#spend some time impersonating a spirit

[chiptrillino]

1. Wamini. Get it? Wani. Mini. Wamini

2. Jee sometimes wakes up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night — lord captain is coming

3. Many pirates attacking random small ships bc easy prey get a very nasty surprise when they're sunk by the fucking fire lord of the fire nation from a boat smaller than theirs

4. Rumors spread and the fire nation advisors are going bald from stress, meanwhile ppl at sea are like naaaah. No way. Is it. No. It's a myth there's no way

(if Yue were to be alive and friends with zuko here, he'd make a stop at the north to pick her up. Get in loser we're going to sink ships or something) (yue would be great at sea)

hahah

i agree to all of this. nobody would belive that the fire lord is at sea hunting down pirates for stress relife.

one thing i am against with, why keeping yue mortal when she could cause so much trouble as the moon? yeha yeha rules and duties and balance. but the her imortal eternity barley started and la is just swiming in circles and the waves are waving, and the moon is gaining and faiding.

sure, yue shouldn't mingle with mortals affairs but she gets the need to let of steam. so who is gona complain every new moon she just like hangs out on the wamini and lures pirates to this ship?

aang: yue... seriously? yue sitting next to zuko braiding each others hair: it was fun you should join next time!!!

[ckneal]

So, when watching the Miraculous Ladybug season 5 finale, I assumed that the woman seen sunning herself next to Nathalie in the ending sequence was Emilie, and still think that was the case. This is mainly because I know that animators will often associate characters with specific color schemes so that they could use those colors as a shorthand for identifying characters in situations like this. Emilie and Amelie have matching suits, but the colors of Emilie’s are pink and black, just like the bathing suit that the woman next to Nathalie wears, whereas Amelie’s suit is black and gray.

Although, in the spirit of fairness, it is worth mentioning that there have been times when the gray parts of Amelie’s suit have appeared pink due to the lighting of the scene. And, realistically, there are plenty of reasons for Amelie to be there. Felix is there, and while we have seen him use his powers to get to France alone as Argos, he usually travels as a civilian in his mother’s company. And depending on what arrangements Gabriel made for Adrien’s care, Amelie might be his new legal guardian. What’s to say she didn’t just borrow one of her sister’s swimsuits for the party when she found the horde of old clothes Gabe probably had stashed away in a closet somewhere?

It's all fair game, and we’ll only really know for sure when season 6 arrives.

But that said. While I do believe that the woman next to Nathalie is Emilie, I have to admit that there would be so much more humor to mine from her being Amelie.

After all, Adrien has never had to deal with an actual caring parent while trying to be Chat Noir. Amelie appears to be an actual loving mother. She and Felix have such an open and supportive relationship with one another, that he seemingly made no attempts to hide his super identity from her. She’s even participated in his plans, going off the episode where she charged into the Diamond Ball and made a scene. There’s no reason to think that she would have a problem with Felix continuing to be Argos. She knows how capable her son is. And ignoring all the questions surrounding why she would suddenly upend her life in England and move to Paris to raise Adrien around all the friends he made during his one year of public school, imagine how annoying this could get for Adrien. Felix is just out as a superhero in their household. Amelie jokingly asks Felix to introducer her to all of his superhero friends over dinner. Meanwhile, Adrien's still keeping a secret identity, and dodging questions about how he spends his time.

Paris is under attack, and Amelie is waving her son off to join Ladybug and her team, while Adrien is trying to find some way to slip away before she activates the mansion’s defense system that we saw in season 2, only to find himself cornered by Amelie, wanting to know how he’s handling the news that someone has taken up the Hawkmoth mantle after Gabriel gave his life helping Ladybug defeat him. Adrien might even start trying to smooth down his hair and impersonate Felix in order to sneak out unnoticed, only to realize he’d drastically underestimated how in sync his aunt and cousin are when Amelie looks at him and says “What’s the codeword?”

Adrien, not wanting to risk any trace of surprise or frustration seeping into his voice and giving him away, just raises an eyebrow, while Amelie, who had been worried sick after Adrien disappeared during the last city-wide emergency, crosses her arms.

“The codeword that we decided on this morning to keep Adrien from pretending to be you to go out and put himself in danger, sweetie. What is it?”

[smilesstardust]

“It’s crooked.” Emmett frowned from the couch.

“Okay, that’s like the fourth time you’ve said that.” Travis turned around. “If you think I’ve done such a bad job of it, you hang the damn mirror.”

Vic let out a loud, barking laugh from where she was assembling the dining chairs. “Dude, he literally can’t.” She called over.

“He makes tea!” Travis shouted back, completely ignoring the ghost on the couch.

Emmett cleared his throat. “He is right here and he finds it easier to move some things than others.”

“And yet you can draw.” Travis muttered, rolling his eyes and turning back to face the mirror. He paused for a moment and adjusted it, tilting it to the left.

“Okay, you just made that way worse.” Emmett disappeared from the couch, only to reappear right beside him a split second later. “You need to move this side down at least two inches.”

Travis obliged, following directions as Emmett called them out.

“Oh hey, looks good.” Vic walked through the living room as they finished, carrying an armful of trash to the designated pile by the front door. “You guys think I’ve got time for a shower before heading down to the woods?”

“Yes, but why?” Travis asked as she sorted the trash into what could and couldn’t be recycled. “You’re just going to change and then spend all night rolling in the dirt.”

She paused for a moment. “Fair point. In that case I’m going to the store and buying a ton of raw meat. Do we still have the cat cage for me to stuff it in?” She said standing up.

“Nope, you destroyed it last full moon.” Travis told her, turning his head to follow her as she walked back to the dining room. “Do you want me to go and get a new one?”

“Please, the woman at the pet store keeps giving me weird looks.” She stuck her head back out of the kitchen a moment later. “Are you good for feeds?”

“Considering you had a slow day yesterday, he’s going to need another couple of blood bags. Or he’ll be unbearable.” Emmett answered for him. “I should be able to steal some from the hospital now you’ve shown me where they are. It’s not like I’m going to be seen on security cameras.”

“Great.” Vic said, carrying another armful of stuff to the pile. “Sounds like we’ve got a plan.”

“Do you want me to check on Hot Doctor while I’m there? See if he flirts with the other paramedics when you’re not around?” He teased, putting on a bad impersonation. “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m tall and blonde and perfect and I only like girls who act uninterested then tell me they can’t have a relationship because they’re sick after I fix their dislocated shoulder.” Travis tried and failed to contain his laughter as she shot them both a glare.

It was a poor imitation of the man Vic had been on a handful of dates with, but she let it slide because the boys didn’t mean anything by it. Neither of her roommates really knew him, as he’d only been to the house twice and both times she had made it very clear that there were to be no supernatural gate crashers, especially not the sort he couldn’t see. He’d met Travis a little at the hospital and Emmett had definitely spied on him a few times, but they didn’t really know much about him.

“I still can’t believe he bought that lie.” Travis chuckled as he put the hammer and unused spirit level away and closed the toolbox with a loud click. “He’s a doctor, and he just believed you when you said you had a non specific medical condition that caused you to black out every full moon?”

“I didn’t phrase it like that.” She groaned loudly. “I might’ve been less specific about the frequency and implied it was due to the trauma of being attacked a few years back? I think he thinks it’s some weird kind of PTSD.”

