#or you might see a familiar radical and make a vague guess at what something means

[rigelmejo]

Extensive Reading Updates - Zhenhun

I have been extensively reading zhenhun, my print novel version so I am not looking up any words. (Whereas with the hanshe pingxie fanfiction I am still occasionally clicking a word). I have read the first 20 chapters of the webnovel version of zhenhun in Pleco in the past few months, so most unknown words I have looked up before at some point. So right now I'm re-reading a lot of the same content and will be until I get past chapter 20.

I can tell that my comprehension of zhenhun probably is at about 95%. As in, its enough that I can follow the main plot and most key info details, but there's enough unknown words that I cannot guess some of them from context if its a totally new part of the novel I'm reading. And I run into a number of words in the in-depth scenery and character backstory descriptions that I just do not know and there's enough I don't always have enough context to guess relatively closely to their meaning.

Since these first 20 chapters are a re-read more or less, I have the extra context of 'knowing the overall plot that happens here' already. So I'm reading slower than I probably could, trying to figure out any unknown words from all the surrounding word context and the prior-plot-knowledge I have. For these re-reading sections this is working well, a majority of the words I can re-remember or figure out. I am hoping I will pick up enough of THESE kinds of unknown-words during this re-reading portion, so that hopefully my comprehension when I get to the new parts of the book will be a bit higher than 95%. Then hopefully once I get into totally new parts of the book: my reading speed will be a bit better (less unknown words I hope lol), and I will know a bit more words to guess more totally-new unknown words (that I've never looked up before) vague overall meanings.

Examples of what things I can read clearly versus parts I can't figure out all of the words enough to be relatively sure of the details. In chapter 1, I can read the parts about "Guo Changcheng having a phobia of phone calls" clearly, but then the details about him being afraid of people and having social anxiety I can follow certain parts, but other parts of the descriptions (like him when he sees a teacher or principal) I just sort of vaguely guessed meant he was terrified of them. When chapter 1 described Zhao Yunlan's entrance, I could clearly follow the parts about him looking serious/having a bad attitude and walking fast with the attitude of "if you're in my way roll the fuck away" and then the part about how instantly his mood changed to warm, he smiled friendly, he talked kindly and helped Guo Changcheng out by patting at his shoulder when Guo Changcheng got all sweaty trying to shake hands. But then the part about how Guo Changcheng sensed a seriousness/almost-scariness about Zhao Yunlan? All those details read vague to me and I am just summarizing that my interpretation of it was "even acting friendly, Guo Changcheng felt he was serious underneath/powerful/had an intimidating vibe." And since that detail read SO vague to me, I can't tell if that was an early hint Zhao Yunlan might be a god/used to have been Kunlun, if its just another implication Guo Changcheng is afraid of people/authority figures, or if it was trying to imply something else I just did not pick up on. So even WITH the re-reading prior context of these scenes, in-depth descriptions of character's intepretations still are more vague to me even if I can guess some of the words. I imagine this will get worse when I get to the totally new chapters - unless I learn a LOT of helpful words from context by the time I get through the first 20 chapters.

When I re-read the Kunlun intro I realized I may have translated some details wrong when I translated it to english several months ago. Now, this time I didn't use a dictionary to read at all, so it's possible I also did not interpret the details I read correctly THIS time around. But yeah, a couple days ago when I re-read that part I interpreted the 'qing yi' as possibly green/blue cloth Kunlun is wearing as the blizzard is blowing (whereas when I first translated that line months ago I thought it meant 'clear white fabric' blowing in the wind like some ripped piece of cloth - its also possible this time it still means 'bright cloth' but I do think it sounds more like its Kunlun's clothes than a random cloth blowing in the wind). And this time, when I read about Shennong it seemed more like he was either a god who'd lost his powers, or a god who'd lost his godhood fully, and its just he still retained his kind unselfish demeanor. Whereas when I first translated, I figured he was just a god 'who'd suffered' because of the great calamity that had just happened, but not particularly doing any worse than that. In this re-read though it feels to me more like its implying something more severe has happened to him/is happening. Also during this re-read, the line about 'the hole in the ground being so deep the rain did not even reach this far down' was much clearer for me whereas when I initially translated I had to look up a Ton of words in that section and still didn't quite get what it meant.

Also for the chapter 1 re-read, certain details were much easier for me to clearly understand. The part about McDonalds I FINALLY recognized that word in the sentence, the part about Guo Changcheng parking then going into the courtyard area and seeing the lobby office building, the part about human resources department, all of those sections I followed the details much easier than last time I read with a dictionary. So yeah, I'm curious which parts will be 'clearer' to me this time reading.

I am still reading at a slow 5 minutes a page (speed I was reading print novel of zhenhun last time). But to be fair? I am slowing down to try and figure out every unknown right now on the re-reading sections. And I read english fiction at like 3-4 minutes a page (why???? Do I just... picture and savor a lot???). I know when I'm reading nonfiction or back when I'd read class-assigned things I could read way faster, but I think its just because I scanned for important info and details and then moved on. Idk but...I really do read english fiction too slow too lol (I'm reading a friend's book and I've read like 110 pages despite like 10 hours on this book so far T-T just because I keep savoring it and pausing and rereading). I'm rereading a fic I wrote, so I know everything that happens, and I was reading like 1 page every 3-4 minutes ;-;. I know I can read super fast I think when I like something I just... slow down. Now, my chinese is reading slow just because reading slow is ALL I can do lol. But I may need... to be more realistic that any novel may take me 20-30 hours optimistically when I read like an english novel that's only 300 pages over 3 weeks now and I'm only 1/3 through it.

I can read chinese a touch faster if its actually in my 98% comprehended range I think. For hanshe, while when I'm slowing down looking up all unknown words its probably around the same speed as zhenhun? While I'm just reading to follow the story, I can finish a whole chapter in a handful of minutes. Now, like zhenhun, I am currently reading chapters I have already read before - so the familiarity is likely speeding me up. So that fact does mean it probably won't be as easy/fast once I get to the new chapters. At the moment though, unknown words pretty much all I have a good guess of understanding roughly in context (a lot like me reading fanfic in middle to high school as far as the amount of new vocabulary beyond my range that is not affecting my understanding). I just do not necessarily have a good chance of guessing completely new hanzi pronunciations (which is the main reason I keep occassionally looking up words). The hanzi I've vaguely seen before, I can sometimes guess their reading based on radical or the other word I know them from. But the completely new hanzi I do not remember seeing at all (although I did apparently at some point during the first read through) - I cannot make a decent pronunciation guess sometimes. And of course, the hanzi I always cannot guess correctly for the life of me (looking at you 'suspicious' 'hesitate' 'doubt' because I am STILL getting those 3 words/hanzi in them confused even though I've probably looked up each word like 40 times at least).

For me, print text is slightly easier to read (and in extensive reading its somewhat easier for me to guess new word meanings/hanzi). By this I mean the font they usually use for print novels (it looks a bit more like handwriting with more slanted lines and less 'blocky' of a look). I sort of think its because the print text usually used in books has more obvious radicals to me. So my eyes parse out the radicals I'm looking at easier and can make a guess at meaning/pronunciation. An obvious example is any time a 'sound noise' is written with hanzi with the mouth radical on them. When I'm reading in print text, I recognize 'mumbled, shouted, humph'ed, sighed, breathed in etc quite quickly. Along with sounds like 'xililala' and 'deng deng deng' and there was a sound phrase used I think in Guo Changcheng's section about school in chapter one that was like he sort of 'tumbled/fumbled his way through school' and while i know tumbled/fumbled is probably not Exactly the word? It looked like a sound-noise word to me because of the mouth radical, so I figured it might be something like that? Whereas I know when I read the webnovel if I saw a 4 hanzi phrase like that I would've just gotten confused by those hanzi cause I wouldn't have recognized the meaning of the other radicals in the hanzi. Also a few weeks ago I changed a fic I was reading's text to the print-usual text in Pleco, and had a much easier time reading less slow/recognizing hanzi I'd seen before. That said, recently reading a ton of hanshe has helped computer-text reading ability a bit I think. I'm getting much more used to recognizing radicals in computer-text website usual font, which I notice most obviously in that I'm hitting more 'sound hanzi' that are getting less confusing to me to recognize.

So I guess in summary, reading extensively is going fine. I'll find out in a few weeks if its causing any improvements. I do think its helping with my ability to recall words/pronunciations of words I've seen before though. Just because the quicker I can do that the less I pause, and I don't have a dictionary to help me out so I seem to remember some pronunciations quicker (maybe because I 'have' to). I also think its helping me with general sentence parsing a bit - which I thought I was fine at, but on re-reading the beginning of zhenhun I am realizing there's a decent amount of sentences I did NOT interpret quite right the first time around even with a dictionary.

[princesssarcastia]

the republic shatters, but it does not Fall. and its not Ahsoka’s goddamn job to pick up the pieces, actually.

GUESS WHO SPENT ALL OF THIS WEEK HAVING LOTS OF STAR WARS FEELINGS.  GUESS WHO JUST WROTE AN 8K+ WORD FIC ABOUT THOSE FEELINGS.

definitely haven’t been subsumed by thoughts of the Fall Of The Republic as a proxy for all my anxiety about the election, no siree. 

anyway.  In which Ahsoka takes Maul’s hand, convinces Anakin to sit his ass down, and then has to learn how to hand the fate of the galaxy back over to he people who fucked it up in the first place.  And in which the author acknowledges Barris Was Right, Even If Her Methods Were Radical and Flawed, And Ultimately Detracted From Her Message.

will probably call this, “had we but world enough and time,” on ao3. edit: here it is on ao3, if you prefer.

—

Maul smirks and the feeling of it lingers in the wider office, grating.

But that doesn’t mean she’s wrong.

Her breath comes and goes in quick bursts, montrals shuddering lightly with exhaustion.  The enormity of what they’ve done has started falling on her; the enormity of what she’s done, by the Force.  But her hands are the kind of steady earned through a crucible of three years of constant battle.

Too much battle, Master Windu thinks, and Ahsoka narrows her eyes at him when she catches it and presses closer.

“You don’t lay a finger on him; none of you get to do that, not now.”

“Now that I’ve—” Maul starts to drawl, but Ahsoka cuts him off.

“Not helping, Maul,” she spits without taking her eyes off the threatthreathreat she can feel from Master Windu.

Ahsoka showed up out of nowhere with the enemy she was meant to capture as backup—or, she was his backup, they hadn’t quite straightened that out on the way.  But it’s also that Anakin has—Anakin was—Anakin is—and Ahsoka was his apprentice for three years.  

And whose fault is that? Ahsoka thinks desperately, and Windu catches it, and it’s getting harder and harder for them to keep their shields up, keep their minds from meeting in the Force; Master Fisto lies dead not ten feet from her, and she’s used to dead bodies, she is, but dead Jedi still feel anathema and the violence of it lingers in the Force here even though they’ve been dying in droves in the last stages of this pointless conflict all this pointless death she is a solider not a Jedi what was it all for?

“Come now, Lady Tano,” Maul says, an undercurrent of pleasure at the chaos he can sense from her—not that he’s any better, he likes chaos.  It’s what he’s good at.  But she’s not, and it dulls her keen edges.

She forces a slow, full breath in, and out, and her hands stay steady.

“This is not the Jedi way,” Master Windu says like it matters.

“No?  Maybe not.”  Ahsoka draws in another breath.  “But I don’t think that means anything, anymore.  There have been too many compromises in this war, Master Windu, for you to tell me here and now that Maul deserves to die for winning it.”

“Obi-Wan would agree with me.”

“Obi-wan isn’t here, master,” Ahsoka says like an accusation.  “And can you honestly tell me you were going to do anything different? Why were you here in this office?”

“Arresting him, so he could be brought to justice,” Master Windu bites out, and Ahsoka knows she’s won, because it’s a lie.

That’s not what this was about. 

This was about millions of dead clones and thousands of dead Jedi and hundreds of years of steady decay disguised as peace.

Another lie.

Master Windu sighs like the weight of the galaxy is pressing it out of him.  And maybe it is; destiny fell hard on their shoulders today. 

Now, they find out if they can bear it.

“Fine.  We’ll do it your way, Lady Tano,” he capitulates, using Maul’s title for her to make a point.  “For now.”

—

 “How did you get away with being pregnant for so long?”  Ahsoka asks hesitantly, as they wait together.  “I mean, your gowns make a good effort, but…”

Padmé hums.  “They weren’t meant to convince anyone I wasn’t pregnant; it’s,” she taps her armrest, “it’s a cultural thing.  Padmé Naberrie is pregnant, but Senator Padmé Amidala isn’t.  Our private lives are sacrosanct, on Naboo, and with Palpatine,” her voice breaks, and she clears her throat.  “With Palpatine being the Chancellor for so long, Naboo culture was something most of the Senate understood.”

“Ah,” Ahsoka says, and it almost makes sense.  “We never had a lot of privacy in the Order. Or in the GAR, but that was different,” she adds, shaking her head.

“How so?”  Padmé asks, her eyes brightening the way Master Obi-Wan’s did, those rare moments in between battles when Anakin and Ahsoka could be lured into debating philosophy.

“I mean, we’re all Jedi, we all grow up together, learn together, live together.  We’re Jedi,” she repeats, “and we—it’s—we blend together in the Force.  There are things we just knew about one another, unless someone made an effort to hide, but then we knew that, too.”  She makes a frustrated noise.  “It’s not bad, though, it’s comforting.  Usually we didn’t feel the need to hide anything from other Jedi, and it was comforting, to know that you could just be in the Temple, without any pretenses.

“Whereas the GAR,” Ahsoka twists her lips wryly, “the lack of privacy stems from the close quarters and the constant battle and movement.  There’s no time for privacy when every second wasted means someone else dies.  And a lot of the regulations meant there were things we had to report to our superiors. Everything, basically, because some senators who helped draw up regulations thought that our use of the Force meant our every thought and feeling was pertinent to the war effort.”

“I see,” Padmé says, and they sit with these things they’ve said, and all the things they haven’t.

Ahsoka can feel the question in the back of their throats, and she can’t tell if it’s coming from her or from Padmé, but Padmé is the one who gives it life.  So kindly that it almost doesn’t feel like the dagger to her gut that it is.

“Is it still like that now?”

“I don’t know,” Ahsoka whispers, finally, because this isn’t something she can say loudly; not yet. “I don’t—not for me.  It isn’t like that for me, anymore.   But for everyone else?”  She asks.  “I can’t tell the difference between trauma and classified information and loss of faith in other Jedi, in the others.”

Or in herself.

—

When the find the chips—

Little gods and all the Force, too.

Anakin felt like he could have torn all of Coruscant asunder, and Ahsoka knew she wasn’t far behind him.  A lot of the other Jedi weren’t far behind him; Aayla Secura and Plo Koon and Depa Billaba and the others who lived and died by thousands of brothers for three years.

But Rex isn’t surprised. That’s what finally breaks Ahsoka: the lack of surprise on Rex’s face and the grim way Cody asks if these chips really change anything.

She leaves the now-chaotic debriefing room and hurries blindly through the halls of the Senate, grasping at the Force for a safe place to land and fall to pieces.

 She stumbles into a large set of offices, meant for a senator, maybe, but Ahsoka can’t quite grasp the lay of it with her montrals vibrating like they are; with her eyes so full of this last shattering betrayal, the final throw of earth in its burial.

“Master Jedi?” Someone calls sharply, but Ahsoka can’t answer them before she backs into a corner and sinks to the floor.  Can’t correct them, say, I am no Jedi, because she doesn’t know truth from lie anymore.

“Master Jedi,” that same voice repeats more calmly, right in front of her and vaguely familiar. “Ahsoka, right?”

She desperately trills some affirmative, and it must be within their range of hearing because they say, “Okay,” and nothing else.

Slowly, in fits and starts, the physical creeps into her awareness.  This is a senator’s office, and if she’s not mistaken, it’s the office of the man crouching in front of her.  She recognizes him, vaguely, and might be able to name him with another minute of study.

“Do you know where you are?” He asks, radiating calm like a Jedi master without any of the awareness in the Force.

“Your offices,” Ahsoka bites out lowly, starting to feel a low burn of embarrassment.  “Sorry, I’m—sorry.  I’m sorry.  I was just—”

“It’s fine, Master Jedi. There’s a lot of that going around,” he jokes lightly, except for how it isn’t a joke at all.

“The debriefing,” she says, the debriefing, because there’s only one, and if Ahsoka can recognize him then he’s definitely important enough to sit in on it.  “You weren’t there,” she adds questioningly.

“Ah, yes,” he says mildly. “I’m afraid I’ll need to be briefed on the debriefing later by one of my colleagues; Senator Amidala, perhaps, her notes are usually impeccable.  I was unavoidably detained by the Queen.”

“The queen,” Ahsoka repeats back to him, like Hondo’s stupid monkey-lizard. 

“Queen Breha Organa,” he responds, and she’s grateful that still, all he radiates is calm, because her embarrassment now is strong enough to rival her desperate horror.

“Your wife,” she says like an idiot to Senator Bail Organa of Alderaan, one of the leaders of the delegation of 2000 and main architects of the Republic’s efforts to rebuild.

“Yes,” he says.  “Do you drink tea?”

She takes a deep breath in, forcing her heartrate to slow.  “I do,” she replies.  You can’t spend any time in proximity with Master Obi-Wan without it. 

“I would be honored if you would join me, then,” Senator Organa says, rising and extending a hand to her in one smooth motion that belies his heavy robes.  “I think your perspective on these proceedings may be invaluable, if you’re willing to offer it.”

Ahsoka grasps it and pulls to her feet.  “It’s the least I can do,” she says.  “Seeing as I just had a panic attack in your office.”

“Wonderful,” he smiles at her, not denying it, and leads her away.

—

A galaxy cannot stumble up to the edge of oblivion and then step back gracefully, kindly, simply, easily, just because they notice it’s happened.  An end is inevitable.

The Republic fell three years ago, thirteen years ago, seventeen years ago.  Now the work is sorting shattered remains to see what is worth preserving, and what can be thrown out wholesale.

Saving isn’t on the agenda.

—

There are so few Jedi left, now, compared to what they were before.  Perhaps half the Order has died, in three years of relentless violence, and those who remain feel brittle in the Force.  The very young and the very old alone remain whole, and the disconnect is stifling.

Not all of those who remain stay.  Entire lineages depart from the Temple, unable to contemplate trying to live as they had before.

Trying, and failing.

Tholme and T’ra Saa depart for parts unknown to the Order at large as soon as the last battle fades into armistice.  Years of intelligence work and corralling those brave few Jedi who were willing to let the darkness swallow them whole have left them closer than the Code can abide. And Quinlan Vos follows soon after, to no one’s surprise. 

Aayla…she stays.  She stays, for now, but it’s a tenuous settling. As long as Bly is with her, she will endure.

But if she has to choose between the Order and Bly, or the Order and seeing her master again, the Order will lose.

—

Calling them Senate hearings would be a misnomer; the Senate doesn’t really…exist, anymore. With Palpatine gone, a crippling power vacuum sits at the heart of the Republic, leaving them, somehow, even more ineffective than they were before.  No system trusts any other system well enough to vote someone else into the Chancellorship that, all of a sudden, seems too powerful for any one being.

But their bylaws are still legal.

If not for the Jedi’s efforts to negotiate armistices with the Confederacy, they would be completely unable to negotiate or sue for peace, left mired in a thousand little wars, shards of the larger conflict that shattered with Dooku and Grievous.  The Jedi hold the peace of hundreds of worlds in their palms.

No one is particularly happy with this state of affairs.  Not even the Jedi, though some of Bail’s colleagues doubt that to the point of insult.

This particular briefing is in one of the lesser chambers, with perhaps only two hundred key systems directly represented.  A dozen Jedi and half that many clones have joined them to provide information and counsel on military matters, and all of their agitation is more palpable by the moment.

Master Windu, as Head of the Order, has spoken before the Senate many times; but today, he remains quiet and stone-faced, his hand pressed against his mouth as if to remind himself of his silence.

Master Kenobi, on the other hand, has exhaustedly pulled and pushed at conversational threads the entire time, lambasting falsehoods and correcting ignorance and on one very startling occasion baring his teeth at a senator who suggested—demanded—the Trade Federation be allowed a voice in these proceedings. 

That motion died swiftly.

The famed negotiator is seemingly at the end of his rope when it comes to these proceedings, and Bail can’t blame him.

After the very first of these briefings, the one Bail missed, Master Skywalker was not allowed to attend, and the look on Ahsoka’s face when they learned of this made him think it’s for the best. 

No Kaminoan representative has appeared after Halle Burtoni was swiftly recalled just before Master Shaak-Ti revealed what had been done to the clone troops, which Bail thinks is also for the best; if only because their safety could not be guaranteed.

—

Mace doesn’t understand it until he meets Padawan Vrosch.

Barely Padawan Vrosch; if not for the war, this little nautolan would still comfortably be an initiate, but needs must.

Padawan Vrosch is a padawan of the Temple.  Masterless, and left that way too long because no master could take up their training after…after what always happens to Jedi in wars. 

Padawan Vrosch’s master died very early on, after taking a padawan very young on both ends. They went to their master’s funeral, when they were still affording every Jedi lost in battle their own funeral, their own pyre and remembrance.

Most Padawans their age would have been at odd ends; but Vrosch quietly took up their own education, signing up for and attending classes as they came, joining initiates in their saber training, and patiently waiting for the day someone noticed them again.

They also found purpose in these intervening years, a much harder task: attending all the funerals held for fallen Jedi at the Temple.

“I was the only one there for my master,” Padawan Vrosch speaks solemnly up to him.  “When he died.”

Mace settles down next to them in the gardens—still too quiet, too empty, too devoid of the sparks of brightness that made it easy to just be in—and waits, patiently, for what the Force is telling him he needs to hear.  

Not just the Force.  Mace has trained one Padawan to Knighthood already.  A youngling alone shouldn’t stay that way.

“I know the war was important,” Vrosch continues.  “The Jedi wouldn’t fight in it if it wasn’t.”

Their faith stirs some inkling of wonder and shame from Mace; he finds he isn’t so certain.

“But we’re Jedi,” they say insistently.  “We’re all Jedi.  We shouldn’t die alone, and we shouldn’t pass into the Force alone, and we shouldn’t be remembered alone.

“I can’t fight very well, Master Windu,” Vrosch whispers, their tentacles twitching listlessly, like this is a failure on their part.  “But I could do this.  We aren’t mean to be alone, Master Windu.”

Mace sighs and looks out over too-quiet gardens.

“No, we’re not, Padawan.”

—

“Where is he?”

Ahsoka has been avoiding Obi-Wan for this exact reason. 

“I don’t know,” she says quietly, looking back at him steadily.  Steady, steady, so, so steady; Ahsoka is steady because if she isn’t then it all falls apart.  She’s certain and resolute because if she isn’t then she was wrong, and they Fall.

Obi-Wan runs a hand through his hair, pulling too-long strands out of his face.  He’s eroded to the quick.  They all are.  But leaving on what should have been the last mission of the war, only to return to find the Republic and your padawan on the brink of collapse, your oldest enemy free and your former grandpadawan responsible for freeing him…

The one thing he could still be sure of had been Cody, and even that was taken from him.  Now, he has only himself.

“He pulled us back from the Fall, master, and left without taking advantage of it.  I don’t think we can ask more from him than that.”

Welcome to my world, Kenobi.

None of their shields are functioning anymore.  Ahsoka gets Obi-Wan’s full impression of Maul, his sense of Maul’s whole self, and accepts it as another burden on her shoulders.  She knew the second she took Maul’s hand that Master Obi-Wan would never forgive her, would never understand, and she did it anyway.

Before he can work through to quiet acceptance of another grievous wound from someone he didn’t expect—a burden that might finally break her—Ahsoka untangles them from each other in the Force and walks away.

Infinite sadness, the Force murmurs to her, but she doesn’t look back.

—

It’s like they hit the Republic and the Order and the Galaxy over and over and over and over and over again until cracks spread into their very foundations—and then each took the finishing blow inside themselves, in place of the things they all bled and died and Fell for.

And they all shattered instead.

—

When Ahsoka tells Rex what she wants, he drags her to Cody—who gives in with surprisingly little resistance, and then lets her watch his comm to Commander Fox and the face that he makes, because Cody outranks everyone, and Fox can’t say no.  It almost makes up for stifling-fear-anger-betrayal from her time in Fox’s custody.

Sometimes, Ahsoka forgets that Anakin spent half a year serving with Cody the same way Ahsoka served with Rex.

They try to take her lightsabers at the last checkpoint, but she hands them off to Rex to safely hang from his belt.  Not a single one of the men here can be trusted with them in her mind, even though that’s not fair. 

The hard part of being self-aware is knowing you’re being irrational with no way to stop.

She waves the escort off, and to her surprise, they leave, though she can feel them linger just around the corner.

One beat, two beats, three beats of silence.

Fine.

Ahsoka settles onto the durasteel floor, lets the cold seep into legs and work its way up her lekku and down her montrals.

In, out, in, out, in…out…i n… . . o u   t . ..   . …….

Her-not-her-other expands and contracts in time with her lungs, and she becomes grassland; wind whips across the plains and she is the predator at the center, low to the ground, tasting the breeze and aware of every creature, every hidey-hole, every current. Daughter, the wind murmurs, and a convor’s cry echoes across the endless sky.

In the place between them, grassland and frigid desert meet, warm and cold winds mixing to create something more.  Something terrible.  They are not the same winds; the predator snarls, for it knows death rides on the cold.

Death and betrayal.

Barriss stiffens in her cell, and Ahsoka sighs.  As it should be, she thinks, but also, that’s not why I’m here.

But also, Barriss, is that true? and justice is merely the construct of the current power base.

Barriss’ eyes fly open at that.  “So, the rumors are true.  You did help him,” she says dully.

“He helped me,” Ahsoka fires back.  Sighs again. “But maybe it doesn’t matter.”

“Oh?” Barriss raises an eyebrow cooly. 

With your help, the Jedi can stop Sidious before it’s too late!

Too late for what? The Republic to fall? It already has, and you just can't see it!  There is no justice, no law, no order, except for the one that will replace it!

Energy crackles between them, and Ahsoka bites her lip.

“I think…” she hesitates. “I think he was right, Barriss,” she whispers.  “I think you were right, too.”

Barriss’ breath catches in her throat, her eyes snagging Ahsoka’s until they’re caught in a deadlock and warm and cold winds rise, rise, rise together, and a squall erupts in the Force.  At the edge of it, the clone troopers shift, discomforted. 

“You can feel it, too?” Barriss asks desperately, and Ahsoka catches flashes of Master Luminara sitting where she sits now, beaten and drawn and blind.

In, out.  Ahsoka expands the grasslands and points out the guiding winds to friend-not.  These aren’t Master Windu’s shatterpoints, but they are everywhere: in the Senate, in the Temple, on the Star Destroyers, in the Jedi and the people and the clones. The Republic has shattered already. It just hasn’t fallen to pieces.  The Republic is failing!  The Republic is Falling.

Tears slip down Barriss’ face, relief-fear-sadness-righteous.  Ahsoka trills, acknowledgement-soothing-fear-anger.

“What are we doing? What are we going to do?”  Barriss throws out.

“What have we done?” Ahsoka counters.  Blasters-energy-darkness-death-dying-agony-conflict-violence-pain-destruction-death-war-war-war-war.

In, war, out, war.

“It didn’t die with Sidious. I thought—but Maul was right, you were right.  It’s all of us.  And I don’t know how to fix it, Barriss, and I don’t think anyone else does, either.” She shifts, hugging her knees to her chest.  The predator morphs, uncertain, into prey, akul-scented on the wind, nowhere to run; they can only face it.

“That’s because it’s not our job,” Barriss says, face darkening.

“Why not?  We are j—” Ahsoka swallows the word.  They aren’t.  Barriss, expelled.  Ahsoka, lost.

Barriss shakes her head sharply.  “No, that’s not what I meant.  We should never have—we—we’re peacekeepers!”  She says indignantly.  “And that doesn’t mean pacifist, but it also doesn’t mean warmonger.  The jedi lost their honor the second they put us on the battlefield.”

Blasters-energy-darkness-death-dying-agony-conflict-violence-pain-destruction-death-war-war-war-war.

Death Watch surrounds her, too close, and it damns them; her lightsabers whirl out and catch all four of them in the neck at once.  And on to the next before their heads roll to a stop.  Bloodless, cauterized death-wounds, but the smell of it….

The grasslands are set ablaze, and the predator learns to run with the flames, instead of from them.

Barriss’ hands are never fully clean.  Mud and viscera stain her skirts as she lashes out at the Umbarans to protect her men, and then drops to hold the men she couldn’t protect together in the Force, desperately failing to hold them all together, Master Luminara isn’t here no one is here it’s just Barriss and Death nipping at her heels.

Desert sands whirl and whip like glass shards, higher and higher and colder and colder until all that lasts is the storm.

And….and….

Anakin, only seven years older than Ahsoka is; Master Obi-Wan hadn’t even been knighted yet at his age. Ahsoka thinks about being thirteen and missing Temple classes for battles.  Thinks about being fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and feeling death emanate from her lightsabers in the unifying force, stronger than any other feeling. 

Thinks about being knighted at seventeen.  Thinks about Barriss alone on the battlefield.  Thinks about Katooni, and wonders if she’s a Padawan yet. 

Thinks about half of the Jedi Order, gone.

When the guards come back for her, Ahsoka stands and works the kinks out of her muscles ruthlessly fast, too used to her surroundings shifting on a credit to let that kind of weakness linger.  Barriss stares after her with water and hope in her eyes, because they both know Ahsoka is coming back.  More questions lie between them than answers, now.

