#real yearning is referencing a character not even in the image

[sanae-kochiyas]

<Maybe one day I’ll ask him, what color the koi are in the pond.>

[wangxianficfinder]

In the mood for...

March 25th

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1. hi! y'all are really cool! A) are there any fics where a-yuan (raised by the wens/wwx) wields suibian when he gets older?

also, are there fics B) where jiang cheng dual wields suibian with sandu? @writeitinsharpie

1A)

Though one were strong as seven, he too with death shall dwell (For many times and lands) by sjyl_lotus (E, 148k, wangxian, WIP, Major Character Death, Graphic Depictions of Violence, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Suicide Attempt, Suicidal Thoughts, YLLZ WWX, LSZ is a Wei, WWX Adopts LSZ, WWX doesn't go to nightless city, WWX runs away with a-yuan and granny Wen, Little bit of angst, Wéi Yuan is an excelent son, WWX Doesn't die, people is people and overall JGY is JGY so shit will happen, JYL Lives, Wangxian Reunion, Canon Divergence, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Lanling Jin Sect, Yunmeng Jiang Sect, Gusu Lan Sect Rules, Gusu Lan Sect, Burial Mounds, granny wen is best, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Blood and Violence, Implied/Referenced Torture, Panic Attacks, supportive WSZ, Anxiety Attacks, Canon-Typical Violence, Slow Burn, Mutual Pining, Slow Build, MXY Deserves Happiness)

🔒❤️ kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight by AlfAlfAlfAlfAlf, tardigradeschool (T, 75k, WangXian, Hurt/Comfort, Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Eventual Happy Ending, Getting Together, Burial Mounds Settlement Days, Inspired by The Parent Trap (1998), Kid Fic, teen shenanigans, two a-yuans, Fluff and Angst)

1B)

The Twin Blades of Yunmeng by GhostySword, ofmindelans (T, 89k, JC & WWX, wangxian, JC/NHS, Canon Divergence, Yunmeng Brothers Reconciliation, BAMF JC, protective LWJ, Golden Core Reveal, Swords and Feelings, WWX Resurrection, Canon-Typical Violence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Slow Burn, Embedded Images, Sect Leader QS)

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2. Hi!

For the next itmf :

Looking for the fics that talk about NHS a) as the real author of the spring books he was distributing. Imagined and painted .

B) Or another version where he specifically was giving WWX spring books with gay sex or bi threesomes maybe

C) fics with focus on wwx browsing NHS spring books and doing some thinking about sexuality and self exploration

Thank you!

2B)

Fentao-laoshi’s Guide to Cut-Sleeve Pleasures by occultings (microcomets) (E, 31k, wangxian, canon divergence, pining while fucking, friends with benefits, first time, cloud recesses study arc, practice kissing, sharing a bed, jealousy, getting together, confessions, happy ending) could also fit 2C

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3. hii this is for itmf!!

fics where lan yuan is still like a toddler!! or even an infant!!!

💖 The Simplest Way Forward by harriet_vane (E, 71k, wangxian, modern, accidental baby acquisition, slow burn, pining)

box your errors by mellowflicker (T, 42k, WangXian, Modern AU, single dad lwj, Domestic Fluff, Family Issues, Slow Burn, Kid Fic, let lwj have friends agenda, Hurt/Comfort, Pining)

🔒 so take my hand (take my whole life too) by cicer (E, 92k, wangxian, Modern, Accidental Baby Acquisition, oh my god they were roommates, Idiots in Love, Mutual Pining, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, this fic is not about trauma, it's about the yearning, slowburn, some characters have a pretty strong bias against folks with drug addiction, (this does not reflect the author's opinion of people with addiction disorders!), none of the really grim abuse/drug use affects our main characters, and it takes place offscreen)

The stuffed bunny, the beautiful nephew, and other gifts from Lan Qiren by deliciousblizzardshark (G, 8k, LQR & WWX, wangxian, Modern, Single Parent WWX, Good Uncle LQR, Accidental Uncle Acquisition, Found Family, Fluff)

Let's Play Pretend and Live Our Lives by Tassos (E, 50k, wangxian, Modern, On Purpose Baby Aquisition, Accidental Husband Aquisition, Idiots in Love, WWX Has Self Esteem Issues, Domestic Fluff, Kid Fic, Light Angst, the Lans and Jiangs make an appearance, NHS Gives Great Advice, Pining, Getting Together)

Magic Mishap by Regency_Bunny (T, 8k, wangxian, Modern, imbo LXC, Single Parent WWX, Kid Fic, Magic Tricks, Fluff and Humor, Child LSZ, Meet-Cute, Bunnies, Misunderstandings, Love at First Sight)

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4. Hi, I'm in a mood for fantasy AUs with necromancer WWX ^^ Can also be modern w magic

Darkness Before the Dawn by Selenay (E, 64k, wangxian, Zombie Apocalypse, Modern With Magic, Necromancer WWX, Reunions, toddler A-Yuan, There Was Only One Bed, There are zombies but not graphically horrific zombies, Angst with a Happy Ending, Find a home in the middle of an apocalpyse)

all the bonds of nature by Anonymous (E, 68k, wangxian, MXY & WWX, MXY & LWJ & WWX, WIP, Modern with Magic, Romantic Comedy, Roommates to lovers, Pining LWJ, Pining, LWJ falls in love in roughly fifteen seconds, he's a mess what can i say, Necromancy, ethical necromancer WWX, Music Teacher LWJ, Fluff and Smut, a lot of meditation on the bullshit of being a public school teacher, musings on the nature of personal property and land ownership as one is wont to do, Ghosts, Urban Fantasy, Low Fantasy, wangxian are extremely weirdo4weirdo in this, Light Angst, Anal Sex, Oral Sex, Rimming, Felching, Light Bondage, Virginity Roleplay, (just a little. wwx is not good at playing the virgin), Kink Negotiation, Praise Kink, BDSM, Developing Relationship, Dominant LWJ)

necromancy is a valid career path! Series by coslyons, Skadiseven (T, 41k, WWX & XY, XY & WQ, WN & XY, WWX & WN & WQ, LSZ & XY, LWJ & XY, wangxian, Granny Wen & XY, Modern with Magic, Seattle, Necromancy, Found Family, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Gardens & Gardening, Mathematics, Running, and other crimes against Teenagers, XY is a shitty teen, sometimes a family can be three mildly feral twenty-somethings and the extremely feral teenager that adopts them, Growing Up, The Mortifying Ordeal of Realizing Your Pseudo-parents are People Too, Big brother XY, A-Yuan is a little gremlin, WWX is a much larger gremlin)

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5. Hi! 🤗

This one is for ITMF. I'd like to read new fics about WWX having a new golden core. No mordern fics or dark ones, please, I'm not in the mood 🙏. I want happy endings!

Thanks again! You make my days much better!!

🥰✨ @wangxiansgirl

The Core Issue by Hauntcats (T, 21k, wangxian, WQ & WWX & WN, NHS & WWX & NMJ, canon divergence, golden core rebuilding, golden core tied to soul, angst w/ happy ending, not JC friendly) WWX meditates a golden core back

when you’re doing all the leaving (then it’s never your love lost) by tardigradeschool (T, 26k, WangXian, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Sharing a Bed, Sharing Clothes, Fix-It, the inherent eroticism of under robes, Golden Core Transfer) LWJ gives WWX a part of his own core

🧡 a stone to break your soul, a song to save it by rikke ( M, 180k, WangXian, Arranged marriage, Canon Divergence, Hurt/comfort, Light angst, Canon typical violence) Technically not a new golden core, but a new core of a different type

The Fire Lapping Up the Creek by notevenyou (E, 66k, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, Injury, Injury Recovery, Blood, Respiratory Illness, Major Illness, Fever, Grief/Mourning, Burial Mounds, Angst with a Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Hunger and food scarcity, Surgery, Fix-It of Sorts) WWX gets part of someone else's core transplanted into him

Ghosts Shouldn’t by ShanaStoryteller (Not Rated, 15k, WangXian, Grief/Mourning, Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending)

Righteous at a Cost by thunderwear (G, 21k, wangxian, LQR & WWX, Canon Divergence, Fix-It, no one dies, LQR finds out about WWX's core, WWX and LQR are friends??, In My Fic?, its more likely than you think, LWJ in the bg like whats happening?, Fluff, WWX goes to Gusu, Mutual Pining, Golden Core Reveal)

Can't Tell Me Nothin by natacup82 (T, 35k, wangxian, Canon Divergence, Everybody Lives, Family Feels, Communication, BAMF Women)

🔒Away from Trouble by Ilona22 (M, 15k, wangxian, Alternate Universe, Not JC Friendly, WangXian Get a Happy Ending) This is one of my personal favorites, for the growth wwx goes through and what he accomplishes separate from the sects while regrowing a new core for himself. (However, the author doesn’t spend enough time on wangxian romance for it to not just feel like something they tacked on to fill that required box, so don’t go in expecting good wangxian)

What Is Left Over by Loriqod (T, 30k, wangxian, JC & WWX, Yunmeng Shuangjie, Yunmeng brothers, Post-Canon Fix-It, WWX Has a New Golden Core, Happy Ending, WangXian in Love, SO SO SO IN LOVE, bite-sized angst, Canon-Typical Violence, JC & WWX Reconciliation, Training Montage) This one’s WWX redeveloping a core in MXY’s body. It might not be quite what you had in mind, but give it a chance, this fic is ALL about him actually cultivating with the idea of making a new core, & it’s rare to find a fic with that focus. (Even amongst fics that are suppose to be all about that(for some reason people are allergic to showing WWX actually cultivate))

I’m Sorry & Thank You by Iamnotawriter (T, 12k, wangxian, post-canon, Canon Compliant, Golden Core, Canon-Typical Violence, LQR’s epipheny, Angst with a Happy Ending)

Bitter Plants Bearing Sweet Fruit by Kryal (T, 83k, wangxian, canon-typical horror elements, Worldbuilding, Desert, Misuse of Historic Setting, Original Character Death(s), Case Fic, aftermath of canon, Established Relationship, Nothing Explicit But Shameless Innuendo)

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6. Alright everyone, give me everything you have where either: (A) WWX is an actual rogue cultivator at the start of the fic, or (B) he leaves the Jiangs (via Madam Yu banishment or getting fed up with them an leaving on his own) and spends time as a rogue cultivator. (I want to see my boy in the wild doing the wild cultivator thing) if he doesn’t have a core at the beginning of the fic, I would appreciate recs where he regains it at some point. I have a Wangxian agenda btw, so WX endgame plz. @omgnectarina

Ad Oblivione by Baph, HikariNoHimeWriter (M, 70k, WangXian, Time Travel Fix-It, Temporary Character Death, Canon-Typical Violence, POV Multiple, Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, Identity Reveal, Golden Core Reveal, Cultivation World Critical, Not JC Friendly, Abusive YZY, Angst with a Happy Ending) WWX is sent back in time to when he was a child & doesn't get taken in by the Jiangs

We Meet at the Thousandth Step by Admiranda, Rynne (T, 258k, wangxian, CSSR/WCZ, WIP, Canon Divergence, No Sunshot Campaign, CSSR & WCZ Live, Rogue Cultivator WWX, Different First Meeting, Night Hunts, Genius WWX, Inventor WWX, Romance, Drama, Fluff, Strangers to married, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Everyone Lives AU, Developing Relationship, Minor Violence, Case Fic, Mystery, Flirting, WWX's Canon-Typical Flower Flirting, Arson, There Was Only One Bed, Getting Together, First Kiss, Meeting the Parents, Resolved Sexual Tension, Resolved Romantic Tension, WWX Is a Good Big Brother, New Relationship Bliss, Chinese Mythology & Folklore, Blood and Injury, Yiling siblings)

Cultivating immortality by KizuKatana (E, 230k, wangxian, Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Rogue Cultivator WWX, Pining, Mutual Pining, WWX low self-esteem, BAMF WWX, BAMF LWJ, Angst with a Happy Ending, not sure if this qualifies as fix-it but that was my emotional need/intent, Hurt/Comfort, unreliable narrator (wwx's self image is…), sect wars happening, Canon typical darkness, demonic cultivation descriptions in detail, self-indulgent exploration of the creation of demonic cultivation and how it changed WWX, JC and LWJ are reluctant (VERY RELUCTANT) allies, YZY & LQR are made to face up to their faults, JYL is badass (fight me) though not in terms of cultivation strenght, JC gets a chance to redeem himself, Found Family, First Time, novel canon relationship dynamics)

🔒 crying like a fire in the sun by Reverie (cl410) (T, 10k, wangxian, SL/XXC, JC & WWX, BSSR/LY, Runaway WWX, Canon Divergence, Everyone Lives AU, rogue cultivator WWX, Angst, Post Cloud Recesses, Not YZY Friendly, Happy Ending, BSSR is WWX's grandmother instead of grandmaster)

Inchoate by Marinelifeclub (T, 20k, wangxian, Child Abuse, Bad Parent JFM, Bad Parent YZY, Protective LQR, Protective LWJ, Rogue Cultivator WWX, YZY Bashing, JC Bashing, No Golden Core Transfer, Dark JFM)

A Thousand Things by tickertape (M, 108k, wangxian, Canon Divergence, WWX Isn't Adopted by the Jiāngs, Developing Friendships, lots of OCs because I can't help myself and I love them, most of the canon cast make cameos at some point, miscommunication and misunderstandings (they’re idiots your honor), Nightmares, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, Night Hunts, The Cloud Recesses Rabbits, Cloud Recesses Shenanigans, Slow Burn, like really slow burn, like if it was a bushfire it would take 8 years for it to burn through one (1) forest, the wangxian strangers to obnoxious best friends to obnoxious lovers pipeline, 'shitty cultivation world bureaucracy' is also a running theme, WWXHas a Fear of Dogs)

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7. hello! I was hoping you could recommend fics where wei ying is taken hostage by people who hate lan zhan and lan zhan gets beaten up trying to save him. Maybe kind angsty and emotional? @ivybookworm

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8. hi - for the next itmf, any fics that go on from that haunting almost last scene in the Untamed where LS, WN and LWJ all leave WY alone on the road. angsty ones that explore the idea of WY having no-one would be awesome. thank you so much for all you do! @oldoni

Story-Shaped by lingering_song (T, 13k, NHS & WWX, wangxian, Post-Canon, Chief Cultivator LWJ, Inventor WWX, Found Family, NHS needs a new hobby, And apparently that’s spoiling his Wei-Xiong, Mentioned Character Death, Alcohol, Protective NHS, WangXian Endgame, Not JC Friendly, Not particularly gentry sects friendly overall tbh) NHS finds WWX wandering about. Possibly not as angsty as requester is hoping for, but does address how bad an idea it is to let WWX wander alone

im reminded of a fic but cant recall the one. Wwx is travelling by himself, writing letters to LZ, he stays in a town and it ends up cursed. LZ and the juniors arrive to solve the case. Wwx is acting weird and hides his letters. The juniors read the letters and find out wwx is angry and full of resentment about how he's been treated. They find out the curse resonates from him. They talk it out to resolve matters. Any idea?

some good mistakes by Lise (T, 18k, WangXian, JC & WWX, JC & LWJ, Road Trips, (terrible road trips), Post-Canon, Rescue Missions, Hurt/Comfort, ish, Awkward Conversations, POV JC, JC & WWX Reconciliation, (ish they’re working on it)) link in #13

Rotten Work by ShanaStoryteller (Not Rated, 63k, WangXian, WWX & JL, Post-Canon, Protective WWX, Protective JL, Yunmeng Bros Reconciliation, Reluctant Matchmaker JL) similar to Story Shaped, but it's Jin Ling who finds wwx. // might fit the bill? It isn't overly angsty, but it does have characters remarking on how bad of an idea it is to let WWX go off on his own.

Judge Softly by Chrononautical (E, 32k, wangxian, LSZ & WWX, LQR & WWX, accidental voyeurism, non-consensual mind reading, oblivious WWX, bamf   WWX, genius WWX, post-canon Fix-it, angst w happy ending, LQR tries)

the soft animal of your body by howodd5ever (M, 21k, wangxian, Post-Canon, Getting Together, WWX has feelings about having a body, sort of a case fic, a little bit of epistolary goodness, graphic descriptions of wounds, Feelings About Death, WWX gets seriously injured, quoting chinese poetry at each other as a love language, Art Embedded, wound-tending as an act of love, Bathing/Washing, the mortifying ordeal of being asked to stay, Sharing a Bed, Finding home, WWX's canonical alcohol abuse makes an appearance a bit)

my age has never made me wise by idrilka (E, 63k, wangxian, Post-Canon, Part-epistolary, Mutual Pining, Getting Together, Marriage Proposal, Homecoming, One Brain Cell WWX Strikes Again)

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9. Itmf: what's a story premise/trope that's really hard to do well, and what stories have done them really well?

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10. Itmf, what's ur fav story prompt/initial premise that you've seen, regardless of the execution(s) of it?

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11. thank u for ur hard work! any fic recs of lan zhan hurting wei ying and he regrets it? thankss

Concord by Deastar (T, 41k, WangXian, Arranged Marriage, Gūsū Lán Sect Rules, Depression, Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending)

我的皇后是農民 | sowing seeds in the cold palace by sweetlolixo (E, 84k, WangXian, Imperial Palace, Emperor LWJ, Imperial Consort WWX, Farmer WWX, Angst, Romance, Wingman LJY, Wife-chasing-LWJ, Arranged Marriage, Best Boy A-Yuan)

Honesty is the Best Policy (Except if You’re an Asshole) by piecrust (E, 22k, wangxian, college/university au, porn w/ feelings)

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12. ITMF like, historical perspectives. Like people in modern times talking about/teaching about/learning about LWG, WWX, and possibly others as historical figures

Historical Precedents for the Concept of Time Travel and Transmigration by meyari (G, 21k, wangxian, Fluff and Crack, dubious academic writing, Historical Research, it's practically its own character in this, vague college setting, Modern, Good YZY, Good Person SS, Reincarnation) It's the second part of a series, the first one takes place in canon era, and the second one is about modern Wei Ying researching about historical Wei Wuxian for his thesis! I recommend reading the first part first (or at least looking at the premise) for much-needed context, and also because it's so good!

DID YILING LAOZU REALLY EXIST???: a Thread [1/?] by el_em_en_oh_pee (G, 6k, wangxian, Academia AU, Social Media, Research, Cartographic Mishaps, HOW IS CARTOGRAPHIC MISHAPS AN ESTALISHED TAG. NO HAPS WERE MISSED HERE I ASSURE U, Folklore, LJY's Hot Takes, Procrastinating Your Dissertation Proposal By Writing A 104-Tweet Thread: The Lan Jingyi Story, Mixed Media, POV Outsider, this is kind of an AU - Modern and kind of not???, it's a modern academic/researchy exploration of canon lol) it's AMAZING

For 12, there's also the one where Wangxian are majoring in cultivation in University and there's a talk about the meaning of Hanguang-jun compositions with several one liner "titles" like fried watermelon rinds are terrible or something like that. Can't mine it on my AO3 history but it's there, I know it's there!

🔒 Night of the Living History (an edutainment special!) by Aerlalaith (T, 51k, wangxian, Modern with Magic, Workplace Relationship, Fluff and Humor, Museums, living history, the author's feelings about, the edutainment industry, museum workers, Some Plot, Slice of Life, Injury, a minor haunting, the stakes are low, unless you're on the museum board i guess, WWX does not get an employee discount)

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13. Hi! For the next ITMF, could anyone recommend wangxian fics that also feature LWJ & JC not getting along/being hostile toward each other? I'm talking like anything from them having disagreements to physically fighting to just outright hating each other.

Untitled tumblr fic where LWJ punches JC in the face (sharing my reblog as writer seems to have deleted their blog & I can't find it on their Ao3)

the only way out by cafecliche (T, 12k, wangxian, JC & WWX, JC & LWJ, Post-Canon, this is one part character study, one part comedy of errors, and one part fix-it, WWX is a people pleaser in this essay I will, my event planning experience rearing its head again, Podfic Available)

Wei Wuxian’s Kidnapping Back and Forth Farce (Starring Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji) by misscam (M, 5k, wangxian, JC & WWX, Humor, Switching)

some good mistakes by Lise (T, 18k, WangXian, JC & WWX, JC & LWJ, Road Trips, (terrible road trips), Post-Canon, Rescue Missions, Hurt/Comfort, ish, Awkward Conversations, POV JC, JC & WWX Reconciliation, (ish they’re working on it)) should be noted that the Wangxian is background and the primary focus is on LWJ and Jiang Cheng having lots of emotions coming out sideways at each other

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14. Hey, guys. Hope you're having a great day. ITMF some Wen Ning POV/Wen Ning-centric stuff @thispatternismine

🔒 The Moon Reflected Upon Two Springs by Rubberduckieassassin (M, 2k, Post-Canon, Fierce Corpse WN, WN-centric, Farmer WN, WN Needs a Hug, Gusu Lan Juniors Dynamics, Good Kid LSZ, Good Kid LJY, Wen Remnants Mentioned, Burial Mounds Settlement Days Mentioned, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, Five Stages of Grief, Melancholy, Building A Home, Family Feels, WN is learning how to 'live' again)

🔒 do not go gentle by RoseThorne (G, 684, WN & WQ, WN & WWX, LSZ & WQ, Canonical Character Death, Spirits, Ghosts, LWJ Plays Inquiry, Song: Inquiry, Protectiveness, Grief/Mourning, Love, Acceptance, Family, Angst, Post-Canon, POV Third Person, POV Wen Ning)

Tea with the Unquiet Dead by treemaidengeek (G, 1k, SL & WN, Grief/Mourning, Post-Canon, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, finding healing in unexpected places, Fierce Corpse Friends!)

