxious, though, and sanctimonious, and terrible messaging, and using poor arguments about causation, and reflecting an insistence on viewing as much as possible in terms of race at all times, and the epitome of identity politics.)

So yeah, after waiting a couple of days, I broke my usual silence and wrote a very polite but argumentative response that turned out to be enough paragraphs to make me feel a little embarrassed that I would take that much of my time on it. I knew there was virtually no chance of convincing her of anything substantial, but I figured just maybe some insight into how foreign and alienating this “you are responsible for what everyone of your color does and are never good enough and have to kneel in deference to those of a color which is” messaging is bound to be to anyone who’s less in an academic bubble than we are (which is, like, most people). I made the point that individual BIPOC didn’t contribute any more than individual white people did to Biden’s victory and that if we’re going to judge blocs of voters according to race we should be blaming Cuban-Americans for Biden’s loss in Florida, and that in fact Trump gained votes from among BIPOC and lost white male votes since four years ago. I wrote that implying that the only salient feature of us individuals is race is exactly what people complain about when they use the term “identity politics” and that the results of this election suggest that maybe we’re doing something wrong with our messaging.

It wasn’t a disaster. I got a very cordial response which completely avoided ad hominem and at least engaged the points I had made while clarifying her views. I didn’t find the supposed rebuttals of my points at all convincing, of course. For instance, my complaint about treating individual voters as merely people of a certain color was met with “It’s important in anti-racist scholarship to be able to analyze demographic trends in terms of race” (I would... never disagree with this?) and that focusing on individuals allows people to only look at their own actions and those of their friends and feel too good about themselves. She also expressed skepticism about my statistics about where Trump gained/lost support, which I was able to back up with a quick Google search which pulled up a Vox article among others (I thought it was only the insufficiently committed white liberals like me who sucked at Googling?). But her own views, while still resting on axioms I fundamentally differ on, just sounded a lot more reasonable when restated? E.g. “Moments like this shouldn’t be centered on whiteness” and “the ‘good white liberals’ should be aware that they aren’t as a big of a demographic in our race as they should be” (I don’t know any white liberal who would disagree or who doesn’t realize that white people vote majority Republican or is okay with that?) and that the bowing and bending the knee was not “a literal statement” but simply meant to convey that we should greatly respect how BIPOC voters contribute. She ended with providing a long list of anti-racist activists (the only one of whom I’m familiar with is Ally Henny, who I mainly remember for statements about how I’m encased in so many layers of racism that I would never be able to peel them off if I spent my whole lifetime doing nothing but trying) as a “starting point” of study.

I replied thanking her for pointing me to sources and agreeing with her implication that I should read more with a mind towards understanding what they’re saying before spouting off any more opinions. (Guess I have to make good on that promise now.) I made clear that I see a difference between her restatements and the way she worded things in her original post and suggested that some of this might even be on me for interpreting these kinds of posts more as logical arguments when they should be understood in a slightly more poetic manner. I gently gestured towards my suspicion that the current scholarship in this area might reflect a university culture (which I am very much a part of) more than the concrete priorities and concerns of the majority of people of color, although I’m in no position to positively claim anything about this. I got no response.

Anyway, in writing my last response, a little more clicked into place for me about a different lens through which I should process all the behavior that drives me nuts in a written context online (I mainly mean social media but am being even broader than that). This is going to sound condescending but ironically it might help me to have a less condescending attitude?

The fact is -- and I just have to accept this -- that making efforts to be nuanced and to “meet people who disagree where they are at” and to aim for the truth but no farther than the truth are simply not highly-valued principles for most people (social media -users and otherwise). They may kinda-sorta agree in the abstract with these principles, but in practice they hold a much lower status than the principles of conveying anger and strong words as a sign of commitment towards Fighting Evil. Some people I know do have an “argumentation value system” closer to mine, and I know who those people are -- it really shows in what they write online. But those people are a fairly small minority.

And this alien “argumentation value system” isn’t something that really shows in casual real-life interactions very plainly at all (which of course is what almost all human interactions were up until 10-15 years ago), while in contrast social media is an environment that augments its effect.

The sooner I accept this, the more moderation I’ll be able to manage in my negative reactions. I can remind myself that there’s less fundamental disagreement on most actual issues between me and the people I know: we instead disagree on a sort of meta-level issue of how one’s views should be presented. And that issue, taken by itself, seems somehow like something more minor. I wrote a few months ago about how knowing what so many people in my life write publicly oftentimes interferes with my capacity to view them as potential intimate friends/partners. Maybe I can be a little more accepting when I recognize that the things they write which turn me off perhaps don’t come from a place of such irrationality as I thought, that the differences in our ways of thinking might not be quite so fundamental (although this differing system of values for argumentation still strikes me as something that could badly affect a marriage, say). And in the practical short term, I can ignore things that bother me more easily in the future -- instead of feeling like I’m on a tilted playing field where everyone else gets to vent without inhibition while I have to carefully monitor and qualify everything I say, I can try to just round a lot of this off in terms of different preferred writing styles and somehow that bothers me less?

A similar underlying principle holds for the things that annoy me on dating profiles, what with the collective obsession with dogs and boasts of being “fluent in sarcasm” and so on. This probably doesn’t reflect much about the way the creators of these profiles actually are as humans in real life. Not that many single women really view their dogs as the most interesting thing that ever was or will be about their lives. They just choose to have a certain style of exposition about themselves because of peculiarities of the environment of online dating sites/apps, where showing enthusiasm and individuality in some way seems to pay and the topic of dogs would seem like a pretty safe place to direct this performed enthusiasm. Doesn’t mean that it doesn’t demonstrate some aspect of incompatibility with me or that I’m not going to be more instantly attracted to those with profiles that have more refreshing things to say than stuff about how amazing dogs are or of those who *gasp* actually prefer cats or *deeper gasp* prefer not to have pets at all. But it means that I can read the dogs-and-sarcasm-enthusiast profiles a little more charitably maybe?

This slightly altered mindset is a far from perfect solution, but I think it helps. A lasting three-quarters-of-the-way disconnect from social media entirely still needs to be a goal at this point.

[moonlitgleek]

Don't you think you're making elia too submissive by having her be solely a victim of rhaegar? If you like her than you should want her to have some culpability in rhaegar's plans as it'd give her agency. She was a viper she must've played the game too. If she hadn't then why would she be staying in King's landing. I think she saw the importance of his actions and agreed to handle aerys In his absence. If it turns out that she encouraged him to take another consort it'd give her a spine, no?

I do not see the correlation between being a victim and being submissive, neither do I think that only submissive people can get victimized. Not only does this fundamentally misunderstands how trauma, abuse and power dynamics work, but it implicitly puts blame on the victim in a roundabout way. It ascribes negatively-coded attributes to victims and derails the conversation to be about some idealized standard for how a victim should behave so that they wouldn’t be victims. It puts the responsibility of the prevention of the abuser’s actions on the abused which heavily overlaps with the dichotomy of good victim/bad victim. I really, really hate that argument in all its shapes and forms, regardless of how it’s being used and who it’s being used with.

As far as agency goes, I understand fandom’s need for Elia to have some kind of agency in her story and I share the frustration that so far she has been mostly used as a plot device in a male character’s story. I just don’t think that arguing that Elia was “culpable” (wth?!) in Rhaegar’s actions accomplishes that. The very act used to supposedly give Elia agency actually diminishes her character on both personal and political fronts. It is built on a bizarre belief that Elia must have believed in the prophecy and in Rhaegar’s quest. But no one seems to give me any logical explanation to why she’d do that all while ignoring that this baseless assumption inadvertently implies that people think that Elia believed in the prophecy simply because Rhaegar did. The idea that Elia supported Rhaegar’s action is based on a frankly perplexing dismissal of history (this is about Lyanna but 1 and 2 apply to Elia as well) and politics which in turns implies that Elia was either weirdly apolitical or weirdly ignorant. Why would Elia endanger herself and her children like? Because reasons.

