#so you can build your natives only landscapes and shit

[sirgwaiine]

reminder that native plant purity kills opportunities for urban horticulture

[puttingfingerstokeys]

a friend in need [reworked]

so here’s the OG if ye cared: The OG(tm)

I’ve added characters and koncepts. Shinnok IS in the amulet, Quan-Chi is around probably, uhh... some shit happened offscreen a la annihilation that I’m sure I can enumerate on later or whatever. Uh

Faraday Cage

Energy crackled and radiated outward, sparking off pavement, trees, vehicles, people—anything with which it came in contact. Fires had erupted all over and people were fighting them as best they could, but with little hope of relief. Destruction radiated outward in all directions from one point. At the center of that point was an angry god, grieved at great loss, enraged beyond his own ability to control.

Earthrealm could not be protected by a weak, fatherly deity; Raiden understood that now, and it scared him. His own weakness scared him. His foolishness scared him. The “justice” of the Elder Gods scared him. He would end this fight and all fights, because they, for some reason, had chosen the path of passive observation. He had to do this; there was no other way. Why did no one understand? He was singular in his purpose and not even the chosen of Earthrealm, Liu Kang, could stand in his way.

Raiden had taken his own advice, a frightful echo from a future as yet unknown, an Armageddon which killed them all, himself included. It had taken many trials and many more errors to realize his own, true meaning. 

“He must win.” 

Raiden had finally reached the conclusion that the “he” in question was not Liu Kang, Earthrealm’s chosen, but Shao Kahn, the bloodthirsty outworld dictator. Reality shivered under the threat of the merging, however, and still the Elder Gods did not step in. How far would this have to go? Did they know that Shao Kahn’s army was, even now, trampling the tenuous pact between the realms? Did they know it had been making rubble piles of Earthrealm cities for almost a decade? Did they care?

“Liu, over here!” It was Johnny Cage, long having grown from the self-absorbed jerk Liu Kang had once known. In fact, he was a father, and proud of his little girl, but right now, damn near shitting in his britches to see Raiden this way. He offered an arm and pulled Liu Kang to his feet. He and a few others were taking shelter behind a small building which shook with the march of outworld foot soldiers and presently began to flicker with a terrible energy.

Raiden had warned himself, somehow, that the merging of realms must begin, that this was the meaning of victory in his own prophetic words, for the Elder Gods to step in. Shao Kahn had begun his dark work, however, and still nothing moved, nothing in favor of the forces of light and justice, anyway. It seemed the Elder Gods had a different idea of what it meant to maintain balance.

Certainly, there had been debate at first. There was no guarantee the Elder Gods would step in to honor the ancient pact between the protector of Earthrealm and Outworld’s greedy dictator, Shao Kahn. The deal had been struck before the eyes of those gods, however, and between divinity and divine blood; it was unbreakable. What no one had anticipated was that Shao Kahn could, technically speaking, send his forces through into Earthrealm without entering himself, or even starting the merge. 

The terms of his further challenge, after having lost to the warriors of Earthrealm had been untenable, however, and so, with little debate, all kombatants under the god of thunder agreed to fight for the safety and security of their realm as a veritable army, rather than allowing their fate to once more hinge on a single battle. It had not stopped Shao Khan from taking Lao from behind and nearly snapping his neck when the behatted monk was the only one he could reach. This should have killed him, but for Raiden’s quick, skilled intervention. Even then, he realized he had been afraid that the Elder Gods would see this as blatant interference, though he had never once regretted it.

The invasion was small, at first, relatively speaking, and confined to Shang Tsung’s island, the weakest place in the fabric of reality, a sort of nexus point which connected most other realms. The Earthrealm fighters were able to contain it there, using it as a funnel, but only for so long. After that, the secret invasion began. Fortunately, the marching armies of open conquest had only made themselves apparent in the last few years or so. As the fabric of reality between realms had become thin, more thin spots had appeared, making crossing realms much, much easier. 

“Your tournament is canceled, puny god! I have rescinded my generous invitation!” Shao Kahn called, raising his great hammer to the sky as Outworld began finally to merge with Earthrealm, tearing down buildings and reconstructing them in hideous amalgams. People fled and were trampled; people stood and were gored. He would line the streets with bodies before the day was out and only Raiden stood before him. Raiden, who had fought his own, dear Liu Kang, who had defied him nearly to death.

Had he died? Was Liu Kang dead? Raiden could not see him. He could not see anything past the haze of fury clouding his vision and judgment. I have killed him, again, as it was said I always will, as I always must. The thought was errant, not his own, and he brushed it aside, focusing on Shao Kahn and the present. It was his only choice.

For Raiden, at that moment, there was only himself, the protector of Earthrealm, and Shao Kahn, the invader. The world around him had narrowed to a tunnel which saw only the vicious Kahn. His soldiers had massed around him, many of them clearly conscripts from Netherrealm. Quan-Chi had long been on the side of Shao Kahn. It had been his magic which resurrected Sindel, giving her Shang Tsung’s many souls and turning her into a maddened force of nature. She was gone now, but while she lived, she stole many an Earthrealm warrior from him and Raiden could see some of these, lined up near Shao Kahn, not least of all the revenant kryomancer, Sub-Zero. 

Meanwhile, Earthrealm’s remaining defenders did their best to regroup. Their numbers had dwindled in recent years. They were hanging on by the skin of their teeth, but only just. Everyone was exhausted and no one could remember when last they slept a whole night in a real bed. 

“He… Johnny—you should have seen his eyes,” Liu Kang gasped, slumping to his rear-end near the wall. Jacqui Briggs stooped to examine him, checking for external injuries, and wishing for a better facility in which to check for internal. She was no expert, but godly lightning probably left a nasty mark.

“I see ‘em from here, Liu, and it’s… this is fucked,” grunted the Hollywood star, handing the binoculars over to his daughter, Cassie. She shook her head.

“He said we had to let Shao Kahn win, or else the Elder Gods would never step in,” gasped Liu Kang between labored breaths. Something was definitely wrong and if it was not treated soon, it could become permanent. “They… aren’t stepping in—I knew they didn’t care about us. I…” He groaned in agony and Jacqui pushed him back down.

“Hold still, Chosen One, your guts’ve been rearranged by a pissed off god—maybe take it easy.”

“If I ‘take it easy’, we all die,” Liu Kang snapped, jaw tight. Jacqui gave him a look that suggested she would take no lip, no matter how damn chosen he was or who chose him, for that matter. She could see from the way he held himself, the way his muscles tensed and tightened, that he was going to get much worse before he got better, especially if he pushed. They might not have a choice, soon enough, but while they did, there was no point risking it.

He met her gaze—it was burning with rage and sadness—with his own. They were matched in this way, both earthrealm natives with everything and more to lose, both people who had fought, tooth and nail, against this very thing. Sitting by idly and wishing things were otherwise was not something to which either Liu Kang or Jacqui Briggs were accustomed. 

Somewhere in the midst of it all, Kung Lao approached, supporting a figure between himself and Hanzo Hasashi, the Shirai-Ryu Grandmaster. Behind them trailed Takeda Takahashi, Scorpion’s pseudo son and likely successor, half-carrying Lao’s cousin, Jin. The figure between Scorpion and Kung Lao was dressed all in blue, with cracked, gray flesh. He seemed to exude chill and once they had placed him, only Grandmaster Hasashi seemed inclined, or able, to stay near him.

“Is this all that is left?” Lao’s voice was not incredulous, so much as despairing. He moved immediately toward Jacqui and Liu Kang, dropping to one knee. “Where is Princess Kitana and her force?”

Liu Kang shook his head. He explained that the last he had seen her, she was leading an auxiliary force of Shokan loyal to her and her claim to the throne, plus a few Osh-Tekk warriors, a gift from the rebellious general Ko’atal. The big man himself had been nowhere to be seen, but he was resourceful. Jade, too, had been missing, but Liu Kang assumed that if they were together, they were safe. She was much more than Kitana’s handmaiden. Their party had been split by the arrival of the irate god of thunder and Shao Kahn’s largest, most potent portal yet.

“Dad!” The three looked up suddenly at Cassie’s shout, pulled from their informal debrief. She was reaching out to an empty space where Johnny had just been standing. Before she could go after him, however, Jacqui was at her back, grasping her elbow, hard.

“No,” Jacqui hissed, “you’ll be fried—we don’t know if Raiden’s friendly anymore… if he ever was.” Cassie jerked her elbow away, but Jacqui held tight and shook her head. “I mean it, Cass. Your dad’s… gunna do what he’s gunna do, just like mine.”

With effort, she pulled Cassie back and away from the violent arcs of red lightning that were even now consuming trees and landscaping, cars, enemy soldiers, anything within the dome of the thunder god’s power—an area that was growing. Cassie hated that explanation, but not because it was foolish. Jacqui was spot on, in every way. Johnny Cage was a force of nature himself and always had been. Cassie wasn’t sure, however, that he would be enough to combat an elemental who had, in her mind, clearly gone out of his wits. 

Raiden and Shao Kahn met somewhere in the middle, just beyond the portal the Outworld emperor had opened to begin the final invasion and merging of Earthrealm to his blasted home. Still, the Elder gods did not stir.

Shao Kahn’s hammer swung mightily and met a fist that moved with swift violence. A thunderclap resounded, flattening the area and then cratering it. Neither hand nor head of hammer shattered, but that was of no consequence to Shao Kahn, who reached out and hauled Raiden forward by his collar.

The thunder god looked into the emperor’s animal eyes and neither hated nor pitied him. Raiden’s rage was beyond petty ire toward the man who had caused his beloved Earthrealm so much grief over the centuries. He would simply destroy Shao Kahn. It had become singularly simple in his eyes. He had been a fool. He would end this once and for all, for everyone, forever.

Perhaps it was the look, the nearly directionless fury which met his eyes that made Shao Kahn drop Raiden. Johnny Cage, who had worked himself much closer than was probably safe, watched from still a ways off and could not quite pinpoint what it was that had Shao Kahn backing away from the thunder god.

“It is forbidden for you to fight,” Shao Kahn warned, with more authority and sureness in his voice than it seemed he felt. “You cannot engage in Mortal Kombat! You are not mortal!” Even his minions began to back away as Raiden’s arced, red lightning crashed violently into them, disintegrating here, vaporizing there, starting fires all over. Raiden’s chest heaved with the effort of either sustaining the onslaught, or holding it back, Johnny wasn’t sure. 

On that heaving chest, Shinnok’s awful amulet pulsed with life and light, beckoning and promising strength. Raiden reached for it, but hesitated, seemingly doubting himself for the merest fraction of a second. It was in that span of time whence Shao Kahn regained his courage, approached, and swung again. This time, he would have caught the god of thunder on the chin, had it not been for the quick footwork of Johnny Cage.

This time, boots met hammer, though the clash was not so even. The force of the impact sent Johnny into the side of a building. His back hit concrete and he was certain he felt something snap, but if he gave up now, Raiden was absolutely going to do something stupid. Johnny didn’t understand Shinnok’s power, or even who and what Shinnok really was, or had been, as the case may be, but he knew an evil piece of jewelry when he saw it. Perhaps ironically, his experience in the film industry had clued him into its potency and danger, if the sickly green glow was not enough.

“Time for a scene change,” he grunted, pushing himself to his feet and spitting blood. The tang of adrenaline was on his tongue and coursing through his veins, making him hyper focus upon this detail or that, the world around him moving in slow motion. Johnny fancied he could hear Cassie screaming somewhere in the distance, but right now, his attention was on the battle before him.

“You are too weak to use that amulet on me, or anyone, thunder god,” Shao Kahn mocked, manufacturing enough bravado to satisfy his immense ego. Raiden grimaced, as if considering whether or not the man was right. He ground his teeth and once more moved to grasp Shinnok’s amulet. Shao Kahn struck again, this time with a boot.

Raiden was forced to block this with a cross before his chest and to step back. He balled one fist and surrounded it with lightning, shaking his head. “You do not know my power,” he growled, “but rest assured, Shao Kahn, you will.” Raiden discharged the lightning at Shao Kahn, who used his hammer as a ground and laughed.

“Pathetic, and weak.” Each descriptor was punctuated with a sharp wag of his finger toward Raiden’s chest and the deadly amulet which sat throbbing with energy thereupon.

“I am not weak—I am doing as I have always done. I am protecting Earthrealm.” His hand once more rose to the amulet. “Whatever that takes, I will do it.”

With his free hand, Raiden wound up a massive store of radiant, red energy and hurled it at Shao Kahn. The tyrant was thrown back mightily, taking out a score of his foot soldiers as he flew. Raiden continued forward, his pace slow, but deliberate. The troops of outworld were suddenly cowed by this display, as if their fellows being randomly vaporized had not been enough. Something had shifted, they sensed, and they began to back away. 

“You are forbidden, Raiden!” This time, Shao Kahn’s voice was laced with fear; the confidence he had earlier displayed with his first remark of this kind had evidently deserted him in the face of what Raiden had become. The deity’s hand was now resting almost lovingly, protectively covering his father’s amulet. It was as if a very small part of him still fought for his own innocence, whatever might have been left of it. 

Yes, a voice whispered, emanating from the amulet, but resounding in Raiden’s fevered mind, yes, grasp the power you have earned. With it, no one will threaten you again. Earthrealm will be safe, forever. The voice which came from the cursed object was familiar and comforting. His thoughts clung to it, to the truth of it. He had earned this power. Eons of bending to the will of the Elder Gods with no reward signaled the need for it, the deserving of its power. He only ever moved to protect Earthrealm.  

Meanwhile, Johnny had begun to close the distance between himself and the wrathful deity. He could feel his hair standing on end with the force of the red lightning radiating outward from Raiden’s body. He was tense; the actor could see that from where he was, and… Are those tears? He shook off the thought as a stray bolt vaporized a fire hydrant less than a yard from him; it burst into a geyser of city water which soon began raining down upon everyone in the vicinity.

Johnny ducked behind a bike rack, realized that was probably a poor choice of cover, and scuttled along on the ground until he found a trash bin that looked as if it was made of plastic composite, rather than anything that might conduct those wicked red arcs of enraged power. His heart was hammering a thousand miles per hour and for a moment, he wondered if that was the first sign of an electricity-induced heart attack. Maybe he had been struck and did not realize it.Thinking about the ramifications of that hurt his head, so he stopped and decided to do what he did best. 

“Now or never,” he told himself, taking a deep breath and fully expecting to be vaporized like the fire hydrant. It would be guts, however, not water spraying about, if he was lucky. Speaking of the water... too much of it, and Johnny would be zapped for sure; he was already soaked to the bone. Oh like it’s any different than what I’m about to do, he hissed internally, covering his face to keep his sunglasses dry. He needed to be able to see for this one. Johnny simply told himself that god lightning was different than the regular stuff and, in a burst of foolish energy, tossed himself around the trash bin and ran, full tilt, toward Raiden’s position. 

A wayward bolt struck his glasses, tossing them from his face and exploding stars before his eyes. Johnny stumbled and, somewhere in the distance—she sounded thousands of miles away—he thought he could hear Cassie’s voice calling his name, screaming it in raw, brutal, throat-rending panic. He prayed someone was holding her back, because if this went south, as he was almost sure it would, she would be about to fight a hurricane, armed with only a pair of pistols. 

Raiden was not going to be stopped, but Johnny felt that it was his duty to try. Liu’s shouldered too fuckin’ much already—my turn, he reasoned, forcing himself to keep going, running harder and faster than he had ever done in his life. 

Raiden had stopped his inexorable stride and Shao Kahn looked on in bewilderment as the earthrealm action star closed the gap, running directly into that deadly lightning. Shao Kahn had been so sure Johnny’s miserable back had broken against that building. There was something to be said for the tenacity of a cornered, wounded animal. The Outworld dictator considered the benefits of having stock like that in the breeding pits. If Johnny Cage lived through this, his life in Outworld would be relatively comfortable, Shao Kahn decided. 

The god turned his head, acknowledging Johnny with eyes as red as his lightning. Sure as shit, Johnny thought, noting that Raiden was, indeed, in tears, though they did not seem to be saline, as a human’s might be—they stood out, even upon his pale flesh, catching light and reflecting it like diamonds—or perhaps rubies, stained by the power of his rage. When they fell, they seemed to solidify midair. He supposed the sound they would make might be the minute clattering of diamonds or solidified quicksilver, though of course he could hear nothing through the rush of blood in his ears and the ambient roar of battle nearly-joined.

“Stop it, man!” Johnny called, reaching a hand out. Raiden still did not move, but neither did he cease his bombardment. Shao Kahn’s forces were at a standstill, watching, for once uncertain of the correct path. Some were even edging toward the portal, back to Outworld and relative safety. “Raiden—you listening to me? You don’t hafta—” 

A bolt struck him square in the chest and he dropped to his knees, eyes wide, staring with pain and fear at the man—the god—who had struck him down. Raiden seemed to shift a little at that and then to turn. Johnny had caught his attention and would have held it but for Shao Kahn’s voice. “An earthrealm fraud has halted your march, Lord Raiden—what sort of god are you?!” He urged his forces forward, but no one stirred. Shao Kahn looked around and once more met Raiden’s eyes, which were again trained upon him. The grip on Shinnok’s amulet tightened and finally, it seemed Raiden would use it. 

“No more.” 

Cassie continued to scream. Johnny could hear her now. He was coming to, realizing that he was not, in fact, dead, nor even too terribly scorched. At the last moment, evidently, the magic of his strange heritage had leapt up to protect him, but he could feel in his bones that this would not happen again. He had one chance. For Cassie, he thought, all those kids—for Liu and Lao and Sonya, for Jax, even Scorpion and Sub-Zero, and Earthrealm. His heart thudded and he started forward, first at a trot, the once more at a leaping gallop. For Raiden. 