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15. For the next ITMF, are there any fics where Lan Wangji comes to terms/wrestles with his darker sexual desires?

Come Back to Gusu… by AitchNKay (E, 90k, wangxian, WIP, Major Character Death, Fluff and Smut, Drama & Romance, Angst, Fix-It, Canon Compliant, Anal Sex, BL,, Switching, Bottom LWJ) Currently less than halfway through this one & it's a WIP so not sure how it goes, but has scenes of LWJ worrying about if his desires are too fucked up

💖 Magical Marriage Ribbons Series by starandrea (Varies, 1m, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Accidental Marriage, Fluff, Happy Ending, Telepathic bond, Kink Negotiation, Family Drama, Magical Pregnancy, Dual Cultivation, Shapeshifters, Modern with Magic, Immortality, Yilling Wei Sect) has LWJ continuously struggling to vocalize nearly ANY of his sexual wants even well after wangxian get together

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16. Hi! ITMF your favourite recommendations with LWJ being petty and pouty (maybe bratty too?) - modern AUs and modern with magic are preferred. Thank you <3

Sorry! Just to add on to last ask petty LWJ ITMF ask --> Judgy LWJ reccs please.

the soft animal of your body by sysrae (T, 15k, wangxian, modern cultivation, Golden Core Reveal, Hurt/Comfort, Whump, Animal Transformation, Shapeshifting, Getting Together, Confessions)

with you, I am home by tellthemstories (M, 47k, wangxian, Modern Cultivation, fake dating for reasons, Meeting the Family, There Was Only One Bed, Casual Domesticity, wwx is oblivious in more ways than one, 'this fic is like emotional edging’, this comment sums up the entire fic)

i really want to know (who are you) by Stratisphyre (M, 19k, wangxian, LQR & WWX, Modern with Magic, Golden Core Reveal Single Dad WWX, Reasonable Authority Figure LQR, Allusions to violence and murder, Hospitalization)

The Twelve Days of Christmas, OR, How to Drive Your Brother-in-Law Insane by Following One Traditional Carol by Hobbsy3 (T, 3k, wangxian, Fluff, Crack Treated Seriously, Twelve Days Of Christmas, sending someone six geese and seven swans is definitely not an act of love, OR IS IT, Christmas Fluff, JC is So Done, LWJ is a Little Shit, Modern) Ooh! One more for 16 (it's a Christmas fic but features a very hilarious and petty Lan Zhan)

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17. Hi Hi i'm looking for two sets of fics a) lan qiren time travel fics where he's good and actually likes Wei Wuxian or atleast let's their relationship happen b) kid fics where wwx and lwj have a lot of children adoption or birth or a mixture of both but just them having a lot of children. @thatperson0-0

17A)

Lessons relearned by Iamnotawriter (T, 44k, WangXian, LQR & WWX, Not Madam Yu Friendly, Time Travel Fix-It, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Inventor WWX, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, No Golden Core Transfer, YZY Bashing)

in stillness, clear water to the bottom by Stratisphyre (T, 40k, CSSR/LQR/WCZ, NHS's Mom/Sect leader Nie/NMJ's Mom, Canon Divergence, Time Travel Fix-It, Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, Threesome - M/M/F, Getting Together, Friends to Lovers, Background WangXian, Everyone lives/Nobody dies, (mostly), (not you qingheng-jun), Family feelings, Minor NieLan, Madam Lan lives, references to past rape)

17B)

❤️ Attempting the Impossible by Ariaste for williedustice (T, 36k, WangXian, JC & WWX, Post-Canon, Yunmeng Bros Reconciliation, Adoption, Family Fluff, Kid fic, Family drama, Fluff, 🔒[PODFIC] Attempting the Impossible by Ariaste by lunatique)

travelers through the empty gate by stiltonbasket (M, 107k, wangxian, royalty au, mistaken identity, emperor WWX, poor LWJ, forced marriage, (by LWJ himself), confused WWX, parenthood, misunderstandings, empress LWJ, fluff & humor, married life, angst w/ happy ending, WIP)

💖 Magical Marriage Ribbons Series by starandrea (Varies, 1m, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Accidental Marriage, Fluff, Happy Ending, Telepathic bond, Kink Negotiation, Family Drama, Magical Pregnancy, Dual Cultivation, Shapeshifters, Modern with Magic, Immortality, Yilling Wei Sect) link in #15

The Wei Family Series by Setari (T, 65k, wangxian, WWX & OCs, Kid Fic, Canon Rewrite, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Mpreg, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Transphobia, Family Feels, POV Multiple, Next Generation Original Characters, Subverted Blame the Bastard Trope, Miscarriage Scare, Horny Teenagers, Hopeful Ending, Crack Treated Seriously, Oblivious WWX, Pining LWJ, Not As Dark As The Tags Make It Sound, 5+1 Things, set during the 13 years Wei Wuxian is dead, POV Original Character, Fix-It, Not Everyone Dies AU, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Work In Progress)

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If you didn’t get an answer to your ask here, don’t forget to make use of @mdzs-kinkmeme and MDZS KINK MEME on Dreamwidth. Authors actually do use them for ideas. You may get what you order!***Your prompt doesn’t have to be kink! Fluff, crack, whatever - it’s all good!***

[rosartemis]

Your Phenomenal Dramaturgy DSMP Animatic

Was gonna post a YouTube comment, but then I realized I didn’t want to get eviscerated by the dsmp fandom for having a different opinion, so submitting my interpretation of the lyrics/animatic in regards to c!Dream here instead :P

“But I don’t know a thing, love or losing, see?” I believe references how before Wilbur and L'manburg these kinds of conflicts/wars were never a thing on the server and Dream had no idea how he should deal with it. “So I threw to the side any human in me.” Implies Dream believed he had to make harsh choices to end the conflict, he couldn’t be soft, “No mercy” right? “If I live a lie of shallow words and empty replies, then what am I?” implying Dream keeps his word, but the people of L'Manburg don’t. It’s framed as a response from Dream to Wilbur during the declaration of independence, and makes sense if you consider the fact that Wilbur was scamming everyone out of their own potions supplies and made L'Manburg in part as an excuse to get away with it when the other members of the server got mad (Dream was uninvolved at this point, but he likely heard about it from Sapnap, who was one of the people that had confronted Wilbur and Tommy about their theft). “Then it stuck in my head, gotta run away” Dream and Sapnap getting carried away with burning down the forest surrounding L'manburg. “Playing out like a scene, posing every lead Near the end of the show, waiting in the wing, see?” Not sure about the first line, aside from referencing how everything’s a play and Dream’s the lead actor, but the second line refers to Eret’s role as the hidden traitor “Waiting in the wings”. “Run to front stage, you’re all actors anyway, no one to watch, You’re all part of the play” Dream having to make tough decisions as the de facto leader of the Greater Dream SMP faction during war. He’s planning out strategies with George and Sapnap, but the map turns into a chess game and he hates how he has to consider using them like pawns in the game to win this war. “There’s no one inside me There’s no one that’s hiding Always been me, empty, a body but nobody here to see” Montage of Dream prepping for the battle, there’s a scene in which he’s stepping into an argument between George and Sapnap. He’s steeling himself for the battle ahead. From a meta standpoint, these are all the scenes we as viewers never got to see, but they still happened, and it was still Dream who had done all this for his faction. “And knowing that those eyes are watching…” From the animatic implies that Dream seems to think things aren’t quite over yet, so he’s keeping an eye on things. “Til before we could see, we were monsters in skin ” Dream and his relationship with being called a monster/tyrant/villain continuously by the other members of the server, in particular those that are a part of L'Manburg. Could also be how he hadn’t noticed himself slipping into that role until far too late. “But even if I had tried to move on, why can’t I leave my past?” Same as above, but this time with the bonus of Pogtopia Wilbur manipulating him and convincing him he’ll be nothing more than a tyrant, a villain despite his clear attempts to amend that opinion of him and change by siding with Tommy (and Wilbur), who he thought were the “good guys”. ““Considering it’s you, better give up soon” “Cuz no matter what you do, you will always lose”” Dream talking in reference to Tommy and Wilbur (?). “And then I was alone way before I knew Blocking every little thought that I couldn’t sit through” George leaving the conflict (and Dream) alone to build his own thing. Dream realizing he’s alone/his friends don’t seem to care about him as much as he does them, and trying not to think about it. “All they want now is safety from what’s around Waiting for help but never learning how” Dream constantly covering for George and Sapnap during conflicts they got themselves into without asking for anything in return, and George and Sapnap never learning how to stop causing conflicts/resolve them by themselves. (taking advantage of Dream’s help) “I don’t wanna think now” Doesn’t want to remember the good times he’s had with everyone/his friends. Him swiping away the pieces like he wants to stop this stupid game of chess. “I’ll play dumb anyhow” Reference to Dream losing his godly powers because of the exorcism and being split into 2 (as explained by creator of the animatic) and pretending everything was fine afterwards. “Always been me, empty, a body but nobody here to see” Realization he’s lost his powers and can’t rely on XD to help resolve the Manberg/Pogtopia conflict. Here his mask goes from covering the top of half of his face to covering his entire face, a “loss of humanity”/“empty” (from a circle to being fully molded onto his face covering), and is also when the strings motif starts. Trading chessboards for puppet strings. Very obviously, you can see him slipping and his mental state deteriorating. “So standing at the front line and maybe this time I’ll be there with a flag high” Reference to the Manburg shield hinting at his allegiance and how he’s leading the Manburg “army” during the battle. “Outmatched but easygoing "Never gonna need a script with me”“ Dream surrendering and playing along with their expectations (Pogtopia winning against Manberg). "Oh you too yes yes so take a deep breath "Swear that you’ll see me again” One chance is all I have now And so I better make it count Climatic ending, come see The final act, I’m shaken to my knees" Speaking to Tommy about meeting him for the final confrontation, Tommy realizing this is his chance to take down Dream for good, “climatic ending” the finale Dream’s planned out for them. Dream is determined to see things through to the bitter end. “Yet crying and lonely” But what has he lost to get to this point? (also the juxtaposition of Doomsday Dream with his armor and cloak staring at the sunset atop his obsidian grid, framed by destruction being swapped out for an image of the old Dream, still with strings tied to his hands, but staring up at the softer night sky being framed by trees, is just, so good) “The world that I locked out is nowhere to find The people who mocked me are gone from my sight Emotions and feelings are useless to keep The tears that had fallen were not mine to weep” Hardening his heart against George/the rest of his friends (who later in turn abandoned him/left him), beating down those who had wronged him in the past, letting go of Spirit and the attachment associated with them so they’ll never be used against him again (representing him cutting off the rest of his attachments to do the same thing) despite it being very obviously painful and hurting to do so. (choosing to let go, but finding that doing so hurts anyways. Crying for something you think you shouldn’t cry for.) “The kindness and warmth, I can’t feel them at all The hands that are offered, I’m scared that I’ll fall The hole dug inside me can’t hold any love Instead, you can see me break down from above” Unable or unwilling to form healthy emotional attachments/connections with other people. He’s scared that if he does he’ll just be hurt again, and so he pushes them away, even those who’d offer him their help. He’s lost so much that he’s grown emotionally repressed (his past as Cornelius and how he lost his entire family in a week) and has trouble feeling things like “love”, and starts collapsing under the lose. (his mental health spiraling hard) “Hey, remember when you saw that they were nearing their end? And you looked like you were laughing at the pain they were in But what did you see? Oh really what could it be Well, take a breath ‘cuz you’ll need it, so c’mon saying” Something more happening with Dream behind the front of “big bad villain” that he puts on for the rest of the server, what was he really feeling? What was he really planning? We don’t know. “We’re pulling at the boundary, unseen A curtain dyed in black soon came to be And knowing that those eyes are watching…” The end of a season/the “show”, Dream’s put in prison and the curtains appear to be closing, but there’s still some loose ends that haven’t been tied with the other characters, and Dream’s presence can still be felt all around the server despite him being locked up in a literal torture box with no real power (power that could get him out of said torture box). (also, just loved how you incorporated the chorus! I’ve known about Dramaturgy for a long time but hadn’t realized how well the lyrics just fit with the DSMP plotline XD)

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Wow, thanks for such a detailed response to my animatic :D I’m really glad you enjoyed it enough to type so much out!

I really like your interpretation, you basically got most of the things I was going for. While I yearn to type out something longer, I don’t really want to tell people how to interpret something lol

Thanks again <3

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Okay, so my ask was about fanfics where either John or Sherlock hallucinates and sees the other one after him (allegedly?) dying. As in, actually hallucinates, not mistakes a real one for a hallucination. Have you encountered anything like that?

Anonymous said to inevitably-johnlocked: hi! i hope you're doing fine! i feel really bad for asking, but i really suck at searching, and as i see everyone asking you, i wanted to see if you could help me, if you dont want to, its fine, i feel like im taking adventage of you... im searching for fics post TRF in which John hallucinates with Sherlock, or fics in which Sherlock comes back but John cannot believe it because he hallucinated with him ... im sorry again for bothering you! hope you have a nice day

Hi Lovelies!!

Ahhh, I don’t have a LOT that have this premise, so I’m just going to give you all of the fics I have tagged with hallucinations :) I do suggest “The Quiet Man”, which has this as the primary plot point (down below) and it’s a long one so I think that will best suit you requests, but DO check out all of the others on this list! <3

And as always, Lovelies, if you have something more to what my Nonnies are looking for, please suggest them!

HALLUCINATIONS

Hallucinations can't open doors by Bespectacled dreamer (K+, 1,330 w., 1 Ch. || Reunion, Hurt / Comfort, Friendship, Hallucinations, John’s Wedding, Light Humour) – In which John gets married and Sherlock gets a broken nose.

Quite Contrary by Hollyesque (T, 1,805 w., 1 Ch. || HLV Fic, Sherlock Whump / After Mary Shot Sherlock, Hallucinations / Flashbacks / PTSD, Hospitalization, Hurt/Comfort, Lestrade POV, ) – A short one-shot, alternate scene to Greg's hospital visit in HLV. Instead of Sherlock disappearing, Greg is faced with an unexpected reaction to a hospitalized Sherlock and winds up figuring out something that he really would have rather not known.

Bitter Nights Turned Sweet by Hyliare (T, 4,076 w., 1 Ch. || Pre-Slash, Insomnia/Hallucinations, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, POV Present Tense John Watson, Cuddling/Snuggling) – Sherlock has always had trouble sleeping; he hasn't always had someone in his life willing to help.

Between Asleep and Awake by katydidit (K, 4,309 w., 1 Ch. || Friendship, Sick Fic, Post-TRF / Reunion) – John is sick. Incredibly, extremely, dangerously sick. Plagued by a high fever, he begins to hallucinate, start seeing things that aren't really there. Because they can't be there. Can they?

A Is For Aftermath by ElvendorkInfinity (T, 10,567 w., 1 Ch. || Injury / Whump, Hurt/Comfort, Friendship/Pre-Slash/Bromance/Platonics, Hallucinations, Introspection, Insecure / Worried John, Big Brother Mycroft, Alternating POV, Anxious Sherlock, Self-Deprecating, Mildly Possessive Sherlock, 3G Moment) – John is still hallucinating, Sherlock cannot sleep, and Lestrade has a new case for them. But will life at 221B ever be able to return to normal? Epilogue to M is for Moriarty.

I Will Take Care Of You by SailorChibi (T, 16,664 w., 15 Ch. || Hurt/Comfort, Sick Sherlock, BAMF John, BAMF Lestrade, Reunion Fic) – Two years after Sherlock's death, John comes to find him on the sofa. Wounded and ill, Sherlock is convinced he's hallucinating and refuses to share any details about Moran or the fact that Mycroft has been compromised. That doesn't stop John from stepping up and taking care of the last of Moriarty's web, BAMF-style.

Wonderful, Etcetera. by VictoryCandescence (T, 16,955 w., 3 Ch. || Wonderful Life AU || Alternate Timelines, Brotherhood, Homophobia, Suicidal Ideations, Mentions of Drug Use, Friendship, Different TRF, Sherlock’s Past, Victor Trevor is Past Boyfriend, Depression, Hallucination?, Love Confessions, Christmas, First Kiss) – Sherlock thinks everyone would be better off if he had never existed, including and especially himself. When he finds himself in a world in which his wish has been granted, he begins to think perhaps even he could be wrong – but it takes an unlikely chaperone to make him not only observe, but understand.

I Think I've Come A Long Long Way To Sit Before You Here Today by ArwenKenobi (T, 18,251 w., 3 Ch. || Grief/Mourning, Passage of Time, Major Character Death, Alternating POV, Sherlock Whump, Pining Sherlock, Hospitalization, Coma, Revenge Murders, Hallucinations, Love Confessions, Brutal Accident, Mystrade, Ghost John) – One year after John is killed Sherlock starts to wonder whether John has actually gone anywhere.

A Home for Us by sussexbound (M, 30,581 w., 12 Ch. || Scars, Bedsharing, Grief, Doctor John, Hurt/Comfort, Post-TRF, Implied/Referenced Torture, Sherlock POV, Pining Sherlock, Suicidal Ideation, Heavy Emotions, Clingy Sherlock, Hallucinations, Disassociation, Emotional Turmoil) – He has been on the road for two years, and he is exhausted. He’s almost accepted that he will never see London (John) again—almost. But then there are nights like tonight, where he is weak, and all he can think of is the warmth of the flat they once shared, the crackle of the fire in the hearth, the teasing smile playing at the corner of John’s lips, the boxes of half-eaten Chinese takeaway balanced precariously in their laps. He aches at the memory of it, at the realisation that it is something he may never experience again.

Impossible to Feign by achray (M, 49,204 w., 12 Ch. || TRF Rewrite / Reverse Reichenbach, Suicidal Ideations / Discussions, Drug Use/Abuse, Mutual Pining, Friends With Benefits, John Accepts his Sexuality, Anxious Sherlock, Meddling Mycroft, Depression, Hallucinations, Secret Agent John, BAMF John, Reunion, Make-Up Sex, Ambiguous Ending) – Sherlock leant forward, his long fingers curving round to grip John’s.“I won’t let him win,” he said, eyes hard. “I will do whatever it takes to get you out.”

Lunar Landscapes by J_Baillier (M, 57,046 w., 21 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || S3/TAB Fix-It, Slow Burn Angst, Drama, Hurt/Comfort, Confessions, Drugs, Pain, Medical, Injury, Sherlock Whump, Mental Health Issues, Panic Attacks, Romance, Secrets, Tragedy, Trauma, BAMF John, Doctor!John, Drug Addict Sherlock, Injured Sherlock, Grieving John, Idiots In Love, Protective John, POV John Watson, PTSD Sherlock, Sherlock is a Mess, Medical Realism) – An accident forces John to face the fact that Sherlock's downward spiral had started long before his flight to exile even left the tarmac.

The Vapor Variant by 88thParallel (CanadaHolm) (M, 72,684 w., 18 Ch. || Post-THoB, John Whump, Protective Sherlock, Guilty Sherlock, Anxious/Worried Sherlock, Virgin Sherlock, Angst with Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, PTSD John, Slow Burn, Mutual Pining, Suspense, Virus, Sickfic, Big Brother Mycroft) – They stood face to face in the middle of a clearing. The dim light of the moon barely allowed Sherlock to see the glassy terror in John’s eyes and the sweat that glistened off his forehead. His nose was bleeding again, blood dripping in a slow stream from his right nostril. They were both gasping for air, John’s eyes locked on Sherlock’s. There was no recognition there, just wild animal fear. Time stood still for an eternal few seconds, and Sherlock took a shaky breath. “John—”Spell broken, John spun and bolted back into the woods. Still heaving for air, Sherlock took off after him.

The Summer Boy by khorazir (T, 94,706 w., 6 Ch. || Post S3/Post TAB/Alternate S4, Friends to Lovers, Asexual Sherlock, POV Sherlock, Flashbacks, Bullying, 1980′s Kid Sherlock, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Inexperienced Sherlock, Grief/Mourning, Pining Sherlock, Case Fic, Sherlock’s Past, Awkward Conversations, Anxious Sherlock) – About half a year after the fateful events at Appledore, Sherlock and John embark on a private case in Sussex. For Sherlock, it’s a journey into his past, bringing up memories both happy and sad that he has locked away for almost thirty years. For John, it means coming to terms with the present – and a potential future with Sherlock. Part 1 of the The Summer Boy series (possibly Imaginary Friend)

Against the Rest of the World by SilentAuror (E, 151,714 w., 20 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Post-TRF, Hiatus Fic, POV First Person Sherlock, Present Tense, First Kiss/Time, Big Brother Mycroft, Escaping from Capture, Soft Sherlock, Toplock, Insecurity, Infidelity, Travelling, Introspection, Pining Sherlock, Depression, Fantasies, Yearning for the Past, PTSD Sherlock, Suicidal Ideation) – Sherlock has been away from London for nine hundred and twelve days and counting, and has no idea what sort of reception to expect when he finally returns.

The Quiet Man by ivyblossom (E, 157,369 w., 58 Ch. || Post-TRF, John First POV, Grief/Mourning, Angst, Present Tense, Imaginary Sherlock) – "Do you just carry on talking when I'm away?"

Proving A Point by elldotsee & J_Baillier (E, 186,270 w., 28 Ch. || Me Before You Fusion || Medical Realism, Insecure John, Depression, Romance, Angst, POV John, Sherlock Whump, Serious Illness, Doctor John, Injury Recovery, Assisted Suicide, Sherlock’s Violin, Awkward Sexual Situations, Alcoholism, Drugs, Idiots in Love, Slow Burn, Body Image, Friends to Lovers, Hurt / Comfort, Pain, Big Brother Mycroft, Intimacy, Anxiety, PTSD, Family Issues, Psychological Trauma, John Whump, Case Fics, Loneliness, Pain) – Invalided home from Afghanistan, running out of funds and convinced that his surgical career is over, John Watson accepts a mysterious job offer to provide care and companionship for a disabled person. Little does he know how much hangs in the balance of his performance as he settles into his new life at Musgrave Court.