I don’t see how having Elia’s character solely revolve around the primacy of Rhaegar’s opinions and wants gives her agency.I don’t see how turning Elia into a person who mindlessly parroted Rhaegar’s beliefs and careless singleminded pursuit of the prophecy right into a civil war gives her agency. I guess I find it more productive for arguments of Elia’s agency for us to treat her as a person with her own mind and her own set of beliefs that’s not reliant on what her husband believed. I like to think she had the agency to have thoughts and opinions that are not blindly reflective of Rhaegar’s.

Or Oberyn’s for that matter since his example is often what drives theories that Elia was fine with Rhaegar absconding with Lyanna. Because Elia was a viper and she played the game. Except 1) she wasn’t. Oberyn is the Red Viper. Elia is a separate person from him. The conflation of the two and of their personalities and opinions are a facet of the stereotyping of Dornish culture that treats Elia as beholden to Oberyn’s actions and outlook as if Oberyn is the Representative of Dornish Culture. But Elia is her own person. I don’t know why this is a radical statement in fandom.2) the game that you are adamant that Elia was playing is actually what makes me reject the idea that Elia supported Rhaegar’s affair with Lyanna. History, politics, danger to her children and everything I’ve honestly talked ad nauseam about to the point where I’ve grown tired of it.

Too, I question how it came to be that having a spine became tied to Elia “encouraging” Rhaegar to have an affair, not only for the reasons listed above that fly in the face of that but also…. are we now acting like acceptance of adultery is a baseline for “having a spine”? Why is it that Elia, contrary to all the women in Westeros, needs to not simply accept but welcome being cheated on to prove vigorousness or proactivity? How does it give Elia a spine to passively accept public humiliation, become a willing participant in a situation that has historically proven perilous to half-Dornish monarchs, and support and “encourage” her own political authority being compromised for no reason whatsoever? Do you honestly think that’s logical? That’s playing the game to you? For Elia to go against her own interests and that of her children’s by supporting Rhaegar taking a highborn mistress with the explicit purpose of having a child on her. As if the Blackfyre rebellions weren’t a thing. As if that’s proof that she had a spine.

Frankly anon, I’m scratching my head over the contradiction in your message. You act like saying that Elia was a victim of Rhaegar makes her submissive, but seem to argue that her passively accepting an insult after another to enthusiastically make way to Rhaegar absconding with another woman is the epitome of agency and proactive behavior. She is a capable political actor and a partner in Rhaegar’s plans that she goes to King’s Landing to stave off Aerys, but also an ignorant woman who saw nothing wrong with being put in danger alongside her children for the sake of the prophecy. She is a viper, except when she is being happily cheated on. She is playing the game, except when she is enthusiasticallyinviting a huge political risk to her doorstep. She is culpable in Rhaegar’s actions because she has a spine, except when she doesn’t care about being needlessly humiliated in public. Pick a person, please. This is giving me whiplash.

[womenandfilm5]

Obvious Child (Gillian Robespierre 2014)  is an unapologetic and refreshingly honest indie romantic-comedy-drama. Overall, this film is nonconventional in the way that it portrays taboo topics that are rarely represented in mainstream media.  Themes of the film include both destigmitization and realism of abortion, sex positivity, humor as a way to cope and get through trauma, and staying true to oneself.  . Obvious Child surrounds a 20-something year old stand up comedian living in New York City. The film opens with Donna (Jenny Slate) performing a stand up comedy routine in a dive bar in Brooklyn.  One thing that is instantly made clear is that Donna’s stand up is unconventional; from the very first scene, she jokes about things that would be considered taboo for most films, or even television shows. In her opening stand up monologue, she casually jokes about things that most women would be mortified to even mention in regular conversations. Donna’s  first line of dialogue in the film is her openly joking about her discharge, and  a gone wrong hook up from last night, and even having to fart. Topics that are considered un-feminine and unlady like, but are generally relatable to every single woman in her audience. Donna’s comedy monologues are central to establishing Donna’s personality and behavior; from the very beginning, she is uniquely herself and unapologetic about it. Immediately following the routine and an applause from the audience, Donna’s boyfriend dumps her in the bathroom stall telling her that he’s been seeing her friend behind her back. He also criticized Donna for using their hook up as material for her comedy routine. Donna’s stage presence is presented from the very introduction of the film as using her  comedy as a way to navigate through her pain and experiences as a woman. 

. Throughout the film, Donna’s personality stays consistently herself with every role she plays. It’s obvious from the very beginning of the film that Donna uses comedy as a way to cope, her stage presence based on what is going on in her personal life. Donna consistently remains herself and uses humor as a crutch even in serious situations.  At her Planned Parenthood appointment, Donna tells the doctor she “would like an abortion please, and then jokes that it sounded like she was ordering at a drive through.  It is obvious to the viewer, particularly during this scene, that Donna’s humor is what she uses to navigate through her struggles. 

. The storyline and depiction of abortion as a viable option in the plot is rarely seen in mainstream media. Unlike other films about unplanned pregnancy, like Juno (2007), keeping the child never seemed like a desired option to the protagonist, Donna. The film’s normalized depiction of abortion seen within the film would never be achieveable with a male director. The normalcy of one night stands  within the narrative also radiates sex positivity, challenging the mainstream representation of having an unplanned pregnancy with a stranger rather than a long term or on-and-off partner.  Donna finding out she is pregnant after a one night stand with Max, who she hasn’t seen since, adds a layer of complexity to the simple narrative. After their initial encounter, Donna and Max’s interactions were left up to chance and coincidence; Max unexpectedly showing up at the bookstore where Donna said she worked right after her positive pregnancy test; Donna standing in her kitchen when Max (surprise!) walks in looking for his professor who is her mother. Leaving things up to fate and luck is a common theme that tends to surround female protagonists. 

. How Obvious Child came to the screen seems like the epitome of organic indie filmmaking. Obvious Child originated as a 20 minute short film that first premiered on Vimeo in 2009, directed and written by Gillian Robespierre and Elizabeth Holm. Both with full-time day jobs, they wrote the screenplay for the short film together, tuning it to perfection in every spare minute, obsessing over the script. Their tedious attention to the script was a shining aspect of the film. The dialogue throughout was consistently strong, filled with personality and was actually funny. The short film did so well on Vimeo, that after a Kickstarter campaign the film was premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and later rolled out in theaters. Through and through, the film felt organic, because it was. Donna’s comedic monologues were taken from bits of Jenny Slate’s own stand up routines, playing a strong character that mirrored herself. Incorporating these real life aspects into the film made it feel all the more honest. 

. There is one scene in Obvious Child that resonated with me the most. The vulnerable montage of Donna that proceeds her getting dumped depicts her drinking a bottle of wine by herself and repeatedly (and embarrassingly) calling her ex-boyfriend, leaving voicemail after voicemail after voicemail. The beginning of the scene pictures a close up shot of Donna pouring herself a glass of wine, taking a sip, and then drinking the rest of the glass as she picks up her phone. The camera angle then changes to being static, like the camera was propped up on Donna’s dresser watching her pace around her room.  Almost as if the viewer is a fly on the wall watching the scene unfold. Instead of the stereotypical drunk dials begging for your ex-beau back, Donna is seen sipping and slurring into the phone telling him that he’s going to get HPV. Donna’s emotional details in the voicemails are so cringe-worthy that with the way this scene made me feel,  you would’ve thought I left those messages myself. After leaving the last voicemail, she flings herself onto the bed and sobs. This scene is ridiculous enough that it creates a sense of relatability and resonance with the audience. The classic, drunk, crazy, voicemail leaving ex-girlfriend is a role I have definitely played in my own life and it resonated with me deeply to see it being accurately portrayed on screen. It’s not a proud moment, but the shame, embarrassment and heartbreak seemed so real. 