—

The debriefings turn into hearings, public ones.  Ahsoka’s shoulders tense every time she sets foot in the Senate, feeling the searching-grasping-angry-false atmosphere.  As inaction continues to dominate their government, some senators have started making noise about someone to blame for all of this.  Like Sidious isn’t to blame; like they all aren’t to blame.

Whenever the noise overwhelms her, the directionless anger prowling for an easy target, she finds her feet taking her back to Senator Organa’s offices, again and again.  It’s the will of the Force that he’s always there when she does, always with tea already waiting for them.  The unifying Force swirls lazily in the space around them in a way Ahsoka can’t interpret; like the future has its eyes on this moment in its past.

They talk about the proceedings.  About the war.  About the peace talks some Jedi are still presiding over without any authority to back them.  Ahsoka discovers that she has opinions about these that are uniquely her own, ones Senator Organa finds fascinating in a purely kind way.

Senator Organa opens up about the troubles Alderaan’s relief missions face, without proper authority and with the Republic forces’ attention off some of the usual hyperspace lanes.

Frustration is a bonding emotion between them.  But the time they spend together is the only peace Ahsoka’s life affords her. 

—

When Ahsoka left the Jedi Order, she felt the weight of all the work she wasn’t doing press hard on her shoulders, guilt twining between her legs and tripping her up every time happiness or contentment seemed in reach.  It made it so easy to take Bo Katan’s hand when she reached out; so easy to take on Mandalore’s battles as her own, because it felt like war and inaction were her only options.

Ahsoka was decisive. Her actions determined the course of so many lives.  So many troopers under her command, so many citizens depending on their victory; and for those brief, too-long hours with Maul, the whole Republic balanced on their backs.

Now, inaction has descended again.  The weight of roads not taken and guilt encircle her throat like a collar.  With Master Obi-Wan and Commander Cody and Captain Rex in the Senate every day, with Padmé and Senator Organa, the future of the Republic doges her every step, but she’s nearly powerless to help.

And it doesn’t help that her future with the Order is still up in the air.

Master Windu seems to have set her brief partnership with Maul aside until they know whether the Republic will fix itself, but having the threat of his disapproval hang over her head is worse than any swift punishment he could have devised.  Like, for instance, barring her from rejoining the Order.

The Temple is her home. The Jedi are her people.  Ahsoka knows she doesn’t want to live without them anymore.

But the Order has ground to a halt, and Ahsoka doesn’t know how to be still, anymore; her waiting is purely predatory, a simple watching for the next moment to strike. 

Meditating has never been her strong suit, but she takes it up again anyway.  It’s supposed to afford her clarity, if not peace. 

In, out.  In, out.

In, out.  In, out.  In, out.  In, out. In, out.  In, out.  In, out.

Ahsoka lets out a frustrated huff.  It’s so easy when she slips into the grasslands and the desert with Barriss; the both of them searching for answers no one seems to have, answers to questions too many people aren’t asking.

But on her own?  For herself? 

Not a damn moment of clarity.

She lets out another frustrated huff and pushes to her feet. Fine. Moving meditation, it is.  In, out.  Rise.  In, out.

In, out.  Left foot back, right foot forward, arm across the body. Ahsoka automatically pulls her empty grip in front of her face, instead of at her side, and lets her other hand act as both counterbalance and guard behind her.

In, out.  In, out.

Forward, back. 

Parry, attack, defend.

Deflect.  In, out.

 In, out.  In,    out,   In….. out…. …. ……….

 She alternates slow and fast repetitions and allows the living Force to flow through her, abandoning all thought toward the future.

In out forward back parry attack defend deflect in out; In, out, forward, back, parry, attack, defend, deflect, in……out……..

“Always in motion, the future is,” Master Yoda says from where he’s settled into the grass across from her.  “Always in motion, you are, Ahsoka.”

In, out.  The grasslands recede, leaving only Ahsoka.  She dashes the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand and falls into slow, easy stretches, letting the moment extend between her and her oldest teacher.

When they’re both ready, she releases a last breath and lowers herself in front of him.

“Happy here, you are not.” His ears dip low.  “Happy here, many are not.  Leaving, many are, to find themselves outside the Jedi Order.”

Ahsoka says nothing, content to wait for him to ask, not sure she has an answer to offer.

He sighs.  “Leaving, are you, Ahsoka Tano?”

“I don’t know, master. I don’t know…what I’m supposed to do now.”

Yoda offers no answers, either. 

“Jedi, you are,” he says, but it feels like a question.  He feels…uncertain, and it strikes Ahsoka like a blow.  Yoda isn’t supposed to be uncertain; he’s supposed to be…Yoda!

We’re peacekeepers! Barriss’ voice says in her mind, and he and Ahsoka flinch as one.

But…

“Yes,” she mulls, “I am a Jedi.”  In, out. “But I don’t know what that means anymore.  What we stand for.  What we’re supposed to do,” she repeats her earlier refrain.

Yoda hums.  “Neither do I,” he says, full of mischief and sorrow for not having the answers younglings always expect from him.

“Jedi, you are; in the Temple, Jedi, you are.  On Mandalore, Jedi, you are.  And on Felucia, Alderaan, Naboo, Tatooine.

“Jedi, you are, always.”

 It rings out in the Force. Daughter, it murmurs to her, and the cantor soars over the grasslands, free once again.

Her breath shudders out of her, leaving tears in its wake.  She shudders, and cries, until it turns into great rolling sobs that wrack her whole body and seep into the Force around them, sinking into the grass and plants and trees.

Relief.  It flows openly between her and Master Yoda. Relief-identity-purpose-forgiveness-Jedi.

“Searching, you are, for answers none have yet.  Find them for ourselves, we must.  Yes,” he hums again.  “Find them for ourselves, we will, and then, know them together, we will.”

She wipes uselessly at her face, still crying.  “But what about the Senate, the armistices, the clones—”

Yoda shakes his head. “Your job, this is not.  Jedi, you are.  Jedi Knight, I name you, Ahsoka Tano; now; always.  But young, you still are.  Heavy burdens, we have placed on the shoulders of all our younglings.”

 “But you just said I was a Knight,” she protests, and he smiles at her.

“Younglings,” he grumbles playfully.  “Younglings you all are, to me.  Even Master Windu.”

A beat.

“Youngling you were, when sent into battle, you were.  When send you into battle, the Council did.”  He sighs heavily.  “Great things, you have achieved, on the field of battle.  Under Master Skywalker’s tutelage,” he emphasizes Anakin’s new title.  “An exaggeration, it is not, to say that saved the Republic, you have, Ahsoka Tano; even if with the unlikeliest of allies, you did.  But had to, you should not have.”

Half the Order, gone.

Fresh tears flood her eyes, and the beginnings of a dehydration headache start to throb. 

“Many things, we will have to consider.  What we have done, for the sake of this war.  What we will do, for the sake of our future.  Easier it is, for myself and other masters, to contemplate these things here, in the Temple.  Easier it is not, for you.”

In, out.  She breathes easier now than she has since the Temple was bombed months and months past.  Now that Master Yoda…he…. Force, his approval still means so much to her.

“Need my approval, you did not,” Master Yoda chides gently.

“I wanted it, though,” Ahsoka realizes.  In, out. With his approval, so much of her uncertainty is gone, the things that temper her will to act dissipating with the knowledge that she isn’t alone anymore.

Jedi aren’t meant to be alone.  

 A breeze winds through the physical world around them, and Ahsoka tilts her head up to feel it better.

“Here we will be, when ready you are to return.”

—

Unsurprisingly, she finds Skyguy at Padmé’s apartment.  The two of them kind of abandoned any pretense when the war ended and he got to stay on Coruscant for more than a week.  When his troops—and the Republic, nominally—didn’t need him on the field of battle anymore.

“I have something to tell you,” they say at the same time, awkwardly sitting across from each other at Padmé’s kitchen table; Padmé herself having retreated to her—her and Skyguy’s? —bedroom with her handmaidens to keep packing.  Ahsoka doesn’t know everything about human reproductive cycles, but it doesn’t seem like Padmé can get much bigger without literally bursting, so she must be preparing for the end of it.  She’ll be on Naboo for a few months.

Or at least, that’s what she says.  Ahsoka suspects she may be back on Coruscant sooner, given the state of the galactic government.

They both gesture for the other to go first; they both pause awkwardly, waiting each other out, and Ahsoka rolls her eyes at them internally.  Little gods, really?  This is what they’re reduced to

And then they speak at the same time again:

“I’m rejoining the Order.”

“I’m leaving the Order.”

“What?”  They yell, together, and Ahsoka growls at the both of them.

“You’re leaving the Order?” Ahsoka demands, finally speaking on her own.

“I,” Anakin blinks, and rubs the back of his neck like she’s blindsided him.  “Yeah.  I don’t think I can stay, Snips, not with the way things are.”

She raises her brow.  “And how is that?”

He rolls his eyes at her, externally.  “I’ve never exactly been a model Jedi, Ahsoka.”

“Banthashit.  Everyone says you’re one of the best Jedi in the Order.”

“No,” he counters, “they say I’m one of the best Generals in the order.  One of the best warriors.  And now,” he turns to look in the direction Padmé went and his whole being softens in the Force, “I want to try and be one of the best husbands.  One of the best fathers,” he grins, and it strikes Ahsoka that he’s so young.  He’s so young, to have done the things he’s done.  So young to be a father.

Holy kriff, Anakin Skywalker is gonna be a dad. 

Visions of him jumping off of cliffs and being electrocuted run through her mind.

He catches the memories and grumbles at her.  Sighs.

“I don’t think I want to try and be a better Jedi, is the thing.  There is no try,” he says bitterly.  “Only do or do not.”

“And you…do not,” Ahsoka says hesitantly.

“I love my wife,” he says. “I love my children.  I love you, and Obi-Wan, and Rex and our men.  But I don’t love the Jedi Order anymore, if I ever did.”

Ahsoka thinks she loves the Order as much as it’s possible to love something so integral to who she is and who she wants to be.

Were you not cast out of your Order?

I left voluntarily.

Yes, but you were motivated to leave by the hypocrisy of the Jedi Council.

Many things, we have to consider.

“So, what are you going to do now?  If you’re not a Jedi.”  Ahsoka asks.

Anakin leans back in his seat, crosses his arms.

What do you want with Anakin Skywalker?

 He is the key to everything.  To destroy.  He has long been groomed as my master’s new apprentice.

 The Force roils as he sees what she has seen, hears what Maul said to her; it’s always so responsive for him.  Anger. Hate.  Disbelief. 

Yeah.  Ahsoka didn’t believe it either, until Maul told her who Sidious really was.  Until they got to Coruscant and Ahsoka could feel Anakin, his rage and fear and uncertainty. They barely got there in time, and the galaxy hung in the balance between Anakin and Ahsoka.  He pulls the memory of that from her too, and visibly brings himself back under control.

“I’m going to Naboo with Padmé.  And maybe,” he hesitates.  “I think I’ll help Rex and the other troops out, too.  With whatever their plans are.  Some other Jedi are helping, too.  Aayla, for one,” he adds when he sees her twitch in curiosity.  “Padmé’s been helping them fight the Senate for citizenship rights, and they’re just starting a search for places to settle down.

“It’ll calm a lot of anxieties in the Senate when they find it,” Ahsoka says, mulling it over.  “Having a standing army makes everyone nervous.”

Anakin snorts.  “Sure.  But it’s less that and more that they deserve it.  They always deserved it,” he says lowly, the seeds of a greater anger taking root.  “And if we tried to frame it like that, then some senators would say the troopers shouldn’t be able to leave until the Separatists decommission their droids.”

Something doesn’t quite make sense about that.  Ahsoka thinks about what she’s caught of the recent debriefings, and can’t remember any of the senators talking about this as anything more than a distant possibility.

“Hang on,” she says, the pieces coming together.  “What exactly are you planning, Skyguy?”

He grins, sharply this time. “Yeah, don’t go spreading it around. We, uh, requisitioned some medical droids and started removing their chips weeks ago.  There’s nothing stopping them for doing whatever they want, now.”

“Holy kriff,” Ahsoka breathes, eyes wide.  “How is this even going to—they’re still members of the GAR, can’t they get court martialed?”

“Not if all of them leave,” he smirks.  “There’s no law or force in the galaxy that could tell them all what to do, anymore.”

She thinks about Anakin and Rex, Master Obi-Wan and Commander Cody, Master Windu and Commander Ponds.  “Not even the Jedi.”

“Which you’re going back to.”

“I am a Jedi,” she says, and the Force winds around her like a satisfied lothcat.  Anakin senses it and purses his lips.  “A Jedi Knight,” she adds, and his shoulders sag in defeat.

“It suits you,” he admits, and leans back toward her over the table. 

“Just because I’m a Jedi doesn’t mean I’m staying here, though.  I’m not just gonna sit around, anymore, even if the Order isn’t assigning missions.”

He hesitantly reaches for her hand.  “So, you’ll come to Naboo to meet the twins, when they’re born?  It won’t be long now,” he says, not meeting her eyes.

She reaches back, leaning closer to snag his prosthetic hand, too.  “I wouldn’t miss it, Skyguy.”

A beat.

“Hang on, twins?  Two of them?”

He bursts out laughing, and the whole apartment brightens with his delight.  “That’s exactly what Obi-Wan said!”

—

Ahsoka walks into Senator Organa’s offices on purpose, for once, and he looks up at her in surprise.

“I see I’ve finally caught you off guard,” she grins.  “I was starting to think you had foresight, the way you’re always ready for me.”

“Well,” he smiles warmly and gestures for her to sit, “perhaps you’ve finally done something unpredictable, Master Jedi.”

He’s called her that this whole time, oddly enough, from the first moment she burst into his space in a panic.  Always certain of who she was.  It’s pretty telling in retrospect that she never corrected him.

“What brings you to me today?” He asks.

“You’re still having trouble with your relief missions,” Ahsoka states.  “I want to help.”

Senator Organa’s brow furrows.  “I was unaware the Jedi Order has started assigning missions again.  Or the Senate, for that matter.”

“They haven’t,” Ahsoka grins.  “But as a fully-fledged Jedi Knight, I’m allowed to offer my services as I see fit, even outside officially sanctioned missions.”

“That’s a very generous offer.”

“I want to help.”  She repeats plainly, but it means something different this time.  “And I know you want to help, too.  I trust your judgment; and,” she shrugs, “Alderaan’s judgment, too.”

“And what kind of help is that, exactly?”

“Whatever kind of help is needed.  Diplomacy, piloting, negotiating.”  She grins again.  “Aggressive negotiations.”

Senator Organa studies her, his hand coming up to his chin in a contemplative gesture.  “I trust your judgement as well, Master Jedi.”

Ahsoka sighs in relief. “Well, that’s good.”  Her backup plans if this didn’t work were pretty, uh, nebulous. 

“You’ve been very occupied by the Senate hearings and the armistices; I suppose,” he says slowly, meeting her eyes directly, “I’m surprised at this decision.  I thought you would remain on Coruscant until matters were settled.”

She tilts her head to the side and considers it.  “Maybe, in another life.  But I think I’m ready to let other people decide the fate of the galaxy again,” she says like it’s a joke, but feels relieved when Senator Organa doesn’t take it like one.  “I think,” she continues tentatively, “I can finally trust that everything will still be here when I return.  And in the meantime, there are people who need my help, and I need to help them.”

“You’re in luck,” Senator Organa says, pulling one datapad of many off his desk and thumbing it open. “Queen Breha just finalized the details of a joint relief mission with Chandrilla to Ryloth.  They only accept aid now when it isn’t the military delivering it, but the hyperspace lanes between there and Alderaan are still tumultuous.  And to be honest,” he admits, “we could use some help smoothing the transfers over with local officials, too.”

Ahsoka breathes out, and feels this mission sink onto her shoulders, displacing the greater weights that took up that space before.  Greater, but not more important.

“I’ll put you in contact with the mission lead, they can give you details about departure times and what exactly they’ll want you to do.”

“Thank you, Senator Organa,” Ahsoka says as she pushes to her feet.

“I think you can call me Bail,” he says, extending a hand.

“Then I think you should call me Ahsoka,” she replies, taking it.

—

Anakin drags Rex and Kix and Jesse and Cody to Naboo with him, when it’s time, and Padmé thanks them quietly for bringing him back to her, more whole than he’s been since they rode into an arena chained together.

Time away from the politics of rebuilding a government and the Jedi Order—and the relationship between the two and the larger galaxy—has been so good for him that she can’t begrudge personal opportunities lost.

At least now, she knows he’s safe in more ways than one, working for something he really believes in.

—

Ahsoka meets Luke and Leia ten days local standard after they’re born at Varykino on Naboo, and loves them instantly.

A Feeling strikes her as she stares down at the pair of them, utterly enchanting and more powerful than anything she’s ever seen before.  “Oh, they’re going to be trouble.”

“You think?” Anakin grins at her.

—

Barriss can feel it, somehow, when Ahsoka finally leaves Coruscant again.  Like their increasingly frequent joint meditations have bound them together.

Her strength in the unifying Force has only ever brought her pain; foresight in the middle of a war is nothing but death and darkness.  But as Ahsoka leaves, more settled than she’s been since Barriss utterly destroyed the trust between them, and between them and the Order and the Republic, the Force seeps into her vision once again.

Desert winds swirl, sweeping aside too-familiar sands to reveal what potential lies underneath.

Growth.  New beginnings.  Life.

Barriss sees:

Her hands sweeping over the head of an anxious youngling, murmuring sweet nothings as she applies bacta patches to the saber burns the little Twi’leck who slipped during their first training class, completely accidental.

“It’s going to be alright,” Barriss says with a smile, and she believes it.  And the youngling believes her.

 Barriss s e e s:

 It is not so easy for the scars of war to fade.

We are not soldiers; but we used to be; but we shouldn’t have been.

When the Jedi Order shouldered the burden of galactic war for the Senate, their lauded foresight didn’t reveal the perils of the aftermath.  What the real cost of war is for the soldiers who fight it: the ones who die for it, and the ones who have to live with it.  Live with what they did in the name of something that was truly corrupted.

Too late for what? The Republic to fall? It already has, and you just can't see it!  There is no justice, no law, no order, except for the one that will replace it!

The temple of the New Republic is not a sanctuary suffused with the warmth of a thousand years of brotherhood that they once lived in.  It reflects its inhabitants in more ways than one.

It is an alert place, the tension of a thousand survivors of Civil War trained to be on their guard, always.  At once a more insular place, disillusioned with the government they’re re-learning how to serve, even now, years after the fact, and a more connected place, with the Jedi more aware of the people themselves by necessity.  There are some who will always be more comfortable in a battle than out of it, no matter how long it’s been, because they came of age in battle after battle after battle.  But there are others who are finally growing up without a war nipping at their heels, corrupting them.

Jedi come and go more frequently than they used to.  There are more Rangers and Watchman than there have been in hundreds of years.

But they are. And they will be.

 Barriss sees:

 Ahsoka climbs the steps to the Temple, her home, completely at ease, the echoes of her descending them in anguish and uncertainty long faded.  Returning from a long, satisfying journey.

Barriss is waiting for her just inside the Temple walls and falls in step next to her.  They make their way through the Temple together.  

Younglings and Padawans and younger knights and older masters alike whisper in Ahsoka’s wake, as they always do; things they once whispered about her Master, and his Master before him: one of the greatest Jedi of the era.  Sith-slayer.  Negotiator. Warrior.  Her adventures are easy stories to tell in creches, ones where the Jedi triumphs over many different types of evil.

The reality of them is more complicated, of course, but that is something saved for people who can bear it and learn from in; not fear it.

“She’s waiting for you,” Barriss says calmly.

Ahsoka groans.  “Barriss, I haven’t even been home five minutes, can’t this wait?”

“You’re ready.  She’s more than ready; she’s been waiting for you.”

“Am I?  Ready, I mean,” Ahsoka says uncertainly.

They pause in the hallway, passersby parting around them without protest because it’s clear to everyone that the pair of them must stop here.

“Are you?”

She heaves a long, heavy sigh that slides into another groan.  “To train a padawan?” Ahsoka hesitates.  “Or to stay in the Temple again?”

Barriss says nothing, projecting the serenity she feels every day in the Temple; the serenity she feels when she’s with Ahsoka; the serenity that emanates from their current topic through the unifying Force.

“Because I won’t train a Padawan the way we were trained,” Ahsoka says harshly.  “Always on the move.  No solid ground to fall back on, no peace.  That’s not who we are.”

“Not anymore,” Barriss replies, with that same hint of bitterness.  In, out.  She releases it as quickly as it appeared.

“I want her to know peace, Barriss.  And love,” she adds petulantly, still stinging from her last debate with some of their elders over the Skywalker Clan, the one Barriss suspects played no small part in sending her back out of the Temple again.  “Safety.”

“Well, you have your answer, then.”

Ahsoka looks at her blankly. 

“Who better to provide those things than you?  It’s not like you’d trust anyone else with her, at this point.  Still ready to take the fate of the whole galaxy onto your shoulders, Knight Tano,” Barriss teases, gently, because that weight still aches for her friend even now.

“And you’re still ready to take its wounds onto yours, Healer Offee,” Ahsoka returns.

“It’s not like you’ll be alone,” Barriss says with exasperation, starting through the Temple again.  Ahsoka keeps to her side automatically, her ‘sabers swinging at her hips.  “You’ll have me, and Master Kenobi, and Knight Katooni, and even—Skywalker,” she settles on delicately.  “Even if he should never be allowed near our younglings.”

“Maybe we can share her,” Ahsoka muses lightly, still protesting Barriss’ decision not to take an apprentice. Barriss lets it go for now, because she just won the argument.

They slow to a halt outside the Bear Clan’s quarters, and Ahsoka curses.  “C’mon, I haven’t even showered yet!”

“You’re no good to anyone putting things off.  Always on the move, that Ahsoka Tano.  Always looking forward.”

Ahsoka sighs again, with a touch of finality, and relents.  She turns to Barriss and tilts her forehead to bump into her friend’s.  “Thank you.”

“Anytime,” Barriss says, and presses into Ahsoka’s touch for a moment, before giving her friend one final push.

“Hey!”  Ahsoka exclaims as she stumbles through the Clan’s doorway, but Barriss is already halfway down the hallway, her lingering amusement in the Force the only sign she was ever there.

—

Barriss sits in her cell and weeps unabashedly, full of relief for this gift the Force has given her: a future. 

For her people.

For herself.

—

fin.

[codenamesazanka]

Well I attempted the essay and I got stuck on the first sentence, so have this very draft-y fic I wrote a while ago that somewhat encapsulates my feelings about Villains in a way similar to what the essay ideally would be like:

AU where somehow Spinner got caught by Heroes during Gigantomachia month; don’t ask me how, all I wanted was to write bits of scenes of Toshinori interacting with Spinner and pretending I know things about psychology.

*

“…no criminal record beyond League of Villains activity. So we brought in a de-radicalization specialist, but seeing how he’s refusing to talk, and with the Commission breathing down our necks, he’s probably going to be transferred to Tartarus the moment the prosecutor’s office gets through to the judge…”

Despite all his years as a Hero catching criminals and handing them over to the justice system, Toshinori never was too familiar with how the process actually worked. The paperwork he had to file was already a nightmare - the thought of learning the intricacies of the courts barely entered his mind. As the counselor beside him talked, he could only nod, nothing to say, attempting to roughly sketch out the path she was describing for the young man on the other side of the glass.

Iguchi Shuuichi had been given the full bind - maximum restraint and containment, every part of him that can and might move strapped down onto his chair; but he seemed to have shut himself away too. He sat with his shoulders hunched as much as they were allowed, face turned down and away from the rest of the world, eyes shut to everything around him. Since Toshinori had first seen him from the observation room about half-and-hour ago, Iguchi hadn't moved at all. It had been three days since his capture. Toshinori wondered if he had been as still as this the whole time.

“—Dr. Nakaya will do another session later this afternoon, but…” The counselor sighed. “It’s a pity. He’s probably the best candidate for the program too.”

“…You called it the “de-radicalization program,” correct?” Toshinori asked, turning to the counselor, who immediately gave him her full attention. “May I ask what exactly that is?”

“Of course, of course! Essentially it’s rehabilitation focused on having the individual reflect on their belief system and rejecting extremism. Allowing them to accept different perspectives and solutions, and understand how their current way of thinking is both harmful to society and themself.”

“That sounds a little too easy for this kind of situation.” Tsukauchi said, looking up from some notes he was taking. “Plus vague. How is that different from any other rehabilitation programs in prisons?”

And Toshinori had to agree with that. He looked back at Iguchi, still unmoving. “You said he was the “best candidate”. That means he’s different as well? From other Villains.”

“That’s what we hoped.” The counselor paused. “Have you read his profile yet?”

[…]

“Build a relationship with him?” Toshinori asked, frowning.

“Another way to put it is ‘treating him as a complex, multifaceted person’,” Dr. Nakaya said with a wry smile. “You see, Mr. Yagi, we think of terrorists - of Villains as single-minded boogeymen that have no history or future. But they’re human too, with a human brain and human emotions, motivations. Our program’s theory is that young people like Iguchi Shuuichi felt something significant lacking in his life, and in trying to fill that hole, they turn to philosophies like that of Stain.

Iguchi Shuuichi fits that model almost exactly. His family told me that he had been a hikikomori. For years. He was aimless, friendless, he ‘had no light’ in his eyes, as his mother said. Then suddenly Stain appeared on the news, and he became obsessed. In just a matter of weeks, he left home to dedicate his life to— to whatever the League is working towards. Interviews with your students said that he was fanatic when talking about Stain. So isn’t that a grand narrative? Having what seems like a noble purpose, having a group of people that would take him into the fold, believing he is doing something important. World-changing. There’s a reason research has shown that many terrorists and extremists got their start as young adults - it’s a time of change and possibilities, and it can be scary not knowing how you’ll spend the rest of your life.”

“So if you were to… become his friend…”

Dr. Nakaya chuckled, looking pleased. “We don’t have to necessarily be his friend, but if we show we are trying to understand him and we want to talk to him, that fulfills the social need - that people acknowledge us, are willing to spend time with us, want to share things with us. That should give us a cognitive opening - get him to lower his guard and defenses, which will make him more willing to listen to us too.”

Toshinori took note of the ‘we’s, but didn’t pursue it.

[…]

The list of Iguchi’s ‘likes’ included titles of video games, movies, and books. At least, Toshinori assumed they were titles; none of the words sounded familiar to him.

“He also apparently likes knives,” Dr. Nayaka said. “But I didn’t include that for obvious reasons. Well, I’m saving that and ‘Stain’ for last if this doesn’t work.”

“I don’t know anything about video games,” Toshinori said. He gave an embarrassed grin. “Though I guess I can ask him to explain them to me…”

“That list is just suggestions. Ask him about his favorite food, about his family. Tell a joke. Use your status as All Might.” She shrugged. “As long as you get him talking.”

[…]

The intercom buzzed. “You can leave now if you want, All Might.”

That felt like admitting defeat. Toshinori stayed in his chair. Nothing he was saying was working, nothing had worked, except…

He took a deep breath. “Shigaraki Tomura…”

And there it was again - Iguchi tensing up, breath quickening.

fulfills the social need - that people acknowledge us, are willing to spend time with us

want to share things with us

Toshinori said, “I knew Shigaraki Tomura—”

The intercom came on again, and this time it screamed. “You know that’s prohibited, All Might! He’s not allow— Ow, what—” The guard’s voice was suddenly replaced by Dr. Nakaya’s. “No, this is good, this is good! Keep going—” Then it was both voices, along with sounds of a scuffle, before it cut completely.

Iguchi looked at Toshinori with a great deal of suspicion and contempt. “I already told you that you’re not going to get anything out of me about him. No matter what you do or say or— or do to me.”

Toshinori paused, then smiled slightly. “You’re very loyal to him. That’s...good.”

There was an instant reaction, Iguchi’s facial expression giving away to what looked like shock and chagrin. He opened his mouth to say something, but then snapped it shut.

From behind Toshinori was the sound of someone pounding on glass and muffled yelling, but he ignored it.

make him more willing to listen to us

In some capacity, Iguchi Shuuichi cared, or at least had an interest in information about his leader. And that was something they had in common.

“I knew his grandmother.” Toshinori said, the words feeling rough in his throat as he forced them out. “Shigaraki’s grandmother. She was like a mother to me.”

It was like collapsing a wall. Toshinori spoke, and Iguchi stared at him, his defenses falling to reveal the vortex of emotions behind it, confusion, horror, anger, too many to distinguish.

“Had things been... different, maybe I would’ve— he’s her grandson, so I would’ve been like an—”

“Why are you telling me this?” Spinner asked. He sounded as uneasy as Toshinori felt. “What does this have to do—”

Toshinori found himself standing up. As if there was something urgent he had to do, something he must head for immediately. His body moved without him thinking—

“I want to help him.” Toshinori said. “I have to, I have to save him. There are— many things I have to do…for him, for Shigaraki Tomura. So please, young Iguchi, if there’s anything you know that can help…”

[conspirwbytheorist-inactive]

Team SWKR baseball!AU when

Hmm probably when I parse out the other team members involved in SWKR. I’m guessing the “R” is Raven. . .Wait. Is that the team name for all the moms? Oh, Lord. 😂 Well. I think I figured it out, so I guess a promise is a promise.

Hope you enjoy this silliness! (opted for Team WRKS instead for the pun of it)

[Under the cut for length. Had fun writing it but. . .not really looking to clog up any dashes 😅]

So, about a year after Ruby is born, Summer reaches out to Raven about joining this Mommy-and-Me Basketball league she heard about at the mission board. It’s not much. Just a way to get to know other moms with some free childcare involved, but she figures it might be a good way to reconnect with her estranged friend. Raven, eager for a chance to be near her daughter that didn’t involve fighting those cursed squirrels, agrees. Summer brings the kids, Raven bribes an urchin named [“Veronica? Valerie? No. Vernal sounds right.”] to pose as hers, and the two meet their teammates.