[kabane52]

Abraham’s Twofold Heritage

At one point I strongly contested any continued significance in God's election for the Jewish people. Abraham's seed was the church and the church was Abraham's seed- Jews were no more nor less covenantally significant than any other people. My argument for this was not based so much on a particular set of scriptural texts as it was on a way of reading the biblical story arc. There was, I believed, a definite structure to the prophetic and messianic hope: the seed of Abraham would undergo two exoduses and two covenants. The old covenant is described in Deuteronomy 29 and the coming to pass of its curses is specified with absolute certainty. The new exodus and covenant is described in Deuteronomy 30: Israel's heart would be circumcised, they would be gathered in from exile, and their right standing with God would endure.

Most simply, it seemed to me that the family of Abraham and the people of Israel were identical in every way. The apostles describe the nations as having been brought into Abraham's family, and there seemed to me to be no justification whatsoever in distinguishing Abraham's family from Israel. The New Testament is permeated by texts which describe the church as the fulfillment of promises made to Israel. In Romans 2:25-29, gentiles receive what is promised to Israel in the second exodus of Deuteronomy 30:1-6. The "new covenant" which God promised and which is identified by  Jesus as His work is a covenant between God and Israel.

I still believe that this argument has not been properly considered in Messianic Jewish literature. [Please recognize that Messianic Judaism is a much larger world than "Jews for Jesus" and there are some very sophisticated Messianic Jewish scholars.] Yet I have come to believe that it can be answered. Its answer is to be found in a constellation of texts ultimately unfolding from Genesis 17-25. We often think of Genesis 17 as the creation of Israel- "the circumcision" proper. But what we sometimes fail to recognize is that without "the circumcision" there is no such thing as "the uncircumcision." The dyad of Israel and the nations comes into existence with the circumcision of Abraham's family. Moreover, in this very text Ishmael and his descendants are the subjects of an enduring promise that is not the promise made to Isaac and his descendants. In Genesis 25, we have a genealogy of Abraham's children through Keturah and through Ishmael. Isaac is the heir of Abraham's estate, yet Abraham sends these other children east with gifts.

Here is the key: in Isaiah 60, we hear of those "from afar" coming to beautify and glorify Mount Zion, newly permeated by divine beatitude and uncreated light. The light of God attracts the nations as a fire attracts a crowd on a cold evening. But one detail could easily be missed: the first nations which are described are the children of Ishmael. As Abraham sent them away with gifts, now those gifts have matured and are consecrated on God's altar. The newly fermented wine which was given in the time of Abraham has now aged to perfection and is made holy on God's altar in the time of the Messiah. Actually, Matthew 2 echoes this passage. The magi are "from the east" and a strong case can be made that they are Ishmaelite Arabs rather than Persians. As the nations are drawn by light, so also are the magi attracted by the star. Two of the gifts mentioned in Isaiah 60 are gold and frankincense, and the magi bring these two gifts along with myrrh. Isaiah 60 is sacral in character: the nations are drawn by the divine presence in Israel, and so also Matthew 2: "God with us" has come to dwell with mankind, and the magi "worship" Him.

This twofold Abrahamic promise is something of a theme throughout the Tanach. The healing of Jacob and Esau's relationship is taken up in Malachi as a prophetic image for the healing of the rift between Israel and the nations. As the "sun rose upon" Jacob on the morning of his meeting with Esau, so also will the nations offer Tribute to God "from the rising of the sun." But the most pervasive image used to describe this twofold structure is that of the two houses of Israel: Ephraim and Judah. Consider the prophecy in Zechariah that "ten men" will take hold of the "wing" (the blue tassel or tzitzit which Jews wear) of a "Jew" (i.e. a Judahite). Ten is a significant figure here because of the northern ten tribes. The promise is given as part of a constellation of promises related to the reunification of the two houses. 

In a way, the nations correspond to Ephraim while the Jews, Israel according to the flesh, corresponds to Judah. Genesis 48 gives further support to this idea: Ephraim will become a "multitude of nations." The fact that the northern kingdom is the "house of Joseph" (remember that Joseph's double portion from Jacob meant that he was a double-tribe: his children Ephraim and Manasseh each became a tribe in the confederation of Israel) is also suggestive towards this end. The illumination of the nations of the world was Joseph's great work, a work which he carried out prior to his reconciliation with his brothers according to the flesh. Indeed, while his family believed him lost forever, Ephraim and Manasseh were present in Joseph's own household.

The New Testament is filled with quotations from prophetic texts about the ingathering of the ten tribes that are identified as having been fulfilled in the ingathering of the gentiles. Nor is this an apostolic innovation: the two ideas seem to shade into each other in many of the prophets themselves, as in the above referenced text from Zechariah. The prophet even refers to the ten tribes being "sown to" the nations and "swallowed up" therein. That word is only used four times in the Twelve- twice in this context and once in the Book of Jonah, where the Prophet is "swallowed up" by a "great fish" before bearing witness to Nineveh. The "great fish" is a symbol of the "great city." While some of the northern tribes were assimilated into Judahite culture and returned from Babylon (note for example that the prophetess Anna is from the Tribe of Asher) most were assimilated into the gentile nations. It seems that one function of this assimilation was to tie together the destiny of all nations with the destiny of Abraham's seed.

*Why* this sort of bond functioned to tie the nations with Abraham is something I do not presently understand. Nothing is merely typological. Types and symbols exist because they manifest the real, concrete, and cause-effect structure of the world. Every type of Christ serves to bring Christ's presence truly closer to fruition. And so we must not simply say that the assimilation of the ten tribes tied the nations to Abraham because of a typological link: that principle which perpetuates the rhythm of the world is also the principle which makes it beautiful. Every aesthetic perfection is also maximally functional. I am perfectly sure that there is an explanation, and that this explanation will teach a great deal about the significance of the human family and its structure as a genealogy of interrelated nations. But I do not know it yet.

In any case, this answered my most serious objection: that there was simply no available category for a covenantally bound member of Abraham's family who was not in every way a member of Israel. There seems to be exactly such a category in Abraham's extended family- from Hagar and Keturah, as well as in the assimilated Israelite tribes. The church shares in Israel's covenant and destiny through her identity as the Body of a Resurrected Jew. In that sense the church takes on the name and title of Israel. But just as we take on Christ's Name (Christ-ian) without dissolving the unique application the title has to the person of Jesus Christ, so also is the church joined to the name of Israel without taking away its special connection with the Jewish nation, Israel according to the flesh- the Messiah's own flesh whom He yearns for with uncreated affection. The first person to ever wail at the wailing wall was our Lord, as He wept at the fate He knew was to befall His own people. When Jesus rode into Jerusalem, He was in tears. These tears will not flow forever, for when Jesus wept on another occasion- an occasion very shortly prior to His riding into Jerusalem- He acted by telling the Jew for whom He shed tears to "come out" from His Tomb. There were those present who figured that Lazarus had been dead too long. But Jesus' words were fulfilled all the same. 

Perhaps the most precise expression of the church's identity in relation to Israel is in Ephesians 2:12. The church is the "citizenship" or "commonwealth" of Israel. We are enrolled in the citizenship of Zion to carry Zion to the far end of creation. But that river which Zionizes the creation must circle back to Zion proper to enrich it with the splendor of all nations- see Isaiah 65-66. The nations will "flow" to Jerusalem just as Jerusalem in the person of Jesus and the Apostles flowed to the nations.

[haloud]

“Not as Lost, Violent Souls:” Alex Manes and T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” -- part 2

- intro - part 1 -

Previously on:

(gif by bisexualalienblast, used with permission)

To recap what we’ve established so far: the epigraph and the first two segments of “The Hollow Men” portray the speaker as a man who has lost a sense of identity or purpose, both among the hollow men and wishing to be more like them, haunted by a vision of “eyes” and wishing to live more completely in the meaningless, liminal space inhabited by the hollow men. If Alex is the speaker, trapped in a sense in the world that makes “hollowness” the only state of being achievable, then the desire to inhabit that distant, liminal space is representative of the defense mechanisms he has developed to navigate the world. He takes control, avoiding vulnerability. He runs away, keeping intimate interactions with the person who makes him most vulnerable on his terms. In sections III-V, the imagery of the eyes grows ever stronger, as the world of the speaker grows more dismal and disconnected, concluding with the breakdown of connections inherent in the Shadow falling between such deeply connected things, and the final statement about the end of the world.

Part III: Lone and level sands

This segment of the poem is one of the shortest, and it shifts the focus from the hollow men themselves, the speaker, and the eyes, and onto the broader landscape the hollow men occupy.

This is the dead land This is cactus land

Of course, we, the writers of Roswell, and the characters of the show would all know that deserts are not dead at all, but instead teeming with life. However, pairing “dead land” with “cactus land” in the segment immediately following the previous lines about the kingdoms of death is meant to communicate a sense of the total bleakness of the landscape, as well as serve as a reminder of the futility of the existence of the hollow men, who are compared to scarecrows, but in this “cactus land” have no real fields to stand in, have no real function.

Here the stone images Are raised, here they receive The supplication of a dead man's hand Under the twinkle of a fading star

In Jeffrey Howard's explication of this poem[1], he identifies these lines and this imagery as being in reference to Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias.” I don’t have a whole lot to say about this in relation to Alex specifically, but it’s certainly an interesting connection in the context of some things I’ve already said regarding him and Jesse. Jesse is very much a “look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”[2] kind of guy. As Howard goes on to say, Shelley’s poem “appears as a cold sarcasm regarding humanity’s aspirations to godhood instead of being an earnest evaluation of humanity’s might, which does not, in reality, exist” (10). This entire discussion brings to my mind again Alex’s speech to Kyle in 1x12, how there exists a constant need to justify atrocities committed by one’s government (the modern American answer to atrocities committed by godhood), and how people generally fail to recognize that what seems like might is more often than not a completely empty concept.

is it like this In death's other kingdom Waking alone At the hour when we are Trembling with tenderness Lips that would kiss Form prayers to broken stone

Here, the speaker is asking if the world is just as bleak for those who have “crossed over,” as said in the first segment, to “death’s other kingdom.” In death’s other kingdom, do the people there have to wake alone, when they are “trembling with tenderness?” Do the people there have the freedom to kiss, when all the speaker/the hollow men can do is “form prayers to broken stone?”[3][4] Previously, the speaker has expressed an inability to come to “death’s other kingdom,” locked in a sort of purgatory with the other hollow men; the speaker has also expressed resistance to “death’s dream kingdom,” wanting to stay far away from the vision of eyes that that dream kingdom brings, knowing that he will always be far away from “that final meeting / In the twilight kingdom.” Here, however, the speaker expresses almost a yearning for things to be different, even if achieving “death’s other kingdom” is impossible.

Part IV: Valley of dying stars

Part IV opens with further bleak imagery and further admission of hopelessness:

The eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

The speaker has succeeded, then, for a given value of success; he has avoided the gaze of the eyes, and now they are gone altogether. The stars are dying, the valley is hollow, even the tiny scraps of life that may have existed previously in this landscape are winking out, one by one. The line that stands out in this stanza is that about the “broken jaw” of the lost kingdom, which is a flare of violence or pain, whether by accident or deliberately induced, which stands out among all the numbness that characterizes the rest of the poem.

In this last of meeting places We grope together And avoid speech Gathered on this beach of this tumid river[5]

Sightless, unless The eyes reappear As the perpetual star Multifoliate rose Of death's twilight kingdom The hope only Of empty men.

The hollow men gather together against what separates them from what is, textually, death, but symbolically is more like salvation, paradise, or connection. This segment of the poem has strong religious imagery—strong enough that I’m forced here to talk about it when I’ve avoided it thus far because it’s not terribly relevant to any of my points about Alex. That being said, I will go into greater detail in the Watsonian analysis about what significance the religious imagery in “The Hollow Men” may have to Alex as a person, despite the lack of any religious context for his character in the show thus far. As a continuation of the Doylist analysis, I will say only that the eyes have once again appeared as a signifier of salvation or peace. “The hope only / of empty men.”

Part V: the Shadow

Here is how the fifth and final movement of the poem begins:

Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear, prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear At five o'clock in the morning.

Now, before I get fully into Part V, I just want to let you all know about the deeply, deeply hilarious opinion of Smith[6] about the "prickly pear" parody of the "mulberry bush" children's song, which is that the prickly pear is a phallic symbol while the mulberry bush is all vaginas all the time, apparently[7] Grover. My buddy. My dude. What. Anyway, the remainder of the poem is a long set of dichotomies or intrinsically and existentially paired concepts, interspersed with a line from the Lord’s Prayer, concluding with the famous final lines.

Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is Life is For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but with a whimper.

The abortive lines referencing the Lord’s Prayer indicate a struggle against a father—The Father—and, dispersed as they are among the lines about a Shadow falling between concepts that should never otherwise be separated, themselves become the Shadow. The Shadow is a higher concept, a higher being, with the power to tear apart even logically and naturally inseparable things. In the context of Alex and Roswell, Jesse Manes is, in many ways a literal Shadow obstructing connectedness and growth. However, there is another version of the Shadow which his worldview has caused to transfer to his son. Critic J. Hillis Miller identifies the Shadow as “the paralysis which seizes men who live in a completely subjective world,” and states, “Mind had seemed the medium which binds all things together in the unity of an organic culture. Now [the mind] is revealed to be the Shadow which isolates things from one another, reduces them to abstraction, and makes movement, feeling, and creativity impossible.” Alex’s “subjective reality” is not a traditional one, but rather the result of two worldviews fighting for supremacy within him and forcing him to a standstill—his own, and the one his father has imposed upon him his entire life. A subjective reality forms when he is incapable of making decisions based upon one worldview without the other intruding; there is no objective truth, no objective way of leading his life. An objective sense of purpose is, of course, something that all people strive for regardless of their circumstances, but it is the specific destabilizing outside force which in “The Hollow Men” is referred to as the “Shadow” that makes Alex’s experience resonate with the text of the poem. By the end of the poem, the speaker cannot so much as complete a sentence. The Shadow comes between, among other things, the thought and the speech. In the same way, Alex’s own “Shadow,” being both the imprinted trauma and continuing expectation as well as his father’s physical presence, comes between who he is and who he wants to be; who he can be and what face he shows to the world.

The speaker and Alex end the poem in the same way as they began. Trapped in a role that is part tool, part puppet, part propaganda, caught between wishing for hope or salvation and wishing he could even wish for as much as that. He has companions but feels no companionship; he stands on the banks of a river but has no boat with which to cross, nor any money to pay the ferryman. And all the while he is watched by these eyes which represent a state of being or an ideal which he can never achieve, but just as he scorns those eyes and wishes they would turn away, they do, and he is left sightless and silent.

This is not a happy poem. Nor do I believe that analyzing it in this way will reveal any more hopeful, happier meaning for Eliot’s hollow men or for Alex Manes. The existence of the hollow men is a bleak one, and at the very beginning of Roswell, New Mexico—the inciting events that build upon each other until Alex references the poem—Alex is in a fairly bleak place himself. However. I, unlike Eliot, do not believe in unhappy endings, so I didn’t want to close out this section just with a whimper. So while this essay concerns itself primarily with bleakness, I still want to remind everyone that “the world ends with a whimper” in episode nine of thirteen (and yet to come). Alex has already punched through the end of the world and is in the process of pulling himself through that hole and out the other side, retaking agency, rediscovering himself, relearning what he wants and how he is going to achieve those desires. The hollow men may have only empty hopes, but Alex’s hope is very real, and his character’s journey, as is the case with all characters in Roswell’s first season, has only just begun.

Part three of this essay will reexamine Alex’s character, his relationship to “The Hollow Men” at various points in his life, and his decision to quote the poem in context from a Watsonian perspective.

[1] Howard, Jeffrey G. “T.S. Eliot’s THE HOLLOW MEN.” The Explicator, vol. 70, no. 1, 2012, pp. 8-12, https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2012.656736. Accessed 2 Sept. 2019. [2] Howard goes into some detail about this line (line 11 of Shelley’s poem); he points out the capitalization of the word “Mighty,” how that grammatical convention is usually reserved for “proper nouns and deities,” and how it “solidifies just such a correlation” between “Ozymandias” and the “feigned divinity of the hollow men.” [3] I believe I speak for all of us when I say: hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh [4] Continuing the Ozymandias reference; worshipping a ruin of something that used to be grand but was always fallible. I really suggest anyone who wants to read a Romantic poet’s 14-line dunk on Jesse Manes go give Ozymandias a look. [5] According to the Norton anthology’s footnotes as well as scholarship on some of Eliot’s other work, as well as Dante’s, which is a stated inspiration for both “The Waste Land” and “The Hollow Men,” the tumid river refers to the river Acheron, which is both a real river in Greece and a fixture of Greek mythology—the river which one must cross to reach the underworld, the river from which the underworld’s other rivers all spring forth. [6] Same Grover Smith I referenced earlier. He’s a serious scholar! But serious literary scholars are also often very, very silly. And literary scholars and anthropologists share the quirk of educated guessing that demands that, when in doubt, every symbol must be either a deity or a penis. [7] The only story I’m aware about concerning mulberry bushes is the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe, very much a proto-Romeo and Juliet story in which two families hated each other, but their children fell in love by whispering through a crack in the wall between them. The myth/drama ends with a double suicide. It is the blood of the lovers that gives mulberries their color to this day. Thanks, the Greeks, for yet another heartwarming tale about nature, and one that is not particularly, uh, yonic. I think the mulberry bush children’s song might possibly be about washerwomen, hence the idea that it is feminine, but I would hardly consider the prickly pear a masculine version of that. In short: Grover. Man. What.

[redantsunderneath]

Us (2019) *Spoilers*

Us is the best movie I've seen since Mandy.  I shouldn't oversell it, but it's really rich and basically everything I like movies for.  I’m going to at least refer to major plot spoilers (usually without direct description) so stop reading if you want to stay clean.

Horror seems more direct and out of the box able to get at the concerns I like narrative art to deal with.  The genres kind of promote certain thematic preoccupations, and horror is so diencephalonic that it really is able to go psycho-chrono-geographically extreme (more unconscious, more primordial, more in the woods) with less dithering.  This movie is an example of why all my favorite movies loosely categorize horror (even cheap dumb horror movies seem to work a lot better subliminally than those of other genres).  

For people who don’t care about spoilers and want to follow along, the movie unfolds as follows: A black upper middle class family goes to their vacation house where no-one really wants to be - the daughter is in her phone, the son is withdrawn, the mom actively does not want to be there, and the dad is overcompensating.  They go to Santa Cruz beach where the mom, when she was a kid, saw a girl who looked just like her in a hall or mirrors below the carnival/boardwalk, the trauma stemming from which derives much of the movie’s impetus.  On the beach, they meet their friends, a white family who are the image of superficial aspirational American values.  

One night a full set of their doppelgängers show up in the driveway and a battle for survival begins.  This turns out to be broader with, at least regionally, alters (”the tethered”) showing up everywhere and killing their analogous surface people. The white family falls immediately, sand our guys have to face their alters too.  The family eventually triumphs, but not before the mom descends into the tunnels under the hall of mirrors and faces her alter who reveals a too literal plot and wins.  The family drives away and it is revealed that the mom was (THE SPOILER) the alter all along and what happens is the result of the “real surface mom” jealously yearning for participation in that kind of stuff we do that gives life meaning, including odd self delusions and empty displays... so, like culture in general.

What the movie is really about is how we have within us a shadow of our primal selves, an ancestral image of progenitors who were concerned with drives and survival, and we suppress this so that society can function and we can be free from the knowledge of existential risk. The "absent center" (a la Derrida) of the movie is the culture war in which we are prone to let this shadow (and its instinctual out-group hatred and violence) take more control. We have a complex relationship this repression that involves guilt (we have it better than they did, civilization is theft and genocide, how can I forget this) and tightly bound attraction/fear of giving into the deeper drives - we know it is valuable but we don't want to edge in too far.  

So civilization is an internal tension filled detente that is kind of a lie we tell ourselves, and that situation is slipping a little bit. Presented as the main perturbation is trauma - being forced to see the real of which this shadow is a part, whether the trauma is abuse, encountering too harsh truths as a child, day to day existence in western civilization, self inflicted trauma to confirm to norms, the loss of a way of life, epigenetic shock from slavery, or whatever else.  Being a “realist”, and societal “red pilling,” is depicted as extremely destabilizing and dangerous because the truths discovered when outed may annihilate everything we have been striving for (if that’s worth saving at all). 

Note, this is within the context of not absolute truth but competing ambiguities, or at least an ambivalent set of incommensurable ideas that are all true but are immanently inconsistent. Or, alternately phrased, culture has rejected confronting certain truths for so long that we should be afraid of how a bunch of people who are not nuanced and are not prepared for the knowledge will react, but we really need to understand the real to grapple with the inevitable dissonance (competing ideas of the good) when figuring out a way forward. This movie is not pedantic and is well aware this struggle should not be ignored but the pain of confronting the truth is that it threatens the good in a way that is fucking tough to resolve.

The semiotics of this movie must have taken forever to put together.  There is symbolism everywhere and most symbols have multiple meanings.The main reference points are the 1111, rabbits, and the direct references to other media, but it is drenched in nods to the Americana, slavery, status markers, black cultural touchstones, etc..  