Before the god could respond, Johnny Cage had tossed his arms around that broad, pillar-like torso. He had never realized just how big Raiden actually was, and thought perhaps he had allowed himself to retain a human size when dealing directly with them. He had to have been at least seven feet tall and change, but Johnny held tight all the same. He could feel a surge of anger and fathomless grief within his own body, as if it belonged to him, originated IN him—and it scared him. All this time, they had though Raiden was losing his mind to the desire for power, something much more understandable to a human mind. Johnny had never held tightly to the belief, having gotten to know Raiden over the years, but others, his late ex-wife included, had been downright certain.

“Christ,” he grunted, “is this what you’re feeling?” 

It was then that the Outworld dictator chose to rush them. With him leading the charge, his hordes felt renewed confidence and vigor and lunged forth as one, howling their triumph over Earthrealm. Raiden was frozen in place, but only for a moment. He seemed suddenly to come back to himself, as if he had been far away, no longer in control of his limbs or actions—certainly not of his lightning. 

He wrapped one powerful arm around Johnny, who still held him, and with the other, lashed a wide, sweeping arc of blue-white lightning across the crowd, releasing his hold on the wicked amulet to do so. Shao Kahn’s hammer protected him, but his troops were not so lucky. There was a smell of ozone and charred flesh left hanging in the air when Shao Kahn opened his eyes and straightened. 

“Send your champion to face me, then!” Shao Kahn shouted, beating his chest, his hubris seemingly undiminished. His tone, however, was just this side of desperate, and his stance was far too eager, too frantic, to regain and retain control over this place. Johnny looked to Raiden, then back to Shao Kahn. He knew what this meant. He’d been at this long enough. The challenge had been issued years ago and Raiden had, with the blessing of Earthrealm’s defenders, refused it. Now, it would be taken up.

“So you’re declaring Mortal Kombat?” Johnny was going to be absolutely clear on this one, since… god contracts and all that—or something. He wasn’t wholly certain on this point, but it seemed to be the right thing to do. Shao Kahn seemed actually to consider this. His troops were slaughtered or retreating, Raiden was placated for the time being, but who knew how long that could last? His konquest had begun unlawfully, but for the loophole of his not quite finishing the merging of realms. That would be his next step—because if there existed no Earthrealm champions to defend her, then who would stop him?

“Yes, Earthrealm clown,” Shao Kahn rumbled, slapping the handle of his great hammer on one rough palm.

“Mime, actually,” came another voice from across a few lanes of what would have been traffic. Emerging from the alley where they were taking shelter, Liu Kang led their friends, injured and whole, into the open. He was supported by a grimacing Jacqui Briggs and a relieved but concerned Kung Lao, but it was clear from Liu’s expression that “no you have ruptured organs” was not an answer he would be hearing today. Raiden’s shoulders sagged a little in relief; he had not killed Liu Kang after all. 

“Thank you, Liu—wait hang on…” Johnny narrowed his eyes at his friend. The Shaolin fighter did not respond and seemed, for a moment, not to be able to meet Johnny’s eyes. In fact, if Johnny wasn’t tripping completely, he could have sworn that the guy was blushing. Still got it, he thought, grinning. 

Before he could continue, however, Cassie broke into a gait he very much recognized as one that signaled extreme displeasure. Her face held a look of grim determination as she stomped toward her father. Johnny knew he was in for it and backed away, hands up.

“Whoa, whoa, pumpkin, easy, huh?” He looked between Shao Kahn and his daughter and realized he would rather face the Outworld tyrant. “C’mon—easy, what was your old man s’posed to do?”

“Not get fried by a pissed off god and leave me a fucking ORPHAN? MAYBE?” Her voice held an edge of hysterical panic he did not like. “Oh. Shit…” she stammered, stopping just as her path crossed Raiden’s. “I’m—sorry… I didn’t mean—”

“You did,” said the god, inclining his head toward her, “but you are not incorrect.”

Cassie was sheepish and mumbled another apology. Raiden seemed to understand her position, however, and addressed it no more. Instead, he turned his attention upon the waiting tyrant.

“When will this foolishness subside so that I can begin the konquest of your filthy realm, Raiden?!” Shao Kahn was growing impatient. “The Earthrealmer has declared Mortal Kombat and I accept, on the terms that, when I win, the merge will begin and you, pitiful servant of the Elder Gods, will stand aside and bow to their will as you have always done!”

Johnny’s jaw tightened at this hateful commentary upon Raiden’s character, but for once in his life, he held his tongue. Now was not the time to bandy words with dictators and monsters; now was the time to make them eat those words with a garnish of ball-crushing whoop-ass.

“It is my destiny to fight Shao Kahn,” Liu Kang hissed, eyeing Johnny, his gaze flinty. The hardness in his voice and tone belied the real fear that they were thwarting destiny and tempting a fate no one was equipped to handle. His eyes snapped to Raiden, then, pleading. Raiden shook his head. Jacqui echoed the movement. Even now, protesting this, Liu leaned heavily upon both people holding him up, in no condition to fight. 

“Guess it’s not, Liu—stand back and watch.” Johnny would hear no more, turning toward his opponent and shouting. “I accept your terms, Shao Kahn—winner take all.” I mean, I’m not gunna take over Outworld, but like… it sounds pretty good when I say it out loud, his fevered brain nattered.

He must win. Raiden’s own, incomprehensible words came back to him in a sickening echo he still wondered, even now, to whom his future self had been referring. He had been so sure it was Shao Kahn, but that sureness had nearly killed his chosen champion. He met Liu Kang’s furious gaze.

“By the rules of Mortal Kombat, the challenge must be taken up by the one who declared it. I am sorry, Liu Kang, but this fight indeed belongs to Johnny Cage.”

Johnny heard his name, but no more. He was focused, utterly and completely, upon Shao Kahn, who stood a few yards hence, leaning upon the head of his hammer and observing the company with such arrogance, it turned Johnny’s guts. He cracked his knuckles and rolled his head upon broad shoulders. 

“Okay big guy, you heard the god. Let’s fuckin’ go.” He dropped into a deep stance and beckoned Shao Kahn. The tyrant chuckled, the sound a raspy, hollow thing, mirthless and full of contempt and triumph for a victory he had not yet won. Kung Lao winced at the sound and whispered to his companion,

“This is insane…”

Johnny made the first move, using his distance to gain speed and launch into a combination of forceful, heavy kicks which utilized his size and the length of his legs. Shao Kahn blocked these with little effort and jabbed in return, hoping to push Johnny off balance. 

The years had made him wily and this was not the Johnny Cage that Shao Kahn remembered, so cocksure and arrogant, his insecurities showing upon his countenance like a glowing sign, pushed by his own self doubt to showboat and make light of his own skill. This Johnny was an old veteran of many ugly fights; he was vicious, clever, and quick. The fate of his world hung in the balance. He would pull no punches and playing fair wasn’t necessarily a given, either.

Using the tyrant’s momentum against him, Johnny ducked around him and launched into a hard kick to the back of Shao Kahn’s head. This, the tyrant bore with an enraged snarl, a stumble, and a wide, arcing swing of the hammer. That swing, too, Johnny dodged, spitting in his opponent’s direction. “Gunna hafta do better’n that, slugger!”

“So your arrogance has not been tempered,” Shao Kahn commented. “Good, good. That will make your defeat all the more satisfying.” He laughed viciously and swung the hammer down, shaking the ground around them. Johnny found himself out of sorts for a moment, but it was long enough for Shao Kahn to catch him up in one hand, tossing the hammer aside and plying both powerful limbs to their grim task. He lifted Johnny over his head and began to bend. “Do you see your champion, Thunder God?”

Raiden, formerly watching with a mask of impassive disinterest, was suddenly assaulted by visions of Johnny Cage, broken nearly in two, over the shoulders of this selfsame tyrant. He could hear Shao Kahn’s triumphant laugh, the horrified scream of Sonya Blade, the heartbroken, barely-audible moan of Liu Kang. As he blinked, the entire scene flashed behind his eyes and, without thinking, he stretched forth one hand and fired a bolt of pure, blue-white lightning.

With a single shot, Raiden, god of thunder and protector of Earthrealm, ended it all. 

Shao Kahn was vapor, dust in the light breeze that had begun to pick up. Johnny hauled himself to his feet, heart hammering once more, and looked between the two. Shao Kahn had been mere moments from snapping him in half, powerful hands crushing him wherever they reached, his back beginning to feel the strain of the Outworld dictator’s prodigious strength when, all at once, it was over and he was on the ground. 

Coughing, brushing off, and reorienting himself, Johnny’s only thought was for the thunder god and he rushed back to where Raiden stood, staring, shocked (there was a pun here someplace), at his own hand, as if he had never before seen it. The amulet, curiously, remained upon his chest, unused, bearing no mark of having been harnessed.

“I…” Raiden stammered as Johnny reached him. The others watched the pair, who had sunk to the ground together, Johnny’s rough hands finding either side of Raiden’s face. They were murmuring—mostly Johnny, in point of fact—and no one was sure if they should get close. 

Liu Kang directed them away and gestured that they ought to start dealing with the portal, which was still open and continuing its inexorable work. He hoped, silently, that the Elder Gods actually did decide to step in, because he was no sorcerer, nor was he a god and could not see himself becoming either in the near future.

Across the expanse of what had become the field of kombat, Kung Lao and Jacqui spotted Kitana, Jade, and a limping Ko’atal. They were followed by a few singed Shokan and some Osh-Tekk, bruised and battered, but alive. Kitana raised a hand and Jacqui returned the salute, made a brief gesture to the murmuring pair, and then to Liu Kang, still suspended between herself and Kung Lao.

“Hey,” Johnny hissed, “it’s okay—it’s gunna be fine… You finished it. It’s—”

“It is not over, Johnny Cage,” responded the god, eyes downcast. “I have upset the balance; the Elder Gods will be furious. The consequences—”

“Seriously,” Johnny interrupted, “fuck the Elder Gods—what’ve they done for us, huh?” Raiden’s eyes opened wide at these words of blasphemy and he reached out to grasp the lapels of Johnny’s vest.

“You know not of what you speak, Johnny Cage,” warned Raiden. Johnny hated that fearful look on Raiden’s face. It was foreign and wrong and did not belong there under any circumstances. Johnny scowled deeply.

“I know a thing or three about shit parents… Listen, this whole… fatherhood thing, y’know, it blows sometimes—no offense Cass; I love ya pumpkin—and it’s… like a never-ending cavalcade of horseshit, nonsense, and doubt.” He shook his head. “I had ONE. I can’t imagine being the… like, dad of a whole-ass world…realm… thing.” Pursing his lips, Johnny searched for his next words, choosing them carefully. “We spend our whole damn lives worrying and wondering if we did all we could—if we fucked up somewhere along the way and if that… y’know, if it caused more pain than it should’ve, or… more than we knew at the time, or could ever know.” He sighed. “And yeah, it’s gunna do that—it will do that. You’re going to hurt your kids and sometimes meaning well isn’t the be-all, end-all… the ends don’t always justify the means and all that shit, except when they do… But the bottom line here is that a good parent does THAT, y’know, looks back and… worries… about the process. Getting there ain’t always half the fun, big guy—and frankly, whoever-the-fuck got you here, where you are right now? They’re not the good kinda parents. Just sayin’.”

Raiden looked as if he had never been told that the Elder Gods were poor parental figures. He looked as if he had never considered them parents at all, which Johnny supposed made sense, since they weren’t exactly physical beings or whatever, but sometimes, one had to wonder at the “my ways are higher than your ways” explanation. 

He, still holding either side of Raiden’s face, pressed their foreheads together and closed his eyes. “We’re gunna be all right, man—I promise. I… we… no one’s gunna let anything happen to you—or Earthrealm, or whatever.” He had clearly run out of words, for the time being

“Thank you, Johnny Cage,” whispered Raiden solemnly. “Your faith and fair words mean more to me than you can know.”

“Ah, one more thing, though.” Evidently, Johnny was not completely out of words. “Just… Just Johnny, please? Whenever I hear the whole thing, I kinda assume I’m in deep shit—y’really don’t wanna go there with a god… ‘specially not the kind who can do… y’know, what you just did.”

Raiden regarded what he had just done very carefully, then regarded Johnny. This, he supposed, was a request he could grant, but it felt strange, not addressing him that way.

“If I am correct, then we are, all of us, in ‘deep shit’.”

“Lord Raiden,” Liu Kang called, hobbling toward them having escaped, temporarily, his captors. “Forgive me, but that portal isn’t closing itself and I…”

Raiden shook his head and stood, grasping Johnny’s hands and pulling the man with him. “I will make this right,” he promised, stepping away from the mortals and lifting into the air. Once more, energy crackled all around, but it bore the tranquil, blue-white glow that they were accustomed to seeing. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief at that.

Cassie approached her father slowly. He seemed dazed. She could have slapped him, but she wasn’t sure that wouldn't trigger some kind of heart attack. Johnny’s eyes were wide, fixed on the hovering thunder deity. 

“You ah… okay, dad?”

“I don’t… I dunno, kid. I’m not sure. But he is… and right now, that’s kinda what we need.”

[thiswasinevitableid]

I would love for you to do the sharing favours professionally from the rivalry/ friends to enemies to lovers for the prompt fill for indruck? (I'm on mobile so can't copy the whole prompt) 😁

“ we’ve been begrudgingly sharing favours back and forth to help each other out professionally but this time i need you to do something more personal and you know you wouldn’t have gotten that account without my help last month or that promotion so you owe me.”

Content note: There’s a brief description of Indrid’s ex being verbally shitty to him.

“No, nuh uh, aboslutely no fuckin way.” Duck maneuvers the last butterfly bush into its display row, stands up to find Indrid glaring at him.

“Why not?”

“Indrid, we see plenty of each other at work. I’m not gettin roped into some evenin shindig with you just because you asked.”

He heads inside, the skinny, pale-haired man on his heels.

“Duck, please, I help you out all the time.”

“Yeah, with work. And it’s only now and then.” He settles behind the counter, checking off the deliveries that have already happened. Indrid stays on the other side of it.

“Oh, really?” he arches a dark eyebrow (of course the guy dyes his hair), “what about the time I made sure city hall chose us for the five year landscaping contract even when you were the one who was supposed to be working on winning them over?”

“That how we’re playin?” Duck leans on his elbows, staring Indrid down, “because I seem to recall it was me who helped convince Mama that havin a little florists space so you could do your arrangements was a swell idea.”

Indrid opens his mouth to retort when the phone rings.

Duck grabs it, “Mama’s Nursery and Landscapin, Duck speakin. Oh, howdy Winthrop. Yep, expectin the last orders this week, then we’ll get started on that zen garden. Uh huh. I see. We’ll see what we can do. You have a nice day now.”

He clicks the phone off, “I hate the rich bastard, but he wants us to do the landscapin on their summer home, which’ll be a nice chunk of change.”

“See! There’s another one you owe me. You have such a hard time being in the room with him, the only reason we got the hospital garden job is because I turned on the charm.”

“Is that what you call it when you get that weird smile on your face?”

Indrid groans in frustration, pinching the bridge of his nose. When his hand drops away he looks...defeated. 

He and Duck may bicker, may compete from time to time, but Indrid’s a good guy. Hell, Duck will even admit (begrudgingly) that he often enjoys how much the two of them work together. 

Duck sighs, forces his brain to switch from arguing mode to problem solving mode, “Indrid, what’s all this about?”

“I told you, I have an art showing.”

“Right, but why do you need me to go. Why do you need anyone, ain’t your job at those to make small talk and hope people say nice things about your drawins?”

Indrid swallows, picks at the front of his work apron, “He’s going to be there.” He says meekly. 

“He-oh fuck, you mean The Shithead?”

Indrid nods.

“He tryin to pull some stunt to make you take him back?”

Indrid laughs bitterly, “no, he’s been all over his social media bragging about how he’s going to turn up with a hot date to my show,  “show me what I gave up” and all that. Dani saw it and warned me so he couldn’t take me by surprise. I have so few friends in town, and everyone but you has work or something else that night. I thought it would be nice to have someone I knew with me.”

Duck thinks about Indrid’s ex. The guy’d come into the shop plenty of times, often making a big show of putting a possessive arm around Indrid (who never seemed to enjoy the gesture). At least, that’s what he always did when Duck was around. Worse, whenever Indrid was describing a new landscaping design, or working on an arrangement, the ex would pick at it, say how it was bad or lacking, that it would never work and no one would like it. And Duck would watch the glimmer dim in Indrids’ eyes, watch him go quiet (find him more than once sniffling and wiping his eyes furiously in an outbuilding once the guy left).

He looks back at the other man, who is staring at his scuffed converse. 

“Where am I meetin you and what time should I get there?”

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

Duck gives a tight smile to the group of hip twentysomethings crowding the door of the building as he squeezes through. It’s some art space/ coffee house/ bar that isn’t quite his scene, although he likes that it’s warm and lively as opposed to the fluorescent lights and weird silence he was expecting. 

He doesn’t spot Indrid right away, and so takes a moment to look at the drawings on the wall. They’re Indrid’s alright, he can recognize the ways they overlap with the sketches he does for arrangements or the plans he draws up for gardens. And they’re incredible, black and white with pops of color, a few abstract or dreamlike but many seeming more like still lifes. 

One in particular catches his eye and he stares at for a good two minutes, trying to figure out why it looks so familiar. 

“Ahem.” 

He turns, and has to forcibly stop his jaw from dropping.

Indrid is in dark slacks and some sort flowy black shall-jacket thing over a bright red shirt. His hair is tousled on purpose, rather than from getting it caught on plants.  

Has he always looked this good?

“Thanks for coming.” He says awkwardly, extending one of the two glasses he’s holding to Duck. 

“This all looks amazin.” Duck says, taking the drink with a smile. Indrid relaxes at that.

“Oh, I’m, uh, glad you like it.”

“What’s this one of?” Duck points to the drawing he’d been staring at.

“It’s of a really lovely, big cork oak up on one of the eastwoods trails. I like to go there on weekends and sketch.”

“Hold up, that the trail that ends at the little lake?”

“Yes.”

“No fuckin way! I hike that nearly every weekend. Amazed I’ve never seen you.”