“He’s going to realise your ‘episodes’ line up with the full moon eventually.”

“Uh, no, he isn’t, because moon cycles are not something most non supernaturally inclined people pay attention to. And I highly doubt he could tell the difference between the full moon and the night before or after.” She stopped in between where the two of them were stood looking at the mirror it had taken all afternoon to put up, resting her elbow on Travis’ shoulder and looking at the reflection.

“Damn.” She said after a moment. “We look good.”

Both of the boys tried to brush off the compliment, clearly flattered, before they realised that neither of them could actually be seen in the mirror.

They both started talking over each other, getting progressively louder as she got further away, the noise of their complaining about what a bad joke and how unfair it had been as a comment echoing after her as she ran up the stairs to get changed.

- Being human!AU

[marabarl-and-marlbara]

I hope you're having a good day! And if not I hope you find comfort

hey there anonymous; good morning, you sent this to me last night when i was well in bed (sun had barely even set, even; time change makes sleeping at 8 feel even earlier than usual);

mostly ignoring this to blog a bit about the usual thing i always whine-about (maybe it:ll help someone 'relate' or feel 'less alone' but lord knows its just me spinning wheels cause i like writing): the flattening of my mood: like every-thing had just become this one singular wide featureless plain with all site in sight being just the same stretch without pit and without hill: the sort-of landscape that'd provoke NO PASSION and NO THOUGHT equally and just-so also smooth away any great pain and any great joy: which is exactly just the comfort i am tired of, as it:s like some crawling thing that keeps taking more and more, example: food now all tastes the same, too, taken under by that same wasteland plain barren; although i:d describe my mood as being fairly 'up' (there are still things i:d been getting keen about: writing isekai story, the new ABA in strive looks really cool, i have religious programming to write, there is new media to read and watch) it never seems to amount more than a small 'pop' that ends-up nearly always more disappointing than fulfilling or centering; it is like the spirit has begun evaporating out of me through these little fissures in the Make of my material that had let that esprit DRY, KILN, BAKE, ASH out and leave the innerworks of me (MARA!) as little more closer and closer to being some fine spotless beetle of mechanics, and operations, clicking with spring and circuit forward and forward to next task: cook, eat, clean, exercise; count in fours always; pray in mornings, too; it is the experience of life not as a person but as the mechanical, where life ceases to be felt as life and yet as mere experience of time (both four letter words, as it were; vision poor enough they:d be the same grey smudge on the screen; vision poor enough they:d be the same dead bug on windshield before the bugs themselves became rare); my mood has been up and i still have these black thoughts flowing out from Dieth and Daniela and centered around how inescapable and infinite Wasteland seems: the self is extricated out and becomes a paperdoll where (impersonal) you imagine it undergoing a hanging or a suffocating of all air, and imagine the 'ecstasy' of whether the viewer can undergo the felt feelings of the paperdoll as it goes to 100% material; the act of moving limbs to go through with the task, to resolve, to collect the instruments, to imagine the Afters (the people who knew), to imagine all the things unsaid and things yet wanted to do and done undone and the willingness to let self be robbed of 'fate' (?) where death claims its 'natural' (?) due;

very-much i:d just like to write and focus and be left fulfilled, but it:s all fairly boring; i:d like to play the new ABA and grind her in practice mode (i SHAN'T be spending money on games though) and just instead imagine how anxious sitting in a practice mode hitting buttons feels and can:t imagine undergoing that more than eight minutes at most (this is much how writing is; much how drawing is); there:s this alien quality being poured in-to me, may-be byproduct of adhering to Etiquette like the years of slowly embodying an ill philosophy has led me further ill and alien: it becomes harder and harder to find any reason to talk to another, to nurture friendships, to say Hey, to want to do anything with others as it all just becomes more stretch on the barrenland and buttons to hit and mechanical beetle limbs to undulate, undulate, driven just by fluid sacs or what-ever dumb organ drives beetles (for me it:s my yap organ).

all of this is to say: i wish i could be playing new ABA cause i like her design a lot but can:t imagine playing a fighting game ever being fun without having a friend to do it with, and nothing sounds more boring to me at the same time, but i:m tired of being bored, too. i want to be at a joyous tone 4! a joyous tone 4! so engender a joyous tone 4 in your own life, anonymous, cause if you will it surely it:ll happen.

[litcityblues]

The Absolutely Charming 'Nimona'

I had no idea what to expect when we sat down to watch this movie. The kids wanted a movie night, so we set up the screen and the projector in the living room and, due to prior experience and not wanting to spend thirty minutes arguing with them about what to watch, the Missus and I reviewed our options and after watching a preview of Nimona decided to give it a go.

And guess what? It was absolutely charming. Just a ridiculous delight and I enjoyed every minute of it.

A thousand years before the movie begins, the legendary heroine Gloreth vanquished a 'Great Black Monster' and enclosed the Kingdom with a high wall to protect it from monsters, founding The Institute for Elite Knights to develop a fighting force to protect the citizens of the kingdom from future danger. In the future, when the movie begins, Queen Valerin (Lorraine Toussaint) is trying to change some traditions so that 'anyone can be a hero' and the first commoner to go through the Institute, Ballister Boldheart (Riz Ahmed) is set to become a Knight and fulfill her vision.

During the ceremony however, a laser shot from Ballister's sword kills Valerin and in the shock of the moment, his boyfriend, Ambrosious (Eugene Lee Yang) Goldenloin (that last name, ha!) disarms Ballister, taking his right arm in the process. Ballister escapes and becomes a fugitive, crafting himself a replacement arm and getting visited for the first time by Nimona. Nimona (Chloe Grace Moretz) is a teenage outcast who has been persecuted for her shapeshifting abilities-- she declares herself to be Ballister's sidekick, sensing a 'villainous spirit' in him, but Ballister is more interested in clearing his name and reluctantly accepts her help.

The duo starts by kidnapping DIego (Julio Torres), the squire who gave Ballister the sword-- the night of the ceremony, Ballister kind of does a double take on his sword, maybe noticing that something isn't quite right, but thinks nothing of it because, why would you? Diego gave him the sword, so he wants to go to the source to see what was up with that: turns out, Diego has video evidence that it was the Director of the Institute (Frances Conroy) who switched the swords because she didn't want Ballister-- a commoner-- becoming a Knight because she felt it would lead to the Kingdom's downfall. The evidence of the switch is destroyed, but Nimona disguises herself as Ambrosius and they manage to get another confession, this time records.

The Director doubles down though, alerting the populace to the presence of a shape-shifting monster who is impersonating her and convincing Ambrosious that Nimona is the Great Black Monster that Gloreth defeated a thousand years before. When Ballister begins to wonder about that, Nimona flees into the woods. We see Nimona's past and her friendship with Gloreth- who initially accepts her, but when she is outed, Gloreth's parents believe she is a monster and Gloreth becomes hostile. Remembering all this, Nimona transforms into the Great Black Monster, deciding to enter the city and commit suicide by impaling herself on the sword of Gloreth's statue.

Ballister stops her before she can do that and apologizes- Nimona changes back to human form and the two embrace and the watching citizens of the Kingdom are moved by this, but the Director is not. She directs the laser cannon to be turned onto the city to destroy them, Ambrosius protests, knowing it will kill everyone, but the Director then turns on him. Nimona saves the Kingdom, transforming into a red-phoenix-like form and flying into the cannon, appearing to sacrifice herself to save the Kingdom and killing the Director in the process. The explosion takes out part of the wall, which reveals a beautiful, mountainous valley beyond it.