Kali - co-leader of a radical faunus rights movement -  happens to be camping nearby and leapt at the opportunity to give her daughter, Blake, a taste of structure (“You’d be surprised how hard it is to find quality early childhood enrichment programs in the woods!”). Willow, on the other hand, isn’t quite sure why she’s here. She vaguely remembers something about a. . . sponsorship? . . . needing to make the family seem more. . . “normal”? All she knows is that she has a cooler full of moscato and 8 guaranteed Jacques-free weekends. She is ECSTATIC.

Anyways. Things. . .start out very rough for Team WRKS (intended to be “works” swiftly changed to “wrecks” by the other moms). It turns out putting the woman whose ex you have a baby with and leaders of two opposing sides of a civil rights war on the same team. . . isn’t such a great idea. Raven keeps trying to one-up Summer, Kali always finds ways to “accidentally” pass the ball to Willow’s face and Willow just generally does not get the concept of the game. (not to MENTION the damage their daughters’ wreak on that poor daycare center)

At about week 3, Summer decides she’s had enough and pulls her team aside: “Is this the kind of example we want for our daughters? Or do we want to work together and win this thing?!” Inspired by her words, Team WRKS makes an amazing turnaround, rising through the tournament bracket, decimating all in their path. Kali realizes that underneath her aloofness Willow may prove a vital ally. Willow learns that faunus friends are good PR. And Raven. . . Raven wonders if maybe Summer was right all those years ago. That maybe, just maybe. . . the power of teamwork could truly save the world.

Ah, what could have been. . . if not for that damn meddlesome Hound.  It comes out of nowhere, the day of the final, a giant black beast in an adorable blue jersey. They think it’s a joke, at first,  but no, from the moment the ball touches the court it’s over. Once, twice, again and again, the Hound leaps into the air – dunking, weaving, free-throwing with a fervor none of them has ever seen. It is only after the final buzzer rings that Raven sees a familiar alabaster face smirking from the other end of the court, stroking her pet. “No.” Raven panics. If Salem was here. . . She was a fool to think she could be safe.

What could have been a dream team crumbles after that. Raven flees - grabbing Vernal at coat check before leaving without a trace. Without any championship to cement their tender alliance, Kali and Winter drift apart, returning to the lives they left, memories soon fading.  But, Summer can’t let go. As she loads the girls into their car-seats, she begins plotting her revenge against the beast that ruined her one chance at making her little family whole again. Gods as her witness, she would make Salem pay.

[firesidexfables]

changes

People told her she’d changed. 

Sure, it’d been 2 months or so since she’d last seen her friends. Maybe a little over 4 months since the break up. And yeah, she’d spent more than a month in Seoul, and another month or so off the grid just cos she wanted to. She couldn’t help it - after the sorry excuse for a year she'd had, all she wanted was a little bit of escape. To just be on her own, be her own person for a while and just exist. 

Truth be told, she had enjoyed the 2 months away from familiar places and faces. It kind of felt like a hard reset for her life. A much needed reset, in her opinion. 

Had she changed? 

Okay, so she did come back to her hometown about 10kg or so slimmer, with a short boyish crop of copper hair and dressed in clothes she wouldn’t have worn half a year ago - a black turtle neck, checkered collared jacket and belted black jeans. Not to mention 3 more piercings in her ears and new silver steel earrings. Maybe it was the ice blue coloured contact lenses too, turning her brown eyes a grey green instead. 

Looking at herself in the toilet mirror, she took in her appearance and had to admit that yes, perhaps the change might have been pretty jarring for the friends she’d left at the table - the friends who’d last seen her more than 60 days ago. 

She’d walked into the cafe and waved to the group of 4 gathered at the table. Two of them had heir backs facing her so they hadn’t seen her entrance. The other two - her best friend since 15 and her boyfriend of 4 years - had been facing the cafe door but stared past her for a good 1 minute. She kept on waving, wondering why there was no response as she strode over to their table. 

Eyes widened in shock and recognition as she sat down on the empty chair beside her. 

“Oh my god, I didn’t recognise you at all! What happened to your hair?!”

She’d shrugged and laughed. “C’mon, you always knew I wanted to cut it short.” 

Opposite her, the two other guys at the table did a double take. 

“Wait, is that really you? Man you look like you really DO live in Seoul.” 

“Well, I did technically. For a month.”

2 coffees and a cheesecake later, she’s excused herself to the washroom to freshen up. To be honest, she hadn’t made any of these changes on purpose - the loss of weight, the haircut, the change in style. She supposed, maybe with finally being free of all the unnecessary pain in her life, these were all things she had always wanted to do. Be healthier. Look cool. Try new clothes. Be herself? Probably. 

She walks back out to rejoin her friends at the table - her Best Friend Jane, her Best Friend’s boyfriend Alex; Ross - the annoyingly athlete whom she’d befriended in freshman year during a concert, and Kai - Ross’s best friend who for some reason had always been in the same classes as her since she’d started university. The people she’d grown to love through tumultuous years as a struggling university student. People whom she’d - somewhat guiltily - wanted to get some space from during her 2 month hiatus. Not that she didn’t enjoy their company, but everything had just been too suffocating back then - too many memories and too much to deal with. 

But now, things were different. She was different. And she was happy to see them again. 

“Dang, Morgan. I still can’t get over how different you look.” Ross blurts out in the midst of the ongoing conversation she and Jane are having about lattes versus Americanos. 

She looks over from the fake banter she was engaged in with Jane and raises an eyebrow. “It’s weird though, I don’t actually feel like I changed much.”

“Are you kidding me right now?” Kai, who’d been strangely quiet most of the coffee session, finally spoke his first few words of the night. “You’re like, a whole new person. If you didn't sit with us I would have thought you were a stranger.” 

Both of her eyebrows arch upwards now, and she isn't quite sure how she should react to that comment. She studies Kai’s face, which she remembered being usually easygoing and ready to smile. There was none of that today, and she realised that he seemed... sad? Not really. Something closer to mirth, almost a cold meanness. She’s pretty sure that's not the Kai who sat next to her in every class, always cracking some lame joke which she’d roll her eyes at with a smile. This Kai seemed cold, almost angry. Was it her? Had she caused this? Or had something happened to change him too? 

Nonetheless, the tension at the table had gone up a notch and she had to do something. She could feel Jane getting worried and flustered beside her, with sweet Alex trying to think of a amicable reply. Ross was just open-mouthed in shock, not quite sure what to say. 

She gave a smooth chuckle, unruffled (seemingly) by her friend’s icy tone. She ran a hand through her fringe out of habit and took a sip of her iced Americano before saying, quietly, “Well I guess it’s a good thing I did sit down then.” She smiled because she really did mean the words she was about to say next, “I really missed you guys when I was in Seoul.”

Kai’s eyes softened a little, although his expression never changed. She took it as a small win. Jane engulfed her in a passionate side hug, and the table mood was in a good place again. 

“Who told you to go for so long! When you said you needed some space to work things out yourself, I didn't imagine it would be that long or that hard not seeing you.” 

“I know, I'm that important in your life right.” Morgan laughs. “You totally don't have a super nice boyfriend, a thesis to write, and your sister’s wedding in a week that you had to plan for.” She jabs playfully at Jane, who rolls her eyes but is still smiling fondly at her. 

“I hate you Morgan, you know that right.”

“Uh-huh, I’m sure. That’s why you stuck with me for 7 years.” 

“Urghhh, you two are grossing me out. Alex is Jane’s boyfriend, not you Miss Kpop-idol-from-Seoul.” Ross grimaces, although this is definitely not the first time he’s witnessed such banter from them. 

“Alex doesn't mind.” Both her and Jane chorus together. 

Alex laughs, his eyes crinkling good-naturedly into tiny crescents. “I’m glad you’re back Morgan. You wouldn’t believe the number of times Jane wanted to call you but realised you wouldn’t be contactable. We really did miss you.

“Anyway, we’ve spent most of the night going on about all of our boring lives the past 2 months. How was your trip? Are you feeling better after Seoul?”

One of the reasons Morgan had approved of Alex dating her best friend was because he really was such a sweet guy. Not a selfish bone in his body, and a heart of gold. She couldn’t think of a better person to love her Best Friend. She smiles and does a quick reflection on her month in Seoul - all the museums, streets, people, morning runs and time to sketch and take photographs that she’d had. Koreans liked to use the word healing, and she couldn't think of a better way to put it. 

“Yeah. Healing, right? That’s what they always say in k-dramas. That's what it felt like. Healing.” 

Jane beams happily at her. “What’s your favourite thing about Seoul?”

“Wow, I’m not sure I can pick just one thing though my god...” 

“Okay okay,” Ross chimes in. “How about your best memory then?”

She cocks her head to the side, biting her lip as she tries to think of her best memory. There were truly so many good memories there, it was hard to pick the best one. 

“Hmmmm... well this is gonna seem a little unimpressive for a best memory. But if I had to pick I think it was one Saturday morning when I travelled a little further to MMCA. It was that golden hour kind of sun, and - don’t judge me for this - but I bought a MacDonald’s coffee and walked from the station to MMCA. It was like maybe 7 degrees out? But the sun was so pretty. It was such a nice walk, I took some photos and sat outside MMCA and just drank my coffee and I don't know. I felt really happy and free. Like I could just be myself, you know? And that life was good and I didn’t anything else in that moment. 

“Sorry I bet you guys were expecting like some epic night out, or some amazing mountain hike or maybe I met BTS?” 

They laughed at her finishing comment. Well most of them did. Kai just drank his latte quietly, not looking up from his coffee cup. 

What was up with him, seriously? Morgan decided that she'd confront him in class on Monday. 

“Nah man, that sounds pretty amazing actually.” Ross assured her. “Sometimes in life it’s just the little things, amirite? I feel the happiest when I’m on my morning runs. Nothing fancy, just me and the pavement beneath.”

She nods and finishes the last of her coffee. “Yeah man, I never thought something so simple could make me so happy. Kind of made me think, why was I trying so hard before, you know?”

It was a vague reference, but everyone knew enough to know she was talking about her ex. The break up that had radically shifted the course of her life. The heartbreak of being cheated on, and the toxicity of a relationship that had pulled her down all this time without her realising. In hindsight, she was actually thankful she broke up with him. It felt like she was a chained tiger who’d finally escaped her cage. Free, and ferocious in all her newfound strength. Ready to conquer the adventures of life again. 

Of course, only Jane knew the full extent of how horrid that relationship had been and how hard she’d taken it at first. She didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, so not everyone - not even Alex - at the table knew much about the break up other than it had happened. 

A soft hand lands on her shoulder, and she turns to see Jane smiling that soft smile of hers at her. “But that’s how you’ve always been Morgan. You’ll try your hardest till you die for something you truly believe in, and I love that about you. I'm just happy you came to before you really died on the inside.” 

The sudden, sombre shift in atmosphere makes Morgan feel a little uncomfortable. She gives her signature half smirk. “Yeah right, like I'd die that easily. What has our years of friendship taught you?”

Jane shakes her head fondly, knowing the bravado has always been her way of diffusing difficult situations and topics. 

“It’s getting late.” Kai says, putting down his now empty cup. “We should all head home.” 

Morgan is, once again, puzzled and a little concerned about the cold edge in her friend’s tone that she has never heard before. She made a mental note to text Jane about it later. 

“Yeah,” she agrees, despite it being way before her bedtime. “The place is closing soon anyways.”

They get up to leave, gathering their bags and finishing their drinks. Morgan is slinging her black Oxford bag over her shoulder, when she feels someone tapping her back softly. She turns around to see one of the baristas from the counter with a cup of iced Americano in her hand. 

“Sorry, this might come off a little weird but, my friend over there wanted to ask you out but she's too shy to do it herself.”

Everyone at the table shuffles awkwardly. Morgan just smiles. Honestly, this wasn't the first time something like this happened since her haircut in Seoul. 

“Mm,’ she hums thoughtfully. “Your friend knows I’m a girl right.” 

The barista flashes a triumphant smile and calls over to her colleague. “See, I told you!!” The other barista just blushes a deeper shade of red. “Yeah, I told her I'm pretty sure you’re a girl, but she said she doesn't care whether you're a buy or girl. She thinks you're cute.”

Morgan cocks an eyebrow for the second time that night. “O...kay. I kind of don't swing that way though, sorry. Don't mind being friends though?”

The barista smiles. “Aww, that’s sweet of you. ‘Kay I'll tell her what you said, but the coffee’s on the house. Her number’s on the sleeve if you change your mind.” She says with a wink before handing the cup to Morgan and heading back to the counter - no doubt to report back to her blushing friend. 

“Well... that was awkward.” Ross breaks the silence, rubbing the back of his neck in embarrassment, as if it was him who was asked out. 

“Believe it or not, that’s not the first time something like this has happened to me since I got the haircut.” 

“Wait. Are you really thinking of calling her?” Kai looks at her incredulously, noticing the coffee cup still in her hand. 

“So what if I do?” Morgan retorts, getting a little peeved at his behaviour today. “She’s a nice girl who gave me a free coffee.”

“Wow,” Jane looks at her with bug-like eyes. “Seoul really has changed you.”

“I’m just kidding. But I probably will text her though, just to turn her down nicely. Cos I’m not a douche like some guys.” 

She doesn't catch the glare that Kai gives her as she walks out of the cafe. 

---

His friend had changed. 

It was Monday, their first day back in school after the year end holidays. Sure, Kai had already met up with Morgan and the gang on Sunday, so he really shouldn't be surprised to see how different she had become. But he found himself still a little shocked to see his friend - the girl who had sat beside him for countless classes, indulging grudgingly in his lame jokes, the girl whom he had seen as more of a bro than an actual girl for the longest time - walking into class in an artfully distressed black wool sweater a few sizes too big, tucked into a pair of ripped jeans and sporting black Dr Martens. Her boyishly-cut hair looked slightly windswept, curling prettily and loosely around her forehead. The shortness of her hair exposed every ear piercing she had/had gotten, along with her slender neck, strong jawline and the slight dip of her collar bones. Had her brow somehow gotten stronger, her lashes longer, her eyes bigger and her lips more full? How could someone look prettier even though her hair was shorter and her features more strong and defined? 

Kai was in trouble. He could tell from how couldn't help but stare at her, heart pounding a little too fast and much too loud in his ears. What was happening to him? He’d sat beside this girl for more than 3 years of his life, and he’d never once felt anything more than platonic concern for her. But suddenly, one trip to Korea and a coffee later, he can’t stop his heart from palpitating uncontrollably. It made him immensely irritated. Not to mention how she’d up and left 2 months ago, just ghosted everyone (him included) without any explanation, until she’d returned last week and asked them out for coffee in their group chat. 

Wasn’t that a little too much? And now she had to come back looking like this. 

It was too much for him to take. All this change. In his friend, and in himself and his feelings too. He knew yesterday at the cafe, he’d been less than friendly - perhaps even hostile - towards Morgan. But he couldn't help it. He was so afraid that if he didn't have the guise of anger to hide behind, he’d say other things he’d regret much more. 

He knew there was a point last night where he���d said something that really did hurt her. He forgot what it was, but he’d seen the hurt in her eyes for a fleeting moment, although she had a smile on her face. It was that empty smile she’d seen her plaster on before, when she was with him - her ex. He’d hated seeing her like that, and hated himself even more for being the one to have caused it. But he had to keep her at arm’s length - at least until he’d figured out what exactly he was feeling. 

Unfortunately, though, Morgan seemed entirely clueless to his predicament as she sat down beside him and placed a tray with 2 coffee cups on the lecture hall table. He tried to keep his face stoic, but inside he was a panicking mess. He couldn't even turn to face her. 

“Hey, I brought you coffee. It’s still a flat white right, you haven't changed your order while I was away.”

He really should say thanks and give her a smile, because that’s what she deserved for being sweet enough to still remember his coffee and get it after the terrible attitude he’d shown her yesterday night. But all he could manage was a curt nod and a muttered, “Thanks.”

She’s silent as she takes her cup out of the tray and pulls out her textbook. The professor’s taken the attendance and is beginning his class. He steals a sideways glance, and sees the deep frown on her forehead. He wished he could reach out and smooth it away.

Stop it, Kai. What the heck are you thinking?! This is Morgan, your friend whom you’ve seen in all sorts of unglamorous, embarrassing and epic situations. Morgan, who probably just sees you as a bro. Not to mention, she's also a year older than you. So that's younger bro to you, sir.

His inner monologue is shattered by the abrupt clank of a pen hitting the table. It’s not loud enough to disrupt the class, but loud enough that Kai can hear it clearly. Morgan’s hand is on the table beside him, clasped over the pen she’d just slammed down. 

“Look,” she turns to face him, her voice low but clear. He has no choice but to turn and meet her eyes, a pretty grey-green now. He’s distracted by the colour for a while, until she speaks again. 

“I get it if you think I've changed. Maybe I have. Why’s that a bad thing though? And why are you so upset with me about it? Is it cos I disappeared without telling you? Just tell me so at least I know why you're treating me like this.” 

He can see the sheen of tears starting to well up in her eyes, and he feels like the worst person on earth. In all the years he’d known Morgan, he’d never really seen her cry before. It was almost shocking, to see her on the brink of tears because of him. She doesn't tear up like how most girls would, with trembling lips and a sad expression. Instead, her jaw is set and her lips pressed together tightly. Her brows are arching in an almost angry way, and she looks more ferocious than vulnerable despite the tears building up in her eyes. 

Kai squares his jaw. “Let’s talk after class.” is all he manages to say. 

Morgan snorts at him, and instead of the tears spilling over, they almost seem to dissipate before actually falling. “Fine. After class. Let’s settle this.”

He muses about how it sounds like one of those things gangsters say when they decide on a fight. 

---

They’re on the rooftop. 

They used to come up here when he was a freshman, and she was a sophomore. That was before he’d managed to skip a year and suddenly they had every class together. When they needed a place to meet because their schedules hadn’t aligned that well.

Sadly, it wasn't just schedules that were lining up well right now for them.

Kai sighs as he runs a hand through his hair. Morgan is standing beside him, arms crossed as both of them look over the ledge to the sprawling campus courtyard below. 

“We’re here. Let’s talk.” she says curtly. 

He doesn't know how to begin. His brain is turning over various opening sentences over and over again, but his mouth refuses to move. For a good 5 minutes. 

“Fine, if you’re not going to say anything then I will. I don't know what I've done wrong to make you so angry with me Kai, but I know I definitely don't deserve this. I’ll admit, I probably could have handled things a little better when I wanted to leave. Explained more. Not just upped and left. So yeah I get it, a bit of a jerk move on my end. But I really needed that break. Really badly. 

“I didn't tell you guys much because I didn't want you to worry. But it was bad. I was in a bad place... I knew I had to call a time out on everything before it was too late. So yeah, I know I didn't go about it the best way and I’m sorry for the way I left. But I'm not sorry for going, and I'm not sorry for changing. 

“The way I am now... I'm happy this way. I don't want to go back to that miserable person who thought she was happy all this time. So I’m not gonna be sorry for that. And if you feel maybe the me right now is not someone you can be friends with then fine, I respect that. Just say it to my face instead of treating me like you can't wait to bite my head off.” 

The silence is excruciating. 

He had never heard such raw emotion come from her before. It was like being burned at the centre of a flame, right at its hottest point. His mind went blank, and he just couldn't think of any response to explain how wrong she was, how he didn't hate her at all, how he wasn't angry at her but really, truly, he was just angry at himself. 

Most of all, he didn't know how to say anything without admitting how his feelings for her had changed. That's right. He was finally admitting it. He had feelings for her. And it hadn’t just started yesterday, when she'd returned looking amazing (although that did amplify things quite a bit). No, when he began to really think about it, it had probably started when he found out about the break up... how angry he had been at him for breaking her heart (although he had no clue what had happened, all she said was that it “didn't work out”, but somehow he knew he’d broken her heart). How he’d wanted so badly to text her “are you okay? do you want to talk?” instead of “oh man, it’s okay lots of fish in the sea.” How he’d been so worried when she didn't reply for days, and when he called her phone was off, only to find out from Jane that she’d decided to take a break and went off the grid. How throughout those 2 months she’d been in Seoul and elsewhere, he wanted so badly to just text “I miss you” but knew it wasn't something a bro would do. How he had imagined the day she’d be back, he'd take her out to her favourite pizza place and ask her all about her trip, if she was doing okay, laugh and make lame jokes at her stories and walk her home. Give her a friendly hug before calling it a night. How they'd go back to class again the next day. 

Yeah, if he was honest with himself, he’d changed too, many months back. Even before she’d changed and became someone cooler, he’d already cared about her back then. 

But he had no idea how to put all of that into words, and so the silence stretched on even longer.

“...Fine. I’m done with this.” she turns around and walks away, leaving him to continue staring out at the courtyard.

He can hear her footsteps, getting further away as the distance between them and their hearts grows with every step. 

Suddenly, he’s sprinting to catch her as she’s almost at the door to the stairway. Before he can think, he is grabbing her wrist and pulling her back, away from the exit and turning her around to face him. Her brow is creased in a puzzled and angry frown, and her whole body goes rigid, as if she’s about to bolt at any moment. 

“I’m sorry.” 

That damned arching brow of hers, as she gives him her habitual questioning look. 

He sighs, once again running a hand through his hair nervously. “I’m sorry.” he says again uselessly. 

“Okay?”

“No, wait. Let me just... I just...” he fumbles and growls in frustration. He’s still holding her wrist, but gentler now. “Why can't I talk properly in front of you?!”

Some of the anger has gone from her face, and now she looks genuinely puzzled. “What do you mean? It’s always been hard to get you to shut up.”

He laughs bitterly. “Yeah about dumb, useless things.

“Okay look, I messed up. You’re right, you didn't deserve to be treated like that. I guess I was angry. But not at you. At myself.” 

Now, she’s just plain confused. He waves his free hand placatingly, indicating that he's about to explain. 

“Thing is, you're not the only one who’s changed the past few months. I think I've changed too, without really realising it till recently. 

I know we’ve always seen each other as friends. Bros. Whatever. And I’m a year younger so maybe I'm more like a little bro to you. But I think at some point that's no longer how I feel about you. 

Remember when you first broke up? Yeah, sorry I’m bringing it up. I told you “its okay, lots of fish in the sea.” right? What I really wanted to say was “are you okay?” But I didn't cos I was stupid and scared. 

And when you disappeared. I wasn't angry actually. I was really scared something bad had happened to you, but then Jane told me you left and I was happy you were safe. 

Those months you were away, I really missed you. Not us like our group, but me. Just me. I missed you. There was so many times I wished I could have just texted you that. Hey, I miss you. But yet again, stupid me was too scared to.

And when you came back, yeah I was angry. But not at you, because you’d changed. I was angry at myself, because I saw how you had to heal and go through everything alone all that time. And I wasn’t there for you and I didn't anything to help you. 

I’m sorry it came off the way it did. I guess in summary, I was just scared of everything I was feeling. And I was scared of losing our friendship because of it. Cos you know, we’ve always been friends. Bros. Doing bro stuff all the time. And you’ve always been looking out for me although we’re seriously barely a year apart?! But still. You probably don't see me that way, and to be honest I never realised I saw you this way until everything went down last year.

Basically I guess, what I'm trying to say Morgan is. 

I like you.” 

---

[tigerlover16-uk-2]

Pokemon Secret Journeys Snippet: “I have a sister now?”

So, here’s something different. I mentioned a few times before I published a fanfiction recently, it’s on FF.net and AO3. And I thought just for fun, and hopefully to get a bit more traffic slowing, I might post a few scenes from it here on Tumblr for people to read.

Here’s the general summary of the story:

An interdimensional being called The Beyonder has taken over the World of Pokemon, altering it to suit his whims. So naturally, it's up to Ash Ketchum to do something about that. Sent back in time on a quest to redo his journey in this radically altered world, Ash and friends are in for their greatest, most dangerous adventure of all.

.

Below is the first scene of the first proper chapter after the prologue, Ash Ketchum’s first taste of the rebooted version of the Pokemon World he’s found himself in. Also featuring the character of Molly Hale, from Pokemon 3.

If anyone’s interested, feel free to give it a read.

*Ring! Ring! Ring!*

Smash!

"Gah!" Ash leapt up so suddenly he ended up falling out of bed, face-planting on the floor just a foot away from his oversized soft Snorlax plush. With a pained groan Ash pushed himself up, glancing in the direction of the shattered pokeball-clock.

Panic quickly overtook him.

"Ah crud, not again!" Ash yelled, hastily looking up at the wall clock above his TV "Wait… seven O'Clock?"

Ash blinked a few times before letting out a huge sigh of relief "Well, okay then" He laughed, scratching the back of his head impishly.

In the original timeline, Ash had somehow managed to sleep through his alarm, only finally waking up after smashing his alarm clock after subconsciously throwing it in his sleep. Ash arrived at Professor Oak's lab pretty late as a result, after all the other three new trainers leaving Pallet Town that day had already gotten their starter Pokemon and took off on their journeys. Well except Gary, he stuck around just long enough to be really smug to Ash about the whole thing and how he got the best Pokemon.

By some stroke of luck, Ash had managed to avoid a repeat of that embarrassing incident this time around.

And yet, his clock still wound up against the wall.

'I guess some things are just fate' Ash mused to himself, observing the broken scrap metal littering the other side of his room.

Wasting no time, Ash pushed himself up onto his feet, stumbling slightly as it suddenly occurred to him he was still very tired. He vaguely remembered the now shattered alarm clock reading 3.45am and realised he'd probably stayed up most of the night planning out his next few moves after he left for Oak's Lab.

What those plans were completely alluded Ash at the moment, but he figured they'd probably come back to him when he was a bit more awake.

After scooping up the scattered remains of the pokeball clock and dumping them into a nearby bin, Ash stumbled over to his wardrobe and pulled open the doors, being greeted by a mirror on the back of one of them. The dishevelled teenager narrowed his eyes at the short tuft of hair on his reflection's chin.

Glancing once more at the wall behind the desk with his TV, Ash double checked the date on the calendar. Still the same date on which he'd first set out on his Journey.

Ash sighed 'Guess there's no point hoping it was all just a weird dream, huh?' Ash stroked the hairs on his chin, frowning curiously 'Am I supposed to start shaving then, or are you supposed to wait until it gets longer and it starts growing under your nose too?'

A loud rumble suddenly filled his ears and made Ash clutch his stomach in discomfort. Shaking his head, Ash grabbed a pair of clothes-the same kind he'd worn for most of his travels in Kanto through Johto-and made his way out of the room and to the bathroom 'I'll worry about that later. Right now I'm staaaarviiiing'

After a quick shower and feeling more awake, Ash got dressed and made his way to the stairs.

"Mime-Mime" a familiar voice greeted.

"Oh, hey Mimey" Ash responded as he passed his mother's Mr Mime on the landing before making for the stairs. About halfway down he suddenly stopped, his face going blank as Ash stood silently for a moment. Then with a sharp "Gah!" Ash leapt up, losing his footing on the step as he landed and tumbling the rest of the way down the stairs, his head becoming acquainted with an umbrella stand as he landed.

"Oww" Ash groaned, rubbing the fresh bruise on his forehead.

"Mr Mime?"

Ash glanced up the stairs and saw Mr Mime looking down at him with concern. As Ash began to get up, Mimey rushed down the stairs and offered him a hand, which Ash graciously accepted.

"Thanks" Ash said, momentarily forgetting the reason why he'd just tumbled down the stairs. It quickly came back to him after standing up "Wait-Mr Mime?! What are you doing here?"

Ash's first thought was to wonder why Mimey would be at his house instead of the Cerise Laboratory where he'd been staying with Ash. Then he remembered that he was sent back in time, so why would Mimey be at the Lab now instead of at home with his mother. And then Ash realised-hey, wait. He and his mother hadn't met Mimey until after he'd won all 8 of his Kanto badges, so what was he doing here at all?

"Mr Mime?" Mimey looked equally as confused as Ash did right now. He placed a hand over the bruise on Ash's head, leaned in close and began examining Ash's face with some concern. Ash just stared back at him awkwardly before eventually swatting the hand away and leaning away from the Psychic-type.

"I'm fine, I'm fine" Ash chuckled nervously, which just made Mimey look at him oddly. Ash scratched his head "I just-um… I was a bit dizzy, that's all. I, uh… didn't get much sleep-but I'm fine! Everything's good, Mimey, thanks. Ha ha"

Mimey eyed Ash suspiciously for a long moment, which made the teen a bit nervous. But eventually the mime's face lit up with a satisfied smile.

"Mime-mime" Mimey said while giving Ash a thumbs up. Ash mentally sighed and waved at the Mr Mime as he began climbing back up the stairs, picking up a stack of freshly-folded towels when he got to the top.

'Okay, so mom and I already have Mimey in this timeline' Ash thought to himself, scratching his chin 'Well, I guess that's not the most surprising thing that could happen. But now I wonder if mom's a blonde or something now?"

A quick trip to the kitchen proved that wasn't the case. At most his mother's hair was just slightly longer than it had been the last he'd seen of her.

"Oh, hey honey, glad you got up on time. What was that big thump just now?" Delia asked while washing the dishes.

"Thump?" Ash frowned "… Oh. Um, I fell down the stairs"

Delia put down the plate she was washing and looked at Ash with some concern, noticing the bruise on his head.

"Oh my gosh, Ash! Are you alright?" Delia squealed, rushing over to her son who quickly threw up his hands in a 'Stop' motion.

"It's fine mom, I'm alright" Ash insisted "You know me, I've been hurt way worse than this"

Delia stared at Ash contemplatively for a long moment before her expression relaxed and she sighed.