“I’m usually off the trail a little ways.” He grins sheepishly when Duck looks aghast at this confession, “I know that’s not allowed but I’m able to get such different perspectives on the things I draw.”

“If, uh, if you wanted to, maybe we could go up together some time. Could leave you to do your drawin while I hiked and then, dunno, maybe get lunch of somethin?” 

Indrid looks a little surprised at the suggestion, but recovers quickly, “That sounds quite nice, actually.”

Duck stays by Indrid as he makes the rounds, asking him about the different drawings and enjoying the way he animatedly describes the process and idea behind each. 

The Shithead arrives about forty-five minutes in. Duck spots him first, complete with a date on his arm. The date is tall, slender, with pale hair, looking like Indrid if he were a model rather than just a regular guy. Or, Duck thinks as he watches the ex preen, as if someone took Indrid and erased all the things that made him so interesting to look at.

“Ex just got here.” He murmurs, and Indrid stiffens beside him. Duck, seized with a sudden need to protect him from that jerk, places an arm reassuringly on his lower back. Indrid glances at him, face unreadable, but relaxes into the touch. For the next fifteen minutes, whenever The Shithead makes a loud, derisive comment, Duck will squeeze Indrids hand or brush his fingers down his back and Indrid will shake off the words. 

There are several people wanting to buy drawings and so Indrid excuses himself to go thank them.

“Knew you’d be the one to pick up the scraps.” Says a familiar, unpleasant voice.

Duck turns, levels The Shithead with his most disinterested gaze. 

“Nice to see you too. And I ain’t got the slightest clue what you’re referrin to.”

“He was always talking about you. ‘Oh, Duck knows so much about native plants,’ ‘oh, Duck has such good ideas.’” He says it in a mocking, high pitched imitation of Indrids lilt and Duck wonders if he can get away with physically throwing him out of the building. 

“Anyway, it doesn’t surprise me that when I traded up, he went crawling to you. Honestly, you can do much better.”

“Beg pardon?” Duck growls.

“Let me see, how to put this in terms you understand? Why waste your time on a weed when you could have a prizewinning rose?”

“Because,” Duck says through gritted teeth, “sometimes people call things weeds just cause they don’t behave exactly how they want ‘em too, or because they don’t see the value in ‘em.” He steps closer to the ex, not noticing that he’s stopped whispering, “You fucked up. You were shitty and Indrid had the good sense to dump you and now you’re doin some petty shit to try and hurt him. He’s amazin at what he does, he works hard, he’s funny, and he’s so handsome I wanna look at him every damn day. You didn’t see the value in him. That’s your loss. Now fuck. Off.”

The Shithead is about to say something when a hand grabs his shoulder. His date is behind him, looking pissed.

“Hold on, you asked me out to try and hurt your ex?”

“Uhhh, babe, no, I can explain.”

Duck smirks, turns to check on Indrid just in time to see him slip out a side door.

“Goddammit.” He mutters, quickly following him. 

The door opens into an alley, and Indrid is standing with his back to him. When he turns, his hands are over his mouth and his eyes are wet. But he doesn’t look unhappy.

“You like me.” He whispers. 

“Uh” Duck scrambles, “well, yeah, we’re, uh, friendly types, fuck.”

“You think I’m handsome.”

“Shit, you heard all of that?”

Indrid nods, Duck sighs.

“Fuck it. Yeah, I think you’re handsome. And all the other stuff. And lots of, uh, other stuff that I didn’t say but could’ve.

Indrid steps closer, “Is the part where you admit all our arguing has been the only safe outlet for your, um, passion for me?”

Duck snorts, “Hell no, sometimes you need a fella who’ll tell when an idea ain’t feasible. But…” He meets Indrids hopeful gaze and smiles, “I’d be lyin if I said I ain’t thought about what it’d be like to be a different kind of partner to you.”

Indrid reaches for him, and Duck goes willingly into his arms as the taller man blushes and says, “Yes, I’ve thought about that quite a lot as well.”

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

 Dani’s glad Indrids’ show is open so late. It means she and Aubrey can go once Aubreys’ act is over. She even texted Jake and Hollis, asking if they wanted to check it out too (also, if Indrid’s ex was there, having someone who looked like, and basically was, the head of a motorcycle gang would come in really handy).

When the four of them reach the bar, she peeks in hoping to see Indrid, but can’t spot the taller man (or Duck) anywhere.

“Huh, maybe he left?”

“Or maybe he’s taking a little ‘break.’” Hollis makes airquotes before pointing up. They all look towards the balcony, which clearly isn’t in use for the party. 

It is, however, in use for the two figures currently occupying it for a long and intense looking kiss. One is wearing red glasses, the other lets out a laugh that unmistakably belongs to Duck Newton. 

“We should give them some privacy.” Aubrey says. The other three look at her, and then she grins.

“Just kidding! WOOOOOO GET IT DUCK!”

“ABOUT FUCKING TIME DUDES.”

“GET A ROOM!”

“I’M SORRY ABOUT THEM BUT GOOD FOR YOU!”

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

The sound of his friends catcalling them breaks Ducks concentration for all of two seconds. Then he flips them the bird, and goes back to the very important business of making out with his boyfriend. 

[all-things-are-nothing-to-me]

A Critique, Not a Program: For a Non-Primitivist Anti-Civilization Critique

So the anarchist individualist as I mean it has nothing to wait for [...] I already considered myself an anarchist and could not wait for the collective revolution to rebel myself or for communism to obtain my freedom. — Renzo Novatore

I conceive of anarchism from the side of destruction. This is what its aristocratic logic consists of. Destruction! here is the real beauty of anarchism. I want to destroy all the things that enslave me, enervate me, and repress my desires, I want to leave them all behind me as corpses. Remorse, scruples, conscience are things that my iconoclastic spirit destroyed [...] Yes, iconoclastic negation is most practical. — Armando Diluvi First of all, there is nothing inherently primitivist about a critique of civilization, particularly if that critique is anarchist and revolutionary. Such critiques have existed nearly as long as a self-aware anarchist movement has existed — and not always even connected to a critique of technology or progress (Dejacque felt that certain technological developments would allow human beings to more easily get beyond civilization; on the other hand, Enrico Arrigoni, alias Frank Brand, saw civilization and industrial technology as blocks hindering real human progress). The real question, in my opinion, is whether primitivism is any help at all to an anarchist and revolutionary critique of civilization. The word primitivism can mean two rather different things. First of all, it can simply mean making use of what we know about “primitive” societies[1] to critique civilization. This form of primitivism appears relatively harmless. But is it? Leaving aside the obvious criticism of the dependence on those experts called anthropologists for information about “primitive” societies, there is another problem here. The actual societies that we call “primitive” were and, where they still exist, are living relationships between real, living, breathing human beings, individuals developing their interactions with the world around them. The capacity to conceive of them as a model for comparison already involves a reification of these lived relationships, transforming them into an abstract thing — the “primitive” — an idealized image of “primitiveness”. Thus, the use of this method of critiquing civilization dehumanizes and deindividualizes the real people who live or have lived these relationships. In addition, this sort of critique offers us no real tool for figuring out how to battle against civilization here and now. At most, the reified, abstract conception of the “primitive” becomes a model, a program for a possible future society.This brings me to the second meaning of primitivism — the idea that “primitive” societies offer a model for future society. The adherents to this form of primitivism can themselves rightly be called primitivists, because, however much they may deny it, they are promoting a program and an ideology. In this form, I actually consider primitivism to be in conflict with anarchic thought and practice. The reason can be found in the Novatore quote above. Simply replace “communism” with “primitivism” and “collective revolution” with “industrial collapse” and everything should be pretty clear. As I see it, one of the most important differences between marxism and anarchism is that the latter is not essentially an eschatological vision of a future for which we wait, but a way of confronting the world here and now. Thus, revolution for the anarchist is also not something historical processes guarantees for the future, but something for us to live and create here and now. Primitivism is no more livable now than the marxist’s communism. It too is a program for the future, and one that depends on contingencies that are beyond our control to bring about. Thus, it has no more to do with anarchist practice than Marx’s eschatology.I have already pointed out how the very concept of the “primitive” reifies the real lives and relationships of those given this label. This manifests among primitivists who seek to practice their ideology now in the way this practice ends up being defined. In a way far too reminiscent of marxism, “primitive” life gets reduced to economic necessity, to a set of skills — making fire with a bow drill, hunting with an atlatl, learning wild edible and medicinal plants, making a bow, making simple shelters, etc., etc. — to be learned in order to survive. This might then be spiced up a bit with some concept of nature spirituality learned from a book or borrowed from new age bullshit perhaps referring to a return to a “natural oneness”. But the latter is not considered necessary. The totality of the life of the people labeled “primitive” is ignored, because it is largely unknown and completely inaccessible to those who were born and raised in the industrial capitalist civilization that now dominates the world — and that includes all of us who have been involved in the development of an anarchist critique of civilization. But even if we only consider mere survival skills, the fact is that even in the United States and Canada, where real, fairly extensive (though quite damaged) wilderness exists, very few people could sustain themselves in this way. So those who learn these skills with the idea of actually living as “primitives” in their own lifetime are not thinking of the destruction of civilization (except possibly as an inevitable future circumstance for which they believe they will be prepared), but of escape from it. I won’t begrudge them this, but it has nothing to do with anarchy or a critique of civilization. On a practical level, it is much more like a more advanced form of “playing Indian” as most of us here in the US did as children, and, in reality, it is taken about that seriously. Nearly all of the people I know who have taken up the development of “primitive” skills in the name of “anarcho-primitivism” show how ready they are for such a life by the amount of time they spend on computers setting up websites, taking part in internet discussion boards, building blogs, etc., etc. Frequently, they come across to me as hyper-civilized kids playing role games in the woods, rather than as anarchists in the process of decivilizing.An anarchist and revolutionary critique of civilization does not begin from any comparison to other societies or to any future ideal. It begins from my confrontation, from your confrontation, with the immediate reality of civilization in our lives here and now. It is the recognition that the totality of social relationships that we call civilization can only exist by stealing our lives from us and breaking them down into bits that the ruling order can use in its own reproduction. This is not a process accomplished once and for all in the distant past, but one that goes on perpetually in each moment. This is where the anarchist way of conceiving life comes in. In each moment, we need to try to determine how to grasp back the totality of our own life to use against the totality of civilization. Thus, as Armando Diluvi said, our anarchism is essentially destructive. As such it needs no models or programs including those of primitivism. As an old, dead, bearded classicist of anarchism said “The urge to destroy is also a creative urge”. And one that can be put into practice immediately. (Another dead anti-authoritarian revolutionary of a generation or two later called passionate destruction “a way to grasp joy immediately”).Having said this, I am not against playfully imagining possible decivilized worlds. But for such imaginings to be truly playful and to have experimental potential, they cannot be models worked out from abstracted conceptions of either past or future societies. In fact, in my opinion, it is best to leave the concept of “society” itself behind, and rather think in terms of perpetually changing, interweaving relationships between unique, desiring individuals. That said, we can only play and experiment now, where our desire for the apparently “impossible” meets the reality that surrounds us. If civilization were to be dismantled in our lifetime, we would not confront a world of lush forests and plains and healthy deserts teeming with an abundance of wildlife. We would instead confront a world full of the detritus of civilization — abandoned buildings, tools, scrap, etc., etc.[2] Imaginations that are not chained either to realism or to a primitivist moral ideology could find many ways to use, explore and play with all of this — the possibilities are nearly infinite. More significantly, this is an immediate possibility, and one that can be explicitly connected with a destructive attack against civilization. And this immediacy is utterly essential, because I am living now, you are living now, not several hundred years from now, when an enforced program aimed toward a primitivist ideal might be able to create a world in which this ideal could be realized globally — if primitivists have their revolution now and enforce their program. Fortunately, no primitivist seems willing to aim for such authoritarian revolutionary measures, preferring to rely on some sort of quasi-mystical transformation to bring about their dream (perhaps like the vision of the Native American ghost dance religion, where the landscape built by the European invaders was supposed to be peeled away leaving a pristine, wild landscape full of abundant life).For this reason, it might be a bit unfair to call the primitivist vision a program (though, since I have no use for bourgeois values, I don’t give a shit about being unfair...). Perhaps it is more like a longing. When I bring up some of these questions with primitivists I know, they often say that the primitivist vision reflects their “desires”. Well, I have a different concept of desire than they do. “Desires” based on abstract and reified images — in this case the image of the “primitive” — are those ghosts of desire[3] that drive commodity consumption. This manifests explicitly among some primitivists, not just in the consumption of books by the various theorists of primitivism, but in the money and/or labor-time spent to purchase so-called “primitive” skills at schools that specialize in this.[4] But this ghost of desire, this longing for an image that has no connection to reality, is not true desire, because the object of true desire is not an abstract image upon which one becomes focused — an image that one can purchase. It is discovered through activity and relationship within the world here and now. Desire, as I conceive it, is in fact the drive to act, to relate, to create. In this sense, its object only comes to exist in the fulfillment of desire, in its realization. This again points to the necessity of immediacy. And it is only in this sense that desire becomes the enemy of the civilization in which we live, the civilization whose existence is based on the attempt to reify all relationships and activities, to transform them into things that stand above us and define us, to identify, institutionalize and commodify them. Thus, desire, as a drive rather than a longing, acts immediately to attack all that prevents it from forcefully moving. It discovers its objects in the world around it, not as abstract thing, but as active relationships. This is why it has to attack the institutionalized relationships that freeze activity into routine, protocol, custom and habit — into things to be done to order. Consider this in terms of what such activities as squatting, expropriation, using one’s work-time for oneself, graffiti, etc., etc. could mean, and how they relate to more explicitly destructive activity.Ultimately, if we imagine dismantling civilization, actively and consciously destroying it, not in order to institute a program or realize a specific vision, but in order to open and endlessly expand the possibilities for realizing ourselves and exploring our capacities and desires, then we can begin to do it as the way we live here and now against the existing order. If, instead of hoping for a paradise, we grasp life, joy and wonder now, we will be living a truly anarchic critique of civilization that has nothing to do with any image of the “primitive”, but rather with our immediate need to no longer be domesticated, with our need to be unique, not tamed, controlled, defined identities. Then, we will find ways to grasp all that we can make our own and to destroy all that seeks to conquer us.

[riding-alpacas]

Best views ever

El Chalten is a funny little village. Imagine your favourite country-side town. Now imagine there is an event on the weekend, let's say a biker event and the whole place is full of bikers. Let's replace the bikers with hikers who are all wearing their walking boots, convertible Columbia pants & Patagucci jackets and you've got El Chalten!

Totally worth getting up at 4am

It's quite obvious that you come here to do three things only: Sleep, eat and most importantly hike! This place only has buildings where you can sleep in, buildings you can eat in and signs that indicate hiking trails. It's a well-oiled machine and for very good reasons. The hiking is world-class and I totally get why everybody's flocking here. But that also means you need to get a little creative if you are after some solitude.

First things first though. When I arrived here, I actually felt like shit. The cold that I'd been carrying around with me for quite some time turned out to be a bit nasty. So I spent the first three days in bed recovering. Because I was bored (and because the first season of Baby Yoda The Mandalorian was only eight episodes), I decided to visualise my tale of suffering. This is how a typical man flu looks like for me:

A typical man flu

Pretty straight forward. A little headache and a runny nose at the beginning, then gradually transitioning into coughing over a total period of 7 days (with medication I’m usually able to make it a week instead).

But the one I caught here was different:

The nasty Patagonian man flu

As you can see it started off very similar and I didn't think much about it. But then it started to step it up a notch and all of a sudden pretty much every body orifice was affected and it all went crazy and in all sorts of directions. Day 7 was when I left Ushuaia, and on day 8 I took the bus to El Chalten by the way - fun times! This thing clearly tried to imitate a typical Patagonian mountain range, so I decided to name it the "Patagonian man flu". Watch out for it and always wash your hands.

Before we get to the more pleasant sections, I also need to spend a few paragraphs with the place I decided to stay at. I don't know how they did it, but Rancho Grande is clearly one of the most overrated hostels I've ever seen on Hostelworld. It starts by not knowing what it wants to be. It's kind of a restaurant with a hostel attached to it. Or is it a hostel with a restaurant out front? And with everything that tries to be two things at once: It's not good at any of the two.

The dorms were underwhelming as they consisted only of a bed and a locker. The bunk beds were tiny and didn't have any rails, the reading lights were so bright they’d scare away Godzilla in the dark, there were no shelves, the kitchen was a joke and the toilets turned into a steam room in the afternoon due to poor ventilation. I definitely expected a lot more at this price point.

The restaurant unfortunately wasn't much better. The bread was dry and the quality of the dishes very average. The common area of the hostel was above the restaurant with a huge void in the middle. I usually go to the common area to hang out but imagine being in a place with a constant restaurant noise in the background. I couldn't stand this for very long, so I saw myself in my dorm most of the time when I wanted to chill. You check in between people munching their Schnitzel and when you brush your teeth before you go to bed you might stand next to a restaurant guest who had one beer too many because the bathrooms between the two audiences are shared. On top of that a disturbing trend continues: I'm not sure if I'm just unlucky but the majority of the people are just super unsocial. They rather hang out with their mobile phone than with actual people. My room mates were the worst at this place: They didn't even tell me their name when I introduced myself to them and they were all just dead silent all the time. What the actual fuck? Anyway, let's move on to the fun part: The hikes!

The first one I did was the Chorillo del Salto trek. It was a short and easy 4km hike to a cute little waterfall and turned out to be the perfect start after spending the previous three days in bed. I chilled out at the foot of the falls for an hour or so before heading back to town. One thing I will miss the most about Patagonia is the water. It's a nice change compared to Oz being able to just dip your water bottle into the closest body of water and drink from it straight away. I think the last time I drank such tasty water was in the North of Sweden a couple of years ago. Apparently this area has one of the world's largest reserves of fresh water and it makes me wonder why we can lay huge pipelines to transfer dirty oil from A to B but not beautiful drinking water.