Sometime later, Ballister's name has been cleared, his relationship with Ambrosius mended and the wall now has a passageway where citizens can come and go as they wish. Nimona and Ballister are honored as heroes and when he visits his old hideout, he hears Nimona's voice, indicating that she may have survived after all.

Overall: Again, this was absolutely charming. I also love movies that fuse fantasy and science fiction so seamlessly (Bright was much maligned by critics, but I enjoyed the heck out of it) and I loved the setting of this. Futuristic Knights on speeders with laser guns and swords and armor? Yes, please! More please! The story worked: I liked that Nimona's punk sensibility is looking for a villainous sidekick, but she doesn't question Ballister's plans-- she tags along and causes chaos, but helps him.

The internet being what it is, I'm sure someone, somewhere had a meltdown over the relationship between Ballister and Ambrosius Goldenloin- and I'm assuming that last name was deliberate and an elegant middle finger to all the haters. 'We can't have movies about shape-shifting monsters and futuristic knights because of woke' is a tiresome argument to make, but I'm sure someone has. Personally, I think it was perfectly done. Do I like representation that beats me over the head as a viewer? No. Do I like representation that has to go 'SEE, LOOK, WE GOT ONE OF EVERY ETHNICITY HERE' over and over again? No. I want representation, but I love subtle. There's no big deal. No big show. Ballister and Ambrosius are in a relationship, we see affection between them and that's about it. The movie doesn't linger on it, and doesn't make a big deal of it. It just is. And that to me, reflects the real world quite nicely. Some people in this day and age are dudes who are in relationships with other dudes and that's fine.

The animation is also gorgeous as well. I may be dating myself here, but it reminded me a lot of Treasure Planet and that era of Disney-- I know this got picked up by Netflix, but you have to think that Disney might be kicking themselves a bit over letting this one slip through their fingers because this screams Disney to me. My Grade: **** out of ****

[devildevotee]

Hello, thank you for sharing your experiences with demonaltry (spelling???) here. It's helped me a lot in figuring out what to do.

I've had an interest in reaching out for some time now, but I'm not sure if I'm ready for it yet. I feel like if I don't force myself to do it, that I'll never actually dive in though. Due to this, I was curious if you have any advice on how to start with either Lucifer and Baphomet? I've felt a pull towards them both for a while, but the only experience I have with any spirits or entities is through deities. While I've done research, I don't actually know how to reach out to demons. Do I need to protect myself in any way? Do I need to do anything specific? Should I set up an entire altar first or wait to hear if the demon actually wants to be around me or not? Do spirits impersonate demons? I had someone tell me that Baphomet was a "trickster spirit" for the entire year that they had been working with them. It made me much more hesitant to reach out at all because I've never encountered a trickster spirit before.

i'll split up your questions in my response if that's okay nonnie! just a warning though, my opinion is formed from experience and there's no guarantee it'll be the same for you. this is just what i've had the most success with!

I was curious if you have any advice on how to start with either Lucifer and Baphomet?

genuinely, i approached demons like i did any deity. i called out to them, prayed to them, talked to them, and gave them offerings and devotional acts in exchange for their company and blessings. it doesn't have to be anything complex, nothing is absolutely required - don't feel like you have do do anything. maybe spend some time figuring out what feels right for you - again, if you're most comfortable interacting with deities, i've never had a demon say their treatment has to be particularly different from that.

Do I need to protect myself in any way?

demons can be malevolent or benevolent forces depending on who you ask. i've never had to do anything more complex than asking lucifer to help keep me safe from anyone who wishes to do me harm, be it a spirit or a person. i don't think it's an insult to them to have a form of protection if you think that will help you relax around them, but like, communicate with them why you feel it's necessary. transparent communication is never a bad thing.

Do I need to do anything specific?

no. there's no set rules, just do what works best for you.

Should I set up an entire altar first or wait to hear if the demon actually wants to be around me or not?

demons don't require altars unless that's something you want to present to them as an offering/devotional act. i personally would wait until you have started any sort of relationship with the demon in question, but again, if you want to do it - i don't think they'll complain lol.

Do spirits impersonate demons?

i've seen it happen, but it's much less common than what people make it seem like. if you're suspecting you've gotten in touch with a trickster, don't be afraid to call on the demon they're impersonating. the real, actual demon will kick their ass to the sun and back.

as for baphomet, it depends on who you ask. some people say baphomet isn't an actual demon, some people do. it's ultimately just an opinion someone has and it's up to you on whether you take that on board or not. one thing i'd always encourage is see for yourself on whether you believe it or not - f/ck around and find out.

hope these answers help, nonnie!

[davros42]

Rewatching Classic Doctor Who, some episodes I haven't seen in years, some of the animated reconstructions I haven't seen at all.

The Sensorites AKA Mind Control AKA Serial G

I enjoy this one a lot. It is kind of weird and occasionally cheap (which makes it prototypical Doctor Who, let's be honest) but the script from Peter R. Newman (his only contribution to the canon) puts in a lot of work, trying to build out the Sensorite psychology/sociology.. or at least as much as you can in about two and a half hours.

It makes for a surprisingly dense story, crammed with world building, including the first description of what would eventually be identified as Gallifrey.

The TARDIS lands on a ship crewed by dead people. Ok, not dead, just sleeping but also in cardiac arrest. But warm. But dead. Until they aren't. Look, it's a hook, ok? Just don't overthink it. It is revealed this is Earth's future (the first story to explicitly take place in the future, relative to 1964 at least) so the Doctor tries to leave before Ian and Barbara hear some spoilers. But the TARDIS has been sabotaged to prevent them from making this a one episode long storyline.

The Sensorites have been psychically knocking out the ship's crew to keep them from escaping and telling Earth about the Sense-Sphere's rich molybdenum deposits. Molybdenum (atomic number 42) is used to alloy steel, as a fertilizer, as a catalyst, as a lubricant, and to make orange pigment. So, of course, Earth wants to do a colonialism. Or at least, that is Earth's reputation to the Sensorites.

Sorry, the Earthlings are the bad guys in this one.

Barbara and Susan meet a crazy man. Instead of just going to sleep, the Sensorites' psychic attacks have made him crazy. They get locked in a room, hijinks ensue. A Sensorite plays peeping tom (above). Everyone except Barbara goes down to the Sense-Sphere because Jacqueline Hill needs a break after carrying the show for this long. The Sensorites are having a plague and enlist the Doctor to help. Just in time as Ian catches the plague. Which turns out to be Earth survivors poisoning the water supply to kill the Sensorites who they believe they are at war with. The Doctor actually chooses to remain and help for once: some character growth! This growth is immediately reverted at the end of the episode when after some mild criticism about his piloting ability, The Doctor declares he's dumping Ian and Barbara wherever they land next. A man who never would... get his companions home safely.