"Yeah, that's true" She said with some amusement "Honestly, I'd hoped you'd be over that clumsy streak by the time you set off on a journey, but I guess that's just who you are. Oh, by the way, breakfast is on the table for you sweetie"

With a relieved sigh Ash took his seat at the table and examined the contents of the plate his mother had laid out. Toast, bacon, fried eggs, and a croquette sandwich. Simple breakfast, but Ash was happy to dig in.

As he made a start on the toast, Ash looked over at his mother, watching her finish washing the remaining dishes. After the shock of everything he'd been through the previous evening and being told the entire universe had been torn apart, it was a welcome relief to see his mother again, just carrying on with her life as normal.

'Now how the heck am I supposed to explain all of that to her?' Ash asked himself, scratching his head. He then noticed the black mark on the back of his hand that read "20" and Arceus's advice on how to "Remind" people repeated in his head.

Ash noticed his mother turn her head to look at him again, and he quickly hid his right hand under the table. He silently cursed himself for not putting on his old gloves with the rest of his clothes, he'd better make sure neither she or Mimey noticed the mark just yet.

"Those are some pretty big bags under your eyes. I did tell you you'd regret it if you didn't get enough sleep" Delia lectured. Ash scratched the bottom of his nose with his left index finger.

"Hehe. I tried, but you know, I just had so much on my mind I couldn't fall asleep no matter how hard I tried" Ash replied. It was the truth of course, but just not for the reasons Delia assumed.

"Oh, Ash… well, I guess I can't blame you. This IS a pretty exciting day for any young man. Just promise me you'll try and sleep better the next couple of days. You may be 16 now, but you're still a growing boy" Delia said, finishing up with the dishes and going to make herself a cup of tea.

"I'll… try. I promise" Ash replied. Delia shot him a warm smile at that, and Ash suddenly felt the most at ease he'd been since before the world ended. His mother could be strict, embarrassing and overbearing from time to time. But she was still a wonderful, loving person with a big heart, and she always knew how to cheer him up.

He was so grateful she wasn't lost forever.

As Ash finished his toast and started on the bacon and eggs, a loud yawn caught his attention. He turned to the door that led to the living room to see a little brown-haired girl in blue pyjamas and a bow in her hair wander into the kitchen, rubbing her eyes and looking very sleepy. Ash could only blink at her, thinking she looked very familiar.

"Molly, dear, what's got you up so early" Asked Delia with mild concern.

Ash blinked harder. Molly? Taking a closer look at the girl as her eyes drifted open, it suddenly clicked why he recognised her. She was Molly Hale, the daughter of a family friend that he'd met in Johto once on his journeys.

"I wa-" Molly yawned again, shaking her head and suddenly looking a little more awake "I wanted to be awake to see Ash before he left"

"He doesn't have to be at Oak's lab until ten, sweetie. You didn't have to get up straight away" Delia said, setting aside her unfinished cup of tea and pulling out a chair for Molly to sit on. The little one smiled and bowed graciously to her before she sat.

'Ten?' Ash pondered. He could have sworn he had to be at Oak's lab a lot sooner than that originally? Or had he really overslept that badly? Why hadn't his mother woken him up, then?

"But I won't get to see Ash for a really, really long time after today. So I wanted to make sure" Molly insisted. Delia giggled and ruffled Molly's hair.

"Aww, sweetie" Delia cooed.

Ash was just really confused by all this.

Molly noticed Ash staring at her and flashed him a sweet smile "Good morning Ash. Ready to be a Pokemon Master?"

"I… sure, I always am" Ash replied, glancing sideways at his mother "What's Molly doing here?"

Ash mentally winced slightly at the look of shock and concern on Molly's face when he said that. Delia looked at her son like he'd asked why water was wet "She's been here a whole week! Her dad's on a research trip with Professor Rowan, remember?"

"Professor Row-" Ash began, but then suddenly it hit him how what he'd just said was probably pretty dumb from his mother's perspective and changed direction "Oh-oh, right, research trip. I um, forgot? Ha ha"

Now Delia and Molly were both looking at him with a bit of concern. Delia heaved a frustrated sigh.

"This is why I don't want you staying up all night, mister. Lack of sleep really messes with your head" Delia mused.

"Is Ash going to be alright?" Molly asked tenderly.

"Oh, don't worry, Mr sleepy head will be fine once he's woken up some more" Delia said with a laugh. Molly giggled, though still looking worried.

Ash continued staring at Molly for a moment. In the old timeline, Ash apparently knew Molly when she was a few years younger than when they'd met again in Johto, but could barely remember much about her or her family before they'd moved away.

Evidently they hadn't moved this time around, and Ash figured from the looks of things he and his mother were a lot closer to Molly because of it.

But there was another bit of information that really caught his interest. Apparently Molly's father was doing research with Professor Rowan? He was the Pokemon Professor in Sinnoh, who Ash had met a bunch of times. It was at his Summer Camp he'd first met Angie, in fact. And Ash also vaguely recalled an encounter with a certain type of Pokemon in Sinnoh on another occasion…

"Are they looking for the Unown?" Ash asked.

"I don't think Spencer's been researching anything else for the last 10 years" Delia chuckled. Ash suddenly felt a bit uneasy, remembering the circumstances in which he'd originally met with Molly in Johto. And then another thought suddenly popped into his mind.

"Is Molly's mom with them?"

Ash regretted the question as soon as he blurted it out, and the looks on Delia and Molly's faces when he said it only reinforced that. Delia gaped at him in disbelief, then swiftly turned to face Molly, who was suddenly staring silently at her feet.

Ash gulped.

"I'm… I'm sorry. I… don't know why I asked that" Was all Ash could say. Delia shot him another disapproving look before kneeling down and putting a hand on Molly's shoulder, whispering something soothing into her ear. Ash looked away in shame.

He suddenly remembered quite clearly that Molly's mother in the original timeline had disappeared quite some time before he got to Johto, apparently it had something to do with the Unown kidnapping her in a similar manner they later did Molly's father. Or, he assumed that's what happened, since apparently she'd been found shortly after Spencer Hale was returned after the whole Unown crisis at Greenfield was taken care of.

Losing her mother had filled Molly with a lot of grief and left her feeling very lonely in the old timeline. And clearly, the same held true for this one.

Not wanting to stick around in case he said anything else stupid, Ash hurriedly finished the rest of his bacon and eggs and scooped up the Croquette sandwich to take with him to his room.

"I, um... I think I need to take a quick nap. I'm not thinking straight" Ash said hastily "Could-could you wake me if I'm not up in time to get to the lab, mom?"

"Sure, honey. Sure" Delia said, still looking rather cross with him. Molly glanced up at Ash, but quickly looked away. Ash felt like his insides had briefly frozen seeing the hurt look on her face, and he wasted no time getting out of the kitchen, bumping into Mimey on his way out who had just entered the room and was watching everyone else with some confusion.

Ash rushed up the stairs, scarfing down his sandwich as he did so. Pushing open the door to his room, Ash shut the door behind him, made straight for his bed and plopped down on it, heaving an aggravated sigh.

"Well, that was awkward" Ash grumbled to himself. He flipped over onto his back and stared contemplatively at the ceiling. He knew he was going to have to apologize to Molly for that little slip-up, but he wasn't quite sure what to say.

'Sorry I brought up your missing mom when you're still torn up about it. Don't worry, she's just trapped in another dimension by floating alphabet soup, and she'll totally come back once you dream up an Entei to blast them back to their dimension and make the world stop turning into crystal'

...

'Yeah, no, definitely not' Ash slapped his forehead and closed his eyes, thinking carefully about how to sound comforting without giving too much away…

...

...

...

He and Molly were decorating a Christmas tree together. Ash was standing on a chair and holding Molly up, as the younger girl struggled to reach out and place a plastic Clefable on top of the tree. Molly and Ash both cheered when she finally got the Clefable to stick.

...

Ash's eyes shot open as he bolted upright. For a moment he had no reaction other than to stare blankly into the distance. Then his senses eventually returned to him and a bemused frown spread across his face.

"What the… what was-GAH!" Ash's eyes snapped shut again as his mind suddenly went fuzzy.

...

It was Molly's fourth birthday party. Ash, his mother, Professor Oak and both of Molly's parents were there. Molly was struggling to blow out the candles on a cake shaped like a Teddiursa's head, so when her eyes were shut during her 5th attempt Ash blew them out for her and pretended she had done it herself. Everyone cheered for Molly, who was laughing and looking very proud of herself.

Molly was four and a half. She and Ash were at the park. Molly had just fallen off the swings and scraped her knee. She cried for five minutes straight while Ash bandaged her leg and told her over and over in a gentle voice that everything would be okay, that she was a big girl and didn't need to cry. When he was done putting on the bandage Ash gave Molly a hug, which finally calmed her down enough to make the crying stop. Ash picked Molly up and took her to find her father. Molly thanked Ash. She said he was the bestest.

Molly was two years old. Mr Mime was making her laugh by floating spoons, forks and plates around and doing a weird tap dance. Ash thought it was kinda silly, but Molly was loving it. Ash then decided to impress her by juggling apples. He was doing pretty well with three, but when he tried juggling five he hit Mimey with one by mistake and made him drop the plates and cutlery he was floating. The plates smashed against the floor. Surprisingly, this made Molly laugh harder than anything else Ash or Mimey had done, but Ash wasn't sharing her amusement. He was panicking over how much his mother would yell at him over the smashed plates.

Molly was crying her eyes out. A few hours ago, Spencer had come home a nervous wreck and informed Delia and Ash that Molly's mother had gone missing. Molly was five years old. Ash was now cradling the distraught little girl in his arms, gently telling her everything would be okay and that they'd find her mom before long. He wasn't sure himself, he didn't understand what had happened very well either, but he had to try to ease her pain somehow. Molly hugged him tight, begging her momma to come back.

It was three weeks ago. Spencer was talking to Delia in her living room. Ash was looking at Molly, who was sulking in the corner of the room. Spencer was telling Delia about how he was going to be moving to Greenfield, his childhood home where his now deceased parents used to live. He and Molly would go there a few weeks after a trip to Sinnoh he had to go on with Professor Rowan to study some ruins in Solaceon Town. Ash noticed Molly was shaking, and suddenly she shot up and yelled at her father that she didn't want to leave and that she hated him for taking her away from home.

A few minutes later, Molly had locked herself in the wardrobe in Ash's room. Delia and Spencer were waiting outside of Ash's room as Ash tried to calm Molly down. It took half an hour, but Ash eventually managed to get her to come out. She cried when she saw her father and apologised for saying she hated him, saying she didn't mean it and she just wanted to stay home and be with everyone. Ash sighed as he watched Spencer hugging his daughter, apologising for needing to move and promising they'd come back eventually.

...

In the present, Ash gasped for breath. His eyes flickered open and he began looking around the room, getting a grip on his current surroundings. He leaned back against his pillow, his mind racing to process that sudden burst of information. Something Arceus had said the previous evening repeated clearly in his head.

"There's another thing you should know. The longer the two of you remain in this new timeline and your bodies and minds begin to acclimate to it, the more you should experience memories of the lives you should have lead in this new reality. Flashbacks, most likely, though a few of them might be subconscious recollections you won't even notice were not related to your past lives"

It all made sense now. Those were his new memories. He was recalling some of the times he and Molly had spent together in this new version of his life. How Ash had known her since she was a baby. How the Hale's were close family friends who hadn't yet moved away.

How Molly had been like a sister to Ash.

Ash rubbed his head, his eyes glazed over as he became lost in those thoughts. Consciously, he knew he had never really experienced any of those moments… and yet, for reasons he couldn't understand… he FELT like he'd lived them. Those memories FELT as real and personal to him as any from the life he actually had lived up to now.

Ash wasn't sure if he should be concerned about that or not. All he really knew right now was that he felt even more guilty for making Molly upset.

He glanced at the clock. 8.15am. What? How long had he been staring at the ceiling?

Slapping his head, Ash got up and opened the window, breathing in the breeze of fresh air and leaning against the windowsill. He looked out at the town of Pallet.

Everything seemed exactly the way he remembered it. Same buildings. Same sky. Same Professor Oak's ranch in the distance. He even noticed the Dodrio that usually woke everyone in the neighbourhood up waddling around. The place outside Ash's window seemed just like the same old world he'd grown up in.

But it wasn't. It was so very different.

'Boy, I'll be glad when this is all over and things go back to normal'

Taking another deep breath, Ash cast another glance out at Professor Oak's lab in the distance. Pikachu was in that building right now, waiting for Ash to pick him and start their journey together. Ash's lip quivered. He wanted to smile, but he was feeling uneasy at the prospect. So much else seemed different about this new world already: Would Pikachu even be the same Pokemon he remembered anymore?

That particular worry vanished when he glanced down at the mark on the back of his hand. He let out a quick sigh of relief. Maybe Pikachu would be a little different… but Ash could make it so he still remembered all the good times they'd had together in their old life.

They'd still be the best of friends. That much couldn't change.

Closing his window, Ash walked over to his wardrobe and pulled out the pair of gloves he'd forgotten to bring to the bathroom with him earlier. Checking his bag to make sure he really did have all the supplies he needed, he also pulled out the piece of paper with Angie's phone number and the jewel Arceus had given him.

Ash stared at the white gem. Supposedly it would glow when the time came for Arceus to contact him for an update on how he was getting along. Ash really wished it would glow now, he had so many questions he wanted to ask about this new life, and he was suddenly feeling a hundred times more resentful to the Beyonder than he already was for plunging him into this mess.

Shaking that thought from his head, Ash put the jewel and the paper with Angie's number back in his bag. He would have to call her once he got to Viridian. Hopefully she was adjusting to this whole situation better than he was so far.

Or rather, would be. With the time Zone she was probably asleep right now.

An hour passed as Ash sat on his bed, replaying the events that had happened in the Hall of Origins and everything that had been said in his head. When the clock reached 9.30, Ash got up, took a deep breath and clenched his fist with a fiery resolve. He picked up his backpack and flung it over his shoulders, then grabbed the cap sitting on the table next to his TV, putting it on as he left the room.

And then he saw that Molly was standing by the door, looking down at the ground and dressed in the same clothes Ash had seen her wear in their previous life. Ash blinked at the little girl as she looked up at him with an unreadable expression. A moment of silence passed before a sad frown suddenly spread across Molly's face as she turned away from Ash.

"Do you… would you be happier if I wasn't around, Ash?"

Ash's eyebrows rose. Where had that come from?

"What? Why would you think that, Molly?" Ash asked with genuine concern. Molly shuffled her feet, twirling a strand of her hair with her finger.

"Some… some girls in the park…" Molly's voice was shaky, and Ash thought she was trying not to cry "I mean… um… I was just wondering… you're going away for a really long time. On your journey. And… I was just wondering… I'll see you again, right?"

A sad smile appeared on Ash's face as he suddenly realised what Molly must be feeling. Her mother had disappeared just barely a year ago. She and her father were going to be moving away for a while… and Ash was setting out on a journey, so there was no guarantee he'd be here when or if she eventually moved back.

Acting on newfound instincts, Ash kneeled down and put a hand on Molly's shoulder, smiling softly at the girl as she turned to face him.

"I'm not going to disappear Molly. And I promise I'll keep in touch and come visit you when I can. You'll see me again" Ash said. Molly's eyes began to water. Ash ruffled her hair and smiled wider "After all… you're my little sister"

Inwardly Ash couldn't believe those words were leaving his lips. But what surprised him even more was how, deep down… he felt like he really meant it.

Molly let out a sob and turned away from Ash again. Ash gave her a moment to compose herself, and when she'd finally stopped sobbing he asked "Why would you think I wouldn't want you around?"

A moment of silence.

"The other day" Molly began, visibly nervous "I was playing in the park. Some older girls were talking with each other. The oldest one was complaining about her mom… said she was really bossy to her. I said… I said she shouldn't say mean things, and her mom was just trying to help her learn and be nicer to people. And then…"

Molly gripped the sides of her skirt, looking like she wanted to cry again. Ash put his hand back on her shoulder and gave her a reassuring smile, and after taking a deep breath Molly continued.

"She said… she said… she said the reason Momma went away… was because I-" Tears were most certainly welling up in Molly's eyes now, and Ash was bracing himself for what she was about to say "Because I was annoying and no one would want to have me as their daughter"

Ash's eyes widened as Molly let out an anguished wail and began crying for real this time. At first he felt too awkward to respond, but after getting a grip on himself he gave Molly a tender hug and let her cry into his shoulder.

Ash recalled his initial reaction to seeing Molly in the kitchen, and how hurt Molly had seemed when he asked why she was around. And it really hit him that she must have thought that maybe that cruel girl had been right. Maybe she was annoying. Maybe Ash didn't want her around, maybe he would be glad to be away from her. And then, what would that say about her mother and why she went away?

A fresh pan of guilt swept over Ash, and he hugged Molly harder.

What felt like a whole minute passed as Molly poured her heart out. When her sobs began to quiet down, Ash pulled Molly forward to look at her face to face again and gave her a firm look.

"Your mother loved you, Molly. I know that for sure, she didn't run away and leave you. I don't care what some jerk told you, you're not annoying. Don't ever let anyone make you think what happened was your fault, because it's not"

Molly sniffled "But-but then… why did she-"

"It isn't your fault! People just go missing sometimes, but we'll find her eventually. I guarantee you that" Ash said confidently. However different this timeline had to be, if the events behind Mrs Hale's disappearance were the same, then it was guaranteed she'd be found again just like last time. Right? "But more important than that, she loved you. And she would never choose to leave you. You're a good daughter, Molly"

More sniffles. Ash ruffled Molly hair again and gave her another smile.

"And just because I have to leave for a while, that doesn't mean I'm going to leave you forever either. Sometimes friends and family move away, or go different paths in life" Ash recalled the faces of many of his friends and Pokemon in quick succession as he said that "… But that doesn't mean we forget each other, or won't meet again. I promise you that"

More tears, and Molly wrapped Ash in another hug, though this time the tears faded pretty quickly.

"I'm sorry, Ash"

Ash looked down at Molly oddly "What for?" Molly pulled back a bit to talk to his face.

"For thinking you didn't care. I know you do. I just…" Molly hesitated "… I'm really going to miss seeing you all the time. I want everything to go back the way it was"

"I know the feeling" Ash said, thinking of the world the way it was before the Beyonder changed it. He frowned, knowing what he was about to say would probably be hypocritical coming from him, but Ash still felt it was what Molly needed to hear "… But that's just life. Change happens, and you just have to get used to it. Doesn't mean every change will be bad. You'll miss me for a while, but just try and think how happy you'll be when we see each other again. And how great you'll feel when your mom is found"

Molly looked thoughtful for a moment, then smiled "That… that does sound nice"

"See, no need to be all doom and gloom" Ash chuckled. Molly wiped the remaining tears from her eyes and separated from Ash, looking a lot calmer now "So, feel better now?"

Molly nodded "Yeah… I'll be okay. You're a good brother, Ash"

Ash scratched his cheek, feeling pretty proud at that "Helps to have a great little sister"

Two hours ago, Ash barely knew Molly. She was just one of many friends that he only knew for a short time and then never saw again. But now, she felt like one of the most important people in his life. A part of Ash was really worried about that feeling. The world he was living in right now was a farce, something that had to be fixed and put back to the way it was. Surely it wasn't going to do him any good in the long run to start getting attached to this version of reality and the life he had here, right?

And yet… for the moment, seeing Molly's gracious smile and the sense of brotherly pride it inspired within him… Ash couldn't find it in him to worry too much about that just now.

"Ahem"

Ash and Molly turned to see Delia looking at them from the top of the stairs, a satisfied smile on her face.

"I really hate to interrupt this moment. But it's nine fourty five, Ash. You should probably be leaving soon if you want to get your first Pokemon" Said Delia. Ash suddenly turned frantic.

"I forgot!" Ash gasped. He turned to Molly quickly "Good talk, gotta go, I'll see you at the ranch later, bye!"

And with that Ash took off down the stairs, much to the bemusement of Delia.

"It only takes ten-" Delia was cut off by a loud thump. She sighed "Also, don't run down the stairs. Keep hitting your head like that, and you won't be in any condition to travel for another week"

"Right… sorry" Ash said, getting up and rubbing the fresh bruise on his forehead. His head was probably going to be purple all day if he kept falling like that.

A moment to let his senses come back later, Ash took off out the door, waving goodbye to Delia, Molly and Mimey who now stood in the frame to see him off as he ran down the path that would lead him to Oak's Laboratory.

"Is Ash going to be okay, miss Ketchum?" Asked Molly. Delia giggled and patted the girl on the head.

"Oh, don't worry. Our Ash can seem like a goof at times, but he's brave and resourceful and determined. He'll be fine"

"Mime, mime" Mimey chimed in agreement. Delia smiled, looking out at her son's shrinking figure in the distance. Her expression softened a little.

She had long prepared herself for this day, but she had to admit to herself she still was a bit worried for Ash's wellbeing. It was a big world out there, one that could be dangerous for inexperienced trainers. She was sure he could handle it, she'd raised him the best she could to be prepared for setting out on his own, but… well, she was a mother. Who could expect her to not have reservations?

Didn't help that she was also going to miss having him around the house almost as much as Molly would. She sighed "Although, I guess I should check to make sure he packed clean underwear before he leaves the ranch"

[schraubd]

Working Through Two New Polls on Antisemitism and BDS

Two very interesting surveys have just dropped on the subject of BDS and antisemitism in America. The first is the AJC's survey of American Jews on the subject of antisemitism in America. The second, a "Critical Issues" poll out of the University of Maryland, surveys all Americans on various Middle East policy related questions, including BDS. Both have some intriguing findings that are worth discussing. Start with the AJC poll. There's a lot of great stuff to unpack in here on how American Jews assess the lay of the antisemitic land. For one, it finally gives me some data on what American Jews think about BDS. Unlike Americans writ large, who've barely heard of BDS (we'll get into that more in the other poll), Jews have definitely heard about the BDS movement (76% are at least a little familiar with it, and 62% of "somewhat" or "very" familiar). There isn't a direct "do you support BDS" question, but they do ask about BDS and antisemitism. 35% say BDS is "mostly" antisemitic, 47% say it has "some antisemitic supporters", and 14% say it is simply "not antisemitic". Of course, that middle response is vague -- it could mean anything from "BDS is not inherently antisemitic, but it's got a significant antisemitism problem" to "BDS is mostly fine, but sure, obviously it has some antisemitic supporters." Nonetheless, paired with some of the other responses -- such as the 84%(!) who view the statement "Israel has no right to exist" as antisemitic -- I think it is fair to infer that the majority of American Jews are, to say the least, not BDS fans. In terms of broad assessments on antisemitism in America, things don't like great: 88% of Jews say it is a "very" or "somewhat" serious problem and 84% say it has increased in severity over the past five years. The silver lining is that most Jews have not been victimized by either physical or verbal antisemitic attack and most Jews are not avoiding Jewish spaces or advertising their Jewish status out of fear of antisemitic attacks. But perhaps the more interesting data comes in terms of where American Jews think antisemitism is coming from, and who is mostly responsible for it. It's no surprise that most Jews are Democrats, most Jews lean liberal, and most Jews have an unfavorable view of Donald Trump (by a 22/76 margin -- whoof!). It might be a little more surprising -- at least given how the issue has been covered by both the Jewish and non-Jewish press -- how Jews assess the threat of antisemitism and the response to it on an ideological level. Jews strongly disapprove of how Donald Trump is handling the threat of antisemitism in the United States -- literally, 62% "strongly disapprove", the overall approve/disapprove spread is 24/73. In terms of where the threat of antisemitism is strongest in America, the answer is "the extreme right" -- 49% of respondents say it is a "very serious" threat, compared to 15% for "the extreme left" and 27% for "extremism in the name of Islam". Add in the "moderately serious" threat respondents and the extreme right gets 78%, the extreme left 36%, and Islamic extremism 54%. But that's dealing with "extremists". What about mainstream political parties? Here we see something that I think should blow some doors off. Asked to assess the Democratic and Republican parties' responsibility for contemporary antisemitism on a 1 - 10 scale (where 1 is "no responsibility" and 10 is "total" responsibility), Democrats saw 75% of respondents give them a grade of 5 or below (i.e., the bottom half of the scale), versus 22% at 6 or higher (the mode response was a "1" -- no responsibility -- the second most common response was a "2"). For Republicans, by contrast, just 38% of respondents gave them a 5 or below score, while 61% scored them above a 6. Their mode response was an "8", the second most common response a "10". The way it's been covered in the press, one would think that Jews are fearful of left antisemitism and furious at the Democratic Party for not tamping down on it. In reality, the consensus position in the Jewish community is that the most dangerous antisemitism remains far-right antisemitism, and that in terms of political responsibility the Republican Party is a far more dangerous actor than the Democratic Party is. That consensus has the added advantage of reflecting reality -- it's obviously true that right-wing antisemitism (the sort that gets Jews killed) in America is more dangerous than other varieties, and it's obviously true that the GOP has been nothing short of abysmal in policing itself and reining in its antisemitic conspiracy mongers (thinking instead that its Israel policies entitle it to a nice fat "get-out-of-antisemitism-free" card). Now the question is whether Jewish institutions and the Jewish media (or -- dare to dream -- the mainstream media) will follow the lead on this, and start reallocating attention and emphasis accordingly. Now let's move to the Critical Issues poll. It covers a bunch of ground on Mid-East policy, but it is in particular one of the first I've seen to try and gauge American attitudes towards BDS, so let's focus on that. Perhaps the most striking finding is being slightly misreported -- the Jerusalem Post says it found that 48% of Democrats support BDS. But that's not right -- the true number is probably around half that. The survey first asked how much people had heard about BDS -- and for a majority of respondents (including 55% of Democrats), the answer was "nothing". They hadn't heard of BDS at all. The next-most common response was "a little" (29%), while "a good amount" and "a great deal" combined for just 20%. Only those who had heard at least "a little" about BDS were then asked whether they supported it or not. Overall, 26% of respondents supported it ("strongly" or "somewhat"), while 47% opposed it, and 26% were neutral. For Democrats, that split was 48% support (14% "strongly", 34% "somewhat"), 37% neutral, and 15% opposed. So that's where the 48% figure comes from -- but again, it excludes the majority of Democrats who've never heard about BDS at all. Add them in (and assume they'll be at "neither support nor oppose"), and the percentage of Democrats supporting BDS probably falls into the mid-20s. Now obviously, that's itself noteworthy. But it's hard to know what to make of it, especially given that most of those who have heard about BDS still have only heard "a little" about it. That in itself is worth pointing out -- for all the indigestion this issue is causing the Jewish community, it's barely made an imprint on the polity writ large: 80% of all Americans have heard little or nothing about it. It's hardly some sort of generational wave that's caught the attention of the nation. Still, it would have been interesting to know if those who had heard more were more or less likely to support the campaign -- my guess is actually it would yield greater polarization (those who've heard a lot about BDS would be more likely to either strongly support or strongly oppose it). But -- probably because the number of respondents who've heard more than "a little" about BDS is so small -- we don't have data at that level of granularity. In any event: What does seem to be the case is that there is a sizable -- though still minority -- chunk of Democratic voters who (a) haven't heard that much about BDS and (b) say they support it "somewhat" (recall the "somewhats" vastly outstripped the "stronglys"). My suspicion is that this represents a set of voters who (a) are pretty pissed off at Israel and Netanyahu right now, and don't feel particularly inclined to think it is pursuing an end to the occupation in good faith, and (b) view BDS vaguely as a means of exerting pressure on Israel to change course, or if not that, at least signal that they don't endorse its current tack. In practice this probably means only supporting more "moderate" forms of BDS (if you even want to call it that) -- sanctions against settlements yes, full-fledged academic boycotts no -- and as I've written before that is actually a predictable consequence of BDS going "mainstream": it will lose some of its harder edges (much to the consternation of its founding, more radical core). Basically, these are people who are looking for ways to signal "what Israel is doing is not okay", and while I strongly doubt they are ride-or-die on BDS, absent other avenues for expressing that sentiment they'll at least be open to some form of "BDS" -- albeit probably not the more radical iterations of it that, say, characterize the PACBI guidelines. The challenge for pro-Israel Democrats isn't, I think, that the 2020 Democratic electorate is going to demand that the US treat Israel as a pariah state. The challenge is that these voters are looking for ways to vent their frustration at Israel, and are going to want their candidates to speak in terms of sticks as well as carrots with respect to how Israel is engaged with. We're already seeing a bit of that -- and it's frankly a healthy move. The survey asks a few more message-based questions about BDS (again, only to those who've heard at least a "little" about it), leading questions of the "is it antisemitism or is it legitimate" variety. I'm very much not a fan of the wording of those questions, and don't think they tell us much other than effective messaging frames to make people more positively disposed towards BDS (including that "Opposing Israeli policy does not equal anti-Semitism" is the salt of Israel discourse -- there's no recipe that isn't tastier with at least a sprinkle of it, so why not just toss it on everything?). The final question the survey asks on this topic returns back to all respondents (not just those who've heard of BDS) and asks about "laws that penalize people who boycott Israel". One can quibble again about the verbiage here (the laws in question impose no criminal penalties, they just bar government contractors from also boycotting Israel -- but then, wouldn't many naturally view that as "penalty", albeit a non-criminal one?), but the numbers are nonetheless striking: 72% of respondents (including 62% of Republicans) oppose such laws. So that's probably something worth keeping in mind (again, might I recommend replacing those laws with general prohibitions on nationality-based discrimination? I bet that would poll much better). via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/340Hop9

[smugbugunderarug]

Smug Bug Reads: Sonic the Comic #12

        The danger in Hidden Danger! isn’t really all that hidden, especially since Sonic loses his memories and abilities...