The 1111 recurrence has many reflections, some harder to notice.  11:11 is in the ether as the “time that big shit goes down,” has numerological connections to the divine descending to earth, and has a direct function of representing the individuation/alienation of the family and the way things are “twinned.”  One good example of the way this ties together is, as they walk across the beach, their 4 shadows make the Black Flag symbol (there is recurrence of Black Flag T-shirts to remind us) which is a stylized single (1) flag, furled as to show a staggered arrangement of the 4 band members as individuals - unity in individuality, which the movie questions (also to play into themes of suburban rebellion and “authenticity”). The 1111/11:11 works a lot of ways: to suggest an eschaton of individuality, that there is a moment of great potential and danger, as judgement/revelation foreshadowing (via Jeremiah 11:11 "Therefore thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape; and though they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them."), the twinnings at different levels (we see the Black Flag t most clearly in the chest of one of a set of twins who have their own "twins" 11:11 - the other twin just has on a halter to maximally show off her "twins").

The rabbits are a psychological critique of the id in modernity (this movie is interesting about sex in its color-around-the-picture absence).  In deep psychological tunnels, they are caged and consumed subconsciously, red and bloody, as the current order/superego’s sacrifice to keep things quiet, and set free by the lysis in libidinal excess.  They also abut the slavery imagery as they are caged, utilized instrumentally, and are present not just in tunnels but in something that codes as an underground railroad.  But mostly I think Peele must be a David Lynch fan as Inland Empire informs this use. 

The Twin Peaks references were unexpected.  The first sequence is a descent from the carnival of fake activities that simulate real experience to the “deep place,” past the dweller on the threshold who gives us warning, into the woods with an owl (which isn’t what it seems), and into a veil of curtains through which are the deeper psychological truths where we interrogate inability to cope with trauma as a kind of existential problem - the whole situation as a manifestation of the sickness of the structures that give life meaning.  Also, the protagonist is trapped for a similar length of time, has a doppelgänger that is in a way the real protagonist revealed, and needs to face this part of themselves.

So, we’ll try to hit most of the wide ranging pop-culture references, but things really intertwine. Example: the red smocks evoke several things: 1. Michael Jackson, with glove, specifically Thriller (as on the tee), intentionally picking up on the gaslighting, the trauma, the ties to his own hidden nature, and the fraught nature of cultural affiliation (specifically black - Peele is the one doing the questioning) that perpetrates a cycle of behavior (we’ll get to code switching); 2. Chain gangs/prison uniforms - there are shackles in the movie and "tethered" is the word for the link between people and their alters - which, in the imagination, is just an echo of slavery;  and 3. Michael Myers... the white mask of one of the characters delineates this, but it reminds one of the other as an encounter with the real.  The glove looking like a low res infinity gauntlet will be left as an exercise for the reader.

The Jaws T-shirt fits with the water/boats stuff, evoking the polysemous subliminal other as a threat to out prosperity and illusions about ourselves. Just as in Jaws, the other is a really wide concept and can lend to a lot of different readings focusing on whatever you want to about the modern western world and what we fear/suppress.  All the MJ symbols and the mention of OJ alludes to the fraught identity of being trapped between worlds.  Black Flag and NWA recalls the shakiness of authenticity from opposite sides.  The consistent riffing on The Shinning evokes the sickness in the culture, the family, and the individual as inseparable and leveraged against our forgetting what has happened and who were were before. Hands Across America’s repeated direct referencing instantiates the desire for and society's readiness to provide the lie agreed upon, ambivalence about which is at the heart of the film.  Lost Boys is name checked by location and timing - literally they its filming is there in the flashback part - but also the spectacle hiding our savage natures which we are drawn to but need to control.  The home invasion scene is very A Clockwork Orange, with the eruption of violent life into the modern domestic space set to pointedly inappropriate music. There are tons of less specific movie references each evoking multiple films with similar shadowing - masks, scissors as weapon, the hall of mirrors, carnival as place of trial and trauma, underground as a place to resolve answers, incongruous music and violence,  etc. There is a shot with shelves of VHS tapes all of which have obvious resonances (CHUD, Goonies, the Man with Two Brains, Nightmare on Elm Street) except the Right Stuff which is pointedly there, perhaps as a reminder that man can and will transcend.

Tim Heidecker plays just the kind of character who you'd expect - a clueless smarm who goofily performs the rituals of commodified masculinity while not really seeming masculine at all. His transparency is why he was cast. He is part of a whole family critique of the superficiality of the American dream and how there is rot underneath.  Much of this critique is undercooked and a weak spot of the film as the family’s alters, besides Elizabeth Moss’s narcissism prompted ritual self mutilation, aren’t that worked in. Yeah, the father mimes dad stances, and the kids are interchangeable just like suburban identities (right, commuters?), but that’s it.  There is a lot of deeply implicit racism and distrust of the outsider in the families’ interactions that is much more subtle than “I would have voted for Obama for a third term.” How about “I knew you’d forget the flare gun” (but not the rope or life preservers) which has a lot running through it - ironic racial assumptions, a from the right critique of a political stance valuing safety and security over defense and accepting help, the "making fire” motif involved in beating back the shadow, and the plastic “real man” attitude.

The primary family is black and affluent, and have a connection to black culture that is depicted as at once not entirely real, aspirational, and a kind of cosmic separation.  But (mostly) the really deep connection to these things is "forgotten." Dad’s efforts to code switch when he has to summon something other than performative consumerism comes off as pathetic in the face of the power of the history of survival.  As dad listens and performs involvement of “heritage,” the son asks what “I Got 5 On It” means - dad deflects and the daughter answers “drugs.”  The correct answer is having a stake in the ($) dream whatever rules you have to break to get there.  This rubs (intentionally) uncomfortably against the Michael Jackson and OJ references (and the trapped in the closet pseudo reference) as cultural aspiration is about having to either forget a history of bad things (what the actual text of the things are speaking to) or leave behind the products of that thing (at which point where is your connection to your cultural past).  

The Fuck the Police joke works a bunch of different ways: 1. It’s a pun; 2. it’s an Alexa/Siri not working joke; 3. it brings the specter of technology contributing to faulty society into the space (as does the daughter’s phone); 4. it ironically contrasts with Good Vibrations; 5. it ironically contrasts with the action, the incarcerated kicking the shit out of suburbanites as class revenge; 6. the actual police literally still haven’t shown up after the 911 (is a joke) calls; 7. it expresses our ambivalence to societal strictures; 8. it is at odds with the environment, suggesting the absurdity of the middle class aping authenticity; 9. Ice Cube now makes a lot of fish out of water comedies of hood-coded man trying to fake middle class; 10. I could go on.

The weapons used by the heroes are all affluent symbols, often a costly reclaiming/supplanting/mastering of the primitive with the stuff of the modern - an expensive aluminum bat, a golf club, an outboard motor, and a geode mounted on a stand. The 3 family members win against both their shadows and that of their white counterparts by unifying his modern advances with the primitive impulses. The dad wins by understanding how machinery works and by mastering fire.  The daughter wins because cars > running. The son is really something because he is all about play and tricks and can't make fire, but is really about empathy (or maybe mirror neurons). His alter plays with fire, has burned himself badly, and is scared by technological magic.  So our son makes a spark, and learns to play with the other and thus control him to walk backwards into the alter's own fire.  He learns this trapped in a closet (the second R Kelly sub rosa reference this weekend after Shazam saying "I believe I can fly" before a messy edit) surrounded by board games including Monster Trap and Guess Who?

The twist really opens up what the movie is saying and is perfect Twilight Zone type "both chewy plot gotcha and thematic epiphany.” The twist basically says that the jolt of becoming aware of the real is traumatic and, if it is bad enough and you are susceptible, the state of wokenness requires you to fake it in order to fit into the life you desire but are alienated from, while the part of you that loves life (giving over to a spirit, art, believing in something "true" rather than factual) stays buried ready to erupt with negative effects.  This is a unique take on the subjectivity of trauma, that the bad unacceptable thing that is not supposed to happen that happened to you makes you feel like you are characterized primarily by that bad thing pretending to be the transcendent nature you repressed.  And yet, the movie ends with the Shining helicopter landscape shots of the car driving away, to Hands Across America being re-enacted, our primitive selves being inspired to attempt to recreate the lie of society as a life affirming spectacle.  This rhymes with the mom continuing to play mom as the performance is the reality, is who she really is.

I have left a lot on the table... the boat (that always pulls left) stuff as class critique, the voices the alters have, what each families’ possessions say (especially the wall art and architecture of the houses), the movements of the alters, the coding of the water settings, the idea of the “Carnival” of souls over abandoned tunnels and superficial (cheap and temporary) vs. deep (forgotten) culture, the scissors as a compound metaphor, the mirroring, 100 other media nods (e.g. Home Alone), the general quality of the music cues, the overdetermining alter names from the IMDB page, the Howard and thỏ shirts, the drunk dad, the excessive hinting at common types abuse (using film and real language) but not letting us have that as an organizing reality (as Nightmare on Elm Street does), and other stuff I’m not dredging up.

The movie is not prefect - 1. it commits the cardinal sin of 11th hour exposition to set the literal plot in concrete, which I didn't need and waters down the themes; 2. the white family (other than mom) deserves more specific behavior from their alters, and 3. there is only one real standout acting performance (Lupita Nyong'o, who I didn't "get" until this). But man, this is 1000 x better than Get Out - it's broader and more primal in its concerns with race falling out as just one critique among many.  

[scarlettlawyer]

Part 4 of my commentary of @renegadewangs‘ fanfic series Phantoms and Mirages.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Now, onto Haunted Specters! God, I love Haunted Specters.

It’s such a pivotal and crucial stepping stone. Just about all the major actors on the playing board, and in fact, the playing board itself all get rearranged in a careful balancing act that sets the scene anew.

It is, or at least it was, SUCH an incredible struggle for me to reconcile the phantom from the previous fic with the phantom we see in this one (and subsequent instalments, even) upon taking a step back, and with good reason, although for me the divide ran a little deeper, as it completely boggled my mind how this was somehow the same character being written by the same author, let alone belonging to the same fic series that somehow had a line of continuity where it made sense for these characters to end up in these situations – this situation.

I don’t merely refer to the phantom’s characterisation – what’s so great is that you can totally get away with writing him in this manner and have the audience accept it, seeing as he’s suffered a traumatic brain injury from the fall. It allows for a great amount of freedom for what direction to take the character in that would have been absent before.

No, I also refer here to (of course) the dynamic he shares with the other characters, the way he is portrayed and positioned by the narrative, and lastly, my own personal approach to reading and my feelings towards – level of investment in the character as he is in this series. As I’ve rehashed many times, I wasn’t very absorbed in or on board with this series’ version of the phantom for a lot of the previous fic when I first read it, at least until the end. But now, going into this fic, I was fully invested in especially seeing and learning what changes and impact the fall had made on him, and there was a new, thrilling level of unpredictability attached not only to the character, but to the plot itself.

By all accounts, the series so far had set me up to want to see how Blackquill and Bobby were finally going to take down the Big, Bad, Evil Phantom once and for all. How they would, against the odds, track him down and apprehend him against his will in what was bound to be an epic showdown. I was ready for that. It’s what I wanted to see. When I previously mentioned wanting – yearning for a “slightly lighter take” in my first post? That was gone now. I was ready for some pizza, at last. It’s what I had been conditioned to expect so far, so I was like, why not? I was like, heck yeah, let’s do this.

And yet, the narrative didn’t hesitate to seem to want to throw all of this out the window altogether. My expectations completely and utterly thwarted, I found myself realising I really had no idea what direction this could possibly be going in (or why my expectations had been thwarted so thoroughly like this). I well and truly had no idea what would happen next most of the time, because I couldn’t fathom where things could possibly go, and that had me hooked to reading, so eager to know what would happen next since it was such a mystery.

Rereading Chasing Phantoms as I have done for these commentary posts was helpful in truly establishing in my mind that yes, that was the same phantom, the same phantom, the same man that is present continuously within this series. That needed to be reconciled not just with regards to portrayal, but also my own misconceptions outside of that about how the story and character were constructed back then.

But I’m getting a little ahead of myself here, so let’s start off with looking at the first few chapters.

Haunted Specters, Chapter 1

…You know, right off the bat, I know/figure this series was mostly (if not wholly) written prior to the release of SOJ, and yet. I could be wrong but it looks like all of the provided dates still seem to match up in order to make it remain fully compliant to ace attorney canon. As in, there’s nothing directly contradicting it. And if that really is the case, well that’s just pretty damn awesome all around. AA7 will surely come along in future and ruin the fun of that I’m guessing, but for the time being, you can’t tell me all of this stuff wasn’t happening in the background even as AA6 was going on. AA6 all seems to take place prior to chapter 1, anyway. God bless timeskips!

...Wait, wait, coming back to edit this much later: scrap that. Apollo’s presence throws a spanner in the works. Ah, well. We can work around that, I’m sure. I’m gonna play around with it in my mind until it fits, somehow. :P Even later edit: Oh also Gaspen.

When Simon left the office, he couldn’t quite keep the broad grin from his face, nor the light skip from his stride.

This is so cute oh gosh happy Simon!

Save it for a more appropriate time- that was what his therapist had taught him.

Oh? Oh really? Is that so? Who might that be? No one important? Oh you mean? You mean the courtroom sniper? Is that right? You mean the phantom’s future

Boyfriend?

Nah, that can’t be right. Carry on then.

Hah, don’t worry, I’m not complaining. Lang Zi says: A man who cannot keep his own affairs in order lacks the competence to be having affairs.” “… No offense, Lang-dono, but at times the suspicion dawns on me that perhaps you’re making some of these sayings up as you go.” “This coming from the man who has a thousand and one prison anecdotes to share?” Lang paused for a moment, then his voice took on a much more serious note. “Anyway, I’m not calling for idle banter.”

“Haha, yeah, good one, so anyway, there’s a good chance your boyfriend might be dead.”

Haunted Specters, Chapter 2

“No! Hold it! Mr. Butz had no reason to kill anyone!”

I WAS WONDERING IF THE DEFENDANT WAS SOMEONE WE KNEW SKNJSDNKJ

“So tell him to hold off on ordering another useless gravestone with my name on it. In fact, tell him to stop looking for me while you’re at it.”

ANOTHER- god I love how completely wack some of these characters’ lives are/have been.

“… I gave him your regards. I gave him your regards, and then some.”

Me, known phantom fangirl trash: OH GOSH IS HE OKAY???

Me, knowing full-well that Bobby would be 100% justified acting in self-defense against a known emotionless killer, therefore also with somewhat mock concern: OH BOBBY PLEASE TELL ME YOU DIDN’T HURT HIM

(Oh, but he didn’t. I needn’t have worried.)

Ah, I’ve been sitting here, wondering what I can say to this. How his assessment is completely aligned with reader expectations and further sets them up only to be subverted, how far off his guesses are… I just… “even the tiniest glimpse of him” they’re… they’re sharing an apartment… Yeah. We’ll get there. I couldn’t find an appropriate reaction image to the above block of text, really.

Haunted Specters, Chapter 3

Okay this is extremely pernickety, and I apologise, but…

And, mind you, I usually pay no attention whatsoever to these things, and it honest to goodness makes no difference at all in the end – if the narrative says it’s Tuesday, then it’s Tuesday. Simple as that. I merely looked it up out of curiosity and because I’ve annoyingly taken it upon myself to micro-analyse everything in this fanfiction series like a little pest. I also kinda figured because you are picking out the dates and actively calling attention to the day of the week, that you would have some kind of system that you are sticking to for it (and the vast majority of details added into your fic was done so meticulously). And maybe Google is off on the calculation and you got it right, heh. But yeah, I definitely paid no real mind to this at all when reading it the first time around.

But then… Even if Fulbright was now avoiding help from the people close to him, that didn’t mean there weren’t any people close to him. Similarly, the Phantom could never quite work alone.

Okay, okay. I know this is a direct lead-in to re-introducing Domestique into the mix, but… oh my gosh. You really just went right ahead and… Hm! The phantom can never quite work alone. He is working with Bobby right now, as a matter of speaking.

Also. I really like Domestique’s dialogue when he’s forced to face Simon, gosh. Just so unabashedly in-your-face, so dotted with swears, it’s kinda great, really.

I ESPECIALLY LOVE THIS LINE FROM HIM:

Because honest-to-goodness, it’s kinda funny how direct it is (and the “THAT’S TWO DIFFERENT COUNTRIES” asdgd), but also rings really true in a “this is exactly what someone like this would say in this situation” way – exactly how they’d phrase it.

…

Oh, I love. This meeting between Bobby and the phantom at the end of the chapter. It’s – aaah. Very good. With the way it’s set out, you’re somewhat kinda like, oh, huh, is it really him though? Could it really be him? But the narrative goes right ahead and keeps dropping explicit hints. It still doesn’t outright confirm it, leaving the slightest hint of plausible deniability that perhaps this is a New Character we’re being introduced to, but… :D

Haunted Specters, Chapter 4

Even the revelation that the Chief Prosecutor had helped uncover a mole who’d been hiding right by Lang’s side was a story that’d spread through hearsay only.

Second reference to the Her 👀 (yes, I’ve been paying attention to that on this readthrough).

“Coupons. Ambassador Palaeno sends me a considerable package of these things every year, yet I find no use for them. They’re redeemable only in Cohdopia itself, so I’m sure you see my problem.”

Bro. Bro you keep making vague references to characters only for them to actually become super important and plot-relevant later on. I’m blindsided every time.

Me, reading this for the first time: Haha nice reference to a minor ace attorney character, yes, Edgey would totally still receive coupons from him. I can see that. He’s totally unrelated to this story though.

Me later: THIS SUCKER WAS ALREADY BEING REFERENCED AT THE BEGINNING OF FIC 2.

The Chief Prosecutor received gifts from the Cohdopian ambassador? Honestly, everyone was intertwined in one way or the other, weren’t they?

Good work. This is very true of the ace attorney universe and it’s cool that Simon takes note of it here like this. But it’s also very true of this fic series as well, helping reiterate that fact. Oh, Simon, you don’t even know yet how intertwined everyone even is…

You set the scene so well upon Simon arriving in Cohdopia. Really depict the atmosphere and everything super well!

So then, Simon arrives at the address, and he finds… Bobby? And it’s like, wait, wasn’t that supposed to be the phantom’s address? Why’s Bobby here? Aint that hugely coincidental…? How did Bobby find… Well, he did cross paths with the phantom, so I guess he also managed to track him down to this place somehow and he just so happens to be arriving at the same time as Simon (?!) and then some other stranger that Bobby seems to know arrives and…

…

…What?!

I love how there was still plausible deniability up until the very moment Bobby says it outright. Like, the phantom’s apartment might have been abandoned years ago, and this “stranger” is completely unrelated, and took up residence there some time after it was abandoned. Yeah – a stranger that will be an important ally and help them on their quest to bring the phantom down! Right? But Bobby’s behaviour, and then he… that’s… that stranger is no stranger at all…

Simon waited, all sorts of hypotheses dawning on him, each more ludicrous than the next. As it turned out, one of the theories he’d dismissed almost immediately on grounds of being too farfetched turned out to be truth.

LITERALLY ME

Haunted Specters, Chapter 5

“I warned you, Simon. Now back away,” Bobby hissed, grabbing him by the arm to pull him away from the faux Cohdopian.

“Faux Cohdopian”… Well,

Anyway. Well. Wow. What can I even say about this chapter? Most of it’s all contained in Simon’s POV narrative itself.

First off, you have the obvious, “whoa, this is how the phantom is being formally re-introduced to the narrative? I really don’t know what I expected but it sure as hell wasn’t this.”

This chapter, this situation, the characters, are all so incredibly volatile and it plays out, it really plays out with that constant volatility.

I, kinda immediately suspected that something was off in that the fall had done some damage to the phantom’s mind in an important, meaningful way.

Bobby’s behaviour is so surreal. Just like it is to Simon. There’s so much going on, so much to process all at once.

“I think that even you, Phantom, would agree this is nothing short of folly.”  A moment of silence followed. Sam didn’t so much as blink at the question. He merely downed the pill he’d been given by draining the water in one go. “… Sam doesn’t speak English,” was all Bobby said.

Now THINGS LIKE THIS, are what made me think, well, the narrative seemed to be encouraging this viewpoint that maybe, at this point the phantom doesn’t actually remember being the phantom. Maybe he lost all his memories, and he’s just wandering around as some poor confused amnesiac who genuinely thinks he’s Sam Specter. (That doesn’t explain a couple of things, but it was only a temporary thought of mine as I read through). But this viewpoint allowed Bobby’s behaviour to make sense in my eyes. It raises a very interesting dilemma. That the phantom is still despicable and needs to be brought to justice and what have you, but how? The phantom is completely absent now, if this man has no memories of any of that. If he genuinely thinks he’s Sam Specter, an innocent civilian who has done no wrong, and for all intents and purposes is trying to live his life as such, reacts as such? Then Bobby would probably bear no ill will against “Sam Specter”. That perhaps, well and truly up until a certain point, “Sam’s” act was not an act. Or it, at the very least, was much less of an act than it would usually be. It’s… quite convincing. In which case, Bobby wouldn’t want harm to come to innocent civilian “Sam Specter”, even if he used to be the phantom. But now? Now he’s just some weak, frail man with a serious mental condition.

The attempts to affirm the personhood, to what extent there is one, of “Sam Specter” is a very interesting point of contention.

With this in mind, as Simon went after the phantom trying to get him to come out, I kind of expected it to consistently not work. That Simon would just keep pushing and pushing to be faced with that murderer once more, only for “Sam Specter” to never break character, perhaps because there is no real character to break from at that point, so caught in a delusion. For Bobby to want him to stop because at that point he’d just be needlessly harassing “Sam Specter”.

But then he does break character, so that theory kind of goes out the window.

He’d been cornered, faced with the truth and forced to drop the charade.