There's also a strong theme of prejudice. The Sensorites seem extremely aggressive when we first meet them, through descriptions from the Earth ship's crew but in reality are as varied in attitude as humans. The City Administrator hates humans (which.. they're poisoning the Sensorites and are probably going to do a colonialism, so.. fair) and exploits the old "they all look alike to me" to kill the Second Elder, steal his clothes, and impersonate him to the TARDIS crew. The Sensorites have terrible vision so they can only tell each other apart by their clothes at range. The Sensorites mistake Susan for a "human" because, again, they all look alike to them, so she has to set them straight: she's not from Earth. Both sides of the story spend a fair amount of time misunderstanding and miscommunicating before trust can be secured. The real antagonist of the story is prejudice. Series 1 and we're woke as Hell, baby. Get used to it.

Like I said, there's a lot going on here. It's a lot of fun: political machinations, back and forths, traumatized survivors, attempted colonial genocide. The Sensorites are the best fleshed out alien race we've seen so far. It's a shame that Peter R. Newman suffered from crippling writer's block after this, his last work, he has a real talent for world building. "It all started out as a mild curiosity in the junkyard and now it's turned out to be quite a great spirit of adventure." is one of the all time great Doctor Who lines. And of course his brief description of Susan's "home planet" echoes down through the ages as the first mention of Gallifrey, put some respect on the gentleman's name. Daphne Dare and Jill Summers go to town on the Sensorites' costuming, but sadly it ends up looking kind of cheap. Digital restoration giving the story a visual clarity that would have been hard to attain on original broadcast probably not helping here. I think the masks have a certain charm though, full marks for effort at least. The set design is quite good too, even if it starts to become clear that there really is just one, tiny, aqueduct set.

Next up: Reign of Terror, the end of Series 1. Will the Doctor make good on his promise to dump Ian and Barbara? (no, he won't *insert "London 1965!" meme here*)

[xgoldxnhour]

vegas. both of our characters wake up married after a drunk night in vegas. (Mafia verse)

What happens in Vegas, leads to intoxicated matrimony.

A disco ball, confetti and an Elvis impersonator—what started out as an elegant night on the town after some business became something to celebrate. After multiple drinks and the insane music near intolerable, the two instead went out on the town, hand in hand. Blue and Birdie, inseparable since day one. It all started as business as usual, until she was spending the night more than coming home. His presence became more intoxicating than the indulgence they shared each night. Long talks, sultry kisses, tangled sheets. An easy existence to fall into behind closed doors, exclusive, for their eyes only. Business as usual again.

Spirits were high, as was the alcohol intake. The city was alive and they felt it too. The city of exuberance and pleasure—what could go wrong? Perhaps it started as a joke, though unsure who exactly started it. Something about Vegas being the eloping capital of the world—alongside its number of divorces. “So, what? Marry today, divorce tomorrow. Marrying you for a day beats…decades with anyone else.” A joke. The two were never quite good at just jokes. The next thing they know they’re hurrying to the chapel, practically making out in the lobby. A business suit and a cocktail dress, there was nothing more spectacular than this.

The vows were written for them, something printed off the internet but it felt like as real if they wrote it themselves. God, she could get lost in those eyes forever. The officiant barely got to the end of “By the power invested in me—“ until Rick had already dipped her over, sealing it all with a kiss. Marriage. No one back home would fucking believe it.

The couple burst through the doors in cheers, El on his back, his hands holding at her legs until they made it back to the car. “Can you believe it, Blue? We’re fucking married.” She murmurs against his lips, words dripping into soft moans, making sure the window between the driver’s side and the back were closed. Sharing another bottle of champagne to celebrate, they retract back his hotel room, crossing the boundary with Rick carrying her bridal style. For the first time that night, Rick makes love to his wife.

Sheets and clothes litter the floor, feathers strewn about. An absolute mess of things but nothing out of the ordinary for these two. The sun beams through the curtains as the circadian rhythm ends and somehow stirs herself awake. El stretches, eyes squinting as a raging war erupts from her head. Something fierce and nauseating. Fuck, how much did they drink?

“Mmm. Rick?” She mutters, reaching over until her fingertips reach his skin, as though molded by her hand. That’s when she sees it. A gold band wrapped around her ring finger and the most elegant gem she’s ever seen. It nearly frightens her, pulling back—as if she wasn’t looking at her hand. “Rick—Blue. Wake up.” El stirs her husband awake and when he finally turns his head with that familiar dreamy gaze she shows her hand and the ring. God, it was beautiful. “I don’t quite remember bonding ourselves to holy matrimony.” One night in Vegas and they fucking elope, when did they become a walking cliche.

[lunarmote]

Revisiting Enter the Void (2009), why I like this film so much

You can read my first review here.

Enter the Void (2009) is the most beautiful and terrifying film I’ve ever seen.

This movie is about a young American drug dealer in Tokyo (Oscar) who gets shot by the police during a deal gone wrong. His soul leaves his body to experience the lives of his family and friends in the wake of his death.

On my first watch of Enter the Void, I described it as philosophical. No longer. It has no claim to stake on the existence of a soul. It is a character study of how a “nobody” spends his last cogent moments struggling with these questions of identity:

Who was I? What kind of life did I live? Did I do the right thing?

To his sister: Do you remember that promise we made when we were kids? By the time you find out I’m dying, will it be too late? What will you think of me?

To the universe: Why was I born?

This film is about the beautiful tragedy of self-awareness hitting too late. As the brain physically disintegrates, the spirit expends the last of its energy recalling as many images of life as possible, hoping their recall will spark something, some remembrance. At that very instant Oscar’s death takes him, he also experiences his birth: a cycle of eternal recurrence due to the brain’s subjective perception of time.

Free association and trauma

The visuals of this movie are fragmented, illogical, and jarring for a reason.

The movie doesn’t just tell you the story of Oscar. It makes you experience what it’s like to be him.

Confused, the brain loses its capacity to understand reality. You live in a world in which subliminal messages about birth and death are communicated through electronic screens, where elements of our consciousness appear like idea salad. Everything strobes. Ordinary objects pulsate like they have neon-infiltrated veins.

The brain loses its ability to understand boundaries. It starts mashing together visually similar and thematically dissimilar images. A prop in the dressing room reminds you of a lamp in your childhood. A bullet wound reminds you of a tunnel. You gain the ability to intensity-match across visual and aural dimensions. A grating noise evokes a harsh light; a muffled humming evokes a faint strobing.

Trauma is re-released. As you lie dying, you think of the last time you saw death up close. Your fear of death starts to hijack all the happy memories you had tucked between layers of fat. Here’s what you experience. A happy family outing. Then a truck plowing into you. A happy reunion with your sister 20 years later. Then another truck plowing into you. The brain is stuck in a loop. By decontextualizing and recontextualizing memories will it finally make sense of your existence?

Symbols and yearning for a past childhood

This movie covers a lot in its 161 minutes. It explores the themes of life, family, birth, sex, alienation, trauma, passivity, and of course, death, but through symbols. This makes the experience extremely emotional and visceral.

How illogical many of these symbols are. Nude bodies are everywhere — Oscar sees his sister, then he sees his mom breastfeeding. The TVTropes page says that this shows Oscar wants to have sex with his mother. Wants to? I don’t think so; the overtones of trauma and longing and regret far overshadow any kind of erotic desire. Sex and intimacy can be linked in a way that is biological, symbolic, and impersonal. They are natural processes that we associate with existing and dying. I don’t interpret it as some puerile longing. I interpret it as a gaping hunger to connect back to life.