. In this scene, following Donna’s intoxicated voicemail montage, her roommate comes home and joins her in Donna’s bed. The friend is supportive, encouraging, and comforting in a way that made me wish I had a friend like her. During this particular part, the camera moves closer to the pair and the mood becomes more intimate and sisterly. Without revealing Donna’s friend’s background, the way the shot was simply framed and softly lit showed that their bond was deep and unconditional.

. Receptions to Obvious Child remained consistent in the way that it was “startlingly honest.” The main response to the film revolved around Robespierre’s depiction of abortion. While being both realistic and sensitive, critics thought that the topic of abortion was shown  in a “humane and natural, politically neutral” way while at the same time being “radical, for all the lightness of its tone.” Overall, the film was applauded by critics for putting a ‘controversial’ issue such as abortion on the big screen and playing it out in a way that wasn’t distorted or horrific. Considered a taboo topic, representations of abortion are rarely seen in mainstream media. 

. On the other hand, conservative anti-abortion groups were more critical of the film. Some dismissed Obvious Child as “Obvious Propaganda” for it’s portrayal and supposed encouragement of abortion. (Source for receptions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obvious_Child) 

. Overall, Obvious Child is the rom-com drama that my 21 year old self needed to see. The narrative of Donna’s experiences are heartbreakingly and shockingly relatable to an audience targeted for young women. Too often, we see films shying away from directly addressing topics depicted honestly in this film, such as abortion. Obvious Child took viewers on a journey of an unplanned pregnancy that was not glorified or glamorized, but rather normalized. To me, this normalization is so much more refreshing than a sugar coated depiction of what it’s like to have an abortion. I watched this film three times through and through, and I loved every second of each viewing. 10/10 would recommend again and again! – ECo

[fellpieces]

Hannibal the TV series

*loads of swearing and frank language

I really love this show; it's well written, the characters are very human, it's creative, the set and crew are fricking awesome, and there are phenomenal actors. I do have some things that I absolutely loathe about this show though:

Freddy just needed to die, so many times, I hate her character and her sneering "I'm better than everyone but I embrace being a snake" attitude.

The investigation writing; l totally get that Will almost has a super power with being able to empathize with anyone, but there are a lot of quantum leaps he (and other characters, though they lack his unique skill) makes with absolutely zero evidence or suggestion to these suppositions. That's not empathy and it's not investigation, considering the vast spectrum of variables of human behavioralism coupled with how many times the "copy cat" killer screwed with the investigation team it simply becomes lazy writing. There's no process here guys, Will'll pull the entire killer's profile out of his ass after examining a lint ball under the victim's door mat on a split second whim. Will's pronouncements take a flying leap out of the realm of empathy and dive into the supernatural; which would be fine, but supernatural phenomena is not a premise in this show. There's a huge difference between having coalescing mental instabilities and neurodivergence that allow you to use observable data to make complex theories and being a fucking wizard. It's complete bullshit, and honestly if the actors weren't as good as they were I wouldn't have made it half way through season one.

The investigation team would not agree and get along as well as they do all the time; while they disagree on things just often enough, having a team of +3 highly trained, specialized, experienced and intelligent people agree on such far fetched investigative methods and conclusions is absolute bullshit and lazy writing. No one in those professions would immediately and blindly throughout the series continue to take Will at his word for everything, especially not after he mentally shit his pants. These people are trained investigators, they have to rely on critical thinking, evidence and process. Not some guy showing up, having an epileptic panic attack and shakenly saying in a dark voice "the murderer is sick. He's unwell. He murdered his victims because he was deprived of eating cat food as a child by seemingly reasonable parents and his victims epitomized this need by denying their mailman the number orange. He needed to teach them a lesson. He needed to feel in control. He needed show us that stuffing meow mix down this guy's pants was his inalienable right." Yeah no, dudes, it doesn't fucking make sense to anyone. It doesn't matter if that's 100% accurate, no. That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works. And unfortunately a lot of Will's proclamations are like this. No self respecting investigator would be like HOLY SHIT GUYS HE'S RIGHT IT'S LIKE MAGIC.

Jack is a human behavioral specialist for the FBI -I'm finding it hard to believe anyone who understands as much he does about how humans act and react to things that he would not only drag Will into the shitmire he did but also let him break as many times as he did. I call bullshit on Jack trusting Hannibal's methods so completely as he did whilst working with the living and acting product in front of him, and as a human behavioral specialist he damn sure would have known that Will wasn't botching/faking the clock test.

Alana and Margot hooking up out of nowhere really irritated me; I'm glad that LGBT couples are getting more publicity and I deeply respect Bryan Fuller but I found their sudden and graphic presentation of their relationship highly distasteful. There was absolutely no lead up or plot until it happened and although the writers/producers/actors are LGBT and LGBT allies it was just another glorified random naked woman scene. Until they were bare ass naked sensually humping on screen it was totally irrelevant to the plot. Funny, how it looked a lot less like what lesbian sex is like and more like a highly staged scene for a particular audience demographic. Idk about any other lesbos out there, but I've never humped another women and spent the major portion of it innefectively making out and staring vapidly at my partner's seemingly expressionless face. If someone looked at me the way they did during sex I'd fucking quit because that's just weird and I'd have complete doubt about them enjoying it at all. I'm not saying women aren't horny, I'm not saying that women don't spontaneously decide to have sex with other women -fuck, that's how I figured out I was pretty gay, being drunk, random and horny; what I'm saying is this wasn't about socio-political normalization, it was just another "let's push the limit on how many titties we can show on American television before we get told no-no".

Sexualizing bi/lesbian couples for the sake of having a nude/sex scene does doesn't do shit for LGBT rights, enforces negative social and industrial expectations of women. Honestly they could have spent less time here and there with repetitive dialogue scenes and gave Margot and Alana a few minutes building up. 2-4 minutes of dialogue in an episode or so and they could have made a non confrontational statement about same sex couples being a really common and natural part of the population. Nah, let's get these broads naked and have 'em fuck in the most stereotypically objectifying way possible, it'll be a novelty.

[altruisticenigma]

Anthy Himemiya’s Character

These past few weeks, my partner and I have been watching Revolutionary Girl Utena/Shoujo Kakumei Utena, and while I have a myriad of both critiques and praises for the anime and movie (I’ll be writing separate posts on them later), the one thing that’s been on my mind is the complex & interesting character that is Anthy Himemiya. Of course, if you’re intending to watch Utena, spoilers are ahead so turn back now. 

From the start, Anthy Himemiya is a very mysterious, ambiguous and complex character and remains that way for the majority of the anime. Her motives and her emotions aren’t ever explained fully; even towards the end of the anime, where more of the back story is revealed, her own personal emotions & motives are still confused by her actions. I found it interesting a majority of the fandom apparently does not like her, simply because she was so hard to understand (and because of course, the betraying act she does in episode 38). I found her extremely fascinating in this regard. I also saw a lot of myself within her, and it wasn’t until the end of the anime that I realized why.

I don’t know if Kunihiko Ikuhara had intended to do so but he wrote literally the perfect depiction of an abused person through Anthy. A lot of her feelings and actions, as well as how the outside world viewed her, really framed her as a genuine abuse victim- on the outside a reoccurring victim of persecution, victim-shaming and violence, but also responsible for the pain inflicted on others, ultimately Utena. Ikuhara says himself, “as for whether Anthy’s character herself is venomous; I don’t know the answer, and while I depict her in ways that make you suspect she is, I plan to never show you if that is out of ill will or not.” I personally believe she’s both jaded but also a kindhearted person inside, as many abused people tend to be. 