But. It’s still not revealed to what extent the phantom was impacted by the fall. And I kind of got the impression that the phantom was “holding onto” the act… more than usual. More than he usually would. He only broke character under duress, so there are still a whole bunch of questions raised here about just how much he was immersed and caught up in the role of Sam, exactly. Also. Yes. On a second readthrough he reacts fiercely and breaks character specifically after the asylum comment and I just – oh my GOSH.

Also: Peacekeeper Bobby…

Bobby’s gaze moved from the broken glass to Sam Specter, who was once again cradling his head with both hands. Who was rocking back and forth on the couch, muttering to himself. Obviously not listening to a word they were saying.

Oh gosh, he really… Yeah. A fall from an apartment building can certainly do that to you.

Haunted Specters, Chapter 6

What if… What if this was a mistake? What if he’d just freed a common criminal?

Well, UM.

“Oh. Oh, right. That makes sense.” A moment’s pause. “…Wait, wouldn’t I be walking backwards then, making your six my twelve?” “…” “Or uh… I’ll just turn the clock around and make my twelve six so it’ll still be right side up for you.” “… I doubt this conversation would be any different if I were having it with a young child.”

Oh my gooosh. He’s really like this huh. He’s really just Like This.

“Oh. … Well, that’s good! That nobody else is stuck here, I mean, not the… the selling.” “Stop wasting time on such trivial sentiments and prepare yourself.”

“Trivial sentiments”… I just… He’s really always Like This. Your version of the phantom is so talkative, something I noticed pretty early on, but I love it, honestly. He could have easily just ignored the statement and continued to tend to the task at hand here, not saying anything, and Bobby would have easily taken that cue and also started to focus more and not really said anything further, but oh, no, the phantom just had to throw in some kind of remark. Not replying would have conveyed the same meaning, but this guy? He’s absolutely gonna say something. He didn’t have to equate Bobby to a child either, easily could have chosen to say nothing. BUT HERE WE ARE. I love it.

Two strangers, guarding each other with their lives on the gamble they’d both make it out in one piece.

Incredible. Incredible!

“What…? Friendship?” For the first time since they’d met, the man’s voice showed more than a stoic nature. Some sort of subdued confusion. “… Wasn’t it… justice?”

THIS MOMENT IS GOLDEN. Yes, YES.

And, you know, his brain’s all muddled, he’s missing huge chunks of his memory… And he really is kind of blurting this out at this point? Like a knee-jerk reaction. He’s reaching for a – for a memory that just comes to him even if he can’t quite put it in full context, or even if he CAN, he really says this without thinking. Because even if he was suffering from this confusion, I am very certain that he would not just blurt it out like that under normal circumstances. No. This man is half out of his mind! He must know that Bobby doesn’t recognise him and he has no real reason to tip him off otherwise right now (because it could backfire very easily if Bobby freezes up or freaks out as a result!), to ask him like that... Haaah. I’m so here for really-not-all-there phantom.

Still, even through their little exchange, Sam looked blissfully lost. As if he truly didn’t understand what they were discussing about the Phantom. About him. What a pathetic little farce.

This really did have me genuinely uncertain what to think. Like, how much of “Sam Specter” is a farce? How invested was the phantom into that role? The phantom understands English perfectly, but because Sam supposedly doesn’t… Was it possible at all that selective hearing was truly at play? That the phantom gets so deep into the role that he tricks himself, his brain, into not really understanding English properly – refusing to process it? At least, that’s what I thought at the time. Bobby makes the requests for the phantom in Cohdopian, after all. He doesn’t just casually sit there and say “hey phantom, come out” in English. Switching between “Sam” and “the phantom” evidently takes… some effort for him. And mind you, I was putting all of this (selective hearing etc.) down to the results of the fall as well. I mean, if the phantom was “Sam” under normal circumstances before the fall he’d be able to understand English perfectly well, he’d just pretend he couldn’t, and also that he’d be able to switch in and out and between personas quite easily. But that the fall did things to his mind to make it all more difficult, for him to now be able to engage in this selective understanding, is what I figured.

But… maybe Simon’s right. Maybe he still really does understand everything they say, and is just faking it. He’s such a good actor that it really is hard to tell.

And maybe the simple fact is that it’s still easy for the phantom to switch between personas, it’s just difficult to switch out of them since he has so little sense of self. And maybe that’s just the way it always has been and the fall didn’t actually change that.

Sam’s personhood hinges on how “conscious” the phantom is while Sam is in place. The less the phantom is actually present (selective hearing etc), the more “Sam” is just Sam. But it’s later implied (more than once I think) that the phantom really is just, conscious while he is Sam, and that being “brought out” is not such an immense struggle as it otherwise could be. And yet, at the same time, the narrative seems to want to tilt us in favour of acknowledging Sam as a… a person, his own person. Of sorts. And… I guess it makes sense(?). During the whole of Dual Destinies, even if every action taken by “Bobby” was consciously chosen by the phantom… Those actions were all taken for a reason, all matching up to the consistent persona “Bobby Fulbright”. Both “Bobby” and the phantom would make a choice or engage in a behaviour for the most part, even if the reasoning was different at times they were united on the action itself. Sam is… kind of the same? He is the spitting image of what used to be a real human being, all of his outward actions and behaviours (are intended to) replicate that human being. By cobbling together some approximation of a real person like this, it is perhaps easier to treat them like a real person if they behave in all intents and purposes as such. Especially considering the circumstances. There’s a constant duality going on which I guess is what we’re supposed to settle on? The phantom never really goes away, he’s always there behind the scenes. But Sam’s there too, and we gotta treat him as real or things kinda just fall apart, really. There’s also much to be said for how Sam’s personhood is as much constituted to the extent that it’s acknowledged by those around him, too. We can’t just look at it on its own. It’s also something that’s made more “real” by others treating it and to an extent acknowledging it as real. Even if, in the very end, there might be nothing truly behind it.

THERE IT IS. Right off the bat, I just gotta say: the phantom is really channelling his inner Franziska. XD. Addressing characters by their FULL NAMES. I noticed it quite a bit in the sense that it is, very consistent within his speech pattern, almost making it a kind of “character trait” of a man who himself claims to have no real character. But of course – it makes it stand out all the more when switching to “Prosecutor Blackquill” instead.

”If you attempt to lay a hand on Sam Specter a second time, I will not hesitate to interfere and protect him.”

Here it is, the phantom himself almost treating Sam like a completely separate person… I… don’t think he would have taken this approach before the fall. Hmm. BUT ALSO. Here he’s also implying that he is conscious enough while behaving as Sam to be able to “not hesitate to interfere and protect him”. Hmm!

“Watch your tongue before I cut it off,” he hissed. “I would never lay a hand on Fulbright.” “… See that you don’t.”

Me: I WELL AND TRULY DO NOT UNDERSTAND AT ALL, WHAT IS GOING ON, the phantom is protective of Bobby, well and truly his brain was influenced by that fall.

Simon really is/was in the exact same boat, honestly.

Now we have the smuggling ring brought up, the March 2019 exposure referenced, another reference to how there was a mole in interpol before… And I was kind of like, “hm! You know! There’s a certain character this brings to mind, yet unfortunately they’re nowhere in sight. Kinda really sucks they’re not a character in this fic series, honestly!” Yes, such a shame, really.

”[…] That’s why we need to expose the involvement of Lex Luster […]”

Me, reading this for the first time: Wait. Lex… Le…x. Huh. That’s… for some reason, that name rings a bell. Ah – that’s right. This “Lex”, he’s quite an important character, isn’t he? From what tiny random scraps of information I’ve seen about this fic series (from years ago!)… Yes. I’m pretty sure that this “Lex” character will be showing up quite a lot going forward.

...Well, I wasn’t wrong.

[hellotherepaula]

The Eerie Nostalgia of HBO’s Chernobyl

by Paula DuPont

Photo Source: HBO

“Nostalgia” isn’t quite the word to explain the feelings that bubble up watching Chernobyl, but I can’t put my finger on how to describe it. “Eerie,” at least, hits the mark. "Chilling,” too. And while I’m not experiencing the sentimental yearning of traditional nostalgia, I’m definitely feeling something as I watch these thoroughly Soviet characters interact against the backdrop of the Cold War in the 1980s.

Real talk, I was alive for the Chernobyl disaster. I don’t remember it, but not because I was too young to remember it, rather because I was too young to care about a disaster an entire world away in a place I had never heard of, full of people I was simplistically taught were the bad guys.

I was born at a peculiar intersection of Generation X and Millennials, old enough to have experienced the Cold War as both an abstract concept and a very real presence in everyday life. I knew Russians were the “enemy” because Communism was evil, but I didn’t know why or what Communism was, and I wasn’t particularly afraid of Russia.

Photo Source: HBO

At 20, I met a boy the same age as me who had fled Poland with his parents after his father, a farmer, had been imprisoned for six months by the Soviets for, as he told it, not using Party workers. He was four at the time. 

As an adult, my Polish friend didn’t seem to hold any particular animus against Russians, and we spent most of our time in each other’s company at 80s night at a local nightclub—the irony of which has only just become obvious to me—so that period can’t have traumatized him too badly. We were of an age that even for those of us who lived it first hand, Soviet Communism seemed abstract and unreal.

Which is why it’s easy to get lost in the window dressing of Chernobyl and feel that eerie nostalgia I referenced above.

Photo Source: HBO

The perms and belted shirt dresses on Jessie Buckley as Lyudmilla Ignatenko, the wife of firefighter Vasily Ignatenko, and Emily Watson as Ulana Khomyuk, a fictional Belarusian nuclear physicist, were familiar staples for my mother. I have a very clear image in my mind’s eye of my mom in a blue frock similar to something Emily Watson wears in the second episode, a dress with an open neck and wide lapels. My mom’s hair is about the color of Emily Watson’s, and she’s permed and styled it so it falls to just below her shoulders in loose curls, just like Emily Watson’s, too. 

This image in my mind comes from a photograph I took of my mother with a toy Kodak camera, less than a year after she bought our first home. We’d left my father about four years prior. In the photo, my mother is smiling, looks joyous. Though thinking back, I can’t imagine the burden she was under, taking care of me on her own, constantly staving off an abusive ex who would try time and again to win custody, caring for her own elderly mother who was in the middle stages of Alzheimer’s.

This was less than two years after the Chernobyl disaster and more than 18 months before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Photo Source: HBO

But I didn’t know anything about that. I was enjoying our new home and our new backyard, the recent acquisition of both a bellwether for a puppy. He’s in the photo with my mom, too.

So I don’t recognize Chernobyl for the actual events I see playing out on my television, because I didn’t become aware of those until much later. I was familiar with the word “Chernobyl,” because you couldn’t be alive and aware at the time and not hear it said, but it sounded foreign to my tiny, American ears. There were far more interesting things to focus on, like that puppy I mentioned, and the kitten that was soon to follow, and Rainbow Brite, and the NES I was saving my birthday money for.

What feels so familiar about Chernobyl is everything else: the striped polyester ties worn by all of the party officials and by every deacon at the church we went to when I was six; the thick plastic rims of the aviator glasses worn by Jared Harris playing nuclear scientist Valery Legasov and by my uncle who was working in Mission Control at NASA during the same period; the laminate tabletops that mirror every surface I ate off of until I was 16; the thick, gold brocade upholstery that is so similar to the curtains that were already hanging in our house when we moved in, curtains that were nicer than anything we could afford and so were still hanging when we moved out over 10 years later.

Photo Source: HBO

I can smell Chernobyl, too, in those smoke-filled rooms where men discuss closing the roads and cutting the phone lines to “avoid spreading misinformation.” It smells like visits to my father’s house, the air thick with Winston 100′s cigarettes—though the men in Chernobyl are likely sipping vodka from shot glasses rather than Scotch whisky from cut tumblers.

I almost wrote that I’ve never experienced anything like the Chernobyl disaster, but I have, in my own way: I lived in New Orleans when the levees failed after Hurricane Katrina. Unlike the residents of Pripyat, Ukraine, the city nearest the Chernobyl plant, we were eventually able to return to our homes and our city, but for a time we thought we had lost everything, not just our houses and our belongings and even some friends, but lost New Orleans itself. So the immediate uncertainty, the evacuation, the sense of being lied to or at least not hearing the whole story, I recognize that, too. 

It all feels so familiar to me, so close, even though I’ve lived a life a world away. Every episode is accompanied by sickly waves of nostalgia; I am left dazed by the feeling of déjà vu.

Chernobyl does not exist only in the past, though. It is alive in the remembrance of those who died when men in power attempted to suppress the truth. It is alive in the minds of those who lived it, those who survived it, those who can never return.

[virtuissimo]

Ghost Quartet Analysis: The Astronomer

I wrote these several months ago and only now did it occur to me to post them. This first one is on The Astronomer

This is an explication of the song The Astronomer (Side 2 Track 1 of Ghost Quartet), which in this case means that I’m going line by line and coming up with detailed possible meanings for each line. I left out a couple possible meanings for the sake of cohesion and brevity. The Astronomer is a song that kind of stands apart from the other timelines. Although it resides quite comfortably within the “rose red and pearl white” storyline (and a little awkwardly in the Usher storyline as Starchild’s father), it does not actually link to any plot events or directly reference anything within the story. It’s role in the story is essentially nothing more than character + theme development, but the way it develops those themes seems important to me when put in the context of the musical’s larger thematic structure. In any case, let’s get into it:

“I am not a priest

I am not a monk.”

Before he even introduces himself, the astronomer finds it of the utmost important to distance himself from religion. More than an astronomer, more than a scientist, he is NOT someone who is spiritual. That is a key part of his identity. That is my preferred interpretation of it, but it could also be a statement of humility (e.g. “I’m no spiritual leader”).

This also has a nice irony when Dave as the astronomer is also the guy playing piano in Monk. He’s distancing himself from monks, but in another life he played piano before two monks (Thelonius and Scheherazade) seeking guidance.

“I don’t go to church much

But when I do I stand and I sing loud”

This gives a sense of his personality, but it also casts some unreliability on him as his own narrator. On one hand, he is the type of guy who despite only showing up to church on christmas and easter, stands and sings with more authority and without reservation. On the other hand, despite not being a priest or a monk (i.e., not someone who is spiritual), he still sometimes does go to church. That means that he DOES actually get something out of going to church, whether it be family or community, or a little bit of clarity when he is confused. We don’t know why or when he goes to church, but he does sometimes go, and although he has never rejected spirituality at this point in the song it still begs some questions about his relationship with it.

“I am the astronomer

And when I look through my telescope

I am certain of the universe

And I am filled with wonder from the stars”

Right after his more official self-introduction, we get a better sense of who he is. The astronomer is a “seeing is believing” type of guy. He may or may not think he has learned all there is to learn (implied by “I am certain of the universe”), he feels that he understands things. To me, his certainty in the universe comes across as shortsighted and arrogant, but when wrapped up in his wonder of the stars it is more of a comfort than declaration of importance. He finds solace in the perceptual constancy of astronomy. Below the arrogance is an innocent fascination with the world. He has learned all that he has about the stars because he genuinely loves it. This line contrasts with the rest so far because despite being a Facts And Figures type of guy, this line also overlays it with artistic romanticism.

“And I never saw anything I couldn’t blame on my mind

So I don’t believe in ghosts”

Right when you hear it, this line SOUNDS important. First off, it really reinforces his nature as a science man. He has never seen or otherwise been presented with evidence of ghosts, therefore he doesn’t believe in them. It also means that the only way for him to believe in ghosts is to be directly presented with evidence that he “couldn’t blame on his mind.”

The other thing this implies is that he HAS seen some evidence of ghosts, but he blamed it on his mind. This is the first real suggestion of the Astronomer’s denial in the song. Even if he sees something, it doesn’t automatically mean he’s going to believe it. He is trying to maintain that scientific objectivity, eliminating all other possibilities before coming to a conclusion despite what he may feel.

“But I like to sing, I like to sing

And when i hear the call to prayer

Coming through the speakers of the mosque”

These lines are mostly setup for the next stretch of imagery. However, it’s huge in contributing to our view of how the Astronomer thinks. Firstly, it adds another layer to the earlier line, “I don’t go to church much/but when I do I stand and I sing loud.” The Astronomer likes to sing, and that may be the reason he goes to church in the first place. However, this bit also adds to that by showing that he is not strictly a “church” man. If you look at it one way, and in the lines following it, he is paying respect to a beautiful experience that is, to my knowledge, unique to Islam. In another way, this expands the world view that he has, it paints his experience of spirituality as something that isn’t strictly Christian, i.e., spirituality in and of itself is a universal experience. And while he appreciates it, he doesn’t necessarily associate it with himself.

All this talk of Islam and mosques also tangentially incorporates the Scheherezade storyline into the pulse of the musical overall. The Muslim, Arabic style of singing is exemplified in the backing vocals on this section, but this type of singing is also referenced in the vocalization + opening verse of Soldier & Rose (which is an interesting association to make with the Soldier considering the extensive military aspects of Islamic history). Islam also has a very direct relationship with our modern understanding of math, physics, and particularly astronomy, which links our character here with the mosque in a more embedded way.

“There’s a shock/There’s a stillness

As the melodies twist and zap

And the air is filled with diamonds”

This is a spot of particularly beautiful imagery. If you have never been in a town/city where there are massive speakers blaring muslim prayers throughout the streets at certain times of day, the experience really instills this sense of disjointed beauty. Basically, it’s good writing. There is also an image that it creates: The air filling with diamonds, makes you think about the sky filling with stars. Connecting back to his wonder of the stars and love for astronomy.

“And I wish that I could sing like that

But I don’t practice enough

No I don’t practice enough”

The line “I wish I could sing like that” changes the tone of the whole preceding descriptive section. Not only is it beautiful, he wants it. Not only does he admire it, he wishes he could emulate it. This could mean a number of things. It could be a testament to the fact that making beautiful art or doing something out of passion is a matter of choice, it’s a matter of practice, and it can be learned.

“I don’t practice enough” is probably a reference to the fact that he associates singing (i.e., singing practice) with church and mosques, but he “[doesn’t] go to church much.” That’s one thing i find interesting about this. Singing and religion are inextricably tied in his mind. Singing is spirituality, and art is spirituality. It’s a romanticism that he yearns for, but because of his scientific ideals he can’t let himself experience that. However, even further than that, I think that he associates ghosts with spirituality. That becomes more evident later on, but he shows the same resistance towards 1) religiosity, 2) appreciating the arts + romantic idealizing, 3) believing ghosts, all under the guise of universal certainty. In his mind, those three things are related.

---------------------------

The next section is the list of things that he is confounded by. While a lot of this section appears to be largely Dave thinking out loud, several of the things he mentions could have ties to the rest of the narrative and the Astronomer’s way of thinking:

“I’m confounded by music”

        As we’ve discussed, music is the symbol of his hangups with spirituality.

“And babies and laughter”

        The baby brings to mind both Roxy and Starchild, both of whom are Rose.

“And stories and goodness”

        Stories = Scheherazade + reference to the multiple lifetime stories

“Infinity and luck”

        Another reference to the intertwined storylines, going on for what must seem like an eternity (hence: infinity). Also might just be the seeming infinity of space, since he is an astronomer.

“I’m confused by the notion that somebody loves me, and drugs make me crazy”

        I listened to this song on a loop for this and eventually this line gave me the impression that it was like an excuse for what happened with pearl and rose. He didn’t understand why they loved him in the first place. [Edit: Drugs are also referenced several times throughout the musical, symbolized through “honey.” Most notably honey is used in relation to alcohol throughout, and also to heroin if you squint.]

“And a clairvoyant told me that I’ve got an old soul”

        This is another reference to the extended intertwined reincarnations. The interesting thing about it is that the astronomer exists in the first timeline. Not the oldest chronologically, but in the inciting incident that causes rose to do all the time travel in the first place. This reinforces the idea of the circular story, because even in the original form his soul had already traveled through many lifetimes.

“Oh Lord I wish I could sing like that

But I don’t practice enough

No I don’t practice enough”

Although the meaning of this is the same as its previous iteration, i think it’s really important to note the placement of this. It comes at the end of a long string of things that confuse him. It comes directly after “a clairvoyant told me that I’ve got an old soul.”

Assuming that he relates singing with spirituality, maybe he’s wishing here that he believed that he had an old soul. Wishing he believed in clairvoyants. But he doesn’t practice letting himself believe it, so he doesn’t believe it.

“There’s a man in Iran/who says he talks to ghosts

And the way that he does it/is he hasn’t spoken to anyone alive in forty-two years

He turns his mind off everyday/and stares at the wall”

When listening to Ghost Quartet more intently, it becomes pretty clear that this is in reference to Shah Zaman from the Scheherazade story line. There’s not much else to these particular lines except for the implication of disgust (disbelief?) that he turns his mind off every day. As a Thinker who takes comfort in certainty, that must be unthinkable to him. [Edit: The Man in Iran/Shah Zaman is also generally portrayed as disgusting for doing this, and no one seems to care that despite being an “empty sack of a man” (Bad Men) he still actually achieved talking to ghosts. It could also just be a comment on the fact that Shah Zaman/The Man in Iran is pathetic, and therefore hallucinating the whole thing, therefore making the whole idea of the existence of ghosts that much less credible.]

“And he is one with the universe

And he says that every soul that ever died

Is living in the shadow of the sky”

What I love about this line is how it parallels the way the astronomer speaks about himself in the first verse. The astronomer says about himself: “When I look through my telescope/I am certain of the universe.” Contrast that with the man in Iran, who “stares at the wall/and he is one with the universe.” At this point it makes you wonder: which has a better understanding of the universe? Who has found more peace? The one who has found certainty in the universe, or the one who has truly Become One™ with the universe?

“But if that’s the experiment

If that’s what a scientist would have to do

If that’s how long it takes

I’m afraid I just haven’t got the time.”