In summary

I really wanted to write an elaborate review of this movie with a complete thesis statement, but I simply can’t. This movie does too much for me to cover in writing. It makes me feel too much in ways I don’t even understand.

Overall, if I had to say why I appreciate this film rather than how it makes me feel, I think I just deeply appreciate when filmmakers are innovative. I appreciate when they start projects destined to be box office flops because of how alienating they can be to most people but which resonate deeply with a few people.

Regarding Enter the Void in particular, I love how its visual intensity meets its philosophical intensity. (Yeah, I know that earlier I said it wasn’t a philosophical film; I think its in-film portrayal is not philosophical, but if you’re like me, the ideas of dying and being born cannot be not philosophical). Taking symbols like the fundamental contradictions of life (the changing writing on the wall: I WANT TO LIVE / I WANT TO DIE) and ramping them up, points to the absurdity and circularity of life.

[adelaidedrubman]

Jessie and Jacob Jenna and John

:) 💜

THANK YOU LICI FOR SENDING SORRY FOR THE LONG ASS ANSWER BUT in brief. for better or for worse, probably the seed they have the strongest mutual sense of “damn, i kinda don’t care” for both of my girlies. somehow despite a gender/sexuality incompatibility jenna and john actually somewhat more likely to work than jestiny and jacob. elaboration on that below cut.

jenna is a lesbian so johnship doa on a sexual and romantic level but i’ve said before and stand by it in another time and place they could have had a very functional quid pro quo lavender marriage for convenient cover as they do get along in a very impersonal and businesslike manner in their established canon. jenna is very skilled at disengaging from conflict with a stiff professionalism so she’s good at neutralizing john tantrums and switching him back into composed façade mode without any real emotional labor on her part and john hasn’t the patience to keep trying to goad reactions from jenna when she’s technically being fully accommodating and polite so he quickly gives up at any kind of deeper emotional understanding and adopts a “well as long as things keep running properly” attitude of disinterest towards her. so perhaps in another world jenna lives in a home with a well manicured lawn and a white picket fence with her “husband” who is always either at work or out on long fishing trips with his buddies (never seen the group of guys he goes with but i think i heard one of them is named jesse?) as men do. shame he doesn’t spend enough time with his wife but suppose it’s good he was kind enough to let his spinster sister move in with them so she has some company. always see them working in the garden together or having tea out on the lanai they seem to get along quite well. family values are so important.

meanwhile jestiny and jacob destined to fail because jestiny can’t fucking stand guys who make the fact they go hunting their entire personality or performative tough guys or bootlickers. hypocrites also.

but more seriously they are just. maximally disinterested in each other. jestiny’s primary thoughts on jacob are that he’s a “boring, whiney ass loser” and jestiny would rather feel almost any other feeling on earth than bored. she is extremely irritated by him (not in the turned on way she’s very clearly capable of) because he doesn’t engage with her every provocation or indulge her antics he won’t even fucking “yes, and” her during her live from the torture cages comedy routine he’s no fucking fun. she needs a live one on the line as they say, a partner who’s a little more spirited and reactive. which brings us to jacob’s part of being supremely unamused by her antics frankly her whole senseless destruction just to entertain herself and willingness to die on every hill she comes across if it proves a petty point in a funny way thing only serves to aggravate his whole hopeless feeling like he’s lived without a purpose and will die without a purpose thing. something something the two types of nihilism “nothing in life matters 😔” vs. “nothing in life matters 🤪”

if i picture them trying to go on a date fr the only thing i can think about is that one bit from parks and rec

^jacobjestiny in a nutshell

[northwoodplaza]

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[gaydryad]

🥊 and 🧊 for ATTWC plz!

🥊 -What do they love to do? What do they hate to do?

Karyn: Loves— Is the kind of person who finds math fun, and loves engaging in movement / dexterity-based sports. Is this influenced by maybe unconsciously tapping into inherited magic? Maybe. She is oddly light on her feet... anyway! She also enjoys people-watching quite a bit. #1 eavesdropper. Hates— Self-reflection

Death: Loves— Reading. It's pathological. Particularly second-world fantasy and science fiction, but also mystery and horror. Anything not a psychodrama or historical fiction is on the table, really. —Otherwise: enjoys sneaking into various spiritual or religious festivities & impersonating various spirits/deities (though does this less than he used to in the past); following new technologies for physical combat/etc, sometimes tinkering with/designing magical weapons. Hates— Actually having to engage in any sort of sustained conflicts, particularly involving the factions. Absolutely hates direct confrontation, preferring more indirect means or games. Also hates being tied down to one thing or place for too long; prefers to avoid extended obligations.

Life: Loves— Working on her experiments and designing new ecotypes. Would isolate herself from everything in a heartbeat if it meant getting to spend all of eternity running field tests and simulations. Enjoys taking on particularly hostile or novel environments, and getting to completely manipulate and suffuse a place with her creations; she likes the slow calculation around and mitigation of random factors and variance. Maybe a bit pathologically. Hates— Having to interface with humans and engage with them outside of strict delegation or indirect manipulation. She doesn't mind keeping up with humans' antics, but hates being roped into them herself. Totally unrelatedly, hates any discussions of morality or politics.

Diana: Loves— Was 100% into any team-based extracurriculars she could join and enjoys nothing more than getting to be in a leadership role, particularly with regards to delegation and task management. Though she gets more frazzled by the more bureaucratic aspects of her position as queen, she really loves the aspects of balance and care. Is the first person you would want to go to with your problems; she will both solve them for you and love doing it. Also enjoys the competitive aspects of team sports. Hates— Managing bureaucracy and regulation. She has a slightly-unrealistic idea of how resource management works and hates having to turn away any in need. —On a lighter note: is fine at practical math but hates proofs.

Oscar: Loves— Anything that involves working with animals. He just loves animals. Also really likes making music and writing poetry; if he didn't have to prepare to be king, he would absolutely be an artist of some stripe instead. Hates— Confrontation, and having to play up confidence or power in general. Is not a fan of violence, and is also an anxious mess, and so has a very bad time if he needs to speak out or defend himself (though, he's not actually terrible at combat, just opposed). Additionally, he hates the kind of power games that he's expected to keep up with both domestically and in broader politics; he doesn't like having to lead, but he also hates the demands placed on him.

lastly... okay hmm... for Triste... let's play in the space of his younger self. Pre violent depression, at least. As a younger man I think he was an absolute nerd, and also highly driven by care for those in his House. He's a good politician, and a competent leader, but the thing that drives him on that front is ultimately moral guilt and not passion. He is, at the end of the day, that mutual who is running threadbare trying to fix the world (or at least, "fight for a better world," by his standards) and has not spent enough time on his own wellbeing. Maybe he loves the fight, the controversy, but it's not so much that he enjoys flouting convention as the other options didn't quite work out. What does he hate? I think Triste hates doing what he's doing: getting into petty squabbles to try and build power, appeal and appease various other Houses to garner support. He hates the game as he hates the game-masters, even if he plays well.

🧊 - Is their current design the first one?

Physically yes (i.e. their general appearance hasn't changed much): Karyn, Death, Oscar, Diana, Zeta, Delta

Physically no (i.e. got a significant visual redesign): LIFE!!, Triste

Universe is kind of in a weird place here—They haven't been redesigned per se but originally I had no plans to give Them a more human-looking appearance (nor to have Them come back from the dead), so... kinda?