Script: Mark Miller Art: Carl Flint Lettering: Ellie de Ville 

        The issue begins with two critters looking up at the night sky, taking notice of a meteor that seemed to get only bigger and bigger. The shooting star crashes into the ground, and the two decide to get a closer look.

        A super cool hedgehog, huh... you don’t have to over do it StC crew. Pretty sure kids who already thought he’s cool were the only ones buying this comic. Probably.

        Some time later, the two critters have taken Sonic to what I can assume is their headquarters or something of the like. Soon enough, the hedgehog wakes up to a new character; Steve Owl. Sonic is immediately asking where he was and the last thing he remembers is fighting Dr. Robotnik in his brand spanking new flying fortress. Steve informs Sonic that he’s in the Hidden Zone, a place safe from Robotnik’s tyranny since they’re kept secret with the help of a cloaking device. Since this place is so hidden, the owl asks Sonic how he got here, however the hedgehog can only confess that he remembers nothing, not even his name. The only thing he can recall was duking it out on the new sky fortress.         Now from what I’ve come to understand thanks to this source over here and one college course of psychology, there are four types of amnesia: retrograde (forgot/forgetting your past), anterograde (cannot make new memories, although this is likely to be temporary), transient global (bouts of confusion and irritation occurring every so often, most likely of which you’ll forget), and infantile (not remembering your earliest years of your childhood... something most if not all of us experience). Sonic seems to be having a form of retrograde amnesia after taking that fall, although whether or not an individual can recall the moments leading up to their memory loss and nothing else is something I don’t believe can happen. In fact, retrograde amnesia usually affects the most recently formed memories, so this is really an odd case... or the writers trying to create a plot where there really shouldn't be one. Or maybe Sonic’s just faking it, which probably isn’t the case. For all I know Mobian brains might work differently, so I’m just going to assume that’s why his amnesia is the way that it is.

        Sorry to go off track there. Anyways, meanwhile aboard Robotnik’s new flying fortress...

        Uh oh.         Robotnik is taking advantage of his newfound opportunity to conquer the Hidden Zone, and he has an even greater advantage since Sonic has lost his memories (although he’s never aware of that throughout the entire issue).         Back in the Hidden Zone, Sonic and Steve are outside, Steve asking if Sonic truly remembers nothing and Sonic replying he only remembers that he was one radical dude (still an ego hog I see). Out of no where though, a frantic rabbit pops in to warn Steve that they’re under attack; they’ve been found. Badniks are literally falling from the sky and crashing into the zone below, causing panic and mayhem for all the critters.

        The worst part of it all is that Sonic has no clue what to do, much less what’s happening. Soon enough they’re all backed up against a wall, moments away from being captured and turned into the doctor’s new robotic minions. Sonic is confident that if he could just remember who he is, then he could easily wipe these dudes out. It’s as if his identity is at the tip of his tongue at this point. The badniks of course are enjoying having things go their way with no one to stop them. Taunting, one badnik jeers how he expected more of a fight from the Sonic the Hedgehog, and for one reason or another, it’s enough to make the hero remember. Everything.         I don’t think I’m going to bother commenting on the likelihood of how possible something like that is (or if it’s even possible to begin with), but I’m just going to say that having Sonic lose his memory like this and then remembering so soon just seems a bit like a wasted opportunity. But yeah, this comic is only seven pages and from what I am aware we’ve yet to get into the bigger stuff, so I can’t be too upset.

         Anyways, Sonic trashes every badnik and frees the critters, as expected. It turns out Steve Owl is familiar with Sonic’s name and has heard stories of him, but he coudn’t believe someone like that could truly exist. You’d think by now Sonic would be well known among all the free left on Mobius, but we’re not really sure how long Steve and those with him have been in the Hidden Zone. Robotnik had stated that he’s been searching for the zone for years, and for all we know that’s how long Steve has been running the place. It’s a vague answer, but I guess that would explain his doubt... but then that brings up the question of how he managed to hear those stories then...         Oh well.

        Sonic gloats after his victory, proving he is once again back to his old self and prompting a comment from Steve about how he liked him better before (seriously though, he was still egotistical and a bit of a jerk even as an amnesiac). The critters now free from the badnik’s terror don’t mind Sonic too much since he did save them, but the mood turns dreary when they realize that their home has been decimated. Sonic tells them not to worry since he just so conveniently finds a bridge to the Emerald Hill Zone... you’d think Steve would know about this, but Sonic just so happens to randomly find it.         Huh.         Sonic further tells them that they’ll find friends and a cause: to free Mobius. The group chants this as they move along, and we see an angry Dr. Robotnik throwing a fit from his latest trashed scheme.

        TL;DR: Sonic forgets stuff but then remembers said stuff and he also recruits furries.

[libertarianbarbarian]

United State Wars Troopers

United Starwars Troopers

   Facts:

- https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Galactic_Empire/Legends#Government_and_politics

 - https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Loyalist

 - https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Galactic_Republic#Organization

 - https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Sector_Governance_Decree

 - https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Delegation_of_2,000

 - https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Petition_of_2,000

 -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers#Militarism

 - https://www.amazon.com/Expanded-Universe-Worlds-Robert-Heinlein/product-reviews/0441218830?pageNumber=2

  OPED WARNING

“My grandmother used to tell me stories about the old days, a time of peace when the Avatar kept balance between the Water Tribes, the Earth Kingdom, Fire Nation, and the Air Nomads. But that all changed when the Fire Nation attacked. Only the Avatar, master of all four elements, could stop the Fire Nation.” Oh yeah, I’m going to get that dorky with it today!

So, here’s the spiel, we’re divided as ever. The left hates the right, liberals hate “nazis”, or “fascists”, or “racists” …or whatever the hell it is now and days. But there’s something to be said about coming together. I’m sorry but no matter what news source you look at whether it be CNN, or Newsmax…or Fox News, then you’re inevitably going to come up with one conclusion. We’re divided. The only real thing that you’re going to see is the source of the division from network to network.

I know, I know, you’re tired about hearing all of this bullshit by now. Got it, and I am too damn it…but hear me out on this one. This is classically, no comically standard procedure, and probably something that all of us have seen before. One look at my FACTS section and you’ll know where I’m going with this. I personally thought about it for a moment and started laughing my ass off about the whole thing myself!

So yeah, Star Wars, and Starship Troopers. Something everyone knows, and probably loves to hell. Well if you take a close look at everything you start to see a pattern. Back when “Lucasfilms” came out with the prequels of the series that everyone, except my goofy ass, hated they tried to explain how the galaxy was as fucked as it was. Back in the beginning of everything, regarding the prequels, it was kind of calm and had the normal shenanigans going on in politics. You know, a little corruption here, a lobbyist there, special interests for specific politicians popping up all over the place, normal stuff.

Well the biggest thing that popped up was the clone wars. I understand that it didn’t really kick off until episode II but stick with me on this. There was major upheaval. One man, spoiler alert…if you didn’t already know, Senator Palpatine rose through the ranks to prominence. In the background he was manipulating something that they call “the outer rim”, or a special group of planets in the galaxy that weren’t part of the “Galactic Republic”. Think of like a foreign interest’s type of thing. Not to long after that war broke out between a group in “the outer rim” and the “Galactic Republic” called the clone wars.

Yes, we’ve got little Anakin Skywalker, emotional little shit bag, and Padme Amidala as the protagonist’s along with young Obi-Wan Kenobi. There’s something to be said about the main political shit going on around the same time and the division it caused amongst the masses though. Basically while the “Clone Wars” were going on you still had senators going “rabble rabble” in one big hall that represented their planet and then Senator Palpatine inching his ass in to the Supreme Chancellor spot…or I guess their version of a president? Anyways slowly but surely, he started to use the war itself as a springboard to slowly limit the powers of the individual citizens, then BAM! Out comes the “Galactic Empire” that we’re all familiar with and the still evermore moody Anakin Skywalker now Darth Vader.

Ok, I think we’re all caught up now. The reason why I say that there was a major division going on here that made me laugh is that this all sounds vaguely familiar. Right now, as it is, we have a group of elites in Washington D.C. that are pretty much dictating what and who we are as individuals along with what we say socially. Take a look at the news I’ll wait. Are you back yet?

Alright, the real big thing that I looked in to as hard as I could was what the main doctrine of the Galactic Republic had as its backbone. I couldn’t find it exactly so I had to pull some crime show forensic shit to figure out what the hell was going on, and why was it so easy for that form of government to be broken up. Well looking at it they did have a “constitution”, but from everything I could find it was basically weak as hell. Point one for America right there.

It was nothing during a time of war for Palpatine to just waltz right in and declare himself the Supreme Chancellor. He still had to divide the senate and get them to argue amongst each other. Cause a little chaos here, question the morals of a specific candidate. Ahem…call in to question the freaking Supreme Chancellor Valurum, the guy before him. There ya go, bad guy in office for the movies to continue.

The part that really started to get me laughing though was the way everything was set up after I started to do my research for this blog. They had almost the exact same set up we did. “Office of the Chancellor”, “Galactic Senate”, “Judicial Department”. If you ask me that kind of sounds like the President, Congress, and the Supreme Court. Well I think that one might be a draw…maybe. Hold up, all the power was easily transferable to the Galactic Senate, because red tape. Yup, they put out all this shit that pretty much made it easy for them to grab power from anyone and everyone they wanted to through bureaucracy. As a matter of fact, Palpatine our good old Sith buddy here added more on to it.

One thing that I’m pretty sure everyone else knows, even though we’ve got a shit ton of red tape going through our own government here it’s damn near impossible to do that from any one of our three branches. They try, they always do, but because of the constitution of the United States of America, ahem, “You will fail!” I’m sorry that was just way to damn easy not to do.

So to say that we’re close to but not quiet like the Star Wars franchise is kind of funny. Yes, we are. We’re not exactly like space traveling ninjas that can do some pretty cool looking Dragon Ball Z stuff, nor are our two governmental systems EXACTLY alike, but we have something that they have and it’s political officials causing both division and derision with in our own society.

Palpatine isn’t just one specific person with in our own in real life society. Hell no! Instead he’s an amalgamation of several different things and groups we have going on right now. Social justice warriors, the ones that want to sit there and tell you that we have to accept the what is told to us by their community because no matter the situation they are right and we are wrong and that’s the way we’ve set it up for, I don’t know, millennia now. There’s the politicians that placate to the exact same kind of bullshit that’s been reiterated by the social justice warriors and those who are from the opposite that lets be honest here kind of issue the same rhetoric and year after year slowly increase government power and their paychecks.

There’s also, and you know I don’t like these folks here, big tech. I’m all for a company growing in the free market. I’m all for it becoming a big conglomerate of sorts. What I’m not for is that company monopolizing the market that it’s in, nor am I for that company not obeying the laws of its country of origin. Oh! Yeah almost forgot, here’s the liberal in me if you want to put it that way, I’m also not for these companies blatantly censoring those of a creed, race, political choice, religion, or country of origin. We should all have freedom of speech and be willing to accept the consequences of our actions no matter what caused them. All of those factors and groups are our Palpatine.

One thing that my ass is definitely going to talk about here is the Galactic Republic a little more. If you take a deeper dive in to the Star Wars franchise, you’ll notice something as well. Doing research about the whole Galactic Republic, and then the Galactic Empire there was a promise that further divided people. The promise of safety.

Granted everyone wants to be safe. Hell, I want to be safe, but there’s something to be said about HOW you are safe. Call me heated now because damn this is going to be a touchy one. Are you anymore safer if you relinquish how you are safe? Are you any safer in your very free mind if you have someone forcibly tell you how to be safe? I’m sorry but my answer is always going to be no. As should yours. The Galactic Republic, much like our own government, slowly eroded its own power through bureaucratic policy after bureaucratic policy. Even in the movies you can blatantly see them do this in the few scenes that they hold in the movies. Hell, one of the most famous movie quotes is “So this is how liberty dies…with thunderous applause.”

I’m sorry but there’s always one sure fire way to be able to get people to commit to that, make them afraid then divide them. We see it play out plenty of times a day here in our own country. The news reports things out of context, or completely false on both sides. Legislatures and other government officials will add more laws to try and cover up what we as a nation had as one of our founding documents. Then the radicals from either side will sit there and either fight against it with their utmost or tell the general population that there needs to be more.

It’s not right. Now there is a flipside to this coin. Militarism. And here’s the little gobblety goop that caused me to take pause and add in Starship Troopers to this whole mess. This whole series started off as a book that was written by Robert A. Heinlein. Don’t ask, I don’t know how to seriously pronounce his name. But I’m pretty sure that not many of my readers will know who the hell that is. I’m pretty sure that my readers would know more about the comical movie that was made in the nineties. I sure as hell didn’t know that there was a book written before the movie.

Now I say “Militarism” because that’s pretty much what Starship Troopers is all about. And it sure as hell mirrors other things that are going on now and days as well. The left has been militarized to form groups like “Antifa”. The right now has groups that won’t start a fight, nor are they racist, but sure as hell will finish a fight like “The Proud Boys”. Don’t get me wrong I have no issues with the proud boys, however I don’t think that their answer is quiet the right one. Some of the things that both groups do that could end up looking like some engagement on “Klendathu”.

Basically, though, in the 1950’s this writer Robert A. Heinlein wrote a sci-fi critique of what he believed was wrong with the U.S. at the time. He’d been stated for “glorified the military…Specifically the P.B.I., Poor Bloody Infantry, the mudfoot who places his frail body between his loved home and the wars desolation-but is rarely appreciated…he has the toughest job of all and should be honored.” Cool so he’s a fan of the military right? Well not so fast there. I, as a veteran of the Army, wouldn’t stand for the bullshit in the movies that he put out.

You’re only a citizen if you’ve served two years in the Starship Troopers military. Only citizens can vote. Only citizens have the right to apply for a license to procreate with their partner. I’m sorry but that would be more towards the right side of things. I can’t name a single military veteran that would actually be cool with that. Yeah democrats getting into our highest position in the executive offices would absolutely mean budget cuts. Oh, and that means that they end up drawing back on forces or start kicking out soldiers for the simplest or pettiest of reasons. No that’s not a way to go ahead and start doing things either.

See the thing about Heilein here is that he had a very crazy view on things. He looked at the way that the U.S. was at the time and thought “hey we need to hand out more ass whoopin’s.” I’m sorry what? Yes, that’s right, the guy who wrote Starship Troopers thought that there wasn’t enough corporal and capital punishment now and days.

Now if you said something like all around I might could get around that if we were talking a little less harsh corporal punishments than used to be passed around back in the day. The women suffrage movement should have been an example for just women, but for everyone. We don’t need a repeat of the “rule of thumb” for the next poor soul that fucks up in a way that’s irredeemable to their partner. No, I’m down with corporal punishment if it’s with less severe crimes than the big ones. You know rape, child molestation, man slaughter, stuff like that. I think that we can all agree that child molestation needs to be more punishable than “three squares and a cot”.

But one thing that we’ve shied away from what we use to be, and it caused us as a nation. I’m not suggesting that we all of a sudden put Rico on the stocks and start whipping him. It was negligible homicide, and he didn’t know what he was doing leave the poor kid alone. No, if you really want to keep people together first you have to start with a set of minds that things need to be more punishable than they are. Go ahead and call the child molester out and sentence him to death. It’s been proven that its more cost effective to our jail system anyways, and who in their right or left mind wouldn’t want to protect their own children?

No people, one less murderer is still one less murderer. Make sure there’s a time period where they do a more in-depth investigation to make sure that we’ve got the right guy. Make sure that there weren’t any false allegations handed forward against the person you say is a child molester. But if you’re caught selling drugs to someone that you know are illegal and could get the person addicted then you should absolutely not be a seamstress getting that “three squares and a cot”. No hell no, but the person’s ass to work, make them take responsibility for what they did. Put their ass to work like we use to with chain gangs, there’s plenty of substantive materials that we could use the jail systems help on producing.

Of course, the libertarian in me is going to cry out…right…about…now! There’s something to be said though about repealing other things away. No direct profit for any given company in regard to the labor put for by the “chain gang”. Give the profit nation wide to those we put to labor, have them reap some sort of reward. You commit to A form of corporal punishment and rehabilitate them at the same time. Win, win.

Now that I’m off of my little pulpit there’s something that goes back to topic here. In Starship Troopers there’s one agreement that I can make with author. Some conflicts have to be resolved by force. One thing that I will absolutely agree and disagree with at the same time. We didn’t need to go to Iraq, but we did need to go to Afghanistan. There were terrorists that were wreaking havoc on the whole of Afghanistan and in order for those people to chose for themselves what and who they want to be we needed to weed that shit out. No, we didn’t go there to do that originally. Yes, we went there to get Osama Bin Laden. But it was something that once we found we couldn’t stand for as a nation.

So yes, I agree that if we have an incursion against us, like 9/11, then we have to retaliate just like we did or what happened in Pearl Harbor. But when we find further injustice and the people cry out, well fuck if they ask us for aide then it’s our responsibility to answer. Hell, no should we be looking for “WMD’s”. We all figured out what the ploy was there real quick. Yes, they had a dictator that was gassing them pretty much every day. But the responsibility belongs to those countries around them to take refugee’s and protect them.

So, there’s absolutely an answer to all this division we have…and yeah, we see it all the time in our media. We have to sit on our high horse as a nation and as a people and first cut the division bullshit and then stop being like “Star Wars” or “Starship Troopers” and agree to disagree. I parrot this bullshit all day long and damn near every freaking blog. We need the third party, libertarians, to go ahead and help things along so that the two warring political parties we have right now don’t divide and conquer us. We see this all the time in our movies and books. We have a choice, do we still want looting, rioting, and others reaching across the isle to call each other names and censor them…Or do we want to be like Palpatine and start the first “Galactic Empire” and make everyone fear us?

[byakuyanya-purinsesu]

Sing with me a song of... {@feat. driftingjazzbard}

Returning from a supply trip to properly arm those still in his employ, the dark knight turned grandmaster found himself silent with the fool who’d been absentmindedly looking outside the carriage window and, after a moment of internal debate, decided to speak up.

“Narukami… I’ve been suspecting something for a while now. It’s a… concern that’s been weighing on my mind since before I met you… but you might be the only one who can answer, given your experience…”

“Can that wait for a second, Prince Leo? There’s somebody on the side of the road, and they look familiar.”

“Wait… what? Let me see…” crawling over to Yu’s side, he peeked his out to see who he was referring to.

“Is that…?” he then called out to the nameless soldier who held the reigns. “Stop the carriage!”

Again and again and again.  Seems her life was interwoven with stories.  She could hardly escape them, even should she wish to.  It was at times a blessing, others a curse.

Which was it now?

She could not sing this time, however, though her fingers clutched an instrument as if a melody could prolong her life.  Fleeing this place had proven…impossible on her own.  She was not a fighter.  It was why she’d left, she was not a fighter, and could not watch this young man tear himself to pieces, could not bear his accusations that she contributed to it.  She had enough weight on her heart without such things.

But this place was too dangerous to traverse alone.  She bore wounds.  Many, many wounds, staining her skin and clothing, matting her hair, one particularly ugly one across her forehead impeding her vision.  She was hardly lovely now.

Carriage wheels.  She couldn’t think to hear them.  An illusion at best, a trap more likely.

Waiting for death was not her style, but she had no more strength to move herself.  Little enough even to pluck the strings of the guitar she loved so much.

She’d always known she would die alone.

“I thought she looked familiar…” the gray-haired fool was quick to kneel down and place two fingers to her neck to check for a pulse. “She’s still alive.”

“You’ve met Erin before, Narukami?”

“Once. We sipped drinks and spoke very briefly. But what happened?”

“Probably the work of brigands. I need to remind myself to kill off any such violent vagabonds after dealing with Tabuu.” Looking down and examining the condition she was in, it was probably nothing short of a miracle she still drew breath. “It’s best we take her back with us lest any low lives that happen upon her body like this get any… depraved ideas.”

She didn’t register them, at first.  It wasn’t worth the trouble to stand, to even look up.  She was dying.  Slowly, but with cruel certainty.  Voices?  What were voices.  She had been hearing them since she’d parted from the prince’s company.

They were all cruel.

It was the touch that registered.  Nothing here was gentle.

“This whole place is depraved.  It’s…poison for the mind.”

Was she talking to herself, an illusion?  Or could there truly be people here?  And one whom had spat venom to rival that which ran through the veins of this world.  Who could create such a place?  For what reason?

Neither of these thoughts were her concern any longer.

“I’m dying.  Whether you’re inside my mind or not, move on.”

She was delirious, poisoned, from blood loss, lack of sleep, lack of food, whichever.

She was also exhausted.

A pause. On the outside, Leo’s face didn’t express any kind of change… not that she could see it clearly. Inside? An undoubtedly complicated mix of emotions swirled. He didn’t think he’d see her again… especially not like this. By his own war effort dominated definition, she was practically a burden to him. Worse, there faced the very real possibility that the two of them would butt heads again. Gods know that he didn’t need another moral debate. Even then…

“Leo… you can’t seriously be thinking of just leaving her like this.”

A sigh of aggravation and a shake of the blond’s head followed suit. His eyes darted over to Yu’s gray optics before falling upon Erin’s marred form again.

“…Think of me what you will, but the tatters of a conscience I have remaining are telling me to relieve you of this agony. Narukami, please pick her up and bring her to the carriage. We needn’t dawdle, and it’s not as if she has the strength to move and object.”

Another sigh. This one of relief coming from the fool. So he wasn’t as completely heartless as recent rumors made him out to be.

“Good to hear… now, I’m going to lift you up off the ground. Is that alright?” Ever the polite one was he.

She didn’t trust it.  She couldn’t trust it, even if it was real, because Leo had given up all his goodness, every bit of him that was worth anything.  Leo had declared his intent to spend the rest of his life bathing in blood.

And if it wasn’t him, if it was a trap, one more thing to taunt her and drain her further…

But what was left to drain?  Even speaking had left her…listless.  She was mute now.  Could not even summon the strength to glare.

Her head fell, nearly imperceptibly.  Was it a nod?  Mere acceptance?  Unconsciousness?  Who could say?

She did not think of him.  Indeed, she thought of nothing.

Once they were back with the fatally wounded bard in tow, Leo ordered the one steering the cart to return to camp double time. She was carefully laid up on the seat across from them. Yu then shot a glance to the prince and spoke.

“That look you gave her… I’ve seen it before. It’s one of regret.” he remarked, seemingly informed. “I’ve been there… what is your history with her if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Nothing gets past you does it, Narukami? What we were supposed to have was a professional relationship… she’d play her songs to give our troops morale, you see. But my feelings betrayed me… a mistake I won’t make again. There’s no time for that now however… actually that reminds me– about the thing I wished to confirm with you?”

The rest of the trip back was filled with conversation, albeit in a hushed tone so as to not wake the woman with them.

Elsewhere…

“D-damn it! We’ll get you back for this, y’hear!? We know your face! Wait until we get the boss, then you’ll pay!” sputtered the sole survivor of what was undoubtedly a one-sided massacre. He ran with soiled trousers (that he wouldn’t admit to) back to his hideout, leaving the only other live person to look over the bodies he’d just slain, championing a defenseless woman they sought to kill or worse.

“Tch… the hell was that supposed to be? Wasn’t even a fight.” the brash man looked back over to where the one he saved was only to find the body gone and drips of blood, still fresh, leading up to what seemed like a road and turning to see the shrinking figure of a carriage in the distance.

“…Guess I’ll follow it. Wherever it goes has got to be better than here. Sheesh, I definitely ain’t in Kagutsuchi anymore.”

“Hey there…” Yu spoke softly, waving at seeing the woman come to. She looked little more than worse for wear but that’s still leagues better than next in line for death’s row… at least in his book.

“Didn’t think I’d meet you again quite like this… are you alright?”

“I didn’t think I’d be meeting anyone again.”

And she definitely didn’t think she’d be back in this camp.  The atmosphere was still thick with tension…though near death experiences did have a way of cutting through bullshit in the mind.

“I’m better,” she spoke honestly, referring to both her mental state and injuries.  “And I owe you thanks.”

“I think the big thanks ought to go to Prince Leo… he did give me the order to retrieve you after all.” the fool answered with something of a knowing smile etching onto his expression.

“He might be getting a lot of crap for his demeanor right now… but deep down, I think there’s a truth in which he’s an undeniable driving force of good. He just has to reach out and seize it with his own hands.”

“He told me that the war he planned to wage when he gets home was partially my fault for an argument I had with him once over taxes and marriage law.”

She said this flatly.  It was bullshit, even if at the time it had struck her.  She’d come to the ready realization that it was a stupid accusation, childish.  Putting blame for his actions anywhere but himself.

“I’ll thank him for this, but he still needs to wake up.  If he’s not careful he won’t have anything worth going back to when this is over.”

…Well then.

“I, uh… don’t know anything about that. The only ‘war’ I’m going to be sticking around for is the one that wants to engulf everything here in Subspace…”

“What he does after that isn’t any of my business but… I’ll try and talk him out of that…? Can’t let a comrade go and self destruct like that after all.” Talk about awkward.

“I’m not trying to…”  She sighed.  He’d saved her life.  She should be kind.  “It’s good you have faith in him.  But…Leo…those of us who knew him before now are scared of what this place is doing to him.  He used to be…a kind, intelligent young man.  A little naive, maybe, but he had a good heart.  Some of the things he’s said and done here…they sound…like his father.  And a continuation of his father’s rule is something none of us want to think about.”

“But, like you said.  It’s not any of your concern.  Just know that…vague promises about how good he might be…they ring sort of hollow.  He used to be good.  What he’s doing now…isn’t.  And threatening more of this…makes us all wonder what the future is going to look like.  It’s going to have real consequences for us.”

“I see…” Yu emphatized with her, noting the plight that this country’s lord seemed intent in throwing his people into. Realistically, what could he do? There’s no feasible means of forcibly changing one’s heart back into what it once was… and he wasn’t about to overthrow a kingdom singlehanded.

“This is difficult. It’s certainly not like a solution is just going to come right through the flap of this tent for you.”

As if on cue, a new head did poke its way through and who should it belong to but another radically different appearing outsider? One with a spiky head of white hair, donning on a red jacket and an oversized sword.

“Yo’. I hate to be the guy to tell ya’ this but there’s a chick out there who was just offed in broad daylight and–” he cut himself short once the other male fell into his line of sight, a bowl cut shaped head of hair he’d recognize anywhere at this point.

“Hold up… Narukami? Is that you?”

“Not quite offed.”  Unless there were more women being ravaged by roving bands of lunatics that Leo had decided not to pick up because he hadn’t wanted to write bad poetry about them at any point.  She suspected that wasn’t the case, though more because this teenager next to her was with him than through any virtue of Leo’s character of late.

She wasn’t asking the younger man for a solution though.  She just didn’t have the patience for empty words right now.  Reassuring her that Leo was good deep down would do about as much good as a fart in a hurricane if he didn’t find that goodness fast.

“Close thing though.”

So much for that solution coming through the tent flap.

“Oh shit, you’re alive after all.” Ragna commented, finally noticing the bedridden woman and feeling a little relieved.

“Thought those touchy-feely assholes did you in… but I uh, got ‘em for ya’.” he then returned his attention to the younger male, grateful he finally found someone he recognized. “If you’re here then that means something’s up, right? And where’s your friend? That shorty who needs a haircut?”

“Right. Tabuu’s somehow on the loose again… and I’ve been here working with the prince of this land to find Minato then finish him off for good. We could use your help… if you’re willing to lend a hand.”

“Yup, I’m alive after all.”

Though not away, and no random strangers were going to fix this shit.  Tabuu, Subspace, war, whatever.  There were plenty of heroes waging war here.  Who was going to fix their prince?

“Yeah thanks.”  It was really meaningful and stuff having them killed while she bled out.  She honestly couldn’t even remember this guy, could barely remember Leo and the kid picking her up off the side of the road.  Her head was starting to spin again.

“Well… I do have to repay that son of a bitch for killin’ me last time and I have no idea where I am so following you’s probably the safest bet. But uh… yeah, about the dead body out there?”

“Dead body…? It’s a good thing there aren’t any poles for phone lines out here for them to be hung on or this might be something else entirely…” he lamented before standing up to follow the reaper. “I’ll see if I can get any troops to dispose of it proper… I’ll check on you again later, miss.” Yu assured.

And out they went… but she wouldn’t be without company for long as in entered another male of white/grayish hair color to take their place. She really had been meeting a lot of those lately, huh?

“…I was wondering who those two could’ve been talking to. Welcome back, Erin… what brings you back here though?”

This conversation seemed to be going on more around her than with her, and she was beginning to grow tired again.  She was about to allow herself to pass out once more when she was addressed.

“Hm?  Oh wait the dead person wasn’t me, alright then.  Good luck to you, Narukami.”  He had saved her, and it seemed rude to keep calling him kid.

And just as he was leaving…

“Near death, apparently.  I didn’t really mean to, but I got caught by some lunatics and violently tortured for…however long.  Leo and that boy were in his carriage and saw me, and the boy insisted they not leave me on the side of the road to bleed out, as I have heard.”  Whatever Yu said, she had her private suspicions on whether or not Leo would’ve stopped if he had not had company.

“I’ve known milord longer than most people here… and I think he would have stopped even without that boy’s guidance, had he caught sight of you. You’re too pretty to just leave like that after all~.” he joked lightly, trying to keep the atmosphere light.