In the beginning of the anime, she’s the epitome of typical feminine standards- polite, obeys whoever she is currently engaged to (even if they abuse & disrespect her), always smiling, and takes pain with a sad, pitiful look on her face, never aggressively fighting back (although she will passively fight back, as shown when Saionji loses her in Utena’s first duel, calling him “Saionji-sama,” as in regards to a classmate & not her fiancé anymore). She is usually quiet and never speaks about herself. She only ever cares about other people. Later on I realized she was keeping everyone at a distance; whether this was due to the curse of the Rose Bride or if it was because she was abused and didn’t trust anyone, I’m not sure, but ultimately she kept everyone away from her inner world and was very guarded. She only opens up once to Utena later on in the series (around episode 14-16?), where she states rather solemnly “I wish I had more friends.” Even later on into the series, when she and Utena sleep together in the Chairman’s observatory, she wishes many times to open up to Utena but always gives up and instead says “never mind.” She continues to hide her pain and her harsh reality from her closest and only friend, finally telling her the entire truth in episode 38, the second to last episode.

Episode 38 is what makes me think she’s both a bad and good person, and it’s in this episode that we see how the abuse has seriously destroyed her sense of morality. She literally stabs Utena in the back- her only friend, the only person who cared for her as she is- because she knew the Duelist was being used as a pawn for Akio to regain the powers he used to have as Dios. Anthy originally sacrificed herself so that Dios wouldn’t die; however this resulted in Dios losing his powers, and thus his righteousness and nobility; he became corrupt and became Akio. Anthy probably stabbed Utena in the back for complex reasons and conflicting feelings. Although Akio was raping her, manipulating her and controlling her, Anthy probably believed she wanted it and that she deserved it, seeing how much he suffered because she had locked Dios’ power away and caused Akio so much pain. Akio even blames her for all of his behaviors and his pain, even though it’s his own choices that derive from his suffering. Even though he’s alive due to her sacrifice, he’s ungrateful. Anthy loved Dios very much; he was her prince. She was probably willing to face any persecution and suffering for him. She suffered immense pain and immortality in exchange for locking Dios’ power away; that is how much she loved her prince. Even if it meant he would abuse her, too. Being in love with your abuser is tricky because you excuse all of their behavior as it being your fault, or that them raping you is evidence they love you; that’s probably what Anthy thought. Seeing Utena and Akio fall in love right before her eyes must have been incredibly difficult. She probably wanted to protect Utena from Akio’s disgusting ways- how he’s playboy and has romantic affairs with pretty much all sorts of women- but also wanted to destroy Utena for taking away her prince, the prince she saved from death and the prince she suffers through a horrible existence for. Although Utena was the only one who truly loved her, Akio was there first; abuse pollutes and ruins your perspective and she prioritized her prince first. Her hesitation to hand over the sword also shows her confusion and her difficulty to make decisions. 

It’s only when Utena continues to fight, after being stabbed, after being betrayed and watching Anthy take on the Swords of Hate, does Anthy begin to see who truly her real prince is. Abused people have extremely high walls to cross, and distrust and isolation are the outermost layers; abused people (I especially talk from a personal place) like to challenge those who they think they can let in. It’s horrible to say, but if that person can continue to love them despite their incredibly ugly and selfish side, the abused person will realize there is more to life than what they already have. They see they can raise their standards, and that there is a love beyond the one they think they have right now. That they can truly trust this person to take care of them. Utena opening the Door to Revolution to save Anthy was to save her from the curse of the Rose Bride, and to save her from all the gruesome suffering she’s had to endure. Utena revolutionized both Anthy and Akio’s world, because she loved them both, saving them from the imprisonment of the Rose Bride curse. As Anthy is ready to leave, she also says “Very well. Stay in your coffin and continue to play prince.” He, too, is freed from his heroic duty of being a prince to all the women of the world and, if he chooses, freed from seeking that ultimate power that used to imprison him before. And of course, Anthy is truly freed from being the Rose Bride and seeks out the prince who saved her from the role. 

Anthy is this complex character whose motives were hard to read, but once I completed the series, it was clear to see that Anthy seems to be written from an abused perspective, or so I see it.

[testinbeta]

The Ecstasy of Communication

There is no longer any system of objects. My first book contains a critique of the object as obvious fact, substance, reality, use value. There the object was taken as sign, but as sign still heavy with meaning. In this critique two principal logics interfered with each other: a phantasmatic logic that referred principally to psychoanalysis - its identifications, projections and the entire imaginary realm of transcendence, power and sexuality operating at the level of objects and the environment, with a privilege accorded to the house and automobile axis and a differential social logic that made distinctions by referring to a sociology, itself derived from anthropology.

Behind these logics, in some way descriptive and analytic, there was already the dream of symbolic exchange, a dream of the status of the object and consumption beyond exchange and use, beyond value and equivalence. In other words, a sacrificial logic of consumption, gift, expenditure (dépense), potlatch, and the accursed portion.

In a certain way all this still exists, and yet in other respects it is all disappearing. The description of this whole intimate universe projective, imaginary and symbolic - still corresponded to the object’s status as mirror of the subject, and that in turn to the imaginary depths of the mirror and “scene": there is a domestic scene, a scene of interiority, a private space-time (correlative, moreover, to a public space). The oppositions subject/object and public/private were still meaningful. This was the era of the discovery and exploration of daily life, this other scene emerging in the shadow of the historic scene, with the former receiving more and more symbolic investment as the latter was politically disinvested.But today the scene and mirror no longer exist; instead, there is a screen and network. In place of the reflexile transcendence of mirror and scene, there is a no reflecting surface, an immanent surface where operations unfold - the smooth operational surface of communication.

Something has changed, and the Faustian, Promethean (perhaps Oedipal) period of production and consumption gives way to the “proteinic” era of networks, to the narcissistic and protean era of connections, contact, contiguity, feedback and generalized interface that goes with the universe of communication. With the television image - the television being the ultimate and perfect object for this new era - our own body and the whole surrounding universe become a control screen.

If one thinks about it, people no longer project themselves into their objects, with their affects and their representations, their fantasies of possession, loss, mourning, jealousy: the psychological dimension has in, a sense vanished, and even if it can always be marked out in detail, one feels that it is not really there that things are being played out. Roland Barthes already indicated this some time ago in regard to the automobile: little by little a logic of “driving" has replaced a very subjective logic of possession and projection.“ No more fantasies of power, speed, and appropriation linked to the object itself, but instead a tactic of potentialities linked to usage: mastery, control, and command, an optimalization of the play of possibilities offered by the car as vector and vehicle, and no longer as object of psychological sanctuary. The subject himself, suddenly transformed, becomes a computer at the wheel, not a drunken demiurge of power. The vehicle now becomes a kind of capsule, its dashboard the brain, the surrounding landscape unfolding like a televised screen (instead of a live - in projectile as it was before).

(But we can conceive of a stage beyond this one, where the car is still a vehicle of performance, a stage where it becomes an information network. The famous Japanese car that talks to you, that “spontaneously” informs you of its general state and even of your general state, possibly refusing to function if you are not functioning well, the car as deliberating consultant and partner in the general negotiation of a lifestyle, something - or someone: at this point there is no longer any difference - with which you are connected. The fundamental issue becomes the communication with the car itself, a perpetual test of the subject’s presence with his own objects, an uninterrupted interface.

It is easy to see that from this point speed and displacement no longer matter. Neither does unconscious projection, nor an individual or social type of competition, nor prestige. Besides, the car began to be de-sacralized in this sense some time ago: its all over with speed - I drive more and consume less. Now, however, it is an ecological ideal that installs itself at every level. No more expenditure, consumption, performance, but instead regulation, well - tempered functionality, solidarity among all the elements of the same system, control and global management of an ensemble. Each system, including no doubt the domestic universe, forms a sort of ecological niche where the essential thing is to maintain a relational decor, where all the terms must continually communicate among themselves and stay in contact, informed of the respective condition of the others and of the system as a whole, where opacity, resistance or the secrecy of a single term can lead to catastrophe.) 4

Private “telematics”: each person sees himself at the controls of a hypothetical machine, isolated in a position of perfect and remote sovereignty, at an infinite distance from his universe of origin. Which is to say, in the exact position of an astronaut in his capsule, in a state of weightlessness that necessitates a perpetual orbital flight and a speed sufficient to keep him from crashing back to his planet of origin.