Personality no: BASICALLY EVERYONE. For the most part, the only exceptions were late adds to the cast (Diana, Universe, Delta), though Oscar hasn't really changed much either. Diana basically emerged fully formed, minus technically a veeeeery old proto-Diana from... I think draft 2...?... who basically was a completely different character; Universe likewise, though Their distinctive speaking style came a little later. Delta has gone through basically zero changes

In terms of changes, Karyn has changed the most. Her current self and the version of her in draft 1 are basically two completely different people LMAO,,, in part because I have changed a lot since 2013 and she has changed with me, in part because starting with draft 2 she more or less went "actually this shit isn't romantic!! I hate it here!!!" and evolved from there.

Both Life and Death also had pretty notable changes—Life got a lot meaner and less empathetic, Death became less cruel and more compassionate—but have kept the same "bones," so to speak. They also both became more "adult," but part of this was the fact that I eventually got tired of writing them constantly bickering; it wasn't fun to read.

The biggest change, though, was regarding how they feel about humanity: originally Life was sympathetic to human plights, and Death more apathetic. There wasn't originally a non-interference taboo (Universe didn't exist in the original cosmology—They were a much later addition) (Triste originally was more or less just power hungry; the ethical debates arose later). In the time between drafts 3 and 4 (2014--2016) all that changed, and necessarily Life's characterization had to change accordingly (Death's a more slow evolution).

(As a side note here, Triste is completely unrecognizable lmao;; I'm pretty sure his current self would absolutely beat the shit out of the character that filled his role in drafts 1-2 (draft 3 he was dead, so...). That said, it's hard to say that he's changed the most, when really it's more like I decided to switch his character type from "abject villain" to "morally objectionable antagonist" and all the rest fell out of that.)

[justlikethefish]

Somewhere outside the borders of the world is a giant scorpion made out of teeth. The main reason we're safe from it is that it's too big to fit inside the world, so it's kinda stuck outside.

You know how elemental spirits that get real strong end up dragons? Sometimes a dragon is also a big ol' frog or a really weird, mean bear. They're still dragons, though!

Sometimes, groups of down-on-their-luck gods will band together and form street gangs. There's probably two cities where this happens most often, and only one of them is Heaven.

The colossal weird titan-things that made the world packed it full of big, weird prototypes of regular critters.

One of them is a mammoth that's practically a mountain, surrounded in a perpetual freezing fog. It herds glaciers.

Another one of them is a mantis so big that its legs are mistaken for redwoods and its body and head are obscured by the canopy of the forest it inhabits. It spends most of its time just vibing and thinking deep mantis thoughts, but every now and then it'll munch on travelers as a little treat if it gets real hungry.

And another is a 20-foot tall puma that once wrestled a hero for three days straight and they had such a good time that they decided to become bros and hunt down the enemies of the Sun. One time, they impressed a guy so much he made them matching armor. Another time, when the puma got all messed up trying to rescue a sorceress, she healed him so good that armor became a part of his body. He's currently hanging out, probably waiting for his old pal to be reincarnated. Hey, his old pal could be you!

And yet another is, like, the first dude, and he's 15 feet tall and made of clay and he swims around through the dirt and if he gets mad at you, he'll just pull a magic sword or something out of the dirt and beat you up with it. He's kinda mad because the folks who made him didn't even finish him before making actual humans, but mostly he just loves to travel and see the world.

For some reason, there's like, a billion things that will parasitize you, or take over your body, or mimic you or something like that.

There's two kinds of wasps that do this! One is a giant wasp that will xenomorph you, while the other will enter your body en masse and hive up in there, puppeting your corpse around all grossly. They'll do this to whole towns!

There's colonies of parasitic orchids that will take over the minds and bodies of their victims with different colored blooms that perform different roles.

There's an evil bog that takes human sacrifices, then uses those bodies to do evil bog stuff.

There's a rubbery, three-eyed squid-bug that'll make one precise cut, then crawl inside you and eat you from the inside. They can learn human language and eventually learn to mimic it in their puppet-bodies.

There's these big, weird, white-furred cat-goblin guys that just absolutely hate religious and virtuous people, and they love to kill, eat, and—you guessed it!—wear their skins and impersonate them. They're immune to attacks made by normal people for some reason.

There's these big, green cyclops-monkeys with goat legs and ram horns that love caring for small, defenseless things but just absolutely love eating people... Especially old people. Oh, and they're perfect vocal mimics, so they'll call out to you in your own voice.

Actually, there's a whole bunch of monkeys, too. The forest mimics listed above, ink monkeys, panic monkeys, (arguably) grate monkeys, tree-singers, chillikin, sleepers-in-the-sand at least look like gorillas, there's blood apes... Heck, you could do a whole post on weird monkeys.

Some of my favorite weirdass shit of all the weirdass shit in Exalted:

An off-balance, amnesiac elemental dragon who travels the world as a ragged human hobo and gives people he likes magical pillow creatures with faces that explode in the owner’s face when he gets pissed

Tiny, pissy, bitter multicolored sparkledeer that are eternally enslaved to giant sentient mountains that read their thoughts

An ancient race of dinosaur-people with names straight out of a Thundercats cartoon who start out life as Jurassic-park level vicious monsters and have a limited and non-replenishable pool of reincarnating souls

bio-engineered giant reptiles who eat drugs, use their stomachs as refineries, and piss out stronger drugs

a man so done with the state of the world that he has spent centuries as a killer whale eating giant squids

a giant imprisoned primordial who affects the form of an angry boarlike being and a giant imprisoned primordial who comprises a vast silver forest who are probably totally boyfriends

faeries that are actually every-shifting entities of chaos who approach simple things like “identity”, “euclidian geometry”, and “feelings of any sort” like they are cosplay props

[russellrustles]

snowballs and skirmishes - g. russell

prompt: 26 - snowball fights requested by anon: ‘snowball fight with with george russell as you babysit his niece and nephew’.

word count: 0.7k

christmas drabble masterlist

masterlist

——————————

George holds your gloved hand in his own as you stroll down the path at a leisurely pace, the two of you keeping a cautious eye on the two kids lurching through the snow a few metres ahead of you.

You’d been asked a few days ago if you could look after George’s niece and nephew for an afternoon while their parents sorted out some Christmas shopping and other errands, and seeing as you didn’t have any plans for the day you had of course agreed. Yesterday, you had been lucky enough to be blessed with a rather generous amount of snowfall, providing you with the perfect opportunity to take them for a walk through the park to keep them entertained.

However, neither you nor George are experts in childcare, and before leaving the house you’d had a convoluted discussion about how many layers his niece and nephew have to wear in order to stay adequately warm. Logically, they probably only really need the same amount of layers as the two of you, but just to make sure they don’t end up falling ill you had thrown the whole set of scarves, hats, gloves, coats and thick jumpers on them, resulting in them running around looking like garishly colourful impersonations of the Michelin Man.

“Hey, guys, let me show you something!” George calls to them, making them skid to a halt and turn back to look at him. You stop at the same time as he does, leaning in against him for some warmth as his niece and nephew come stumbling towards you, kicking up snow as they do so.