“I have noticed, you know. Lord Leo’s changed since that first ordeal with what he refers to as ‘Subspace’. His actions in recent days haven’t been exactly what anyone might call favorable… but observing him up close tells me that something else is bothering him and is causing him a great deal of inner turmoil. I know this… because that’s the state he first discovered me in all those years ago…”

“I don’t know if that’s certain.  I think he might have left me.  I’m not a fighter.  I’m of no use to him in this place.  I think…he was thinking about leaving me.  I think I may have heard that boy scold him for thinking it.”  Though nothing she heard at that time could really be relied upon as completely accurate, in all fairness…she could believe it of the man Leo was becoming here.

“And I think that boy is kindhearted, and that you love Leo.  It is all well and good to tell me that something is troubling him, that he is suffering from inner turmoil…but that doesn’t change that he will have consequences for his actions.  He’s saying things that could lead to…a terrible, terrible future.  And he’s doing things that will poison his own future, even if he does manage to shake this…insanity he’s developed.”

“If even a fraction of the rumors I’ve heard while in this tent are true, he’s done some things that he can’t take back.  Things that…he’ll never regain that…status, of being the light of hope for the future.  He’ll always have those sins on him.  That…fear of what he might do will always be there for some people.  And he’ll always bear the weight of the people who died because he was cruel and reckless and stupid.”

She didn’t say it…but she was nearly as afraid here as out there.

Taking a seat to listen to what she had to say, the outlaw couldn’t deny that there wasn’t a very real possibility of what the bard was insinuating becoming a part of the history of the world they lived in. Even so…

“Milord’s not the type to run from the consequences… however staggering they may be. Whatever happens, I will see it through under his command. I’m his until I break after all. I just hope you don’t think ill of me for abiding by the blood oath I made when I first began serving him.”

“No.  Your loyalty is a credit to you, even if…Leo is not particularly earning it, as of late…I don’t want to see him break you, Niles.”  But in this state…would he?  She would have said he would never run that risk before, he cared about Niles and Odin, but now…

“And…that’s part of what worries me.  He might decide to embrace these consequences…and what they stemmed from.”

“Come now… it’s a crime to have such a pretty face look so sad. At least in my court.” Niles reprimanded, another jest all in good fun.

“Why don’t you focus on getting patched up so you’re not laying in a bed that I can’t join you in? What will you do once you’re released anyway?”

“You’re sweeter than you like to pretend, dear Niles.”  She may as well allow him a smile, even if her thoughts were still heavy.  And that was a question, wasn’t it?  What did she intend to do?  Indeed, what could she do?

“…I imagine trying to leave your group would only end in another attempted suicide, and I have no interest in that.  If I’m allowed, I will likely stay until it’s safe to go back, or until you all head back.”

“That sounds like a safe bet. Milord was the one who brought you back to camp to begin with so I doubt he’d mind terribly. Between you and me, I don’t think he ever wanted you to leave in the first place… but don’t tell him I said that~.”

She could tell him that Leo was the one who’d said such things as to push her out, but what good would that do?  His love and loyalty for the man wouldn’t be shaken, even as she could hear shouting outside that didn’t even sound sane.

“I won’t.  Though I doubt he’ll be seeking my company any time soon anyway.”

Stepping inside the tent that housed them both was finally the man of the hour, but unfortunately not for a friendly visit. He was surprised to see Niles in there for the briefest of moments… but then garnered that this might work to his advantage.

Walking past the woman who he’d given a reprieve from death’s row, Leo was quick to raid the medical cabinet to grab a handful of concoctions, popping one immediately to heal the wounds inflicted upon him by his other former subordinate before turning back and placing his hands on the outlaw’s shoulders.

“I need you to listen to me. This is an order as your liege… and also a personal request as you’re one of the very few I can trust to stay on my side. Keep Erin protected. No matter what, don’t let any further harm come to her… I’m no longer safe around here. No questions asked. Can you do that?”

“…” Niles fell silent and while he couldn’t possibly fathom who’d dare to attack him in what’s supposed to be his own haven but knew better than to beggar a response without answering him first. “…I’d be remiss to not be beside you while you’re out in that strange space thing again, but if that’s what you wish.”

“If you go out there on your own banged up like that, you’ll be the one in here next, even with your abilities.  Everything’s gone mad.”  Including Leo himself, but she still didn’t wish to see harm come to him.  Closing wounds was one thing, but she could see smudges of burns from magical attacks on him, and those could go deeper.

Unfortunately the result of attempting to get up to go to the prince directly was a rather feeble fall from her bed.  She had no strength even to sit up, let alone stand, weak from blood loss as she was.  She didn’t bother asking if Leo had found her pack with her, she was glad enough to have her guitar still by her side.

“You shouldn’t be alone.  This place…there’s something wrong with it.  With all of it…you shouldn’t be left in your own head too long.”

“Precisely. There’s something wrong and that’s why I’m going to make it right. My family seems to not want to have my back anymore so I’ll have Narukami, his friend and those still loyal who dare to come along. You’re to stay here. I can’t remain in this place any longer and you’re in no condition to move… I know where I can take up temporary residence so don’t go worrying over me.” All the while he was talking, he’d been bandaging himself on every single cut, only wincing when pouring rubbing alcohol on the cloth and placing it on the wounds to disinfect them.

“Niles, help her back up into bed, I will return to clean up the mess my lout of a brother seems keen on letting become more unruly by the day. Count on it.”

“Family…Leo, you love your family…what are you talking about?  You talk about your brother as if he were a demigod.”  ‘Lout’?  About his hero of a big brother?  What’s…what’s going on here?  The four Nohrian royals were known for their bond, hearing one of them speak so rudely about another was unheard of.

“I…You’ve got to listen to yourself.  You’re making Niles stay behind and nobody cares about you more than he does…”  It said something strange about Erin’s priorities that she was mildly depressed about the fate of Nohr, but hearing the prince discard his bonds with his siblings sent her into near panic.  She forced herself up on her elbow, trembling from the effort.  “…There’s…something…wrong happening…”

“Listen to this then…” he rolled up the tattered remains of his sleeve, revealing the gashes that had been magically cut into his hand and scaling all the way up to his forearm which he had been in the midst of bandaging up.

“My ‘brother’ stood by and let this happen. Just watched as I was cut to ribbons… didn’t even have the gall to do it himself. He’s no longer of any help to my cause so I’m cutting ties with him and taking the initiative. No more time to talk, I’ve got to go. Niles, you know what to do.”

“Then that’s not your brother, Leo.”

She’d never met Prince Xander.  She’d heard about him, that he was stoic and kind and couldn’t joke to save his life.  That his siblings, his kingdom, were the most important thing in the world to him.  But she also knew siblings.  She had siblings, she was a big sister herself.  No way any big brother, not one Leo talked about the way he’d talked about Xander, would let that happen to him.  No way.

“There’s something…strange about this place, something strange is going on the closer we get to wherever the center of it is.”

She’d dragged herself to him, with immense effort, but could only weakly grasp the edge of his tattered cloak, unable to rise, unable to stand.  “Something…isn’t right about what’s going on, Leo, you have to see it…was the w-way you found me normal?  Normal bandits don’t torture people.  Your brother would never normally let you get hurt that badly…”

Her straining had opened up several wounds on her body, and she was clearly struggling even to stay conscious.

“…Your brother shouldn’t have hurt you.  Nobody should have hurt you…but I’m worried about you.  I’m worried you’re going to destroy yourself.  My life doesn’t matter.  You’ve got people who love you who are worried about you…and two kingdoms you promised to bring peace to…L-Leo…”

Her head fell, her body going limp as she slipped back into unconsciousness, lying in a small pool of blood as the many tears in her skin began to weep once more.

She couldn’t pretend to know what was going on.  She was only a bard, not even a magical one.  But she had been the man’s friend, once.

The prince watched as the poor bard tried to meet with death again by defying him, literally crawling at his feet. This made no sense to him… it only served to feed him more anger.

“DAMN IT ALL!”

Leo screamed out, finding the nearest inanimate object, in this case the railing of the bed she was previously laid up in, and struck it with his good hand, not even registering the pain he’d inflicted upon himself in doing so. “I’M the one trying to do right around here! Why the hell is everyone ELSE turning me into the villain!? WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE IDIOTS!?”

Taking another look at Erin and frowning, he remembered the last time he tried to leave a woman behind… and all the defiance that came with it. He thought it prudent instead this time to keep this one under his watch. He’s not one to repeat mistakes.

“…Niles. Grab her belongings and the blankets to that bed. Carry her and wait for me by the horse stables. Be sure to treat her as best you can in the meantime.”

Relieved at the rescinding of his previous orders in favor of these, he smirked that devilish rogue smirk he’d coined working under his employ. “Understood.”

[babbleuk]

Voices in AI – Episode 108: A Conversation with Kirk Borne

[voices_in_ai_byline]

About this Episode

On Episode 108 of Voices in AI, Byron and Kirk Borne discuss the intersection between human nature and artificial intelligence.

Listen to this episode or read the full transcript at www.VoicesinAI.com

Transcript Excerpt

Byron Reese: This is Voices in AI brought to you by GigaOm, and I’m Byron Reese. Today my guest is Kirk Borne. He is Principal Data Scientist and executive advisor at Booz Allen Hamilton. He holds a BS in Physics from Louisiana State and a PhD in Astronomy from Caltech. His background covers all kinds of things relating to data and data science and artificial intelligence so it should be a great conversation. Welcome to the show, Kirk.

Kirk Borne: Thank you Byron. It’s great to be here.

So for the folks who aren’t familiar with you and your work, can you give us a little bit of a history about how did you get here, what was the path you took?

Well as you mentioned my background is Astrophysics and Astronomy. Starting in grad school about 40 years ago, I was always working with data for scientific discovery either through modeling and simulation or data analysis. So that’s sort of what I was doing as my avocation, which is research and astronomy, but my vocation became supporting NASA research scientists data systems — so the data systems from various satellites that NASA had for studying the space/astronomy domain. I worked on those systems and provided access to those data for scientists worldwide. I did that for about 20 years and so I was always working with data, and I would say data is my day job; data is my night job as an astronomer.

And so it was about 20 years ago that we were starting to notice the data volumes of the experiments we were working with, were just becoming more off scale than ever imagined. I mean just one single dataset I still remember 1997 — we were trying to work with this dataset that just by itself was more than double the size of the other 15,000 experiments we were working with combined. So that was like unheard of. And so at that point I started looking around at what can one do with data of this volume and I discovered machine learning and data mining. So I had never actually looked at data that way before. I just thought about analysis, not so much discovery from data from a machine learning perspective, and so that was 20 years ago and sort of fell in love with that whole mathematical process and the applications that come from that, which include AI. That’s what I’ve been doing for the last two decades.

And so as a practitioner, what’s the sort of work you’re doing now?

Well for me personally it’s really about, as my company likes to say, thought leadership. I feel kind of nervous when I say that about myself but I do a lot of public speaking, I write a lot of blogs. My title includes ‘executive advisor’, so I’m advising both internally our business managers around AI machine learning and data science, but also our clients. But at the same time I’m also doing sort of tutoring and mentoring to some of our younger data scientists because after my 20 years at NASA, I spent 12 years at George Mason University as a professor. I was Professor of Astrophysics, but I really was teaching data science; and so it’s sort of in my blood I guess to be an educator, to teach, to train and so that’s pretty much what I’m doing. I’m promoting the field, having conversations with people, for developing new ideas and concepts; not so much coding anymore like I used to do back when I was younger at NASA. I let the smart young coders today do all that work but we have lots of interesting conversations about which algorithms to use or developing. So it’s really exploratory innovation at the frontier of all this stuff.

So before we launch into AI questions (I have a pile of them for you) I can’t imagine there’s an Astronomy PhD on the planet that doesn’t have their own opinion about the Fermi Paradox. What is yours?

Oh well, I think that’s a good question. But I think that right sort of response to that is the distance between stars is so enormous that it’s really hard to imagine that if every star had planets that were teeming with life, even nearby stars, it would probably be still next to impossible to imagine any kind of encounter. Literally why would they go travel to some speck of dust that would take them literally hundreds of years? You might say the life spans would be different. Different planets, maybe, maybe not.

I mean all these things are tapered by you know that the conditions of star evolution and all kinds of things. So I can’t imagine sort of chemical or biological processes being all that different. In fact they should not be different on other planets. And so I just think that the time travel and space travel challenges are so enormous that I just can’t see it really happening. So I’m not sure if I can believe whether there was life teeming on every other planet in the universe or at least on a planet around each star in the universe. But know that it’s completely possible.

So I only ask one follow up and then we can launch into AI. But you know we would be eager to go visit other stars. I mean you know in the ‘70s we sent out the Voyager probes and those were like “Hey everybody we’re here.” Of course that too is you know, a bottle in an intergalactic large ocean, and so maybe there are alien Voyager probes floating around all over the place. But they’re too sparsely separated to ever come out our way.

Now it’s also considering the size of the thing. I mean we’re detecting better and better than ever before asteroids in our solar system that are a few hundred meters in size. But our probes are not much bigger than a suitcase. So we’re not paying any attention to those. In fact they really are just specks of dust, specks of noise in our data on… and there’s literally hundreds of billions or trillions of such specks of dust in our own solar system. And we’re more concerned with the big ones that might do damage to us. So we’re just ignoring all of those things even if some of them, who knows, for all we know they could be alien probes…

Right we had that cigar shaped… So OK, the show is Voices in AI. So let’s voice a little bit about AI. So let’s start with the basics, how do you in your mind define intelligence and in what sense is artificial intelligence… is it artificial because we made it or it’s artificial because it’s like faux, it’s not really intelligent, it’s just faking it?

Probably all of those. So for me AI is really just the actionable output of what we learn from incoming sensor data. Okay so sensors measure things about the world, algorithms find patterns and trends in those readings. And then there’s a response and action, a decision that comes from that. That’s what humans do, that’s what all animals do. Right? We have sensors, our eyes, our ears, our mouths, our fingers, our hands whatever we have we’re sending our universe. And from what we sense that is patterns we recognize detect patterns and anomalies, that’s what we’re really good at.

Then we infer what would happen if I ignore this or not ignore this or do something with this thing that I’m seeing. And then based upon that sort of inference, we make a decision to do something or not do so. So our algorithms, human or any animal is a biological neural network. And so we’re emulating that with an artificial [one].

So yes, it is artificial intelligence, but I’d like to say the things we’re building are really… the purpose of them is not for the purpose of just building an artificial intelligence but it’s to augment our intelligence. So I say the seven A’s of AI are: augmented intelligence, assisted, amplified, accelerated, adaptable, actionable intelligence — that’s six probably. But anyway so I have seven A’s of AI that basically say what we are really trying to do is augment and amplify and accelerate human intelligence by automating parts of this process — especially the process of dealing with all the information flood that’s coming into our sensors these days.

But in a couple of touch points there, you likened machine intelligence to human intelligence in terms of you mentioned neural nets that are trying to do something vaguely analogous to what the brain does and all that. But isn’t machine intelligence something radically different not just in form, but like if you gave an AI all the data of planetary motion of the last 500 years, all the planets in our, all the bodies in our solar system, it could figure out when the next eclipse was going to be because it would just study it and it would make this assumption the future is like the past.

And it would do it but if you then said, “What would happen if the moon vanished? How would it change everything?” It would be like… (silence), so it doesn’t really understand anything. Like you said it just finds patterns and makes predictions based on them but it doesn’t understand why anything happens the way it does. So it couldn’t be a perfect planetary model, but it wouldn’t ever even intuit that something called gravity exists, right?

Well that’s true. But if you think about ancient civilizations, they had no deeper intuition than that machine you just described. So if the moon vanished it would invoke all kinds of bizarre interpretations for that and even bizarre sort of outcomes — like literally in the ancient times when there was an eclipse, you know people panicked. And if there was like a Royal Astronomer like in some of the ancient quartz kingdoms if that ancient astronomer had not predicted that eclipse, they usually lost their head.

You know maybe we should bring that back quite frankly.

Anyway. So I think the intuition that we have as humans today we’ve gained over millennia of human existence and so what we learn in schools, — and I like to tell people you know hopefully a successful person spends a minimum of 12 years in school, doesn’t drop out, and then hopefully beyond that there’s either college or continuing education or certainly lifelong learning.

So we get to the point where we’re actually employable and useful as an intelligent person in the workplace after literally decades of consuming information and knowledge. So our algorithms we’re feeding ten thousand or ten million pictures of cats. You haven’t gotten to scratch the surface of all the thousands and millions of different kinds of knowledge that humans just gathered through second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour interaction with their world over decades.

Listen to this episode or read the full transcript at www.VoicesinAI.com

[voices_in_ai_link_back]

Byron explores issues around artificial intelligence and conscious computers in his new book The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity.

from Gigaom https://gigaom.com/2020/03/05/voices-in-ai-episode-108-a-conversation-with-kirk-borne/

[writesandramblings]

The Captain’s Secret - p.50

"Time Space Stumble”

A/N: In the spirit of continuing occasional classic Trek escapades, I give you "Time Space Stumble."

Full Chapter List Part 1 - Objects in Motion << 49 - Going Nowhere Fast 51 - Two Truths and a Lie >>

The tests continued. They achieved distance jumps. First small distances, differences barely visible to the naked eye, but then bigger jumps, bigger distances, measurable not in meters but kilometers. Always, though, they seemed to be trailing the Glenn just a smidgen. If they went fifty kilometers, the Glenn went sixty.

"He refuses to push us past the Glenn," said Lorca. He was standing at the window of his quarters, a hologram of Lalana beside him. The two rooms had been carefully mapped in such a way that Lalana appeared to be standing on the same plane as him, and his bed equaled her couch.

"You really have terrible luck with engineers," she informed him. "Billingsley was a 'piece of work,' Sural had no sense of humor, and now Stamets is... well, it's clear you like him, at least."

"He's a headache!" exclaimed Lorca. "The most frustrating man I've ever met."

"Yes, but how much fun do you have watching him squirm? There is a certain degree of delight in your face."

Lorca exhaled in a long chhhhh through his teeth. "No," he concluded. "I don't like Stamets. I hate him!"

Lalana clicked her tongue. "You only protest this hard when I'm onto the truth."

Lorca started to laugh. "My god, you're ridiculous."

"Yes, but would you have me any other way?"

That made him laugh so genuinely, he felt a little guilty about it. "What about your day."

"Saru came by, to check on Emellia's progress, and then they ended up spending a long time drinking tea. Apparently, Saru's old captain also drank tea."

Lorca had noted as much in a personal log many years back. "That she did," he said, with a degree of somber reverence for the departed captain. Even if Georgiou's grave miscalculation at the Binaries had potentially kicked off this war. "So Saru and Emellia get along?"

"I think she might like him even more than you like Stamets."

"Get it through that thick, blue skull of yours. I don't like Stamets!"

And yet, as they readied for the latest test of the spore displacement drive, Lorca had to admit Lalana was sort of right. Making Stamets squirm was absolutely delightful. "Stamets!" Lorca shouted, his voice filling the entirety of the bridge. "Where is my spore drive!"

Stamets, for his part, always rose to meet Lorca's level of ire. "We're not ready yet, captain! We need fifteen minutes!"

"Why!"

"Maybe I don't feel like telling you!" This was a sure sign something was going very wrong in engineering.

Lorca balled his hands into fists and took a deep breath, deliberately forcing his anger away. It half-worked. He didn't scream, but he remained firmly angry as he warned, "Don't make me come down there to engineering, lieutenant. When am I getting my drive back?"

"My spore drive up will be up and running in fifteen minutes. Not ten, not five, fifteen."

"You have five minutes!" yelled Lorca. "Bridge out!"

Everyone on the bridge was holding their breath. None of them could see Lorca's face, standing as he was at the very front of the bridge by the viewscreen. Lorca clenched his teeth and shook his head as he stared out at the stars. Then he relaxed somewhat. There was a rather nice red-orange nebula visible. Probably Lalana was staring at it right now. He'd had the main viewscreen routed through to her quarters so she could look at the same stars he did.

When Lorca turned away from the viewscreen and faced the bridge crew, he looked perfectly calm and even mildly amused. "It anyone wants a coffee, you've got ten minutes," he advised them, smiling. At the operations console, Lieutenant Owosekun smiled and tried not to laugh. She was awfully cute, but Commander Landry was over at the tactical console on the other side of the bridge, and Landry was not a woman you stepped out on unless you had a death wish. Besides, of the two, Lorca guessed Owosekun was the less experienced in bed. Pretty only went so far.

Lorca paced the bridge, walking past the stations and stretching his legs. He paused and exchanged a quick word with Saru at the science station on a briefing scheduled for later that afternoon. After seven minutes, Stamets reported to the bridge that the spore drive was ready.

"Thank you, lieutenant," said Lorca, sounding perfectly amicable.

"So, are we going to go now?" asked Stamets expectantly.

"Not just yet," said Lorca. He could picture the frustration on Stamets' face.

After a minute, Stamets asked, "Are we waiting for something?"

"You're waiting for my command," said Lorca, in the same vaguely derisive tone that had once flummoxed Sarah Billingsley on the Triton. Poor Stamets, but really, the man brought it on himself. Lorca waited just long enough that he began to get impatient himself, then declared, "Black alert! Lieutenant Stamets, do you have our destination keyed in?"

"As good as it's gonna get," said Stamets, probably rolling his eyes as he said it.

"Yes or no, Stamets."

"Yes!"

"Prepare to jump." The traditional pause. "Go."

Discovery jumped. There was the familiar sensation of clammy humidity on the skin.

Everything went sideways. The ship lurched, sending Lorca sliding across the bridge as the force of an impact overwhelmed the gravity generators. Lieutenant Detmer half-fell out of her chair at the helm. Alarms blared. At the ops panel, Owosekun managed to keep a firm grasp on her console and reported, "All systems stop!"

"Stamets!" bellowed Lorca, climbing back to his feet.

"I don't know what happened!" said Stamets, sounding genuinely panicked. "We jumped, we just..."

Lorca looked at the viewscreen. The red-orange nebula had been replaced by a faintly starry void. "Astrometrics! Where are we?"

"Not where intended, sir. It looks like we've traveled... six light years!"

Even if something had gone wrong, Lorca was impressed. This was more than triple their previous record. It was also farther than the Glenn had gone and meant the ship was potentially approaching viability over long distances. But the best part was they had finally surpassed their rival. Discovery was in the lead.

"All right. Systems check."

The alarms quieted. They ran through the systems one by one. Everything seemed fine, until the lieutenant at the communications panel, Richter, reported: "Sir, I'm not receiving any subspace communications."

"Comms down?"

"They seem to be operating, it's just, no signals, and no response to our communications." Wait..." Richter's brow furrowed. "I am receiving something, but it's... I don't understand. I'm sorry, sir, I don't know how to explain it."

"Sir, I believe I have an answer," said Saru. Lorca turned his attention to his first officer. "We are receiving communications signals, but at a rate so gradual it is almost undetectable."

A faulty communications relay? Lorca crossed over to Saru's station to see for himself.

"Since we dropped out of the mycelial network, we have received one piece of a transmission, and we are still receiving it."

"Meaning what exactly?" asked Lorca, trying to make sense of Saru's display. He was no slouch when it came to the science aboard the ship, but the data he was looking at was entirely unfamiliar.

Saru considered how to explain. "If you'll forgive me for 'dumbing this down,' captain, imagine if someone were sending us the message 'hello.' In the five minutes since our arrival at this position, we are still in the process of receiving the letter h."

"Oh my god," said Stamets over the comms. "We're stuck in time."

They called a meeting of senior science staff in astrometrics. Saru, Stamets, Mischkelovitz, and two scientists in charge of other projects aboard the ship: Egorova and Kumar, an astrophysicist and systems engineer respectively. For some reason, Groves had come, too.

Stuck in time was not completely accurate. It was more that they were out of sync with time in the rest of the universe. Events on the Discovery were unfolding at what seemed like normal speed for them, but outside of the ship, everything was moving so slowly it appeared almost completely still. In fact, they were still in visual range of the pretty red-orange nebula, but because they were receiving fewer photons, everything looked dimmer.

Furthermore, the mycelial field they used to delineate the ship and its contents for transport through the mycelial network had not dispersed. The spores were similarly frozen, unmoving.

The fact that they were receiving photons and an ongoing bit of a transmission indicated they had not somehow fallen out of time completely. They were simply operating at such a speed that time outside had become meaningless.

"It's like the spore field has become a temporal stasis field," concluded Stamets. "Or maybe not stasis, more like..."

Groves spoke. "Technically-speaking, the most accurate term would be 'temporal retardation,' but good luck getting that past a jury. 'Temporal reduction' works."

"A jury?" echoed Stamets. "I'm sorry, who are you again?"

"Impediment?" wondered Mischkelovitz aloud.

"Deceleration," offered Saru.

"I've got it. You know null space? This is null time," said Groves.

"What?" went Stamets, shaking his head rapidly as if to knock that idea loose from his brain. "That's a math concept! It doesn't mean space as in"—he waved his hands towards the window—"space!"

"No, but it's catchy," countered Groves. Between that and "radical recyclers," Lorca rather got the impression Groves fancied himself a wordsmith. That instinct probably served him well in courtrooms. Slightly less so in this context.

"I like it," said Egorova.

They were getting distracted, as scientists and civilians so often did. "Terminology aside, analysis?" prompted Lorca.

"We cannot leave the field," said Saru. "If we attempt to, I believe we will incur another collision as we did upon exiting the mycelial plane, and we may damage the ship irreparably."

"Do we have to leave?" asked Mischkelovitz. "I mean, if time's passing super-slow on the outside, think how much work we could get done in here."

"Your work, you mean," said Stamets. "Mine would be stuck. Literally. In time."

Egorova touched a finger to her lips. "The spores aren't entirely frozen themselves, are they? They're moving at the same rate as we're receiving information from the outside world. Meaning, eventually, we might just drop out of whatever it is we're experiencing naturally when the field collapses."

"Then it's a question of the rate," said Groves. "How fast is data entering? And is the rate constant, or is it decaying or accelerating?" He looked at Saru for the answer.

"I have detected no discernible change in the rate as far. Computer, based on the time it takes the mycelial field to dissipate and the current rate time is passing aboard the ship, how long until the field naturally decays?"

"Insufficient data," said the computer.

"We don't know exactly how long the mycelial field persists after a jump," said Stamets. It was something they were still crunching numbers on from the various drive tests. "Individual spores can survive anywhere between a fraction of a second to several seconds, and that's just the ones that actually do get expended by the process. Some persist and have to be flushed out manually before the next jump. Then there's also the question of the threshold at which the field itself collapses. So far, we've seen fields persisting post-displacement even at a density of thirty-five percent."

Saru rephrased. "Computer, using the averages observed so far for post-displacement spore persistence, what is the minimum amount of time required for field density to reach forty percent?"

"Six hundred and forty-five years," said the computer.

That was the optimistic estimate. There was one person on the ship who could live long enough to survive that. She was not in the room.

"Well our ship won't last even half that long," said Kumar. "Our systems will decay well before then and we'll run out of power, not to mention food and everything else we need to survive."

"So we need to find a way out," said Groves.

Stamets had been thinking about the passage of time. "Actually, this could be a good thing. If we're not going anywhere, I could fill that cultivation bay with mushrooms. We could get a whole forest growing, ensure a steady supply of spores at a quantity that would let us make multiple test jumps in a day. We would have way more left over for ourselves after supplying the Glenn." It was no secret that, between Straal and Stamets, Stamets was the better gardener, but because Straal's drive jumps were going more successfully, they were getting the lion's share of the spore supply Discovery produced.

"I want us out of here sooner rather than later," said Lorca. As appealing as Stamets and Mischkelovitz might find the idea of unlimited time for various reasons, Lorca had no interest in aging while the rest of the universe passed them by. "Everyone, get your teams together and start working on potential solutions. I want proposals in three hours. Give me everything, no matter how out there, using the resources we have on Discovery."

Three hours later, they were back, along with the addition of Cadet Tilly.

"'Null time' got me thinking," said Tilly. Stamets had disliked the term and repeated it to his engineering crew derisively, but Tilly had turned it into a positive. "This is really a math problem, and it's a spore field problem. Now, when we're talking about the universe on the scale of the mycelial spore network, we lose the distinction between physics and biology. So, my idea..."

Stamets looked genuinely proud of Tilly for a change as she outlined her proposal to counterbalance the spores with spores modified to be something akin to an anti-spore.

"And we can do this?" asked Lorca. "An anti-spore?"

"Theoretically," stressed Stamets, "but maybe? I mean, it's within the realm of possibility, sir. And having run the math, it looks like it would be perfectly safe to try, so I think Tilly's proposal is worth exploring. It doesn't put the ship in danger."

The same could not be said of every suggestion. Kumar's proposal involved hitting the temporal field with a charged tachyon pulse which would potentially create new, temporally-charged particles sufficient to disrupt the field or cut a hole in it.

As Kumar relayed this, Mischkelovitz began to tug at Groves' arm. Lorca noticed the motion. "Something you want to share, doctor?"

"We're in a chroniton field."

"Chroniton?" repeated Egorova.

"I think the mycelial spores developed a charge that attracted chronitons, coating them in the particles, and the chronitons are holding them suspended in time. In essence, they can't move because they're bogged down by the excess chroniton weight. Not weight or mass in the way we understand it in this physical realm, but in a similar way all the same."

"Chronitons are only theoretical, doctor," said Saru, "but I think the idea has merit, captain. I would trust Dr. Mischkelovitz's expertise in this area. It was her husband's primary field of interest."

"I thought he was a weapons engineer," said Kumar, sounding dismissive. He had always felt the Mischkelovitz name overrated. Hearing Kumar's assessment of the deceased scientist, the surviving Mischkelovitz shrank back behind Groves.

Egorova said, "He rarely published in physics, but what he did was remarkable. I didn't know he was involved in temporal research but I wouldn't be surprised."

"And what do you think we should do, Mischka?" said Lorca, drawing her back in.