I like a good waterfall

The next morning I still didn't feel too great but decided that it's time to give the finger to the cold and just move on. In order to avoid the crowds, I left my hostel at sunrise and tackled the first (easy) day hike: 18km return to Laguna Torre. The first 2km were a bit of an up and down and in between I was welcomed with the following views:

Mount Fitz Roy means "smoking mountain" in the native tongue

Once I got over these initial hills, it was basically just a long walk through a forrest until the Fitz Roy river appeared on the left. One more kilometre and I was standing in front of the lake with a great view of Cerro Torre. There were some little icebergs floating in the lagoon that fell off from the glacier behind it. My plan to avoid the crowds worked out perfectly as I had the whole place to myself for about an hour until the first people dropped in. The fresh air turned out to be perfect medication, too. I felt significantly better when I returned to El Chalten which meant that I felt ready for the next day hike.

Look at all these colours

Acceptable view

I wanted to gradually improve the difficulty of the treks, so the next morning I went off and did the 20km return hike to the foot of Mount Fitz Roy (I still wonder why they named it after a Melbourne suburb): Laguna de los Tres. There are a couple of options how you can do this one. I personally don't like in and out hikes very much and this one had an option to make it sort of a loop. You could take a taxi to a place called El Pilar, then hike to Fitz Roy from the north-east and on the way back take the south-east route to El Chalten. The disadvantage is that you can't really see the mountains on your way in and you'd always turn around on your way back because you missed all the views initially. So I decided to do something else instead. I actually started this hike in the dark. The whole town was still asleep when I left the hostel at 5am in the morning but fortunately there weren't many nocturnal animals to expect (other than the last hike I started at night in Australia where I almost shit myself with that much activity in the bush at that time). The idea was to be at a specific lookout 1.5h later in order to observe the sunrise and see Mount Fitz Roy brightened up in gorgeous shiny orange colours. And as you can see from the first photo above, it worked out and it left me speechless for a minute or two. It was quite a sight and an absolute highlight of my trip so far! I don't think anything will get close to this jaw-dropping moment anytime soon.

Continuing the hike it turned out to be a lot more diverse than the one I did the day before. Having the trails completely to myself, I passed glacial waterfalls, mystic foggy sections and heaps of small creeks with crystal clear waters before getting to a popular campsite very close to the final ascent.

Foggy

The people who slept at the campsite were already on their way down when I tackled the final kilometre of hell. IT. WAS. STEEP. It took me about an hour to get up the last 1000m and I hated every second of it but the reward at the end doesn't need any words:

Does this need a caption?

I ended up staying here for at least 3 hours just taking in the stunning scenery and going up and down and all around the lagoon over and over again. It was absolutely beautiful and I can totally understand why so many people come to this place. Fun fact: If you compare the ridge line with the logo from the Patagonia brand you might discover some similarities.

On the way back I took my time and similar to the day before a crazy amount of people made their way to the top now. I regularly stopped at the river sections, cooled down my feet and also took a little detour to another lagoon that again looked so inviting for a dip. But with water temperatures around 6 degrees it was relatively easy to resist.

Beautiful water everywhere

So clean

The last hike I attempted was the 20km Loma del Pliegue Tumbado. It was supposed to be the hardest hike, but I'd rather put it in the middle between the previous two hikes. Other than the other treks in this area, this one actually went up a hill and didn't lead through a valley. With 1000m of altitude it may sound steep but it was evenly distributed across the whole length, so it didn't feel that bad at all. It isn't a very popular hike and I decided to start it at a decent time in the morning (9am). I actually didn't meet too many other people on the way. It started amid rocky shrubland which reminded me a lot of Australia. If you'd put a wombat right here, it would feel like you're in the middle of Australian bush. After a while, the trail led into a forrest which then turned into this weird rocky landscape that felt like from another planet. Quite fun and entertaining.

I want to be there when this rock loses its balance

What planet is this again?

It ended with an impressive lookout from where you could see the whole mountain range, including Cerro Torre and Mount Fitz Roy. From here I had the option to walk up another very steep hill for another kilometre or so but I couldn't see how the view would change dramatically. Lots of effort, low reward - that math didn't make sense to me, so I decided to stay down, have a picnic and just admire the tranquil scenery for a while. Only to fall asleep and waking up from an asshole fly that made it way into my ear. Yes, similar to Australia the Argentinians use this land partly for cattle and with the cattle come the flies... I didn't expect that I'd have to bring my fly net to this trip!

All together now

I'm such an artist

All in all I had a fantastic time in El Chalten with some of the best hiking I ever did in my life. In terms of food I tried the famous Locro which was surprisingly minty but a perfect hearty dish after a long day out. I also found a place that served a great traditional Goulash and one place where I had Guanaco Goulash. After seeing my first cuddly Guanacos on my way here, I now simply had to taste them.

Locro

Tomorrow I will cross the border to Chile to go on an adventure that I was looking forward to for quite some time now: I will walk the O circuit in Torres del Paine and will completely disconnect for about 8 days.

Last Mount Fitz Roy picture, I promise

[spidersmiceandeverythingnice]

Gonna write my scatterbrained Spicy Hot Takes on Agartha before the news is stale and I delete this annoying and boring chapter from my mental landscape, so bear with me:

I think Agartha’s main issue was just straight up poor writing. The Japanese direct translations being as downright offensive as they were is one thing - but overall, the chapter is just one plot contrivance after another. It tries so, so hard to go for a certain tone but can’t seem to stick to any one thing or idea. Disregarding themes about sexuality probably would have been the very best way to go about this chapter, since I think the most interesting part was the theme about storytelling and in-authenticity - we all know that That Line was annoying af in a game like FGO, but it CAN work in a series like Fate as a whole. I had a helluva long day at work so allow me to explain in the least scatter-brained way I can manage right now:

Here’s what I’m thinking: Scheherazade, whose name I guarantee I will spell wrong/differently every time I write it even though I’ve been able to pronounce it properly since I was thirteen (I was in a speaking competition and told some of the Thousand and One Nights using her framework as the opening monologue, long story short ANYWAY -) is traumatized by her ordeal with the king. This is a really good and interesting thing to explore! Fitting it in with the theme of storytelling - Scheherazade is deeply afraid of dying and will do whatever it takes to live, so she makes a fantasy world and fills it with legends, and feeds their energy to a Holy Grail. With this, and the power of a Demon God at her side, she plans to reveal magic to the human world in the most destructive fashion possible, allowing the fantastic to become ordinary, and destroying the Throne of Heroes itself in the process. Fate is a series were stories have power - but Scheherazade survived basically by telling the most fantastical, interesting tales she could and never finishing them. She always would pause in the middle, and say, “That’s all for tonight.” I think this is the kind of thing we can run with in terms of setting.

Dahut is the weirdest example because it’s the one story in the chapter that I know next to nothing about. At one point it’s mentioned that Dahut is impossible to summon as a Servant, and so Drake was “forced” into the role of the Pirate Princess. Ys is probably the weakest part of the chapter for that, but I did like the idea of her being “Drake Alter,” where Drake vibrantly pursues her goals and desires but takes nothing for granted; Dahut gives into her every whim and takes absolutely everything for granted. The conflict between “Drake” and “Dahut” should have been emphasized more instead of having the player/Da Vinci dismiss her as “Oh, it’s not Drake, except when she conveniently comes back to delivery us the MacGuffins Ex Machina in the eleventh hour.” Dahut has little connection to Drake - it’s not her story, but a role she was forced into because Scheherazade was building a very specific kind of world. Therefore it is inauthentic. Perhaps that’s all it needs to be in this context. 

This can also work with the Amazons. Scheherazade never told stories of the Amazons, but she has access to basically all stories in the world through her Noble Phantasm - she learns that they are a society of warrior women who live without men, and so decides that they will be a society which oppresses men due to her fear/bitterness towards men after the ordeal she suffered through. The “oppressing men” plotline was honestly dumb all around but using the Amazons as a mechanism to explore Scheherazade's trauma would’ve been more interesting than just having them be the Big Bad before the Big Bad Columbus Reveal: Scheherazade doesn’t like fighting, but wishes that she had been strong enough to protect herself. Because she views herself as a coward and her ordeal with the king has complicated her view of sexuality - “I’m better suited to a bedchamber than a battlefield” - she uses the Amazons of Agartha as a mechanism to cope. 

This brings us to Wu, whose design I’m still not happy about even though I think the in-story justification is somewhat fair. (Let Helena and Wu be gray-haired grannies together or so help me!) Wu was absolutely an authoritarian ruler who did, in fact, invade and conquer several nations and institute a terrifying network of secret police. In her later life, she was given to decadence - but her tenure on the throne showed her to be a highly competent administrator. Notably, she ruled over an era of religious tension and balanced matters quite well, and though she was accused of undoing meritocracy to put her supporters into power, many of the men she appointed held positions in government long after she’d died because they were actually good at their jobs. Wu has been heavily mythologized over the years - later Tang emperors and Neo-Confucian scholars wrote her off (Wu founded her own dynasty under her own name, so they kind of had to legitimize it somehow), she became associated the nine-tailed fox spirit thanks to a few popular novels and poems, etc., etc., etc. The crazy thing is that Wu actually left very few records of herself behind, apart from some poems. Even the inscription on her tomb is blank! People can say whatever they want about her - it’s extremely difficult to know the full truth of the matter without any objective observers in the field (and without Wu’s own words to give context/another story), especially if you don’t read any Chinese. 

BTW - the first thing I learned history class is that when you’re dealing with primary sources, you must always remember that translators have agendas. Every word is a deliberate choice, and it changes the meaning from the original text. When dealing with historical documents, this is not always a good thing. 

Scheherazade reads some, but not all of these stories, and integrates Wu into her world as the sadist empress with an iron grip on her decadent mythical city. 

Do you see what I’m getting at here? It’s a lot, but I’m not done. Now we have to deal with Columbus - there’s “In Defense of Columbus” video is floating around in the Agartha tag, but I haven’t watched it in full and haven’t done like, any intensive research on Columbus in particular, so I’m going to apologize right now for any historical inaccuracies/misconceptions that I’m about to write. The point I want to make here mainly is that Columbus, like Wu, has been heavily, heavily mythologized for both good and evil at various points. The thing about Columbus that is also interesting is that the authenticity of his journals is or was apparently a subject of debate. The man who published most of them actually happened to be Bartolomew de las Casas - one of the founders/first vocal supporters of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. The reason de la Casas supported this is because he believed that using African labor would be an improvement over enslaving the native populations of the New World. Soon after, he had a change of heart and devoted the rest of his life to fighting against slavery in all forms. De la Casas went on to be named a saint, and was possibly the first person in history to propose the idea of universal human rights - which is how I had heard of him until literally just this afternoon; I had no idea he’d ever supported the slave trade until I was looking up basic info about Columbus’s writings so I could write this long-ass post. History is full of complicated people. 

But as I mentioned in Wu’s bit, it’s very important to note that in many ways, Columbus is literally just whatever people decide he is. Like, he never even set foot in any land that would become the United States, and yet he’s a huge symbol here! Along these lines, his amnesia would fit the theme of inauthentic storytelling, choosing what to read and what to believe in. Columbus regaining his memories was an understated moment, which is actually fucking fantastic because it could be used to really emphasize the choice that is being made here. He’s a Heroic Spirit who can choose to be whatever he wants. He can choose to be the simple hero-explorer that schoolchildren sing about, or he can choose to be the Big Bad, the first and perhaps most infamous conquistador. And he chooses to be the bad guy. That is so fuckin’ fantastic, y’all! I honest to God love that not only did FGO portray Columbus as a villain of history but that the bad reputation is something he chooses to maintain! I can write a list of Servants who were less than stellar people and got a makeover for Fate. Nero is probably one of the worst examples but like - Ozymandias absolutely owned slaves in his life as a pharaoh. Hercules and Medea murdered their own children. Asterios literally ate humans as the Minotaur. Gilles de Rais exists as a playable character. Jack the Ripper is your daughter. Hell, Nobunaga burned temples with the monks still inside - but she feels bad about it now! Enough digressing but I a hundred percent get why Japanese fans found Columbus “refreshing” at his introduction. He owns his cruelty, his desire to exploit others - he challenges the narrative that everyone is redeemable because he doesn’t even want to be redeemed, he just wants to get rich and famous, and he doesn’t give a shit who he steps over in the process! Like, Columbus said, “I’m just doing what comes naturally,” at one point when he still had amnesia, so when he got his memory back and turned on the player, I really would’ve liked for him to say is something like, “You’ve already decided that I’m the bad guy, right? You know my story, and I’m nothing if not a man of my word.”

These kinds of questions/debates could have been used to emphasize the themes of Agartha. Legends are what people decide they are. People make choices and history decides whether they were good or evil or important retroactively. Can you know what someone is like by reading a translation of their poetry? Can you judge a king’s reign by the words of their successors or their rivals? Does the context of a story matter? This all could have been super interesting to explore!

Like I said, the main theme of Agartha being “inauthentic storytelling” could have been hella, hella good considering that this is a world created by Scheherazade’s fears and trauma feeding into her escapist desires. But Minase’s incompetence as a writer made everything so hamfisted and awkward that everything just suffered under his desire to insert his fetishes at every moment. It was so obvious that he didn’t read any material for old Fate characters - like Astolfo you poor sweet thing, you deserved so much better! - and even the new characters that he clearly did research on, like Columbus, fell flat because he couldn’t figure out what he was trying to say beyond mildly-to-extra offensive sex jokes.

[anxiouslyfred]

Enough ‘On site Investigations’ Logan!

for ghost hunting, I got the pairing of analogical, and can only giggle at how I think it would be. @spookylissawho @sanderssidesspook

Sometimes Virgil really wondered just why he ever married Logan. Usually it was fine, all the knowledge his husband amassed would help him calm down from panic attacks, or entrance him with myths constellations are named after, but then there were the conversations which began with the words he was hearing now.

“Lightning, have you heard that the manor a few miles out of town is apparently haunted by an executioner from the 17th Century?” There was already a history book in Logan’s hands as he wandered though. “Some of my students were discussing it earlier on. It’s complete nonsense, of course. The area wasn’t even settled in until well into the 18th Century, but where on earth would they get such a bizarre idea?”

He had to take a deep breath before replying, long since knowing what suggestion would be made at some point and hoping he could divert it. “Weren’t you studying the colonisation of America just a few weeks ago, with an essay on how early settlements would have been run due this week? One of them probably made it up to try and scare their friends since the building is rather old fashioned.”

“But not at all like the houses of the 17th Century. How could anybody even believe that?” Logan exclaimed. “I might believe it could be haunted by the native Americans which should rightfully still own this land, or even that an executioner or jailer from a later time period might haunt the house, but the facts just don’t line up.”

“And I’m certain none of them believe it now, after hearing all your historical evidence to disprove the tale.” Virgil had to keep trying to reason his frustration away, if only to avoid...

“No! They’re insistent. The only way to prove them wrong is to investigate on the site precisely.” Logan decided, only to look at Virgil in concern as he sunk back into his chair, hiding his face behind his arms with a groan. “But if you’re feeling unwell I am sure I can investigate this on my own.”

The glare as he snapped his hands away would have made anyone less stubborn back down in an instant, unfortunately in their friends group that only included Patton. “If you insist on such idiocy as breaking into ruins then someone has to keep you safe and as your husband, that’s my duty. You try and step out of the door without me, and I’m handcuffing you to your desk so all you can do is your grading.” He hissed out, stalking over to Logan and straight past him to start putting his shoes on. “Let’s just get this shit over with while there’s still some natural light out.”

As ever when he started hissing his words silence followed as they got ready to leave.

VLVLVL

“See, Virgil, the arch of the doors and set of the windows is all distinctly 1830′s in design” Their shared silence was broken as soon as Logan saw the house and could begin analysing the architecture. 

“Yup, definitely no early executioners haunting here, probably was a doctor’s house I bet. They always made fairly good money, right?” Virgil agreed, still hoping that he could stop it from becoming an actual ghost hunting trip though it was proving to be futile.

Even as he spoke his husband had kicked the door open, breaking the long since rusted through lock and wandering into the ruins. “Hmm, do you think that could be the actual ghost that was seen then?”

“No, I don’t think any ghost was seen, just that your students were telling scary stories amongst themselves and someone told it a little too realistically.” Virgil insisted, eyes scanning over the floor for any weak points they could fall through and other possible dangers. 

As ever Logan had gravitated towards the books left to the mildew on a table in the hall. “You were right about the village doctor living here. The last page used was recording an outbreak of some illness,though he hasn’t specified the name, just the people infected or killed by it.”

“Oh goody. Does that mean we can go and leave this all to rest as a mistaken identification of your students?” Virgil asked again. “What on earth else do you want to happen? An actual haunting so you can witness it?” The sarcasm in his questions was ignored as always as Logan carried on looking through the house, having wandered into what might have been a parlour once.

“That would be ideal, so I can say for certain who haunts here.” Logan agreed, turning at his husbands growl.

Virgil had followed him though, looking increasingly frustrated. “I’m sure meeting a ghost would be ideal, given ninety percent of reported hauntings are malicious in nature and we would all love to welcome death with open arms tonight, right?”

“Ah. Perhaps it might comfort you to know that should there be a ghost here, given that there are only few reports none containing violence it is doubtful to occur here.” Logan tried, clearly hoping to assuage his worries while continuing the investigation.

Before Virgil could respond however a thump came from the hallway, distracting his husband once again, as they both hurried through to it. 

There was no sign of a ghost as they entered the hall again, but a landscape on the wall had fallen down, it’s frame splintering into pieces, making Virgil grasp his husbands wrist so he couldn’t get to close to it. “Stop that, can’t you see how sharp some of those splinters are?”

“Don’t you see the picture that was drawn on the wall beneath it?” Logan whispered back, though there was no reason for them to be quiet.

The picture had obviously been sketched by someone talented, and showed a solemn gentleman, frowning out from it. “Oh joy, someone drew a picture. Why don’t you take a photo to show your students and we can get out of here?” Virgil snapped, glancing around to see if there was anything else sharp on the floor he hadn’t seen before, settling on a pair of shoes. “In fact, do that quickly before Mr Cellophane over there gets too close.” 