Although he spends a few moments resting his hand on your lower back, he’s quick to delicately push you away, encouraging you to keep walking while he stays behind with the kids. A slight feeling of suspicion rises within you as you hear hushed whispers between the three of them while slowly continuing to walk, and you’re almost certain that they’re up to no good.

Almost immediately, your thoughts are confirmed when you feel the dull thud of a snowball hitting your back.

The kids erupt into squeaky laughter, giggling and cheering at the success of their uncle’s nefarious plan.

“George William Russell!” you shout, turning around to face the three attackers with your hands on your hips like a disappointed mother. George responds with nothing more than a roguish smile, still crouched down to be at the same height as his niece and nephew and casually throwing a snowball from one hand to the other.

Right as you see him getting ready to throw another snowball at you, you grab your own clump of snow and hurl it at him, hitting his chest. He falls back with theatrical flair, clutching at his chest as he lays in a pile of snow.

The kids let out shrill shrieks, running and bouncing around him and yanking at his arms and legs in an attempt to get him back up.

Once they’ve succeeded in getting George back onto his feet, their retaliation is relentless.

You’re forced to duck behind trees and benches for cover as the three of them toss snowball after snowball at you, and despite accuracy perhaps not being their strongest asset they manage to land a fair few hits.

Despite your attempts at self-defense you’re greatly outnumbered. Even though you throw the occasional snowball back at them, you’re no match against a high-spirited boyfriend and two seemingly indefatigable kids, and you’re eventually forced to capitulate, grabbing a tissue from a pack you keep in your coat pocket and waving it in the air as a white flag of surrender.

George and his niece and nephew cheer loudly, jumping around and giving each other high fives in celebration while you head back towards them.

However, just before you reach them, you scoop up a small amount of snow and hide it in your closed fist.

Approaching George from behind, you wrap your arms around him in a tight hug. “Congrats on winning an unfair fight,” you giggle, still unwilling to fully admit defeat despite your unceremonious surrender.

“Oh, you’re just bitter that you’re not on the winning team,” he jokes.

You see the opportunity, and you take it.

Standing up on your tiptoes, you whisper, “Maybe I am, Georgie. Maybe I am,” before slamming a handful of snow onto his face.

He only manages to let out a betrayed gasp before you start sprinting down the path, refusing to look back when you hear three sets of footsteps setting off in pursuit.

——————————

TAGSLIST: (read this post for more info about my taglists)

@emmnf1 @idkiwantchocolatee @ohthemisssery @dumb-fawkin-bitch @wintergilmore3 @revengze

[dancemachinetrait]

September 10th, 1910- Letter extract, Clem Gillespie to Daisy Gillespie

I am certainly seeing a side of Greater Windenburg we never saw when Aunt Minnie used to take us to the pantomime at Christmas. You can tell Mother rest assured that I have not quite sunk into a pit of vice and voluptuousness, but my horizons have certainly been expanded. Our boarding house is in Villareal Square, and there are more kinds of people here than I knew existed! Just walking down to buy a loaf of bread in the morning one hears half a dozen languages. It makes me feel excited to be alive!

The boarding house is run by Mrs Travers, who was an actress herself in her youth. She is enormously proud of all the stars of the stage who were inhabitants of the house in their humbler days; singers and dancers and actresses and acrobats, even some I had clippings of in my scrapbook back home! The parlour is fairly papered with their framed photographs, and on her merrier evenings she is a goldmine of stories. We told her we were newlyweds. I'm not sure she really believed us- she looked us up and down and said that she wasn’t one to ask questions ‘if the rent is paid and the premises is orderly.’

Our fellow lodgers certainly aren’t what you would call orderly. All those years I longed to live among bohemians, I never knew how noisy they were! But what a collection of people.

Miss Christina has a popular female impersonation act. It feels strange to call her a female ‘impersonator’, when she lives as a woman on-stage and off. Everyone calls her Miss Christina. (I called her Miss Pickering once and everybody laughed.) I don’t know what her male name is and have no inclination to ask; I can’t imagine calling her Mr Anything. I suppose in a way she is like me.

Mr Berel and Mr Rivkin are quite a different kettle of fish. They work backstage, like me, and are very political. They stay up until all hours of the night arguing about Marx and drinking dreadful Russian spirits, and usually finish up singing maudlin songs in Yiddish until someone goes and thumps on their door. Otherwise they spend their free time going to political meetings in Vatore Street in the Jewish neighbourhood, near where Eli’s family lives! Although they argue incessantly they are plainly devoted to each other.

Then there is Bella Rosen. Some days the door rings two or three times with  deliveries of flowers, bonbons or love-notes from one of her gentleman admirers. I can well understand why. She is very popular in the vaudeville and musical comedies, and some of her costumes are quite astonishingly skimpy, but I think she could stand stock still in the middle of the stage wearing a potato sack and still bring the house down. Her rooms look as though they were transposed from the more scandalous sort of French novel. Mother People back home would say she was no better than she should be, but so far as I can see 'as good as she should be’ is perfectly sweet. She is forever passing on boxes of bonbons from her admirers, and I know she gives half of the jewellery she receives to Miss Christina, with whom she is great friends.

Miss Hammond and Miss Healy work in scenery and wardrobe respectively.  Miss Hammond is rather fierce. She smokes cigarettes just like a man and wears knickerbockers on her bicycle and even on occasion about the house! I suppose it would be rather rich of me to cast stones in that regard. Miss Healy is Irish and rather scatty. They are friends of long standing and share a room.

And lastly there is Cecilia Rheinhold, who is in the play with Hon. She is from Germany and apparently already quite well-known there. One certainly gets that impression to hear her talk, in any case. But Hon seems very taken with her. She says she is being perfectly sweet to her in rehearsals and showing her how things are done, etc. and even offered to ‘run lines’ with her (that means practice) outside rehearsal. The play is called The Cherry Orchard; it is by a Russian and apparently it is supposed to be a comedy. I must say the Russians must have a very odd sense of humour.

At present I am still working backstage as a sort of general dogsbody or factotum, generally with Mr Berel and Mr Rivkin. The work is so much more exhausting than anything we ever did on the farm. I fall into bed aching all over and some evenings it’s all I can do to stay awake at dinner! So you can rest easy knowing I have no time for fleshpots or debauchery.

All this is so I can make myself useful until Leslie King, the celebrated male impersonator, returns from tour. I am to be trained up as a sort of apprentice, and if I am good enough I might even have my own act some day. Just think of it! You might come and see me in top and tails. Quite a way from the Little Windenburg Dramatic Society!

Enclosed is a studio photograph of Hon and me, paid for extremely rashly out of my first month’s wages. You can’t think how exciting it is to have money one has earned oneself- even if it is hardly more than the pin money I used to get back home.

Your loving brother,

Clement

P.S. Please convey my gratitude to Eli for his willingness to pass on my letters.

previous | next | beginning

[vital-information]

Without missing a beat Heath [a MacArthur Fellow, a linguistic anthropologist, and a professor of English and linguistics at Stanford,]  replied: “Yes, but there’s a second kind of reader. There’s the social isolate — the child who from an early age felt very different from everyone around him. This is very, very difficult to uncover in an interview. People don’t like to admit that they were social isolates as children. What happens is you take that sense of being different into an imaginary world. But that world, then, is a world you can’t share with the people around you — because it’s imaginary. And so the important dialogue in your life is with the authors of the books you read. Though they aren’t present, they become your community.”