These lines are very briefly and simply explained in Dave’s Genius annotation for this song: “This amazing idea is from Ken Wilbur’s ‘A Brief History of Everything’… atheists/rationalists/scientists are so quick to dismiss the claims of gurus and mystics as unverifiable, but in fact none of them do the repeatable and thus verifiable experiment, which simply requires that you experience subjecting your mind to many many many decades of a spiritual practice.”

I have always agreed with this type of thinking. If scientists aren’t willing to be spiritual, how do they know without a shadow of a doubt that there is no spirit? Besides, ironically I suppose, blind faith? That is what’s happening here with the Astronomer. He is resisting spirituality, resisting conducting that experiment. In these lines, he’s admitting that even though he “never saw anything he couldn’t blame on [his] mind,” he hasn’t actually put in the time to disprove or prove his disbelief in ghosts or the spirit.

“So I’ll go home/pour some whiskey

And I’ll sigh”

There’s a couple of things that this reminds me of, which may or may not be related. Firstly, it reminds me of the defeated drunkenness of the Shah Zaman in Bad Men (to a much lesser degree). It also reminds me of the lines in Four Friends: “I remember you [whiskey] and my daddy/sittin’ in an easy chair/he’d rip open your wax/pour a finger or two/ and then he’d sit in the dark and just stare.” Despite the clear similarities, I’m hesitant to say that they are linked because the song Four Friends exists comfortably outside of the overall plot, but as with all the songs, the thematic parallel is there.

“And when it’s time to go to bed

I’ll keep the nightlight on.”

This is one of my favorite lines in this song. It’s what really got me thinking really critically about it (more than usual anyways) and wanting to do this deep explication of each line. The way that I see it, he is keeping the nightlight on to keep the ghosts away.

In the preceding verse, the man in Iran said that “every soul that ever died/ Is living in the shadow of the sky.” If the souls (read: ghosts) are living in the shadow of the sky (i.e., the dark), the only way to ensure they stay away at night would be to keep the nightlight on.

Even if someone were to not fully find a reason for why he is keeping the nightlight on, he is clearly afraid of something or trying to keep something away. This fear comes across as uncertainty, and it immediately casts doubt on everything he has said about himself. If he is so “certain of the universe,” and if he “[doesn’t] believe in ghosts,” then why is he keeping the nightlight on? It really vividly depicts someone who is wearily in denial of his own doubts and insecurities in the universe.

Anyways I didn’t really think of a way to conclude this so that’s all I guess lmao bye yall

[kidsviral-blog]

Is It Time For Us To Take Astrology Seriously?

New Post has been published on https://kidsviral.info/is-it-time-for-us-to-take-astrology-seriously/

Is It Time For Us To Take Astrology Seriously?

In an April marked by angry eclipses portending unexpected change, the ancient, long-debunked practice of astrology and its preeminent ambassador might be weirdly suited for the 21st century.

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Illustration by Justine Zwiebel for BuzzFeed

Every Tuesday and Thursday from noon until 7 p.m., Bart Lidofsky pins a small plastic name tag to his shirt (“Bart Lidofsky, Astrologer”) and receives customers at the Quest Bookshop on East 53rd Street in New York City. After I wander up to him and introduce myself — I am there to have my natal chart read — he leads me to a little table in the back of the store and pulls a gauzy green curtain closed behind us. “For privacy,” he says.

Quest specializes in spiritual, esoteric, and New Age literature, but also sells crystals, runes, incense, divination equipment, mala beads, essential oils, candles, pendulums, gemstones, and “altar supplies.” It smells like church in here. You can picture the clientele — people who are comfortable pontificating about auras, people who know how to hang wind chimes. Lidofsky has been performing astrological readings for 20 years, and his bio contains a long string of bona fides: He’s a member of the American Federation for Astrological Networking and the National Center for Geocosmic Research, and frequently delivers lectures for the New York Theosophical Society. Or, as he calls it, “the Lodge.”

After we sit down, Lidofsky asks for the precise date, time, and location of my birth, and spends the next 45 minutes determining, in his words, “how things fit together.”

Before I leave, Lidofsky — who wears a robust white goatee and small wire-frame glasses — hands me his business card. It is pale blue, and features a photograph of Saturn alongside all the pertinent contact information. “Feeling lost in a difficult world?” it wonders in extra-large type. “Help is available.”

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Until recently, I thought of astrology, when I thought of it at all, as frivolous and nearly embarrassing — a pseudoscience unworthy of consideration by serious people. I’m sure I felt at least partially implicated via my age and gender: A short screed in an 1852 edition of the New York Times called astrology’s audience “women and girls who are compelled to struggle as a living,” and declared the practice more odious than “the dozen other species of street swindles for which our city is famous.” In the late 1980s, when a former chief of staff published a provocative memoir claiming Nancy Reagan relied on a San Francisco astrologer to, as Time magazine put it, “determine the timing of the President’s every public move,” Ronald Reagan had to publicly insist that “at no time did astrology determine policy.” It was a major humiliation. Even the celebrity astrologer Steven Forrest has acknowledged his field’s dubious image. “I am often embarrassed to say what I do… Astrology has a terrible public relations problem,” he wrote in an essay for Astrology News Service.

But then there was this sense — suddenly, on the street — that astrology had credence. A 2013 New York magazine story claimed that “plenty of New Yorkers wouldn’t buy an apartment or accept a new job without an astral okay.” An occult bookstore opened on a dusty corner of Bushwick and was rhapsodically covered by the Times (its name, Catland, referenced a song by the British experimental band Current 93; its location in Brooklyn indicated a certain kind of culturally conscious clientele). People were talking frankly about their aspects. They knew which planets are in retrograde; they were jittery about eclipses. And it turns out what I’ve been observing anecdotally in New York — among my undergraduate writing students at New York University, in the press, between the otherwise high-functioning attendees of Brooklyn dinner parties — is supportable, at least in part, by statistics. According to a report from the National Science Foundation published earlier this year, “In 2012, slightly more than half of Americans said that astrology was ‘not at all scientific,’ whereas nearly two-thirds gave this response in 2010. The comparable percentage has not been this low since 1983.” While this sort of acceptance isn’t unprecedented, it’s still a curious spike. Astrology is gaining believers, and has been for a while.

In some ways, these numbers jibe with some broader cultural shifts: Whereas an astrological dabbler may have previously glanced at his horoscope in the newspaper while swirling cream into his coffee, there is now a vast and endless expanse of websites featuring complex, customized forecasts, some further broken down into insane and arbitrary-seeming categories (on Astrology.com, for example, you can consult a “Daily Flirt,” “Daily Home and Garden,” “Daily Dog,” or “Daily Lesbian” horoscope, among other variations). There is more access to astrology, just as there is more access to everything: A person can shop around, compare their fortunes, wait to find what they need.

When I speak to a former student, now 22, about the increase — it seems likely it’s at least in part attributable to her and her peers — she describes astrology’s mysteriousness as its most alluring attribute. She reads her horoscope every month, faithfully. Its inherent fallibility, she says, is precisely what makes it fun. For her, astrology is about feeling the strange thrill of indulging something (vaguely) supernatural, but it’s also about getting what she is really after, what we are all really after now: actionable, interactive information. These days, there aren’t many problems Google can’t solve. Except the problem of what happens next.

While folks her age are hardly the first group to feel the draw of the unknown, it also makes sense that a generation that came of age with the whole of human knowledge in its pockets might find the ambiguity of astrology a little welcome sometimes. For people born with the web, information has always been instantly accessible, so astrology’s abstruseness — and, ironically, its promises of clarity regarding the only real unknowable: the future — becomes appealing. This generation’s predicament, as I understand it, has always felt Dickensian: “We have everything before us, we have nothing before us.”

But then I’m reminded, again, that inaccuracy, or, at least, a belief in the fluidity of truth, is at the heart of the present-day zeitgeist: Our news is often hasty and unverified, our photos are filtered and retouched, our songs are pitch-corrected, our unscripted television programs are storyboarded into oblivion, and most everyone shrugs it all off. Astrology might not offer the most accurate or verifiable information, but at least it offers information — arguably the only currency that makes sense in 2014.

In that way, astrology seems perfectly positioned to become the defining dogma of our time.

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The earliest extant astrological text is a series of 70 clay tablets known collectively as Enuma Anu Enlil. The originals haven’t been recovered, but copies were found in the library of King Assurbanipal, a seventh-century B.C. Assyrian leader who reigned at Nineveh, in what’s presently northwestern Iraq. (Some of the tablets are now held by the British Museum in London.) The Enuma Anu Enlil contains various omens and interpretations of celestial phenomena, and accurately notes things like the rising and setting of Venus. According to the historian Benson Bobrick, the Assyrians at Nineveh had distinguished planets from fixed stars and figured out how to follow their courses, allowing them to predict eclipses; they also established the lunar month at 29 1/2 days.

By 700 B.C., the Chaldeans — tribes of Semitic migrants who settled in a marshy, southeastern corner of Mesopotamia — had discerned that the planets traveled on a set, narrow path called the ecliptic, and that constellations moved 30 degrees every two hours. In his book The Fated Sky, Bobrick explains how “the twelve [observed] constellations were eventually mapped and formed into a Zodiac round (about the sixth-century B.C.), and the signs in turn (as distinct from the constellations) were established as twelve 30 degree arcs over the course of the next 200 years.” As early as 410 B.C., astrologers had begun making natal charts, noting the exact alignment of the heavens at the moment of a baby’s birth.

Bobrick eventually suggests that astrology is, in fact, “the origin of science itself,” the practice from which “astronomy, calculation of time, mathematics, medicine, botany, mineralogy, and (by way of alchemy) modern chemistry” were eventually derived. “The idea at the heart of astrology is that the pattern of a person’s life — or character, or nature — corresponds to the planetary pattern at the moment of his birth,” Bobrick writes. “Such an idea is as old as the world is old — that all things bear the imprint of the moment they are born.”

It’s at least hard to untangle the development of astrology from the rise of astronomy, and for a long time, the two fields were essentially synonymous; the divide between the supernatural and the natural wasn’t always quite so entrenched. As Bobrick writes, the “occult and mystical yearnings” of Copernicus, Brahe, and Galileo helped to “inspire their scientific work,” and astronomy and astrology remained close bedfellows until almost the end of the 17th century.

Nick Popper, a historian and author who has studied the intersection of science and mysticism, explains the relationship this way: “In Europe before the Enlightenment, for example, most individuals recognized a distinction between the two. Astronomy was the knowledge of the map of the stars and their movements, while astrology was the interpretation of their effects. But knowledge of the movements of the stars was primarily useful for its service to astrology. On its own, astronomy was most valuable as a timepiece.”

For early modern Europeans, astrology was undeniable and ubiquitous, a guiding force in various essential fields, including medicine. “Every noble court worth its salt had an astrologer on consultation,” Popper tells me. “Typically a physician skilled in taking astrological readings. Many brought in numerous people to help interpret significant events. These figures were [frequently] charged with determining propitious dates, anticipating future transformations, and using horoscopes to assess the character of all sorts of figures. This predictive capacity was not deemed a ‘low’ knowledge, as now, but seen as an utterly vital political expertise.”

Johannes Kepler, one of the forefathers of modern astronomy (he determined the laws of planetary motion, which allowed Newton to determine his law of universal gravitation; Kant later called Kepler “the most acute thinker ever born”), wrote in 1603 that “philosophy, and therefore genuine astrology is a testimony of God’s works, and is therefore holy. It is by no means a frivolous thing.” Three years later, in 1606, he declared: “Somehow the images of celestial things are stamped upon the interior of the human being, by some hidden method of absorption … The character of the sky flowed into us at birth.”

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“There are so many misconceptions about astrology, it boggles me.” Susan Miller, arguably the most broadly influential astrologer practicing in America right now, is sitting across from me at a white-tablecloth restaurant on New York’s Upper East Side wearing a dark blue sheath dress, black tights, black knee-high boots, and Hitchcock-red lips. “The biggest is that it’s for women. I have 45% male readers. People just assume that it’s all women. It’s not.”

She is petite and precisely assembled, but not in a grim, bloodless, Park Avenue way. There is something openhearted about her, a vulnerability that borders on guilelessness. I find her instantly kind. We will sit here together for over four hours.

Miller founded a website called Astrology Zone on Dec. 14, 1995; the site presently attracts 6.5 million unique readers and 20 million page views each month. She released a new version of her smartphone app (“Susan Miller’s AstrologyZone Daily Horoscope FREE!”) late last year; her old app was downloaded 3 million times. Miller is hip to the way astrology functions online, having embraced the web from the very start of her career. She is active across most social media platforms, and fluent in the quick rhythm of virtual interaction, often acting as a kind of kooky, round-the-clock therapist. Offline, she employs 30 people in one way or another, has written nine books, and is aggressively feted by the fashion industry, a community in which she functions as an omniscient, beloved oracle.

Miller was born in New York, still lives in the city, and doesn’t have a whiff of bohemian mysticism about her. Instead, she presents as intelligent and detail-oriented, with none of the candles-and-crystals whimsy endemic to New Age bookstores. (A minor concession: Her iPhone, which beckons her often, is set to the “Sci-Fi” ringtone.) She appears legitimately compelled to help people, and offers an extravagant amount of free services to her followers. Of course, “free services” can be a potentially devious vehicle for other, less altruistic pursuits — and Miller does sell her books and calendars on her website, and frequently pushes a premier version of her app featuring longer horoscopes — but it is very, very easy to read and follow Astrology Zone without ever making an explicit financial investment in it. (Miller insists she makes “pennies” from the non-pop-up advertisements on the site.) I believe her when she says she considers her readers friends.

It had started to feel like a colossal waste of energy, fretting over whether or not astrology is “real” — whether or not there are accurate indications of our collective or individual futures contained in the cosmos, whether or not those indications can be massaged into utility by trained interpreters — because the fact is, even beyond our present disinterest in objective truth, reasonable people believe in all sorts of unreasonable things. True love, the afterlife, karma, a soul. Even high-level cosmology, the study of the origin and evolution of the universe, hinges in part on tenuous scientific presumptions. When I considered astrology objectively — the notion that celestial movements might affect activity on Earth, and that people born around the same time of year share might certain characteristics based, in part, on a comparable environmental experience in utero — it didn’t seem nearly as dumb as, say, waving one’s hands around a crystal ball. Or calling someone your soulmate.

Still, astrology is often (rightly) equated with charlatanism: hucksters peddling snake oil, burglarizing the naïve. As with any unregulated business, there are practitioners who aren’t properly trained, who haven’t done the work and don’t know the math; they will snatch your $5 and spit back some vague platitude about the stars. It makes sense, then, that astrology is so routinely conflated with fortune-telling, mysticism. “People think it’s predestination. It has nothing to do with predestination,” Miller says, forking the salmon on her chopped salad. She is careful, always, to emphasize free will in her readings — when properly employed, astrology doesn’t dictate or predict our choices, it merely allows us to make better, more informed ones. As the astrologer Evangeline Adams wrote in 1929, “The horoscope does not pronounce sentence … it gives warning.” It’s the same idea — in theory, at least — as a body undergoing genetic testing to unmask certain proclivities or susceptibilities: to find out what it’s capable of, to preemptively protect the places where it is softest, most at risk.

Miller has written extensively about the debilitating, unnamable ailment she suffered as a child (“I had sudden, inexplicable attacks that felt like thick syrup was falling into my knee,” she wrote in her 2001 book, Planets and Possibilities), and over lunch, she tells me she was bedridden for weeks-long stretches, and endured bouts of extraordinary, life-halting pain. She describes the problem as a birth defect, but her doctors were mystified by her condition, and routinely accused her of total hysteria. Around her 14th birthday, Miller’s parents finally found a physician willing to further investigate her case, and she spent 11 months in the hospital that year, undergoing and recovering from various vascular operations.

“The other doctors were like, ‘You’re very clever, aren’t you? You don’t want to go to school, and you’ve hoodwinked all of us,’” she recalls. “And you know, my mother and father were on my side. But they were the only ones. I could feel how a prisoner would feel when unjustly accused. It was the most horrible thing. To be in so much pain and to be screamed at!”

To date, Miller has received more than 40 blood transfusions. Although she no longer endures attacks, if she were injured again in her left leg — in a way that suddenly exposed her veins — she could easily bleed to death. As of 2001, there were only 47 other documented cases of her particular affliction on record.

The pain kept her out of high school, but Miller studied from bed, passed the New York State Regents exams, and graduated at 16. Shortly thereafter, she enrolled in New York University, where she studied business. The whole arc is remarkable: a narrative of redemption. I can’t tell whether I find it incongruous or inevitable that a kid who was constantly told her pain was not real grew up to adopt a profession that gets ridiculed, nearly incessantly, for being its own kind of con. It speaks to Miller’s self-possession that she is charitable, always, to her skeptics.

“No astrologer believes in astrology before she starts studying it,” she says. “What I have a problem with are people who pontificate against astrology who’ve never studied it, never looked at a book, had no contact with it. And they criticize it without opening the lid and looking inside.” She pauses. “But I’m not an evangelist.”

Miller is famously available to her readers, particularly on Twitter. The medium suits her: Her dispatches are sympathetic, personable, chatty. Aggressively educated young women, especially, share them in a half-winking, half-sincere way, indulging in astrology’s prescribed femininity and wielding it in a manner that feels almost confrontational. It reminds me, sometimes, of the way women talk to each other about nail polish: as if it were a political act to not be embarrassed by it.

Miller, for her part, spends loads of time answering questions from her more than 177,000 followers, like, “I need to have oral surgery. when should I schedule? Aries w/Virgo rising.” (“Every Aries I know is having oral surgery,” Miller wrote back. “My daughter had it too. Go ahead and have it — think of it as repair work. Good time!”).

Advice like this would be troubling if Miller was not always exceedingly mindful of her influence (she says she would never tell someone not to have surgery or not to get married on a specific day), and it is, in fact, troubling regardless; her readers take her work seriously. She is pestered with inane questions like some sort of human Magic 8 Ball. If there is any delay in the appearance of an Astrology Zone forecast — they are posted, en masse, on the first of the month — people get agitated. The tweets accumulate, and range in timbre from bummed to slightly desperate: “Waking up the first day of the month to find that Susan won’t post for another 24 hours is the worst,” “It won’t officially be spring until Susan Miller posts her March horoscopes,” “This wait on @astrologyzone is killing me,” “Why is @astrologyzone always late? Every other astrology website posts on time but the best.”

Eventually, the forecasts always appear. Miller stays up very late — until 2 or 3 in the morning, most nights — and wakes up at 7 to exercise, screen several news broadcasts (she likes to compare them, to see how certain stories are prioritized), run errands, and, eventually, around 11 a.m., start writing. She generates at least 40,000 words every month for Astrology Zone, and produces detailed horoscopes for Elle, Neiman Marcus, and a slew of international publications, including Vogue Japan.

Anyone who’s ever interviewed Miller has observed that she’s a circuitous, digressive storyteller, and her monthly forecasts are far longer — they’re essays, really — than a typical newspaper or magazine horoscope, which usually contains just a sentence or two of fuzzy wisdom. Miller can be specific in her advice (“I suggest you do not accept a job now, not unless the offer emanates from a VIP from your past. In that case, you would be simply continuing your relationship, not starting a new relationship, and you therefore would be on safer ground during a Mercury retrograde phase,” she cautioned in February), and she calls her work “practical astrology,” which differs, she said, from “psychological astrology.” She wants to be service-oriented. She wants to give people information they can use.

“I can tell right away if you had a harsh father or a critical mother,” she says. “I might mention it. But I’m not going to delve into your childhood and growing up. I think that’s the work of a psychiatrist.” Instead, Miller finds out how certain astrological phenomena have affected a client in the past, and then, when those events are about to repeat, asks them to recall the state of their life at that prior moment. “When I do a chart the first time, there is so much information there. I have to watch your proclivities.”

Miller pulls out her MacBook and opens a program called Io Sprite. She plugs in my birth information, and a pie chart appears on the screen. It contains several concentric circles; the outermost circle is divided into 12 sections, one for each sign of the zodiac. Individual slices contain glyphs representing the sun, the moon, planets, nodes, trines. It is a snapshot of the sky at the moment of my deliverance, and it is the lynchpin of Western astrology.

Besides the placement of celestial bodies, astrologers also consider what they call “aspects” — the relative angles between planets — and use the natal chart to determine an ascendant or rising sign (the sign and degree that was ascending on the eastern horizon at the time of birth; astrologers think this signifies a person’s “awakening consciousness”). The planet closest to one’s ascendant is that person’s rising planet, and is believed to indicate how we approach or deal with other people. Every astrologer will interpret a natal chart slightly differently. Miller compares this to how various broadcasters report the same news, but emphasize or deemphasize certain narratives. She tells me it is important to find an astrologer that I like and trust.

“You have Uranus rising the same way I do,” Miller says, staring closely at my chart. “Your thought patterns are different from everybody else’s. You think they’re the same because you’re living inside of your body, but they’re different. That influences your personality. People will remember you. And at some point in your life you will form a path for people. You will expose something or teach them something that they didn’t know about.” I’m not sure how or if I’m supposed to respond, so I chew on the end of my pen and look up at her like a puppy dog. I want her to tell me everything. Maybe I don’t believe in astrology, or at least not entirely, but I’m also not immune to the lure of whispered prophecies.

Obviously, the personality attributes commonly associated with most signs (and repeated by astrologers) are positive, and if they’re not immediately complimentary, they’re at least forgivable (“secretive,” “stubborn”). In astrology, no one is “strangely shaped” or “sort of dense.” I am a Capricorn, like Joan of Arc and LeBron James, which means, according to Miller, that I’m rational, reliable, resilient, calm, competitive, trustworthy, determined, cautious, disciplined, and quite persevering. “Your underlings see you as a tower of strength,” she wrote of Capricorns in Planets and Possibilities. “And indeed you are.” Meanwhile, I have Scorpio rising at 19 degrees, which means I have “awesome sexual powers” and a set of “bedroom eyes” that, I’m told, will get me “just about anything I want.” Like many people, I find my astrological profile to be spot-on.