“It was a doctor from the 19th Century, this just proves it!” Logan could have almost been cheering as he took the photos on his phone, matching the form marching towards them to the picture, even as he was yanked out of the house.

“I’ve told you time and time again, Logan. I don’t care what stories your students are telling we have to stop your investigations of them all before you get us killed.” Virgil was ranting as he dragged his husband away as fast as he could, not even looking back to see if they were followed at all.

[foreignersgod-rp]

Though the snow-capped crowns atop the mountain range were miles away, they seemed somehow to loom over the massive structure known as Fort Briggs like silent, foreboding guardians. Elio found it difficult to direct her attention to the four Fotian soldiers awaiting her instruction and not glue herself to the awe of the surrounding nature. They were grown, hard-faced men, perhaps the youngest less than a year older than Elio. All of them towered over her in height, but definitely not in confidence- or ego. It was now nearly two years after her sanctioning as Knight Commander, and she felt as though she was tending to children when giving orders. 

That was a considerable improvement, considering at the start she viewed them as nothing more than the cattle she used to herd back at home in the northern alps.

"Pair Ceann, guard the vehicle and cargo," she demanded firmly in their native tongue. A small nod back at the black metal wall behind them, and she continued, "Pair Biert, you will enter with us ad are assigned to Earl Od Nua. A distance of three paces, at most. This is low risk, but do not let anything catch us flatfooted. Are we all clear?"

"At your mark," they all affirmed.

"Go."

They dispersed like flies being waved from cow shit, and Elio turned to Arcturus who observed quietly by the car, fiddling absent-mindedly with the hem of his gloves. A  common tick, she learned, that he did when his nerves were getting the better of him. "The air is so crisp here," the woman commented as she slid to his side. "You should take some deep breathes. Just look at the mountains over there!" 

But as she gestured to the scenic view, Arcturus merely shook his head and rubbed his nose, reddened by the biting wind. "There's reason I don't travel to Northern Fotia often. This weather doesn't agree with me."

Elio smirked crookedly but didn't fail to caught sight of the Earl's eyes fixate on the wall of the fort. Who could blame him? Such a terrifying, cold structure looked so tasteless among the simplistic, peaceful wilderness holding the border of Drachma and Amestris. That ominous letter received prior to this visit was undoubtably pushing his anxiety to its limits as well as the meeting with the Fuhrer approached ever closer. Elio wasn't so oblivious that she didn't know Arcturus was witholding information, and the entire trek across the sea and land to Amestris was a constant battle with her own desire for pettiness in retaliation.

"... Anything I should know before we move forward?" Her face was still holding its warm smile, but her tone was provoking. She watched him tense up, the muscles his jaw and neck tighten with the stress, his knuckles clench slightly. Surely, he overthinking what to say next and Elio tipped her head in anticipation. In the end, Arcturus could only gulp and shake his head.

Elio's hazel eyes thinned. 'What a terrible liar, for a politician,' she thought and found herself unsure whether to pity him or to strangle him right there in the open field. Resisting the urge to huff, she stated shortly, "At your mark then, m'lord".

There was a moment's hesitation, but after some mental preparation, Arcturus took a determined lead into the maw of Fort Briggs. Every step closer, and the darkness cast by the colossus building enveloped him bit by bit, and he was surprised to find it much colder in its shadow. Just as he realized the pain in his temple from grinding his teeth, he could hear Elio from his shoulder, so gentle and soft he could've mistaken her hiss for the wind. "You need to breathe, Arcturus..."

He then forced a deep inhale and a steady exhale, training his eyes to the Amestris soldiers now approaching. She was right. The air was very crisp.

***

As much as Anostraus respected that his presence was obligated for the arrival of the ambassador of Fotia, he couldn't help but try to make his presence as small as possible within the Fuhrer's office. Reading the ever tense atmosphere of the room, he had managed to perch himself onto whatever allowance the windowsill overlooking the landscapes surrounding Fort Briggs allotted, out of the way of the few uniforms busily striding about the room (and yet somehow accomplishing next to nothing). He could hear Mustang quietly sigh among the stressed murmurs and confused questioning about the Queen's disappearance. And though it pained Anostraus to keep his mouth shut on the matter, he just barely managed to do so.

The cold radiating from the window bit at his cheek when he leaned in closer, daring to press his head against the pane to get a better view further down the one main road below, barely visible from the snow. However much the world appeared to be the very picture of tranquility and peace outside, there was little to be found among the Amestrian military. Anxieties had even wormed their way into the idle gossip of the nurses under Anostraus's authority at the Briggs clinic. He had heard theories from some secret military execution, directed by a coupe within the ranks and that was hurriedly being covered up by Mustang, to the more entertaining idea that Queen Ixelia had elloped away to Creta with a nameless gentleman. Anostraus may have enjoyed laughing to himself about the insanely out-there stories the public was entertaining themselves with, but there was an undeniable ache felt by those close to Ixelia in her absence.

But instead of giving into temptation that was political turmoil, he drew a lazy, long drag from his cigarette, trying to keep his mind occupied by the arrival of his nephew- pardon, the ambassador. That scheduled meeting alone was enough to send him into cardiac arrest, as it had been so, so long his he had last seen the boy. But there was also the thought that little Arcturus was now carrying his father's title brought a small nostalgic smirk to his face. Arcturus was a quiet, well-mannered child, one that Anostraus found little complaint in- and that was saying a lot coming from an infant-despising man like Anostraus. He couldn't resist wondering, though, how Arcturus came into power as Earl of Nuada when he had enlisted with the King's Guard specifically to revoke his claim... He supposed he might be able to inquiry the lad himself, perhaps, depending on just how vexed he may still be over Anostraus's abrupt uprooting and migration to Amestris.

As he rose his pursed lips to the crack of the window and blew the smoke from his lungs, he overheard the Elric boy speak. “Have you been able to get ahold of Mr. Krol, Roy? I feel that he might have the answers we need out of anyone else we can ask. But if he doesn’t know what’s happened, then…” Without waiting for Mustang's response, Anostraus interjected flatly: "No. Nothing from him yet. But we're being cautious about where we lay our tracks, remember?" He peaked over his shoulder to Elric. Mustang, though it seemed painful to admit aloud, grunted in agreement. "We possibly won't hear from him for another couple days," he huff as his grip dug into the edges of the table.

'A few days' was being optimistic, he was regretful to acknowledge. Anostraus wished he could just simply ring up his old friend, just like any other day before this disaster, and ask how things were happening around there in Jozefat's little cabin in the middle of nowhere. But they all knew just how far Drachma would curl its fingers around Ixelia and her family. And they all knew that there was a very real chance that the Drachman government already had its nails right into Jozefat's throat. Turning his attention back to the scenic views, he could feel the weight of the matter settle uneasily on his shoulders yet again. Jozefat was more than capable of handling himself, and Airenne was just as much a hellcat as Ixelia, if not more so. He wanted to believe they were all resilient enough to endure, but they weren't going to be able to pry from Drachma's grasps by themselves.

'So many emotions to process, so little ability to process them to begin with', Anostraus thought with a tired sigh. There were a handful of difficult tasks ahead, so he'd focus his efforts on the easiest one...

There was an abrupt knock at the door. A guarded calm fell over the room as the door swung open. A single Amestrian soldier stepped forward and announced, "Fuhrer, may I present Earl Od Nua of Fotia." Mustang calmly rose to his feet and fastened the button of his uniform, and the rest of the soldiers in the room filed out in an orderly custom until it was just Roy, Elric, Anostraus, and their two foreign guests. From under his knitted brows, the Fuhrer's dark eyes took a some time to surveyed his new company. There was a tall, limber man with skin as pale as the snow just outside their window, as well as jet black hair braided and drawn tightly at the back of his head. For someone from Fotia, which was known for their overly intricate fashion at such formal occasions, he was dressed in a basic, all-black fashion, with a long tailored coat adorned with hanging sleeves that trailed behind him. Though he was perhaps in his early thirties, Roy could make out the creases of stress forming beneath his blue, down-turned eyes. No doubt he was the ambassador.

Arcturus stepped in the middle of the room, seemingly determined to keep his sights solely on the Fuhrer. Deeply he bowed his head. "Good morning, Fuhrer Mustang, and thank you for the invitation to visit your country. It is truly an honor," he said. His voice, though not necessarily loud, was notably full-bodied, compelling. And despite his prominent accent, his Amestrian was remarkably clear. Arcturus bowed slightly lower before rising again to his full height. With a gesture with a single gloved hand to the second guest, Roy's attention turned to a thin woman with sharp features, tanned skin kissed passionately by the sun with dark freckles, and short, messy ginger hair. She too wore a uniform somewhat similar to her master's, but somehow she appeared entirely out of place in it. Nevertheless, her chin was raised with an air of poise and her narrow eyes sharp and steady as she meticulously scanned every inch of the space. 

"Please, allow me to introduce my Knight Commander, Elio Illuka, who hails from County Beira. She's been enjoying your weather here in the Briggs." Roy regarded the woman with a small simper. "Is that so? It's pretty harsh, out here." In turn, Elio tipped her head in acknowledgment of the Fehrur, but offered nothing more than her intense scrutiny.

Roy continued on, "Thank you for coming all of this way, Earl Od Nua. I hope your trip was a comfortable one?"

"Yes. I haven't visited the Briggs before, only Central of Amestris. This was... ," With a brief pause, Arcturus couldn't resist a quick glance to his uncle any longer. "An unexpected rendezvous point, I must admit." Anostraus, refusing to waver under the attention, offered a strained grin. The atmosphere of the room began to hang awkwardly over everyone in attendance as they stood about in a sea of many unspoken words. Anostraus unhurriedly directed his gaze to the king once more, this time he wore a more somber, focused cast. "Though I'm hardly bothered by idle chat, Fuhrer... May I know what you and my uncle would have of me?"

[carriecourogen]

In Times of Chaos, Maggie Rogers Serves a Much-Needed Catharsis

Three-quarters of the way through Heard It In A Past Life, Maggie Rogers recalls words of wisdom implored decades before her: Standing, staring straight ahead, listening when Stevie says: Come out of the darkness.

Rogers isn’t the first millennial to look to the past — or Stevie Nicks, in particular — for inspiration. But on her full-length major label debut, she voyages to the lighthouse and returns to report on the revelations made in ways that feel not derivative or contrived, but fresh, invigorating, and necessary for our times.

We are living in an increasingly unstable world, and those of 24-year-old Rogers’ generation are bearing the brunt of it. We’re the first generation all but guaranteed not to be more financially successful than our parents, the ones navigating an imploding and underpaying job market, the ones facing the downright terrifying possibility that the world will encounter apocalyptic climate crisis before we’ve even reached retirement age. Can you really blame us for being the most anxious generation yet? After all, on top of trying to clean up the world’s messy shit, we’re still 20-somethings with personal crises of our own.

It makes sense, then, that the current musical landscape seems a little bleak — and not just in the resurgence of intimately emotional indie singer-songwriters. Pop music, once considered to be joyous, saccharine stuff, is getting sadder. A recent study found that pop songs’ mood has been trending downward considerably in the past few decades, with fewer songs conveying “happiness” or “brightness” and more ticking off the “sadness” box. In 2014, the Billboard Hot 100 chart was topped by Pharrell Williams’ infectious, sunshine-kissed bop “Happy” (I swear, you can’t make this stuff up). Five years later, the number one song is Halsey’s “Without Me,” a brooding breakup track released via a tweet that said “Here are my insides. Handle them with care.”

Maybe this is why Maggie Rogers feels like such a breath of fresh air. Rejoice, our times are terrible, indeed, but her music is a spot of brightness in a world that seems to be growing more grim every day. Her music is the stuff of joy, hard-won optimism in the face of challenge. It’s the kind of cathartic dance party you throw in spite of — and sometimes because of — darkness, not in ignorance of it.

Rogers’ story goes a little like this: The rural Maryland native enrolled at NYU to study at the esteemed Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music. Nicknamed “Banjo Girl,” she played the requisite Brooklyn and East Village venues with her folk band, but living in the city, as well as a semester in Paris, exposed Rogers to hip-hop, dance, and electronic music. Though revelatory, it led to confusion about what kind of artist she wanted to be. Rogers put music on hold for a few years and instead pursued a journalism career, interning for Elle and helping Lizzy Goodman with her oral history of New York’s music scene in the early-aughts, Meet Met In The Bathroom.

All that changed in 2016, when Pharrell appeared as a surprise guest at the then-senior’s masterclass to critique students’ work. Rogers played a demo she wrote in 15 minutes and finished just moments before the class started. A video of that exchange, in which the veteran producer’s reactions flash across his face in real time as he listens to “Alaska” — surprise, awe, amusement, moved — was uploaded to Reddit. “I’ve never heard anything that sounds like that,” he concludes, telling her he has absolutely no notes for her. Days after she graduated and moved home, the video went viral and, suddenly, Rogers was the subject of a major label bidding war.

The catapult to fame and a career — a rushed EP, a year-long world tour, and multiple TV appearances — left Rogers panicked and overwhelmed, feeling like her life was happening to her, completely out of control. Heard It In A Past Life is loosely a concept album that reckons with the aftermath of virality, one that declares agency in the face of such radical upheaval. Musical reflections on the trials and tribulations of fame can be hit or miss, more often ringing “woe is me” than not. But Rogers’ youth is her benefit; at the end of the day, it’s an album not so much about fame as it is about change.

A track like “Overnight” may explicitly be about the bizarre ways Rogers’ life, and the people in it, changed abruptly with fame. But it also shares a feeling of camaraderie for anyone in this quarter life stage beginning to grasp the breakneck pace of life when pausing briefly to look back, realizing that the people we were or the people we loved just a short time ago feel like strangers.

On “Fallingwater” Rogers speaks to the imposter syndrome that can cripple us in the face of success, the way we can feel confused or ungrateful for allowing terror to dominate our emotions even when things are objectively good. Go on and tell me just how I could allow, she sings, all this light to end up somehow where it’s getting darker.

She works through the complicated emotions more explicitly on “Light On,” sharing glimpses of scared tears shed in bathrooms, the strangers telling her she must be so happy with her newfound success. Rogers recognizes the give and take of the universe, that neither light nor dark can exist without the other. There’s a gratitude that her love of music — which radiates throughout the album — has gotten her this far. But she acknowledges that there may be more moments of uncertainty or doubt, hoping that she — and listeners — will remember to keep a light on to safely guide herself back home.

These contrasting shades of light and dark weave their way thematically through the album. They take up residence within her lyrics: the warmth of a sunlit lake after dark days, the slinky confidence that comes out in us when the sun goes down, the shadows of our minds, and the burning flames of happiness and love. But they also exist in the contradictory nature of her music itself. To define it strictly “pop” is a disservice to Rogers’ artistry and her knack for twisting a listener’s expectations, be it reaching back into her folk roots with deeply confessional, Laurel Canyon-reminiscent lyrics and soulful vocals that get paired up with pulsating synths and electronic beats, dipping into R&B slow jam territory, or combining organic, world music rhythms like spoons, jars, and hand claps with more traditional, infectious pop melodies. Because in the end, it’s not genre (nor even the at times imperfect production) that matters, but what each song evokes: an urgent, immediate need to move your body, a freedom that comes only with feeling lost enough within the music to shake off whatever it is that haunts you — even if just for a few minutes — and dance.

There’s a metaphor Jane Fonda uses when speaking about personal growth that I’ve been thinking about a lot when listening to Rogers’ album. You can, as Fonda recalls doing for many years, drift through the current of life like a leaf. Or, you can choose to put your oars in the water and try to “determine what direction you want to go in” and move with intention, refusing to settle “for what people tell you you’re supposed to be.”

On the album’s clincher, the standout anthemic battle cry that is “Back In My Body,” Rogers offers a powerful reclamation of her voice, her story, her life. Over thumping, militaristic drum beats that gradually build, she recounts a series of panic attacks experienced while on tour before determining that she won’t allow fear to coax her into easily giving up on what she loves and holds so dearly. This time, I know I’m fighting, she sings. The past is out of her hands now, but this time, she can control her present and her future. 

With Past Life, the 24-year-old Rogers has her oars firmly placed in the water. She is the captain of her career from here on out. The water might be choppy and uneven, the ride never perfect, but it will be exciting to see where she steers to next.

[persephonesnow]

That worldbuilding thing

Below a cut because holy crap this thing is nine pages long. 

The very point of worldbuilding is to create a cohesive arena for your story to take place. Think of it as the background of a painting. You’ve got a subject that’s intended to be the focus of the piece, but that subject isn’t going to stand out if the background makes no sense and distracts the viewer. Worldbuilding is the thing that will make or break a story. That goes for original fic and fanfic both.

The most daunting is by far original fic. The easiest place to start is with, well, the place. The literal landscape of your story can have a huge impact. Is it mountainous? Forested? Rich and fertile? Cold? Hot? Dry? Are there settlements? What kind? Cities? Villages? Have no idea where to start? Start in the real world.

(We’re going to stick with stories centered on human characters, simply because they are the overwhelming majority and where worldbuilding tends to most often fail. And full disclosure: I am one of those writers who has written encyclopedias for the worlds I create. It makes things so much easier.)

I’m serious. If you think you want to write about a desert world, look into what real-world desert life is like. Even if you’re writing something sci-fi and need to account for currently impossible tech, look at the real world. How has the desert shaped the history of the people who live there? What have been the challenges they’ve faced from the environment and how has that changed them?

And pro-tip: if you’re writing a world with lots of direct sunlight, any human character native to this world is highly, highly unlikely to be white or overly fair-skinned. If you’re writing a snow-covered or water-filled world, you’re more than likely talking about a native population with both tanned skin and likely monolid eyes. When I say look at the real world, I don’t just mean the culture and history. I mean look at how people have evolved to survive in the given environment. Y’all may not realize this, but things like (light) skin colours and eye shapes are adaptations that evolved to allow humans to live in places very different than where our species first turned up.