...

According to Heath, readers of the social-isolate variety (she also calls them “resistant” readers) are much more likely to become writers than those of the modeled-habit variety. If writing was the medium of communication within the community of childhood, it makes sense that when writers grow up they continue to find writing vital to their sense of connectedness. What’s perceived as the antisocial nature of “substantive” authors, whether it’s James Joyce’s exile or J. D. Salinger’s reclusion, derives in large part from the social isolation that’s necessary for inhabiting an imagined world. Looking me in the eye, Heath said: “You are a socially isolated individual who desperately wants to communicate with a substantive imaginary world.”

I knew she was using the word “you” in its impersonal sense. Nevertheless, I felt as if she were looking straight into my soul. And the exhilaration I felt at her accidental description of me, in unpoetic polysyllables, was my confirmation of that description’s truth. Simply to be recognized for what I was, simply not to be misunderstood: these had revealed themselves, suddenly, as reasons to write.

By the spring of 1994 I was a socially isolated individual whose desperate wish was mainly to make some money. After my wife and I separated for the last time, I took a job teaching undergraduate fiction-writing at a small liberal arts college, and although I spent way too much time on it, I loved the work. I was heartened by the skill and ambition of my students, who hadn’t even been born when Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In first aired. I was depressed, though, to learn that several of my best writers had vowed never to take a literature class again. One evening a student reported that his contemporary fiction class had been encouraged to spend an entire hour debating whether the novelist Leslie Marmon Silko was a homophobe.

Another evening, when I came to class, three women students were hooting with laughter at the utopian-feminist novel they were being forced to read for an honors seminar in Women and Fiction.

The therapeutic optimism now raging in English literature departments insists that novels be sorted into two boxes: Symptoms of Disease (canonical work from the Dark Ages before 1950) and Medicine for a Happier and Healthier World (the work of women and of people from nonwhite or nonhetero cultures). But the contemporary fiction writers whose work is being put to such optimistic use in the Academy are seldom, themselves, to blame. To the extent that the American novel still has cultural authority — an appeal beyond the Academy, a presence in household conversations — it’s largely the work of women. Knowledgeable booksellers estimate that seventy percent of all fiction is bought by women, and so perhaps it’s no surprise that in recent years so many crossover novels, the good books that find an audience, have been written by women: fictional mothers turning a sober eye on their children in the work of Jane Smiley and Rosellen Brown; fictional daughters listening to their Chinese mothers (Amy Tan) or Chippewa grandmothers (Louise Erdrich); a fictional freedwoman conversing with the spirit of the daughter she killed to save her from slavery (Toni Morrison). The darkness of these novels is not a political darkness, banishable by the enlightenment of contemporary critical theory; it’s the darkness of sorrows that have no easy cure.

The current flourishing of novels by women and cultural minorities shows the chauvinism of judging the vitality of American letters by the fortunes of the traditional social novel. Indeed, it can be argued that the country’s literary culture is healthier for having disconnected from mainstream culture; that a universal “American” culture was little more than an instrument for the perpetuation of a white, male, heterosexual elite, and that its decline is the just desert of an exhausted tradition. (Joseph Heller’s depiction of women in Catch-22, for example, is so embarrassing that I hesitated to recommend the book to my students.) It’s possible that the American experience has become so sprawling and diffracted that no single “social novel,” a la Dickens or Stendhal, can ever hope to mirror it; perhaps ten novels from ten different cultural perspectives are required now.

Unfortunately, there’s also evidence that young writers today feel imprisoned by their ethnic or gender identities — discouraged from speaking across boundaries by a culture in which television has conditioned us to accept only the literal testimony of the Self. And the problem is aggravated when fiction writers take refuge in university creative-writing programs. Any given issue of the typical small literary magazine, edited by MFA candidates aware that the MFA candidates submitting manuscripts need to publish in order to obtain or hold on to teaching jobs, reliably contains variations on three generic short stories: “My Interesting Childhood,” “My Interesting Life in a College Town,” and “My Interesting Year Abroad.” ...

The value of Heath’s work, and the reason I’m citing her so liberally, is that she has bothered to study empirically what nobody else has, and that she has brought to bear on the problem of reading a vocabulary that is neutral enough to survive in our value-free cultural environment. Readers aren’t “better” or “healthier” or, conversely, “sicker” than nonreaders. We just happen to belong to a rather strange kind of community.

For Heath, a defining feature of “substantive works of fiction” is unpredictability. She arrived at this definition after discovering that most of the hundreds of serious readers she interviewed have had to deal, one way or another, with personal unpredictability. Therapists and ministers who counsel troubled people tend to read the hard stuff. So do people whose lives haven’t followed the course they were expected to: merchant-caste Koreans who don’t become merchants, ghetto kids who go to college, openly gay men from conservative families, and women whose lives have turned out to be radically different from their mothers’. This last group is particularly large. There are, today, millions of American women whose lives do not resemble the lives they might have projected from their mothers’, and all of them, in Heath’s model, are potentially susceptible to substantive fiction.

In her interviews, Heath uncovered a “wide unanimity” among serious readers that literature “‘makes me a better person.’” She hastened to assure me that, rather than straightening them out in a self-help way, “reading serious literature impinges on the embedded circumstances in people’s lives in such a way that they have to deal with them. And, in so dealing, they come to see themselves as deeper and more capable of handling their inability to have a totally predictable life.” Again and again, readers told Heath the same thing: “Reading enables me to maintain a sense of something substantive—my ethical integrity, my intellectual integrity. ‘Substance’ is more than ‘this weighty book.’ Reading that book gives me substance.” This substance, Heath adds, is most often transmitted verbally, and is felt to have permanence. “Which is why,” she said, “computers won’t do it for readers.”

With near-unanimity, Heath’s respondents described substantive works of fiction as, she said, “the only places where there was some civic, public hope of coming to grips with the ethical, philosophical and sociopolitical dimensions of life that were elsewhere treated so simplistically. From Agamemnon forward, for example, we’ve been having to deal with the conflict between loyalty to one’s family and loyalty to the state. And strong works of fiction are what refuse to give easy answers to the conflict, to paint things as black and white, good guys versus bad guys. They’re everything that pop psychology is not.”

“And religions themselves are substantive works of fiction,” I said.

She nodded. “This is precisely what readers are saying: that reading good fiction is like reading a particularly rich section of a religious text. What religion and good fiction have in common is that the answers aren’t there, there isn’t closure. The language of literary works gives forth something different with each reading. But unpredictability doesn’t mean total relativism. Instead it highlights the persistence with which writers keep coming back to fundamental problems. Your family versus your country, your wife versus your girlfriend.”

“Being alive versus having to die,” I said.

“Exactly,” Heath said. “Of course, there is a certain predictability to literature’s unpredictability. It’s the one thing that all substantive works have in common. And that predictability is what readers tell me they hang on to — a sense of having company in this great human enterprise.”

“A friend of mine keeps telling me that reading and writing are ultimately about loneliness. I’m starting to come around.”

“It’s about not being alone, yes,” Heath said, “but it’s also about not hearing that there’s no way out — no point to existence. The point is in the continuity, in the persistence of the great conflicts.”

Jonathan Franzen, “Why Bother?”