"The cadet's plan," she said. "If we negate the spores, the chronitons should disperse because they'll have nothing to adhere to. That would release the field. But if we charge the field with tachyons, as the lieutenant commander suggests, we risk causing a casmaclysic cascanade... No. Casme—no. Casmaclysic... No. Casma—no."

"Cataclys—" both Lorca and Groves began.

"—mic cascade," finished Groves, narrowing his eyes at Lorca. Lorca shrugged in response and made a face as if to say, "It was obvious, you think you're the only one can do that?" If the look in Groves' eyes meant anything, it was probably that he felt he was indeed the only person allowed to do that, and Lorca had just violated some sort of unspoken boundary.

"What would make the spores develop a temporal charge in the first place?" asked Stamets, disliking the implication his spores were to blame.

"Residual temporal radiation!" exclaimed Tilly. "We cleared the spores from the chamber when the first module wasn't working, but radiation could have lingered in the chamber. Then, when we put in the next batch of spores, they were contaminated. And because the spores act in concert with one another, it caused a chain reaction! Like a virus!"

Stamets' eyes widened. "Physics as biology!" he exclaimed. "Of course! It wasn't the spores, it was the chamber! As we went through the mycelial plane, the infection spread across the ship, until it dropped us out because we were too heavy with—chronitons!"

Tilly was over the moon. "Yes!"

"How were the spores exposed to temporal radiation in the first place?" said Groves. He seemed to have no trouble following any of the science. Mischkelovitz stood deep in thought, saying nothing in response to this question.

"Perhaps Dr. Mischkelovitz and I could investigate this question while Lieutenant Stamets and the cadet devise a way to create an 'anti-spore,'" said Saru.

"If we're right about this, we could prove chronitons exist!" exclaimed Tilly.

"That's already proven," said Mischkelovitz.

Egorova shook her head. "I'd have heard if chronitons were proven. If anything, we're just gonna prove that mushroom spores are unpredictable, or we got a bad batch, or the mycelial plane we've been traveling through has some temporal mechanics we haven't properly accounted for yet."

"My spores are not the issue," said Stamets defensively.

"Are we all on board with Tilly's plan?" asked Lorca, looking to head off a fight between the scientists.

"I'd like my team to continue research into the field mechanics area," said Egorova.

"Granted," said Lorca. "And Kumar, as a backup, draw up schematics for as many devices as you like, but focus on resource rationing. Just in case our plan A is no good. Everyone know what they're doing?" The assembled scientists responded with nods and words of assent. Lorca clapped his hands and then spread them, palms up. "Then go."

Part 51

[warholiana]

On August 1, 2017, at the Swiss Institute in New York, I sat down to watch all five hours and 21 minutes of “Sleep,” Warhol’s first serious movie. In 1963, Warhol filmed his boyfriend John Giorno sleeping; in 2017, I committed to staying awake to take minute-by-minute notes on the whole thing. (Click here to read my similar notes on Warhol’s eight-hour “Empire”.)

  00:00

–  Begins w. shot of nipple – could almost be female. Hard to read. Establishes possible heterosexuality. (Somewhere Warhol is quoted saying he was afraid Sleep would be read as gay.)

So very tender: Watching someone sleep is the ultimate maternal act. (I wonder if the story about Julia Warhola watching her son Andy sleep is true. It was told after the movie was famous)

Note how close we are to Giorno’s nipple. So absurdly intimate.

–  I start to notice rise and fall of the chest, giving away the subject. Also, white crumpled sheet visible in background.

–  So very tender – watching someone sleep is the ultimate maternal act. (I wonder if the story about Julia watching Andy sleep is true. It was told after the movie was famous)

–  Vexations by Satie playing in background at Swiss Institute, as it may have been (or may not have been) in an early screening. Does its sweetness push the tenderness of the footage too far? There should be a stronger edge of painful boredom to the piece. But this is after a bare few minutes. May yet get painful.

–  Nipple still there. (Surprise-not-surprise.)

–  Actually seems less tense than Empire, where you actually thought something might happen. Here, the sight of the chest rising and falling gives a rhythm to the scene that makes it play out more easily over time.

–  With Empire, you thought that you might almost be watching a still. Here you know absolutely that you aren’t. Two pieces always seen as cognate are actually more different than one might think.

–  Nipple has now disappeared into darkness. Was there a change of lighting – and film reel – that I failed to notice? The problem with taking notes is that it distracts you from the events in a film that is supposed to be event-free.

00:07

–  Going to spend two minutes NOT typing

–  Nope: Gotta record that a change in reel led to change in exposure, so nipple is again visible. But nothing else seems to change. At a time when everyone was familiar with the basics in film technology, and the three-minute reel, would audiences have understood that the action was continuing across film changes? Would that have added a pacing to the film that we’ve lost?

00:10

– Two minutes not typing again.

00:11  

–  Nope. Too much I want to write, at least early in the process of watching.

–  Note how CLOSE we are to Giorno’s nipple. (Would ppl. have known it was Giorno?) So very, very, absurdly intimate.

- Change of reel, and exposure, and slight change of angle.

–  Looks as much like a landscape as like a body (cf Venetian nudes-in-landscapes, almost a cliché). Close-up is so extreme that this feels like a fully

modernist exercise in form, a la Weston. A denial of the intimate, sexual nature of the piece – useful to in-the-closet Warhol – but also sets it right into the modernist tradition that Warhol has such great training in, and that he never ever jettisoned. I think Edward Weston’s photos were shown in Pittsburgh when AW was young. Gotta see if they were the nudes. (Do the dates – late 1940s – make that possible?)

–  Back to darker exposure of the nipple. Is AW looping some of the same footage (as I know he did, and as some early watchers knew) or have we really moved forward in time with the sleeper?

00:11

–  From almost its first public appearance, people have said – ads for it have stated – that Sleep was eight hours long. That’s how powerful the cliché of the eight-hour-night turns out to be. We want – we need – Sleep to be even LONGER than it is. (I’ll see if I feel that way in five hours.)

–  Sorry to be watching it on projected video. Not at all the same thing as film (as I watched Empire.) The click of the film projector, and the need to stop to change reels, would have

00:20

–  Hold that thought. Radical change of angle. Now camera is looking up Giorno’s body toward his chin and face. Meaning we must be down at his crotch.

00:21

– More angle changes, to indefinable but vaguely public spots on his body.

00:22

– Now his face, in Hollywood-style closeup. Can’t tell he’s breathing, so could be morgue shot. Plangent and commemorative. Ties to history of portraiture – Fayum funeral portraits? Roman funeral monuments with sleeping/dead hero? Meleager – most famous of gorgeous dead guys.

00:23

– Another angle change. Now top of chest and part of jaw, and ear, visible in close up. Nb links to the LOOK of the first American avant-garde films that AW saw in P’burgh – Maya Deren etc. This new shot reads as about surrealist dismemberment and collapse.

00:25

– Back to the up-the-body shot. DOES make us pretty sure that some shots have  been repeated/looped. Hard to imagine the camera going back to precisely the same positions again and again.

–  Very COMPOSITIONAL – against the grain of its moment’s most radical, anti-European thought.

–  AW gets it much more right in Empire – this film should be a continuous shot, or at least truly sequential shots of the same scene.

–  Must have been VERY tedious to keep reloading the camera every 3 mins.

–  Now back to the “pubic” shot of earlier moment. Such a strange shot that we KNOW it’s the same footage, repeated.

–  Was anyone at the premiere watching closely enough to take any of such subtleties in?

–  Strange shot of…. Giorno’s thing? Can’t tell. Sexy regardless. More sexy for being hard to read.

00:29

–   Back to the face shot again.

–  Back to thinking re video vs film projection. At very least, I want to see this video at some absurdly high def where the artifacts of video simply disappear. The new scanning being done of Warhol films should allow that. Here, I can see the little “pixels” that the projector’s LCD image is made up of, competing with the original film grain.

00:32

– I really do want to hear the film-projector sound. Makes one aware of the physical side of the film – that shooting the piece involved someone manipulating physical film through a physical camera, in the presence of a physical body.

00:35

– But would the sound of the projector have been salient in 1963, or a background phenomenon read-through as cognitive noise.

–  Funny that I feel very worried about any minute that I’m not attending to the film. (Someone just came in from the street, and asked me about the film. And it made me very nervous to be missing seconds or minutes of … Giorno sleeping. As though there were any chance of him actually doing anything!)

–  I thought of asking the gallery for the remote, so I could take a break if needed. (As now, when my glasses need cleaning!) So glad I didn’t. The film needs to move forward relentlessly, without the viewer having any control. The FILM time and VIEWER time need to be very different, even out of synch and in different realms of control.

–  Film time is Warhol time, controlled – at least originally – by him. And I have to see how much I want to bring my time in synch with it.

00:40

– Also glad I didn’t ask for the WiFi code for the gallery. The 21st century permits distractions and multitasking that the 1960s didn’t. Does that make us feel even more stranded in Giorno’s sleep, since we aren’t used to EVER surrendering to one stimulus?

00:41

– Screen goes to white, as at end of a reel – for first time – now footage of what looks to be part of a pimply rear end, with very Modernist geometricization.

–  Were there Modernist precedents for the MALE nude body being reduced to geometry?

–  I notice, as I am supposed to, the scratchmarks running down the film and the bits of lint flickering across it. But I think it takes Modernist training to (want to) truly become aware of such things.

00:45

– Same shot, but seems to have been a change of film reel – after the 4 minutes that are supposed to elapse between reels.

–  Still the same bum-shot.

–  Nb that four people have just walked in. Having them chatting (loudly) in background is probably MUCH more like the orig. experiences of watching the movie … but I kind of want a more laboratory experience of silence. Is my duty as a historian to recapture original viewing experiences, or to zero in, autopsy-style, on the art object in question, so as to understand it fully?

00:50

Still that bum! (If that’s what it is.) Reaching that point where the image on the screen starts to lose its salience. The brain assumes that it’s no longer “signal” worth attending to. Nb that Warhol’s durational films – like durational music by Satie or Yves Klein –  is almost a psych experiment on attention and perception and how they interact.

–  Funny, Alva Noe’s notion of “embodied consciousness” should be relevant as I stay conscious of a body, but I’m too aware of Giorno’s body as representation.

–  I guess I am aware of my own body, as I shift in my chair. Wish I had the Factory’s famous “couch” to watch this on.

00:54

– New angle! Looking from behind at Giorno’s rear, as he lies naked on his side. Could almost be a woman’s body …. Except for the visibly hairy bum and back.

–  Utterly sexual, as the film hasn’t been until now. I was about to write that only a gay filmmaker could have done this shot … but then realized that I ought to be able to imagine a woman having shot it – but our society doesn’t leave much room for such “scopic agency” (sorry) even in the 21st century.

–  Camera records the bedsheets as so bright white as to seem like a fashion photog’s prop, rather than normal everyday sheets.

00:56

–  I suddenly realize how BRIGHT Warhol’s lights must have been, to allow such exposures on movie film. Could Giorno have been such a heavy sleeper, as is claimed, that Warhol’s shooting didn’t wake him up? Or should we imagine him complicit in the shoot?

–  If we imagine him complicit – and why should we imagine him asleep in ALL the shots? – then he is “suffering” the same duration, and possibly boredom, as us. He is us, but worse off because he really has nothing to look at!

–  And of course, as with all representation, we are also Warhol looking at Giorno at the time of the shoot. (Is it at the time of the shoot, or some present “now”? Does representation always situate the viewer in some past time as well as in some alternate space? I’m not sure…)

–  About one hour gone by. Pretty quickly. Not so bad. Pretty easy to imagine staying six times as long.

–  No seats (normally) in the Swiss Institute show. I had to borrow one specially. Can curators simply not IMAGINE someone staying throughout? Are we assumed to have such short attention spans? Nb that “durational time-based work” is now a staple of contemp. art, and we assume that we are allowed to give it the glancing attention we give to a painting. Whereas in 1963 the absolutely ruling paradigm for film was the auditorium (or loft) screening of a film that would be watched, sitting down, from end to end.

–  Inviting the possibility of casual, interrupted, non-continuous, painting-like viewing of film is one of AW’s most radical artistic moves. The resistance to AW’s films partly comes out of the failure to assimilate this new model – until fairly recently.

–  Some camera shake/motion at one cut in the “bum shot” – makes us doubly aware of Warhol (or someone’s) presence as the camera operator.

–  “Bum shot” rhymes with “cum shot” – of course absent from this film, but always there as a possibility because of the OVERWHELMING assimilation (in 1963) of this film to porn. In 1963, I bet most people’s most likely encounters w. 16mm film might have come via illicitly circulating, mail-order porn.

1:11

– Sudden cut to almost illegible shot of … corner of an eye? Nope – it’s the top of Giorno’s bum-crack, but seen horizontally because he’s lying on one side. Truly fetishistic to see this much sustained attention to one (potentially) sexual body part that is completely passive and immobile.

1:13

– Warhol is always billed as a passive observer, but here he’s met his match in a partner who’s so passive, he’s actually unconscious. And Warhol’s looking doesn’t seem passive at all, but determined and almost aggressive in its relentlessness. The aggression of a private-eye determined to crack a case.

1:15

– Another face shot, this time a different angle, w. Giorno in near-profile, looking up. Is he really asleep as AW looks on, or is he faking his inattention?

–  Giorno looks absolutely Roman (ancient) – a perfect Roman pugilist’s face. Slightly prognathous jaw.

–  Amazing! Giorno moves! I genuinely said “Woa!” when it happened, after more than an hour of immobility.

–  Wait – does anyone move as little as he has while sleeping for the last hour? Does that prove that this footage is to some extent faked? Someone give that man a FitBit, so we can record his sleep.

–  My own rear end hurts from sitting – I want Giorno’s bed!

1:19

– Going to stand up while I watch, w/o keyboard. Funny how much I’m worried about missing something.

1:21

– Back already. Wanted to record that the way the projection is installed is totally 21st Century, perfectly filling the big end wall of the gallery from wall to wall and floor to ceiling (wall runs straight to floor and ceiling w/o baseboard or top molding). This would have been an unknown presentation in 1963. A screen would almost always have been involved in the showing of the piece, whether in a cinema or a loft or the Factory. It would have felt closer to a Hollywood movie than to a gallery painting.

–  Giorno moves again … with exactly same motion as earlier. Anyone paying any attention would twig to the fact that the film has been looped now and then, and is NOT recording a true session of sleep in real time. Moves again … with exactly same motion as TWICE earlier.

–  Nb hard shadow of Giorno’s head on a wall next to him conjures sense of him in a small, bohemian space, on a single bed. If the bed isn’t narrow, AW would have to be lying on it next to Giorno to get the close-up shots he does.

1:28

– Does the slowing of the original footage to “silent” (3/4) speed also slow the familiar (visual) pitter-patter of the film grain? Certainly feels like it does, letting us KNOW that the film has been slowed. (Jonas Mekas, first and greatest fan of AW’s films, claims Stan Brakhage, AW’s rival in radical film, hated AW’s durational works when shown incorrectly at normal speed, but loved them when slowed.) So we end up, weirdly, with a slowed vision of something/someone who is already necessarily static. What does that mean?

–  Am I (is anyone?) sure that Sleep was always shown at slow, “silent-film” speed? I really doubt that in the wild-and-wooly sixties Warhol or anyone else would or could or would have wanted to guarantee such consistency.

–  Suddenly felt a slight wave of sleepiness – for first time! You’d think that would hit much sooner, given the subject and form of this film!

1:36

– New shot (or have we seen it before) sliding up Giorno’s body from below, framed to cut off all but the top of his pubes/bottom of his belly. Camera has to be about level w his (naked) crotch.

– He shifts and moves and breathes deeply.

–  Nb that, as with earlier shots of his cheek, if you stare at any one pale patch of skin you realize that the grain artifacts of the film actually turn its tone into something like a roiling pit of lava. Very strange since it ought to look ivory-smooth and immobile.

–  Nb that the hairy Giorno presents a “normally” masculine image of the homosexual male that was almost absent from 1950s and early-60s discourse. Even the (tiny) pro-gay literature – “One” magazine; “The City and the Pillar” by Gore Vidal – was obsessed with the “problem” of the swish, effeminate queer. (I.e., Warhol)

–  I am barely hearing the Satie – but it is also clearly making the whole experience more mellow and pleasant.

–  Compare Sleep, screening w. Satie played on the piano (by whom? On a record? What are the details of that narrative? Do they make sense?), with Rauschenberg having Feldman piano pieces played lived during his Egan Gallery (cct?) show.

1:46

– Giorno has been on his back for quite some time now, w. camera in same position. That’s what we (falsely) think of as the unchanging status of the entire film. In fact Sleep has (even) more event in it that Empire does.

1:47

– Foreshortened body, although not seen at full length, evokes Mantegna Dead Christ seen from his feet. Warhol must have known that from slides (I should check his college textbook) and once AW saw something, it NEVER seems to have left his memory bank and tool kit.

1:51

– Long period of white “leader” (as I guess it’s called), for second time that I notice in the film. Is that left in the digitized version to evoke the change of reels that would have been required in an original screening? Does the film survive as a bunch of 3-minute reels, as shot, which were then spliced together to fill six one-hour (?) reels for projection?

1:52

– Two hours gone by, more or less. I (guiltily) check my phone, which I realize I couldn’t have done in 1963. What distraction might I have had then? A visit to the concession stand for popcorn and a Coke?

1:54

– Reminds me that I’ve read early reports of Sleep screenings, and the anger that people felt in watching. (Famously, one wag went up to the screen and yelled “Wake up!” into Giorno’s ear – but actually, not sure if there’s any moment in the film when his ear would be thusly available to a standing viewer.) Most people walked out – some were angry at the “no-refunds” sign proudly posted – but some 50, the reporter said, stayed to the end. I have a feeling that in the (druggy) 1960s, more people might have watched straight through than now.

–  What would be the drug of choice for Sleep-watching? Speed, to increase one’s focus and to keep one awake, or pot to help one relax and go with the flow? Or acid, to add incident and excitement to the subject matter?

2:01

– Funny how representations never commit us to the size of the figure seen. Here Giorno is projected some 12-feet tall, from just the waist up, but doesn’t read as any bigger than if we were to see the same shot reproduced as a 3inch high still in a book.

2:02

– Screen went black for maybe ten seconds, then leader-white, then back to footage. Why?

–  Would even a bare hairy chest have been almost beyond the pale in 1963 Hollywood terms? How often did one see a naked man’s chest on film? I think Newman’s chest is bare in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

 –  Was homosexuality so very very forbidden in that era that some or many original viewers couldn’t have conceived of a homoerotics? I’ve certainly interviewed people (women, mostly) who said they had never heard of queer love until quite far along into their adult lives.

–  Now typing so much I’m in danger of lying if I say that I’ve “watched” Sleep for all 5.4 hours.  If only I could touch-type and never look at my computer screen, only at the movie screen and its image instead.

–  By almost always being below Giorno’s head, is AW’s gaze somehow “subordinate” to Giorno’s? Is Warhol establishing himself as a “bottom”. (I hate that silly, limiting terminology; also, I’m aware that it was EVERYWHERE in gay talk and writing in the 1960s)

–  This is almost Warhol’s (later) Blow Job, but from the position of the blow-er. Once you think of that, it’s very easy to think of Giorno as being a rather impassive blow-ee, feigning sleep.

–  Seems like we’ve been on the same few (looped) shots of Giorno’s torso from below for a LONG time. The normal notion of what Sleep is supposed to have been.

–  In a world of utter distraction like ours, what a pleasure to concentrate, in isolation, for so many hours straight!

–  Is this the ultimate in Arden Reed’s “Slow Art”? (Did Arden make a MoMA appointment to watch all of Sleep? He must have said, but I can’t remember.) The subject is the ultimate in slow (not still, like Empire, which is a different thing), and it forces slow looking. But of course its near-static subject also allows itself to be adequately “got” in a single glance, making the piece in fact fast. Is a two-hour action flick in some ways inherently SLOWER, since it forces close watching, with no wavering in attention, for longer?

–  There’s a wonderful, almost comic rhyme between the slow in-out breaths of Girono, as he sleeps, and us as we sit watching. Has there ever been as perfect a mirroring between subject and viewer as here, across the plane of the cinema screen? (Just realized that that effect is even stronger in Warhol’s Screen Tests, where the Test-ee looking out is perfectly mirrored in us looking at them.)

2:23

– Funny, screen is now perfectly bisected by long black scratch – which arrived when in the history of the footage this is based on?

–  How much does anyone, or did anyone, think of the material substrate for this film, and what it was and has been. It was shot on “direct reversal” (ie, slide-type) film, as it could have been edited and then watched for the first time in AW’s studio, and must have been turned into an inter-neg later so it could be printed for distribution to cinemas. In the digitized version now being screened, which artifacts are a product of which stage in the process? And of course some are artifacts of the digital transfer, and then the digital player and projector at the Swiss Institute.

–  Warhol said his slow films should be treated like a cozy fire in a fireplace, ie as background effects in a room, rather than as subjects for contemplation. (And I think I have him, somewhere, talking about them as paintings we look at now and then – at least I’m certain that a curator once asked him for permission to treat his films as paintings, to be shown alongside paintings in the gallery.) But the problem is:

a) That Warhol very often said things that he absolutely didn’t believe, for effect or to please a listener.

b) That we may not want to care about how Warhol wanted us to contemplate his work, when it’s in fact our turn to watch it.  Who is he to tell us how to look and attend? I assume that most artists, working in any medium, may have spent very little time attending to a piece once it was done. They are most normally in the presence of the unfinished. Does that (mostly) make them lousy elucidators of their own finished works?

2:38

– Looking at a strange bald patch in Giorno’s stomach hair, I’m reminded of that shot, in the long-ago Sensations exhibition of YBAs, that showed a hole in someone’s hairy head where a bullet had gone in.

2:40

– Funny, but a big black scratch that bisects the image, during certain segments of the piece, would have had to be a scratch on the interneg (scratches on the original positive would have been white) – so how is it that the scratch is repeated on different parts of the film that AW edited together? Wasn’t the interneg made in one go, from the entire film in its completed edit? (Greg Pierce, oh master of film stock, where are you when I need you?)

2:46

– Almost three hours in, and I’m acutely aware that the note-taking that allows me to attend for so long is also not true attention to the sensations of the film. I am, basically, attending to the contents of my mind, with occasional prompts from the work of art. But is this always and especially the case with slow art? Do I like slow art because it conforms so well to my model of the work of art as a “machine for thinking”? – that is, as occasion for thought and talk, rather than as freestanding sensation with its own inherent qualities independent of what we use them for. (Not sure what the “inherent qualities” of a work of art would be, except for its physical attributes, and why we would care about them outside of the effects they have on us and the thoughts/sensations they trigger.)

–  I guess I’m arguing for (or prone to) valuing the thoughts triggered by works of art over the pure sensations or emotions they trigger – even though I guess you could argue that the sensations and emotions are in some way (but in what way?) more inherent to the work and its qualities. Thoughts can wander a long way from the work, whereas sensations and emotions are triggered more directly.

–  Of course the range of possible emotions and sensations so triggered is more limited than the range of thoughts – and, most especially, can’t really be shared. Whereas the thoughts inspired by a piece can be shared and used and revamped and updated by an entire community of lookers.

2:55

– Back to LOOKING, Blake.

2:56

– For Beyond the Fringe fans: “Mine brother Giorno is an hairy man, but I am an smooth man.”

2:58

– Very weird skip in the footage. I wonder how it came about, and how it entered the history of what we now see in this digital version of the piece. The digitizers must have chosen to leave the skip in, even though it would have been trivial to remove it.

–  Seeing basically the same, almost identical (two? three?) shots of Giorno for a long, long time now. I wonder why or how Warhol decided to introduce more different shots at the beginning of the piece, then allow it to settle down to a more passive sleeping form later on.

3:01

– Precisely as I wrote that, image cut to a close up on Giorno’s sleeping face, in profile, that I don’t think I’ve seem before.

–  Feels very different from the footage of his entire torso.

3:03

– Funny glitch in the digital signal, so that some info about the HDMI source appears for a sec. Funny how the digital is no more foolproof and flawless than the analog and physical. I almost miss the old days when the film would get stuck in the projector and you would get to watch it burn and melt.

– Same profile shot as before is now lighter, as though Warhol adjusted his camera exposure, or the exposure that the interneg was printed at for this portion of film. Few minutes later, and it’s darker again. What gives, Andy?

3:06

– Giorno, in profile close-up, for some reason looks Brando-ish. The same funny combo of macho and tough and somehow slightly fay.

3:07

– Funny little thing, but I just noticed the perfectly squared and shaved end of Giorno’s sideburn. Reveals him to be the well-groomed former stockbroker that he was. Love to think of him visiting the barber in anticipation of Warhol’s arrival to film him. “Mr. Warhol, I’m ready for my close-up now!”

–  Come to think of it, a man as hirsute as Giorno would have had to shave before bed to appear as smooth-shaven as he does in “Sleep.” More extreme artifice in a film that seems entirely without any.

3:11

– Although I find Giorno very attractive in this footage, I’m struck by how essentially chaste, almost disinterested my reaction to him is, as a straight male viewer, and how different that must be from the reaction I might have if I were gay. Anyone who tries to play down the importance of sexuality to culture and art is ignoring how fundamental that difference really is, and how much it can affect the act of looking. (Even if you choose to ignore or repress a sexual response – as I might do when confronted by an image of a gorgeous naked woman, or by an image of a naked woman who wasn’t my “type” –  you are still aware of that act of ignoring or repressing, and your response is affected by it.)

–  Is this in any meaningful way Pop Art – even to the extent that Pop Art is a meaningful or useful category?  The four-square approach of the Campbell’s Soup is here too – the refusal of commentary or editorializing, and the presentation of subject for subject’s sake. That’s one of the most important features and innovation’s of 60s art, and extends also to abstraction (think minimalism’s “specific objects” and Stella’s “What you see is what you see”) and to photography (the “observational,” putatively anti-formal tendencies in photographers like Friedlander.) It’s my “ostensive” function of art, turned into an esthetic principle.

3:30

– Not sure why, but all of the sudden the cropping of one of Giorno’s eyes and cheeks by the tight close-up on his face seems violent, like an amputation.

3:31

– A section of underexposed footage makes the buzzing grain read very loudly as incident. Funny how mobile the surface of a projected 16mm film can be – like a Pollock! Would such a comparison to the previous generation have pleased or displeased Warhol and his fans in 1963?

3:34

– Giorno’s lips now seem very present. He’s shown on his back, as though awaiting a kiss (from Warhol). It’s so important to get rid of the myth of an asexual Warhol. He wanted and enjoyed love and sex as much as any (or at least many) of us. I worry that the culture has desexualized Warhol out of a kind of puritanism (and homophobia) that prefers not to think of greatness and sex (and most especially gay sex) as going together.

3:43

– Again, seems impossible not to conflate John sleeping with John, dead. I guess we have much more powerful precedents and models for images of manly men who are passive because dead than passive because asleep. (A nice piece of “quantitative art history”: Take a representative sample of Western paintings and sculptures and see how many show men asleep versus women, and ditto for men and woman who are dead. Also, I wonder how many images of sleeping men have automatically been categorized by art historians as images of male corpses.)

–  Always that rhythm of Giorno’s rising and falling chest, always visible if you take care to note it.

–  What would it be to watch this without taking notes? Just to be a completely passive observer, trying to truly take in the footage without actively reacting to it? How dull would that be?

–  Note how much less boring I find Warhol’s almost-static “stillies,” compared to his semi-narrative later films, which I find much more trying. Is that because the truly non-narrative can’t ever be failed narrative? And it’s narrative failure that produces frustration and boredom…

–  I have a feeling that most people who watch Sleep and Empire bring with them the narrative expectations of (Hollywood) film, and are annoyed when their expectations aren’t met. Whereas if you told them to look at, say, a painting of a sleeping man for five hours, they might refuse or even resist, but they wouldn’t somehow be annoyed at the work itself for not having narrative motion.

3:56

– When you turn away from the screen for a moment, then turn back, you’re struck by how much it feels like you’re seeing the close-up shot from a Hollywood film – and then you’re surprised simply by the fact that it doesn’t change to another shot as you watch. The fundamental semiotics are from Hollywood (unlike, say, in the films of Brakhage), so there’s an appropriation that matches the appropriation in the Campbell’s Soup cans. (Although, interestingly, that’s much less true of Warhol’s silkscreened paintings, where the subject – Marilyn or Liz or a suicide – is taken from pop culture but the fractured visual structures are fairly high-arty.)

4:01

– 5470 words written so far. Even if I post them, how many people are likely to read the whole pile? In an ideal world, would I actually write so much during a screening of Sleep that it would take a reader the full 5:21 to read my words?  Which of course would mean that I’d have to manage the impossible task of writing faster than someone can read, thereby turning a slow-art experience into a mad race.

4:04

– Suddenly aware of how the overexposed parts of the digital image go to a pure, bright white in a way they don’t with film.

4:05

– Another moment of all-black then all-white as some (fictive) projectionist changes the reels in Sleep. (How often would an underground theater have had the two projectors it takes to assure a continuous flow across reel changes?) I wonder if, in digitizing the piece, they should have included a track of the sound of the film projector, as I’ve sometimes come across with digitized art films? It would have been fake, sure, but there’s something unnerving and sterile about Giorno’s sleep unreeling in utter silence.

4:09

– Just about an hour left – and this has really not been hard or boring at all. But maybe that’s just because I love the sound of my own … thoughts.

4:11

– Was Warhol keen on the enlargement of his own love and lust for Giorno to movie-screen size? Sleep is really quite the act of commemoration – of a love and a lover and a love affair. Not one of the Old Masters managed to paint a lover’s face so it covered an entire wall.