(All bets are mostly off for any aliens. But if your aliens are humanoid and can pass for one of us, that means that they can pass for one of us, and will be bound by any physical adaptations humans in their given region would have.)

Worldbuilding is about 99% research. That’s it. It’s reading lots of random and weird things because the strangest things will have an impact. Environment and climate impact each other. Both impact what edibles are available and if the local population is going to be mostly hunters, fishermen, or farmers. Or even a combination, but given what humanity has been like, once we start trending agrarian we largely stay agrarian. Similarly, if your main settlement has little in the way of agriculture, then it’s not going to be much of a settlement and is more likely a waystation for nomads. Agriculture is the backbone upon which civilization is built. And agriculture doesn’t necessarily mean plants. Ranching is a thing, people, and you can farm fish.

There are other things, of course. If your world has few trees, your buildings won’t be wood, which changes what shapes they can take and their overall appearance. It also changes how the buildings hold heat or if they stay cool year-round.

IS THERE WINTER?

Okay, this point. Is there a winter in your world? Nothing, absolutely nothing will have a bigger impact on your growing world than the existence or nonexistence of winter. Don’t believe me? Go take a look through human history and the various mythos we’ve created. How vital is spring and the growth that come with it? How much is the winter, with the lack of growth and migration of game featured in those stories? How much is the concern of the lean times, of the time when diseases are more common (flu season, anyone?), of when children of all species are less likely to be born and less likely to survive if they do present?

No winter? Guess what, that has an impact too! You know all those plants you love to look at? All the ones you eat? Most of those require a winter to grow. Some plants need their seeds frozen and held at a freezing temperature for a length of time in order to properly germinate. Some need the inverse, of course, and will not grow unless they’ve quite literally been torched.

No winter also changes bug populations. Which can have an impact on the spread of disease. Which very definitely changes any population. Is there a monsoon season in place of the frozen winter that’s often featured? My good dudes, water is dangerous in all forms. Rivers will flood. Hurricanes and monsoons will happen. Floods will happen. No place is perfect. If you’re imagining an idyllic world where nothing is wrong, you’ve done something wrong and you’re missing something.

Worldbuilding requires a lot of really weird details, in order to do it properly. If you’re keeping your story small and focused on something small (a person, a family, something of interpersonal nature) then you can probably stop here and go write your story.

If you’re wanting to write and epic a la Harry Potter or A Song of Fire and Ice? Buckle up, kids, you’ve got a lot more think about.

Worldbuilding isn’t just your landscape. It’s your culture and everything in that. You imagine your characters wearing furs? Okay, then what kind of animals are lurking about for hunters? Go look at real fur, at real game, and think very seriously about what kind of skins your people are likely to have access to. Things like bear and other big carnivores aren’t likely to show up on normal people. Those will be, as they have been in the real world, expensive af. Predators tend to be rare, even places with lots of prey. There is in fact a set ratio for populations of predators to prey that researchers have discovered in the real world. Go look it up. Look up requirements for large predators, because they tend to have insanely large ranges and are often solitary, which makes them rare for hunters.

You have deer? Okay. Look at what a normal deer population looks like and what their behaviors look like in any given environment. Not all deer are as big as the white-tail. Some are bigger. Some are infinitely harder to catch. Some are isolated, some form herds. Some are aggressive. White-tail are what’s lurking where I live, and they’re mostly blind and rely heavily on their hearing. You know the classic deer in headlights look with the ears straight up? Yeah, they can see the light and something big moving towards them, but they can’t identify it so they’re listening.

Think all of this is unnecessary because you’re not writing a hunter? Nope, sorry. This shit impacts not only what your people are eating but also what they are wearing. Not a problem because your people have cattle? Not so fast, sweetheart. Cattle evolved from aurochs, officially in Turkey (I remember coming across a study that thinks aurochs might have evolved into cattle more than once, but don’t remember I found it). Cattle are also not the end-all of bovines. There’s multiple forms and then there’s also things bison and all their forms, oxen and their brethren. All are different. All have different environmental requirements and sometimes very different requirements for farming. Not all can be used for milk and not all are good eating. Same goes for sheep and goats. You’ll have to think about how humans have altered whatever species has been domesticated in your world, because it’s unlikely you’ll be writing at a time when domestication is just starting.

Poultry? Chicken come from a jungle fowl native to southeast Asia. Ducks and geese have different stories. They’re also largely useless for clothing, bar decoration and we’re not to that yet.

(On birds: all females will produce eggs, male present or not. It’s a natural process and just happens. Never seen a pet bird lay an egg? That’s because birds sold in the pet trade are almost exclusively males. If you’ve got egg-laying birds and no male around, you’re not going to get any new birds from those eggs. They’re unfertilized and will never develop because there is no embryo.)

Food is the traditional ground on which the divisions between rich and poor are drawn. Humans are a naturally greedy species, so you need to account for this and where your MC fits into this picture. Food availability and quality can change everything from general population health to culture and how people interact with one another, but also how families interact with each other. If food or other resources are at any time scarce, then whichever child has been designated heir will get preferential treatment because that’s the child that needs to survive to adulthood to carry on the family legacy. If your chosen MC is from a wealthier background where food, clothing, and shelter were never a concern, then where do they fit in? Are they the heir? Guess what. No adventures across the world for them. Your best bet will be an extra child who isn’t in line for anything and is mostly just expected to not cause problems. Determined to have an heir be the MC? Go read up on your history. Research, research, research. That’s going to come with some very unique challenges that will change how your MC interacts with the world around them and how the people in that world interact with them.

Clothing is a thing that divides us, mostly because it is an outward marker of wealth but also because clothing can restrict us. Clothing requires people to make said clothing, and your world will be restricted by materials. Textiles require looms and huge amounts of resources. Leather requires critters and tanning is a whole other can of worms. It’s smelly and can be done different ways. Leatherworking is also very, very different from sewing in any form. You’ll need to think of cobblers and what resources they’ll have. There’s a saying in the vintage community that your shoes will make or break your outfit and that’s true. Shoes have been a revolutionary thing in history. Not only do they protect our feet but we can use them for other things. Heels originally evolved on men’s cavalry shoes, where the heel was used to sort of latch onto the stirrup, allowing the rider more security when trying to stay in the saddle.

Utility matters, but humans will decorate themselves too. Accessorizing isn’t a new thing and it’s taken many forms across the ages and cultures. Hair is a surprisingly complex matter too. Curly hair has very different needs and behaviors than straight hair and colour can dictate what you can and can’t do to your hair (some ingredients will stain/discolour lighter hair). Bleaching is not a new phenomena. Dyes in general are not a new phenomena. Think carefully about beauty standards. No one is immune to them and they can and do change whole societies.

Other things that can change a society are work animals. Like dogs. No, I’m not talking about your cute pet. Go take a good, hard look at the history of dogs. One, as a species they are a hell of a lot older than you probably think they are. Second, precious few of them evolved with the intent to be companions. Most were created for a job and that job was often killing things. Some breeds are also significantly younger than others. The Labrador Retriever, the ultimate utility dog (seriously, it can be trained to do just about anything and it’s perfectly happy being a companion. There’s a reason it’s been the most popular dog in America for as long as it has been), was created only about 150-200 years ago and was meant to be a more manageable form of the Newfoundland. Given the thousands of years that dogs have existed, that’s brand new.

For me, personally, the absence of dogs will destroy any attempt at worldbuilding faster than anything else. Y’all trying to tell me you’ve got wolves, foxes, and other canines but you don’t have dogs? Not how that works. Canines have a notoriously slippery genome, which is how you get everything from wolves and foxes to Chihuahuas and Great Danes. Humans have had dogs for thousands and thousands of years. Their very existence has altered everything from how our ancestors hunted to our fashions (see: how the poodle went from respected retriever to a fashion icon). Take a look at a region similar to your world and look at the dogs found in that region. What purpose have they traditionally served? Were they hunters? What kind? Were they a pack animal? Livestock guardian? Shepherd? Mouser? Because oh, yes, dogs are mousers and rat catchers. They don’t call it a Rat Terrier for nothing.

Terriers in general have been created solely for the purpose of hunting small game and pest control. Cats, in comparison, are only semi-domesticated. Your “ancient” cat breeds? They’re what’s called a landrace in dogs. Humans have only recently started messing with cat breeding. A pet cat will not be a mouser unless they want to be, and chances are they’re going to go for easier prey. A cat’s purpose is solely to be cute. That’s it. That’s all it’s ever been and all it will ever be. Don’t believe me? The first known dog of what we now call the Rat Terrier was a set of remains found on a shipwreck, where it was being used to control pests.

Hounds also change things. Beagles were largely used for hunting hares, though they’ve been used for other small critters. Foxes? My dear, that’s the aptly named Foxhound, a similar looking dog that is quite a bit larger than the Beagle. Foxes are a mid-sized predator, like the coyote. They’re not super small and they are vicious little bastards. Dogs are older than you probably think but trust me when I say the dogs you think of as being the oldest breeds probably aren’t.

Two of the oldest dog breeds in the world are what we today know as the Afghan Hound and the Saluki. The Basenji is also extremely old. Notice a trend there? Some of the oldest depictions of dogs in human art show something that looks like what we today call the sighthounds, the most famous member of which would likely be the Greyhound. The hardy northern dogs (Huskies, Malamutes, etc…) still have that wolfish appearance, yes, but they’re nowhere near as old as things like the Carolina dog and other wild dog-adjacent breeds. Because yes, wild dogs exist. You do know what a dingo is, don’t you? A hyena? The vast majority of modern dogs came from these wild dogs and the wild dog endemic to a given region is going to determine what kind of modern dog you’ve got.

(In other news, the Mabari of Dragon Age gets a hard side eye from me, because it’s modelled on a relatively new modern dog and we’re given no evidence of the many breeds that went into creating that dog. Not to mention, as dog crazy as Ferelden is supposed to be, there’s a surprising lack of canines around. It doesn’t fully destroy the worldbuilding for me; the presence of the Mabari kind of saves it. Mind you, the worldbuilding actually crashes, for me, in the human noblewoman origin of Origins. What it doesn’t recover from, however, is what we’re getting to in this next bit.)

Horses are another major point in societal evolution. Cars? Guess what, they’re not only a hell of a lot older than you think, but they became as popular as they are as fast as they did (in the US, at least) in response to how difficult keeping horses and other large cart-pulling creatures in an urban environment was proving to be.

Horses in history look a wee bit different from what you’re thinking. Those pretty little runners who are so popular these days weren’t super popular in history. Their legs are too weak. I’m serious. If you’re writing something that features people in armor, they’re riding what we now call a draft horse. With the exception of one draft that was bred for farm work from retired war horses, draft horses are traditionally war horses because they’re the only horse with legs that wouldn’t break under the weight of a knight in full armor. They’re also relatively mild-mannered and often easier to train than their smaller cousins. But they’re not the kind of horse you’d want for a long-distance journey. Assuming the horse isn’t pulling anything and you want endurance over speed and strength, then you’re looking at a cutter horse. Just like dogs, different horses have different purposes. Do your research and please for the love of all that is good, do not overlook horses and other modes of transportation.

I mentioned Dragon Age above, and they’re probably going to be the series I talk about the most in this next bit because they not only excel as one of the few fantasy series to address technology in any way, but because they also utterly fail at building infrastructure. It is a video game and it has been restricted by that medium and it has made attempts to address some of the weaknesses I’ll be discussing, so I do trust the writers behind it to have thought of most of this. Witcher 3 had the budget and the engine to account for horses and ships and conveniently was based on a series of books that prominently featured portals in addition to both of these. The Witcher books are also something DA owes a lot to, so expect the odd reference to it (the books. I’ll rarely mention the games).

One of the things both series do well is establish that technology and magic can exist at the same time. Fantasy and sci-fi are not the same genre and do not deserve to be lumped together as they often are. Genres do blend, and these two do have a tendency to blend more than others because they are quite complementary to each other. But y’all have a tendency to not think it through. Fancy sci-fi tech is nice, yeah, but remember how much agriculture can change a society? Industry and tech are the two that follow on that list of variables. Agriculture has in fact been the single largest source of industry and tech in human history.

Remember textiles? Most of the plants used for that are labor intensive not only to grow and harvest but also to process into something weavers can use, assuming you have a climate that can produce them or have friendly trade going on with someone who does. If I’m not mistaken, the only thing more resource heavy than cotton is silk. Spidersilk is nice, yeah, but spiders don’t actually produce a lot of usable silk. There’s some great research on that and how to make it usable, but we’re not there yet. And holy crap don’t get me started on bamboo and linen. Do you realize how difficult flax can be to produce and how radically different the process for turning it into linen is from cotton? There are reasons why today, cotton is king.

Handwaving and going *~magic~* will only get you so far. And unless everyone can do that magic, you’re going to have some kind of innovation going on for those who can’t. Even then, magic in stories only really works if there’s a price to that magic, so you’re still going to have innovation. Don’t think so? Okay, let’s talk about food again.

One of the things I absolutely loved about DA:I was something found in Orlais that is a logical progression of something the series has established from the start. To recap this, there is a race in Dragon Age that most fantasy fans will recognize. Dwarves, specifically those that live underground, famous for their beards and tempers, and renowned as the best miners and smiths in the world. It’s this last point that I want to draw attention to, because the existence of dwarves is a super popular fantasy trope and DA  is the only one to have done it right so far. Within DA the dwarves have Paragons; dwarves who have made such significant innovations to dwarven society that they are regarded as effectively being living gods. One of them is Branka, who got the distinction for the invention of smokeless coal.

Let that sink in. Smokeless coal. Do you realize how beneficial that would be? You’re talking about a people who still need to breathe, who can succumb to black lung as easily as any other air-breathing being. And the technological innovations of DA’s dwarves doesn’t end there. There’s something that sounds suspiciously like a thresher among the surface dwarves, which in the real world was one of the most significant agricultural innovations in the world. And it has been a while, but I seem to recall Bianca Davri’s machine being described as something akin to a Whitney gin. Not to mention the existence of the crossbow Bianca.

So imagine a fantasy world with magic and dragons and all sorts of amazing things. And you go into the kitchen of an upper class home and there’s an oven. It’s a little thing, but it firmly establishes the coexistence of technology and magic. And it’s believable, because there is this group of people who are widely considered the best smiths in the world, and by extension we are given the means to believe they are also considered the best inventors. And oven makes perfect sense in this context. So do threshers and gins and every other bit of agricultural tech that would 1000% be beneficial to a group of people who canonically are no taller than maybe 4’ and still need to eat.

Cooking over a campfire is restrictive. You’ll mostly be cooking over/under the embers of a dying fire or a good distance away from a healthy fire. You will likely never be putting anything directly on the flame unless you like eating ash. You’ll have next to no temperature control. Which severely limits what you can do. Goodbye, baking, you don’t exist in this world. Except for some quick breads. Some soda breads were traditionally made by being buried in the cooling embers. But fancy cakes and breads are out.

The oven changed the world. It allowed for cooks to be as creative as they wanted and as a result we have a whole host of sweets and baked goods. Modern ranges allow for temperature control and spawned huge industries manufacturing tools to use with them. Pans and whatnot largely evolved after the oven, which is itself a bit older than you’d think. DA:I was just a big deal because it was a thoroughly modern range in a thoroughly old world. Do look at the history of the kitchen, because it doesn’t really mean anything for your characters to have access to certain ingredients if they don’t have the tools to make anything with them. And I trust most of you have heard at least some of the noise made about the links between nutrition and health.

Which brings us around to the thing that completely destroys DA’s worldbuilding: infrastructure. Specifically how people and things move. Few, if any societies are capable of being fully self-sustaining. Even if they are, people always want more and no society will be able to produce everything they want. Enter trade. The odds that you can create a grand epic and not include any other group than the culture you’ve started with is slim to none. Look at any large landmass. You’ll always have variations in people and beliefs because isolation breeds uniqueness. This is where trade comes in and fills in the gaps, bridging the distances between different groups. But how does the trade happen? I’m assuming you’ve thought of horses and ships, and any other mode of transportation that might exist in your world. That’s all well and good, but how long does it take for those things to happen? Looking at you, DA, with your assertion that DA:I took place in about two-three years. They have horses. That’s nice. They also have an official map with an official key to understanding distances. You can probably see where I’m going with this.

Travel times can alter everything. Not only how long your story can take to complete, assuming there is some kind of long physical journey involved, but also trade. How long does it take for goods to move from one place to another? How risky is the journey? How does that change the value of the goods and thus the availability? Your readers may never need to know the details but odds are you will because the weirdest shit will turn out to be necessary for your storytelling. Travel and isolation impact everything from food to medicine, which in turn can limit almost every aspect of life in a region.

Which brings me to a surprisingly oft-overlooked aspect of worldbuilding: continuity. Did a character have a certain job in one part and then are doing something completely different in another with zero explanation (my copies of Harry Potter state that James Potter was a Chaser for Gryffindor, until the later books when suddenly he was a Seeker. Little me was very confused). Consistent internal rules are an important thing. Not only does this apply to things like physics and seasons (do you have seasons? Do you have variations in day and night? Oh boy I can go on about that one and ATLA), but it applies to things like the stuff society needs to keep working. Do yourself a favor and write out a timeline and stick to it. If you have any changes, change it and review everything you have written to bring everything in line with that change. Someone will always notice a mistake and those mistakes can break the illusion that holds a reader in a story. Continuity is everything. If it’ll help, and it probably will, keep a notebook or something that’s exclusively for the notes about any complicated storylines you’ve got. Be it how characters are related to each other or how religion works, even notes about food and clothing (which is important. Everything from the textiles used to the styling can say so much about the manufacturing of the world and about a specific character’s socioeconomic status).

Long story short: research everything and keep copious notes and reference those notes when writing. Please reference your research. I’m not talking about citations in text. Just don’t completely wing it when writing. A story that has been well-plotted and actually thought out with care is going to stand head and shoulders above something written by someone just making it up and not bothering to check to make sure it actually works. You’re welcome to make it up as you go, but please make sure it works and stays cohesive. A story falling apart at the seams is going to distract readers from whatever it is you’re wanting them to pay attention to. Read your own work. Repeatedly. As someone else to read it to make sure it works if you can’t decide.