This realization of a living satellite, in vivo in a quotidian space, corresponds to the satellitization of the real, or what I call the “hyperrealism of simulation” 5 : the elevation of the domestic universe to a spatial power, to a spatial metaphor, with the satellitization of the two-room-kitchen-and bath put into orbit in the last lunar module. The very quotidian nature of the terrestrial habitat hypostasized in space means the end of metaphysics. The era of hyperreality now begins. What I mean is this: what was projected psychologically and mentally, what used to be lived out on earth as metaphor, as mental or metaphorical scene, is henceforth projected into reality, without any metaphor at all, into an absolute space which is also that of simulation.

This is only an example, but it signifies as a whole the passage into orbit, as orbital and environmental model, of our private sphere itself. It is no longer a scene where the dramatic interiority of the subject, engaged with its objects as with its image, is played out. We are here at the controls of a micro-satellite, in orbit, living no longer as an actor or dramaturge but as a terminal of multiple networks. Television is still the most direct prefiguration of this. But today it is the very space of habitation that is conceived as both receiver and distributor, as the space of both reception and operations, the control screen and terminal which as such may be endowed with tele-matic power—that is, with the capability of regulating everything from a distance, including work in the home and, of course, consumption, play, social relations and leisure. Simulators of leisure or of vacations in the home like flight simulators for airplane pilots - become conceivable.

Here we are far from the living-room and close to science fiction. But once more it must be seen that all these changes - the decisive mutations of objects and of the environment in the modern era - have come from an irreversible tendency towards three things: an ever greater formal and operational abstraction of elements and functions and their homogenization in a single virtual process of functionalization; the displacement of bodily movements and efforts into electric or electronic commands, and the miniaturization, in time and space, of processes whose real scene (though it is no longer a scene) is that of infinitesimal memory and the screen with which they are equipped.

There is a problem here, however, to the extent that this electronic “encephalization” and miniaturization of circuits and energy, this transistorization of the environment, relegates to total uselessness, destuetude and almost obscenity all that used to fill the scene of our lives. It is well known how the simple presence of the television changes the rest of the habitat into a kind of archaic envelope, a vestige of human relations whose very survival remains perplexing. As soon as this scene is no longer haunted by its actors and their fantasies, as soon as behavior is crystallized on certain screens and operational terminals, what’s left appears only as a large useless body, deserted and condemned. The real itself appears as a large useless body.

This is the time of miniaturization, tele-command and the microprocession of time, bodies, pleasures. There is no longer any ideal principle for these things at a higher level, on a human scale. What remains are only concentrated effects, miniaturized and immediately available. This change from human scale to a system of nuclear matrices is visible everywhere: this body,our body, often appears simply superfluous, basically useless in its extention, in the multiplicity and complexity of its organs, its tissues and functions, since today everything is concentrated in the brain and in genetic codes, which alone sum up the operational definition of being. The countryside, the immense geographic countryside, seems to be a deserted body whose expanse and dimensions appear arbitrary (and which is boring to cross even if one leaves the main highways), as soon as all events are epitomized in the towns, themselves undergoing reduction to a few miniaturized highlights. And time: what can be said about this immense free time we are left with, a dimension henceforth useless in its unfolding, as soon as the instantaneity of communication has miniaturized our exchanges into a succession of instants?

Thus the body, landscape, time all progressively disappear as scenes. And the same for public space: the theater of the social and theater of politics are both reduced more and more to a large soft body with many heads. Advertising in its new version~which is no longer a more or less baroque, utopian or ecstatic scenario of objects and consumption, but the effect of an omnipresent visibility of enterprises, brands, social interlocuters and the social virtues of communication - advertising in its new dimension invades everything, as public space (the street, monument, market, scene) disappears. It realizes, or, if one prefers, it materializes in all its obscenity; it monopolizes public life in its exhibition. No longer limited to its traditional language, advertising organizes the architecture and realization of super-objects like Beaubourg and the Forum des Halles, and of future projects (e.g., Parc de la Villette) which are monuments (or anti-monuments) to advertising, not because they will be geared to consumption but because they are immediately proposed as an anticipated demonstration of the operation of culture, commodities, mass movement and social flux. It is our only architecture today: great screens on which are reflected atoms, particles, molecules in motion. Not a public scene or true public space but gigantic spaces of circulation. Ventilation and ephemeral connections.

It is the same for private space. In a subtle way, this loss of public space occurs contemporaneously with the loss of private space. The one no longer a spectacle, the other no longer a secret. Their distinctive opposition, the clear difference of an exterior and an interior exactly described the domestic scene of objects, with its rules of play and limits, and the sovereignty of a symbolic space which was also that of the subject. blow this opposition is effaced in a sort of obscenity where the most intimate processes of our life become the virtual feeding ground of the media (the l​oud family in the United States, the innumerable slices of peasant or patriarchal life on French television). In-adversely, the entire universe comes to unfold arbitrarily on your domestic screen (all the useless information that comes to you from the entire world. like a microscopic pornography of the universe, useless, excessive, just like the sexual close-up in a porno film): all this explodes the scene formerly preserved by the minimal separation of public and private, the scene that was played out in a restricted space, according to a secret ritual known only by the actors.

Certainly, this private universe was alienating to the extent that it separated you from others - or from the world, where it was invested as a protective enclosure, an imaginary protector, a defense system. But it also reaped the symbolic benefits of alienation, which is that the other exists, and that otherness can fool you for the better or the worse. Thus consumer society lived also under the sign of alienation, as a ‘society of the spectacle.‘ But just so: as long as there is alienation, there is spectacle, action. scene. It is not obscenity - the spectacle is never obscene. Obscenity begins precisely when there is no more spectacle, no more scene, when all becomes transparence and immediate visibility, when everything is exposed to the harsh and inexorable light of information and communication.

We are no longer a part of the drama of alienation; we live in the ecstasy of communication. And this ecstasy is obscene. The obscene is what does away with every mirror, every look, every image. The obscene puts an end to every representation. But it is not only the sexual that becomes obscene in pornography; today there is a whole pornography of information and communication, that is to say, of circuits and networks, a pornography of all functions and objects in their readability, their fluidity, their availability, their regulation, in their forced signification, in their performativity, in their branching, in their polyvalence, in their free expression…

It is no longer then the traditional obscenity of what is hidden, repressed, forbidden or obscure: on the contrary, it is the obscenity of the visible, of the all-too-visible, of the more-visible-than-the-visible. It is the obscenity of what no longer has any secret, of what dissolves completely in information and communication.

Marx set forth and denounced the obscenity of the commodity, and this obscenity was linked to its equivalence, to theabject principle of free circulation, beyond all use value of the object. The obscenity of the commodity stems from the fact that it is abstract, formal and light in opposition to the weight, opacity and substance of the object. The commodity is readable: in opposition to the object, which never completely gives up its secret, the commodity always manifests its visible essence, which is its price. It is the formal place of transcription of all possible objects: through it, objects communicate. Hence, the commodity form is the first great medium of the modern world. But the message that the objects deliver through it is already extremely simplified, and it is always the same: their exchange value. Thus at bottom the message already no longer exists; it is the medium that imposes itself in its pure circulation. This is what I call (potentially) ecstasy.

One has only to prolong this Marxist analysis, or push it to the second or third power. to grasp the transparence and obscenity of the universe of communication, which leaves far behind it those relative analyses of the universe of the commodity. All functions abolished in a single dimension,that of communication. That’s the ecstasy of communication. All secrets, spaces and scenes abolished in a single dimension of information. That’s obscenity.