The most noteworthy scientific repudiation of astrology was conducted in the early 1980s by a UC-Berkeley physicist named Shawn Carlson. He tasked 28 astrologers with pairing more than 100 natal charts to psychological profiles generated by the California Personality Inventory, a 480-question true-false test that determines personality type. The idea was to figure out if a trained astrologer could accurately match a natal chart to a personality profile. “Astrology failed to perform at a level better than chance,” Carlson concluded in Nature in 1985. “We are now in a position to argue a surprisingly strong case against natal astrology as practiced by reputable astrologers.”

It is a surprisingly strong case, in that I’m legitimately surprised that the astrologers fared so poorly, and then further surprised by my own surprise. I wonder, for a moment, if astrology has become so omnipresent and accepted in America — nearly everyone, after all, knows their sign, and has since childhood — that we’re all unconsciously performing our attributes now. That we have assumed them. This seems bonkers.

I recall Wittgenstein: “We feel that when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched.”

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These days, it’s not terribly easy to find a reputable scientist willing to go on the record about astrology. The practice is so heavily disregarded that folks don’t even want to expend the energy required to debunk it. The American Museum of Natural History tells me they do “not have anyone to talk about this.”

I eventually get in touch with Eugene Tracy, a chancellor professor of physics at the College of William and Mary, who studies plasma theory and nonlinear dynamics, and who recently co-authored a new book (Ray Tracing and Beyond: Phase Space Methods in Plasma Wave Theory) for the Cambridge University Press. Plasma theory — that’s heavy. It posits that plasmas and ionized gases play far more central roles in the physics of the universe than previously theorized. It’s also what’s known as a “non-standard cosmology,” meaning it essentially contradicts the Big Bang, and hypothesizes a universe with no beginning or end. I get a little bug-eyed just thinking about it.

Tracy, who has taught high-level graduate courses in physics and undergraduate seminars in things like “Time in Science and Science Fiction,” acknowledges that science and mysticism now sit in total opposition. “The separation between what we would now call science and religion, philosophy and art, is a very modern development,” Tracy says. “The [early] motivation for studying things in the sky was the belief that either these things were gods, or they were the places where the gods lived,” he says.

Tracy and I talk for a while about Kepler, the last great astronomer who maintained faith in astrology; I am interested in how Kepler juggled his confidences. “He believed that astrology wasn’t working, that it demonstrably wasn’t very predictive. But he believed that it was because they were doing it wrong, not because the field itself was misguided,” Tracy says. “He had that scientific attitude: I need good data to build my models on. But his motivation was mystical.”

I finally tell Tracy that what I really want is a succinct debunking of the entire enterprise: I want to know, definitively, that it can’t work, that it doesn’t make sense. He is gentle in his reply. “Newton’s theory of gravity says that everything in the universe gravitates toward everything else. So that means there is a force exerted upon you by the other planets, by the sun, and so forth,” he says. “Now if you ask, ‘Well, the person who is sitting next to me in the room also exerts gravitational influence on me. How close do they have to be to exert the same gravitational influence as Jupiter?’ I’d say depending on where the doctor stood in the room next to you when you were born, [he] exerted the same gravitational influence [as Jupiter]. So gravity isn’t gonna get you astrology. The argument is that there’s something else going on. And that’s where you get outside the realm of science.”

In the beginning — my beginning, your beginning — gravity was everywhere, and the planets were just planets.

When I ask him why he thought people continued to believe in astrology — to cling to a myth — he likens it to our ongoing interest in science fiction of all stripes. “We don’t want to think of the planets as being empty, that there aren’t stories out there. Just like here,” he answers. “We want to fill the world with stories.”

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I have plans to meet my friend Michael in the West Village on a particularly frigid Friday night. Over email, I convince him we should go see an astrologer or clairvoyant of some sort — you know, just dip into one of those tapestried storefronts on Bleecker Street, slip some cash to a woman in a low-cut top. I anticipate resistance, so I tell him we can get a drink first. We meet at a quasi-dive called The Four-Faced Liar, and have 300 beers. I want to see for myself whether astrology — even when practiced in the most pedestrian, mercenary way — can distinguish itself from all your basic soothsaying rackets.

Sufficiently over-served, Michael and I stumble around the neighborhood. (It doesn’t even seem that cold out anymore!) (It is 11 degrees.) Walk-in astrologers in major cities tend to keep bar hours — they are often open until midnight or 1 a.m., at least in New York — and I suspect a decent chunk of their business is derived from rambunctious tavern patrons on the move and in search of one last thrill.

Street psychics obviously command a different clientele than high-end private astrologers (comprehensive natal readings tend to cost between $150 and $200, whereas most people can only stomach shelling out 10 or 20 bucks on a late-night whim), but the questions are often the same; all of our questions are always the same. Speaking on the telephone one afternoon, Miller tells me that people come to her for many kinds of personal advice: love, sex, marriage, friendship, health concerns, career counseling. “This is the most educated generation in history, and they’re reading me because they can’t get a job,” she says. “But they don’t read me just for solving problems. They read me to get a perspective on their life. That’s another misconception,” she sighs. “There is nothing but misconceptions.”

The promise of “perspective” is an interesting way to think about the basic appeal of astrology. It allows us to step back — way back — and get a broad-view portrait of our lives, to have someone say: “This is who you are.” A person could spend her entire life trying to figure that out (which is to say nothing of the subsequent quest — in the unlikely event of a successful self-definition — to have that identity validated). I wonder if part of astrology’s attractiveness doesn’t have to do with its rote assignment of signifiers. All the clues to how a person should be: rational, reliable, resilient, calm, competitive, trustworthy, determined, cautious, disciplined. It feels like a road map, in a way.

Of course, what people really want to know is the future. It’s supremely annoying, not knowing what’s going to happen to you.

Michael and I procure dollar slices on Sixth Avenue and wander over to Houston Street. We find a storefront with a neon PSYCHIC sign. The establishment is called Predictions, and is operated by a tiny Egyptian woman named Nicole, who immediately beckons us inside. Her card says “Horoscopes,” and I inquire about an astrological reading. She is dismissive of the idea. “They read your sign,” she says. “I tell your future.”

The best part of my 10-minute session with Nicole is when she asks Michael to leave, commands me to squeeze a clear quartz crystal in my left hand, and then announces, in succession, that my sex chakras are blocked, that someone bothered my mother while she was pregnant with me, that things other people find difficult I find easy, that I am destined to be with someone whose name begins with “J,” and that I am slightly psychic myself.

Back on the street, I find Michael deep in conversation with two young, dark-haired women who are both contemplating a consultation with Nicole. They say they are going to buy a scratch-off lottery ticket first, and that if they win, they’ll go in to see her. They do not win. I tell Michael how I am supposed to be with Jeorge Clooney.

We turn onto MacDougal and walk past a building with the zodiac painted on the window. The door is locked, but eventually an old woman — toothless, and wearing a pink bathrobe — appears and unlocks it. Despite the iconography decorating her building, she also denies us an astrological reading. “It’s too complicated,” she sighs. “You have to know what you’re doing.” Instead, she reads Michael’s tarot cards while I sit on a chair with a ripped cushion. The television remains on the entire time. “I don’t look at the past,” she says while he shuffles the cards. “That’s for you to deal with.” She proceeds to tell Michael a few things about his future — two to three kids! — but I’m not listening because I’m thinking really hard about nachos. Before we leave, he asks her if she has any ideas for a cool nickname. We discussed this question ahead of time, back at the bar. “Something with a T,” she says. “And an L.” He decides on “Talon” after a brief dalliance with “Toil.” The next morning, I text him the word “TOILET” repeatedly.

If there is a way to ascertain usable info about the future, I am not sure this is it.

View this image ›

The question of why astrology has endured — why, of all the outlier theosophies and esoteric theories, astrology is the one that’s remained in the public consciousness for thousands of years, the one with a presence in nearly every daily newspaper in America, the one that’s flourishing online — might just be attributable to the endless romance of the night sky. Find a field out in the country, wait until dark, look up: It is a fast and easy way to find yourself cowed. There is something seductive about the stars, about their beauty and their strangeness, about what they imply regarding the smallness of our existence here on Earth. In his book The Fourth Dimension, the mathematician Rudy Rucker wrote: “What entity, short of God, could be nobler or worthier of [our] attention than the cosmos itself?”

Eugene Tracy suggests something similar during our conversation. “I think for most of human history, the sky has been very important to people,” he says. “And now we live our lives without it. We’re surrounded by artificial light.”

Astrology is, in the end, a kind of mass apophenia: the seeing of patterns or connections in random data. Although it resembles a pantheism and sometimes gets slotted as such, astrology has never struck me as a useful stand-in for organized religion — it doesn’t proffer absolution or any promise of an afterlife, nor is it a practicable ethos — and many astrologers (including Susan Miller, who is a devout Catholic) nurture active spiritual lives that have nothing to do with the zodiac. Astrology, unlike religion, is a deeply personalized, nearly solipsistic practice.

When I ask Dr. Janet Bernstein, a psychiatrist who’s worked in all kinds of contexts (privately, in prisons, in hospitals, in New York, in Alaska), if she has a sense of why so many different types of people turn to astrology, she points out that it often only takes one win — one “right” horoscope — to convert a skeptic. “Humans seem to like certainty and predictability in many, but not all, situations,” she says. “Astrology is just one of many systems that promises some certainty and predictability. Medical research is another. Stock market analysis is yet another. What often happens when one prediction in a system is born out is that the entire system [is] accepted.”

Back at the Quest Bookshop, when I ask Lidofsky if his belief in astrology requires at least a temporary suspension of cynicism — a “there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”-type of open-mindedness toward wildly unquantifiable truths — he only shrugs. “I don’t see any logical reason why it works,” he replies. “It just does. Aspirin was the most prescribed drug in the world, and no one knew how it worked until the ‘70s.”

Ultimately, I understand astrology’s utility as a (faulty) predictive tool, even if most astrologers prefer that it not be used that way. I also understand its attractiveness as something to believe in: Here is an ancient art — rooted in the cosmos, the default home for everything divine and miraculous — that promises not only clarity regarding the future, but also a summation of the past. Humans have always been drawn to succinct markers of identity, to anything that tells us who we are.

There is also the assurance of change in astrology: The planets keep moving. The chart always shifts. The forecast refreshes on the first of the month.

One particular story has stuck with me: In July 1609, Galileo discovered that Dutch eyeglass makers had developed a simple telescope, and weeks later, he’d designed and forged his own (improved) version, which allowed him to define the Milky Way as a galaxy of clustered stars, to see that Jupiter had four large orbiting moons, and to reaffirm Copernicus’ heliocentric understanding of the universe. Still, several prominent philosophers, including Cesare Cremonini and Giulio Libri, refused to look through the telescope. Maybe they just didn’t want to see what he saw — didn’t want to challenge one worldview with another. In 1610, in a letter to Kepler, Galileo opined what he called “the extraordinary stupidity of the multitude,” but it’s impossible to say precisely what kept the philosophers away.

I like to think they chose to uphold a private sense of heaven. One that told them exactly what they needed to know.

1.

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[missmonroe123-blog]

Their Eyes Are Watching God- Zole Neale Hurston

Their Eyes Are Watching God- Zole Neale Hurston

Zola Neale Hurston, from the word go, appeared to make a communication point at something. However her slender novel does not provide sufficient content to pass across any of the thematic concerns that she intends to pass across.  The reason why I agree with Richard Wright on his assertion that the text lacked message is due to the excessive integration of so many issues that nothing substantive comes out. Their Eyes Were Watching God, tries to present the issue of love while at the same time trying to raise the narrative of hate. If these were the only themes, the plot development may have worked out just fine. However, the reader still comes across the weak theme of gossip, the issue of politics, the literary advancement of poetry within literature and the conflicting thematic concerns of life and death.  Indeed, its publication in 1937 ought to have majored on one strong theme such as Women Right or Black empowerment. To subtly purport to have a strong narrative when nothing stood out implies that, as Wright would put it, writing in vacuum. It is for this reason that the novel realized most of its relevance several decades after its publication.

Hurston in the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, uses various formats of imagery to pass across the text’s messages. One powerful figurative component that towers over the rest is the use of a horizon. She uses this to present Janie’s yearning for equality. Initially, Hurston had applied the image to display Janie’s long search for love. When this item was found, Hurston progressed into using it to show Janie’s yearning for equality in marriage. The horizon, with its distance representation shows Janie longing for things she did not have. They were so possible yet so hard to come across. They were so near yet so far. As had been symbolized by the horizon, she did find love and got married to Logan. However, even in marriage, she feels that she is not an equal partner to Logan. The yearning for equality then begins. Hurston uses this horizon figure to figuratively show what women were going through at that period. Many were looking for love, most did not get it and those who found it missed on equality. The equality message perhaps overrides all the other factors as the early 19th century provided the hardest period for American women.

Janie Crawford, the main proponent of Hurston’s novel, was a woman keen on finding true love. That fact explains her experience going through 3 marriages. However, her journey through these engagements blends in a reality of tragic endings and painful lessons. In fact, she only manages to independently exit from only marriage set-up. Each of the marriages is all different. In her first forced marriage to one Logan, she is treated possessively. Her husband is way too old to comprehend the building factors of true love. He uses her as she pleases and ignores her soulful needs. Janie’s experience in the hands of Logan aptly replay the experiences of black women especially inter-marriages. Her next husband is Joe Starks. The guy is overly presentable, very suave and appears to be Janie’s solution to an easy marriage. However, behind the modern and corporate face, is a rough man who treats Janie in a worse way than Logan.  In short, the neat presentation was façade and Janie found out that Starks displayed empty dreams. She moves on to marry Tea Cake, a man who appears to show some sense of sensitivity. However and as Janie tragically discovers, the guy is not substantive enough to inspire any kind of sensible life. He is simply flat. The three marriages show Janie’s long search for love, and later equality. In reality Hurston was simply showing what the black women went through during that period. If one was lucky to find love, they were not assured of equality.

Joe or Jody as Hurston double-referenced Janie’s second husband had a twisted character. To one end, how was that person who presented very presentable body curriculum-vitae to the public. Inwardly, he was as cruel as currently can get. Even at this point, it is clear that Hurston was using her to pass the message of white aristocracy. To share the message of the pin-striped suit wearing gentlemen who were darling to their business associates and fellow crooks but cruel to the vulnerable. Precisely, he gained his power by extracting it from others. He felt venerable every time he muzzled Janie’s voice. Janie is looking for a space filled with equity, something which Jody cannot manage to provide. She threatens his insecurity by subtly demanding to be recognized. On Logan’s case, the guy was on old and quite ugly man. From a technical point of view, he needed Janie’s help. At one time he requests her to assist him in moving farm items. Indeed, he owned a very big farm which was evidently beyond his full control largely due to the age factor. Again, Logan had to seek the advice of Nanny when making the decision to marry Janie. That alone illustrate that he could not manage his thoughts to arrive at independent decisions implying a sense of impotence that required support.  Logan’s conception of marriage indicates that he only viewed wives as supportive structures. Additionally, his perception greatly reflected the mindset of men from the south whose possessions came first. If marriage happened, it was a game of convenience and the wife was in the same category as all the workers and possessions in their large firms. Jadie’s conception of marriage signifies the trues state of black women in the 1930’s. They were in genuine search for love, equality and soulful recognition. Sadly all the three factors were in very short supply.

Primarily, while reading Hurston book from a practical point of view and in relation to the situation in the US at the time, silence represented vulnerability. By implication, silence was sign of personal weakness, a lack of sufficient power. However, in the representation of Janie, Hourston takes a different route to portray the effect of silence. She developed the character of Janie as an internally powerful character who had a very high level of interiority. In that case, Jane used silence to reflect and create powerful thought processes in her. This fact explains why even when silence is a sign of weakness, she did move out of three marriages without seeking a single divorce. Once her inner voice told her that enough was enough, she did not hesitate to take a decision. At no single moment did she appear hopeless and helpless against all who traumatized her.  Hurston uses silence in Janie to indicate the power of conscience and consciousness. Janie did know how her husbands were treating her. However, instead of unproductive confrontations, she chose to sustain her search for true love in an environment that supported equality. Silence, in that sense trajectory, again represented what women went through. Most understood that they were powerless. However, instead of taking the route of full submission, they strengthened their characters and shored up their resilience vaults as a means of retaining a direction even when the environment was harsh.

Hurston has expressly applied dialect to share the practical perspective of the issues that Janie faced. This application makes the stories appear real and highly believable.  For example, a reader versed with the US history cab detect that most of the text setting is based on stories and life in the Southern States. From Joe Starks to Logan to Tea Café and the experiences that Janie faced, Hurston had a message from the south to all her readers. Even though Janie is a black woman, the factor of African-Americans and their unfortunate experiences is overwhelmed by ‘southern effect’. Figurative narration as applied in the book is a means of supporting Janie’s character. Janie did not bring out issues openly. Instead, she chose silence and reflection as her guide towards permeating a rough American pathway. Colloquial dialogue supports the practical narration point as highlighted above.

Phoebe takes positively all the stories and experiences that Jadie is passing through. Her character represents that reliable, everyday friend that everyone on the globe has. In fact, she admits that the only difference between her and Jadie is that the latter is more outgoing, independent and adventurous than her. Her character display is that of an average persona, of an individual who is ready to provide a supportive role to others. Hurston, through Janie presents her as highly conservative and average in life. The most significant point in that Phoebe-Janie connection is the role that Janie plays in upraising the morale of Phoebe. Phoebe admits that she became ‘10’ feet taller through the guidance of Janie. The communication point as shared by Hurston is that the society will always have two kinds of people. There will be the bold Janies’ and the conservative and average minded Phoebes’. It is however the role of the strong to guide the weak and elevate them to their levels.

Hurston had the explicit desire of making reference to God. However, from the figurative point of view Hurston was making referring to the external hands when it came to meeting to seeking for their help.  When humanity cannot assist with even the most basic of needs, you can only turn to an external hand for personal gratification. Through Janie, Hurston communicates the plight of black women who had no other source of hope and trust other than God himself. Indeed, their immediate environment did not appreciate or recognize them. Even with their search for authentic things in life, true love and equality, they did attract attention from their fellow living beings. The only solution to that human travesty was extracting hope from another source. Janie is faced white men who the brutal southern mindset. These were supposed to be her intimate soulmates but they ended up being her tormentors. To where else would her eyes watch other than Gods’ direction? Janie and Phoebe lived in psychological solitude due to the exclusion by the white community. For that reason, Their Eyes Were Watching God.

[pumpituppainting-blog]

Interview: Rachel Lee

A conversation with Rachel Lee

By Cindy Becerra

March 2017

Rachel Lee is a Miami-based artist and prospective graduate of the New World School of the Arts. Her work is based on 90’s alternative music, video games, and her suburban neighborhood. She combines these sources to create artificial realities through a default state of escapism fueled by isolation. Rachel has participated in several group exhibitions including the NWSA 2017 BFA Unbound Exhibition at the Cisneros Fontanals Foundation and the Miami Biennale: Unfolding Series I.

Cindy Becerra: What are you working on right now?

Rachel Lee: For BFA I’m working on three large scale paintings that are landscapes and they are a combination of video game spaces with concert equipment. They are in and out suburban landscapes made up of street lights, grass and trees.

CB: Is it only for your BFA?

RL: BFA gave me the opportunity to focus on it and deal with it as my thesis because it’s something I feel like I’ve been trying to get closer to this whole time that I’ve been practicing art making. It is the end goal for me to figure out how to deal with these things I care about into one mass.

CB: What medium do you use to make your landscapes?

RL: I use oil paint on canvas or found material. Recently I’ve been doing more collage type of work where I’m taking cheap paper and I throw painting on it, sharpie, highlighters, or I’ll take a screwdriver and make some marks that way which is readily available. I use cheap materials that I can replace easily.

CB: So you are being resourceful

RL: It’s like a mix of me just being mindful of my money because I don’t have a lot of it and I can’t really rely on many people to help me financially. Also, the philosophies and art making that I’ve been getting into relate with bands that I listen to. A lot of them were their own record label. They would send out live concert flyers for themselves, make their shirts, send out and manufacture their own albums. I internalized that and try to keep that going with how I make things. A lot of this stuff we use we don’t really need to go to art stores to get it; we just need to know where things are left.

CB: Are you looking to be represented from a gallery?

RL: It would be nice. I don’t know if I’m necessarily ready for that because I’m only 23. I feel like just coming out of art school and being represented already might be a bit much at once. So I would like to know that I’m able to get myself out there and know that I’m resourceful enough to make sure my work is in different places and is seen properly. That I don’t have to rely on someone immediately coming out of an institution that already babies you.

CB: You mentioned that one of your main sources is video games. What other sources do you use to make your work?

RL: I realize that the way I’m putting these images together and the sources I’m taking them from, all of them have to do with things I have been around and things that I have used as either coping mechanisms to deal with being at home all the time or interests that I’ve picked as a kid like you do going into adolescence. I’ve always played video games with my brother, and I’ve always loved them visually. I grew up playing super Nintendo and Nintendo 64 and those are now considered old school or obsolete graphics. They are very square and pixelated. They try very hard to be realistic and 3D as possible, but the technology wasn’t there yet. So I played those games and I still was able to let my imagination go crazy even though they weren’t hyper realistic like how games are now. So I still love those places that existed in those games. I still want to wander around in them and have my own adventures in them.