4:14

– It’s almost impossible for most of us to remember or imagine how utterly formalist most thought about art still was right through the 1960s. It was very very difficult for most highly-trained viewers to see subject instead of pattern in a work of art. (I remember actually finding this hard, as a kid raised by diehard Modernists.) I wonder if Sleep was meant as the ultimate challenge to that old way of thinking. Was Warhol daring viewers not to see a man sleeping in his film? The hints of motion and action in the film make it that much harder to read it as a formal array; its near-total stillness, and its assimilation to painting, invite the failed attempt.

4:22

– All my notes until now have been taken from close enough to the projection that it just about filled my field of view – just because that’s where the gallery put my chair. I’ve now pulled back to the distance I’d be in a cinema, and the effect is very, very different. The piece felt very much like a painting, when seen from so close, but at this distance it feels much more cinematic – much more like a fine surrogate for the presence of a man really sleeping. Funnily enough, from the greater distance Giorno actually feels more present, at least as a cinematic subject.

4:25

– I wonder if the black-and-white of Sleep now feels more obviously and thoroughly old-fashioned than it did in 1963, when a good proportion of first-run movies, and most art-house movies, were not yet in color. The footage now feels very Golden-Age-Hollywood. I wonder if it did then? (Somehow, Warhol’s slowing of his footage seems to contribute to a nostalgic effect. Does the past always somehow feel in slow motion?)

4:28

– Aha! I think I just saw motion from Giorno I haven’t seen before, and new camera angles. Sounds trivial, but actually feels very notable, after so many hours of watching.  And feels surprising – you think you know Warhol’s tricks and procedures, and then he alters them.

4:30

– Giorno’s face now in close-up, facing the camera as he sleeps on his side. And now he’s back on his back, with his arm raised to present his underarm.

– Just noticed that Giorno has the little rings around the flesh in his neck that Renaissance men found so appealing, at least in women. (See Parmigianino, Madonna of the Long Neck.) There is a kind of “beauty-shot” effect in this film, or it’s like the Renaissance paintings of exemplary beauties.

–  Come to think of it, Giorno looks shockingly like the figure in a great Renaissance male portrait. I think it’s by Mantegna, but might be by Bellini or just maybe Antonello da Messina. Nice for once not to be able to look something up – as no one could have done, anyway, in a cinema in 1963.

–  Current shot (which has been looped a bunch of times, now) is really lovely – a giant, especially loving close-up on Giorno.

–  He moves his mouth as he sleeps the way a little kid does. And of course watching someone sleep is an inherently parental act, and the more tender for that.

–  How many people know that Warhol made several (half-hearted, more like quarter-hearted) attempts to become a father – by adoption, at least.

–  Giorno had a very lovely, sensitive mouth. Part of his beauty comes from its contrast to his notable, distinguished, Roman-general nose and jawline.

–  And such long eyelashes

4:42

– A new, strange shot, of Giorno sleeping with his arm over his head, with dark shadows hiding his eyes. Warhol seems to introduce just enough new shots to keep a pretense alive that the film is really continuous footage of Giorno sleeping, and changing positions.

–  With his eyes blacked out, he looks more dead than not. V. strange.  

–  Someone, somewhere, has obviously done a shot-by-shot diagram of the structure of Sleep.  I’ll have to look for such in my Warhol books – or wait for the catalogue of the films to appear. Like a dissection that lets you understand how a creature lived and moved.

4:49

– Yet another new shot (I think).  Strange enough in its composition (Giorno’s arm beside his head) as to seem almost Bauhaus.

4:51

– Giorno has such strong, identifiably Italian features that it’s hard not to see him as appealingly familiar to Warhol, the Slav who grew up among fellow immigrants. (One of his best childhood friends in Pittsburgh was Italian. She’s still in the family house, just doors up from Warhol’s.)

4:58 – OK, so I am indeed losing my concentration now. Have to ask, as my rear-end falls asleep on my hard chair: Is the experience of watching four hours of Sleep any different than watching five?

4:59

– But had I left just now, I would have missed yet another new shot of Giorno sleeping! Not a closeup on his face as he sleeps with one cheek against his pillow. And would my knowledge or understanding of the piece been any different had I not seen that shot?

5:00

– The difference between leaving early and staying throughout is that if you leave early you don’t have the certain knowledge of nothing happening that watching the full movie gives you. If you leave early, you can’t know for sure that there wasn’t some amazing, radical action that you missed.

5:04

– Seems almost as though Warhol deliberately lit Giorno so his eyes would be in deep, dramatic, funereal shadow. Warhol was capable of such planning (he was a much better technician than he let on)  but also quite capable of trusting to luck – and maybe, just maybe, to our willingness to find excellence in whatever he did.

–  Worth remembering that Warhol had only had one year of attention, of any kind, when he made Sleep, and was not yet the giant star he would become over the next few years. (The Silver Factory and its freak-show was still months away from coming together.) So Warhol was truly taking risks with his film, and daring to push a wary audience.

5:09

– Deeply weird new shot of Giorno’s face from above, camera now looking down his nose, with glints of sleepy tears in his one visible eye. Not at all a normal position from which to approach or view a sleeping person or friend or lover. It’s as though Warhol were peering (leering?) over the bed’s headboard.

- From this strange angle, the face seems somehow dismembered – becomes a congeries of features, with the (beautiful) mouth as the main identifiable item.

–  Talk about formalist, Bauhaus modernism, but with a Surrealist edge. Could really be a shot from Bunuel – or again, from Maya Deren.

5:16 

–  Film just  nearing its end – interesting that AW chose to end on this strange shot, and nb that there’s notable camera shake and movement, signaling a camera that’s clearly hand-held. Warhol is there at the end, as a palpable observer of his lover.

TA-DUM. Over. And out.

  (Installation photo of "Andy Warhol: SLEEP AND OTHER WORKS,” at the Swiss Institute, by Daniel Perez)

[hereticmk]

Resurrection.

If the bones of Jesus were found tomorrow, what would it do to your faith?

The answer to this question isn’t as easy as it may sound. Ask me the question 15 years ago and I’d say “what do you mean?” Even 10 years ago my answer wouldn’t have changed. But the last 5 years have been different. The last 3 even more so.

I hadn’t read much since High School, burned out by all the required reading for mundane classes. I prided myself on that fact, like any 20 something male would. In the last 3 years (I’m 31 now) that has changed. If it weren’t for side projects, 2 small children, and the fact that reading puts me to sleep still, I wouldn’t be able to put books down. But I stick to philosophy and religion.

I grew up what I would call Evangelical Christian. My parents did not seem fundamentalist, in fact far from it usually. But the Bible was inerrant (something I never questioned), and everything we needed to know to live a life worthy of Christ was found in it.

Last year I read the Koran cover to cover (in English unfortunately). I got a ways into the Bhagavad Gita before I couldn’t handle it any more. Maybe it was the translation I had. Maybe it’s that I don’t like fantasy/epic tales and battles. I got a few pages into the Vedas. I recently started reading the Talmud. Years ago I attempted the Book of Mormon but was mostly annoyed. And of course I have a long history and deep familiarity with the Bible. I’m not sure what religious text I’ll pick up next, but it’s quite fascinating trying to grasp life from the viewpoints of others who believe their path is the way that leads to God/Enlightenment/Heaven/Utopia/Good stuff.

I’ve also fallen in love (and out again) with Nietzsche, Renan, Tillich, and others. I love the philosophical approach to religion, especially when it comes to Christianity.

My own faith has changed so much in the past 3 or 4 years I barely recognize it. I have a running vision in my head of where I am on the continuum of the faith I grew up in. For the first few months of the beginning of my branching out I saw myself on very solid ground. As time went on, the vision showed me nudging closer to the edge of a cliff very similar to those in Dover. A year or so later I would see myself repelling down the edge of the cliff, but on sturdy ropes. Even later I imagine myself treading water at the base of the cliff, but easily within reach of the shore if emergency struck. And then I started to see myself swimming further out to sea, occasionally dipping my head underwater. As I look at my faith now I see myself in deep water, hundreds of yards away from shore, but not as scared as when I was treading water. Every day I found myself somehow drawing deeper into the contents of what I believe, but further from the version I was taught.

The fear that remains is not really of the religious kind, it is of the disappointment kind. My parents are what I would call “strong” Christians. Faith was a central part of our life as a family of four. My parents were (and in some capacities still are) missionaries, and my life consisted of much traveling, many churches, mission trips, Sunday services, and general Christian things. The most miraculous part is that both my brother and I would still consider ourselves Christ followers. We were not abused, abandoned, or otherwise disenfranchised with the church. I owe this to my parents. They were a consistent source of what real faith looked like: sometimes messy. To this day they only go to church if they are leading worship that Sunday. Even as a kid I remember the looks my parents would get for acting in very counter-evangelical ways. My brother and I would sneak up after church and split the communion bread (upon my mother’s prompting) so that we could last until lunchtime with the Pastor (who of course was always the last to leave church).

The faith I grew up in involved simultaneously supporting the sacrament of communion during the service, while realizing that the bread was nothing more than just bread. And at some churches, damned good bread too. The kind of bread an 8 and 10 year old set of brothers would happily chomp away at backstage while their parents wrapped cables and packed away instruments.

This ability to see the magic as well as spend time with the man behind the curtain was shaping my faith more than my parents knew at the time.

At the Last Supper, Jesus broke the bread, drank the wine, passed it around the table, and said the super vague phrase “when you do this, do it in remembrance of me.” The bread was his body, the wine his blood. But we’ve exchanged bread for crackers, or wafers, or hamburger buns, or baguettes, or bread. We’ve taken the gluten out of the bread. We’ve added grape juice as well as wine. We’ve served it on trays and plates. We’ve taken it, had it handed to us, had it placed on our tongues, dipped it, sipped it, passed it, and gotten nervous about it when the person in front of us has a cough. What is communion? We’re told to make sure our hearts are “ready” for it, or that only if we are already part of the Church, or part of THIS church, or baptized, or maybe baptized as infants is cool (but not at THIS church). You stay in your seat, cross your hands over your chest, take it and fake it, take it and real it, and all sorts of things if you haven’t “said the sinner’s prayer.” What is communion?

Modern-day Communion surely represents everything we’ve turned Jesus into. A plethora of options that suit our tastes, or the rules of the Elders, or the agreement of the church, or the Tradition passed down. But what is it? I guess it is nothing more than a group of people having decided to collectively affirm the tradition and the historical words of Jesus. Isn’t that all church is? Just a collection of people affirming tradition and history?

Back to my original question: if the bones of Jesus were found tomorrow, what would it do to your faith?

My answer starts with a question. What did Jesus come to do? A Bible answer first: to seek and save the lost. Or, he came that we may have life, and have it to the fullest. Or he came to become the path to God. Or he came to play some kind of middle man between us, our sin, and God. Or he came to conquer death. Or he came to set up a kingdom (what the Jews were expecting). So, I have a few more questions:

Did he accomplish his goals while alive?

Did he need to die in order to finish accomplishing his goals?

Did he need to resurrect in order complete his goals?

Did his heart need to literally start beating again in order to resurrect?

That last question admittedly is fresh off my brain as I work through Renan’s “The Apostles.” Where he completely denies a physical resurrection of Jesus’ body and claims it is a resurrection that, while just as critically important, occurs in the minds, hearts, and spirits of his followers, effectively producing the same end result.

Jesus was never clear. He was rarely clear about anything. And of his death and subsequent resurrection, he was no different. “I will destroy and rebuild the temple in three days,” along with its explanation, is about the closest we seem to come (along with a few other allusions to how he might die).

Someone very, very remarkable came along 2000 years ago. So remarkable in fact, that a tiny, tiny, tiny group of Jews not only decided to stop what they were doing and follow him, but through even more remarkable events, decided to (eventually) keep a record of what happened, and spawn a global movement that has changed the course of history for every human on the planet.

I have no reason to doubt the supernatural interfering with we claim is the “natural” world. I have had enough experiences myself to realize that weird things happen that we cannot explain. In some ways I hope one day we can start explaining supernatural items with the laws of nature. I think that makes them even more intensely interesting. I have no reason to doubt that Jesus is somehow the Son of God. If God is the essence of being, the force behind life, the love that appears between humans, then I don’t know how it works for him to have a son,  but between translations of what Son of God means, and us not really being able to grasp it, I don’t have a problem letting that one go for now.

Paul Tillich has a great quote in “Shaking the Foundations” in what it meant for Christ to die:

The Christ had to suffer and die, because whenever the Divine appears in all Its depth, it cannot be endured by men. It must be pushed away by the political powers, the religious authorities, and the bearers of cultural tradition. In the picture of the Crucified, we look at the rejection of the Divine by humanity. We see that, in this rejection, not the lowest, but the highest representatives of mankind are judged. Whenever the Divine appears, it is a radical attack on everything that is good in man, and therefore man must repel it, must push it away, must crucify it. Whenever the Divine manifests Itself as the new reality, it must be rejected by the representatives of the old reality. For the Divine does not complete the human; it revolts against the human. Because of that, the human must defend itself against it, must reject it, and must try to destroy it.

If the Apostles made everything up. If they got together, conspired to “pretend” Jesus rose from the dead in bodily form. If they kept the secret so well, and were able to write it down in a way that solidified the fact for generations to come, I would first of all be very impressed. Second of all, would it matter? Does not the church today (an idea borrowed from Tillich) represent Jesus as the Christ. Does the Church not shadow and act as Jesus? Is not the Church the very proof needed as to what Jesus was trying to accomplish in his time.

I find myself in deep dark water. I find myself not denying the resurrection, per se. As denying the resurrection is the one thing that my faith as a child does not allow me to do. That is the very thing our faith has been based on for so long. If the Christ did not die and was not resurrected, then we as Christ followers, in the words of (St. Paul I believe), should be “pitied most of all.” But I do find myself starting to understand the theory behind how one could believe that a flesh and bone resurrection is in many ways as good as a spiritual and heart-felt resurrection. The end goal is the same thing: a Church lives on to represent (as best it can) the life Jesus led, and the direction he pointed the Church.

I may find myself in deep water, but I am not alone. Renan writes from 1866 and depicts with striking clarity the future versions of Christianity, Islam, and attitudes towards spirituality in general.

To be continued…

[rigelmejo]

Like to preface, I never learned a language to fluency so everything i say needs a million grains of salt but like i do think it’s true, that the more u study languages, the easier it gets. not in the sense that it will ever be magically fast, but in the sense you get a better idea of how to study proficiently. You get a better idea of how to do the most possible in the least amount of time.

Because like? Chinese - it’s objectively hard. It’s hard. I think it’s difficult. But I am making progress at maybe 50% the speed I made progress in French. Which is a LOT faster than I made progress in Japanese (which was about 30% of the speed I learned french). In French, I got to being able to read the gist of informational texts/forums at around 6 months - and maybe 3-4 months to start struggling through titles and simple texts. Then maybe 1-1.5 years for being able to mostly read simple texts, get the gist of historical texts and light novels, and struggle through pretty much anything else - but at least get the basic ideas. 

For Japanese? It took me 1.5 years to get the basic gist of BASIC things like titles/short captions. It took me 2 years to get to the point where I could read simple short dialogues in some slice-of-life daily-activity mangas, and sometimes be able to get the gist of the plot. I think right now, for Chinese, I would probably be somewhere slightly under that point - because I can read fanart comics and watch short fanwork animations based on things I know and follow the gist - but if I looked at something completely new its uncertain if I’d be able to get the gist at all. But like... that’s 3 months of chinese in comparison to 2 whole YEARS working on japanese.

If I’m going to be GENEROUS, I also had a 3 month-ish high school chinese class once upon a time, although i don’t remember much from the class. So that would be like 6 months total in my life studying chinese. Which is still a FAIR BIT faster than I accomplished things in japanese. It’s still slower than french, but french is definitely one of the easiest languages to try to read in if you’re a native english speaker (so many words are similar once you get some basic grammar and high frequency words learned). 

If I keep progressing at this speed, I might be able to start struggling through web-novels and comprehending the gist at around 1 year. And for me, reading is the easiest way (and my favorite way) to improve my skills in a language. So once I hit that sweet spot where I CAN struggle to read, I’ll just keep improving at reading more or less as I just keep making myself read. And if Chinese is anything like French, then I’ll just need to be aware of the need to listen to chinese as well (and shadow audio for pronunciation) if I don’t want my listening comprehension to lag behind. That could be... a relatively decent level of reading ability in a few years. If it’s like french, but half as fast, then maybe 3-4 years to finally get to the point I don’t need a dictionary to read the stuff I want to be reading, and probably 1-2 years to start being able to grasp the main ideas of the target-stuff I want to read.

But like - my point? Is just that I am CERTAIN part of why I’m managing to progress to something I consider useful at a speed I am happy with, is because I’ve learned how I learn best.

For me, I know that I learn fastest by USING a language. My brain does not like being hand held, it does not like going slowly. My brain likes being thrown into a problem and being expected to solve it. It likes learning from context. It REMEMBERS best by being given a real context to associate the new words and grammar structures to - if it has a memorable example, that will make me learn it faster than mnemonics or repetition or anything else. Secondly - my brain acts like it always wants to go slow, and the best thing for it is to push myself past where I feel comfortable and keep over-challenging myself. It learns faster than I think it does, but I only can see that progress if I push myself.

For me, the fastest way to learn is:

To look up that 200-300 most common words tumblr post, for being able to communicate one’s thoughts, and make that the first list I work on learning. My brain likes knowing how to say anything it would need to say, and that list is perfect for prioritizing usability of a language (versus textbooks, which often prioritize classroom/work/hobby words before sentences like ‘i hope that’ ‘i need help with’ etc).

To look up a grammar guide, and read through that bastard. I’m not kidding - read through it. Don’t wait, don’t slow down. If a grammar point makes sense, move forward and do NOT bother trying to memorize it. Grammar points WILL keep popping up again and again in other textbooks you look at later, and as you look up structures later in context - so first literally just prioritize EXPOSING yourself at least once to the grammar structures and the explanation of how they work. (My brain always, without fail, wants me to slow down here - but it never actually needs to, slowing down here just prevents me from making progress as quickly as I’m able to). It’s boring, but do it - this step is so the structure of the language will make some sense to you, and be something you can start to interpret when you see/hear it.

Now start engaging with native material - right now. It’s the biggest struggle in the world. You maybe know 50-150 words. Start engaging with native material and looking things up that keep popping up. It’s a painful struggle at first - but its the easiest way to get started on learning the rest of that 300 word list, and to get started on learning the most common words by frequency (because they’re the words pissing you off the most as you see them over and over but don’t understand them). At this point get a good dictionary app or website lined up (that has audio examples) to use. Bonus points if you are also LISTENING to native material. With Chinese, I started with watching shows from day 1, with chinese subtitles on - which made looking up new words really easy, and made attaching pronunciation to words really easy. Youtube videos are also good for this. Again, at this point EVERYTHING is an absolute struggle. You just live with it. This step is to throw yourself into the deep end and make your brain START LEARNING AND CARING - this is the problem it’s being given to solve: how to understand. The difficulty makes your brain want to figure out what things mean, and try to figure them out - and this is also the basis for context you’ll refer back to as you learn more. 

Once the absolute pain of the struggle finally hits its breaking point, find a general word frequency list of 500-2000 of the most common words in the language. You can either use a flashcard app (memrise/anki), literally just go through that list over and over, use a book focused on teaching them, use clozemaster if you want context around the words (which WILL be a struggle at first just like reading native materials, but if you’re improving it will become MOST obvious on that app when suddenly sentences go from seeming awful to get through, to seeming overly easy). This also might be where a textbook comes in - just so you can see those frequent words used in textbook example sentences, with explanations, over and over.  This step is so that the next time you dive into native material, it hurts less.This is about expanding vocabulary.

After a while, gauge your progress by going back to native materials. (To some degree, always be engaging in native materials - but during step 4 of expanding vocab you can just do it passively without actually trying to learn much from native material). But once you feel you’ve improved your vocabulary, go back to trying to read/listen and gauge progress. There should be some difference. What’s easier to read? What’s easier to hear? What are the weak points - is it certain grammar structures you now need to look up more in depth? is it idioms holding you back? have you been focusing on fantasy words too much and you need more business vocab? is the listening weak - do you need to listen while reading more? Whatever your weak points, that will help you plan your next specific learning goals (aside from the obvious long term goals of - acquire more vocabulary and keep re-looking up grammar points until they stick). Clozemaster, again, I think is one of the fastest ways to gauge progress - the short sentences make it clear if your reading is improving or not, without being overwhelming. Youtube videos make it clear if your listening is improving or not - can you understand more without english subtitltes/without ANY subtitles, or is it still the same? It’s pretty obvious if you’re in a ‘struggling’ stage, a ‘gist understood’ stage, or a ‘easily understood’ stage. This step is about engaging in native material intensively again, to see what topics you actually CARE about learning, to practice comprehension, to put all the hard work to use and feel satisfied at the improvements. 

Once you have noticed a jump in progress, take the time to look at your original high frequency word list again. Did you learn all of the 300 basic common words? If not, finish that up now so there isn’t a gap in knowledge. If there’s a real basic grammar point you didn’t learn, fill that gap now too. Then move on to the 500-2000 high frequency word list. If there’s a gap in what you know, work on filling it in now (by doing step 4 some more). If you noticed that you only understand grammar up to a POINT, then consider now diving into a new grammar guide or book and start reading into grammar more again - just read through it, don’t worry about memorizing. You just want to become more familiar with the parts you don’t understand, and get more exposure to other explanations for those grammar structures. This step is all about working in a more structured manner to fill in the gaps in your knowledge so you make sure the foundations you’ve build are solid. This step is all about finishing reading the actual word lists/pushing through flashcard or clozemaster drills/reading textbooks, and making sure everything you’ve learned is a solid level - whatever level that is. (Sort of like A1-B1 etc, you don’t want some reading ability at B2 then you get thrown a topic you forgot to study and suddenly you aren’t even A1 level comprehending anything). 

Now just keep repeating steps 3-6: (3) engage with native material and look up things when not understanding something that keeps coming up is frustrating/holding back comprehension, (4) find a word list of a higher size if you get too frustrated from too many unknown-words and focus on word drills, (5) go back to native materials once that gets boring and gauge progress again. 

---

 Once you see a significant progress-jump in your comprehension of native materials, you can do step 6 again and make sure your newly-learned level of comprehension has all it’s gaps filled in - by scanning over the entire word list you’ve been using/scanning over grammar books for structures you’ve been struggling to understand/doing more listening practice if that’s what you need/etc. 

The key to studying efficiently, for me, is to first find word frequency lists and grammar guides and start reading those through. Then to throw myself headfirst into native materials and struggle horrifically - but it’s interesting material, and I know I’ll look up a bunch of the high-frequency words/grammar structures I encounter that keep eluding me (and the native content will provide context for those words/structures so I remember them more easily). Then once that is no longer efficient, diving into learning materials and just cramming new information quickly - again, because I’ll go back to native material later to get more exposure to those new things, and to get context to remember them better with. Then finally, as I keep cycling through this process, occasionally gauge my own progress and make more specific goals if I realize I have gaps in certain areas (which is almost ALWAYS in either certain topics of vocabulary, listening comprehension, or grammar points I haven’t read about yet and should read about once they start hindering my ability to comprehend things).

I know myself, and what I’ve learned is my brain loves to encourage me to study much slower and less efficiently than I know I’m capable of - because being thrown headfirst into challenging content feels HARD, but it’s also the way I learn quickest, because I learn the easiest when I’m just problem solving.

---

I also know that for myself, the things that have made the most significant difference in how fast I learn are: 

Finding a frequency word list immediately and using THAT to prioritize which words to learn.

Finding a grammar guide and CHUGGING through that as fast as possible as early as possible.

Engaging with native materials immediately, and often, even though at first (and in waves throughout my progress) it can be an absolute slog. 

Doing listening early, often - listening to shows, listening to youtube videos, listening to audiobooks, listening to the pronunciation in the translators/dictionaries when I learn new words. (I did NOT listen to french often enough or early enough, and that still holds me back in french. In contrast, I did listening so immediately in chinese that even though my listening still isn’t as good as my reading, it is FAR CLOSER in comprehensibility then my listening-to-reading ratio in french is.)

Not letting myself slow down and try to stop and memorize things. Instead, trying to prioritize learning from context. Flashcards and word lists DO help me, but not nearly as much as context based problem solving - so they’re more of a crutch to push up my ability to comprehend or to fill in gaps in knowledge. I should use those things to be exposed to the new word/structure, and then instead of memorizing jump into REAL CONTEXT and then start learning it as I keep coming across it. This is the easiest, fastest, way for me to learn new words and structures. Mnemonics/flashcards/lists are just crutches for when learning from context needs some more building blocks to even be possible to do. I am NOT good at sticking to flashcard/list regimes, and they don’t help me as much as just forcing myself to dive into native material anyway. 

[rigelmejo]

random june notes:

japanese:

i probably WOULD improve in japanese at this point if i just like. made a schedule to play video games regularly lol. i know enough kanji “roughly” through hanzi. yes, it would be brutal. it would also be brutal figuring out the hiragana words that like help (are not common particles but mean stuff like ‘and’ or ‘a lot’) since those words are necessary to comprehend but not kanji. i do think if i used the dictionary app on my phone while playing, it would be fine, i’d get through enough to eventually improve in japanese. would it be brutally draining at first? yeah... would studying more of the nukemarine memrise decks help... yes ;-;.

so all i’m saying is - i COULD just study with games at this point. it would be harder than using other stuff too, but i Could. so technically i have no excuse to not study more except - no time right now.

that said i want to read my ‘reading japanese’ books and feel the urge to, so i’m just going to do what i want.

also likewise, i think the Wasabi Japanese lesson plans would help me a LOT with listening and speaking skills - which are 2 areas i’d benefit from studying, so i kind of want to do those lessons more when i have time! 

So yeah my “official” plan right now is: Finish reading Japanese in 30 Hours, finish Nukemarine Memrise courses, read other books as desired, do some Wasabi Japanese lessons, read manga/play games as desired.

french:

i want to keep doing and finish le francais par le method nature. do i have time? later but not really rn.

also i just recently remembered i liked Charles Duff’s french textbooks.

korean:

do you ever want to study a language just because the teacher is cute? do you ever want to just because you’re watching more kdramas and maybe you’d focus more if you were listening to the words, and just found your old Korean at A Glance book and kind of want an excuse to read it? Yeah ToT. yeah i’m really feeling the urge to just study korean short term and see how much i can learn. (An excuse to test comprehensible input method at least you know? Because the Learn Korean in Korean youtube is REALLY good and i WANT to watch it even though i have no big reason to, and i like the teacher’s vibe ToT). who knows if i’m just gonna. fuck around and do that for fun.

Chinese:

WELL i had a humbling experience yesterday lol! I found out I can follow Guardian audiobook MUCH LESS WELL if its made by a different speaker. I can follow Avenue x’s audiobook super well (and she does different voices for each character, different audio for each scene). I just tried listening to someone else’s Guardian audiobook yesterday, and except for some key familiar lines? I couldn’t pick up a lot the first listening. Which!! I guess means YES who you practice listening to matters a lot lol. So I am currently RE-DOING step 2 of L-R method (chinese audio, chinese text) with the new audiobook. Because with the text I can easily understand this new audiobook and follow along (I do KNOW most of the words in reading lol now thanks to the prior L-R sessions). But without text? Oh man I was drowning. On the upside - this means I’m doing more listening/reading practice again in chinese! Downside is YES I am still procrastinating future L-R chapters lol. At least I’m doing something I find fun.

I am watching a LOT of cdramas lately. Mainly with eng subs because its just for fun. Although I got the urge to watch The Shaw Eleven Lang again which is only chinese subbed so. But yeah - I am trying to use these shows as some listening practice/shadowing lines every few minutes/looking up new words every few minutes. It’s not intensive, its probably barely study, but its what I’m actually doing so might as well mention it.

basically i’m just kind of playing around this month. i needed a break from intensive study i guess, and more time just reminding me what i like doing? ToT

i also want to finish reading the DeFrancis Readers I just. have no time rn.

(there were many good things about learning chinese). i think one thing i’m really glad i got through in chinese was the initial hump of starting to learn hanzi? I truly think its because the book Tuttle Learn Chinese Characters (800 characters) just used an approach that really clicked with me. After that, I could use the same mnemonic method more or less to learn more on my own through words, and chinese words use hanzi pretty logically. Now, when i do go into japanese again, one of the biggest hurdles of just ‘basically recognizing’ kanji is over. I still need to learn all the kanji pronunciations, and specific words, but just having them be symbols i recognize and can interpret on some level makes them so much less daunting. and if i hadn’t gotten over that initial ‘1000 hanzi’ hump lol, then i would still be finding chinese and japanese unbearably daunting. in 2.5 years in japanese i never got past 500 characters. in 6 months i got through 1000 in chinese, and that really just helped so much. now when i learn new characters in reading it is rarely as hard to recognize their radicals and potential meanings and sound and quickly get a vague recognition of them. 

also shout out to chinese for having grammar that just ‘clicks.’ yes i make mistakes (and forgot SO much that i now know intuitively so i no longer remember the actual rules and need to review). but simply comprehension wise it did NOT take long to figure out (like a year?). and just. whenever i go back to french or japanese i’m always like oh god oh no i FORGOT conjugation exists. ;-; i really love and appreciate how when you learn a chinese word you LEARN THE WHOLE WORD - not just one conjugation. that IS the whole word you need to recognize - if its used in past tense, in different ways, it will ALWAYS sound the same and be spelled with those hanzi and that is NICE. its just like... with french or english or japanese you’re really learning like 8+ words when you learn one word, with all the conjugations you have to make. with chinese i think the way the grammar works makes it less effort for each individual word which wow do i appreciate...