The hot, sexual obscenity of former times is succeeded by the cold and communicational, contactual and motivational obscenity of today. The former clearly implied a type of promiscuity, but it was organic, like the body’s viscera, or again like objects piled up and accumulated in a private universe, or like all that is not spoken, teeming in the silence of repression. Unlike this organic, visceral, carnal promiscuity, the promiscuity that reigns over the communication networks is one of superficial saturation, of an incessant solicitation, of an extermination of interstitial and protective spaces. 1 pick up my telephone receiver and it’s all there; the whole marginal network catches and harasses me with the insupportable good faith of everything that wants and claims to communicate. Free radio: it speaks. it sings, it expresses itself. Very well, it is the sympathetic obscenity of its content. In terms a little different for each medium, this is the result: a space, that of the FM band, is found to be saturated, the stations overlap and mix together (to the point that sometimes it no longer communicates at all). Something that was free by virtue of space is no longer. Speech is free perhaps, but I am less free than before: I no longer succeed in knowing what I want, the space is so saturated, the pressure so great from all who want to make themselves heard.

I fall into the negative ecstasy of the radio.

There is in effect a state of fascination and vertigo linked to this obscene delirium of communication. A singular form of pleasure perhaps, but aleatory and dizzying. If we follow Roger Caillois 7 in his classification of games (it’s as good as any other) - games of expression (mimicry), games of competition (agon), games of chance (alea), games of vertigo (i'lynx) -  the whole tendency of our contemporary “culture" would lead us from a relative disappearance of forms of expression and competition (as we have remarked at the level of objects) to the advantages of forms of risk and vertigo. The latter no longer involve games of scene, mirror, challenge and duality; they are, rather, ecstatic, solitary and narcissistic. The pleasure is no longer one of manifestation, scenic and aesthetic. but rather one of pure fascination, aleatory and psychotropic. This is not necessarily a negative value judgment: here surely there is an original and profound mutation of the very forms of perception and pleasure. We are still measuring the consequences poorly. Wanting to apply our old criteria and the reflexes of a “scenic" sensibility, we no doubt misapprehend what may be the occurrence, in this sensory sphere, of something new, ecstatic and obscene.

One thing is sure: the scene excites us, the obscene fascinates us. With fascination and ecstasy, passion disappears. Investment, desire, passion, seduction or again, according to Caillois, expression and competition - the hot universe. Ecstasy, obscenity, fascination, communication, or again, according to Caillois, hazard, chance, and vertigo - the cold universe (even vertigo is cold, the psychedelic one of drugs in particular).

In any case, we will have to suffer this new state of things, this forced extroversion of all interiority, this forced injection of all exteriority that the categorical imperative of communication literally signifies. There also, one can perhaps make use of the old metaphors of pathology. If hysteria was the pathology of the exacerbated staging of the subject, a pathology of expression. of the body’s theatrical and operatic conversion; and if paranoia was the pathology of organization, of the structuration of a rigid and jealous world; then with communication and information, with the immanent promiscuity of all these networks, with their continual connections, we are now in a new form of schizophrenia. No more hysteria, no more projective paranoia, properly speaking. but this state of terror proper to the schizophrenic: too great a proximity of everything, the unclean promiscuity of everything which touches, invests and penetrates without resistance, with no halo of private protection, not even his own body, to protect him anymore.

The schizo is bereft of every scene, open to everything in spite of himself, living in the greatest confusion. He is himself obscene, the obscene prey of the world’s obscenity. What characterizes him is less the loss of the real, the light years of estrangement from the real, the pathos of distance and radical separation, as is commonly said: but, very much to the contrary, the absolute proximity, the total instantaneity of things, the feeling of no defense, no retreat. It is the end of interiority and intimacy, the overexposure and transparence of the world which traverses him without obstacle. He can no longer produce the limits of his own being, can no longer play nor stage himself, can no longer produce himself as mirror. He is now only a pure screen, a switching center for all the networks of influence.

J​ean Baudrillard

1988

Translated by John Johnston

References

1. Le Systéme des objets (Paris: Gallimartl, l968). [Tr.]

2. Baudrillard is alluding here to Marcel Mauss‘s theory of gift exchange and Georges Bataille‘s notion of dépense. The “accursed portion" in the latter’s theory refers to what- ever remains outside of society’s rationalized economy of exchanges. See Bataille’s, La Parte Maudite (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1949). Baudrillard’s own conception of symbolic exchange, as a form of interaction that lies outside of modern Western society and that therefore “haunts it like its own death is developed in his L'échange symbolique et la morte (Paris: Gallimard, 1976). [Tr.]

3. See Roland Barthes. “The New Citroën,“ Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972), pp.88-90.[Tr.]

4. Two observations.

First, this is not due alone to the passage, as one wants to call it, from a society of abundance and surplus to a society of crisis and penury (economic reasons have never been worth very much). Just as the effect of consumption was not linked to the use ‘value of things nor to their abundance, but precisely to the passage from use value to sign value, so here there is something new that is not linked to the end of abundance.

Secondly, all this does not mean that the domestic universe - the home, its objects, etc. - is not still lived largely in a traditional way - social, psychological, differential, etc. It means rather that the stakes are no longer there. That another arrangement or lifestyle is virtually in place, even if it is indicated only through a technologistical discourse which is often simply a political gadget. But it is crucial to see that the analysis that one could make of objects and their system in the '60s and '70s essentially began with the language of advertising and the pseudo-conceptual discourse of the expert. “Consumption,” the “strategy of desire,“ etc. were first only a metadiscourse, the analysis of a projective myth whose actual effect was never really known. How people actually live with their objects - at bottom, one knows no more about this than about the truth of primitive societies. That’s why it is often problematic and useless to want to verify (statistically, objectively) these hypotheses, as one ought to be able to do as a good sociologist, As we know, the language of advertising is first for the use of the advertisers themselves. Nothing says that contemporary discourse on computer science and communication is not for the use alone of professionals in these fields. (As for the discourse of intellectuals and sociologists themselves…)

5. For an expanded explanation of this idea, see Baudrillard’s essay ”La précession des simulacres,“ Simulacre: et Simulation (Paris: Galilee, 1981). An English translation appears in Simulations (New York: Foreign Agent Series. Semiotext(e) Publications,1983). [Tr.]

6. A reference to Guy Debord’s La société du spectacle (Paris: Buchet-Chastel, I968). [Tr.]

7. Roger Caillois. Le jeux et les hommes (Paris: Gallimard, 1958). [Tr.]

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Trump's Russia Lawyer Isn't Seeking Security Clearance, And May Have Trouble Getting One

The ongoing investigations into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia involve reams of classified material. Yet Marc Kasowitz, the New York lawyer whom President Donald Trump has hired to defend him in these inquiries, told ProPublica through a spokesman that he does not have a security clearance — the prerequisite for access to government secrets. Nor does he expect to seek one.

Several lawyers who have represented presidents and senior government officials said they could not imagine handling a case so suffused with sensitive material without a clearance.

“No question in my mind — in order to represent President Trump in this matter you would have to get a very high level of clearance because of the allegations involving Russia,” said Robert Bennett, who served as President Bill Clinton’s personal lawyer. Like many Washington lawyers, Bennett has held security clearances throughout his career.

As the spotlight on Russia intensifies with new email disclosures that his son, son-in-law, and then-campaign manager met in June 2016 with a Russian attorney who promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton, Kasowitz’s lack of a security clearance could hinder the president’s legal and political response to the scandal.

One possible explanation for Kasowitz’s decision not to pursue a clearance: He might have trouble getting one.

In recent weeks, ProPublica spoke with more than two dozen current and former employees of Kasowitz’s firm, Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP, as well as his friends and acquaintances. Past and present employees of the firm said in interviews that Kasowitz has struggled intermittently with alcohol abuse, leading to a stint in rehab in the winter of 2014-15.

Several people told ProPublica that Kasowitz has been drinking in recent months. (The vast majority of those who spoke to ProPublica for this article declined to be quoted by name, citing Kasowitz’s penchant for threatening lawsuits.)