Above all, just write it. Most of this is just little things that can be fixed in editing. Unless there is a solid story at the heart of it, you’ve got nothing but a bunch of words. Worldbuilding makes no sense without a story to tie it all together. Worldbuilding can be added in after the first draft, and after you know your characters a bit better.

(Think none of this applies to fanfic? Oh boy, you’re wrong. You’re dead wrong. Fanfic is actually harder because you have to do all of this while colouring inside the lines someone else drew.)

[centaurianthropology]

The Magnus Archives ‘We All Ignore the Pit’ (S03E17) Analysis

Hoooo … for those of you who listen to these on public transit, fair warning: this one was, for me, the scariest episode in a long damn time.  The statement is phenomenal, and got a real gut reaction out of me at one point.  And there’s a character who … you know what?  Just listen to it.  Because this?  This is the good stuff.  Come on in to hear what I have to say about ‘We All Ignore the Pit.’

It’s nice to get a proper statement read from Sims after so many either shortened ones or ones that are directly related to the larger story.  Sometimes it’s great to get something just a little more distant from the action, make everything feel less driven toward a single point.  And acting as a departure from the primary action, I couldn’t have asked for better.  It’s classic horror fare of a guy moving into a small town with a dark secret, but with a very TMA twist.  Plus it ended up bulking out the feel of the horror landscape of America in this universe, which was a lot of fun.  

Honestly, my only minor quibble with the episode was how obviously British the narrator was.  Trying to write in another cultural dialect is seriously hard, and usually requires a dedicated editor to go through the script and make phrasing suggestions, so I get why that might not have been feasible.  And honestly, as a native American, nothing was ever bad enough to drag me out of the flow of the story.

And what a story it was.  The feel of Bucoda was perfect, and really managed to capture the sense of a small town when you’re from the outside.  I also really appreciated how often the narrator mentioned that he might be blowing details out of proportion after the fact.  It lends the whole story a nice sense of the concrete.  This is a guy who had a weird thing happen to him, but he couldn’t say how much of it was weird and how much he invented to correlate with the weirdness.  

I also liked how well this story set up, in a thousand subtle ways, that the horror landscape, the powers in control, and the feel of the terror in America is decidedly different to that in Britain in this universe.  Having the Vast and the Below (which is what I’ll be calling it until I get a more official name) be the main focus of American horror works well, particularly given the sense that a lot of this horror plays out in the more rural portions of America (the majority of the North American landmass is rural), and calls to mind miners and clear and empty plains.  If Britain of the TMA universe feels like Robert Chambers and MR James got together and had a horror baby, America is unapologetically the purview of Ambrose Bierce.  And I really like the sense of contrast hinted at in these two horror landscapes.  

I also have to say that, of all the entities, the Below is starting to scare me the most.  Maybe it’s the creeping sort of scary it exudes.  Maybe it’s because we know so little about it or what it does or what its motivations might be.  It’s the most unknown of the major entities, at least to Sims and to the audience, and that makes it worrisome.  It also helps that the Below has had consistently fantastic stories.  Building on the strong foundations of ‘Dig’ and the absolute bedrock of this series that was ‘Lost Johns’ Cave’, this episode approaches the latter in terms of horror and narrative tightness.  The story told here is a classic horror tale, yes, but no less strong because of it.  Hell, the dream with the teeth and the tongue?  I actually started grinning like an idiot because it was so perfectly creepy.  I haven’t felt creeped out like this by one of TMA’s statements since some of the best episodes of season 1.  I know I don’t often dig into the statements during these analyses, since I focus on meta, but I just had to take the time to sing this statement’s praises.  Strong doesn’t begin to cover it.  It cracked my top 5 statements from this show easily, and has lingered with me for days.

And really, topping what was an utterly glorious horror story off with the introduction of Nikola Orsinov (and even explaining why she has a male patronymic!), played to eerie, horrific perfection by Jessica Law?  Oh, it was good.  She’s an utterly delicious villain, and deeply frightening on a fundamental level.  I’ve always found that cheery monsters were by far creepier than ones that seemed entirely serious.  The decision to make her as alien as Michael, but far more threatening was brilliant, and her entire approach to coming after Jon was a breath of fresh air.

I love that, instead of killing one of his assistants or menacing him, she basically pops by to ask him if he wouldn’t be so kind as to find that skin for her.  Sure, there are threats, but the line ‘that would be lovely!’ when he asked her if she expected him to just hand the skin over was fantastic.  And I also love the notion that she needs the skin to wear.  It’s so simple, but makes perfect sense for a plastic being that requires the skin of others to perform basic tasks.  

And of course, we find out in this episode what exactly happened to Gregor Orsinov.  Apparently, having created a monstrous daughter, she got bored one day and repurposed all his bits.  Nikola not only accepts that she’s a monster, she embraces it.  She has a fantastic sense of self-confidence and cheer which makes her horrific actions all the more powerful.  I loved her instantly. 

Another note that I think is relevant on a meta level is her use of darkness to hide herself from Jon.  I don’t know about anyone else, but I was more than a little convinced that when Jon stepped into that darkness, he was no longer in Georgie’s place, but in the same strange stone cathedral described in ‘Growing Dark’, a location that only seems to exist when you can’t see it.  Likewise, I think that this is yet more evidence that the darkness and the People’s Church are different extensions of the Stranger

Oh, and it wouldn’t be an episode of TMA in season 3 without Jon being a complete moron, apparently.  Who was still at Georgie’s place despite insisting that he should leave before she was endangered?  Jon.  Whose home is now known to the Stranger, and has been invaded by Nikola?  Georgie.  I swear to god, if Jon gets Georgie’s skin stolen because he was too stupid to move back into his own place once he got his job back, I’m going to smack him one.  And a flayed and undead Georgie, now fully claimed by the End, might well smack him too.

Seriously, Jon, get the hell back to your own damn apartment, and keep your problems safely in your wheelhouse.  

The final interesting tidbit that I found myself thinking about during this exchange was Nikola’s statement that she wanted to wear the skin when she ‘danced the world anew’.  What I realized was how much creation and art seem to be a focus of the Stranger.  Nikola wants to wear a taxidermy skin, the definition of turning death into art.  She plans to dance, creating a story with her body and a world with her movements.  Even Nikola herself is a deliberately crafted plastic being who creates other plastic beings like her.

I think that the Desolation might actually stand as opposed to the Stranger as the Beholding does.  As the Desolation destroys all, consumes all, the Stranger creates.  It remakes.  Nothing, from the victims of the Anglerfish to the bits remaining of Gregor Orsinov, are wasted.  

Everything can be reworked.  The world won’t end with the Unknowing; it will be made.  Hell, it might have already been made several times.  For all Jon knows, the world he’s living in could be the result of previous Unknowings.  With a soft apocalypse in which everything changes but very few die, how would you know hundreds of years after the fact that it had happened at all?  The change has become reality.  The vagueness of the concept of the Unknowing, the delicacy and the art of it, is fascinating.  I love the notion that everything about the Unknowing is actually cloaked in creation.  

The Stranger is beautiful, and active, and alive.  And that makes Nikola all the more terrifying as a villain.

Conclusions

I’m thrilled that, after last week’s disappointment, this show is very much back on top in my eyes.  This is a cracking statement and a hell of an introduction for Nikola, very nearly as chilling as the introduction to Michael last season.  Nikola feels infinitely strange and infinitely threatening in the most genial way possible.  Jessica Law completely nailed the delivery (I also love that TMA is quietly drawing on all the Mechanisms one by one).  She’s uncanny and terrifying, but also has a beauty and a joy to her voice.  Nikola, I think, believes herself to be the heroine to this story.  She’s taking a boring world and creating something far more beautiful out of it.  She’s wresting control of it from the staid hands of the Beholding, and she’s actually DOING something with it.  

And I love her.  I’m thrilled that season 3 (and possibly more) has a villain this rivetingly unhinged.  Jon’s now stuck having to either acquiesce to her request, knowing he’s letting her get closer to the Unknowing, or to try and stop her.  I’m interested, honestly, to see if Elias can see in her darkness (I would bet he can’t, and that keeping out his prying eye was a big reason why Nikola wouldn’t let Jon turn on the light).  If he can, I want to know how he’ll react to all this.  If he can’t, how insistent is he going to be that Jon fill him in?

I’m interested in Elias’ reaction mostly because we can basically be guaranteed that Jon is going to do whatever seems stupidest at the time.  I love him, but the man is a complete and total disaster.  I despair that he’ll do something sensible like get away from Georgie before her skin gets repurposed, or talk to his assistants about anything of substance.  Could I at least suggest that he start small and try bringing them tea?  Maybe give them all spa days or something.  God knows they’ll deserve it after all this shit hits the fan.

[theresgloryforyou]

a really good article.  I feel like this whole thing is just a ritualistic bloodletting so males and patriarchal systems can learn how to pretend to listen to women and make women feel like we’re being listened to so they can just continue on down the same path we’ve been on all along.  I don’t actually give a shit about al franken or donald trump or kevin spacey or johnny depp or whoever, because this is all a game to the media and nothing is going to happen, and also there’s the point of this article-- what do you think you’re gonna do that will fix anything, exactly?

perhaps because the author of this piece is native american I feel like I can relate to her point of view as an indigenous person myself.  it’s a breath of fresh air amid all the liberal handwringing and pretend empowerment.  excerpt:

But has the evolution of this cultural moment, as Milano claims, actually put the focus on victims? In recent weeks, I have seen a steady stream of allegations, but what I have not noticed is a larger public conversation about how to materially and emotionally support victims. I have seen no increase in advocacy for programs that help survivors access resources. Conversations about prevention are usually reduced to catchphrases about "teaching your sons not to rape" -- a process that has no established road map in a culture of rape. And then there are the takedowns, which are treated as ends in themselves, as though robbing some powerful men of some of the trappings of fame materially alters the landscape of sexual violence.

Somehow, in the hands of powerful white women like Milano, a moment of solidarity and a discussion of how we can support survivors became a large-scale mission to take "these men" down. So, they're being brought down. Now what?

The powerful men who've been outed for harassment, assault and other abuses are not going to prison, for the most part -- and even if they did, would they become less harmful? Punishment-based approaches to social harms are the default in our society, but they have consistently availed us nothing. Few rapists ever see the inside of a jail cell, whereas 86 percent of women who have spent time in jail are survivors of sexual violence. Marginalized women face continued criminalization for acting in their own defense, and across the board, US prisoners face alarming rates of sexual violence while confined. But in this supposed watershed moment, high-profile white women, whose voices have been loudly amplified, have offered little critique of the carceral and punitive approaches that have only added additional layers of abuse and exploitation to an already violent society.

Will this fleeting moment, of simply naming and condemning "predators," bring neglected survivors closer to the care and resources they need?

It is possible that renewed interest in rape survivor Cyntoia Brown's case could mark the beginning of a larger public dialogue about the criminalization of survivors. But given Cyntoia's extraordinary circumstances -- including the fact that she was trafficked as a child and has pursued higher education while incarcerated -- it seems more likely that her case will be approached as an anomaly, rather than one that exposes a system that grinds survivors under. Meanwhile, the emphasis of the vast majority of public conversations remains on the allegations and the perpetrators, not on supporting survivors.

I will admit, I was here for the takedowns, for a moment. I am not sorry rapists and those who have harassed are losing their jobs or the respect of their peers. What I am worried about is what we are building right now, and what we are not building.

Are we creating an environment where survivors are more supported? Has the average, working-class survivor been given new tools with which to halt their abuse? What about survivors living in the margins, whose cries are often unheard, even when they have disclosed? And will this fleeting moment, of simply naming and condemning "predators," bring neglected survivors closer to the care and resources they need? Will it transform the people who harmed them? I think not.

As a Native person, I am acutely aware of sexual violence, and the ways in which it is invisibilized. Fifty-six percent of Native women have experienced sexual violence -- which means Native women are 2.5 times as likely to experience sexual violence as any other group. I do not expect that the current flurry of celebrity takedowns will have much impact on the violence Native people experience, or even spur a greater awareness of that violence, or the transformative efforts to overcome it.

So, what is this cultural moment accomplishing? For one thing, it is feeding a conflation that will ultimately be weaponized against the marginalized. I know no one wants to hear it, but let's challenge ourselves to take a look backward, at the history of criminalization and punishment. There have been other historical moments when a lewd comment or gesture (or the perception or accusation of such) evoked the same rage and response as an all-out assault. ​Throughout US history, in the eyes of the law and white society, Black and Brown men and boys have been viewed as potential predators. Historically, those who have been deemed "predators" have been ensnared by social mechanisms that were supposedly geared toward "public safety." If you're thinking, "the men who are being brought down now are white and powerful, so these situations aren't comparable," I would ask you to consider what happens when the high-profile white women who've taken the wheel, in this social moment, get out of the car and move on to other things. That car will still be in motion, but who will be driving? And who will they run down?

We already know.

[rainbowdoom32]

Nationalism Language and Internet Grammar

I’m slightly drunk and its finals and I’m reading a book on nationalism at 1 am instead of studying, but I have an idea. (Pre-apology for this if it is a jumbled mess) So basically the argument of the book so far (I’m like 50 pages in), is that nations are formed around common languages. That nationalism develops around this shared vernacular. This vernacular needs to be standardized in text meaning it has to have a regular written form. That getting a certain group to adopt one united writing system forms them into a nation. So, nationalism relies on uniting these nations of people who share a written language.

Now a lot of the book talks about the importance of books and printing, and like the Reformation, but consistently is this idea of shared language and standardized writing. So what comes next is a stress.

The internet has redefined the rules of written text. Now, I can only speak for English (I’m monolingual unfortunately) but it has done so in a way which would be incomprehensible to a lot of non-internet english readers. For example when we say shit like” wow.” and *shoving bread sticks into my purse* and okay.......that sounds fake........ but okay when we use emojis or add excessive punctuation when we capitalize words in the middle of sentences. When we purposely break the rules of grammar to convey tone and sarcasm or to make a joke we’re fundamentally changing the language. But we don’t do it randomly. it means something to keyboard smash. to add three exclamation marks and two question marks. THERE. ARE. RULES. They’re new nuanced clever rules, that are baffling to newcomers, but instinctual to natives. More than that these rules are standardized for all English. British Australian american Canadian, those speaking it as a second or third language. It knows no borders.

My point is this. WE. ARE. BUILDING. A. NATION.

Here on the world wide web we’re building a nation. One not defined by physical borders or imagined histories. We have a shared culture here of marvel movies and anime. Jokes about frogs and tea. We even in a way have a shared history not of wars and leaders, but of websites. Vague forgotten memories of MySpace and dead forums of webkinz and neopets and facebook and Vine. We have communities not of physical borders, but of coded ones. Of League and overwatch and reddit and 4chan and here on Tumblr. We also stride easily between these communities. I have a facebook and am active on reddit as well as Tumblr. We have subcommunties of individual fandoms or political views or genres. A nation is being built here. It is being built NOWHERE. The internet’s borders are imagined and limited, sure there’s the sites you can only access from certain countries and the Great Firewall, but you on the big sites you can hide your nationality easily.

If we’re building a nation, or perhaps nationS then what does that mean for those nations out there in the physical world? The ones with the lines on the map?

I don’t know. But what I do know is that the establishment, the bourgeoisie the elites, the ruling classes are terrified.

The Great Firewall exists for a reason we have to fight for net neutrality in the states for a reason. They blame the internet for populism, for a reason. The internet is empowering, the Arab Spring proved that. The UN has said access to the internet is a human right. There is power here, with all of human knowledge at your finger tips. With social media giving us a platform and a voice. The internet is power, and it is changing the landscape of the world. We know this. We know it is shaping language and culture and politics.

So why can’t it build a nation? It’s caused coups. Revolutions. This is the future. This is power and knowledge. THIS IS THE FUTURE.

We are building a nation.

[graphicnerdity]

Fan Theory: The Magic School Bus & Harry Potter Exist in the Same Universe

The Magic School Bus and Harry Potter are beloved stories that chronicle the adventures of school children being put in harm’s way by irresponsible adults. But with magic! The similarities go far beyond that, though. There is a good deal of evidence to suggest that both schools – Walkerville Elementary and Hogwarts – exist in the same universe. 

Walkerville desperately fills a need for wizarding elementary school

Growing up magical isn’t easy. Kids have to learn a shit ton of spells before they can function in the wizarding world. If you enter the workforce and the only spell you’ve remembered is Alohomora, you’ll be stuck working the door at a hotel lobby the rest of your life. You’ll be a senior citizen’s dream, but practically useless when the Dark Lord shows up. 

Hogwarts has no choice but to build a curriculum that focuses exclusively on magic. Because the wizarding world is averaging a civil war every 14 years and your life may very well depend on the degree to which you can perform a defensive spell or spot a potentially disastrous potion. And yes, that leaves little room for math and science in the curriculum, as so many people like to point out. But who gives a shit? Everything you need to know about math and science is pretty much covered by grade five anyway. 

That is precisely why magical elementary school exists. That is how we ended up with schools like Walkerville Elementary. Here, prospective Ilvermorny students are given practical knowledge about the muggle world. They learn basic math, science, biology, astronomy, natural history, and for some reason, what the inside of Arnold’s asshole looks like. All of the things their wizarding school won’t have time for. Best of all, they’ll have a janitor nearby in case one of the students accidentally blows up a teacher or releases a python. 

The idea behind elementary wizarding school to give students a basic understanding of how things work, before teaching them how things change.