The concerts that I’ve always wanted to go to- half these people are dead- because they all came out of a scene were people were taking drugs and being foolish. A lot of those bands are not getting back together, some of them have and I have seen some of them. People my age love them and we are all going to their reunion concerts. But I don’t get to have the experience of seeing them in small clubs where everyone is piled and enjoying these bands that are throwing themselves off the stage and mingling with the crowd. So I have memories of something that I did get to experience and things that I wish could have experienced that were happening when I was baby that I was not aware of. Those two are my biggest interests and influences.

I’m completely aloof and day dreaming all the time so those are the things that are in my head a lot. Part of playing video games is not wanting to be in life currently. The only place you have is a game that is an open world and has things to do in it. You want to go to a concert so badly, but you know those bands are not going to play those shows because half of them aren’t around anymore. Or you are a teenager and you don’t have the money to buy yourself concert tickets, you can’t drive a car and take yourself to a gig. And the fact that being homeschooled and not really having friends for a long time until I got on the internet and met some people. So that’s your bubble and that shaped how I think about things and how I cope with loneliness or having a yearning to be part of something that isn’t happening anymore or something that I would of fit into but I can’t just bring myself into it because it is not there anymore- which is that scene of music that I listen to. So I figured the best way to deal with it is to physically manifest it so that I can get it out of my system. Have these places exist visually so that I can look at them and know that this is my space and I can walk through here whenever I feel like it. If anyone feels inclined to feel the same way or they get any of the references that I’m putting in the paintings like speakers, or trees stumps that are specific to a Zelda game from 1999 or 2000. If someone recognizes those and they are like, “I don’t know why I know where this is from, but I get it even though it is out of context” I want people to either relate to it and get it or not know where any of this stuff is from at all but still have the need to explore it.

CB: How do you feel now that you are coming to an end in your college experience? New World provides you with a studio space to work in and soon it will be gone, how will you deal with that?

RL: Not having a studio is already sort of freaking me out because I have to think smartly about how I plan to get out of here and where I decide to work. I need to get a job and I need to make sure that I can pay bills that I will have in the very near future. I need to be able to be an adult but I also know that I need to make time for this regardless of whether I have a big space or not. So I sort of do have a plan of how I’m going to work it out and what scale I’ll be working in in the weird intermediate time before I move into my own place and while I live with my parents. I’ve had the small space struggle before so I sort of know how to deal with it.

CB: How has your work changed throughout the semesters?

RL: When I started painting I was taught technical skills. I’ve always liked renaissance and old style kind of paintings that were technically correct and used thin paint and glazes. Once I got here, that wasn’t enough to facilitate what I needed to do. Everything I know how to do and being able to have different ways of working I got through Aramis because he taught me to not be freaked about not being perfect. I had to come to him several times and be like, “I’m not feeling it for some reason, I’m freaked out that I don’t care anymore, I don’t know why”- that was during Painting I. He figured I had been painting the same way for a long time and I needed to learn to loosen up and just enjoy the act of painting. I have that to carry with me so that helps me a lot. I’m in tune with physically dealing with the paint itself and I don’t really have a fear of messing something up anymore because I know I can just fix it by doing something else. So my paintings don’t have to suffer being hesitant or afraid of things happening.

CB: So you’ve reached a certain level of maturity.

RL: Yeah, I’ve only been painting since I was 15 so that’s 8 years of painting. That’s not a whole lot but it’s good to have that.

CB: We can move on to talk about one painting. Let’s talk about the last one you did. Do you have a title for it?

RL: I have titles for all of these [paintings] now. They are lyrics I pulled from specific songs. I’m calling this one “I Can’t Meet You Here Tomorrow” it’s from an Alice in Chains song. It’s a song about someone telling their friend that they are running away. I picked each song title lyric for the three bands that I want to reference through words to see if anyone recognizes where the lyrics come from. This is an accumulation of references that I have from around where I live. The trees, the water, and the plants are all things that I have nearby. I threw in some amplifiers and a couple of little characters. It’s mostly based in reality but it’s me rearranging where these things exist and not making too big of a difference between what is real and what is not.

CB: So it’s not too abstract.

RL: I don’t think so. Compared to the other two I think it’s the most naturalistic painting.

CB: How does this one differ from the first two?

RL: I approached it differently because at this point I already had the tools and strategies that I had developed through these two. Because these two were already sort of hurlers I needed to get over and they were working out problems that I had not dealt with yet. So this first one specially is so loaded with experiments and trial and error and being worked over so much to get to a point where I am okay with it. And this one is me understanding how I got to this place without having to do all that fumbling and back and forth with what I want to reference and or what I think needs to be referenced or not.

CB: So it’s a direct representation of what you want both in terms of the imagery and the process because you were able to go to it directly and make it directly without having the struggle of the first two.

RL: Yeah. There’s some stuff in there that I could include. Like more video game stuff or may be have an extra piece of stage equipment, because I always want to balance out the space that I want to deal with. It has the things that I feel like my work needs in order to get the point across which is loosely rendered landscape and different forms of paint of application. The figures and the objects that are in the distance that aren’t completely explained but I would assume someone looks at it and they would want to care to figure out who that is or what that is and why is that standing there. Just like the whole trailing off and wondering into somewhere else idea.

CB: Is there anything else you would want to say?

RL: I feel like I’ve covered everything because I’ve rambled a lot. I guess my only thing is that I feel like I need to know wrap up my explanations for these things better because they are sort of loaded and it’s loaded with personal history and I want to be able to communicate that. That is my struggle at the moment. The paintings are coming out fine, where I would like to be. If I knew I was going to paint these when I was sixteen I would have been very excited and hyped up. Explaining it and having the proper wording that’s where I’m still falling short.

CB: You are not.

RL: I long winded.

CB: Long winded?

RL: Yeah, it’s a lot of verbiage. I have this much to say and I need to narrow it down to this much.

CB: Okay, I think we are finished with Rachel’s interview.

RL: Yey

"Don't Follow" Oil on canvas 72" x 48" 2017

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Hello lovely!! I’m a sucker for Sherlock comforting John after nightmares or just ptsd episodes, and was curious if you know of any? And/or any fics where johns old shoulder injury is bothering him and Sherlock helps :) I just need all the caring fluff ☺️

Hey Nonny!

Ahhhh!! Yes, I have quite a few Nightmares/PTSD fics, and I’m going to use this opportunity to update my past lists since I have a nice collection of more! As for the shoulder injury, I believe Maintenance and Repair by patternofdefiance has Sherlock doing that, but I can’t recall. I’ll start a separate list offline for Shoulder Injuries perhaps. Hmm. Actually, you might find some good Caring Sherlock fics on these lists:

John Whump / Sherlock Takes Care of John

John Whump / Sherlock Takes Care of John Pt. 2

John Whump / Sherlock Takes Care of John Pt. 3

Scars

Scars Pt. 2

Now, for the main event!! Hope you enjoy, and as always, Loves, add your own!

NIGHTMARES, PTSD, PANIC ATTACKS & MENTAL/EMOTIONAL TURMOIL Pt. 3

See also:

Nightmares, PTSD, Panic Attack, & Mental / Emotional Turmoil

Nightmares, PTSD, Panic Attack, & Mental / Emotional Turmoil Pt. 2

NIGHTMARES

Study in John by chappysmom (K+, 2,158 w., 1 Ch. || Post-ASiP, POV John, Introspection, Friendship, Nightmares, Caring Sherlock, John’s Limp) – After the events of "A Study in Pink," John lies on the couch in Baker Street and thinks about the whirlwind events of the day. What is he getting himself into?

Sleepless nights by El loopy (T, 5,467 w., 3 Ch. || Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares/Insomnia, Panic Attack, Worried Sherlock) – Sherlock has a nightmare and John wants to know what it was about. Set during season 1. Three-shot.

What Did I Do Wrong? by Starlight05 (T, 7,880 w. || Hurt Comfort, Angst, John Whump, Hospitalization, Worried Sherlock, Emotional Turmoil, Nightmares, Sherlock Being Dumb) - After John almost dies on a case, Sherlock disappears. So John is left to figure out what he can do to get his best friend back. Meanwhile Sherlock, guilt-ridden and willingly alone, is doing everything he can to stay away.

Lunar Landscapes by J_Baillier (M, 57,046 w., 21 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || S3/TAB Fix-It, Slow Burn Angst, Drama, Hurt/Comfort, Confessions, Drugs, Pain, Medical, Injury, Sherlock Whump, Mental Health Issues, Panic Attacks, Romance, Secrets, Tragedy, Trauma, BAMF John, Doctor!John, Drug Addict Sherlock, Injured Sherlock, Grieving John, Idiots In Love, Protective John, POV John Watson, PTSD Sherlock, Sherlock is a Mess, Medical Realism) – An accident forces John to face the fact that Sherlock's downward spiral had started long before his flight to exile even left the tarmac.

Just To Hold You Close by sussexbound (E, 70,841 w., 18 Ch. || Alternate First Meeting, Sherlock POV, ASD Sherlock, PTSD John, Demisexual Sherlock, Bisexual John, Cuddling/Snuggling, Platonic Cuddling, Enthusiastic Consent, Bed Sharing, Love Confessions, First Kiss/Time, Sexual Tension, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Cuddle Negotiations, For a Case Until It Isn’t, Hair Petting, Sexual Negotiation, Anxiety, Trust Issues, Slow Burn, Panic Attacks, Frottage, Hand/Blow Jobs, Referenced Self Harm / Abuse / Suicidal Ideation, First Kiss/Time, Anal) – When a woman is murdered and the last person to see her alive is recently invalided army vet turned reluctant (and prickly) professional cuddler, John Watson, Sherlock Holmes is pulled into a world of intimacy and intrigue he never could have imagined. John is a conundrum and mystery: frank yet reserved, tender yet angry, open yet afraid. Sherlock is instantly drawn into his orbit, and begins to feel and desire things he never has before.

Not Broken, Just Bent by Schmiezi (E, 87,585 w., 43 Ch. || Pining, Love Confessions, Rape/Sexual Assault, Torture, Hurt/Comfort, Heavy Angst, Villain!Mary, Suicidal Ideations, Main Character Death, Sherlock First Person POV, Parentlock, Sherlock’s Mind Palace, Grief/Mourning, Emotional Love Making, Possessiveness, Depression, PTSD, Kidnapping, Virgin Sherlock, Eventual Happy Ending) – "For a second, I allow myself to remember teaching John how to waltz. There is a special room in my mind palace for it. A big one, with a proper parquet dance floor. For a second, I go there. I remember holding him, closer than the World Dance Council asks for, excusing it with the fact that we are training for a wedding, not for a competition. For a second, I feel his hand on mine again, smell his sweat, hear the song we used. For a second, I allow myself to love him deeply. For a second, only a second, that love reflects on my face." Fix-it for S3, starting at the end of TSoT. Evil Mary.

The Summer Boy by khorazir (T, 94,706 w., 6 Ch. || Post S3/Post TAB/Alternate S4, Friends to Lovers, Asexual Sherlock, POV Sherlock, Flashbacks, Bullying, 1980′s Kid Sherlock, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Inexperienced Sherlock, Grief/Mourning, Pining Sherlock, Case Fic, Sherlock’s Past, Awkward Conversations, Anxious Sherlock) – About half a year after the fateful events at Appledore, Sherlock and John embark on a private case in Sussex. For Sherlock, it’s a journey into his past, bringing up memories both happy and sad that he has locked away for almost thirty years. For John, it means coming to terms with the present – and a potential future with Sherlock. Part 1 of the The Summer Boy series

Against the Rest of the World by SilentAuror (E, 151,714 w., 20 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Post-TRF, Hiatus Fic, POV First Person Sherlock, Present Tense, First Kiss/Time, Big Brother Mycroft, Escaping from Capture, Soft Sherlock, Toplock, Insecurity, Infidelity, Travelling, Introspection, Pining Sherlock, Depression, Fantasies, Yearning for the Past, PTSD Sherlock, Suicidal Ideation) – Sherlock has been away from London for nine hundred and twelve days and counting, and has no idea what sort of reception to expect when he finally returns.

Proving A Point by elldotsee & J_Baillier (E, 186,270 w., 28 Ch. || Me Before You Fusion || Medical Realism, Insecure John, Depression, Romance, Angst, POV John, Sherlock Whump, Serious Illness, Doctor John, Injury Recovery, Assisted Suicide, Sherlock’s Violin, Awkward Sexual Situations, Alcoholism, Drugs, Idiots in Love, Slow Burn, Body Image, Friends to Lovers, Hurt / Comfort, Pain, Big Brother Mycroft, Intimacy, Anxiety, PTSD, Family Issues, Psychological Trauma, John Whump, Case Fics, Loneliness, Pain) – Invalided home from Afghanistan, running out of funds and convinced that his surgical career is over, John Watson accepts a mysterious job offer to provide care and companionship for a disabled person. Little does he know how much hangs in the balance of his performance as he settles into his new life at Musgrave Court.

PTSD / EMOTIONAL TURMOIL

A Room of One's Own by whitchry9 (K+, 2,174 w., 5 Ch. || S2 Timeline, Hurt/Comfort, Supernatural, Sherlock’s Mind Palace, Coma, John Whump, Worried Sherlock, POV John, Angst, Friendship/Bromance, Hospital) – When a severe head injury lands John in a coma, somehow he ends up in Sherlock's mind palace. It's actually pretty nice there, and John is entertaining the notion of staying there, rather than returning to his broken body. But Sherlock isn't taking it as well, and John can feel him breaking around him.

Museums and Laboratories by RhododendronPonticum (T, 3,004 w., 1 Ch. || Romance, Angst, Obsessive Sherlock, Anxious Sherlock, Anxiety/Panic Attack, Separation Anxiety, Doctor John, Co-Dependent Sherlock) – If Sherlock's kitchen was his laboratory, then his bedroom was his museum.

A Home for Us by sussexbound (M, 30,581 w., 12 Ch. || Scars, Bedsharing, Grief, Doctor John, Hurt/Comfort, Post-TRF, Implied/Referenced Torture, Sherlock POV, Pining Sherlock, Suicidal Ideation, Heavy Emotions, Clingy Sherlock, Hallucinations, Disassociation, Emotional Turmoil) – He has been on the road for two years, and he is exhausted. He’s almost accepted that he will never see London (John) again—almost. But then there are nights like tonight, where he is weak, and all he can think of is the warmth of the flat they once shared, the crackle of the fire in the hearth, the teasing smile playing at the corner of John’s lips, the boxes of half-eaten Chinese takeaway balanced precariously in their laps. He aches at the memory of it, at the realisation that it is something he may never experience again.

Impossible to Feign by achray (M, 49,204 w., 12 Ch. || TRF Rewrite / Reverse Reichenbach, Suicidal Ideations / Discussions, Drug Use/Abuse, Mutual Pining, Friends With Benefits, John Accepts his Sexuality, Anxious Sherlock, Meddling Mycroft, Depression, Hallucinations, Secret Agent John, BAMF John, Reunion, Make-Up Sex, Ambiguous Ending) – Sherlock leant forward, his long fingers curving round to grip John’s.“I won’t let him win,” he said, eyes hard. “I will do whatever it takes to get you out.”

Anchor Point by trickybonmot (E, 49,856 w., 80 Ch. || Truman Show AU || Psychological Drama, Suspense, Slow Burn, Dark Characters / Fic, Alternating First/Third Person, Protective John, Anxious/Worried Sherlock, Tender Moments, Love Confessions, Hand/Blow Jobs, Cuddling, Jealous John, First Kiss/Time) – The world tunes in nightly for Sherlock, the ultimate in reality TV: Sherlock Holmes, a real person with a legendary name, unknowingly lives out his life in a staged setting contrived by his brother. Things get complicated when a retired army doctor joins the show to play the part of Sherlock's closest friend. This fic borrows its concept from the 1998 film, the Truman Show. However, you don't need to have any knowledge of the movie to enjoy this story.

Lunar Landscapes by J_Baillier (M, 57,046 w., 21 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || S3/TAB Fix-It, Slow Burn Angst, Drama, Hurt/Comfort, Confessions, Drugs, Pain, Medical, Injury, Sherlock Whump, Mental Health Issues, Panic Attacks, Romance, Secrets,  Tragedy, Trauma, BAMF John, Doctor!John, Drug Addict Sherlock, Injured Sherlock, Grieving John, Idiots In Love, Protective John, POV John Watson, PTSD Sherlock, Sherlock is a Mess, Medical Realism) – An accident forces John to face the fact that Sherlock's downward spiral had started long before his flight to exile even left the tarmac.

Repairing the Broken Things by BakerTumblings (M, 75,252 w., 15 Ch. || S4 Compliant, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Medical Trauma, Hospitals, Big Brother Mycroft, Misunderstandings, Realizations, Severe Accident, John Whump, Pneumonia, Medical Procedures, Bed Sharing, First Time, Healing, Happy Ending) – "I'm calling today to notify you that there's been an accident."

Not Broken, Just Bent by Schmiezi (E, 87,585 w., 43 Ch. || Pining, Love Confessions, Rape/Sexual Assault, Torture, Hurt/Comfort, Heavy Angst, Villain!Mary, Suicidal Ideations, Main Character Death, Sherlock First Person POV, Parentlock, Sherlock’s Mind Palace, Grief/Mourning, Emotional Love Making, Possessiveness, Depression, PTSD, Kidnapping, Virgin Sherlock, Eventual Happy Ending) – "For a second, I allow myself to remember teaching John how to waltz. There is a special room in my mind palace for it. A big one, with a proper parquet dance floor. For a second, I go there. I remember holding him, closer than the World Dance Council asks for, excusing it with the fact that we are training for a wedding, not for a competition. For a second, I feel his hand on mine again, smell his sweat, hear the song we used. For a second, I allow myself to love him deeply. For a second, only a second, that love reflects on my face." Fix-it for S3, starting at the end of TSoT. Evil Mary.

Just To Hold You Close by sussexbound (E, 70,841 w., 18 Ch. || Alternate First Meeting, Sherlock POV, ASD Sherlock, PTSD John, Demisexual Sherlock, Bisexual John, Cuddling/Snuggling, Platonic Cuddling, Enthusiastic Consent, Bed Sharing, Love Confessions, First Kiss/Time, Sexual Tension, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Cuddle Negotiations, For a Case Until It Isn’t, Hair Petting, Sexual Negotiation, Anxiety, Trust Issues, Slow Burn, Panic Attacks, Frottage, Hand/Blow Jobs, Referenced Self Harm / Abuse / Suicidal Ideation, First Kiss/Time, Anal) – When a woman is murdered and the last person to see her alive is recently invalided army vet turned reluctant (and prickly) professional cuddler, John Watson, Sherlock Holmes is pulled into a world of intimacy and intrigue he never could have imagined. John is a conundrum and mystery: frank yet reserved, tender yet angry, open yet afraid. Sherlock is instantly drawn into his orbit, and begins to feel and desire things he never has before.

The Summer Boy by khorazir (T, 94,706 w., 6 Ch. || Post S3/Post TAB/Alternate S4, Friends to Lovers, Asexual Sherlock, POV Sherlock, Flashbacks, Bullying, 1980′s Kid Sherlock, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Inexperienced Sherlock, Grief/Mourning, Pining Sherlock, Case Fic, Sherlock’s Past, Awkward Conversations, Anxious Sherlock) – About half a year after the fateful events at Appledore, Sherlock and John embark on a private case in Sussex. For Sherlock, it’s a journey into his past, bringing up memories both happy and sad that he has locked away for almost thirty years. For John, it means coming to terms with the present – and a potential future with Sherlock. Part 1 of the The Summer Boy series

Northwest Passage by Kryptaria (E, 95,157 w., 27 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Canadian AU ||  BAMF!John, Canadian John, PTSD, Anal / Oral Sex, Rimming, Emotional Hurt / Comfort, Drug Rehab, Falling in Love, Pining Sherlock, Love Confessions, Sherlock’s Violin, Panic Attacks, Switching, Anxious / Protective Sherlock, Hugs for Comfort, Suicide Mentions, Healing Each Other) – Seven years ago, Captain John Watson of the Canadian Forces Medical Service withdrew from society, seeking a simple, isolated life in the distant northern wilderness of Canada. Though he survives from one day to the next, he doesn't truly live until someone from his dark past calls in a favor and turns his world upside-down with the introduction of Sherlock Holmes." Part 1 of Tales from the Northwest

Against the Rest of the World by SilentAuror (E, 151,714 w., 20 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Post-TRF, Hiatus Fic, POV First Person Sherlock, Present Tense, First Kiss/Time, Big Brother Mycroft, Escaping from Capture, Soft Sherlock, Toplock, Insecurity, Infidelity, Travelling, Introspection, Pining Sherlock, Depression, Fantasies, Yearning for the Past, PTSD Sherlock, Suicidal Ideation) – Sherlock has been away from London for nine hundred and twelve days and counting, and has no idea what sort of reception to expect when he finally returns.

Proving A Point by elldotsee & J_Baillier (E, 186,270 w., 28 Ch. || Me Before You Fusion || Medical Realism, Insecure John, Depression, Romance, Angst, POV John, Sherlock Whump, Serious Illness, Doctor John, Injury Recovery, Assisted Suicide, Sherlock’s Violin, Awkward Sexual Situations, Alcoholism, Drugs, Idiots in Love, Slow Burn, Body Image, Friends to Lovers, Hurt / Comfort, Pain, Big Brother Mycroft, Intimacy, Anxiety, PTSD, Family Issues, Psychological Trauma, John Whump, Case Fics, Loneliness, Pain) – Invalided home from Afghanistan, running out of funds and convinced that his surgical career is over, John Watson accepts a mysterious job offer to provide care and companionship for a disabled person. Little does he know how much hangs in the balance of his performance as he settles into his new life at Musgrave Court.