Experts on federal security reviews told ProPublica that recent episodes of alcohol abuse are a major barrier to receiving clearance, a process that involves government agents poring over a person’s past and interviewing family, friends and colleagues. Investigators typically raise flags about behaviors that might make someone vulnerable to blackmail or suggest poor judgment.

Kasowitz’s spokesman said he doesn’t need a clearance. “No one has suggested he requires a security clearance, there has been no need for a security clearance, and we do not anticipate a need for a security clearance,” the spokesman said. “If and when a security clearance is needed, Mr. Kasowitz will apply for one with the other members of the legal team.”

Kasowitz’s spokesman did not directly respond to questions about whether he has struggled with alcohol abuse, but said the attorney is able to drink in moderation without a problem.

While not a government employee, Kasowitz has become a public face of the administration on the Russia case. Last month, he went before the cameras to deliver the president’s response to the landmark testimony of fired FBI Director James Comey. White House officials have regularly referred media inquiries about Russia-related matters, including queries about Jared Kushner and Michael Flynn, to Kasowitz.

In Washington, where every word and action of the president’s lawyer is scrutinized, Kasowitz is a neophyte. Instead of negotiating deals among the capital’s power brokers or fending off FBI investigations, Kasowitz, 65, built a lucrative practice in civil court suing banks and representing, among others, a leading tobacco company.

Kasowitz has been described by colleagues in the scrappy world of New York lawyers as the “toughest of the tough guys.” Bloomberg News called him a “Pit Bull Loyal to The Boss” while The New York Times described him as “the Donald Trump of lawyering.” His aggressive legal style has spurred rebukes from two judges.

For over 15 years, he represented Donald Trump, earning the president’s loyalty through his eager pugilism. Kasowitz has defended him in the Trump University fraud lawsuit. He fought to keep records from Trump’s 1990 divorce private, and threatened to sue The New York Times for publishing a story in which women accused Trump of unwanted touching and sexual assault. He also recently represented Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly after multiple women accused O’Reilly of sexual harassment.

Before representing Trump in the Russia inquiry, Kasowitz was informally advising the president. He has told friends he recommended firing Preet Bharara because the crusading prosecutor posed a danger to the administration. He has told people Trump wanted him to be attorney general.

Trump reportedly sought a classic Washington lawyer to represent him on Russia before choosing Kasowitz. Initially Kasowitz was reluctant to take it on. “He didn’t seek this,” said Joseph Lieberman, the former senator and Democratic vice presidential candidate who is now senior counsel at the firm. “In the end, the president said, ‘I need you. I know you and trust you.'”

Lieberman and Kasowitz grew up in the same neighborhood in New Haven, Connecticut. The future senator used to see Kasowitz’s father, who ran a scrap-metal business, walking through the neighborhood, greeting everyone as he went. Kasowitz went to Yale to study American history and then to Cornell Law School. After graduating in 1977, he started his law career in New York. In 1993, Kasowitz broke off from the prominent firm Mayer Brown to found his own firm.

As the firm met with early success, Kasowitz became wealthy. He brags to friends he makes anywhere from $10 million to $30 million per year. He owns an apartment in a white-glove building on Park Avenue and a mansion in Westchester County. He travels by private jet and, when in New York, is driven around in a black Cadillac SUV. He owns at least two horses, according to a lawsuit Kasowitz once filed against his daughter’s equestrian stable.

From the start, Kasowitz Benson had a hard-drinking culture that its leaders epitomized.

“It’s like a time warp,” said one former employee, citing the firm’s “macho, scotch-drinking, fist-fighting” ethos. Multiple former attorneys said they saw Kasowitz under the influence at the office, an accusation Kasowitz denies.

Associates would vie to join powerful partners in Kasowitz’s inner circle during the day at the Palm West Side, the steakhouse just across the street from the firm’s offices, and more recently, at another midtown steakhouse a couple of blocks away called Gallaghers. A framed magazine profile of Kasowitz hangs on the wall across from the bar at the Palm. Three former employees at the firm recall attorneys having to go across the street to the restaurant during the workday to consult Kasowitz on work matters, as he held court, drinking and eating. In response to questions, a spokesman for Kasowitz disputed that, saying he never had a drink during the day at the Palm outside of lunch and dinner and never handled firm business while at the restaurant.

Former employees pointed to reckless behavior by Kasowitz while drinking. ProPublica spoke with 10 people who attended the firm’s holiday party on Dec. 10, 2013, at the Edison Ballroom in Manhattan. Spouses and significant others were not invited.

Kasowitz, according to an attendee, was visibly inebriated, appearing to have a hard time standing on his feet without support. During the festivities, Kasowitz and a much younger woman not employed by the firm hit the dance floor. According to multiple eyewitnesses, they danced intimately in a way many employees felt was inappropriate for a work event. One person described it as “dirty dancing.” Some employees had seen Kasowitz’s dancing partner before: the then-25-year-old woman had been a hostess at the Palm. “It made women feel uncomfortable,” said one former female attorney who attended the party.

Kasowitz’s spokesman, Michael Sitrick, initially said Kasowitz “does not recall whether he danced with her at a holiday party over 3.5 years ago.” Later, he said that the descriptions of Kasowitz dancing at the party were “untrue.” Kasowitz said in a statement he never had “a romantic relationship” with the woman, “who many of us came to know (as we have many others) because she worked at the Palm Restaurant across the street from our offices.”

Kasowitz has been married for 25 years to Lori Kasowitz, a former Mayer Brown administrator and regular on the Manhattan charity circuit. The couple has one daughter.

Sitrick supplied eight statements from Kasowitz employees attesting to his character and behavior at the party and denying the allegations about the young woman. He said ProPublica could not quote the employees’ statements by name without their permission. ProPublica reached out to all of them. Two declined to be named, and six did not respond to requests to use their names.

That was not the only dramatic incident involving Kasowitz and the Palm hostess. Late one Thursday night in March 2013, the same woman was arrested for felony assault at Beauty & Essex, a lower Manhattan restaurant and club, after allegedly throwing a bottle that hit another woman in the head, according to NYPD records. A former partner in the law firm said that Kasowitz was with her and sustained an injury. Afterwards, Kasowitz walked around the office with two black eyes looking “like a raccoon,” according to the former partner.

Asked about that incident, Sitrick did not answer directly. He said Kasowitz attended a dinner at a restaurant where the woman was in attendance. As Kasowitz was leaving the restaurant, he was “assaulted by a total stranger,” Sitrick wrote in a statement. The Palm hostess was not involved in that assault and Kasowitz’s assailant was arrested, the spokesman said.

According to current and former attorneys at the firm, Kasowitz hit a low point in the winter of 2014-15. He abruptly left New York for Florida, where he owned a mansion at the Equestrian Club Estates in Wellington. Kasowitz sought alcohol treatment at the nearby Caron, a high-end rehab facility, according to two people who heard it from Kasowitz himself.

According to Sitrick, that winter had been difficult for Kasowitz because of the death of his father and that he had “sought out counseling” like “millions of Americans.” The spokesman did not answer directly whether Kasowitz was in rehab that winter but said he was not “at Caron in January 2015.”

Anyone whose job involves classified information, from White House officials to State Department diplomats to outside contractors, must get a security clearance. The applicant fills out paperwork disclosing where he or she has lived, worked and traveled abroad, as well as any contacts with foreign government officials. The form also asks about substance abuse, criminal history and mental health.

The government then undertakes an investigation that can take anywhere from weeks to over a year, depending on the position. In the case of White House positions, the FBI does the investigation. Agents comb through educational and financial records and speak to neighbors, former employers and associates. They then present a recommendation to the hiring agency, which makes the final call.

It’s not clear who currently makes decisions on clearances for White House hires. Spokeswoman Hope Hicks told ProPublica that the Trump administration does not comment on security clearance issues.