Ms. Frizzle’s class is small because it reflects the magical population

Figuring out the population of a fictional universe is a difficult undertaking. Fortunately, the Harry Potter fandom is full of people who laugh in the face of adversity. Here is one such hero’s essay about the population of the wizarding world that delves into greater detail:

http://www.fictionalley.org/authors/commendatore/HMHATAEOTPOWB01.html

Pretty impressive, right? By her own admission, J.K. Rowling isn’t great at math. Nevertheless, when she claims that 1000 students are attending Hogwarts at any one time, we have to take that as the gospel truth. Based on that statement, and after some crafty math by user commendatore over at www.fictionalley.org, we can postulate that approximately 0.0194% of Great Britain’s population is magical. Applying the same ratio to North America, we can put the wizarding population at around 100,000.

Thus, we end up with schools like Walkerville Elementary, where there aren’t enough students to fill out a classroom but enough to warrant one. That’s why Ms. Frizzle’s entire 3rd grade class contains just 8 students and the parking lot usually looks like a ghost town. And not the fun kind where Headless Hunts take place. 

Students are introduced to magic via practical lessons

At Walkerville Elementary, magic is used primarily as a teaching aid. Students aren’t thrown into the world of spell mastery just yet. Accidental magic, as we know, is common among underage wizards. So Ms. Frizzle surrounds her class with magic and slowly immerses them into this world that, at the age of 8, is still relatively new to them. 

Ilvermorny students don’t receive a wand until their first day of school, which is why Walkerville students are introduced to various forms of wandless magic. This is a common occurrence in America, where Native American witches and wizards have been practicing wandless magic for centuries: http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Native_Americans

We do see a few examples of students accidentally using magic to bewitch various items. In one episode, the students attempt to build a robot, despite having no knowledge of engineering whatsoever. Nevertheless, after stacking together some discarded items, Ralphie issues a verbal command (incantation is perhaps a better word for it) and the unplugged trash golem magically springs to life.

We see similar forms of magic in both worlds

In the wizarding world, time travel can be attained by using a Time Turner. You know, that handy bit of magical technology that allows students to learn two subjects at once while genocidal wizards roam free. Over at Walkerville Elementary, they’ve got a Time Turner too: The Bus. So what does Ms. Frizzle’s class do when they have the ability to go back in time? They go way the fuck back in time! Because obviously! 

The students are Transfigured on a regular basis, taking the form of bats, salmon, and bees, just to name a few. In the wizarding world, we see that wizards can transfigure themselves into horrifying human/animal hybrids in a similar manner. 

And speaking of transforming into animals, let’s not forget those Animagi. Hey Liz, those are very human gestures for something that is supposed to be just an average chameleon. No, that’s a woman who took the form of a chameleon then decided life was better when people just fed you all day and you didn’t have to speak with them. Or hey, maybe she’s a criminal who’s hiding out in a grade 3 classroom until things cool down a bit. Either way, great job on blowing your cover, Liz!

Another notable similarity between the two worlds is moving paintings of deceased witches and wizards. The ones in Walkerville don’t seem too keen to talk to kids. I don’t blame them.

We also see magically transforming fabrics. I’m not sure what spell this is, but Ms. Frizzle and Dumbledore use it purely to screw around with school children.

There is even a living skeleton in the classroom. I guess kids have to learn about necromancy at some point. You know, if the Inferi had top hats and polka dot bow ties, I don’t think they would’ve looked nearly as terrifying.

Enchanted vehicles are common in the wizarding world

The mechanical and the magical are often deeply intertwined in the wizarding world. The Hogwarts Express is able to traverse vast landscapes without being seen. Arthur Weasley’s invisible flying car and Sirius Black’s flying motorcycle serve to show, if nothing else, that wizards love enchanting the crap out of vehicles.

We even see the Potterverse’s version of the Magic School Bus: The Knight Bus. I could base my theory on this fact alone, and still feel pretty confident. It’s just a bigger, purpler version of the Friz’s ride that transports vagrants instead of students. The Knight Bus changes its appearance and dimensions in a way so similar to the Magic School Bus that it’s practically copyright infringement.

Come on, Ms. Frizzle is obviously a witch

Ms. Frizzle's primary talents involve commanding an enchanted bus and changing her clothing at will. If that was the extent of her magical ability, then the case could still be made that she is a decent witch. While the Bus is responsible for the majority of the show's magic, Ms. Fizzle is seen on numerous occasions performing obvious spellwork even when the Bus is absent. For example, here is Ms. Frizzle appearing out of nowhere in a way that looks very similar to the wizarding world's Apparating ability.

Here she is, gliding to safety after jumping out of a third-storey window to rescue a fallen student. She might not know what qualifies as child endangerment, but it looks like she knows how to conjure an Arresto Momentum spell.

Here’s The Frizz riding a tidal wave that she conjured out of nowhere using a powerful Aguamenti charm, because impressing a group of 8-year-olds is important to her. That water, in case you were wondering, disappeared immediately after her dramatic entrance was made.

You don’t have to look too hard to find connections between both magical worlds. I personally looked into it way too hard, but that’s so the rest of you can just sort of skim through and spot the similarities. Now that you’ve seen them it’s a pretty easy theory to subscribe to.

[onestowatch]

The 15 Best Albums of 2019 (So Far)

We are just over halfway through 2019, and the amount of amazing music that we have been blessed with thus far is nearly enough to help us forget about everything less than amazing going on in the world around us...nearly. So, with an ever-growing list of albums, mini-albums, projects, mixtapes, and the like filling up our Spotify queue, we wanted to take a moment to recognize some of the best projects that have graced our eardrums this year. In no particular order, these are 15 of the best albums of 2019 (so far).

Billie Eilish – WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?

Favorite track: “bury a friend”

2019 was undoubtedly Billie Eilish’s breakout year. From delivering a momentous Coachella debut to delivering one of the most anticipated albums of the decade, Eilish did not just leave her mark, she took a blazing hot iron rod and engraved her name. WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? arrived as a thrilling, hypnotic, and brilliantly ominous vision from one of pop’s new stars. Doing more than simply delivering on all the hype that had come to encompass the pop star in the matter of less than year, Eilish broke free of any expectations to present an album that took the world by storm.

Aries – Welcome Home

Favorite track: “BAD NEWS”

Aries is arguably one of the most underrated figures in the music scene today. Originally rising to cult-like fame with a series of YouTube videos that spanned the range from production deconstruction videos to re-imagining Migos as a Mariachi band, the producer and artist’s debut mini album WELCOME HOME proved him to be so much more than just an enigmatic viral force. With an infectious blend of emo, hip-hop, and alternative rock aesthetics, Aries brought to a life a world brimming with soaring highs and crushing lows.

Lizzo – CUZ I LOVE YOU

Favorite track: “Juice”

Self-love feels like Lizzo sounds. Combining her upbringing in Houston rap, gospel soul, and classical flute (yes, the queen kills it on the flute), Lizzo’s major label debut Cuz I Love You cemented her place in the modern hip-hop vernacular. Abounding with humor, charisma, and an overflowing wealth of sexual and body positivity, the 14-track offering is a deft illustration of the power of simply loving yourself and singing your praises delivered in a remarkable package of hip-hop and R&B.

Kevin Abstract – ARIZONA BABY

Favorite track: “Peach” (feat. bearface, JOBA, Dominic Fike)

Few artists can maintain the level of visceral excitement that BROCKHAMPTON leader Kevin Abstract keeps up throughout ARIZONA BABY’s 11-track run. Produced by Jack Antonoff and featuring Ryan Beatty, Dominic Fike, and fellow BROCKHAMPTON members JOBA and bearface, the solo project cemented Abstract as an undeniable hip-hop auteur.  With the way Abstract waxes poetry on his past demons, dreams of rap stardom in the context of first seeing Tyler, the Creator live, and the lived gay experience, ARIZONA BABY is essential listening for 2019 and beyond.

Tyler, the Creator – IGOR

Favorite track: “EARFQUAKE” (feat. Playboi Carti, Charlie Wilson, Jessy Wilson)

Any “best albums of 2019” compilation list that does not feature Tyler, the Creator’s IGOR is sorely missing the mark. Tyler, the Creator has long existed as one of rap’s most polarizing figures, but, with the release of Flower Boy in 2017, he released what felt like a landmark album… and then came IGOR. With bold experimental production, a host of spectacular features, and a sound quite unlike anything else out there at the moment, this is Tyler, the Creator’s magnum opus. Well, at least until he drops his next album.  

Lewis Capaldi – DIVINELY UNINSPIRED TO A HELLISH EXTENT

Favorite track: “Grace”

In the span of less than two years, Lewis Capaldi has witnessed a meteoric rise to fame. The Scottish singer-songwriter went from amazing crowds in pubs in his native Whitburn to selling out arenas across the world, all thanks to the power of his voice and moving songwriting. It is an innate gift that Scottish singer channels in his long-awaited album DIVINELY UNINSPIRED TO A HELLISH EXTENT, which arrives as a heart-rending portrait of an artist on the rise to worldwide stardom. Plus, it doesn’t hurt he’s a hilarious guy with a stellar Tinder bio to boot.

slowthai – Nothing Great About Britain

Favorite track: “Gorgeous” 

Nothing Great About Britain is an obvious social commentary on a post-Brexit Britain, but it is more than just a reaction to a singular political event. The debut album from critically-acclaimed UK rapper slowthai, Nothing Great About Britain is an unflinching glimpse into everything from his upbringing in the council estates of North Hampton to a country increasingly mired in toxic nationality. Sonically, slowthai’s debut is as complex as the social and political issue the UK rapper deftly tackles.

Stella Donnelly – Beware of the Dogs

Favorite track: “Old Man”

A proudly self-proclaimed shit-stirrer, it comes as no surprise that Stella Donnelly first introduced her debut album with a lead single that doubled as a biting single of a generation of men whose time is up. The aforementioned single “Old Man” is not the only moment on Beware of the Dogs that the Australian singer-songwriter leverages her knack for infusing cutting socio-political commentary into an infectious brand of jangly indie rock. From “Boys Will Be Boys” to the titular track “Beware of the Dogs,” Donnelly’s debut carries with it a salient message told through stirring song.

Maggie Rogers – Heard It In a Past Life

Favorite track: “Give a Little” 

Maggie Rogers’ musical résumé holds two impressive distinctions. She is one of the few musicians to make Pharrell Williams visibly shed tears, and she released an album earlier this year that you absolutely need to be listening to. Heard It In A Past Life, the lauded debut album from Rogers, combined folk, dance, pop and R&B to unprecedented effect and established her as different sort of star. With a musical vision that stays wholly true to herself, while still finding the space to explore newfound territory, this is an album you need in your life.

Carly Rae Jepsen – Dedicated

Favorite track: “Too Much”

There are no two ways about it; Carly Rae Jepsen is a pop icon. More than just a one-hit wonder (with that being said, “Call Me Maybe” has most definitely stood the test of time), the long-awaited follow-up to Emotion arrived this year to widespread acclaim. Dedicated channels all the joy pop and disco has brought with them over the years to present a collection of songs that relishes in the emotional rush of being both lovesick and heartbroken. This is pop done right.

Flume – Hi This Is Flume (Mixtape)

Favorite track: “How To Build A Relationship” (feat. JPEGMAFIA)

After what felt like an eon of radio silence, electronic auteur Flume returned in brilliant and unconventional fashion. Returning not with an album but a mixtape, Hi This Is Flume saw the Australian producer and artist shying away from the pop-minded inclinations of Skin to deliver a wildly experimental electronic spectacle. Enlisting some of music’s most avant-garde figures, from slowthai, SOPHIE, to JPEGMAFIA, Hi This Is Flume is a glimpse into an artist who forever changed the landscape of electronic music.

Wallows – Nothing Happens

Favorite track: “Are You Bored Yet?” (feat. Clairo)

In many ways, Wallows’ debut album has been a decade in the making. Operating as a band since they were eleven, Braeden Lemasters, Dylan Minnette, and Cole Preston first whisked up a palpable fervor for their full-length project in 2017 with the release of their debut single “Pleaser.” Wallows channeled the excitement surrounding any hint of their highly-anticipated debut album into a collection of exhilarating, emotional-driven indie rock and anti pop perfection. Nothing Happens is a sonic embodiment of a shared childhood dream placed alongside the realities of growing up.    

Steve Lacy – Apollo XXI

Favorite Track: “Like me” (feat. DAISY)

Steve Lacy, who you may know as the bassist, guitarist, and producer for The Internet, invokes the mystical air of a decades-long R&B, funk, and soul tradition in his debut album Apollo XXI. There is a novel yet nostalgic quality to the whole affair, as if you were to suddenly awake in the ‘70s with the sun peeking through your blinds on a warm summer day. The timeless nature of Lacy’s debut makes it feel like that this is not only one of 2019’s best album, but perhaps one of this generation’s best.

Nilüfer Yanya – Miss Universe

Favorite Track: “In Your Head”

Black Mirror and breathtaking indie rock build the crux for Nilüfer Yanya’s spellbinding debut album Miss Universe. The West London native’s portrait of reality blurs the lines between dystopic technological vision and haunting picture of reality itself through a collection of songs that nears the sacred, terrifying space of a fully-realized concept album. Whether you take it as a concept album or not, there is a resounding sense of urgency to be found in the exhilarating body of work Yanya has put together.

Ariana Grande – thank u, next

Favorite Track: “thank u, next”

From Arichella to surprise dropping quite possibly the breakup track that will define a generation, 2019 belonged to Ariana Grande. thank u, next illustrated Grande’s consistently jaw-dropping range, her gift for transforming sweet nothings to lovelorn anthems, and most of all, the promise of a lasting pop star. The veritable pop star certainly has come a long way from her humble beginnings as a child star.

[calesleg]

Detroit

Last week, I was lucky enough to visit Detroit. I road-tripped my way down to perform in the Detroit Improv Festival, so I knew I'd have an exhilarating time but I left with more than expected. Admittedly, upon arrival I was nervous. “You're staying in Detroit proper,” broached a friend who'd heard where I was housing. His words echoed our fear-peddling media, stirring reminders of our political temperatures and peaking my habitual flow as a caffeinated squirrel. Detroit didn't look like anything I've known. It'd been years since I'd visited our southern neighbours anywhere outside of NY and LA. I felt navigationally clueless. If Maslow had asked me to identify my level of fear, I'd've barfed on his whole hierarchy. Active buildings were sparse and nearly as downtrodden as the half-burnt buildings beside them, making it hard to distinguish any difference, like a desert of rotten teeth that could fool even the dentist on the hunt for the tooth worth the root canal. What little of the city that did offer a semblance of proclaimed ownership appeared not to be calculated into westernized value — an ideology I've become used to thanks to Toronto's high turnover of resto-stops an hustler-hubs — and the Ikea-smothered belly of my Airbnb aired as much of a disguise as would a pair of Groucho glasses on a ghost — ill fitted. The paucity of city bustle hit me with unease but digging deeper serves better than believing in valid first impressions. So I gave myself a second reason to be in the city: I'd ask as many locals as possible what they liked about Detroit. “Oh, you're asking the wrong guy for that,” said the uber driver so bona fide he compelled me to start thumbing quotes onto my iPhone in his back seat. Let's call him Tom. Tom suggested I see the murals in the market before quickly steering the conversation back toward his dislikes about his native city. “It's shit now. I loved it when the recession was on. There was no one in the city but artists and musicians and the weed growers, you know?” I asked Tom when  he last remembered it being that way. “Oh, 2009, 2010. 'Round 2012, 2013's when it changed.” Bars were his mental markers for the city's downturn. “The first thing to come in is bars. Bars is the first thing to get a mother fucker downtown,” he said with a dryness that exposed one man's attempt at economic resurgence as another man's despondency to see local spirits replaced. The same resurrectional attempt was evident in the top three floors of my Airbnb, a sizeable house aside a driveway slabbed with broken concrete. Inside, the fresh coats of paint and the Huck Finn paperbacks died out before finding their way into the dark, dank basement, contrasting starkly the structure's old and its new. Tom zeroed in on the trend, alluding to the residential disturbance that has wedged over a million people out of the city since the 1950's. “Suburban cats with money would kick 'em out of their homes and rent [the houses] out.” Before he became an uber driver, he says, his dwellings were on the fourth floor of a decrepit building with no running water; “talk about Uncle Sam fuckin' bleedin' you dry.” Within our ten minute roll over to the after-party that would have me dancing with comedians 'til the morning's tiny hours, Tom made it clear that the recession hit his city from all angles. “[The government's] squeezin' 'em for healthcare. Even a tube of toothpaste is six bucks. I don't think that's capitalism. I'm all for some healthy capitalism. I just think that's price jacking.” It's extortion. “I'm part Mohawk,” he continues, adding first-hand recounts of the city's old and new. “[Government officials] can shoot ya here and nothin' will happen 'cause it's all federal property,” he utters with a sarcasm that sounds like it's bled through the same words enough to now ring dry. “It's funny how crystal meth still finds its way onto the reserve, you know — it's not us brining it there.” Every snippet he offers makes me more sure our ride's too short and even more sure I'd be left with more questions than answers. When I tell him where I'm from, Tom says he's always been envious of Canadians, adding, “but I really do believe that shit will come to a heed in America.” And I think he's well on his way to being right. From the gut griping landscape of a ruptured economy, to the vibrant museums that unify the chaotic bricolage of human experience, to the characters driving tales wrapped in aversion and pitted with hope, I was offered a glimpse of a resilient city — a place full of people who know things you don't, nodding you along your travels in a way that suggests each adventure leads back towards your own core; miles of spirits who'll open their doors, turn on the music, and dance with you 'til dawn. While it was all too brief, I left with a new piece of heart only someone who's visited Detroit proper could come to recognize, and I wouldn't have been able to had I not left my fear at the threshold. Clutching to fear invites assumption and always involves risk of missing out on beauty. It's dangerous to fear the unknown and it's funny how you find yourself on the other side. I'm lucky to have traveled those miles. I won't pretend my tired bod isn't thankful to be climbing back into the mountain of duvets atop my Canadian queen mattress, thumbing through my New York Times' Weekend Briefing, but I'm more thankful to know there will forever exist another chance to transcend this world of madness and stumble our way into the beauty of our cities' unknown, if we'd only allow ourselves to drive down those roads and peer up at those murals from artists who've come before.