Alcohol abuse is one of many issues examined as part of the security clearance process. The standard form that those seeking clearance must fill out asks whether in the last seven years “your use of alcohol had a negative impact on your work performance, professional or personal relationships, your finances, or resulted in intervention by law enforcement.” According to the official security clearance guidelines, “Alcohol-related incidents at work, such as reporting for work in an intoxicated or impaired condition, [or] drinking on the job” can be a reason to withhold clearance.

While all clearance decisions are subjective, “You probably wouldn’t get your clearance if you had serious drinking problems in the last five years,” said Sheldon Cohen, a longtime Washington, D.C, security clearance lawyer.

The security clearance guidelines also flag personal conduct “that creates a vulnerability to exploitation, manipulation, or duress by a foreign intelligence entity.”

In 2016, over 1,100 people appealed their denial of security clearance. Alcohol and drug use were common reasons for such denials.

Attorneys representing clients in Washington frequently are required to seek security clearances in matters ranging from Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi hearings to employment disputes involving undercover CIA agents.

Already, there’s ample evidence that many aspects of the Russia case involve classified material. When former FBI Director James Comey testified about his interactions with President Trump, he said that he took notes after one classified briefing. “I wrote that on a classified device,” he said.

Adm. Michael Rogers, the head of the National Security Agency, testified last month of his interactions with Trump that could relate to the obstruction of justice issue: “Those conversations were classified.”

Meanwhile, congressional intelligence committees looking at the Russia issue have been scheduling hearings with key witnesses in classified sessions. A congressional meeting with special counsel Robert Mueller also took place in a classified setting.

In a statement, Kasowitz said that “we are unaware of and not involved in … any investigation involving ‘highly classified’ (or even classified) information.”

The firm has gone through multiple rounds of punishing layoffs. In the past six years, the number of lawyers has shrunk from around 370 to 260 today. Several major rainmakers have departed, including two of the most prominent women at the firm: Eleanor Alter, a well-known divorce lawyer, and Robin Cohen, who led Kasowitz’s insurance group.

Now its founder’s increasingly high-profile relationship with Trump has some partners worried that it could damage the firm’s brand and future business prospects.

Last year, with Election Day weeks away, Kasowitz fired off a letter threatening to sue The New York Times for a story in which women accused Trump of unwanted touching and sexual assault.

Kasowitz’s letter to the Times dismissed the women’s accounts as “false and malicious allegations” and demanded a retraction.

“People were embarrassed by the letter,” said one former attorney at Kasowitz’s firm.

The Times stood by its story. No lawsuit has been filed.

In February, several lawyers were upset when Michael Cohen, the former personal injury lawyer and real estate investor who is best known as Trump’s former in-house attorney, arrived at the office.

“I came to see him because we were working on several matters together after the inauguration,” Cohen told ProPublica regarding his multiple visits to Kasowitz. Former employees say the firm briefly converted a conference room for Cohen to use as an office, with his nameplate on it.

Cohen said the “multitude of legal matters” he and Kasowitz were discussing included working as co-counsel for a client. Asked if anything came of those talks, Cohen said yes.

Sitrick, the Kasowitz spokesman, said, “Michael Cohen never worked for the firm or occupied any office at Kasowitz Benson.” He added: “They were working together on one civil matter for President Trump.” He didn’t specify what it was.

During roughly the same period that Cohen was visiting the firm, The New York Times reported that he was under FBI scrutiny in the Russia case. Cohen has denied wrongdoing.

One Kasowitz Benson partner, Zachary Mazin, departed in May for another firm, McKool Smith. In a private Facebook post, Mazin praised many of his former colleagues, but said that he and his wife concluded their family could not be associated with the firm. “As the extent of the Firm’s support for Trump’s presidency became clear, Amanda and I concluded that we would not be living our values if I stayed,” he wrote,” adding: “Our most important consideration was the message that this choice sends to our daughters, both now and when they look back on this moment as adults.”

When Kasowitz traveled to Washington to respond to the Comey testimony, he brought at least two other lawyers from the firm with him.

In the rush to respond to the former FBI director’s testimony accusing President Trump of inappropriate meddling, a team of Kasowitz lawyers, along with another spokesman, Mark Corallo, drafted a statement that was riddled with errors. It started with the widely mocked misspelling, “Predisent Trump.”

Corallo said in an email that the statement went out to reporters with typos because of a technical glitch.

The day after the June 8 Comey hearing, sources linked to the Kasowitz team told reporters they would file a complaint against the former FBI director for giving what they described as “privileged information” to the press. Three weeks later, that plan fizzled entirely.

In recent weeks, employees say, Kasowitz has tried to calm fears within the firm, holding a series of town hall-style meetings.

“You can work toward steering this president toward the best possible decisions whether or not you agree with his politics,” Kasowitz said at one such event, according to a person familiar with his remarks.

President Trump selected Kasowitz Benson to represent him despite high-profile instances in which judges criticized the firm for ethically questionable tactics.

In one particularly heated case, the firm sued investors on behalf of a Canadian insurer, Fairfax Financial Holdings. The company accused the hedge funds and others of conspiring to release information that would send the stock lower. Michael Bowe, Kasowitz’s deputy on the Russia case, was the firm’s lead lawyer.

In 2006, employees of Kasowitz’s in-house investigative arm, KBTF Consulting, tried to ensnare employees of Morgan Keegan, a broker-dealer whose insurance analyst was publishing critical research on Fairfax, according to a court document. They wanted to find out if Morgan Keegan gave certain clients access to its analysis before making its reports public. Kasowitz employees, including two lawyers who worked for the investigative arm, created a fake hedge fund called Blackwood Group Capital Partners. Posing as investors, the Kasowitz private investigators met with the Morgan Keegan analyst who covered Fairfax, asking if they could have advance copies of his reports. He said no.

Years later, Morgan Keegan hired a Rutgers law professor, John Leubsdorf, to assess whether the Kasowitz employees violated New Jersey ethical standards. The state bars attorneys from misrepresenting themselves. Leubsdorf called the firm’s conduct “inconsistent with the standards of professional responsibility.”

The Morgan Keegan attorneys tried to get Kasowitz’s firm thrown off the case, a request the judge rejected. But the judge said he was troubled by what the Kasowitz firm had done.

“I was brought up as a person and as an attorney to think you tell the truth, that that’s the only way you can deal with life. You tell the truth and, right, wrong, or indifferent, the truth will prevail. I don’t recall as an attorney ever participating in a deception such as [this] one,” Stephan Hansbury, a judge for the Superior Court of New Jersey, said at a 2011 hearing. “I don’t think that was an appropriate use of an investigator. I don’t think you’re supposed to go out and create evidence in order to justify a case. That’s not what the law allows.”

In 2007, Kasowitz had to defend his law firm from allegations of unethical conduct when another firm accused his team of violating a protective order in a legal proceeding. The order barred disclosure of bank records obtained during discovery in a federal shareholder lawsuit against Kasowitz’s client, a Canadian pharmaceutical company then known as Biovail.

But when Kasowitz’s law firm filed a separate complaint in New Jersey state court on behalf of Biovail, it used the bank records from the federal proceeding to bolster its case. Lawyers for the bank cried foul and in February 2007, Kasowitz had a testy conference call with Richard Owen, the U.S. district judge overseeing the federal case.

Owen was furious: “You get a whole bunch of the bank’s records and you’re sitting there drafting a complaint in New Jersey and you’re saying nobody ever said, ‘Where the hell did we get these records from, how come we have them?'” he asked Kasowitz, according to a court transcript of the call.

Kasowitz said his law firm did not know about the protective order and countered that the documents were not marked “confidential.” Owen did not see that as a good enough excuse and the two men went back-and-forth. Finally, Owen lost his temper.

“The record may show I hung up on Mr. Kasowitz,” said Owen, who has since..

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